GYC SE Fall Conference 2019: “The Wife of Jesus”

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GYC Southeast

Plenary

Dean Cullinane

The Wedding

Father in heaven, Lord, we are still waiting.

Still waiting for that day when the clouds will be rolled back as a scroll, still waiting for that trumpet sound, still waiting for the voice of the archangel as it descends.

Help us, Lord, not to lose hope in this time, but to look forward and to prepare for the day that is coming.

Father, we've all sinned against you and against heaven.

Lord, we are not worthy to be called your daughters or your sons.

Father, your son, Jesus Christ, The bridegroom himself will forever be worthy to be called our Savior.

So we ask that he would speak to us today, this special day that you have blessed, sanctified, and set apart.

I have a testimony actually from when my wife and I got married.

It's very easy when organizing a wedding that is primarily just about 2 different people to make that day entirely about those 2 people.

We when we were planning this out came to a consensus, an agreement that if anyone was going to be lifted up on that day it would be Jesus himself.

And we wanted the day to be more about what God has done for us than what we had done or were going to do for each other.

And we tried to put a conscious effort into making sure that each part of the service was understandable to people that did not yet have a relationship with Jesus.

Weddings, probably more than any other service, maybe alongside funerals in our church, I think have the greatest capacity for evangelism.

Rarely are you going to get more unconverted or more unbelievers present in your church than when there is a wedding or unfortunately when there is a funeral.

And I remember at our wedding, our wedding ceremony in the evening, a young lady came to me and my wife and she said, I just want to let you guys know that I've seen a picture of God today that has made me want to serve Him for the rest of my life.

And I think that's the whole point of the wedding.

The whole point of the wedding is that 1 would make a commitment for the rest of their life.

Now, marriages in the time of Jesus, marriages when the Bible was written, differ wildly from what you and I see as marriages today.

There's a lot more preparation back then.

There was far more ceremony and a lot more formalism.

There's usually, there was usually a number of steps that I want to briefly take you through.

The steps of marriages before and in the day of Christ.

Step 1 would have been the perprosal or the betrothal.

What would happen is the groom would go to the father's house the father of the bride and He would there he first of all he would leave listen to me because this is all gonna come back It's all gonna come full circle.

The groom would leave his father's house and he would head to the house of the bride and there he would make the proposal to her a payment would be put down for her and then they would establish the marriage covenant They would make sure that what this marriage was going to look like was set out before them both.

Step 2 would be what we call the period of engagement.

The groom would then return to his father's house and that usually meant being apart from his bride-to-be for about 12 months.

And in those 12 months, at his father's house, he would build an extension to his father's house, which would serve as the house for him and his wife to be.

Then he would return from his father's house to the place of the bride, but he would return at a time unknown to the bride.

And just before his return, the bride would spend time undergoing a period of ritual cleansing It was in stage 3 upon his return upon his arrival That the wedding ceremony would happen and a few people not everyone a few people were invited to this wedding ceremony.

Step 4, he would return with his bride now to his father's house.

There the marriage would be consummated and the wedding feast would be celebrated for the next 7 days and That wedding feast would consist of anyone who wanted to be there Now there is a reason There is a reason why Christ and His church are likened to a groom and His bride.

The Father was actually the 1 that paid for the bride.

In the very first step, it would be the father that put down the payment and We see that step 1 has already been accomplished in this analogy Step 1 the father has already paid for the 1 whom his son loves he paid that price with what with his son's life and So step 2 follows shortly after Jesus said I go to a place where you cannot come the marriage doesn't work like that I don't propose and then take you back home with me.

No, no I'm gonna go and prepare a place for you in my father's house.

Many mansions I go why to prepare a place for you So that when I come back I can receive you unto myself.

Mind you, it was not the son that decided his time of return.

The father was the only 1 that knew when the son would return because he would request the son to return and the only condition upon that was that the son's work would be finished, the preparation would be complete.

The bride doesn't know exactly what time.

It means that she always has to be ready.

That's like Knowing that your wedding day is 12 months from now and spending every single day from now getting ready for that day.

12 whole months in preparation for 1 single day.

How many of you think that sounds a little overcompensated?

The bride has 365 days to prepare for that 1 day.

God has given us 70 years or more to prepare for that 1 day, and how many of us are still unprepared?

12 months doesn't seem like a long time anymore.

But the bride would not be caught completely unawares because when the groom would get close, there would be a loud shout.

A message would go forth, behold, the bridegroom cometh.

Do you see why Jesus uses this analogy so many times?

Do you see why it seems to be, especially as we get towards the end of his life, the thing that he keeps going back to, the marriage, the marriage, the marriage.

I remember as those 8 months became 2 months and then became a single month and then 3 months, sorry, 3 weeks and then 2 weeks.

You know what happened around the 2 week mark for those of you that were here?

It was the panic monster came up about 2 weeks.

I said, hey, Dean, you haven't even written your vows yet.

I remember getting a week, a week away from the wedding, and now I downloaded those silly apps as well.

Phone would be randomly popping fireworks all over the place to let me know that there was 4 days left.

