Sunday School “Clothing” June 3, 2018 Part 1

And I pray that you would help us to be all the more aware of opportunities we have in our everyday lives to give you worship and to spread the good news of Jesus Christ.

We pray these things in his name. Amen. Okay, so to start off, last year

I taught a class called the Biblical Theology of Food And that was an outworking of some themes that I was putting my eyes on, considering the gospel significance of feasting, which had come earlier in a sermon that I had preached.

And then I was supposed to preach a Bible conference on the atonement, and I can't really think about sacrifice without thinking about food.

So everything in the sacrificial system is based on the significance of food in the biblical story.

So that was very helpful. Everything in Sunday school I was doing to prepare to think about the atonement.

And so we used the term last year, satisfied, as the key term. Are we satisfied in Christ?

God certainly is. And he is our food, bread from heaven, sacrificial lamb,

Passover. So this study has been very helpful to me. It always helps the teacher probably far more than the students, and that's been a thought in my head constantly.

And it's actually helped me evangelize to very quickly get to the point about the gospel.

There was one instance where I met a couple of complete strangers, and the deacons have arranged some basic benevolence to help.

And so I just handed along what the deacons had prepared, and one of the people said something about doing good or whatever.

And I just let them know, look, God's not impressed with any of this. He's not impressed with any of this.

And no matter what you promise that you'll do better, God's not impressed with that. There's only one person with whom God is completely satisfied, and that is

Jesus Christ. And the question is whether or not we are. Do we have faith in Christ? So for me, it was one of those moments where to have that imagery in head, and I even talk about food, but to have that imagery in my head was helpful in the evangelistic moment, especially when you don't have a lot of time, especially when you don't have a lot of time.

And that's the case sometimes. We don't have a lot of time, and perhaps sometimes we feel a little hampered from starting the conversation if we feel like we're not going to be able to finish it.

But it was helpful, and so that's what I want to make sure that we're thinking about as we move to the next study, a biblical theology of clothes.

Our main term, our important, flexible, helpful term is going to be this, covered.

Okay? Covered is going to be the term we're going to be working with. And I do want to thank

Ms. Starley for the idea and the encouragement to do this study, the biblical theology of clothes.

I think her instincts, her biblical instincts are very accurate. How many times do we find in the Bible food and clothing in the same thought, in the same sentence, in the same issue?

Food and clothing go together, don't they? Because of our mortality, because of the curse, because we live in a world of lack, of scarcity, food and clothing very often come together.

Food and clothing are where a lot of people are. It's hard to remember that because we live in the most affluent nation on the planet, perhaps in the history of the world per capita in the amount of people that we have here.

Does Pearson know we're having Sunday School here? Yes, Pearson. Welcome. I need this chair.

I thought you were coming to class, but you're stealing a chair, so. I'm taking this chair to another class. All right.

We're good. Thank you. Man. All right. But food and clothing are where a lot of people are, and thankfully, we are reminded about that often in the scriptures.

Maybe that's not necessarily the primary thoughts on our mind in the way that we live from day to day.

It certainly is something that we do think about, sometimes not even very carefully, but sometimes yes.

What kind of food are we eating? How to prepare food? This is something that, you know, very much day to day.

But we're not worried about food, are we? We're not like, where's my next meal coming from? We're not thinking about it in those terms, but we are thinking about it.

We are thinking about clothes, putting on clothes, keeping them clean, so on and so forth.

That's basic. But we're probably not worried about whether or not we're going to be warm enough or how to, you know, that kind of thing.

Or are we going to be able to function well? So that's not something that we're anxious about perhaps, but a lot of the world is.

And so it's helpful to remember those both together.

I think what's going to be most practical for us when we think about this biblical theology of clothes is like just with food, this is a daily thing.

This is a daily thing. That when we consider clothing, you'll see on your handout, it's a story of provision and thus a story also of compassion.

So the main theme is provision. We're going to talk about that this week and then next week follow up with the sub -theme of compassion.

It's also a story of identity. You can tell who people are by the way they dress, sometimes by uniform, sometimes by style, sometimes by class.

But it's also a story of deception. Clothing is also a story of deception, we find in the scriptures.

Clothing is also a story of mediation, and we'll get more into that.

