Truth Archive

[Jack Oliver labors in Madagascar]
I have been thinking about something I spoke about in a convention not too long ago. You don’t forget what you speak at a convention, do you? You don’t forget your testimony. You continue to think about it and you continue to feed on it. It will become a little clearer, a little more real to us. I was talking last evening about God speaking to our hearts; that is far deeper than common knowledge or speaking to our minds.
A verse in Ephesians speaks about the love of Christ that goes beyond knowledge. That kind of sums up what has been in my mind these last few days. We sing in that hymn “Christ is coming; Christ is coming Let us lift our eyes on high, For the final, great fulfilment of all things is drawing nigh.” I wonder what the final great fulfillment is. Revelation chapter 19:6 says, “And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come and his wife hath made herself ready.  And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.” Could this be the last final fulfillment? The Bridegroom united with His Bride, His people forever. That is the day that is ahead of us. That is what has been on my mind, the Bridegroom and the Bride.
I think that everything God has given us in creation and in life is a type of the spiritual world. When God made this world, He gave us everything to help us understand His thinking. It’s impossible for us with our finite mind to understand God’s mind, but in as much as He could, He gave us so much in nature, so much in this life. The longer I live I see He did the most to show us things which we can understand with our human mind concerning the Kingdom of Heaven. That is why the Lord Jesus was able to speak about so many things in parables. Things like this, a man went out to sow and a woman making bread and treasures hid in a field. It was just the things in everyday life that teach us the truths of His spiritual kingdom. Maybe the best or most real is just this matter of the Bridegroom and the Bride.
Really this space of time in which we live between two Eternities, Eternity before the world began and the Eternity that will continue after the world began, this space of time can be summed up in a very simple sentence: it is about a Father seeking a Bride for His Son. This is the whole purpose of creation. The whole purpose of our meeting today and the purpose of the Scriptures is about the Father seeking a Bride for His Son. There is no other reason for creation. It is a love story, and that is what I would like to try to talk about a little bit this morning: this matter of the world and everything we are engaged in. Really, from us up here on the platform and from you out there giving your testimony, it is the same thing – it’s just being said in a different way, the message is being spoken continually but just in a different way to help us understand.
This matter of the Bridegroom and the Bride is the most wonderful love story ever told. It was planned in heaven and is being lived out here on earth, and it will finally be accomplished in heaven. This matter of God the Father finding a Bride for His Son: God’s love is beautiful, human love is beautiful. There is nothing more beautiful than pure human love. The world has corrupted love. The world so often mixes love with lust but human love is beautiful. It is a picture of God’s Divine love. Human love is sacrificial, human love is enduring, human love is powerful. Divine love is so much more sacrificial and everlasting. If we could just forget for a little while this matter of male and female and the human aspect of love. God is a spirit and the spirit is neither male nor female. We talked about the Father seeking a Bride for His Son but we could equally say a mother seeking a bridegroom for her daughter as a spirit is neither male nor female. God is a spirit. The human kingdom is the highest kingdom that is male and female. It is not that way with the Angels which is a higher kingdom than ours, and there is not that in the spirit. So, God is a spirit and we can set some examples.
Let us go back to the beginning of creation and see what happened. We know well enough what happened: God created man in His own image. That means that man has the capacity to have the same feelings God has. Man has the capacity to love the same as God has. Animals do not. When a mother hen protects her little chicks it’s not love, its instinct, but we have the capacity to love in the same way God does, and we have the capacity to have compassion and mercy and be angry – the same attributes God has. Because we are made in God’s image, it is the same, in a measure. When God made man in the beginning, man was God’s masterpiece. He was the very final piece of God’s creation. God was able to talk to Adam and beginning in Genesis 2:18 the Lord God said it is not good that man should be alone so I will make a helpmeet for him. The modern translation says “a suitable help for him”. God wasn’t only talking of Adam, he was talking about Jesus. God said it is not good for my Son to be alone. This is a Father with one Son who was looking forward to the time when His Son would have a Bride. When God said it is not good for man to be alone, He was equally saying it is not good for the Lord Jesus to be alone, so I am going to make a helpmeet for Him.
