Imagine with me, if you would. You are an employee at a store. The store has had an incredible year; profits are through the roof. The store is having the best year ever. The CEO of the company announces a visit for next week. You are thrilled because you are going to get the recognition you deserve for all the hard work you have done. There is a buzz among all the employees. “This is great!” everyone exclaims. However, the manager and assistant managers don’t see as happy as everyone else does. They are constantly whispering with each other. It is obvious that they are not excited about the impending visit of the CEO. Then two days before the visit, you find out why the management is not excited. They have not followed company procedures. The CEO is sure to find out about this, and the management is scared. The good news of the CEO’s visit for you and your fellow employees is rotten news for the store manager and assistants.
Isaiah tells of a similar situation in Isaiah 61. Turn with me to that passage.
Read 61:1-3.
This prophecy was fulfilled with Jesus. In Luke 4:18, 19, Jesus quotes the first verse and half of the second. At the time, he was in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth. After reading the passage, he said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” You will notice that he stopped short of the part where it says, “and the day of vengeance of our God.” The day of vengeance has yet to come. Jesus ushered in a new era. He showed up on the scene and turned things upside down. He brought in the “year of the Lord’s favor.” The “year of the Lord’s favor” is not to be taken as a literal 365-day year, but rather as the time in which God rewards those who follow him. This is the time when the Good News would be preached to the poor. It is also the time when freedom will be proclaimed to the captives and prisoners would be released from the darkness. Jesus came to do that. And as his followers, we are commanded to do that as well.
That doesn’t mean we go bust people out of jail, or send files inside a cake to someone in prison. This is talking about spiritual captivity and darkness. There are people who are so engulfed in the darkness of sin that they cannot see their hand in front of their face.
We were on vacation, when I was a young teenager, in the Black Hills of South Dakota near Mount Rushmore. We decided to go to a cave and take a tour. The tour guide took a group of us into this large open room in the cave. They had put in electric lights and the room was well lit. The tour guide told of the explorers who used to crawl around the caves exploring and mapping the caves with little or no light. The tour guide said, “To give you an idea of what it was like for those men exploring this cave, I am going to turn off the light.” When he did, it was black inside that cave. I mean black. I held my hand right in front of my face and I could see not see it. I had it right in front of my nose. That kind of darkness is eerie. Many people are afraid of the dark because they see shadows or something. There were no shadows in this cave when the lights were out. Everyone was quite relieved when the tour guide turned the lights on and we could see again.
Jesus came to proclaim the release from darkness. I was very glad to be released from the darkness of that cave. It was only dark for maybe a couple minutes, but it was very lonely even though there were several people standing very near me. Jesus came to offer light to people caught in the darkness of sin. Jesus offers that even today. The offer is there as long as it is still the “year of the Lord’s favor.”
Verse 3 continues the same theme as verse 1. Jesus offers “a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of the spirit of despair.” Again Jesus turns everything upside down. Those who belong to Jesus need not despair. This is not saying that we will not face difficulty or trials in our life, but he is with us to comfort us and see us through it.
During the time of Isaiah, the people practiced a ritual of putting ashes on their heads when they were in mourning. I not quite sure why they chose to put ashes on their heads, but that was their custom. We may be better able to relate to that last phrase, “a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.” What we wear often tells about our mood. When we go to a funeral, we often wear black. Black, typically, is a color of clothing is serious and somber. We don’t see too may people who wear Hawaiian shirts to funerals. What Jesus does is take our black clothes of mourning and give us clothes of praise.
The people of the Lord then will be called “oaks of righteousness.” We are to be strong witnesses “of the Lord for the display of his splendor.” Our lives should reflect God.
Read 61:4.
Last week, I mentioned that before Tammy and I got married, Hurricane Andrew blew through southern Florida. We went to Florida at Christmas time that year. Tammy’s parents took around to see the damage that the hurricane had left in its wake. Hurricane Andrew blew through in late August, and in late December, the devastation was unbelievable. Trees were stripped bare, and houses were literally twisted off of their foundations. Four months later the rebuilding had just began.