But when we think about the mediators in the Bible, whether they were kings, priests, prophets, or wise men, they all were very distinctive in their clothing.

And we can't think about the mediators of the scripture without thinking about the one mediator, Christ Jesus and his story and what clothing had to do with his story, ultimately the whole story.

And finally we're going to talk about clothing as a story of occasion, dress for the occasion.

That's something that's very distinctive to us. And we're going to talk about that theme in the scriptures.

But ultimately then the sub -theme is about decision. Clothing is a story of decision.

You have to decide what to put on. So we're going to be looking at that. That's kind of a rundown of the whole overall study.

Now when we talk about biblical theology, all theology should be biblical.

What that means is that we're trying to trace the themes as they go from Genesis on to Revelation.

We're tracing the themes and the arc of how they develop and the ideas and how they form up.

This is different than systematic theology. Biblical theology you may envision a cylinder, and biblical theology is the spiral happening as we look at the themes in the scriptures as they develop.

Systematic theology doesn't look at it so much along the lines of how it all comes to be, but then looks at it from top down and sees it as a finished product.

So I say that just to point out that what we're going to be doing in talking about the biblical theology of clothes is we're not looking at necessarily a finished, complete, definitive statement, but we do have a definitive trajectory, and the story is time and again the trajectory is aimed right at Jesus Christ and his person and his work.

And so in this sense, clothes is not the primary aim.

It's not the primary thought. It's a thought that leads us to Christ. It's a matter in our everyday lives that if we understand it biblically, then we'll have more reasons than ever to thank

God, to worship Christ, to evangelize the lost. So that's the aim.

In the process of my studies, I ran across a paragraph from the dictionary of biblical imagery, and it was about garments.

I was reading what they had to say. And it says, The imagery of garments and clothing is of major importance in the

Bible. Its significance can be physical, economic, social, moral, or spiritual.

Literal and figurative meanings of clothing are intertwined in virtually every category of usages.

And this is the line that caught my attention. It says, It is no exaggeration to say that one can trace the entire outline of biblical theology and salvation history through the motif of clothing.

And one of the biggest stories in the Bible that we're going to reference time and again about clothing. Let's see if we can pull out of thin air here.

What is the one story in the Bible that you can think of? And this is not a remote story at all.

What is the one story in the Bible when you think about clothing that is, you think, most significant about clothes?

Joseph? Joseph, right, yeah. It's amazing. At every single point where that story shifts and moves, clothing is in view.

And the complete rundown of the special gift, the favored son, that robe that was used to deceive the father, the tearing of the clothes by both

Reuben and Jacob, Joseph leaving his robe with Potiphar's wife in his escape, his need to change his clothes to something presentable when he went before Pharaoh to interpret the dream, the adornments that he had once he was to the right hand of Pharaoh, and then all the clothes that he gave his brothers as a sign of providing for them.

It's just over and over and over, every single stage in that story. So it'll be something we'll look to again and again.

But as we talk about clothing, the first lesson here is going to be one that is very broad.

It covers a lot of ground. And in some ways, when we think about food as provision, that was a theme that lasted the whole way through, and so also clothing as provision.

So we're going to go to Genesis, Genesis chapter one and two will start us off. What is interesting to me, as I've been thinking about these themes of food and clothing and then also shelter, because that's part of the three universal needs of humanity, how the gospel is central to each one of these.

The theme of clothing seems to be the one that is most remote from the original design of creation.

After all, God made Adam and Eve, made them perfect. He made them in his image and there was no sin.

And there was nothing wrong with the world. There was no lack, no scarcity, no need.

God provided everything. There was food for them to eat, but he did not in the original creation create clothes for them to wear.

And the Garden of Eden can be seen as a type of shelter.

It can be seen in distinction from the rest of the world that had yet to be cultivated by humanity and turned into the glory of God.

And so you can see shelter in the Garden of Eden, most definitely see the theme of food in abundance for Adam and Eve.

But this idea of clothing, it wasn't there. God did not make clothing for Adam and Eve.

They were without clothing and he said it was very good because of their condition. And something that we need to keep in mind is that Adam and Eve were made in the image of God.

Primarily, this means that we need to think in terms of three relationships.

