Sunday School "Clothing" June 10, 2018 Part 2

Compassion, Provision, and the Biblical Story of Clothes

Respiratory infection to recover soon. Let's remember Melissa as she's in Tulsa. God will provide for her needs and keep her safe. Yes, Mr. Starley. Hey, Pearson. Does he have an eye surgery or an eye test?

Good morning, Janie. Let's pray for Jan and James and Melissa and Ralph. Anyone else we can pray for this morning? Let's be sure to pray for Ken and Cheryl. They're here with us, thankfully, today, but Wednesday they're heading back up to Illinois for about a week or so.

They need stamina and safety for this rigorous schedule that they have planned out for the summer. Father, we thank you so much for gathering us together this morning. We do miss those who cannot be with us.

We think of Jan and James especially as they're not feeling well, but I pray that she would meet their needs and that you would encourage them today and help them to trust you as they go through these trials.

Lord, we pray that you would protect Melissa and give her all that she needs as she strives to make a new life in Tulsa. Lord, we pray that you would help her to be a good witness in her walk with Christ.

Lord, we think of Ralph and we pray that you would help his blindness that is coming on in one eye. Lord, we pray that you would give wisdom to doctors who take a look and pray that you would alleviate any anxiety and please help him to do what is necessary to help his eye to recover.

Lord, we pray that you would heal him. Lord, we think of Ken and Cheryl Smith. We know that they have a tall task ahead of them this summer. Lord, we are pleased to give them safety as they travel back and forth to Illinois.

Lord, we pray that you would give them the stamina that they need to do this task and do it well. We pray these things for Christ's sake with whom you are well pleased. Amen. Good morning. Welcome. Hi, Michael.

Hi, Nathan. Good to meet you. We talked over the phone today. I'm Jacqueline. Hi, Jacqueline. Nice to meet you. Well, this is our handout. I got one from last week, so you're only one week late. That's from last week.

Go ahead and have a seat. This is Caitlin Barnett and her mom, Kristen, will be joining us shortly. This is Vonnie and Woody. And this is Nathan and Jacqueline. Glad to have them today. They're all the way from Mustang.

Food, Clothing, and Shelter in the Bible Story

Well, we just finished praying for some concerns, but now let's turn our attention to our study this morning as we continue to think about a biblical theology of clothes. As we talked about last year, we started with the theme of food because it is central to the Bible story, essential to the overarching narrative of redemption, of salvation in Christ.

We cannot think of Christ's sacrifice as the Lamb of God in the context of the Passover's fulfillment. We cannot think of these vitally important issues without thinking about food. After all, the sacrificial system is built on the idea of food and its purpose and its history, especially from the garden.

So, as we notice in the scriptures, throughout the scriptures, food and clothing are mentioned time and time again in the same phrase, in the same verse, in the same context. Why? Because these are basic human needs.

Along with food and clothing, often we find the theme of shelter. These are three universal human needs, food, clothing, and shelter. Why is it important to observe that from the Bible, that we see those themes again and again?

God, in his wisdom, has made his expression of the gospel, the message of salvation, and very often he centers in the scriptures the story of salvation, the meaning of salvation in Christ, around those three universal human needs.

Food and the sacrificial system. Clothing in dealing with the shame and the guilt of our nakedness, and yet the promise of our clothing of righteousness in Christ, even to the images and revelation of the white robe given to those who are overcome with Christ.

And there's a lot more to it. Also the idea of shelter, of being exiled from the Garden of Eden, exiled from the shelter that God created, and always in the search for the next place of shelter, ultimately the New Jerusalem, the city which has foundations that Abraham was seeking for by faith.

So I think it's important to note, because unlike other world religions, Christianity, which is the ultimate truth about who we are and who God is, is not bound culturally like Islam to 7th century Arabia, is not bound epistemologically and philosophically to the Eastern pantheism like Buddhism and Hinduism.

