Sunday School "Clothing" July 22, 2018 Part 8

Clothing as a Story of Provision, Identity, Mediation, and Occasion

And the time you offer us this morning, and I pray that you would help us to make the most of it as we study your word and we think about the message of salvation that you reveal to us through your son Jesus Christ.

We thank you that you speak to us in ways that we can understand, that you reveal your good news to us with themes that are very close to home and very basic to who we are. Lord, I pray that you would, in your scriptures, as you challenge us and as you call us to faith and repentance in Christ, that you would glorify yourself in our lives.

We pray these things for Christ's sake. Amen. All right, so in our last lesson, we are going to be talking about clothing again as a story of occasion and thus decision. So far, we've talked about the different ways in which the Bible features clothing at the heart of the gospel story.

And we began with what is really the overarching theme of everything we've talked about so far, and that's provision. That clothing is a story of provision and thus compassion. That really is the controlling theme.

Everything else has been some kind of further explanation of that. As we see Adam and Eve in their sin, in their shame, in their guilt, in need of clothing, and God provided that clothing in the initiation and the inauguration of the sacrificial system, covering their shame in a merciful and compassionate way.

And really everything else after that is some sort of extrapolation of God's provision and compassion. And so we also talked about identity. Clothing is a story of identity that you can tell who people are very often by the way that they're dressed, uniforms, class, religion, gender, so on.

And we see that the provision there ultimately is that we are provided a covering in the identity of Jesus Christ, that he is the favored son, he is the accepted one. And when we are covered with his identity, we know the same favor and acceptance with God that Christ does.

And although this is a very encouraging thing, also we see that because clothing is used to identify us, it can also be used to deceive others. We can be deceived as well. People will use clothing for disguise and for deceit.

And so we must be cautious in that. Now clothing is also a story of mediation and thus incarnation. Now mediation, when we talked about that, we thought about the different mediators in the Old Testament, each one a particular emphasis on the image of God, a king who mediates God's authority, a priest who mediates God's holiness, a prophet who mediates God's truth, and a wise man or woman who mediates God's wisdom.

And we see examples of all those in the Old Testament. These are the ones who were anointed very clearly. Sometimes it was, you know, the physical action of the anointing with oil. But in all the cases, we see the Holy Spirit involved and he is anointing them with special power, special giftings to be a blessing to the people of God.

And we see that all these roles are fulfilled in Christ, whose title literally means the anointed one, the Messiah. And thus we pay attention to his incarnation and who he is as our king, king of kings, who he is as our great high priest, who he is as the great prophet, who he is as our wonderful counselor.

And we see the story of salvation in his particular role as Christ, as he takes on all the roles of the mediators. And we just look at the story of his life, and we can tell the whole gospel story just by paying attention to his clothes, from his swaddling clothes that he was wrapped up in, in love by his mother, all the way to the grave clothes that he was wrapped in when he was buried in the tomb that he left behind in his resurrection, and the victorious robes that he wears now and in his return.

And just following through what kind of clothing that Jesus Christ wears, we have the whole gospel story. I mean, you can use the whole, just follow that story by what he's wearing, and you can tell the gospel story to anybody.

And finally, we've been talking about stories, clothing is a story of occasion and thus decision, that there are special occasions. There are some clothes that we wear not simply for protection, not simply to identify ourselves, but there are clothes that we wear for special occasions.

This is something that we see throughout the scriptures, and we know instinctively in our own lives. So, and we talked about two of those occasions, primarily being weddings and funerals, incredibly significant times in human life.

And we see that in the scriptures as well, special clothes. And these, of course, point us to the gospel story. And when we're talking about special clothing for special occasions, we are reminded about the very simple daily habit of deciding what we put on, deciding the clothes we put on.

I know some of you know about my grandmother, that she had had a stroke. Thank you for praying for her. She is recovering pretty well, but she's no longer able to live in her duplex over by Lake Overholser.

And so, my aunt and my uncle were able to move her into a retirement home, kind of a place where she gets all the care that she needs. And she's having to adjust to the schedule there. She does not like being on somebody else's schedule.

