The Lord is well aware of our “wrinkles”, and He so loves us that He is taking them out one by one that “He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” – Ephesians 5:27
Jesus is making a bride fit for Himself! Can I tell you this? There is going to come the day when you are going to look into His eyes and He is going to look into your eyes and He is going to say, “My love, you are perfect, there is no spot, there is no wrinkle.” Brethren, do you realize? Do you know how it is, when the glorious, beautiful, wife of the king walks among the subjects of the country? Splendor! Do you realize? As we behold His glory we are being cleansed. Moses, he was cleansed in the glory of God and it came back off of his face, it radiated from him. We are being cleansed, we are being cleaned, and purified by the washing of the water of the Word, not by the water H20 but by the water of the Word. And in that water is the water of glory.
It is as if we go into a bathtub of glory. We go into the Word of God and we see glory and we are transformed. This is like going into a shower, where from that shower head sprays glory and it hits us and it radiates back off of us. That’s what happened to Moses. That is a picture of what happens to us. We behold this glory and we are being transformed by degrees to the place where…
I want you to comprehend this. Jesus is not just any king. He is not just any prince who they themselves have the most beautiful women. He is King of kings and He is preparing for Himself a bride that is worthy of all that He is. So much so that when He looks at her, He will adore her for her beauty. He will commend her for her beauty. He will be struck by your beauty. He will find you altogether lovely! The Book of Solomon just rings, there is a spiritual picture with this. He will find us so beautiful that just as it says there, the glance of our eyes just quickens His heart. (Song of Solomon 4:9)
Oh, this beauty, He is responsible for it. We will not be able to boast in it. Our eyes will be set on Him and His beauty. Do you ever think of yourself this way? Does it ever strike you that this is what you are being made into? This is no little thing. Oh, to be a Christian!
I’m telling you if you are here today and you are not a Christian, this is altogether out of this world! And the whole time Jesus is nurturing, and nourishing, and cherishing. He cares for us. We are the object of His affections. Sometimes we feel alone in this world but don’t you believe it. He is right there, and He is saying, “My loved one, I don’t leave you, I don’t forsake you, I am feeding you, and I am washing you, and I am cleansing you. I am well aware of the wrinkles, and I am taking them out.”
Christian, have you found it this way? One by one, He deals with us. This sin… this idol. Now sometimes He has to return to old things because they crop up again. But as we move through this life, He takes this edge off, this irregularity, this spot, this blemish. And He presents a picture. It’s stunning.
The thing about it is, we come into this world… It’s not like, we’re this river that flows out of the high mountains, up in the Himalayas where the snow is. And as it comes down you’ve got a factory and it dumps garbage in and then you’ve got these people, they dump their raw sewage in. And so this thing becomes more and more filthy. Rather right at the spring head, we are utter corruption, born in iniquity. Our river is like that which gushes out of a sewage pipe at a big chemical plant. Before we had all of these laws that prohibited so much of that. If you go back to Lake Erie in the 1970s, and you look at what came out of the steel mill, that’s us. As this river flows now down to the ocean, Christ is making it into pure, pristine, cold, drinking water, that is without flaw. That’s what is happening here, cleansing, washing.
Folks, let me tell you something. When you go into the Word of God it is no little thing. Your daily time in that Word is no small matter. He is cleansing you by the washing of the water of the Word. That water doesn’t cleanse you by sitting this book on a shelf and collecting dust.
Again, no mysticism. I remember a woman, she had demons who would fly around her room at night so she would sleep with her Bible on her chest. That’s mysticism. This image comes into the very soul and nature of our being as we behold glory in these words.
And I’ll tell you what, you don’t find glory in these words without meditation. You don’t find glory and gaze upon glory by 5 minutes a day in the Word of God. Those of you that take this serious, that Christ is cleansing, and nourishing, and bringing along, making holy, setting aside for Himself, no spot, no wrinkle, no blemish, nourishing and cherishing. He nourishes us by His Word. Man does not live by bread alone. But by every Word, comes, flows, every Word from the mouth of God. Brethren, this is where we need to be.
