Photo from: http://www.lorussostudios.com/wedding-photography/nj/
Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently.
– Exodus 19: 16-18
Long ago Yahweh chose a man of faith, named Abraham to become the father of his people. After many generations were born, Abraham’s descendants were great in number but they lived as slaves in a heathen land. Yahweh sent Moses to call his people to become a great nation, as he had promised Abraham. It was time they became acquainted with Yahweh, the creator and God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Moses extended Yahweh’s invitation to the nation and they agreed to leave Egypt and follow Him. In essence Yahweh issued a marriage proposal between himself as the bridegroom, and the nation of Abraham, his long awaited bride. The people accepted his proposal and left their false gods in Egypt and followed Moses, who served as the bridegroom’s best man, to a new land. It was customary for the best man to be dispatched by the bridegroom to comfort and protect the bride before the wedding ceremony.
Along the way Moses received from Yahweh at Mt. Sinai a wedding gift for his bride – 10 laws to guide her how to live after the wedding ceremony. The bride had second thoughts at first and rejected the bridegroom and his gift. But Moses showed the people they were wrong in their love of non-living gods and to accept Yahweh, the living God, as their bridegroom.
The second time the wedding gift of 10 laws was offered it was accepted. For once, the people understood how they were to live their earthly lives according to laws from God instead of following laws made by men. All the people went through a 3-day purification process, put on their best clean clothes and waited for the bridegroom to appear. But His glory was so bright and his voice so loud, the people asked Moses to continue to intercede for them.
The wedding took place, vows were exchanged where the people all agreed to reject all other gods and serve only Yahweh. The creator of all mankind agreed to take this nation from the bloodline of Abraham as his people. He would live with him in a land of milk and honey, where they could live happily ever after.
Unfortunately, Yahweh’s bride began to lust after other gods and turned her back on her husband. This defied the laws in their wedding covenant. The bride was so disrespectful that Yahweh had to step in and punish his bride. She was expelled from her home in the Promised Land and taken as a prisoner and slave in Babylon.
After sufficient time, Yahweh allowed his bride to repent, return home and rebuild a new nation that would love the bridegroom. For many years the relationship wavered. As a last attempt at restoring the marriage, Yahweh conceived a Son with his bride through a girl named Mary. His desire was for the bride as mother, to love her Son and thus, restore the bond with the husband.
Unfortunately the bride rejected the Son and killed it. This was the last chance for the bride to reconcile with the bridegroom. As punishment for what she had done, Yahweh, the Father, divorced his bride, and scattered her to the four winds, never again to be part of their home in the Promised Land.
The Father raised his Son from the dead and gave him a place of honor beside him on his throne. The Father then agreed that anyone who was loyal to his Son could become his Son’s bride. To assist the Son’s bride until the time of the wedding ceremony, the Father sent a best man (the Holy Spirit) to comfort and protect the bride and to remind her of the gift of laws the Father gave to live by.
None of the people chosen to become the Son’s bride deserved it. They too had broken the laws given by the Father. But they were told they only had to have faith in the promises made by the Father. As a result, he will freely forgive them and provide the gift of living forever with his Son in a place prepared for them.
As a show of faith and love on the part of the Son’s bride, she is to reject her old life and desire to obey the laws of the Father, which the Son has not changed. As preparation for her new life, she is to love the Father and Son and reflect that love in her everyday actions with others.
Then one day when the Father signals that the time for the wedding ceremony has come, the Holy Spirit will escort the Son’s bride to the place of the wedding banquet. The ceremony will occur and the bride and Son will be together forever. They will live in a place the Father has created for them and He will live with them also. And they will all live happily ever after. Amen.