And she's going to have to learn the nurses a thing or two, because she set out the clothes she wanted to wear. Well, the nurses came in the morning, and in the process of waking her up and getting her about, they saw clothes out.

Oh, we need to put those away. And then they set out her different. She says, no, I put out what I want to wear, and that's what I'm going to wear. So, she stuck to her guns and, you know, tell them. She decided what she wanted to wear that day, because she hates being cold.

And I told her, Grandma, it's 110 degrees outside. Why are you cold? Excellent air conditioning in the facility. So, I just reminded me that it's important, you know, it's very personal, that we actually care what we wear.

This is what I want to wear. And we don't really care for others telling us to wear something else. Well, this is part of thinking about clothing, what we wear, that there is decision involved in what we wear.

And this is the case for when we look at the way that clothing is a metaphor for salvation, for the salvation experience, for who we are as Christians. We think about things as basic to the Christian faith as, well, faith and repentance, that these are described in terms of clothing.

And there's an intentionality about us believing in Christ and repenting from our sins. And this is likened to clothes, the clothes that we put on, the clothes that we are deciding to wear. And then we'll look at some examples of holiness, godliness, specifically in terms of compassion and humility.

And then I want to conclude, as we're talking about clothing as a story of decision, we must make the full circle back to Genesis 3 and remember that though Adam and Eve had already decided what they were going to wear, which was what?

Fig leaves. God, in his mercy, in his love, in his compassion, he decided what Adam and Eve were going to wear. You remember that? So that we're going to make full circle, come back to that after we discuss these first themes.

As we do, I thought it would be helpful to more further apply the issue of deception. Deception is not only a matter of a snake or a wolf deceiving us, deceiving the sheep, but also sometimes we deceive ourselves.

So we must be careful with thinking about things that are external or manufactured, which is we're dealing with, we talk about clothes. So let's begin with the theme of faith. We've talked about this passage before, but we think about the most basic gospel message.

Jesus Christ in Mark 1 verse 15, he comes preaching the gospel. He comes preaching the kingdom. It says in verse 14, and this is the way he preached. He said, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Repent and believe in the gospel. Now, repentance and belief are two sides of the same coin, because it is all about a turning away from self, a turning away from sin, a turning away from anything else that you might trust in, and a turning to Christ, his person and work, the gospel, to believe only in him.

This is two sides of the same coin, repentance and faith. They each have their own emphasis. But in Galatians 3 verses 24 through 29, we have the language of faith, belief combined with the metaphor of clothing and what we put on.

So in verse 24 of Galatians 3, Paul writes, therefore, the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor, for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

Our relationship to God has everything to do with our union in Christ by faith. Verse 27 explains, for all of you who were baptized or immersed into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. Paul is talking about the joining together by faith, and he's using the metaphor of baptism, but he also uses the metaphor of clothing.

Do you see that? To be immersed in Christ is to be clothed in Christ. And it says, you have clothed yourselves with Christ. This is what it means to believe in him. We talked about the clothing is a story of identity.

You are taking on the identity of Jesus Christ. He is whom I am known by. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me, and taking on this identity of the Son of God. We are sons of God because we identify with the Son of God.

And that's why all other aspects of identity become absolutely secondary, if not just plain ancillary. Verse 28, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

This is why it is a breach to the gospel to give ourselves identifying prefixes before Christian, to call ourselves a white male Christian, to call ourselves, well, I'm a upper class Christian. For someone to say, I am a female minority Christian, and so on.

This is all what Paul so greatly complained about with Peter, and got in Peter's face about, because Peter was eating with his Gentile brothers in Christ, until some from Jerusalem came. And then all of a sudden, Peter's playing the ethnic card or the race card, and now he's not going to eat with the Gentiles because of these other people who are here.

You know, and this may have been considered in our day simply a cultural thing. Paul says it was a gospel issue, and he got in Peter's face over. So we've got to stop putting those prefixes in front of our identity in Christ.

There is no reason to qualify it. We are only qualified by Christ. And the same idea is in Revelation 7, about those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Again, this is intentionality.