Humanity is the only creature that God made in his own image. And what's unique about us, there are several things unique about us, but the main thing we should think about in uniqueness is relationships.

We are a unique intersection of relationships that no other creature has, not the angels, not the beasts, no one except humanity, that we are to love

God supremely so that we love him. He blesses us and we love him and that we are to love others rightly.

The animals are not called to love each other rightly. The angels probably are meant to relate to each other rightly.

You would imagine that. I think you could extrapolate that. The angels are to love God supremely, but the angels are not in charge of the earth.

It was not given to them to be stewards of creation. It was given to us.

We are this unique intersection of relationships that we are to love God supremely, love others rightly, steward the creation responsibly, that this trifold relationship is a model for us to think about when we think about clothes.

Adam and Eve were living in the image of God without fault and without blame.

Everything was right. Everything was good. There was nothing wrong with the relationship with God or with each other or the world around them at all.

And God in creation also. We're going to talk about the fourfold role of how they were to, as they love

God, as the whole idea of this threefold relationship is that the goodness of God would be mediated through us so that the glory of God would be manifested in us, and this is how we image him forth.

And we'll talk more about how we do that, but also the basic requirements then for us to be in the image of God are these, that we are body and soul.

This is not to be understood as one primary to the other, although the soul we can understand as more important than the exterior, but we are not meant to be divided.

We might be two parts, but we're not supposed to be apart. It is not natural for the soul to be outside the body.

That's death. That's not part of God's original design. So we are a body -soul whole, and a lot of people talk about possessing a soul.

C .S. Lewis threw the pendulum the other way and said, no, you are a soul. You possess a body. Which part of you goes to heaven?

But we need to remember that this is supposed to be one whole. We're supposed to be body and soul, and this is essential for this kind of relationship.

How else are we going to steward creation and love God supremely unless we're body -soul?

It's the way it has to be. And then also we are rational and moral.

And this could be summed up as lingual. Animals may communicate, but there's nonverbal communication, and you can grunt and get your point across.

Lingual means that we are full of language. We're creating God's image. God spoke us into existence, and therefore we are lingual, which means we both reason in our minds in terms of just rational and putting things together, but also we're moral.

We know right from wrong. And again, how closely associated is morality to language?

That's the fight we're in right now, right? All the terms get changed so we can change morality. Morality and rationality are based upon language.

When the languages get confused at Tower of Babel, they can't get along. We have no basis to communicate, no basis to operate.

We can't get along with one another, and the whole thing falls apart. But we're lingual, so we're rational and we're moral so that we are thinking through in terms of wisdom.

We're thinking through in terms of righteousness these relationships. And also we are male and female.

God made us in his image both male and female. And from the very beginning, he put male and female,

Adam and Eve, into the marriage relationship in which they would love each other rightly as they loved him supremely and took care of the created order together, helping one another.

So everything I've said right now about the image of God is highly controversial and probably hate speech for a whole lot of people, but that's the way the

Bible presents what humanity really is. Why is that important to the story of clothes?

Well, it tells us a little bit about if everything's going right, if everything's going right in the image of God and there's no sin in the world, no curse, no shame, then clothes are not essential.

So we have this in verse 25 of Genesis 2.

We hear all about how mankind is to live in Genesis 1, 26 through chapter 2, verse 25.

And God blesses us. We are to love him more than anything. We are to treat one another rightly, take care of the world around us.

It was not good for the man to be alone, so God gives him Eve, gives Adam and Eve, the man a woman, husband and wife, and the man and his wife are both naked and were not ashamed.

And so when everything's going right, there's no sin and no guilt, no clothing is no problem.

And this connection between nakedness and shame after sin and the need for clothing, it all erupts there in chapter 3 because of the fall.

I think it's important to point out that this issue about clothing is also unique to humanity.

It's far different than with the animals, right? There's no concern about that at all.

But with humans, it's different. Why? Because we're made in God's image, we're made in this design, and should this design be corrupted and perverted, then there's this sense of needing to cover up and to hide and conceal.

And that is the very, very strong instinct that we find with Adam and Eve in chapter 3 of Genesis. And so Satan convinces

Adam and Eve that God is not really good and that they need to make their own way in the world.

