In his sermon 'I Will Show You the Bride', Scott Brown explores the imagery of the bride presented in Revelation 21, highlighting its significance as a metaphor for the church and its relationship with Christ. He explains that the church, depicted as a bride, city, and walls, symbolizes the people of God loved and cherished by Jesus. Brown contrasts this with the image of the harlot in Revelation 17, emphasizing the stark difference between the paths of destruction and salvation. He argues that Christianity uniquely centers on love, contrasting it with other world religions and atheism. The sermon underscores the importance of understanding ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church, and how it reveals Christ's profound love for the church. Brown calls for believers to embody this love on earth, urging them to love the church and its members as Christ does. The sermon encourages believers to view the church as a beautiful bride, recognizing its imperfections but also its divine transformation and ultimate perfection in heaven. Brown highlights the practical implications of these teachings, urging the congregation to live out this love and to see the beauty in one another, reflecting the heavenly vision of a world of love.

Yes, please find Revelation 21 beginning in verse 9. Revelation 21 verse 9. This is the inerrant, all-sufficient, sweeter than honey Word of God, Revelation 21 verse 9. Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues came to me and talked with me, saying, come, I will show you the bride, the lamb's wife. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain and showed me the great city the holy Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God having the glory of God her light was like a most precious stone like a jasper stone clear as crystal Also she had a great and high wall with 12 gates and 12 angels at the gates and names written on them which are the names of the 12 tribes of the children of Israel.

Three gates on the east, three gates on the north, three gates on the south, three gates on the west. Let's pray. Oh Lord come edify your church, equip the saints for the work of the ministry. Pray oh Lord that you would convict any who are running towards sin, that you would bring them back. Pray that you would heal any brokenhearted today.

Pray that you would come and pour out your word that you would come and purify Your church through these words here on earth as it is in heaven. Amen Please be seated So we are in the section of Revelation Speaking of heaven revelation 21 and 22 and we're seeing many many pictures of Heaven we've crossed over many of them The subject here though in verse nine, which will be our singular focus this morning, the subject in verse nine comes from the mouth of an angel and He says, come, I will show you the bride. Come, I will show you the bride. Isn't that what everybody wants to see when there's a wedding, the bride? And the church, of course, is a bride.

Brides are many things, but at minimum they are beautiful and they are beloved. And the bride here in this passage is also a city. It's also a lit up city with beautiful light. It's also a city that, the bride is also a wall and a gate, but we'll just focus on the bride. We'll get to the city and the light and the gates next time.

There are three illustrations in these verses from nine to 13. And the first is that of Christ's love for his bride. He loves her as a bride. And then secondly, he adorns her as a most beautiful city. That's verses 10 and 11.

And then finally, he strengthens her as walls and gates. That's verses 12 and 13. We'll get to those last two when we meet again. This is metaphorical language. The lamb is not married to walls.

The lamb is not married to jewels. The lamb is not married to streets. The lamb is married to saved souls. So all of these things are metaphors of people. The bride is a people, the people of God.

The city is a people, the walls are a people. The gates are a people. That's the metaphorical language that John is using here. What's the doctrine here? It's always helpful to try to understand the big picture of the doctrine whenever we're dealing with a section of scripture or a verse.

The doctrine here is Christ's love for the church. The church is loved by Jesus Christ. The Christian story really is a story of love. And you see that everywhere. In this set of metaphors, we find the church as a bride.

And the question, or the syllogism, I think, in our minds ought to go like something like this. If the church is loved like a bride, if the church is beautiful like a radiant city, lit up like stones, if the church is strong like high walls and beautiful gates, then we're being taught something about the church, about Christ's love for the church, but we are also being taught together how to love the church the way that Jesus Christ loves the church. In his love we learn how to love by the ways of his love and so it's such an important passage and you can see that when you read the Bible that the Bible really is a story of the love of God for sinners. That's the whole Bible and this is this stands in contrast to world religions, by the way. The great world religions don't focus on love.

I don't believe the word love appears in the Quran. Islam is not a religion of love. You don't have a God who loves in Islam. In Hinduism, love is not the central theme. Nothingness is the theme.

Some kind of bliss. But there's no love story in Hinduism and there's no love story in Islam. There's really no love story in atheism except love for self. There certainly is much self-love in atheism. That's why the atheist man uses women as objects.

