The Love of God in Christ: No Rival for His Bride (Part 2)

He stood there and watched the religious people who were more tied up with religion than they were with God. He stood there, and as a man, He stood there and looked at it, and He said, “Now I know the feeling of the religious nature.” He had faced it with the enemy. He saw Adam in His fallen state. He saw the old man. He felt what you have felt. He went around talking about being God’s Son. He went around talking about a close, intimate relationship with the Father, and He watched the nature of man rebel against Him. And He understood. And He said, “That’s got to go, because I’m going to have a bride who is not fearful of Me, but one so close to Me, so intimate to Me.” He marked down the old man, the religious man, the old man, the good man. He had marked down death already.

Excuse me. You know, I never do this unless it’s important. Praise the Lord, I left out one. Maybe it was this time when He was walking along the road, and He heard John and James and probably Andrew and Peter shouting at one another and threatening one another and fussing with one another. And He walked back to listen to them, and they were enraged against one another, and some of them were pouting, and they started fussing at the Lord and telling them of these guys. You know the story. We’ve told it around here many times. What was it? Who was going to sit on the right hand and the left hand of the Lord when He set up His political system in Jerusalem? Now, that’s exactly where they were. The Lord looked at that, and He said, “There’s not going to be any…nark this, brothers…there’s not going to be one… I’m going to end the corrupt flesh with its crate.” Maybe this was drawn home again when the sinful woman was brought to Him, and they asked Him what Moses’ law was, and He agreed, He said, “Moses law is to stone her.” And He said, “Stone her, but only on one condition. Let the one who has not sinned stone her first.” And the Lord, when they had all left, He looked at her and said, “Go and sin no more.”

I don’t know whether it was the fleshly action expressed or the fleshly deed committed; I don’t know, but somewhere, while the Lord was on this earth, He looked straight at the knowing lust of the flesh, its craving, its ambition, its drive, its corruption, its distortion, its perversion, and He said, “She will not be marked by this.” You see, brothers, the Lord had to draw His wife out of the race of man, and these were the things that had gotten into man, and had caught man’s attention, and won man away. These were the things that had brought man down, corrupted man, and stolen man. And this was the people out of whom the Lord was going to have His bride. Something had to change.

(Continued in Part 3)