Word of Salvation – Vol.06 No.28 – July 1960
The Spirit & The Bride Pray for the Coming of The Lord Jesus Christ
Sermon by Rev. J. J. van Wageningen on Revelation 22:17
Scripture Reading: 2Peter 3
Hymn 80:1,3; 287; 144; 370; 432:3,4 (without refrain)
Translated by John Westendorp (with some help from Mr Google).
Translator’s note: early editions of ‘Word of Salvation’ still had some sermons in Dutch for the migrant communities that then made up the Reformed Churches of Australia.
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Between Pentecost and Christmas we are in the “festive-less” period of the church calendar.
Is it too strong, too harsh a statement, when, despite the celebration of church holidays, we characterize the life of the church in general as the “festival-less” period?
Certainly, it is true, we remember again and again the saving events that took place many centuries ago.
But, and this is the question at hand, are they really SALVATION facts for us, that is, facts on which our salvation rests; facts in which our salvation, our preservation, our life lies?
This will only be the case when we know Jesus with a living faith, Jesus to whom all those facts of salvation relate, yes, who is the content of all those facts of salvation.
Even though the celebrations, in the sense of ‘church holidays’, are over, the celebration remains, because we know Jesus, because we are known by Him; a celebration within – a celebration in the heart.
When we live in this way with the facts of salvation that have taken place in the past, then we are also not left untouched by the fact of salvation that lies in ‘the now’, in the present, that continues every day, namely this fact of salvation: the sitting of our glorified Savior at the right hand of God.
Yes, that is also a saving fact!
He who is clothed with all power in heaven and on earth, He through whom the Father rules all things, He is working our salvation there. He is there for our good. He holds the reins of world government in His hands, though the peoples rage and the nations plot a vain thing, though the kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against His Anointed. (Psalm 2).
Our King (the King of kings and the Lord of lords), gathers His Church by His Spirit and Word, He brings about His Kingdom, He prepares ‘His day’, the day of His return, the day of His judgment.
And this brings us to the last event of salvation, which is still in the future: Jesus is coming back; He will appear in glory on the clouds of heaven.
Yes, this too is a fact of salvation: “His coming is that which makes our salvation complete.”
There is every reason, especially now, in this “festive-less” period, now that Pentecost is behind us, to reflect on this saving fact of the Second Coming.
There is no particular Sunday designated as a day of celebration for that. This does not mean, however, that it is less important than the other salvation facts that we do celebrate. On the contrary…! The return of Christ is of such tremendous significance for both church and world.
If it is to be right and good, then this coming event must put its stamp on and fill and control the life of the church. This must, among other things, come out in prayer, in the prayer of faith, which is full of tense expectation: “Come Lord Jesus, yes come quickly!”
God’s Word tells us that the Spirit and the Church pray this prayer. It is the main idea of our text:
THE SPIRIT AND THE BRIDE PRAY
FOR THE COMING OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST:
- The reality of this prayer;
- The calling to join in prayer.
1) “Come, Lord Jesus!”
It is only a very small word: Come! – a prayer that is as short as it is urgent, with which the Spirit and the Church address Jesus.
When we listen to this short prayer with intense attention, and think about it with a believing heart, it is as if a small closed window opens, through which we see a surprising, an overwhelmingly wonderful view.
It is not – as the world would have us believe – that history and our lives are a meaningless game, or a meaningless drama with a dark ending; a jumble of events; a chaotic clash of ideas and forces; an aimless going-on, simply because one has to, until death puts an end to it; a being locked into a circle, a cycle, from which one can never escape, the fatal circle of death, which surrounds us on all sides, without hope, without prospects….. Oh no! Thank God, that is a lie…!
“The Spirit and the bride say, Come!
There is a view! There is insight! There is a perspective!
It has been Pentecost once in Jerusalem; that Pentecost event has taken place and it can never be undone: Jesus, our glorified Savior, has fulfilled His promise, the promise of the Father: He has poured out His Spirit!
The Holy Spirit has come upon those disciples who are hiding together in Jerusalem. They receive power and come out as witnesses of Jesus, who is the Christ. Joyfully and fearlessly they testify of their risen and living Lord, and they proclaim His name, as the only name given under heaven for salvation.
It is the birth-hour of the New Testament church, in which the Spirit dwells. The New Testament church, which now, filled with the Spirit, and led by the Spirit, sets out on a journey, on the march, towards the final goal: the end of the world, THE DAY – the day of Jesus’ return, the day of complete redemption.