This is about faith in Christ. I trust Christ for my salvation. I have made my robes white, how? By the blood of the Lamb, not by anything else. So, faith has the language of intentionality. There is decision involved, and has the metaphor of clothing.

So, what are we going to get dressed up in? Faith and repentance. Jesus says, repent and believe in the gospel. Putting on faith looks like putting on Jesus. I'm covered in Christ. I'm identified in Jesus, who he is, his perfection, his desires, what God thinks of him.

I'm hiding in Christ. That's what that looks like. What about repentance? What does repentance look like in terms of clothing? Well, take a volunteer for someone to read Luke chapter 10 and verse 13. Luke chapter 10 and verse 13.

So, Jesus connects the repentance that Tyre and Sidon would have affected if they had seen his signs and wonders. We see that they would have repented sitting in sackcloth and ashes. Now, we talked about sackcloth last week.

We see sackcloth combined with ashes or dust on the head. Mourning is mostly connected with sackcloth. Mourning, grieving as if there is great loss, death, and so on. You see sackcloth all the way through the scriptures, not just Old Testament, also see this in the New Testament.

And it's combined with great grief and mourning. Now, Jesus connects that mourning and that grief with repentance. We'll try to clarify that even more. In Joel chapter 1 and in verse 8, there is a call from the prophet to the people to repent of their sins, especially as they see the consequences of judgment on the horizon.

And he talks about sackcloth. He says, whale like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the bridegroom of her youth, meaning the kind of repentance and sorrow that you should exhibit, O Israel, is the kind that a bride-to-be would have on her wedding day when her husband-to-be just died.

That is the kind of grief that you should have, and sackcloth is mentioned there. Now, also verses 13 and 14, gird yourselves with sackcloth and lament, O priests, priests who have a very distinctive kind of clothing, right?

But they're going to take that off and put on sackcloth. Whale, O ministers of the altar, come spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, for the grain offering and the drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.

Consecrate a fast, proclaim a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord. It's not just mourning, not just grief at loss, but a crying out to God, and that's the idea of repentance, that we recognize our sin, we are grieving for the disaster that we have brought upon our nation, and we will wear the clothing of mourning and sorrow as we cry out to God that things will be made right.

So, there's this connection of sorrow with repentance, that we see that they are different. And of course, we remember the story of Jonah, don't we? Jonah preaching in Nineveh, preaching a message of y 'all gonna die, didn't say much else, but the king of Nineveh got the idea and ordered that everybody, including himself, would be repenting in sackcloth, and he even said, dress the animals up in sackcloth, he was so thorough.

Yeah, even the animals should wear sackcloth, we're all gonna grieve down to the last donkey, we're all going to repent. And God had mercy on the evil and largely ignorant Assyrians there in Nineveh. Well, let's talk a little bit about authentic versus disguised.

Authentic faith and repentance versus disguised faith and repentance. Do we know of any examples of a kind of disguised faith and repentance over and against authentic faith and repentance? Is that an issue in the Bible?

Is that something the Bible talks about? Fairly often, fairly often. And you can trace it all the way back to Cain and Abel. There's a counterfeit type of worship, there's a counterfeit type of faith and repentance, and there's a genuine repentance and faith.

Yes, right, professors, but they're not truly, not truly born again. And in fact, there are many who followed Jesus throughout his ministry, who were not true believers, who had not truly repented from their false gods or their false gospels.

And so, but faith and repentance can be disguised by words, right? It can be disguised by words. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven. We read about that. Jesus shares that.

Also, repentance can be disguised with mere sorrow, meaning sorrow all by itself, grief all by itself, which in and of itself, of course, does not save anyone and does not regenerate the heart, does not bring about the new birth.

Just because someone becomes sad, just because someone weeps, doesn't mean that they have been born again. Emotionalism is never a replacement for the work of the Holy Spirit. We know that as we look at 2 Corinthians chapter 7.

So in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, we can read in verses 9 through 11, and Paul writes, I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, by a letter he had wrote them, confronting them in their sin, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance.

So it's a sorrow combined with repentance. This is 2 Corinthians chapter 7 verse 9. For you were made sorrowful according to God, according to the will of God. So that you might not suffer loss in anything through us.