That's why the atheist woman uses men as objects. Because there's no love like there is in this Christian story. And that's the story we should always be telling, first of all our own hearts, but our own children, our churches, our co-workers. Christianity is a story of the love of God to save sinners. You know, our God is not like the Greek gods.

The Greek gods are always trying to squash any human beings who are trying to get fancy. Not our God. Our God carries us. And in Christianity, you're actually loved by a person. The church is loved by a person.

It's a personal love. You know, that's why we talk about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. There's a, Christianity is about a person. It's not centrally a thing or a principle. It's really about the person of Jesus Christ.

I read something that I thought captured this. You can be a Muslim and never meet Muhammad. You can be a Buddhist and never meet Buddha. You can be a Catholic and never meet the Pope. You can be a Mormon and never meet Joseph Smith.

But you cannot be a Christian without meeting Jesus. Well here we meet Jesus as the lover of the bride, the church. If you call yourself a Christian, this is for you because this speaks of these illustrations that we are given. Now again let me just further continue this theological principle of love and its contrast with the world religions, the supremacy of love is the mark, it's the chief mark, the supreme mark of Christianity. God is love in Christianity.

The greatest is love in Christianity. The fruit of the Spirit is love in Christianity. Jesus commands his children to love one another. If you love God you will love the brethren in Christianity. Love is actually the evidence that you've passed out of darkness and into light in 1st John.

So love really is the central matter. This is the doctrine. And this is one element of what theologians called ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church. What is ecclesiology? Ecclesiology is the teaching in the Bible about the church.

Ecclesia, the assembly, church, ecclesiology, the study of the church. And here in this passage, this is ecclesiology right here. And it has to do with Christ's love for his bride, and she's a city, she's all lit up, and her walls are strong and high. And this really does speak about the centrality of the church in the heart and mind of God. And it also ought to be central in our own minds and hearts as Christ so loved the church.

You know, why should a human being turn to Jesus Christ. Because it's the only place where true love exists. If you want an argument for turning to Jesus Christ, He stands up against all the other false forms of love that really boil down to self-love. So you should turn to Jesus Christ because he loves his church and he gave himself for her. Well, I don't know if that's a big enough argument for anybody to turn to Christ, but it was pretty big for me when I was young.

Now, let's look at verse nine. We're gonna just zero in on verse 9 here. He loves her as a bride. He loves her as a bride. Verse 9.

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues came to me and talked with me saying come I will show you the bride the Lamb's wife so the subject of this sentence is the angel okay you have an angel that's talking to God Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven plagues, that's the subject. You have an angel talking to John. Angels do many things in the Bible. God uses angels to do his will on the earth. We see that all throughout Revelation.

There's a tremendous doctrine of angelology in Revelation. Angels serve God, they are messengers of God. They bring judgment of God, They bring God's protection. They do all kinds of things. The angels are watching over you And it's such a blessing to know that It's interesting, you know Do you notice the number seven is mentioned several times here just in this passage.

But this is the same angel, this is the same angel who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues. Well, let's go check him out. He's in chapter 17. Go back to chapter 17 in Revelation. Revelation chapter 17.

And the angel is showing John another woman. He's showing him the bride, but in chapter 17, the same angel is showing John a different woman. She's a harlot. Then one of the seven angels, this is verse 1 in chapter 17, then one of the seven angels who had the seven bulls came and talked with me saying to me, come I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters. Do you see the contrast?

It's the exact same language but two different women. With whom the kings of the earth committed fornication and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and 10 horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls." In other words, she's beautiful. "...having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication and on her forehead a name was written mystery Babylon the great the mother of harlots and the abominations of the earth I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus and when I saw her I marveled with great amazement so you have this same angel First of all showing John the harlot And where is she?

She's in the desert. Where is the bride? She's on a high mountain. The contrast is so striking, and it's instructive to us. The harlot is in a desert wasteland where there is no water The the harlot is in the place where you will die the harlot is Beautiful her beautiful her beauty is really from the world.

She's arrayed in scarlet and her wealth is remarkable, but her wealth is short lived. Now turn over to Chapter 18, verse 16. You meet her there, in the narrative. And saying, alas, alas, Revelation 18, 16. Alas, alas, that great city that was clothed in fine linen, purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, for in one hour such great riches came to nothing.