She has a worldwide mission: to preach the Gospel to all peoples. She has promises that endure the ages; promises that span her like a rainbow and continually direct her attention to the end, for her Lord says to her: “Behold, I am with you even unto the end of the world.” “And this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.” The end, when the Son of Man will come with power and great glory.
It is not just a single word, of minor significance, a remark, made so casually and perhaps not well understood and even misunderstood. No, the opposite is true.
The Lord has repeatedly spoken to His disciples concerning the last things. With great emphasis and clearness He has preached to them the coming of the Son of Man, and with emphatic earnestness He has called upon them to be on watch.
When the risen Lord has ascended into heaven, the disciples may not continue to gaze after Him, with their face and heart caught in the past. No, they receive the message immediately – on the Mount of Olives – that this Jesus, who has gone from them, will return in the same way. They are not to follow Him, but to look for Him. Their eyes are to be directed right over everything, to the end.
Hence, this is an essential part of the preaching of the apostles, as is evident from the letters.
And the last book of the Bible is also full of it: through all the travails of world history the end comes: the glory of the new Jerusalem, the perfection of the new heaven and the new earth, on which righteousness dwells.
And like a trumpet blast it sounds: Jesus is coming! Jesus is coming: Yes, on the last page of the Bible, in the last chapter of the last book of the Bible, our Savior says it Himself, three times: I am coming, I come, I am coming quickly!, so that it will continue to sound in the ears and hearts of His people, never to be forgotten.
Now this is the ground, the background, and the foundation of the prayer of the Spirit and the bride in this world. For the Spirit and the bride say, Come!
And this is not an empty, meaningless cry. It is not the prayer of an ignorant man or the voice of one crying in the wilderness. It is the giving of an answer, of the only good and necessary answer to the word and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a reality of which the world knows nothing, but which the Lord reveals and gives to us.
–O–
The Spirit and the bride say, Come!
That the Spirit and the Church are mentioned here in the same breath should not surprise us as a “Pentecost Church”. After all, at Pentecost the Holy Spirit made his home in Christ’s Church. “Praise the Spirit, He will not depart from the Church bought with blood.”
And the Spirit prays, yes, the Spirit first of all! God, the Holy Spirit prays – He longs for the return of Jesus Christ.
This is not at all strange. For what is the work of the Spirit? It is the carrying out and application here on earth of what Christ has acquired.
Here in this world, which is full of sin and unrighteousness, where hatred and enmity flourish, where destruction and death lead to the downfall of existence alienated from God, where Satan still does what he can and God is ignored and cursed, in that world the Holy Spirit works, the Spirit of God, poured out through Christ, the other Comforter.
He convinces the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. He works renewing, life-giving, purifying, comforting. He brings sinners to the feet of the Savior, under His lordship of grace. He points the way to the full truth. He wants to glorify Christ, and for that purpose He takes from the fullness of Christ to proclaim it to His own and to distribute rich gifts.
Yes, these words express it very clearly: “He wants to glorify Christ.” The Holy Spirit longs for the moment when every knee will bow to Jesus and every tongue will confess that He is Lord, to the glory of God the Father!
He longs for the perfection of the new heaven and the new earth. He works toward the completion, toward the re-establishment of all things, toward that glory in which Satan and sin are banished and God will be all in all. And therefore the Spirit prays to Jesus Christ our Lord: Come, yes, come!
–O–
The Spirit prays together with the Church.
The Lord has promised: “He abides with you and will be in you.” The Holy Spirit prays for and with and in the Church.
And the Church prays through the Spirit, who generates prayer. Without the Holy Spirit, the church is finished. Then it is ‘death in the pot’, despite a well-running organization, because the Spirit is the one who gives life.
The Spirit works true faith, the Spirit connects to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Spirit reveals to us our sin and guilt, our death and need, but not to bring us to despair, but to lead us into the saving arms of Jesus, so that we may know and love Him, who first loved us so excellently that He gave Himself for us, even to the death of the cross.
He shed His blood and bought His Church at that price. “You are bought at a price.” You belong to Jesus, forever.
And now there is such a strong bond, such an intimate fellowship of love, between the Lord Jesus and His Church, that Scripture uses the image of the bridegroom and the bride.
The Lord is the bridegroom and the Church is His bride. Thus Paul writes in Ephesians 5: “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; that she would be holy and blameless.” These words conjure up for you the image of the radiant bride in her spotless bridal attire.
The apostle also speaks of the love relationship of man to woman as a great mystery; that is… looking to Christ and the church.