Christianity is the truth from God about who we are, and so it's universal. We can have a talk if we pass the language barrier. All of them know what we know, that we need food and we need clothing and we need shelter.

And God has centered his message of salvation on behalf of Jesus Christ around those three universals. So that's why we're taking the time to do these biblical theologies of food, clothing, and then, Lord willing, next year, shelter.

Clothing as Provision in Genesis

Okay, so we talked about last week clothing as provision. Right off the bat, we see in Genesis 3 .21 that Adam and Eve had sinned and failed to provide for themselves adequate clothing. Stand in their shame and their nakedness before God.

And so God, in his mercy, in Genesis 3 .21, closed them with animal skins. The implications are clear. These animals had to die so that the shame of Adam and Eve would be covered. Let's lay eyes on the verse again, Genesis 3 .21, remembering the context of hope.

Even though the curse has been leveled, the consequences have been explained. We have the gospel in its infancy declared in verse 15 as the seed of the woman who will defeat, crush the head of the serpent.

So there are some notes of hope, even there and in verse 20, for the man called his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. Although death is the sentence for the crime, yet God makes provision for life.

And he also makes provision when he says, Lord God, make garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothe them. So provision. Now, intrinsically connected to the idea of provision is the idea of compassion.

God does not provide in absence of a sense of compassion. It's not provision out of duty, it's provision out of compassion. Because he is a God who is slow to anger, he is merciful, he is full of loving kindness.

And so he provides, and we see this as an act of compassion. His compassionate God would clothe Adam and Eve to cover their nakedness and their shame as a signal of how he would save us in Christ. Okay, now the first thing we have to reckon with when we talk about compassion is that clothing in the ancient Near East was a major item of wealth.

You know, I think probably like most Americans, I've got a bunch of clothes in my closet in my drawers that need to be passed along because I don't use them anymore for various reasons. We've got more clothes than we know what to do with normally.

So it's kind of sometimes hard for us to connect with where the majority of the world's population is in terms of their relationship to clothing, which is scarcity. And the reasons for that are many, but it's not as much as we have and we deal with.

And the experience of most of the world today is closer to what it was like in the ancient Near East. Garments were scarce and thus very hard to create, unlike today. Very hard to make and manufacture in a sturdy and long-lasting way, so this is very important.

Consider in Exodus 12, verse 35, and then we'll look at Joshua 7, verses 20 and 21. When God arranged for the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, Pharaoh is confronted by Moses. God tells Moses, you're going to be my voice, you're going to be like God to Pharaoh, saying what I say, and very simply, let my people go.

And so Pharaoh's going to refuse, I'm going to harden his heart so I'll glorify myself in his destruction. And so it is, and it goes through all the plagues of Egypt until finally Pharaoh and his people have had enough.

And Pharaoh says, get out of here. And to speed them out, to speed them along, the Egyptians give the people all kinds of plunder. The Israelites have not raised a sword, they have not launched an arrow.

But God has defeated Egypt and now they plunder Egypt like they beat the socks off. Now the sons of Israel had done according to the word of Moses, for they had requested from the Egyptians articles of silver and articles of gold and clothing.

Silver, gold, and we don't normally say clothing after that, do we? That's not normally the triad of wealth that we might say. We would probably say gold, silver, jewels, something, stock. We would say something else, we would not normally say clothing, but clothing was an important source of wealth in the ancient Near East.

Now let's think about Achan out of Joshua 7, 20 and 21. When Israel finally did enter the promised land and did battle at Jericho, God placed everything in Jericho under the ban. In other words, he set aside all of Jericho, everything in Jericho, the people and the spoils and everything there, was set aside unto God, separated unto God, and in the Hebrew quite literally sanctified for destruction.

It was all under the ban. So no one would be left alive, none of the animals would be left alive, none of the spoils would be taken, but everything killed and burned in Jericho. Now what did Achan do in Joshua 7?