God was able to talk with Adam. He called all the animals to Adam and told him to give them names. Adam named all the cattle and the fowls of the air and the beasts in the field. God brought these animals to Adam and Adam said this is a camel and this is an ox, and so on until all the animals that were there at that time were named. It also tells us there was not found an help meet for man. All these animals God brought to Adam were made from the same dust as Adam was made but a suitable helpmeet for Adam could not be found. That is a little picture of the world. I was told a little while ago that there is about 7.2 billion humans living in this world and God is looking down from heaven at this mass of humanity for a Bride for His Son. He is looking for those who would be a suitable help for His Son, Jesus. Out of this mass of humanity there is not one person humanly who is a suitable bride for the Lord Jesus. This is like all the animals brought to Adam – not one was a suitable helpmeet for Adam. So, what did the Lord do? We know what He did, He put Adam to sleep and while he slept He performed a surgical intervention. He took a rib from Adam and made a woman. Adam did not feel a thing.
Some years ago I had major surgery. They took me to the operating theater in the morning and I didn’t know anything else. I woke up a little while later in the ward where they had taken me from. Everything was done and I felt comfortable. That is exactly how Adam would have felt. God put him to sleep then took a bone from Adam and from that bone made a helpmeet suitable for Adam – that is just what happened. The Lord went to the cross but God didn’t put Jesus to sleep on the Cross. The Lord, because of a love that we cannot possibly understand, suffered an agony we will never know, a physical agony, an agony of soul, an agony of mind when put on the cross. He accepted that. When He was put on the cross He gave His life, He simply died before the Roman soldiers came to kill Him; He gave His life. You remember the story – the Roman soldiers came along and the Jews said take these bodies down from the crosses because the Sabbath is coming. They broke the legs of one but when they saw the Lord Jesus in the middle, He was already dead; He had already given His life, so they broke the legs of the other. The Roman soldier didn’t know what he was doing; he said I will make sure He is dead and he took his spear and thrust it into His side. John the apostle was there and told us definitely he was there and saw this so we would believe. He saw the blood flow from the side of the Lord Jesus. Through the blood of the Lord Jesus on the cross, God made a Bride for His Son – just the same as God taking a rib from Adam and making a bride for Adam, then God took the blood from His Son and made a Bride for Him. No one in this world has ever been nor ever will be a suitable bride for Christ except they be purified through the blood of Christ. This is a wonderful opportunity we have. Let me read this verse in Corinthians. Paul was writing to the Corinthians and said, “I am jealous of you with a godly jealousy for I have espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” Think of those words, “that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ”, sinners, sinners, as chaste virgins, pure, no sin, no nothing. That is the way our Father is going about to prepare a Bride for His Son.
Let us go back to Adam. It tells us that God prepared Eve and gave her to Adam. Well, this was a new experience for Adam, wasn’t it? He had never seen a woman. He didn’t know. He had seen animals. He had fellowship with God and could talk to Him before this woman came. They had talked together about the animals and so on. He had to learn, how do I cope with this new situation? He had to woo his wife, and that was something quite new to him. She was quite different – she had a different mind than man, different thinking, different in many ways. Adam had to learn this. I will read a little verse in Hebrews about the Lord Jesus, “though he were a son yet learned he obedience by the things that he suffered and being made perfect he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.” What does that mean, being made perfect? Jesus was always perfect. What does it mean, being made perfect? Well, in the same way Adam had to learn to live with and respect this helpmeet God had given him. The Lord Jesus could not possibly understand humans until He came to the earth and took upon Himself the form of a servant. He took upon Himself a human nature and because of Him taking upon Himself a human nature, He had to learn obedience. He had to learn what it was for us humans to obey God. He always knew what it was to obey God. In the same way, Adam knew what it was to have fellowship with God. The Lord Jesus knew what it was to have fellowship with His Father. He always obeyed His Father but now He had to learn what it means as a human being to obey God. He came down to this earth for 33 1/2 years and took upon Himself our form and nature. It says in one place that He was tempted in all points like as we are. And that was so He could understand how to live with us and understand how He could intercede for us. Today He is interceding to God for us, He is always there. It says He was tempted in all points like we are; well, we are tempted, aren’t we, but maybe the things that would tempt you would not tempt me and the things that would tempt me would not tempt you. But Jesus was tempted in all points and knows how difficult it is for human nature to accept the will of God. He learned that so He could be a faithful Bridegroom to us and could intercede to His Father for us. The whole creation, everything God did is such a wonderful example of what He is trying to do spiritually.
