It is a marriage thing, so when we have a communion service, you may kind of get distracted by the fact you've got this little wee thing here, a cup and a little wee bit of bread and whatever. It looks so small, but actually, what it's to do is to call to mind, we're covenanted with God Almighty! Isn't that something else! Now what about the gift? Well how about that, I'm glad you asked about the gift, because He promised. This is what He promised. Now notice this, it tells us in Ephesians 1, Verse 18, it says: He has given to us, the earnest of the spirit, which is the down payment of our full inheritance. So He's given us the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now this is the important one, is to understand the gift He's given you. In Acts, Chapter 1, Verse 8, you shall receive power from on high, and shall be witnesses unto Me - so this is, you have to understand, the gift is really significant. The gift is the reminder that you are in marriage covenant with the Lord, and the gift will empower you to prepare for His coming.
This gift God has given us, is the most precious gift of all. It's the gift of the Holy Spirit, the indwelling Holy Spirit, that leads, guides, convinces of sin, that helps us know we belong to Him. You know that what the witness of the spirit is, that we belong to another. We're already committed. Want to look at my wedding ring? I belong to another. I belong to another. That's why you wear a wedding ring. It's like you belong to someone. People go out on the dating scene, they look around and see the wedding ring - oops, belongs to another. So you are given the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit in you is visible to the spirit world. Demons recognise you are a believer. They understand you are joined to the Lord. They understand you are in covenant with the Lord, you belong to the living God. You have received the mighty Holy Ghost, and gift of God!
You'll see something else that He does in a moment, which is the bit we really want to get to - and so this is so exciting. I got so excited about all of this, I think it's wonderful. He gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now John, Chapter 14, you know this familiar verse. Of course it doesn't mean a lot unless you understand the context of the wedding - Verse 2. Pick it up at Verse 1 - Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions, or dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare a place for you, chuppah, the bridal chamber for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am - where is He? In intimacy with the Father - there you will be also, in that same place of intimacy with God. Where I go, you know the way that I go.
So you see here, this is the language of a groom, because the groom would say, as they finished up the betrothal: now I'm going to my father's house, to prepare a place for you, and I will return. So when Jesus said this, we've got to remember the context of this is, Jesus is having His last meal with His disciples, so everything He says has got more significance than almost any other place. The significance of this is He's saying: I'm about to leave you. They didn't understand that. I'm about to pay the price to purchase you - they didn't understand that. I will rise again from the dead, and I will ascend into heaven, and I will give you a wedding gift before I go. I will return, and I'm going to prepare a place for you, so all of this is the language of the marriage. In their culture, their mind would be racing, that just as God of the Old Testament coveted with the people of Israel, now Jesus - God is revealing Himself in Jesus, saying I have a covenant not of law, but of love. I'm about to lay My life down for you all, and then to take of the spirit in Me and put that spirit in you. You and I will be one. We will be like husband and wife. Isn't that fantastic?
This is the language of it, so when it says: He's coming as the groom, this is all that it implies there, it's in these things here. He promises to return, and we saw that in Revelations. Now Jesus has made it absolutely clear, He has gone to be with the Father, to prepare for us, so He's already in the process of preparing, and He's preparing places of intimacy, dwelling places of relationship with God, that all of us are called into. Now the key to it happening is the Holy Spirit. The key to all of this is the Holy Spirit, because the bride is called to prepare herself, so just as the husband went to prepare the place that they would consummate their marriage, and get the feast all ready, the bride had to prepare herself. Now I'm going to give you four scriptures about the bride preparing, and each one of the scriptures contains a truth about what preparation looks like for you. The thread that flows through all of it is, it has to do with the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. You can't prepare yourself without the work of the Holy Spirit. We need the Holy Spirit to help us. I'll show you how to help us in just a moment, so let's have a quick look at it. I won't take long. Let's have a look.