Autonomy, self -made people. It's remarkable to me that the story here, the temptation, what happened in Genesis 3, 1 through 6,

I cannot find a sinful trajectory, any issue or concern, any temptation, any lie that does not easily arc back to this story.

Like everything, everything, all the sinful problems, all the hot -button issues of today and 100 years ago and 1 ,000 years ago, it could all be traced right back here.

It's a remarkable fountainhead for understanding what sin is and how Satan operates.

Well, when Adam and Eve sinned, verse 7, then the eyes of both of them were opened, which is an ironic way of talking about the spiritual eyes, the inner perception now changes, and they knew that they were naked.

And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. The first attempt at making clothes was a miserable failure by Adam and Eve in response to sin.

So even as they recognized that now no clothing is a big problem, this side of sin because of what just happened, their first attempt at making clothing was a horrible failure.

Their whole goal is, of course, to not feel so ashamed in each other's presence.

They also hid among the trees to hide from the approaching creator.

They're trying to hide under leaves and also under the trees. They're hiding.

This is the basic instinct when authority approaches, when there's something objective that confronts our sin.

And so listen to the neediness of Adam and Eve here, verse 8.

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. So this is the pre -incarnate

Jesus Christ. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

The Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you? He said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself.

And he said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which

I commanded you not to eat? So all of a sudden, this is a new consideration for Adam.

Never talked about it before, never an issue. He has to hide from God because he knows he's naked.

You can tell there's a certain stage at which little kids start worrying about that.

Before then, they don't care. But at a certain point, all of a sudden, it becomes an issue. There's an awareness more or less of sin and guilt.

There's a sense of needing to hide. Well, we have it here with Adam and Eve.

God says, Who told you that you were naked? Now, he's saying that because he feels shame and guilt.

This connection between nakedness and shame and guilt pops up again and again in Scripture.

What's the next story in Genesis that deals with the shame of nakedness?

Noah. That's right, because Noah planted a vineyard, got drunk, uncovered himself in his tent.

Ham sees it and mocks his father, and thus he is cursed, while Shem and Japheth walk backwards with a cloak on their shoulders and cover their father's nakedness.

This issue about shame and physical nakedness. We see this literal expression and this connection between nakedness and the curse again in Genesis 9, as we have it here in Genesis 3.

But also, we see the deeper significance of it as we read in the prophets.

I'm not going to read Ezekiel 16. It's rated R, but I'll read out of Hosea 2.

So let's go to Hosea 2 and look at verse 3.

When God wants to get the attention of his people about their idolatry, about their lack of fidelity in worship,

Hosea 2 is one example as he deals with his wayward, spiritually adulterous people.

So he's talking about Israel, but in such a way that as a nation, he's trying to deal with Israel as a nation, envisioned as one betrothed to him, and she has been unfaithful.

She worships idols, so she's an adulteress. He speaks to the individuals of the nation as her children, trying to stir up the individuals of the nation as the children of the mother to turn the whole nation back, the mother herself, back to God.

So that's what's going on in Hosea 2.

Verse 2 says, So what he's saying is that this is about,

I'm going to expose the true, sinful guilt of the nation. But the expression of nakedness is the one that is chosen here, and we know why from back from Genesis 3.

And this registers, right? We need clothing not only to keep us warm, not only to protect us from the external elements, but also to cover our shame and our guilt because we're sinful.

Verses 9 and 10, See, God has been providing, hasn't he?

He's been providing for Israel, giving her things to eat, also giving her enough to clothe herself, he says.

And then I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one will rescue her out of my hand. So he's going to expose her sinfulness and her perversity to make her disgusting in the sight of all because he will not lose her.

He's going to do everything he can to hold on to her. But again, the language there is the connection between nakedness and shame and guilt.

And what this is setting up for us is why do we need clothes? It's not part of the original creation, but why do we need clothes?

It's because of sin. It is because of the curse, because of our shame, and therefore

God provides for our need. You know, the curse brings about scarcity.

Genesis 28, 20 is where Jacob is bartering with God. Okay, God, if you give me enough food and clothes and bring me back to my father's house, you'll be my

God. Okay, well, hey, that's where Jacob was. Jacob just, he's in exile, he's on the run.

His brother was trying to kill him. He's got nothing. So he needs food and clothing.

