Where are your wedding clothes?

 

Friday, November 10, 2023


Psalm 25

2 Kings 14:17-15:7

Matthew 22:1-14


Observance: Leo of Rome, bishop and teacher (d. 461)


Where are your wedding clothes?


When Christ hung there outstretched on the cross, He was inviting the entire world to His wedding feast. Embracing the whole world in His love, He then went to the grave, lay there for three days, and then rose again. Spending time with His disciples for just a little over a month, He ascended into heaven to prepare that feast for all who would accept the invitation.


Accepting the invitation to the wedding feast might seem easy – we have the warnings, we have the promises, we have the miracles which prove the truth of the whole matter. But we won’t be welcome if we aren’t wearing our very best outfit.


This wedding outfit which we must wear is not that nice suit in our wardrobe, or that elegant dress we have hanging in the bedroom. That outfit is as worthless and flimsy as the fig-leaves our first parents made for themselves in the Garden (Genesis 3:7). Our own attempts at tailoring are embarrassing at best.


When our first parents were expelled from the Garden, God made them better clothes (Genesis 3:21). God is always doing something to make us better – those first clothes, of skin, and now our new wedding garments, robes of pure white, washed clean in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:9-17).


The enemy is stalking us, accusing us of all sorts of terrible things, pointing out our filthy rags. In one way, he is right, because that is no way to be dressed at the heavenly banquet.


But we have been given beautiful clothes, clean and spotless – clothes washed in Jesus’ blood. When we accepted the invitation to the wedding, we did so by acknowledging our sins before God and asking for forgiveness in Jesus’ name. Because of this, God has given us clothes that reflect Jesus’ beauty and righteousness. The cleansing power of Jesus’ precious blood is what works that miracle of new life in all of us. Our wedding clothes have been given to us by God, because of what Christ did on the cross for us.


When the Bridegroom cometh will your robes be white?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Will your soul be ready for the mansions bright,
And be washed in the blood of the Lamb?

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