Anybody remember? Yeah, he did. And because of his sin and the sin of those who helped him, because the items, he probably had to have a little bit of help, but anyway, his sin was found out because Israel went on to a little town, Ai, and failed miserably, and then they realized that sin was in the camp, and so they had to figure out who sinned, and it was Achan.

Now what did Achan take? So in Joshua 7, 20 through 21, would someone like to read those two verses for us? Yes, Ryan. So we see what he lists first, a beautiful mantle. Yeah, silver and gold, but wow, you see this article of clothing.

You see the emphasis on the temptation that Achan felt when he saw this article of clothing. It was for him a magnificent coalescing of wealth in this one item. So when we read about great wealth in the Bible, from Solomon's splendor to lucrative trade, from the abundance of the new creation, all these different things, garments are of this kind of abundance, and wealth, gifts to kings and gifts from kings featured in the articles of clothing.

Solomon bought all his nobles gold, silver, and clothing. What about the story of Naaman? Naaman, who was a captain of the Arameans, and he contracted leprosy, but there was this servant girl from Israel, and she knew about Elisha, the great prophet of God, who could heal Naaman.

So she gets mentioned to this, and so Naaman wants to go, and the king of Aram values Naaman so much that he says, take with you something to convince this prophet to work this miracle for you. And so he was to take 10 talents of silver, 6 ,000 shekels of gold, and 10 changes of clothes.

There's a whole big hunk of silver, but there's 10 of those hunks of silver and 10 changes of clothes. You can kind of sense the equation of the wealth that is involved here. Now Elisha, of course, rejected that gift, but who, this is trivia time, who went after that gift?

His disciple, his servant. Extra credit for getting his name right. Gehazi. He couldn't believe his master had not taken all that wealth. So he went after Naaman and said, oh, two prophets just came down from the hills, poor guys, and they need some new clothes and a talent of silver.

And Naaman said, be pleased to take two talents, and he did, and ended up with leprosy for his punishment. But you can see the temptation, the temptation of the clothes, because it's an item of wealth.

And of course, who can forget, and I said this last week, but when you talk about clothes in the Bible, at every single juncture in the story, we talk about clothes with Joseph, don't we? Now, Israel gave Joseph something he did not give to any of his other sons.

He loved Joseph more than his other sons, and so he made sure they all knew it by giving him what the New American Standard calls a very colored tunic, which I wish they would have kept the King James, a coat of many colors.

And I'm not a very colored tunic, but I know what a coat of many colors are in the New American Standard, which is not normal. But nonetheless, a coat of many colors, excellent description. Now, why is it important?

Well, the brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, and so they hated him and could not speak to him on friendly terms. But this coat, like the one that Achan found in Jericho, was fit for a king.

It was fit for a king, and it was a constant visible reminder of the dreams that Joseph had of him lording as king over his brothers. It becomes the focus for that first part of the story, is this coat of many colors.

So clothing as wealth, let's have that entrenched in our minds. So it's important that we understand that clothing is an important symbol and item of wealth in the Old Testament. If we understand that clothing is part of the tribe of basic human need, and it's a form of wealth, then we know that it's because of sin, it's because of the curse, that some people do not have enough.

They don't have any clothing, or they're without enough of this basic necessity in the Bible called nakedness. Nakedness is not having enough clothing, to whatever that means. Now, last we talked about the theme of nakedness being connected to the shame and the guilt of personal and inherent sin.

The reason why we wear clothes is because we are from Adam, and we have this inherent guilt, this inherent sin, and that we do sin, and therefore we have this basic human need of clothing ourselves. But not only because of that, because of the exposure to the elements, because we live in a cursed world, and because of the curse of this world, from thorns to snow, we have the issue of needing clothes to survive.

Who are those who couldn't care less if they wore clothes or not? What's the medical term that we've come up with? They have no sense of the difference. Mentally ill. Exactly. Mentally ill, and particularly psychopaths.