We said that Adam had to woo his wife; he had to learn to love her. There is a verse in Proverbs 30:18, “There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.”  The way of a man with a maid was too wonderful for the writer, he could not understand it. What is the way of a man with a maid? Different peoples have different customs for marriage; we have a different custom in Madagascar that is different from any place else … But, the way of a man with a maid: what did he mean by that? Well, here is what it is. A young man is attracted to a young woman. So what does he do? He tries to make an excuse for a casual acquaintance. He knows where she works so he just happens to be driving by when she comes out from work. Unfortunately she doesn’t come out right away so he drives around the block and she is already gone. The next day he does the same thing. Eventually it works out and he says, “Oh, I didn’t expect to see you”. Then maybe he says I have to go someplace, would you like to go with me? She says okay, so they take a ride together and it goes on from there, you know better than me. Then what happens? He gets enough courage to say, I love you and then he is waiting for her to say, I love you too.
You love the Gospel. That is the Gospel, as clear as anything we could have. You invite someone to come to a gospel meeting and you make it casual, you say I am going to a meeting would you like to come? And then maybe again a second time. You don’t say you have to come and make your choice. Then little by little the person comes along and maybe eventually they realize that Jesus loves them, and they realize that the Lord Jesus gave His life for them and that promotes a love for Jesus. That is the Gospel, the way of a man with a maid. That is the Gospel as clear as anything can be. I remember many years ago before I was in the work, there was a young fellow who I went to school with who was learning to drive a motor car. I had a car and I said to him look why don’t you come with me to the gospel meeting, and you can drive the car and that will give you some practice. He came for a long time and then he got interested. He never made it but that is the way it is in the beginning, just in a casual way and then things grow and develop and it becomes the most important thing. The man, once she gets into his mind, is always there, at his work and in his spare time, continually. And that is the way it is with the Lord Jesus, He is always trying to draw us. We have had some folks in Madagascar tell us that after the first few meetings that they came, they didn’t understand anything, but there was something that kept drawing them and kept them coming. That is the work of the Gospel. That is the connection between a man and a maid.
Then let us move on. The man says I would like for you to meet my mother, I would like for you to meet my folks. The Lord Jesus wants us to meet His Father. If you look at the last meeting Jesus had with His disciples, beginning in John 13, it must have been a meeting John never forgot but thought about continually afterwards. The meeting continued to John 17. It began with Jesus washing His disciples’ feet and Jesus praying audibly for His disciples during that time. The word Father was said 50 times, “My Father, the Father”. After the resurrection, the first message was given to a lady, “Go and tell my disciples I ascend to my Father and your Father.” Jesus never said “Your Father” until after He died and was resurrected from the dead. He had to go through that and shed His blood so the God of heaven could become our Father. I suppose you could say God is our Father and our father-in-law, He is our Bridegroom’s father and that is just the way it is. He has given His life so we can get to know God, our Father.
The next thing that would happen when a young couple is contemplating getting married, they would say where are we going to live? In John 14 Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you. In my Father’s house there are many mansions.” He was not thinking of Heaven because in just a few hours He was going out to face the cross and I’m sure He was thinking about the cross. There was no place for us to live in Heaven until Jesus gave Himself on the cross for us. His death opened the way for us to enter into heaven. It opened the way we can live with our Bridegroom for all Eternity. Jesus had to give His life so He could do this. Jesus said to His disciples, “No greater love hath any man than this that he would lay down his life for his friends.” We cannot possibly comprehend the love Jesus had for us. As we said in the beginning, it is beyond our knowledge.
Something someone told me, and I was speaking about it at a convention when a man came up to me afterwards and said, I read an article recently by a famous psychologist who was doing some research and at the end of his research he said, the strongest emotion in a human being is the love a man has for a woman; it’s even stronger than a woman’s love for a man. The Lord Jesus loved us with a love we cannot understand. Jesus not only laid down His life for His friends but for sinners also, so we could become His Bride. We cannot understand the love of our Bridegroom for us, it is beyond our comprehension.