For the sorrow that is according to the will of God, or just according to God, produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation. But the sorrow of the world produces death. So you hear that there's a sorrow of the world and there's a sorrow of God.

There's two different types of sorrow. The sorrow of God is a grace. It's a kind of brokenness provided by God to turn someone away from their sins in a repentance that they do not regret. And in fact, in the Greek, it's the same word.

So we can read it this way. In verse 10, for the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without repentance, meaning it is a repentance you do not repent from. There's a whole lot of repentance today that is full of buyer's remorse, because it was a worldly sorrow and it was not a godly sorrow.

So verse 10 concludes that the sorrow of the world produces death. So we have to be clear that there are disguised kinds of faith and repentance. We'll talk about authentic in a moment, but just because someone uses particular words does not mean that they have authentic faith.

Just because somebody has some sorrow and some emotion does not mean that they have truly repented. Again, remember that what is on the exterior, the clothing that is worn can often be to deceive. So let's talk about some examples of putting on the clothing of faith and repentance and what that looks like in everyday life.

We'll begin with the theme of compassion. For this, and I know I don't have these references on the handout, but you know how these things are. Isaiah 58, 5 through 8. That's easy to remember, right? Isaiah 58, 5 through 8.

I was trying to find it earlier and I resorted to my index, which I have a great little concordance back here. But Isaiah 58, verses 5 through 8. And the question in the context is what is real piety?

What is real worship? What is true godliness? And there is the form of it in the life of Israel, but no genuineness to it. And so God is confronting them on this through the prophet Isaiah. And in verse 5, he says, he asks, is it a fast like this which I choose, a day for a man to humble himself?

Is it for bowing one's head like a reed and for spreading out sackcloth and ashes as a bed? Will you call this a fast, even an acceptable day to the Lord? In other words, you can put on sackcloth and appear pitiful and not really be worshiping God, not really be repenting from your sins, but you have the appearance of it.

You have the appearance of it. And God says, no, genuine repentance would look like a real change in somebody's life. And let's look at what that looks like for Israel. Israel who is caught up in idolatry and necessarily then injustice.

Verse 6, is this not the fast that I, which I choose, God says, to loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke and to let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke. They are enslaved to sin.

They are enslaved to wickedness. They are enslaved to idolatry and thus they are enslaved to a way of living that continually oppresses others. And so he says, verse 7, it is, is it not to divide your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into the house when you see the naked to cover him and to not hide yourself from your own flesh?

So you can pretend that you are wholly all you want as you fast in your courtyard and you look like you are penitent before a holy God. But as long as you're not taking that food that you're foregoing and using it for the good of somebody else, if you're not caring about the people around you, how can you say that you love God supremely if you won't love your neighbor rightly?

That's not genuine worship of God. There's to be an impact in all of our life. And so he says, if this is the case, if there's genuine repentance, verse 8, then your light will break out like the dawn and your recovery will speedily spring forth and your righteousness will go before you.

The glory of God will be your rear guard. And this is the general promise of God to Israel. And this is about the way that they were supposed to live within the covenant he made with them. Also, this is not a guaranteed formula for prosperity.

I will prosper and have everything go well with me if I will give to the poor. If I give to the poor, I will always be blessed. This is just a social justice version of the health and wealth gospel. If I do enough social justice activity, then we will always be happy and God will always approve of us higher than anybody else.

Tell that to Job. Tell that to Job. Job had a lot of money, a lot of influence. He didn't let it go to his head. He was always concerned about the poor. Job 29, verses 13 and following, he said, the blessing of the one ready to perish came upon me.

I made the widow's heart sing for joy. I put on righteousness and it clothed me. I wore justice. I wore treating others rightly like a garment. That's what he put on every day. My justice was like a robe and a turban.

I was eyes to the blind, feet to the lame. I was a father to the needy. I investigated the case, which I did not know. I broke the jaws of the wicked and snatched the prey from his teeth. And I thought I shall die in my nest and shall multiply my days as the sand.

You see, Job was a social justice warrior in his day and he can't figure out why things are going bad for him. He thought there was a one-to-one connection. If I do this, then I'll have that. And then all of a sudden God says, I'm God and you are not.