Somebody who does not have a sense of the morality of one way or the other. There's just no connection between the conscience and the act. There's a severing between the sense of right and wrong that is innate in the image of God, and then the action of whatever they're doing.

So, psychopaths. So that's the most extreme example. But also, the less guilt and shame people feel in their sin, the more broken the image of God in the life. Also, for some, the less clothes tend to be worn.

So there's this idea of a conscience that is seared, a heart that is hard, a mind that is reprobate, and so therefore, I feel no shame and no guilt, so I can immodestly expose myself and don't feel anything about it.

And for a lot of us, we are concerned about immodesty in our day, aren't we? And we should be, because that form of nakedness and exposure speaks to some level of degradation of the image of God in a person.

But you know that immodesty is far less common? Immodesty is far less common than nakedness and exposure of the poor? I'm talking globally and worldwide. Globally and worldwide, on the whole, inadequate clothing is not an issue of immodesty, it's an issue of not having enough.

So immodesty in an individual can speak to the degradation of the image of God personally. But the nakedness and exposure of the poor, that kind of nakedness speaks to the degradation of the image of God in the society.

So we're sick in the head if we walk around exposing ourselves. We are individually God-denying from the heart if we prance about with inadequate covering, I have no shame. But we are also, are we not corporately irrational and irreligious?

We are communally psychopathic if we do not clothe our poor. We're guilty if those made an image of God, but we don't live without that image. Very simple. And consider the result, now this is going to be 2 Chronicles 28, 15.

There was a civil war between Israel and Judah. The army led out of Samaria, led out of Jerusalem. The southern kingdom of Judah lost the battle and all their people began to be taken captive. Israel was going to turn the kingdom of Judah into slaves.

So they captured a whole host of people and were just going to make them slaves. Obed, the prophet, got involved and he rebuked Israel's leaders. Did they treat their brothers differently? And the result was in 2 Chronicles 28, 15,.

2 Chronicles 28, 15,. Then the men who were designated by name arose, took captives, and they clothed all their naked ones from the spoil, and they gave them clothes and sandals. Basically meaning clothing.

Fed them and gave them drink, food, anointed them with oil, let all their feeble ones on donkeys and brought them to Jericho, the city of the palm trees, so to their brothers. And then they returned to Samaria.

And Obed's point was, you're going to bring all manner of the wrath of God upon us and great evil upon us because you are not clothing your brothers. That was his concern. Now, again, that's a great example from the Old Testament, but before we restrict that idea of clothing others to just those who are genetically related to us and try to cordon it off, remember that Christ's own story of the good Samaritan, the Samaritan, the hateful Samaritan, who had compassion on the man who fell among thieves, the thieves who had stripped him and beat him and went away leaving him half dead.

But Samaritan had compassion, didn't he? Now let's turn over to Job. This is going to be a lengthy passage, but Job chapter 24 and verses 2 through 10. We need to think about inadequate clothing and nakedness as an expression of sin.

Why is this so? It's because of sin at some level. The injustice that is going on is because of sin. Poverty is because of sin. Either the sin of the people involved or the sin of others, but there's sin involved.

This is the biblical worldview. We have to have the right perspective. For many, poverty is because we're in a zero-sum game. Naturalists, Marxists say we just don't have enough. We're in a zero-sum game.

There's not enough, and that's why we're overpopulated, and the government seems to take over, and so on and so forth. That's not the case. I'll give you an example about food. The world today is producing 50 more food than the people on the earth can eat.

Why is there hunger? If the world is producing 50 more food than all the people of the world can eat, then why is there hunger? Because of sin. If the entire world wants to be paid off so that the food can get to their people, we've got a problem, right?

When there is statewide genocide somewhere in the Near East or in Africa or so on, we've got a problem. That's why people are starving. We have a similar example with clothes. Job 24, verses 2 through 10.

