Sermon Preached January 02, 2011 by Pastor Spaude

Just the Right Kind of Clothing! - Isaiah 61:10, & 62:1,3

Dear friends in Jesus Christ, perhaps you’ve noticed that second-hand clothing stores have been springing up all over the place. It used to be that those stores were just for the poor and the needy. But that’s no longer the case. If you get just the right pair of jeans with just the right holes, and just the right tears, well then, you are in fact just what the fashion doctor ordered. Now second-hand clothes, you see, are cool. So is wearing shorts in wintertime if you are a teenager as well as wearing your pants lower than your underwear. JUST THE RIGHT KIND OF CLOTHING make us acceptable to the people we see.

Have you ever had this experience? You go into your closet and you see before you all the clothes that you own, and you look, and you say, "I can’t find a thing to wear!" Now that’s a little incredulous, if you stop to think about it. But I think what we’re really saying is whatever we’re looking for doesn’t really fit the occasion. I think this describes with complete accuracy precisely our situation before God. We are looking for just the right spiritual outfit to make God happy with us.

So we go into the closet, and we dig out our nicest spiritual outfit- our good works. We put it on and conclude that it looks pretty good on us. There is only one problem. It has a few stains on it. We wonder, "How good does the outfit have to look? If there are a few stains of sin, is that OK?" Last Sunday I asked Mari Harpold if she had a nice Christmas Day. She said “Yes, but it didn’t go as planned.” I asked what she meant. Well, she and John were planning to go out to lunch after Christmas Day Worship service. But as Mari was helping clean up communion after the service, some wine accidentally spilled all over her blouse. Couldn’t go out to eat like that, so she had the luxury of John cooking lunch at home for her. Do you think if we would show up at the entrance to God’s heaven with our clothes stained by our sin-even if it were only a few stains-that he would let you into his perfect heaven?

       No that outfit won’t work so we dig into the chest of drawers and hunt around for those spiritual rituals that we can put on. So we wear our church attendance or church membership with pride. We happily take on the label Christian as if a label will get up to heaven. But then we realize that our worship has not always been from the heart. How may times haven’t I prayed the Lord’s Prayer without thinking about what I am saying? How many times haven’t you enjoyed your church membership without putting time and effort toward the organization? How often have I liked the label Christian, but shirked the cross of denying myself that comes with being a Christian? No, that outfit won’t work either.

Finding our own spiritual clothing completely inadequate we do what Americans are accustomed to doing. We run around from one mall to another, looking for something that pleases us and catches our eye. People try on one religion or another trying to find what fits their conscience. Sometimes we look into the spiritual mall and find a store that is selling a kind of "feel-good" religion. It is the kind of religion that never talks much about sin and the Savior but makes us feel just fine in how I am living. And so, a false sense of security is secured.

        Let me tell you about our dog. Her name is Missey. She is a sweet little dog, except she always barks when people walk by the fence. But if Missey were a beggar, out standing on the street corner with a sign, the sign she would hold would be, "Will do anything for food". When you haul out those "treats", nothing will divert her attention from that treat. No matter what you do, she will focus like a laser beam on that little morsel, until she finally gets it. She will roll over. She will sit up. She will fall over when you say, “bang.” Until that tidbit is gone, you will not divert her attention in any way, shape or form.

        That is what happens many times as churches are on a spiritual quest. They look at one religious trinket after another, and they will be so distracted by it, and so attracted to it, that they will completely ignore what they need the most. So churches stop paying attention to God’s word, to His sacraments. It’s having coffee bars, it’s the music, it the programs. But the soon another spiritual religious trinket comes along that catches our attention so we look at it for a while. Meanwhile, we miss out on the most incredibly comforting truth- God has provided for us the spiritual clothing we need-. JUST THE RIGHT KIND OF CLOTHING, His clothing. He gives us the gift of forgiveness of sins. He clothes us with His very own perfection. This is the clothing that makes us fully acceptable in the sight of God, and fully ready for citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. It is Jesus Christ alone who can possibly give us what we need so that we can stand before God on that great and last day, without fear and without dread.

