A Longing for His Coming Part 2

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Welcome to the Teaching Ministry of Jubilee Church International. Jubilee is devoted to making disciples, winning the loss to Christ, building strong families, and taking the gospel to the nations.
Open your Bibles and join us as the presence of the Holy Spirit helps us to grow a little deeper.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:29)
So, to preface my sermon, I wanted to say that I'm going to be using a lot of wedding talk, which is very applicable to the season of life that I am in.
I'm using a lot of marriage examples and stuff like that. But I wanted to say that my sermon is not a marriage or a not, it's not a marriage sermon, so it's not just applicable to the wedded couples. But I think it's applicable to whether you're single or married, you know, whatever season of life you may be in, I think it's very applicable. Because today, we're talking about Alonging First Coming, Part 2, The Anticipating Bride, which, kind of what that means is, today I'm talking about Christ and His Bride, the Church, and the return of Christ, or the marriage of the Lamb. So, to really start my sermon, this is my second start, I want to give everyone a healthy reminder that's applicable to both new Christians, you know, who are just starting their relationship with Christ, or Christians who have been, you know, chasing after God for their entire life. But I wanted to remind everybody what Christ did for us. Now, what exactly did Christ do? Well, I'll tell you. He was first born to the Virgin Mary. He lived 30-something years on this earth and lived a sinless life. He was tempted by every single sin that we are tempted by today. You might say, well, Jesus didn't have iPhones and he didn't have the Internet, but he really did. He was tempted by every single sin that we are tempted by today, yet he did not sin. He was both fully God and fully man at the exact same time. He ministered to God's people for three years. He was captured by the Romans in prison. He was beaten, broken, bruised. I mean, some people say even beyond recognition, he was hung on a cross, on a tree. He made a way of salvation for us, right? Because what is sin? Sin is the breaking of God's law, right? It separates us from God because when we sin, we defile ourselves. When we sin, we make ourselves unclean. Whereas God is completely clean, he is completely holy, and there is no sin in him, right? And so because of that distinction, we cannot have relationship with Christ, with God. But Christ came to bridge that gap. He came and he made a way that we can have relationship with Christ again.
And that was through the sacrifice of his life. And so by his blood, we could have relationship. Now, I told you I was going to do a lot of wedding talk, and today I want to talk about how excited I am to get married.
If you talk to me or Maddie on any given day, we could tell you the exact amount of days it is until our wedding. A hundred sixty, baby. Yes, it is. Awesome. Because we were just that excited. We guys brought us together, right? And he perfectly timed it and everything. And we were just very excited to enter into this covenant together. Amen.
But I want to ask all the wedded couples out here, how many prepared for the daunting task? Because weddings, they're a lot of work. They, there's a lot of preparation that goes into it. I was actually talking to Sam about this the other day. He was asking me how the wedding prep is going. He was like, I don't know, because if you ask, Maddie does a lot of the planning. She's probably the big planner here. I've done some, you know, helped here and there, but you know how it goes. Maddie's done a lot of the planning. But I'm not talking about the events of the day, or the vendors, or anything like that. I'm talking about the mental, emotional, and spiritual preparation for the day.
Because first of men, our very first assignment, our very first calling that God gives us is to our wives and our families. That's the biggest calling that He gives us. And I remember my dad telling me one time that when we get to see God face to face, He's not more than, you know, more ministries, more than how much we served, more than how many cards we had, or how big our house was, or how successful we are. God's going to look at the men, at the husbands and the fathers. He's going to say, how did you govern the family I gave you? Right? Right?