The Five Rings to Combat Suffering Pt. 3 - The Wedding Ring
There is a reason why stories like Harry Potter and Cinderella are so popular.
It’s because just like the main characters in those stories we have all felt rejected before. Harry Potter had special abilities, he was unique just like all of us. But people who didn't understand him couldn't see how special he was. They made him hide his gifts and they even made fun of him for them.
When someone doesn't see our worth; whether at a job, a group of friends, or a relationship, we daydream about what it would be like for them and the rest of the world to finally see that we are worth something and that we are a valuable asset.
You will have Your Harry Potter, Cinderella moment.
If you are a person who has experienced rejection, felt looked over whether by a job, a relationship, or the world at large, the scriptures have an important message for you.
You are called and chosen, you are lovable, and you have never actually been rejected. In order for true rejection to take place, someone would need to know you fully, and no human being can. They can only reject their perception of you. The one who truly knows you inside and out is your Creator. And He does not say that you aren’t worth anything, to the contrary, He thinks you’re so valuable that He paid the high price of His life to win you back and He wants you to be His bride.
“As a young man marries a young woman, so will your Builder marry you, as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.”
- Isaiah 62:5
The Source vs. The Vehicle
If you’ve ever been heartbroken and wondered how you’ll feel whole, the first step is to realize that you haven’t actually lost what you think you need. As humans, we have a need for love and to feel valuable. As we already mentioned, no human judgment can lessen or determine your value nor does the loss of another human mean you have lost love. When you experience pain, I want you to ask the question ‘Why?’ three times. The conversation in your head would probably go something like this:
I feel broken. Why?
I lost something, whether it was a job or a person.
Why does that hurt? Because I lost love or value.
Once you get here, I want you to ask yourself; Is that true?
God is love. He is the source of every ounce of love you have experienced in this world. The person or thing you felt that love through was only a vehicle not the source or substance of love itself. You have direct access to the source. I want to be very clear that I am not saying that the loss of the vehicle doesn’t hurt, it does and it will take a long time to get through. But the difference between pain and depression is HOPE. When you lose a vehicle, you feel pain. But it is pain that you believe that there is no hope to change that leads to depression. You do have hope because you don’t need the vehicle to experience love again. Feeling like you have lost love is unbearable. Recognizing you were not in any lack or deficit of love but have lost a vehicle is painful but not as devastating.
Preparing the Bride
The Hebrew word used for preparing the bride is Pekah which means ‘to open’ in reference to opening her heart. It is the same word used by Jesus when it speaks of “ to open” the eyes of the blind, “to open” the ears of the deaf. In the same way, the first step a man takes to open the heart of the bride is to woo her. The first thing that Jesus did to woo us to Him was to heal us.
Stages of Betrothal in Hebrew Culture
After a groom woos his bride, just like Jesus, the groom goes and prepares a place for her which was usually literally a new room built in his father's house.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that 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 so that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
- John 14:1-4
When the groom returns for his bride, he is preceded by a shout just as the bride did not know exactly when the groom would return. The Bible says no one knows the date or time of the return of Christ but just like the groom, His return will be preceded by a shout.
“For the Lord, Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.”
- 1 Thessalonians 4:16
Redefining Holiness
We are told to stay ready. One way a bride got ready for a wedding was a cleansing ritual which was literally the equivalent of removing debris and taking a bath. As Christ's bride, we ready ourselves in the same way so that we are not unprepared for His return.
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”
- Ephesians 5:25-27
As the bride, we are to be holy. Holiness means set apart. The Hebrew culture tended to misunderstand this word in the same way we do today. Jesus completely redefined what it meant. When we think of the words “holy” and “clean” we tend to think boring and sterile. Or somebody who acts holier than thou. But Jesus showed that someone who had a clean heart was someone who was willing to get dirty for the sake of others. The loving neighbor is described as those who care for the dirty outcasts of society such as the man who picked up the bloody, beaten traveler on the road and fed and housed him. Compared with those who walk on the other side of the road to avoid his uncleanness, “blood” in Hebrew culture believes made you unclean.
Surprising Miracles
In the gospels 3 famous miracles recorded are:
Healing of the leper
Healing of the woman who had been bleeding for years
Healing of the dead boy
The Bible says if we were to record all the things Jesus did, they wouldn't fit in The Book. So what made Him choose these miracles to write down? What was more significant about these events than the others?
Do you know what these three stories have in common?
These were things that in Hebrew culture made you unclean, in need of healing before you could re-enter the camp; leprosy, coming in contact with blood and coming in contact with a dead body. Jesus makes the point that outward uncleanness might separate you from people or society because man looks at the physical, but these are not causes for God to reject you because God looks at the heart.
“But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them.”
- Matthew 15:18
He did not shy away from the leper, the bloody, or the dead instead he healed them. Jesus didn't become unclean, instead, He was able to absorb and heal the pollution.
Healing our Heart
What did however separate us from God was the uncleanness of our heart. But even this did not make him give up on us. Instead, like a faithful husband when we were unfaithful he remained true and called us back to himself.
In order to deal with the uncleanliness of our hearts, He died in our place taking the punishment we deserve so that we can be covered by His finished work.
What is the relationship between betrothal and holiness? What does love have to do with purity?
Obviously, there are the connections that we’ve all heard about. We need to be holy to be in the presence of God. Devotion and faithfulness are important parts of a relationship. But there is something else going on here as well…
Pollution of something pure lessens its value.
When we don’t understand God’s value or our value, we cannot experience the true level of His love.
We cannot live out our intended purpose, as image-bearers of God, or as His body. If we do not operate from His kind of love.
The opposite of purity, holiness, and cleanliness is to pollute. To pollute is to lessen in value. If I pollute the nutritional value of an apple by using poor soil or mixing it into a sugary pie, I am lessening the value of the nutrients. When we profane God's holiness we are demonstrating we don’t value him. Here’s the interesting part. When we don’t value Him, we in turn don’t value what He has created. We lose our own sense of value.
Sin is always the result of not understanding value. When we don’t understand the value of our brother (another creation of God), it is much easier to steal from him or hurt him. During any genocide, the first step was always devaluing the life of the enemy race.
When we lose a sense of our value, we get depression, anxiety, and the opposite experience from the fruit of the spirit and the fullness that God desires for us.
In order for us to experience the Quality of Life we desire, we must remove the pollution and have a clean heart. It is impossible for us to purify ourselves. We must be given a new heart and be born again.
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
- Ezekiel 36:26
The role of the bride is relatively easy; she must simply say yes, she must agree to the marriage. Christ paid our bride price with His blood; He woos us, He purifies us, He has already given us the down payment of the Holy Spirit. He has gone to prepare a place for us and now, we keep our ears open for the shout. We look forward to the promise of shalom.
The Hebrew word for Bride is Kallah the root of the word is K-L-H which also means complete.
Wholeness, completeness.
When we feel broken, set our hope on our destination when we will feel complete for the rest of our eternity. Set your hope on the future, Christ, our bridegroom is preparing for us and bask in the source of love itself.
Setting our hope in the right place makes our problems small and our God big. We feel consumed by love and excitement. We experience anticipation instead of worry.
When you feel like no one sees your value or the world is rejecting you, remember that the creation of the universe has chosen you.
You were so valuable to him he thought you were worth dying for.
Whenever you feel broken-hearted, remember how loved you are by the source itself.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God.
“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
- Romans 8:38