That's what's primarily on his mind. And he looks to God to provide those for him because it's not easy to get food and clothing, is it?

Out there in the cursed world. Proverbs 31, 21, the wise woman fears not the cold because she has provided clothing for all of her children, for her whole family.

She has foreseen the problem, the threat of scarcity, the threat of the cold, but she's not worried because she's provided, right?

This is just where we are, right? It's where humans live because of our neediness, because of mortality, because of the curse, this is where we are.

We'll talk more about Job 24, which is a very sad -looking passage. Next week we talk about compassion.

But God provides. Now, before we go to Genesis 3, 21, let's think a little bit about God as a provider.

How good of a provider is God? God doesn't have a body like man.

How does he know what we need? He created us, he made us. And it's in the context, surprisingly, in Psalm 104, in the context of this creation psalm, that we see how good of a provider

God is as our creator. In Psalm 104, at the very beginning, what do we discover about God's wardrobe?

He is clothed with honor and majesty. What else?

Covering yourself with light as a cloak. God has no need for clothing.

He's perfect, he's holy, he's righteous. He's a spirit, he doesn't have a body like man. But from all of eternity, he has been clothed with splendor and majesty.

Before he made light, he was covered in light as a cloak.

Which begins to tell us a little bit about Adam and Eve, when God made them in his image.

Although they were both naked and not ashamed, they were clothed in an important way. They were clothed in righteousness.

They were clothed in righteousness. Created in God's image, here is

Adam and Eve, king and queen on earth, vice regents, put in charge of, and they, in a lesser way, but in the image of God, they were clothed with splendor and majesty.

They had their own splendor and majesty. They were the rulers on the earth. And the only adornment upon their skin was light.

The light that God had made. And they were truly living in the image of God. Now they lose this spiritual clothing, they lose this covering.

They lose their covering in their sin. That's why they're so desperately scrambling about trying to cover themselves again.

Because they just got uncovered. God is compassionate,

Genesis 3. Now God has confronted the man and his wife and the serpent.

He has cursed the serpent, giving hope to the humans that victory will come through the seed of the woman.

He has told Adam and Eve how hard it's going to be to produce food and have children, raise them.

But he also lets them know life is not over. Life is going to continue.

And so Adam, in hope on this very terrible day, he calls his wife's name

Eve because she was the mother of all the living. A hopeful note. He named his wife a hopeful name.

And right after that hopeful note comes another hope -filled note. The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

Which has been noted very often as the inception of the sacrificial system.

And in sacrifice, not only do we have this new focus for food, but we have this focus on clothing.

That these animals died for the sake of Adam and Eve being covered so that their shame and their guilt was no longer visibly apparent to them both.

But also, the sign, of course, pointed forward to the seed who would come as a sacrifice and deliver and to cover us.

So in Genesis 3 .21, when the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them, we see that he is providing for them.

Yes, this is about basic provision. Yes, keeping you warm, keeping you safe from the elements around you.

Clothing for most of the human history has been about keeping warm and keeping yourself from getting tore up by the elements around you.

That's what it's been about. Covering your skin from the sun so you don't fry alive. It's always been about protection.

It's been about function. And also, over time, when times are really good, then it becomes about splendor.

It becomes about style and everything else. We'll get to that. Basic provision.

God gives his reign on the just and the unjust. Jesus says in Matthew 5 .45,

and therefore we ought not be worried because God is a good provider. Matthew 6 .25 -34.

Why are you worried about what you're going to put on? Why are you worried about whether you're going to have enough clothing? Consider the lilies of the field.

Even Solomon in all his glory was not so finely arrayed as these, and yet they are here today, gone tomorrow.

If God cares about lilies, he cares about you. He'll take care of you. Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and then all these things will be added.

So these are the sentiments that Jesus was giving to his audience. But his audience was not the 5 % ultra -rich.

They didn't really like him all that much. The Pharisees had a lot of money. They didn't really like him. There was the 15 % artisans who were like the fishermen and the stonemasons and all those who had their own business.

They were fortunate, a very, very small kind of middle class. There were the 10 % homeless.

Of course, the lepers, the blind, the lame, the people who were just beggars. All right? In the Bible, they're just called beggars.

And then there's the 70 % hand -to -mouth subsistence living people that were just trying to make sure they had enough food for tomorrow.

