To accept His pursuit and His Mohar is to call on the Name of the Lord and, of course, everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved. When we believe and confess and call on His Name He gives us His promised Holy Spirit, the promised seal. Again, let’s look at Ephesians 1:13-14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession–to the praise of his glory.”(NIV)
II Corinthians 5:5 puts it this way, “Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.”(NIV) What is to come? There is more yet to come. He is not done with us yet. Our seal, the Holy Spirit, is our deposit guaranteeing what is to come.
There is something else that is important for us to see. His seal is connected to His Name. We see in I Kings 8:10-11 when the ark of the covenant was brought into Solomon’s Temple it says, “When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the LORD. 11 And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled his temple.”(NIV) Now let’s look at I Kings 9:3 where the Lord is responding to the prayer of Solomon dedicating the Temple, “The LORD said to him: “I have heard the prayer and plea you have made before me; I have consecrated this temple, which you have built, by putting my Name there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there.”(NIV) Where did He put His Name? On the Temple!
In I Corinthians 3:16 it says, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?”(NIV) That cloud was God’s presence that filled the Temple. Yes, His Spirit filled the Temple. He made it Holy and placed His Name upon it. Again, later in the book Paul writes in I Corinthians 6:19-20, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”(NIV)
Your not your own, you’ve been bought with a price and your very body is a temple. II Corinthians 3:18 says, “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”(NIV) What did He fill the Temple with? His Spirit. It was called His Glory in I Kings. The Glory that comes from the Spirit, which is in us, and He is giving us an ever increasing Glory, He continues to fill us with His Glory. With ever increasing Glory, that’s what He’s doing in us. If that doesn’t excite you I don’t know what will. So be filled with the Spirit.
Alright, Revelation 2:17 says, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it.”(NIV) What might that white stone be? A seal. We receive that name. He is going to give to us a new stone, a white stone, a pure stone, with a name on it. When we receive Him, when we receive His Holy Spirit He literally marks us with His Name, the Name upon which we call upon. He Marks us with His Name.
And of course, that Spirit according to II Thessalonians 2:13 sets us apart for Him, “But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth.”(NIV) The Spirit continues to sanctify, it continues to set us apart.
Remember our Kiddushin, it is a ceremony and period of sanctification. He sanctifies. We who are believers in Yeshua the Messiah are living our lives in a period of sanctification. That is where we are at, we are being set apart for that awesome day. That day when our faith is made sight and we see face to face our beloved Bridegroom.
So let’s recap this amazing segment. When we accept His pursuit and His Mohar He seals us with His Holy Spirit and His Name so that our future is guaranteed. That future is with our Beloved Bridegroom forever and we will forever bare His Name.
As we know Yeshua went to be with His Father as the disciples looked on and were told He would return in the same manner that they saw Him leave. And yes, we also know that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for us. As Hebrews 7:25 puts it, “Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.”(NIV)
Jesus paid the price in full, the full bridal price with His death on the cross. But did you know He lives for you. He lives for you. Think about that. Do you live for Him? I hope so. I try to. He lives for us and He is constantly thinking about us. He is thinking about us so much that He can’t stop talking to His Father about us. That’s what He’s doing. He’s talking to His Daddy about you and me.
But what exactly are they talking about? John 17 tells us what they talked about while He was here with us, it says in verse 24, “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.”(NIV) I want them to be with me.
In other words, “When can I go get them? Is it done yet? Am I done yet? When can I go get them? I want them to be with me.” He’s talking! He and His Daddy are talking, and apparently Daddy’s still saying, “Not yet, Son, not yet.”
Oh, what a day that will be. The great passion of Jesus is to have His bride, His wife, with Him where He is, in the place He prepared for Her, in His Father’s house.
Not just any house, His Father’s house. It was the responsibility of a Jewish Bridegroom to leave His beloved Bride after the Kiddushin to literally go and prepare a place for her in His Father’s house. We see this again with Isaac and Rebekah. Isaac brings Rebekah into his mother’s tent, a part of His father’s estate. That was their home together.
Yes, while Yeshua and His Father are talking, He’s working. Yes, He’s gone to prepare a place for you and me. I can not end this section any other way than with John 14:1-3 “”Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”(NIV)
I am going to come back and we are going to have a wedding. We’re going to have a wedding. And as the precious Ketubah ends, “The Spirit and the Bride say, Come.”
We will start by taking a look at Jesus as our Bridegroom. We will do this by studying Jewish wedding rituals and then seeing from Scripture how Jesus life and ministry fulfilled His role as a Jewish Bridegroom. We will be discussing Scripture from cover to cover, from Genesis to Revelation, so keep your hats on, it’s going to be a wild adventure through the greatest love story ever told.
Jesus is revealed in Scripture from beginning to end and many of us have heard many times how the story of Scripture is from garden to garden, but as we will see that is only the place, awesome and wonderful as it is. What we will discover in our study is that it is the relationship in each garden that matters. What is that relationship? That is what we will find so fascinating and thrilling at the same time.
Like I said we are going to be looking at a lot of Scripture. I am aware that many of you know that Jesus is our bridegroom and that He spoke of some of His responsibilities as the Bridegroom such as when He said, “I go to prepare a place for you.” We know that’s there. But I want to show you how much Scripture is loaded with it. There is no doubt in my mind that this will be a lot of information to process, but also very fulfilling in the end, so I am asking you from the start to hang in there to the end because we are headed straight for the Wedding and the Wedding Feast. Are you ready?
We will dive right in tomorrow by taking a look at the first step Jesus took as our bridegroom, continuing, of course, with the rest of the steps Yesuah took as our Bridegroom in the days ahead.
We will then do an in depth study of The Bride, The Unity of the Bride, and The Wedding and The Wedding Feast.
Esther's Legacy 