Revelation: The Present Future

Week 3: A Wedding Party

This includes:

  1. Leader Preparation
  2. Lesson Guide

1. LEADER PREPARATION

Lesson Overview

The Bible teaches that those of us who are followers of Christ will have an incredible encounter with Jesus in our future. We, the church, will join Christ in a celebration feast for the ages! What a day it will be, when we are welcomed into Christ’s presence as his pure and holy sons and daughters. It is a future reality. The question for us is how this knowledge affects our lives today and in the future. This lesson examines that question.

Lesson objectives

  1. WHAT: There is an incredible celebration awaiting us in heaven.
  2. WHY: We can find great hope and encouragement from John’s account of seeing a celebration event involving Jesus and the saints who make up the church.
  3. HOW: Your students will learn that our future destination is an incredible source of strength for today and hope for the future.

Primary Scripture

Revelation 19:6-9

Secondary Scriptures

Isaiah 25:6-8 and Luke 14:15-24

TEACHING PREP

The short overview below is designed to help you prepare for your lesson. While you may not want to convey this information word-for-word with your teenagers, you’ll definitely want to refer to it as you lead.

Read Revelation 19:6-9.

In this passage, we reach a place in John’s account where God has defeated his enemies. There is great happiness in heaven. The church has been gathered and is now presented to Christ as a pure, spotless bride. The wedding feast of the Lamb is about to commence.

The wedding imagery might seem odd for us modern-day readers. But for the first century Jewish community, and those non-Jews familiar with its customs, this would have been an image they immediately recognized. The wedding feast was an elaborate, multi-day celebration, a joyous occasion. Moreover, it was a common image used to describe or talk about the kingdom of God. In the Old Testament, Israel was referred to as the bride. Jesus used the image of a wedding feast when he told various parables. And Paul used the imagery to describe the church as the bride. So it’s a common theme that would have echoed of the great celebrations that happened when a bride and groom joined in marriage.

As the church, this wedding feast is our future. We are headed toward it with each day. There is a moment in our lives when we will join Jesus at a table where the celebration will be one for the ages. It’s such a profound reality. This lesson will help students see how their future destination can be an incredible source of strength for them today and hope for them in the future.

THE BEFORE & AFTER [optional]

Text Message Questions

We’ve provided a couple of different text message questions to send out to your students prior to your meeting. Feel free to use one or both of the questions below. As with the rest of the curriculum, edit these questions to fit the needs of your ministry.

  • Are you ready? There’s a HUGE party coming up. Details tonight in small group.
  • Do you like going to weddings? Yes? No? Unsure? We’re going to talk about the all-time coolest wedding party tonight in small group. Don’t miss it.

Parent Email

We’ve provided you with an email below that you can send to your parents following the lesson. Our hope is to encourage parents to continue the conversation at home. Feel free to edit and customize the email to fit your ministry needs.

Dear parents,

This week was the third lesson in our four-lesson look at the book of Revelation. Our lesson helped students understand that there is an incredible wedding feast awaiting Christians in eternity. Students learned that this future destination can be an incredible source of strength for today and hope for the future.

As you go throughout this week, help reinforce this teaching in your child’s life by asking the following questions as you have the opportunity.

  • What are some specific reasons in your life to celebrate being a follower of Christ?
  • What images do you think of when you think of the wedding feast between the church and Christ?
  • Have you been thinking about how this future reality can impact your life today? What have your thoughts been?

Have a great week!

Revelation: The Present Future

Week 3: A Wedding Party

  1. LESSON GUIDE

GETTING THINGS STARTED [optional]

Preview this video of wedding bloopers:youtube.com/watch?v=lW_smAFm_LA. You’ll need a computer and Internet connection to display the video to your students.

Welcome your students and invite them into your meeting area. Open in prayer, and then ASK:

  • How many of you have been to a wedding?
  • Do you like weddings? Are they fun, boring, or a little of both?
  • Have you ever been to a wedding where someone really goofed up or something completely unexpected happened? Tell us about the experience.

Then inform your students that they are going to watch a video with some memorable mistakes and bloopers fromweddings.

Show the video, and then SAY SOMETHING LIKE:Our thoughts on weddings are no doubt influenced by the weddings we’ve attended—or blooper videos we’ve watched. Weddings can be short and simple, or long and elaborate. But almost every wedding centers on celebration. Today’s lesson focuses on this kind of amazing, memorable, joyful celebration—except that this celebration will surpass any we can ever imagine here on earth.

If you came up with an opening activity, movie clip, or game that worked well with your group, and you’d like to share it with other youth workers, please email us at .

TEACHING POINTS

The goal of the Teaching Points is to help students capture the essence of each lesson with more discussion and less lecture-style teaching. The main points we have chosen are
(1)An incredible celebration awaits us in heaven, (2)Sin will no longer defile us in heaven, and (3) Our place at the banquet table is granted by God’s grace.