That's the people that Jesus talked to. Those are the people who were always around him for the most part. And he's telling them, don't be consumed by these things.

Trust in God as your heavenly father, as a good provider. God provides.

In the story of the Exodus, what was said about the garments and the sandals of the

Israelites didn't wear out. God, again, providing bread from heaven and clothes that don't deteriorate.

I need some of those for my kids. I'll take the bread from heaven too. It'll be cheaper. But you see

God again and again as a good heavenly father seeking for the needs of his people, and he's providing, and he's providing, and he's providing.

This is why when we think about the significance of the cloak in Old Testament law, a poor man, the last thing he has is the cloak, the outer covering that would keep him warm, that he would sleep on, this thing that was basically his most essential square one protection, his cloak.

And it had some worth. It had some value. Clothes were a measure of wealth in the ancient

Near East. If you had to do business with this guy and he was gonna borrow an axe because he didn't have one, then you would take his cloak and hold it and say, when you finish with my axe and bring it back, you can have your cloak back so you don't steal.

It was just a common way of doing business. But the boss said, you're not allowed to keep his cloak overnight.

You give it back to him. He also said you don't go into his house and take his stuff out of his house to satisfy the debt.

The poor man, you don't take his cloak because it's basic provision, basic provision.

There's also the idea of, and this gets extended in terms of marriage.

Okay, this is a little bit harder trivia question, but Naomi came up with this brilliant scheme to engineer what

God was doing already and to send Ruth down to the threshing floor at night to surprise

Boaz. Boaz is already a man of God.

He's already expressed his intention to be kind and caring for Naomi and Ruth.

But there Ruth goes, following her mother -in -law's advice. She lays down at the feet of Boaz, who's had a hard day's work and he's feeling very, very good.

Someone's laughing. And then she uncovers his feet, right? Oh, I can't sleep like that.

Uncovers his feet and lays there until he wakes up because he's uncomfortable. He's like, what are you doing here?

And she says, spread your cloak over me. Fulfill your duty in the

Levite law of claiming me as your own. She basically proposed to him, will you marry me?

But she said, and in such a way, she said, spread your cloak over me because that's a symbol of protection.

Symbol of protection. We have that more than once in the Bible of God, spreading his cloak over his people.

That's a look of betrothal. It's a look of protection, of accepting.

And if you're two people in one garment, the garment covers them both. This is a picture of marriage.

It's a picture of marriage. One cloak, two people. So it's protection.

And of course, that's gonna be feeding into our look at identity and so on. But it's worth noting that because when you talk about spiritual clothing, if we recognize the fact that Adam and Eve in the garden, when they were naked and unshamed, were still covered, if they were still covered, still spiritually clothed, then the whole story of clothing is altered and we're gonna be paying attention, not necessarily to just the externals about clothing, but also the theological significance, the spiritual significance of clothes, which is all throughout scripture.

Again, I'm not gonna read Ezekiel 16 because it's rated R. But when God loved

Israel, she was a baby thrown out into the field.

That's how they used to do abortions. For thousands of years, the boys lived and the girls died in general.

And they would just throw the babies out in the field to die. Well, this is what happened to Israel.

That's the picture in Ezekiel 16. There's Israel laying in her blood. She's not been cleaned up. She's just a baby crying for help.

And God has compassion. Nobody else did, but God has compassion. And he takes her and cleans her up.

She gets older. He dresses her. He clothes her. He shows her that he loves her. And then she goes off and plays the harlot.

But the significance is that when God loves you, he clothes you. So that's a very strong image in the

Old Testament. Now, with that in mind, and the spiritual significance of clothing, we have these other ideas in the

New Testament about spiritual clothing. One, in Luke 24, 49, when

Jesus promised the Holy Spirit, of course, he was telling his disciples to wait in Jerusalem until the proper time, but he said, wait until you are endowed, endowed from on high with the

Holy Spirit. And the idea is that they will be completely covered and encapsulated in the

Holy Spirit, spiritual power, spiritual life. And that's a theme that you find in the special folks in the

Old Testament, prophets and judges and kings upon whom the

Holy Spirit would come for very special, powerful actions. They would be temporarily anointed by the

Holy Spirit for great action. Now, in the New Covenant, Jesus is saying, everybody, everybody's gonna be specially anointed by the

Holy Spirit, covered by the Holy Spirit. Saul, at the outset when he was supposed to become king, before he became king, was endowed by the

Holy Spirit and he was among the prophets and he was prophesying. And everybody could tell he's among the prophets because the

Holy Spirit's covering him. And then near the time, near the end, when he was failing, it happened again.

