Are You Wearing Your Best Clothes? Series

Personal Questions…

Are You Wearing Your Best Clothes?

Isaiah 64:6

March 25, 2001

Intro:

A. [Clothes Make a Church]

A Methodist church tried to get a man to attend, but he never did.

"Why don’t you come?" the minister asked, and the man finally admitted it was because he didn’t have proper clothes.

So a member of the congregation took him to a clothing store and got him a nice suit, shirt, tie, and shoes.

But on the following Sunday, he still did not show up.

So the minister visited him again and asked him why he didn’t come.

"When I got dressed up in my new suit," the man explained, "I looked so good I decided to go to the Episcopal church."

B. Today I want to look at the Bible to see what kind of clothes God wants us to wear.

1. Is it suits and ties?

2. Is it skirts and blouses?

3. Or perhaps its something totally unexpected.

4. Are you wearing your best clothes?

C. Isaiah 64:6, All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

1. God says that the best things we do are like dirty rags.

2. The Bible says that all of the good deeds we do are like filthy rags.

3. Our best deeds are nothing but filthy rags and yet that is what so many people wear to church every week.

4. Have you lived your life trying to be a good person?

5. Then God says your wearing filthy rags.

6. Is that what you should be wearing when you come to church?

7. Are filthy rags the best you can come up with to come to worship God?

8. Can’t you find anything better in your closet to wear than filthy old rags?

9. But I’ve got some Good News!

10. The Good News is that God wants to give us some nice clothes to wear and they are absolutely free, if we’ll just take ‘em and wear ‘em!

D. Galatians 3:27, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

1. The Good News is that if we have been baptized into Christ, we have been clothed with Christ.

2. And being clothed with Christ is the finest suit you’ll ever own—and I guarantee it!

3. I happen to have several suits in my closet, but they cannot compare with the clothes that Christ has given me!

4. I have done a few good deeds in my life, but they are nothing but filthy rags compared to the clothes that Christ has clothed me in!

E. In the past several weeks we have looked at what the Bible says about our high position in Christ.

1. I have said repeatedly that the Christian life is not hard to live—it is impossible to live.

2. And the reason it is impossible to live is because only Christ can live it.

3. Today I want to say that there is no way that we can be a good person and try to live the Christian life on our own by trying to do enough good deeds, because all of our good deeds combined are nothing but filthy rags!

4. Today I want to say that the only way that we can live the Christian life is by being clothed with Christ and letting Him live in us!

5. What is a real Christian?

6. A real Christian is a person who has both put on Christ and has Christ living in Him and loving through Him.

7. We cannot live the Christian life on our own, we must have Christ in us and on us!

8. Today I want to talk about what Christians really are; first…

I. Christians Bear With Others

Ephesians 4:2, Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.

A. Paul says that Christians should bear with others…

1. And he tells us how we are to do that.

2. He says we are to be completely humble with others.

3. He says that we are to be gentle with others.

4. He says we are to be patient with others.

5. When someone has a different opinion than ours, we are to be completely humble.

6. When someone has a personality problem that gets on our nerves, we are to be gentle with them.

7. When someone does not seem to be making much progress as a Christian, we are to be patient with them.

8. Now I don’t know about you, but I am not completely humble.

9. I often have a hard time being gentle.

10. And I certainly have a problem with patience.