Remember: All throughout these lessons, it’s up to you to choose (1) how many questions you use, and (2) the wording of the main points—keep ours, or change the wording to make it clearer for your audience.

Read Revelation 19:6-9together as a group. Consider dividing verses among your students so everyone has a chance to read.

SAY SOMETHING LIKE:This is the third of four lessons from the book of Revelation. As we just read, this particular passage is talking about the wedding feast of the Lamb, the awesome celebration that is going to take place in heaven when Christ and the church are united.This passage helps us see that our future destination is an incredible source of strength for today and hope for the future. Let’s take a closer look at this.

1. An incredible celebration awaits us in heaven

ASK:

  • What’s the loudest environment you have ever been in, where the sound was made totally by people’s voices? Was it a concert or an athletic event? Tell us about it.
  • How many people would you guess were responsible for making the noise you heard?
  • Verse 6 describes multitudes gathered before God, worshipping God so loudly that it sounded like a huge crowd or a mighty ocean. What do you think that experience would be like, to be part of that event?
  • What are some specific reasons in your life to celebrate being a follower of Christ?

SAY SOMETHING LIKE:In Jesus’ day, around 2,000 years ago, a wedding feast was an awesome party! It was a happy, joy-filled celebration that lasted for days. As John was watching something human eyes had never seen, he compared what he saw to the wedding feasts he had participated in and observed. The feast will be a joyous expression of the longing of the church to be unified with Christ for eternity.

2. Sin will no longer defile us in heaven

ASK:

  • When you think of the color white, what words or images come to mind? Do you think of the idea of purity, or being clean? Explain.
  • Imagine that your life is like a clean, white robe. You wear it around your whole life. But the sins that you commit, your thoughts and your actions, they stick to you, each sin staining your robe. Think of what this robe looks like at the end of your life. But then you arrive at this feast, and the sinful, stinking robe you have been wearing around your whole life is replaced by Christ with clean, fine, sparkling white garments. How does this picture of grace and forgiveness affect the way you see your future?
  • Knowing Christ paid for this forgiveness with his life, how does this change the way you see your sinfulness today?

SAY SOMETHING LIKE:The purity of the wedding feast is incredible. Earlier in Revelation, John had seen a vision that he described as a prostitute and her lovers. This, of course, is symbolic language. But it is a sinful, wretched image. As he depicts the wedding feast of the Lamb, John makes a great contrast between the vision of the prostitute and the pure vision of Christ (the Lamb) and his virgin bride (the church). It’s a beautiful image, especially as we consider how our sin has been taken away by the Lamb himself. Christ made us, his bride, pure in order that we would be redeemed and cleansed.

3. Our place at the banquet table is granted by God’s grace

ASK:

  • Have you ever been invited to a really nice dinner? How did you feel as you were at the table? Did you feel special? Excited? Nervous?
  • Sometimes it seems like it’s a duty to be a Christ-follower, a task we have to carry out. We forget the joy of following Christ sometimes. How does verse 9describe the people who have been invited to the feast?-
  • If you have professed your faith in Christ, you are a child of God because of God’s grace. What does this mean to you personally?

SAY SOMETHING LIKE:Our place in heaven was made possible by Christ. God loves all his children. But because of his nature, God cannot fellowship with sinful man. God is holy. We could not stand in his presence because of our sin. And God is just. All sin is rebellion against God, and rebellion deserves death. But Christ paid the debt our sin earns for us. And Jesus made us holy and righteous in God’s eyes by his sacrifice on the cross. Christ broke down the barriers to our dwelling with God forever in heaven. Our seat at the feast is made possible only because of God’s love for us as demonstrated through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

ADDITIONAL DISCUSSION [optional]

ASK:

  • Read Luke 14:15-24. What are some differences and some similarities between this parable Jesus tells about a wedding feast and what we see in Revelation 19?
  • Read Isaiah 25:6-8. How do these verses echo the imagery and ideas from the passage in Revelation 19?

APPLICATION

Ask students to form groups of two or three for these questions.

ASK:

  • Studying the book of Revelation is both really cool and a little perplexing. As we’ve gone through the lessons so far in this series, how have the conversations changed the way you think about your relationship with God, what eternity will be like, or what you ought to value most in this lifetime?
  • It seems like we could draw some strength and assurance in our faith from knowing how God has planned the end of this present reality. Do you think this is true? Why or why not?
  • What role does hope for the future play in your life? Is it hard to really think about these types of things as a teenager or not? Explain.

SUMMARY

End your lesson here. Provide your teenagers with a quick summary or take-home challenge based on (1) the content of this lesson, (2) the dialogue that took place during the lesson, (3) your understanding of the issues and struggles your teenagers are facing, and (4) the big picture of your youth ministry and what your leadership team wants accomplished with the teaching and discussion time.

FOR KEEPS [MEMORY VERSE]

Encourage and/or challenge your teenagers to memorize the verse below.

And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb.” And he added, “These are true words that come from God”
(Revelation 19:9).