Christ’s Bride: what a wealth of divine mercy is contained in this name, for the Church consists of people who are in themselves evil and depraved, ungodly.
Christ’s Bride: when we hear this name, we should be overwhelmed by the riches of the love of Christ, the heavenly Bridegroom, who obtained this status for his Church by giving himself for her, even to the depths of hell.
Christ’s Bride: this means a love for the Bridegroom, a surrender to the Bridegroom, a longing for the Bridegroom, so deep, so great, so intimate, that it cannot be expressed in words.
“And the Spirit and the bride say, Come! Come, Lord Jesus!” The bride, filled with the Spirit, led and moved by the Spirit, pleads for the coming of her Bridegroom. She desires to be united with Him in a perfect, undisturbed, eternal communion. The Bridegroom’s cry, “I am coming, I am coming quickly!” makes her heart leap for joy and she answers, “Come, yes, come!” It is a prayer that expresses her faith, her hope, and her love.
She believes in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, her Lord, who redeems her with a complete redemption, who will one day present her before Him in all her glory, without spot or wrinkle, in holy splendor.
She hopes with joyful and confident expectation for the fulfillment of His unwavering promises, that He will come to cast all His and her enemies into eternal damnation and receive her to Himself into heavenly joy and glory.
She loves Him, and with eager longing she reaches out for Him, for His future, for His day. And the Spirit and the bride say: Come:
–O–
The question probably now arises in your mind: Is this really so? Does this portray the image of the Church or is the reality very different? Do you not recognize the Church in this image of the bride? Certainly, it has been Pentecost and the Lord poured out the Spirit and the Gospel was carried out into the world among the nations, and the church was planted and expanded. It is all true, but… what division and schism! What quarrels and strife! What externalization and formalism! How the light of the Gospel is darkened and how far away love and humility are often to be found. How the Church has become established in this world, as if this is where she has her final destination. Is it not true that the Church is constantly pre-occupied with things that are below and has lost sight of her real destination?
Is not all our attention focussed upon what the future will bring here on this earth, and oh, the anxious longing for the future of Christ; the longing for the day when Jesus comes again; the strong waiting with the longing of love for the coming of the bridegroom – where is that found?
Has not the Church drifted from the spiritual level of the first Christian communities, where the flame of love and longing burned brightly and every church service was concluded with the heartfelt, urgent plea: “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly”?
Certainly, we must not generalize and our field of vision is certainly limited, but is there still not much truth in this scathing indictment?
Should we then just cross out this Scripture passage and say: it is no longer so?
Oh, no! It remains true, in spite of all the sin and failure and lukewarmness of the Church: “The Spirit and the bride say, Come!”
It is a glorious reality in this terrible world: the Church of all ages prays through the Spirit, as a bride to her heavenly Bridegroom.
However, in the light of this reality, there is serious reason for the Church of Christ to examine itself, to humble itself deeply, and to be converted to that first love which it has forsaken.
For indeed the prayer of the Spirit and the bride is a glorious reality, even now and until the end of this dispensation, but the poignant warning of our exalted Lord always remains in force: “I will remove your lampstand out of its place.” Then the church is no longer a church; then it will certainly perish.
A Church that is truly Church awaits her Lord.
A Church that is truly Church is a bride who longs, longs intensely, for her Bridegroom.
“And the Spirit and the bride pray, Come!”
–O–
2) “And let him who hears say, Come; and let him who is thirsty come; and let him who will, take the water of life freely.”
He who hears the words of prophecy, the gospel of God, the message of Him who came and is to come again—he who hears these things are you, brothers and sisters, …all to whom the message of the kingdom is preached.
You are called by God to believe in the prayer of the Spirit and the bride. It must not go on outside of you. It must not be that you know of that glorious reality of the calling of the Spirit and the bride and of the return of the Lord Jesus, but that it leaves you unmoved – as just a spectator.
Then you may find it interesting or impressive or old news for a moment, which you already knew, and then you leave it again. You go back to the order of the day, ordinary life with its ordinary activities and ordinary worries.
But if there is one thing that belongs daily in your Christian life, it is praying for the coming of the Lord Jesus… longingly looking forward to Him.
This should indeed be an indispensable part of your ordinary life, of your Christian life.
This must show that you belong to the bridal church, that you are a living member of it.
Do you personally agree with the prayer of the Spirit and the bride?
Do you also say it yourself: “Come, Lord Jesus!”?
Not just once in a while, for example when it is prayed here in church, but continually, as an expression of your personal faith, of your personal expectation, of your personal love for the Savior?