I remember 1 way of trying to just get it off my mind was to go and preach.

I traveled 3 hours getting a call to preach the night before on the Sabbath.

I was like, I just, I need some time out of this space where everyone is just asking me if I'm ready and what I think and what's going to happen.

I just need to go a good 4 hours up north to people where places where nobody knows me and just preach the word and it was therapy.

And then the night came and I headed back down to London, headed to the church and spent maybe another 7 or 8 hours setting the church up.

I went to bed at 04:00 in the morning to get up for 07:00.

Panic monster going crazy, Dean, you still haven't written your vows.

And you know what's the interesting thing?

You know what's interesting about this whole wedding process?

I know the stages, I know how the entrances work.

The Honeymoon

Father in heaven, we thank you for this privilege to be gathered here at this wonderful school here at GYC Southeast.

And for the final message, the final time that we open your word here together, we just ask for your spirit to be present.

We thank you for the way that you have been leading these past few days.

Thank you for the decisions that have been made, for the way that you have shown yourself, shown your power.

Father, we pray this evening that we would see it again.

We have all sinned against you and against heaven, Lord.

We are not worthy to be called your daughters or your sons.

Father, your Son, Jesus Christ, the bridegroom of the church, will forever be worthy to be called our Savior.

So speak to us this evening, we pray in His name, amen.

Before I tell you that story, I want to tell you another story, so we'll get to that 1.

Now that I'm married, I'm broke, and as a student, broke, and so on and so forth.

Broke, just broke, let's just use that word, just broke.

But extra broke when we were saving up for our wedding.

And as we got pretty close, maybe within a few months, the panic monster woke up and said, "'Dean, you haven't organized the honeymoon yet." I thought to myself, that's right.

And the honeymoon is 1 of the most vital parts of the whole experience.

And so I was thinking, scratching my head, where can we go?

And then I would look at my bank account and it looked like the answer was just gonna be home.

It's gonna be a homey moon kind of thing.

The budget did not allow for much traveling, for much exploration.

And it got closer and closer, and the panic monster just went back.

He was like, there's nothing to even bother trying to wake you up for.

Procrastinate on this 1 all you like, nothing's gonna change.

And so I told my wife, I said, I said, babe, I'm gonna have the honeymoon, don't worry, I'll take care of the honeymoon, okay?

You're just gonna have to wait until we get there.

In the back of my mind, I was thinking, well, what if she's already been there numerous times?

However, a few weeks before the wedding, and by a few I mean maybe 5 or 6, I got an email.

And the email said, hi Dean, hope you're well, Came across some of your sermons online, and we really want you to come to our church and speak for a series there for a couple of weeks.

And the Dates are February 10 through to February 24.

Dear so and so, thank you for the invitation.

I'm honored, however, I cannot make it because I'm actually getting married in between those dates.

Hope that your experience has blessed nonetheless, Dean." And they're probably, I'm paraphrasing.

Then they responded, oh wow, that's amazing, congratulations.

Response, well Dean, what if we move the dates a little bit further down and then we brought you and your wife to South Africa?

And I said, you know what, I'm going to need to pray a bit.

4 days after our wedding concluded, which you know is only a day long, we flew out to Johannesburg and there we spent 3 days at someone's house, a very nice house in Johannesburg, and then from that point, from that point, the real honeymoon kicked in.

You see, knowing that I was going to South Africa, I was like, well that's great, but I'm not really doing much for that, that's just kind of happening, and I don't just want to go to South Africa and be like, hey, we're in South Africa because we're still broke.

Broken South Africa is the same as broken London.

And so I was like, no, no, no, she deserves better.

And so I messaged all of the bridal party, got them in a group chat without her.

And we had 7 bridesmaids and 7 groomsmen, so that's 14 in total.

And I said, hey guys, I've got this crazy idea, wondering if you can help me out.

You see, there's a place in South Africa, northern South Africa, just north of Kruger National Park, called Pondoro Game Lodge, and it's rated as the number 1 luxury hotel in all of the continent.

And I was wondering if maybe you guys could help out a little in making this possible.

Here's the thing, it's 250 pounds per person per night.

I was like, I'm looking to maybe stay here for 2 nights.

And so I asked if each of them would be willing to put 50 pounds towards this experience.

And they all did, and I think I ended up putting about 500 in myself.

And we spent 3 days, 2 nights, 3 days at Pondoro Game Lodge.

It's a rather small place, extremely isolated.

You fly in to the most short airport you've ever seen in your life.

We flew from Johannesburg to an area called Hoitzbrut and we got there and There was, there's no building.

You just get off the plane and there's people over in the corner and they have, they have like your suitcases and they have a little scanning thing and they're like, is this you?

Now They were a little bit stringent when we were coming back.

They stole my wife's hairdressing scissors.

I say they stole because it passed the requirements, but that's another thing altogether.

And so there was only room for 12 guests at this resort.

Only 12 guests, really small, really romantic.

And everyone has their own, their own, I don't know what this thing is kind of called, but your own area.

Series

Plenary

The Honeymoon

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

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