Christmas 2
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
This week, we all have yet another Christmas under our belts. And probably many of you thought back during the holidays to past Christmases you had, and the fond memories of these events. Maybe your mind was turned to the presents you remember opening up as a child. Some presents were great! Some were a little ho-hum. Growing up, did you enjoy getting clothes for Christmas? I remember opening up gifts, tearing off the wrapping only to find a box that contained…a sweater. “Great, a sweater” I would say, doing a pretty poor job of masking my unexcitement.
After a few years, my siblings and I got to be experts at shaking gifts weeks before Christmas and determining whether a wrapped gift was just clothes. If a box underneath the wrapping felt light and flimsy: it was clothes. If there was no box and the gift was soft, and lumpy: it was a dead giveaway that the present was clothes and could be set on the “open after everything else” side of the Christmas Tree. Don’t get me wrong, it is not that we were against clothes for Christmas, but they always seemed to be 2nd rate presents compared to toys, games, and other things.
God teaches us a lesson about his gifts to us this morning. The Lord teaches you that his greatest Christmas present to you is clothes. And so let’s study Isaiah as he tells us about these clothes this morning.
Part I
Unlike some other times of the church year, like Lent, Christmas is unquestionably a time of rejoicing. During the feel-good Christmas season, we see God’s love for us in the greatest gift ever given. Lent has its joys, but it also has its sorrow as we especially focus on our desperate need for a Savior. The writer of our text seems to be wrapped up in the joyous Christmas spirit, like a child eager to unwrap Christmas gifts. As he considers this present from God, his heart is filled with joy. “I delight greatly in the Lord, my soul rejoices in my God.” And what gives him joy? His Christmas clothes he receives!
Some clothes are really expensive. About 15 years ago during my High School years, Girbaud Jeans were especially sought after. They cost between $80-$90 a pair. Nowadays, you can’t even find this brand name. But back in school, if you had Wranglers, you were kind of out of it. If you had Lee’s, well, they were ok. Levi’s were a tad bit better. But if you really wanted to be cool, you’d spring for the Girbaud brand. And while you can’t even find these jeans anymore, the principle hasn’t changed. You can go to Burlington Coat Factory and buy a suit for a couple hundred bucks, or you can go to the shops in Winter Park and spend a few thousand dollars on a designer suit.
God has some expensive clothes to give his people. And God’s clothes are even more costly and more powerful than a pair of Girbaud jeans. Girbauds might have the power to make you cool in high school, but look at the power of the Lord’s clothes! He calls them: Garments of Salvation. “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 jewels.”
Of course we all know about the tragedy of last week – the big wave that hit the other side of the world, causing so much devastation. You almost don’t want to read the newspaper because that death toll number goes up by thousands of lives each day. But compare that wave to the devastation caused by the great Flood when the entire earth was covered with water, and everything outside of the ark died because God was angry with sin. There’s not much of a comparison between that Flood and what happened last week. Now compare the devastation of the Great Flood to the total everlasting desolation of bodies and souls in hell, caused by God’s anger over sin.
Not to at all downplay the Tsumani tragedy, but hell is a far more serious calamity. Hell is a disaster from which no one can ever recover from. People around the globe are sinking millions and millions of dollars in the form of aid to the stricken countries, which is great. But how hard are people working to overcome the devastation hell will bring? The world has this hellish disaster on our doorstep, and few even seem to notice.
Even though it doesn’t seem to be a big priority on most people’s minds, sending aid to hell-bound sinners was Jesus’ rescue mission. And our text pictures it as Christ giving us refugees new clothes. Not just rags or hand-me-downs, but expensive, valuable, powerful clothes. In our text, these clothes are connected to salvation and righteousness; they are compared to the preciousness of jewels. These are clothes that will cover up our sins, clothes that will remind us of the sacrificial death Christ made on our behalf, clothes that will fit us well for heaven.
Part II
And these are clothes we wear right now. We don’t have to wait until heaven to wear them, but we have them right now. We could say that we are God’s fashion statement.
People say a lot with the types of clothes they wear. Some celebrities in the entertainment industry wear provocative and revealing clothes – what kind of message are they trying to send? Oh, I think the messages are obvious: “Look at me! I’m so good-looking! I’m a free spirit, and above the rules of decency! It’s not how you act, but how you look that make you a valuable person.” What if you were walking down the street and you saw someone dressed up like a WWII Gestapo agent, complete with Swastika armbands? That person would definitely be sending a message just by their clothes about their beliefs and ideals.
What message do you send with your spiritual clothes? In the 3rd paragraph Christ himself speaks about this Christmas gift of clothes that he gives to the church, here called “Zion” and “Jerusalem”, “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet, till her righteousness shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch. The nations will see your righteousness,[notice the statement our spiritual clothes make!] and all kings your glory; you will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will bestow.”
Sometimes when people do something special for the British government, they get knighted, and so they get a new name. Before, their name might have been “Jerry,” but after being knighted they are now called “Sir Jerry.” Well, you new clothes give you a new identity. You are now called by God by a new name. Previously you were called names like “sinner, outcast, object of wrath.” Now your new clothes have given you new names and titles, “Redeemed, Saved, God’s precious child!” These are titles that we can proudly tell other people that we hold. We can let them know how we received those names, and how Christ wants to impart them to them as well.
But too often we don’t feel all that special. We seem to be just another number, another statistic, in this populous world. At work we are just one of dozens or hundreds of employees. At the mall we are just one of thousands of faceless shoppers. Advertising gives people a little boost of esteem: persuading us to buy products because we deserve them, but of course in the back of our minds we know that they don’t really care about us, they are simply after our money. I always get a kick out of commericals this time of year. If I didn’t know any better, I would think from television that the way for me to be a perfect soap-opera husband is to buy my wife diamonds for every special occasion: Christmas, her birthday, Valentine’s Day, our Anniversary, Flag Day, and you get the idea. Expensive diamonds will make your wife crazy for you! And wives, if you want to transform your husband into your knight-in-shining-armor, all you have to do is to have a Jaguar gift-wrapped in the driveway for your husband. Now if the good Lord blesses us with material things – great. Let’s thank him for them. Let’s use them to his glory. But let’s also glorify him by remembering that things don’t really define us.
The world says otherwise. If you go to Best Buy, and you and another customer are looking to buy a TV, who is going to get preferential treatment from the salesperson? – the one buying the plasma TV, or the one settling for a $200 stone-age television. See, the world gives the impression that the more things we have, the better quality of things we have, the more valuable a person we are. I noticed this when I got a new cell phone the other week. I was shown the new $500 Motorola Razr phone, and when I settled for the $30 cheapie, the salesgirl wasn’t mean to me, but I just didn’t feel as important as someone who had sprung for the bling bling cell phone.
But friends, our possession do not define us. Their luster, like everything else on earth, goes away after a time. But not the glory of the Lord’s clothes. The world defines our importance by what we own. The Bible defines our importance by the fact that we ARE owned…and cherished…by God. The next time you are tempted to be discontented with your lot in life, or the next time you don’t feel all that valuable or loved or important, recall the last words of our text, “you will be a crown of splendor in the Lord’s hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.”
Conclusion
So next year you might be shaking presents under the tree and trying to guess what they might be. When you come across a gift that is obviously just clothes, don’t discard it and move on to a “better” gift. Let it remind you of the clothes the Savior Jesus gave to you on Christmas. These garments of salvation will be your wardrobe in heaven, and they are also clothes which you may proudly wear even now. Amen.
sdg