This is Job's observation of why there's poverty. It's because of sin. Some remove the landmarks. What does that mean? Well, back then, you have deeds. I own this, and it's been surveyed, and it's down at the County Courthouse.

No, they were just stones. They were just stones or just markers to say, hey, this is my family's land. But some remove the landmarks. What are they doing? They're stealing people's land. They seize and devour flux.

Oh, you don't have your land anymore, and you don't have your flux. We just took them away from you. They drive away the donkeys of the orphans. They take the widow's ox for a pledge. The orphan and the widow don't have enough.

Oh, yeah, we'll give you something and charge you high interest. Take your ox. You're never going to pay me back. I get to keep your ox. They push the needy aside from the road. The poor of the land are made to hide themselves together.

Behold, as wild donkeys in the wilderness, they go forth seeking food in their activity as bread for their children in the desert. So in the actions of sin, some are dehumanizing others. And they themselves are dehumanizing themselves.

They harvest their fodder in the field and glean the vineyard of the wicked. They spend the night naked without clothing. They have no covering against the cold. They are wet with the mountain rains and hug the rock in want of a shelter.

Are you hearing it? Food, clothing, shelter. Others snatch the orphan from the breast. And against the poor, they take a pledge. They cause the poor to go about naked without clothing, and they take away the sheaves from the hungry.

This is Job's observation of wickedness in his day, an ancient day. And his observations are accurate for today. There is still injustice today. There is still a great deal of sin that is involved in those who do not have enough.

Now, this is not to say that those who do not have enough are without sin and instantly justified by merits of their poverty. I'm not saying that at all. And sin begets sin. And when someone sins against this person, this person reacts in sin as well.

And it's a destructive cycle. So it's good to note that the problem is not that there are not enough resources. The problem is that there's not enough righteousness. We don't have a lack of resources.

We have a lack of righteousness. And that's the reason why we're in what we're in. As a testament to the sinfulness of man, and as a testament that we know that things are wrong because our creator says so.

And he has imprinted that upon our hearts. We know that things are wrong. And he's told us in his word to be more specific about why it's wrong. The answer to injustice is not a large impersonal government redistribution of wealth by force.

The government puts a gun to the head of some, taking from them, and then give to others. Is that the solution? How about voluntarily contributing to a large slush fund to alleviate trenchant poverty?

Neither one has worked very well. And we're going to get to what does work biblically, but I want to read a little bit to you. This is a book called Rethinking Social Justice, Restoring Biblical Compassion.

The whole idea is that the Marxist version of social justice has taken terms like compassion and justice, which are biblical terms, and has stolen them from true biblical meaning. And what are the definitions in the Bible?

And what does Jesus say? And so on and so forth. And let's give it some thought to it. And Darrell Miller is the author. But on page 39. The 2011 census report on poverty and income displays this evidence.

After pouring $3 trillion. That's a lot of zeros. But we're going on $4 trillion. This was written a little while ago. So $4 trillion during the last three years. In the name of helping the poor and creating jobs, the federal state's failure is breathtaking.

The ranks of American poor have swollen to the highest number, 46 .6 million, since poverty figures first began to be reported 52 years ago. The percentage of Americans who are poor, 14 .1%, is nearly one in seven.

It's the highest in 17 years. Is giving so much of taxpayers' money to the state helping the poor? Doesn't look like it. Right? Those who insist that the only or the best way to achieve the common good, which is a buzzword, is to give more resources and more control to the federal state, they should be looking for some evidence somewhere that undergirds their self-righteousness.

They insist that others of us who do not support the expenditure of more state money, that we are immoral. Okay. Thomas Sowell says giving money to the state in order to help the poor is a little like trying to feed the swallows by feeding the horses.

The swallows get very little out of it. He gives another example. A Kenyan economist, James Shekwati, at the G8 Summit. And James Shekwati has an interesting and helpful perspective. And he's being interviewed.