She loses everything. The harlot gains the whole world and loses her own soul. The bride gains everlasting joy on a high mountain, on a beautiful mountain. So you have this consistent theme in the Bible, you have you have two different identifications with two different women. This is consistent with the rest of scripture.

You have two doors, you have two roads, you have darkness, you have light, and you have two women. You have two women that you're attracted to. And there's the harlot and the road to the harlot's house, and there's the bride and the road to the city of God, the shimmering, shining, beautiful city of God. There's a road to heaven, there's a road to hell. There's a road to the bride, and there's a road to the harlot.

And on the harlot's road, you never recover so be careful with the harlot Solomon said the dead are there she takes everybody to the dead when you click when you click on something be careful if the dead are there. Be careful who you identify with. Where you click is who you identify. So the angel is showing John the bride. Now John sees this beautiful picture.

God uses the most enduring tender relationship the most tender scene That you can think of and that is the scene of a bride a beautiful bride Going down to meet her husband. It's such a Stunning stunning picture takes your breath away whenever it happens. It's a joy, isn't it, to be able to do that on earth, to think of heaven. When you see that bride, you think of heaven. You've already seen the bride here on earth.

God is showing you the bride here so that you'll just have some sense of what heaven is like. He's trying to draw you to heaven whenever you look and see that beautiful bride. Because everything on earth points to heaven. And everything in heaven draws you there. And that's why we've been saying, we've been repeating the statement in the way that Jesus taught his disciples to pray, Lord your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And when you think about the bride, think about earth as it is in heaven. Think about bringing heaven down. What you see in heaven is actually meant to be brought down. And what you see on earth is meant to be perfected here until the final perfection. That's why Heaven is such a practical doctrine.

I've hoped that we would find ourselves relieving our minds of thinking of heaven as some ethereal, otherworldly thing, it's not. There's a bride and there are trees and the city and there's water and there are beings, just like here. There are remarkable beings here and there are remarkable beings in heaven. It shouldn't make us think it's so different, but it's perfected. And so the realities on earth represent perfected realities in heaven.

One point thing points to another. And so as we continue our path through Revelation 21 and 22, we're here stopping at the bride. Now, the first eight verses in Revelation 21 are kind of a summary statement. And then the statements are unpacked. And This is the second time the bride has been mentioned.

It was mentioned in the first eight verses. There's a bride coming down from heaven, from God. And God will be with them and they will be his people and he will be their God. So we've already seen these images, they're gonna come up again and we're gonna continue to work through them. He said, I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts.

Well, you've seen water, you've seen fountains here. Those are drawing us to heaven. Those are showing us the beauty of the kingdom. This is evangelism. Look at how good God is.

That's what you want your children to know. You want them to see how beautiful God is, how good God is. That was my chief objective, how poorly I did it. That was my objective though. I just wanted them to see how fantastic the kingdom of heaven was.

When we read the Bible, I'd almost always say, what wonderful thing do you see here? Now, we've seen brides here, and we also have, you know, passages of scripture that teach us how to have a bride. Ephesians 5 for example teaches that. Please go to Ephesians 5. Find verse 25, Ephesians 5, Because the history of the Bible is the history of the love of God for a bride.

And that actually has an earthly picture. Christ's love for the church is pictured in a husband. I've always thought it strange that God would choose husbands to be pictures of Christ because husbands fall so short. But that's because God wants husbands to be sanctified. God wants husbands to love more and more and more.

He wants them to learn how to love from Christ. So, Ephesians 5.25, husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word that he might present her to himself a glorious church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing but that she should be holy and without blemish. By the way That's an exposition of Revelation 21 verse 9 So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies he who loves his wife loves himself Think of Revelation 21 Christ loves his wife. He's loving himself in the same way That a husband receives great benefit from his wife when he loves her It's actually wise for him to love her if he loves her as himself she will love him and Here the same thing is in heaven the bride of Christ the church is loved and now the church receives the love from the bride, and the church just can't get over it. Well, we recited a passage of scripture earlier in the service about the bride in heaven They just can't get over how good God is and they just can't quit saying Oh, holy Holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and who is and is to come it's just so overcome they just can't get over it and they'll never get over it They'll never get in other words the the bridegroom the Lord Jesus Christ is receiving love from the bride for all eternity Why?

