The Bride and Bridegroom 

Continuing our serialisation of the booklet Are You Ready? by Sarah Winbow

There are three great biblical feasts: Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. The first two were fulfilled at Jesus death and by the coming of the Holy Spirit on the early Church. But, so far, the Feast of Tabernacles awaits its final fulfilment in Jesus’ Second Coming – when He comes to make His literal Tabernacle [dwelling place] with us on the earth. The feast is also known as the Feast of Ingathering, an agricultural term which also implies the final harvest of souls. 

All three feasts speak to us richly of the Jewish wedding. At the first Passover, God promises to rescue His people with language evocative of a lover to his bride-to-be,  (Exodus 6:6-8) – “I will take you as my own people”. This promise went on to become a betrothal between bride and bridegroom at Pentecost on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:5-8 below). Tabernacles points to the great wedding feast of the Lamb in the book of Revelation (Rev 19:7-9). The whole journey is all about the bride and groom! 

‘“Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.’ So, Moses went back and summoned the elders of the people and set before them all the words the Lord had commanded him to speak. The people all responded together, ‘We will do everything the Lord has said.’ So, Moses brought their answer back to the Lord.” (Exodus 19:5-8)

This is a marriage covenant made between all twelve tribes [the bride] and God [the bridegroom]. The words translated in English as ‘the people all’ are literally in Hebrew the kahal i.e. the gathered community, flock, or family of God. So, the ekklesia, ‘church’ or bride of Christ did not begin on the day of Pentecost narrated in the book of Acts, as is commonly taught by the Gentile church, but two thousand years earlier on Mount Sinai – on the first named Day of Pentecost – when God vocally issued a call for a people to set themselves apart to Him in covenant (marriage) relationship. The concept of God’s gathered bride was born on Mount Sinai at the first Pentecost (Exodus 19:8); but it was born again on the Mount of Olives, also at Pentecost (Acts 2). At the first Pentecost God gave His word – the ten commandments, Torah; at the second Pentecost He gave His Spirit.

The concept of God’s gathered bride was born on Mount Sinai at the first Pentecost (Exodus 19:8); but it was born again on the Mount of Olives, also at Pentecost (Acts 2).

This continuity from the Old Testament to the New shows that Jesus and the Holy Spirit’s ministry through the apostles continued the existing, established pattern and calling for the family and God’s bride. Messiah’s coming was meant to be a reformation within Judaism, not a separation from it! 

The Divorce

In this marriage covenant, God chose from all the nations of the earth the twelve tribes that comprise the Hebrew people to be His treasured possession. But they were continually rebellious and independent. He answered their cries for an earthly king, but this kingdom was eventually broken up and all the northern tribes (Israel) scattered across the face of the earth. 

“I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. Yet I saw that her unfaithful sister Judah had no fear; she also went out and committed adultery” (Jeremiah 3:8).

It seems that Judah was spared the same fate, but only just. Only Judah, Benjamin and Levi are distinct today and corporately known as the Jews. The rest have been assimilated into the nations where they were scattered, with many losing sight of their Hebrew identity completely. This is just one of the many good reasons why the gospel of the kingdom must go out across the world in these last days.

“If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house … then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the eyes of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 24:1-4).
“For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him. So then, if she has sexual relations with another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress if she marries another man” (Romans 7:2-3).

A bride is legally bound to her husband for her whole lifetime, so she cannot be bound to one man but married to another. Once a divorce has taken place the first husband cannot take her back because she has been defiled. The only way she was able to be remarried was if the bridegroom died, when the charge of adultery could no longer be brought.

“The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete” (John 3:29). 
“He [Caiaphas] did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one” (John 11:51-52).
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them” (Matthew 5:17).

God, in the form of Jesus, was the bridegroom sent to die in order to fulfil what the Torah demanded. Only the death of the bridegroom would free God’s bride from the curse and consequences of her spiritual adultery; to make the way for faithless Israel, cut off under the old covenant and scattered because of her sins and resulting divorce, to be brought back into God’s family by way of a new covenant.

Only the death of the bridegroom would free God’s bride from the curse and consequences of her spiritual adultery.

God demonstrates with powerful imagery his desire to reconcile following the divorce through the prophet Hosea, whom he instructs to “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes” (Hosea 3:1).