But this time, he went a little nuts and he disrobed and he was naked and covered by the

Holy Spirit and was prophesying, God's point is this, you're only king if I say you are.

You're only in power if I give you that power and it's not what you're wearing that makes the difference.

So it's about the spiritual significance of it. We're also told in Ephesians 6 about spiritual armor. We don't have that in and of ourselves.

This is part of how we live the Christian life, right? When we put on this spiritual armor, this is spiritual clothing, isn't it?

And we'll get into this more when we talk about identity, but you know a soldier when you see one, right? What's he wearing?

You can tell, even today, in the medieval times, and even in the ancient

Near East, you could tell a soldier by the way he dressed. But this spiritual armor is a gift from God.

There's the bridal dress in Revelation 19, 8, what the church wears, the white linen, the righteous acts of the saints that were accomplished in our new life in Christ.

Paul's own language is when he talks about putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, what

I want to end with is, and you can look this up yourself, but the passages in Revelation are significant, but I want to go to Matthew 22,

Matthew 22, verses eight through 14, and we'll attempt to use this as a bit of a first and last passage, because we're definitely coming back here,

Lord willing, in eight weeks. But throughout

Revelation, those who are overcomers in Christ, those who are true believers, are identified by their clothing.

Throughout Revelation, and it is a white robe. The martyrs are given a white robe.

The followers of Christ are given a white robe. It's just made very clear, those who are around the throne, worshiping

God and the Lamb, are wearing white robes. And this white robe, this picture of the proper attire, comes from Matthew 22, verses eight through 14.

You've probably heard the story before. It's the parable of the marriage feast.

And the king is throwing a feast, and of course Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is like, and so he says, the king is throwing a feast, and a wedding feast for his son.

He's getting married, and those who were invited are not worthy, because they were too busy to come.

They're too caught up with whatever else, and they're not coming. The king is enraged, and he sends his armies, and destroys those murderers, and set their city on fire.

Verse eight, then he said to his slaves, the wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main highways, and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.

Well, these are not going to be worthy either. Not really. I mean, if the nobles of the land are not worthy, certainly the commoners are not going to be worthy.

So what are they going to do? Well, they were given clothes to wear. Verse 11, but when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, and he said to him, friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?

And the man was speechless, and this, like it's also in Luke, but the idea is that these clothes are being provided for them.

He did not put it on. He said, I don't need to wear that. You invited me,

I'm here. Why should I put these clothes on? But the man was speechless, and the king said to the servants, bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness.

In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, for many are cold, but few are chosen. The white robe is something that is provided in Revelation.

It's given to the saints in the parable here in Luke. It's given to those who arrive.

It's the, what is this? It is God's provision for those who are uncovered.

It's God's provision for those who are uncovered. Adam and Eve were covered in the garden.

Splendor and majesty, righteousness, the light of God. They were covered, but in their betrayal of God, in their abandonment of the way they were supposed to live in the image of God, they became uncovered.

And no matter how many fig leaves they sewed together, no matter how often throughout the scriptures people would cover themselves over in that which appeared good.

Outwardly you are whitewashed tombs, but inside you are covered in dead men's bones. The issue is that we need to be covered.

Covered inside and out. With that kind of clothing, and that's the white robe, that's the righteousness of Christ, that is a kind of spiritual clothing that we cannot provide for ourselves, but God does because he knows our need.

Okay, so that's our opening study. Next week we're going to talk about how the story of clothing, what we see as provision, naturally flows into thoughts about compassion.

Okay? All right. Let me close with a word of prayer. Father, I thank you for the time you have given us.

I pray that you would help us to think carefully about these themes, that you would drive your word deep into our hearts.

And Lord, we thank you that we have a covering in Christ that cannot be stained, cannot be taken away. We pray these things for his sake, whom you are well pleased.