Because he loved her first. Open your Bibles to Ezekiel chapter 16, find verse eight, or find verse three. Ezekiel chapter 16. This theme runs through the whole Bible of God rescuing a bride, God redeeming sinners. The whole story of the Bible is God on a mission to rescue a bride.

You know, he does so many things along the way to do that. One of the things he gives is preaching. He's trying to rescue a bride through the preaching. Ezekiel 16, three. Thus says the Lord God of Jerusalem, to Jerusalem, to Jerusalem, isn't that interesting?

Jerusalem is also a woman in Ezekiel 16. Thus says the Lord God of Jerusalem, your birth and your nativity are from the land of Canaan. Your father was an Amorite, your mother was a Hittite. In other words, you came out of paganism. You didn't love me.

As for your nativity, on the day you were born, your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed in water to cleanse you. You were not rubbed with salt or in swaddling cloths. No eye pitied you to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you, but you were thrown out into the open field when you yourself were loathed on the day you were born. And when I passed by you, I saw you struggling in your own blood, and I said to you in your blood, live. Yes, I said to you in your blood, live.

Yes, I said to you in your blood, live. And I made you thrive like a plant in the field. And you grew, matured, and became very beautiful. Your breasts were formed and your hair grew, but you were naked and bare. The story goes on and God clothes her with beautiful garments and continues, actually continues to rescue her, her whole life long, even having compassion on her in her rebellion.

But in the Bible, the church has a husband. The church is a bride and the church has a husband. Everybody has a husband in the church of Jesus Christ. Well, everybody has a father in the church. Everybody has a brother and a sister.

The church is such a wonderful place. In Isaiah 54, the prophet says in verse five, for your maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name, for your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, he is called the God of the whole earth, for the Lord has called you like a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, like a youthful wife when you were refused, says your God. God is rescuing a woman, she happens to be a bride. She was refused, she was forsaken. But not by God.

Here the church is the lamb's wife. Did you catch that? The church is the lamb's wife. The church is the wife of a lamb. Now, the church isn't married to an animal.

That's not the point. A lamb is a metaphor, a sacrificial lamb. It's a metaphor for sacrifice. The church is married to a sacrificial being, the Lord Jesus Christ, the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. By the way, the word lamb shows up 29 times in Revelation.

And here, we're here again at another occurrence. And so this is this is really a picture of God's adoration for his people. This is a picture of God's adoration for his bride, for his beautifying his bride. And we know that the Bible teaches that God is beautifying his bride on Earth, progressively, it's called progressive sanctification, and then finally and completely in heaven. And the progress of sanctification that you're on right now is not uncommon to the sanctification that will be completed in heaven.

God's teaching you how to love now. God is teaching you how to adore heavenly things now. And that will all be completed. And we're just such slow learners, aren't we? But God is patient with us.

He continues to give us more and more and more. He's very kind. He's a good shepherd. He's a patient shepherd. He's a patient husband.

Are you a patient husband? He's a patient husband. He's a patient husband to you as a husband, but are you a patient husband to your wife? You know, I was tempted to make this into a marriage sermon because it's logical to do that. So what does this doctrine teach?

So you've kind of got the doctrine. We're talking about the bride who's been prepared for her husband. And she's on a high mountain. And this first metaphor is very critical. I didn't want to confuse the metaphor of the bride with the other metaphors quite yet.

So I want us to just focus on this one metaphor. So what? What does this doctrine teach us? What does it teach me? What does it teach you?

How do I respond to the doctrine? Now, we were told in the first three verses of Revelation that we were to obey the doctrine in this book. By the way, this is a letter to the churches. It's a letter to the seven churches. It's just like Ephesians and Philippians and Colossians except it's prophetic literature.

But this is a letter to churches and the doctrine in Revelation is meant to be obeyed. So how do you obey the doctrine of Christ's love for the church? How do you obey that? Well, Revelation 1.3 actually promises a blessing for those who obey the doctrine. Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep or obey those things which are written in it.

Well, doctrine is never meant to be a simple matter of intellectual pursuit. Doctrine is never meant to just stop at intellectual exercise. There is intellectual exercising in the doctrines of God, But doctrines aren't just dead facts that just stop with the fact. And that's what John is driving at in Revelation 1 verse 3. Doctrine is meant to move you from one position to another.