In verse 4, Isaiah talks about the ancient ruins being rebuilt. The houses in south Florida were not ancient ruins, but the task to rebuild them was a difficult and long process. The area affected by Hurricane Andrew is now rebuilt, some ten years later.
What Isaiah is talking about here is two fold. The captives that will come back from captivity in Babylon will be faced with the task of rebuilding the city of Jerusalem, as we see in the book of Nehemiah. But, Isaiah is talking about something different as well. The city of Jerusalem would have only been in ruins for seventy years, which is only about two generations. Isaiah is talking about the devastation that sin has brought upon the human race.
When humans were created, they were created with an intimacy with God. When sin entered the world through Adam and Eve, that relationship was broken. It became as an abandoned ruin. What Jesus did was to bring about the possibility of that relationship to be restored. For generations sin had ravaged the human race, and in fact it still does. God was setting up his plan to restore the lost relationship with humans. The devastate ruins would be fixed up, so we can meet God, and have a vibrant relationship with him. Thanks be to God for his gift of his Son, so we can enter into a relationship with him.
We celebrate this season, of Advent and Christmas, the gift of Jesus in the manger. It is not the manger that gives us the restored relationship with God; it is the cross and the empty tomb that provide the way for the relationship to be restored.
What are the benefits of being in a right relationship with God? The answer is simple. First, we get ourselves in a relationship with our Creator, which is the way God designed us from the beginning.
The other benefits are found in verses 8-11.
Read 61:8-11.
The second benefit is that God will make a lasting covenant with his people. Covenants are agreements or compacts. Some subdivisions require that covenants be signed when purchasing a house in that subdivision. These are binding agreements about rules of the neighborhood and what can and cannot be done with the property. One lady I used to work with told me about her aunt who bought a house in a neighborhood that was made up of Victorian houses. The covenant for the subdivision stated that all house had to be painted in “Victorian colors.” This lady wanted to paint her house and was told that she could not use the color she had selected because it violated the “Victorian color” rule. Quite perturbed, the lady went and did a little research on “Victorian colors” and found out that there was rather bright purple that was “Victorian.” The neighbors were more upset with her new choice of color, but they could do nothing about it because it was within the covenant.
God has made a covenant with his people, and it is a everlasting covenant. The covenant says that he will reward his people.
The reward is that he will make his people known to all nations. As God’s people, we should be known to the world. The end of verse 9 says, “All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the Lord has blessed.” God will bless his people, and the world will see it and acknowledge that it is because they are God’s people.
Further, as God’s people, we are to praise him. Isaiah says that he delighted in the Lord and his soul rejoiced in his God. This means that he offered praise to God. We need to praise God more.
Isaiah goes on to give us the reason for praise. “Fore he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.”
God offers us new life. Like earlier, in verse 3, where Isaiah writes that God will give his people clothing of praise, here says that God has given him the clothes of salvation. God again turned his fortune upside down. From judgment and condemnation to a life of being right with God is how he turned it all upside down for him, or perhaps, right side up. God takes our lives and puts his clothes on us.
Isaiah uses the example of a bride and groom here. Have you ever been to a wedding and not known who the bride was? Every wedding I have been to, it has been abundantly obvious who the bride is. She is usually the one in the big white dress, with the veil and long flowing train and beads.
When we get our relationship with God, he clothes us in a way that there is now mistaking who we are. We are his, and he makes sure that the world knows it. It is no mistake that Isaiah uses the example of a wedding here. In the New Testament, Jesus is pictured as the groom and his people, the Church, are pictured as the bride. God decks us out in a way that it is obvious who the bride is. We are to be the bride of Christ. It should be obvious to all that we are the bride of Christ. We should live our lives in a way that the world has no doubt about who we are and what we are.
As we prepare to celebrate the coming of the baby Jesus, we need to look and see if we are in a right relationship with him. Look at your life, are you ready for the Savior to come. Is it obvious that you belong to him? He can restore the relationship. He can build over the ancient ruins. This is “the year of the Lord’s favor.” He can restore a broke relationship. If the CEO of the company were coming tomorrow, would you be happy or nervous? There is no reason to be nervous when you are right with the Lord.