And Spiegel says, the G8 Summit at Glen Eagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa. And Shekwati interrupts him. He says, please, for God's sake, just stop. Stop, Spiegel says. The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shekwati says, such intentions have been damaging our continent for nearly 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape.

Despite the billions that have poured into Africa, the continent remains poor. And the reason why is that when you pour a whole bunch of money into a sinful place, it doesn't end up in the right places.

Anybody ever do plumbing? I've done very little plumbing, and it's very frustrating because the water goes all the wrong places. I should be a better plumber, but anyway. One more example, and we'll move on.

But on page 43, Dara Miller is making the connection between social justice and culture. Culture matters. Culture matters. Let's talk about Haiti. When you think of Haiti, you think of what? Poverty. Okay, let's think of an event.

When you think of Haiti, you think of hurricanes and earthquake, natural disasters. Very good. So we have a natural disaster, big earthquake 2010, big hurricane that comes through, and we have this impoverished nation that just can't catch a break, right?

The day before the 2010 earthquake, 10 ,000 mission agencies and relief and development organizations and tens of thousands of volunteers were working in Haiti. That's not that big of a place, folks. Okay?

$1 billion per year from the international community and $3 billion from the Haitian diaspora in the United States of Canada. $4 billion a year to this one little place with 10 ,000 mission agencies. And you know what?

All the king's horses and all the king's men cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Why? Because they're not thinking about the sin problem. They're not thinking about the fact that, as it's been said before, Haiti is 80 Catholic, 20 Protestant, and 100 voodoo.

The clarity of the gospel is obscured. There's no repentance from their witchcraft, and there's this culture that is endemic to disaster. And so with this animistic worldview, they just don't have a framework for what to do with the aid that comes.

And so it's just disaster after disaster. Well, we have to think about compassion differently, not on the large scale, but on the personal scale. Why do we say that? Biblical compassion rightly understood.

Everything from the basic definitions of the Hebrew and Greek terms to the stories of Christ himself is personal. God showed up and showed compassion personally by coming to us in the person of his son, Jesus Christ.

God personally communicated to us on our level in a way that we can understand it so clearly, it is so accurately, and faithfully. God personally knows our needs, indeed our truest, deepest needs. He personally moves to meet those needs as our creator and as our savior.

What is his name? His name is Emmanuel, God with us. What does he know? The very hairs on our head. You hear how his compassion is direct and personal. So God's compassion, you hear about it. You hear about his provision in all sorts of ways throughout the Bible.

He provided for his people in the wilderness. Their sandals did not wear out and their clothes did not wear out. He provided for them. We hear that as Jesus teaches to the crowds in Matthew 6 and Luke 12 that God provides for their needs as well.

And that if he clothes the lilies of the field in a way that even Solomon couldn't match in all of his splendor, well, can't you trust him that he'll provide for you too? And yet at the same time, doesn't he also ordain that poverty should remain upon our world?

The poor will be with you always, Jesus says. Now, to take that into context, Jesus is not saying, and that's a good thing. Keep them in their place. I actually read that in blogs on the Internet from people who should know better.

When Jesus says the poor you'll have, that's proper in society. There should be a poor class. That is resplendent in its stupidity. That is not at all what Jesus was meaning there. He was saying that what the woman did in anointing him was far more important in her worship of Christ than just giving money to the poor.

Now, that's important, but the poor you're going to have with you always, and you're always going to be able to do that, and Christ wants us to do that in his name. But he was not going to be with them very long, and she was showing proper priority.

That's what that means. And also, does he not even leave his own children in situations of dire need? Think about Paul. First Corinthians 411. To this present hour we are both hungry and thirsty and are poorly clothed, roughly treated, and are homeless.

Why would God ever deprive any of his own servants from the three basic human needs of food, clothing, and shelter? Why would God? What was Paul doing? What was he after? Preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And Paul was demonstrating by his very own sacrifices that Christ is worth more than shelter. He is worth more than clothing. He is worth more than food and stuff. He ordains that his servants will go through difficult times so that we will know, ultimately, the value of Christ.