The New Marriage Covenant

“‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,’ declares the Lord. ‘This is the covenant that I will make with the people of Israel after that time,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.’” (Jeremiah 31:31-33)
 “In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.’” (Luke 22:20)
“For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance – now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.” (Hebrews 9:15)

The death of Jesus, the bridegroom, opened the way for all God’s people everywhere (Jews, scattered Israelites and Gentiles) to reconnect with Him through the new marriage covenant made through His blood. In the Jewish wedding, the cup offered to a bride by her bridegroom represents the cup of the New Covenant..

For almost two millennia it has been taught that the institutional Church is the Bride of Christ and that this has no bearing on the Jews and the scattered lost tribes. However, the overall biblical concept relates to the one new man (Ephesians 2:15) who comprises any Messianic-believing Jews, members of the scattered tribes and the Gentiles who have chosen to place themselves under the covenant through accepting that Jesus, Yeshuah, is the long-awaited Messiah and have obeyed Jesus’ call to follow Him as disciples. 

The Bridegroom’s Love

Ever since Sinai all of history has been heading towards the Great Marriage Supper of the Lamb as described in Revelation 19:7-9. 

Ever since Sinai all of history has been heading towards the Great Marriage Supper of the Lamb as described in Revelation 19:7-9. 

Jesus told us in the parable of the wedding banquet – possibly with the Marriage Supper of the Lamb in mind – that there are many who have been invited but for one reason or another they will not come. 

“Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame…Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet” (Luke 14: 21-24).

These verses show us clearly God’s deep heart of love for those who were lost, scattered and cut off.

As I was pondering all of this early one morning, I sensed the Spirit say to me, “Tell my people that I love them.” My response was, “But I do that all the time Lord. You know I teach them about Your Father’s heart and love.” His reply to me came immediately; “How have you come to know Me since your husband died?” “As my husband, Lord.” “Yes and that love is not the same as that of a Father. Tell them that I also love them as their Bridegroom; it’s a different type of love.”

Immediately the Lord took me back to the wedding of my son in 2023; there were a good number of guests but not one of them would have witnessed what I did. The ceremony was under way; the music was playing, and in the now commonly adopted American tradition, the bridesmaids preceded the bride; first the children, then the older bridesmaids; and with each appearance our anticipation for the appearance of the bride only increased. 

Then suddenly she was there, and she did not disappoint; she was, and is, stunningly beautiful, inside and out. But what I saw from my position in the row behind the groom was his reaction; he was looking intently for her but at the moment he first set eyes on her, he just burst into tears. She had come. She had made herself ready and he was overwhelmed with love for her.

This is just a shadow of our heavenly bridegroom’s heart towards us, a picture of how much God loves us, His bride; you and me. 

“How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful!…” (Song of Songs 4:1). “You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you…” (Song of Songs 4:7). “You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart…” (Song of Songs 4:9). 

Surely God loves us; you and me, not only as His precious child but also as His chosen bride and His heart is yearning, longing for us to make ourselves ready.

And it goes on. Surely God loves us; you and me, not only as His precious child but also as His chosen bride and His heart is yearning, longing for us to make ourselves ready.

Preparation

My daughter-in-law spent more than six months preparing herself for the wedding day. For many brides the time is much longer. But from the moment of the betrothal – i.e. the promise to marry – until the day of the wedding, it was all systems go. 

If all of this is how active and busy it is in the natural, how much more should we, as a prophetic people – those who are reading and seeking to understand the signs and the times of the age, and who realise that everything is moving towards the fulfilment of scripture – also be busy in making ourselves ready for the return of our bridegroom? 

It is time to get ourselves ready because God’s moving in the nation begins in you and me. 

God is seeking the complete devotion of a bride who is totally, passionately, abandoned to Him.

We cannot hope and pray for a national spiritual awakening to suddenly fall on us from above if we are not first willing to allow Him in to bring a personal true revival in each of our lives. God is seeking the complete devotion of a bride who is totally, passionately, abandoned to Him; a bride who is set apart from all earthly distractions and temptations, devoted to Him who has her complete heart-allegiance; a bride who has realigned her values and priorities with those of the bridegroom and chosen to walk the narrow, hard path of radical obedience and denial of self; a bride who has learned to abide in Him. She is the one whom He will adorn with His glory so that she can carry His presence into a lost and broken world.

I hope it is clear just how high the stakes are. This is not something that is just about me, myself and I; it is about being the people, the bride, that God has called us to be and needs us to be for the end-time harvest of souls to be gathered in. Therefore, we each need to apply ourselves to the question of to what degree are we already ready, and if we know that we are not, then how do we begin?

To be continued…

(Image by Rebecca Scholz from Pixabay)