Delight Greatly In The Lord

First of all, the children of Israel would see the righteousness of the Lord and they would praise Him for it. Then that righteousness and praise would also be for the whole world. Those garments of salvation would not be for just a few people, weren’t meant just for the children of Israel, but the Lord forgave the sins of the whole world. He has covered up the whole world with His garments of salvation. You and I today rejoice! We are just like Isaiah in that we can say we delight greatly in the Lord. As we look at our life, we realize that we, too, have nothing to offer the Lord except our sinfulness, our wicked ways, and yet the Lord, through His Son has covered us up with a robe of righteousness—not because we deserve it, not because we have earned it, but because of His great love for us.

John, when he wrote the book of Revelation, was given insight. It was quite a revelation because heaven itself was revealed to him. He saw into heaven and he saw the people that were there. He saw the angels, he saw the elders and he saw people worshipping the Lamb of God. His question was, ‘who are these people? How did they get here?’ The answer that he was given is the answer that still stands for us today. There is only one way to get there and that is to be clothed with the righteousness of Christ. He says: "These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb"(REVELATION 7:14).

That’s what you and I do today, don’t we? We celebrate the Lord’s Supper today where the Lord reminds us that with His very own precious blood our Savior has washed away our sins. Jesus has taken that robe which is darkened by sin and made it white and pure with His blood. We are clothed with that. We’ve been clothed with the righteousness of Christ for a long time. It’s good to reflect on that too. When did that take place? When we’re born into this world, no matter how cute and innocent we look as infants, we still are God’s enemies. It is hard for anyone who is an enemy of someone to get close to them personally. You and I know, once again by God’s grace, through the power of His Word with the water, baptism has made us His children. He covered up our sinfulness with the washing of water with the Word. In Galatians, the Apostle Paul writes: "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ"(GALATIANS 3:26,27). We’re still clothed with sinfulness because of our sinful nature, but over that sinfulness we are now clothed with Christ through our baptism, the hearing of His word, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. If we want to picture God as looking down on the earth and looking at us, what does He see? He sees Christ’s righteousness covering us up. He sees you and I as believers rejoice greatly in the Lord (just as Isaiah says…’I delight greatly in the Lord.’) My soul rejoices in God because He doesn’t see my sins anymore. He sees the blazing white robe of Christ’s righteousness. Our lives are changed by it.