And it's important to remember that God does not—we see this from the scriptures—that God does not provide equal outcomes for everybody. Not even in heaven. There's not even equal outcomes in heaven. It should remind us that grace, the very framework of creation itself, has nothing to do with equality.

The best thing to be said in agreement with grace is, that's not fair. That's right. Because it's grace. Okay. Since God's compassion for us is, pun intended, tailor-made, how then should we operate in our compassion?

Our compassion would be wasted in self-gratification. If it's all about making ourselves feel better, warmer inside, who cares if they get warm or not? This happens a lot. This is why there's so much money that flows into Hades.

There's so much money that flows everywhere. It's that people want to feel good about themselves, and here goes the money. I feel better about myself, and it's the secular version of penance. I feel better now.

But that kind of surface, unthoughtful, impersonal act is about us and not about them. The real need of the poor. So when we give or provide clothing for the poor, whether through knitting and crocheting as little warmers for infants in crisis with Hope Pregnancy Center, or donating to a clothes closet, or providing coats for homeless men, or passing down clothes to families in need, whatever it is, are we first worshiping God as our provider?

Are we thinking of Christ's words in Matthew 25, to the degree you've done it to the least of these, my brethren? You have also done it for me. Are we thinking about that, and are we trying as much as we can to be face-to-face, stride-for-stride with those we're trying to help?

Right? That's the question. God is intensely personal in his compassion, even back to Genesis 3 .21. He made them garments out of animal skins. He literally tailor-made them clothes in his compassion for them.

Now, how are we being compassionate? How are we being compassionate, especially when we think about providing clothes for others? Ezekiel 18 .7 -9 gives a summary of the law and how we are to love others rightly.

It says, If a man does not oppress anyone but restores to the debtor his pledge, if he does not commit robbery but gives his bread to the hungry, and covers the naked with clothing, if he does not lend money on interest or take increase, if he keeps his hand from iniquity and executes true justice between man and man, if he walks in my statutes and my ordinances so as to deal faithfully, he is righteous and will surely live, declares the Lord.

Paul confirms this. If you keep the whole law, you get to live. If you fail in any of it, you die. And the law, as ever, is the schoolmaster which takes us straight to Christ. The righteousness we need is in Christ.

And when he closes with his righteousness and changes us, then we start living for him. And the life we need to surely live is in Christ. The abundant life of true living is found in following Christ and following him into every new act of obedience in which we live out the act of righteousness that Christ gives to us and works in us by loving others rightly.

Now let's think of Tabitha, and you might know her name by Dorcas. What was she known for? Making clothes. She was a faithful disciple of Jesus, and she had made all manner of garments for the people in the church, and perhaps people who were outside the church who were now in the church, because as they gathered around where she had died and Paul was there, they were saying, look at this, and she made this, and she made that.

Remember how important clothing is in the ancient Near East. What a symbol of wealth it is, and look what she did in her sacrificial giving to these folks. The text says that she abounded with deeds of kindness and charity.

She abounded as she followed Christ. So there's more that could be said, but again, the main theme for these last two lessons is this. We've got to think of clothing as provision, that God provides the clothing.

Ultimately, we see this from Genesis 321. This leads us to think of Christ, that God provides us the clothing of the righteousness of Christ, that we will be covered and welcome and acceptable in his presence.

How often in Leviticus, your favorite book of the Bible, how often is it described there that the priests cannot come to the presence of God unless they are dressed in this way, this way, this way, this way, and this way.

All of that is provided in Christ, come to the presence of God. That is an act of compassion, grace, mercy, and love. God will provide his Son and provide his clothing in that way. And so since we follow Christ and since we are being renewed in the image of God by the work of Christ, we too ought to be compassionate and think about this issue and think about how we can also, in modeling Christ, give clothing to others.