So the question I've been wrestling with is, how should this doctrine move this church? Because doctrine is meant to change your mind about something and move your feet towards something or maybe away from something as well. Doctrine isn't just an intellectual exercise. Doctrine is meant to be obeyed. And so we have to deal with that whenever we're in matters of doctrine.

And here, in the doctrine of the love of Christ for his church and this matter of the city and the gates and the walls. How do you obey the doctrine? I just wanna make a few suggestions. I wanna spend the rest of the time just making various suggestions on how this doctrine might be obeyed, might be applied in the church. Well, In this matter of ecclesiology, the church is a bride.

And that means that Jesus Christ thinks about the church in a particular way. The Lord Jesus feels about the church in a particular way. And that should shape the way that we think about one another and the way that we talk to one another, the way that we feel about one another, that we are in the midst of the bride of Christ. You know, you're not just talking to old Joe over there, you're talking to somebody who's a member of the body of Jesus Christ. This is a sacred matter.

We often take each other so lightly don't we? I don't think anybody would argue with that. But in a passage like this we're not taught to take one another lightly. We're taught to take one another as a beautiful bride. To think of one another like that, to feel toward one another like that.

You know, our flesh gets in the way and jumbles us up so much. But you know, isn't, I mean Christianity is a long life of learning to treasure what God treasures, to love the things that God loves, because you spend so much of your life just loving the things of the world, and then you've gotta get weaned from the world, and you're always learning how to love what Jesus Christ loves. That's what Christians do. And so in this sense, you know, treasure what the Lord Jesus Christ treasures. And the bride is not some ethereal thing, it's people.

It's real people. It's easy to say, oh, I love the church. Well, yeah, but do you love the people? In their immaturity? In their rudeness?

Being sanctified still, you know? Still loved by God, still forgiven by God, but not all put together quite yet. I think it means that we should be really careful to get caught up in criticizing one another in the body of Christ. You know, like if you're a husband, we have several husbands here, learn from Christ for how to treat your wife. Oh, by the way, you don't have to wait till heaven to love your wife like Christ loved the church.

Like on earth, right? On earth as it is in heaven. That's the prayer of a Christian. You know, bring the love of Jesus Christ for his bride in heaven on earth. Look at heaven and transform the earth.

Look at heaven and trans, look at that husband and be a husband like that. You know, the doctrine of heaven is eminently practical. It runs right down to the street. If you're a wife, learn from this bride's adoring respect for her husband. In other words, the bride now loves her husband.

The bride now loves her husband. She sees her husband face to face and it's glorious. Now you might, if you're a bride, if you're a wife, you might say, well, you know, I really, I could love my husband a lot better if he was a lot more like Christ. Well, he will be. Someday he will be.

So don't obsess about it, because he's going to be okay. Or if you're a boy or a girl, learn to love the church the way that Jesus loves the church. How does Jesus love the church? Well, we already read about it in Ephesians five. Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.

He gave his life. And all the ways that Christ loved the church is the way that a husband should love his wife, is a way that a church member should love the other church members. We have a pattern in heaven. You know, Paul said I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision and the heavenly vision is so critical. The heavenly vision is what puts us together.

Thinking heavenly is the best thing we can do for earthly things. To be heavenly minded is to be eminently earthly good because you're bringing heaven down. You're bringing these kinds of things down. You know how, you know if you're a little boy and you love the Lord Jesus Christ, or you're a young girl and you love the Lord Jesus Christ, or if you're a single person here and you love the Lord, or you're a husband or a wife, love the church the way that Christ loved the church. She's a bride.

And she's a beautiful bride. In God's eyes, in your eyes, not so much. Well, you need to learn from God. How does he love her? Well, he is present with her.

He said, I will never leave you or forsake you. He comforts her. He says, let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house are many dwelling places.

He was poor, yet making her rich. That's how he loved his church. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich. He loves his church by carrying her. He carries his church as a man carries his son.

One of the most beautiful pictures in the Bible to me. As in the wilderness where you saw how the Lord your God carried you as a man carries his son." Deuteronomy 131. The Lord Jesus prays for his church. In John 17 9, I pray for them. I do not pray for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.

He draws her with loving kindness. Jeremiah 31, three, yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with loving-kindness I have drawn you. He draws his church. He sanctifies his church from her former defilement, 1st Corinthians 6 11, and such were some of you, But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus by the Spirit of our God. He nailed her sins to the cross.