Are you thirsty, thirsty for the water of life, thirsty for the eternal salvation that Christ gives? Will you drink the water of life?
To be thirsty, that is bad! Then you do not want to drink for pleasure or for the sake of company, as when you drink a cup of tea or coffee; no, then you want to drink because your life is at stake, like travelers who, lost in a desert, exhaustedly search for water to quench their burning thirst.
Then you suffocate and you cannot endure it. Then you want to drink with everything that is in you; all your thinking and desiring and doing is directed towards that: water…! water…!
Are we so thirsty? Do we long for the water of life, for Christ and His salvation?
There are those, even in the Church, who are thirsty, certainly, but it is a thirst for money, for possessions, for all kinds of pleasures, lovers of pleasure more than of God. Their whole existence is directed towards the temporal and material.
And others have no thirst at all; they live their lives and all is well with them. What a terrible thing it will be when the Lord Jesus comes and He finds you like that, in a spiritual sleep of death, like a stranger whom He has never known. “Awake, you that are asleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light!”
Must you not admit that your faith is so often dull and sunken, without tension, without resilience?
Is it not true that we often get caught up in the things of this world, are earthly-minded, dwell superficially on our sins, and are far removed from the Savior?
How often we are spiritually depressed, so that we lose our perspective and live without joyful hope, without the desire of love, without focusing on the end, on the future of the Lord.
How easily we place the coming of the Lord Jesus outside of our lives, in a distant future.
This can also be contributed to by the fact that we are actually afraid of the end times. After all, by the time Jesus returns, it will be so terribly difficult for believers, a period of the most fearful persecutions. This is clearly revealed by God’s Word and the Lord Jesus himself says that if those days were not shortened for the elect’s sake, no flesh would be saved. And we shudder at that.
When we imagine this, it makes the prayer, “Come, Lord Jesus,” die on our lips.
That’s why we prefer to push that return far away. We still have it so good here.
It is on purpose that we say this here, because many people have difficulty with this, especially many young people. They reason: “How can I long for that? How can I pray sincerely for that? I still expect so much from this life. I still have so many ambitions.”
And certainly, we do not want to forget that spiritual life must grow, also in this respect. But on the other hand, we must also learn to see, also our young people, that expectations and ideals apart from Christ, outside of Him and His kingdom, are ultimately worthless.
Surely all our expectations and ideals must be governed by and subordinate to that one great expectation: the return of Christ, His eternal Kingdom!
And when we allow ourselves to be controlled by fear, Oh, how far we are from the attitude of faith which Paul expresses in the words, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
How our faith and our hope and our love has sunk. (Isn’t it still there?) Then we think of ourselves, of our natural desires, of this earthly life, and consider that the highest. Then we no longer see the dreadful, the God-dishonoring, the damnable sin and the unrighteousness in our own lives and in world events, the terrible curse of God, who is angry about it in His holy majesty.
Then we will have no eye for the glorious, the surpassing work of God’s redemption in Christ Jesus our Lord by His Spirit; that He makes us beloved children, that He redeems our lives from corruption, from the powers of sin and death; that He will one day liberate the entire creation and cause His eternal Kingdom to triumph to the eternal glory of the triune God.
Do you stand in this faith, bound to your Savior by the deepest ties of love, do you live in that hopeful expectation? Oh, if we do not, we must not be quiet about it, as if all were well.
Do you not know the desire that it might be otherwise? Let us humble ourselves heartily before the Lord and pray for His grace. Let us plead for the working of the Holy Spirit, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to be truly allowed to pray with the Spirit and the bride-church of all ages: “Come, Lord Jesus!”
We are such miserable sinners, but the grace of God is so great, the river of God is full of water, salvation in Christ is overflowing. “Whosoever is thirsty, let him come, and whosoever will, let him take the water of life FREELY, without price, without money, just like that, …FREELY.
It is purely grace.
When you live by grace like this, when you drink from the water of life like a thirsty man, you do not stand at a distance, like a spectator. That is impossible.
Then you understand your calling, you pray.
You are compelled, you agree with the prayer of the Spirit and of the bride: “Come, Lord Jesus!”
It will be your daily prayer in this dark, distressed world, where unbelieving humanity has no insight and no prospect: all doors are locked and all shutters are closed. What anguish!
But you, by God’s grace and Spirit, have a view, THE view, because your eyes and your heart are on Jesus, who is coming.
And with your prayer you combine your deeds: you prepare yourselves for the wedding feast; you have your loins girt about and your lamp burning, and you go out to meet the Bridegroom.
Amen.