We like to think of Christmas as the peaceful scene in the manger, a family made complete with the birth of a child. But in 62:1 God is speaking and says: “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not remain quiet, till her vindication shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch.” In looking at the Hebrew, the two words that are paired together teach us something astounding about Christmas. The word translated 'to be silent/still' implies inaction rather than not making noise. The word translated 'to be quiet/rest' denotes a peaceful state. In other words, God is not going to sit idly by while world sat in clothes stained by sin. But the action God would need to take to give us the proper clothes would not be peaceful, but will be that of a battle.

There was nothing peaceful about Christmas for Mary. Childbirth- pre epidural and spinal tap? No midwife, no hospital, not even a Tylenol. You think Joseph was much help- would you want him for your midwife? Scary and fearful for Mary and Joseph was God thundering on to the scene of our human race. Scary and fearful for Satan and his demon warriors, too. Because God would not stop until righteousness would shine like a new sunrise at daybreak and salvation blaze like bright light at night! Through Jesus innocent sinless suffering God has dressed us in clothing that is His righteousness and His sinlessness and His forgiveness. And that forgiveness was purchased through the drawing of His last breath on the cross. All the nakedness of our sin no longer exists because our Lord Jesus Christ has taken it on Himself, paid the penalty Himself, and He has nailed it to a cross with His own hands and with His own feet. Nothing peaceful about that –for Jesus. But everything peaceful about that –for us!

        Now, why would we want to look for something better? What other clothing would be more stylish? What other clothing would make us more acceptable to God when we stand before Him in heaven on the great and last day? These clothes are not like clothes that we put on only to take off and wad them up on the closet floor. These garments don’t merely cover us they also change us. Isaiah says: “you will be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will bestow.” Believers are called Children of God- not Condemned of God, Saints Righteousness not Slaves of Satan, heirs of heaven, not doomed for destruction, the Bride of Christ, not the Whore of Satan. Isaiah pictures God’s people: “as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.” The picture is of God and his people in a covenant of faithful marriage.

Some in Israel became “a crown of splendor in the LORD’s hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.” Nehemiah, clad in the God’s Garments of Salvation, led a group of God’s people back from captivity and rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem. Ezra, also clad in God’s Garments of Salvation, led another group back from captivity and they rebuilt God’s house, the Temple. Those laborers who rebuilt the temple and city of Jerusalem, those worshipers who sang and prayed, those prophets who proclaimed a living Word, and those families who lived and loved in trust of the word of God were a “crown of splendor, a royal diadem on the hand of God. They were faithful to God in their covenant of marriage.

And so, you and I also have the challenge set before us to remain faithful to our marriage covenant with God. And do you know what the greatest challenge you and I face in being faithful in our marriage to Christ? We have it too easy in the US. Let me illustrate: The Christmas Day edition of the Wall Street Journal ran an article about a Christian congregation in Iraq. Moslems were threatening to blow up their church on Christmas Eve so the congregation (which was rather large) had to worship in small groups gathered in their homes on Christmas Eve! How we take our worship for granted! How we take our blessings for granted.

And so as we look at the start of a new year we have the comforting reminder that we are wearing JUST THE RIGHT KIND OF CLOTHING. As people who no longer are embarrassed by the nakedness of our sin we also have the wonderful opportunity to show faithfulness to our covenant of marriage to God this New Year. Will you and I continue to rise to the financial and volunteering challenges that our building project present before us? Will we rise to the challenge of the real building project that begins when the brick and mortar part are done- the challenge to be evangelists who bring people in to our new buildings? Will you rise to the challenge to be more faithful in your church attendance? To read the Word more at home? To have yourself and your children in Sunday school? Dressed in JUST THE RIGHT KIND OF CLOTHING, the answer is a resounding, “Yes!” Amen