Continuing with this meeting Jesus was having in John 21, He came to Peter and said, “Peter, do you love me?  Peter said, you know that I love you, Jesus said, feed my sheep. Again he asked Peter to you love me? And Peter said, you know that I love you, and Jesus said to feed my lambs. Again he asked, Peter , do you love me? Peter was grieved because Jesus asked him the third time and he said, Lord , you know that I love you and Jesus replied, feed my sheep.” The way we show love to the bridegroom of our soul is the love we show to His bride, our love for the lambs and sheep in His family. The only way that we can show our love to Christ is by showing our love to each other. And you know, there is another thing that might happen. One time Jesus said to His disciples, if any man loves father, mother, brother, more than they love me, they are not worthy of me. Other loves come and try to take His place. The devil comes and tries to bring other loves, people, and things we would love first. We could call that a name, you know what it is? It’s adultery. If anything comes between us, who have committed our lives to God, between us and our Bridegroom, it is adultery. We have the responsibility, an enormous responsibility to keep ourselves free and keep His love most in our lives.
A few years ago, in Madagascar, a young worker could no longer continue in the work and he was going to change his course. After a while he came to me and he referred to a young lady and asked if she had offered for the work and I said actually, she has. So he said, fine, he was not going to think any more about her. Eventually he approached another young lady who was not able to go into the work and they got married. He asked me to come along and say a little bit at their wedding, which we do sometimes if the bride and groom wish so. I was glad that day that I could stand there before his parents and her relatives, some professing and some not. Her name was Mary and I turned to her and I asked, do you think you are the first love in John’s heart? You are not. Then I turned to John and said, don’t ever think you are the first love in Mary’s heart because you’re not, God is. That is the right relationship. We see young people getting married and if God is their first love He will bless their relationship. It is like a little example I saw one time. It is like a triangle with God at the top and the closer that each moves toward God, the closer they move towards each other. The further they move away from God, the further they move from each other. The further we move towards our Bridegroom, the closer we move toward God.
My father died suddenly in 1977 while I was in Madagascar. I didn’t know anything about it until after he was gone. There wasn’t any electronic communication back in those days so, by the time I got there, the funeral had not taken place but it was to take place but it was to take place shortly. After 10 years I returned to England and my brother talked to me and said I went through dad’s things after his death and there was a photograph in his wallet in the inside pocket of his jacket. It was a picture of mom before they were married. We don’t think about our parents as being romantic, do we? My brother said that he must have carried it around all of his life. This would have been during the years of the depression, in the 30s. Dad used to work on the steam wagons.  It was pretty tough going then because he was a conscientious objector during the war and was posted to the coal mines, and it was a pretty hard life. Conscientious objectors were pretty well despised. I could just imagine him in some of the difficult experiences taking his wallet out and looking at my mother’s picture and thinking this is the one I am going to be with. Jesus has given us some pictures of Himself. Every Sunday morning we take the bread and the wine. He said do this in remembrance of me, this is my body. And every Sunday morning we get a fresh glimpse of our Master, our Bridegroom who gave Himself for us. We come to meetings like this and have a fresh glimpse again of our Bridegroom and it helps us. Sometimes during the storms we have heard about, if we can get a fresh glimpse of our Bridegroom it will help us to just look forward to the day when the final great fulfillment of all things will happen.
Just another little example, the time is gone, but a few years ago I was talking to a man who had been in the work for many years. It wasn’t in America, it wasn’t in England, it wasn’t in Canada and it wasn’t in Madagascar so you don’t have to guess where it was. He had been so many years in the work and wasn’t able to continue so he got married. He married a woman who was quite a bit younger than himself. I was talking to him one day in the home; I had known him pretty well before. He said, my wife told me when we got married that she didn’t love me but I guess I can learn to love you. I have never forgotten that. I professed in my late teens and I don’t know if I could say it was because I loved Jesus by choice. It might have been more because I was afraid of a lost eternity and I knew what would happen if I did not do God’s will. Maybe it was fear that motivated me, and maybe there are others here that feel the same way. Maybe it was because of fear, but I am not going on because of fear; I have learned to love my Master. I have learned to love His people, and perfect love casts out fear.
There are many other illustrations in the Bible, and I’m sure you can find them for yourself, but this matter of the Bridegroom and the Bride is one of the best ways we can understand God’s will, God’s love, Jesus’ love for us, and if we feed on that, it will help us to love Him.