Colossians 3, 7. And he has taken it out of the way having nailed it to the cross, having disarmed principalities and powers. He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it. Over what? Their condemnation toward their sins.

And he nailed their sins to the cross. Because he loves his bride. He came that she might have life and might have it more abundantly. John 10, 10, I have come that they have life and that they may have it more abundantly. He lights her up.

He makes her the light of the world. John 8-12. I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. He feeds her with living bread.

He flows living water through her. He guides her by his spirit. He's the door to the sheepfold. He's the good shepherd. He is the rock of the church, the spiritual drink of the church.

He gathers the church together like a hen gathers her chicks. He loves the church even though she was dead in her trespasses and sins. He died for her while she was ungodly. He writes her members, the names of her members on his hands. Isaiah 49, 16.

See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands. There's so much more that we could say about how Christ loved the church. But when you encounter this image of the bride, you are encountering the theme of the entire Bible that Jesus Christ came to save sinners and make them his bride and beautify them all their life long and then absolutely stunningly forever beautify them. Or ever beautify them. There's a particular chapter in a book that our church read this like 10 years ago by Jonathan Edwards called Charity and Its Fruits.

And Charity and Its Fruits is Jonathan Edwards' exposition of 1 Corinthians 13. It's such a fantastic help to the church. I just wanna quote in closing some of the things that Jonathan Edwards says about heaven. Heaven is a world of holy love. The love of God dwells in heaven.

His name is love. He's the source of all holy love. He is an infinite fountain of love. But he goes further and he talks about his people in heaven. Talks about what it's like for people to be in heaven together.

And he says that in heaven the people of God will be beautiful to one another. There are none but lovely objects in heaven. All the persons who belong to the blessed society of heaven are lovely. The father of the family is lovely and so are his children. Because you become like him, We shall see him as he is we shall see his face and we will be like him lovely There are no unlovely persons There are no false professors or hypocrites there are none who pretend to be saints There are none whose gold has not been purified from its dross, none who are not lovely in themselves to others." And then He keeps elaborating, he goes on page after page talking like this.

And he talks about how in heaven, God's people will love one another perfectly. Wouldn't that, won't that be such a refreshment? All the members of the glorious society of heaven are sincerely united. There's not a secret or open enemy among them all. Not a heart is there that's not full of love and that is not beloved by all the others and as all are lovely so all see each other's loveliness.

Let's bring that down with full complacency and delight. Every soul goes out in love to every other, and among all the blessed inhabitants, love is the mutual, full, and eternal happiness. I mean, in heaven, you see one another's loveliness. Bring it down. You can bring some of that down here on earth.

I'm just here to encourage us all to see the loveliness of Jesus Christ in one another, to think on that, To be reminded that the church is a beautiful bride in God's eyes. And it's right to treat the bride on earth the way Christ treats his bride. I really liked what he said about those in heaven will have no distaste for one another. Because every once in a while somebody in the church gets a distaste for somebody. It happens, okay, you know, it's life on the dark planet.

But we're bringing heaven down, okay? In heaven there shall be no remaining enmity, no distaste, no coldness or deadness toward God or the other members. All the members of that blessed society rejoice in each other's happiness, for the love of benevolence is perfect in them all. This is the doctrine of the church of Jesus Christ. That the church is a beloved, beautifying bride, and then finally beautified eternally.

It's a picture of Christ's love for the church, infectious in the church, and the brothers and sisters love one another. They delight in one another. They encourage one another. They weep with those who weep. They rejoice with those who rejoice.

They speak the truth in love to one another. They care for one another. They forgive one another. They have compassion for one another. They bear one another's burdens.

This is the church of Jesus Christ. This is the world of love. That's why Jonathan Edwards said, "'Heaven is a world of love.'" And you can have elements of that love today among these people. Because it is possible that his kingdom can come and his will can be done on earth as it is in heaven. Isn't that a wonderful gospel?

Is that so inspiring that God would bring people into such a society, such a kingdom, such a culture, such a city, such a nation, the body of Jesus Christ. Would you pray with me? Father, we thank you for teaching us heavenly things, beautiful things, so that all the beauty of heaven would come down. We would turn away from our sins, love one another from the heart, and find our hearts beating to the way of your heart toward your bride. Amen.