Now we should be compassionate and we should like Job and in following Christ, be eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, father to the needy, and break the jaws of the unjust. Yes, but that's no guarantee that we're going to end up better than everybody else.

That's not the goal, it's not the motivation. So again, we're talking there authentic versus disguised. And you can all, it's very, very, very easy to have a disguised compassion versus authentic compassion.

And authentic compassion is derived from a supreme love for God, a desire to glorify God. It's about the worthiness of God and a genuine love for other people, therefore. Disguised compassion is one of the, I think, most common expressions of American benevolence today.

Americans in general give a lot of money to a lot of causes and different organizations want to make it as easy as possible. So, the earthquake in Haiti, text something to such and such and $10, there you go.

Easy, easy. Leave your change at the fast food restaurant in this glass box. See, easy, easy. Would you like to donate a dollar to such and such as you're checking out? And so there's all this opportunity to show compassion by giving and those kinds of things.

And in general, and I was behind a car the other day and there's Frank on the side of the road and he asking for money and the car in front of me gave him a dollar. Okay, why do people do that? Why do we do that?

If we pay any attention at all to the people who have lived on the street, come out of the street and talk about genuine compassion and help that doesn't hurt, they say, don't hand people cash to fund their addictions.

But why do people keep on doing it to feel better about themselves? Okay, it's penance. It's penance. Now, there may be a genuine need and you may be able to genuinely help, but help is not easy. Compassion is not easy.

It is not quick. There are no shortcuts to really help people to really show compassion requires a level of involvement that few of us are comfortable with. So there's a genuine versus a false and now also humility.

Okay, so first Peter three and first Peter five talk about humility and clothing ourselves and humility. Would someone like to read first Peter five and verse five for us? Thank you. Yes. God is opposed to the proud that gets grace to the humble.

And that's the explanation for why we ought to clothe ourselves with humility toward one another. Now, that's an instruction for everybody. After all, God being opposed to the proud, giving grace to the humble, that applies to everybody, no matter who you are in whatever stage of life you are, but who are the ones who are being instructed here?

Particularly. Apparently, young men have always been the most arrogant kind of people in every generation, even so far back in time of Peter, just the case. They need the instruction most, but then everybody needs the instruction as well.

So it's not just younger men who have a trouble, have problem with arrogance and need humility, but all of us do. And it's, you know, this is the image is clothe yourselves with humility, clothe yourselves with humility.

Now, this is not only an instruction to young men, but also it's an instruction in first Peter three, one through six. It says in the same way, you wives be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be one without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior.

Your adornment, now we're getting into clothes, your adornment must not be merely external. And these are examples of mere externals, not saying that externals are bad, saying that it must not be only found in the external, braiding the hair, wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses.

These are not sinful things. If this is all you ever do, then you got a problem, right? Not merely external, but let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God.

If women are at all concerned about the way that they appear to others, then the primary concern must be the way in which they appear to God. And what is the adornment of the heart? It is a gentle and quiet spirit, precious in the sight of God.

And this, of course, is precious in the sight of God for anyone of his children to have a meek spirit, strength under control, like Moses, who is known for that. Verse 5, we're in this way in former times, the holy women also who hoped in God used to adorn themselves.

Okay, adornment, you would think, is just only an external word. But here, Peter's using it as an internal kind of adornment, being submissive to their own husbands, just as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, and you have become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear.

So there is a kind of putting on of humility and a kind of putting on a submission that we see in the marriage relationship and even in the church. Look at these young men, they have to put on humility and they have to submit to their elders.

And there is to be, that's humility and submission should be an adornment for all the children of God, for we're all being called to submit to somebody at some point, every single one of us. It's not one of us that's going to be completely autonomous, right?

So humility, I think, is an interesting word for clothing because it has to be, you know, humility falls apart if you just have a little, right? If you just have a little humility, it just doesn't work, does it?

And so that the metaphor of clothing makes sense to be fully covered in humility. Now, as far as holiness and godliness, we have seen these passages before in one way or another, but the metaphor of clothing holds true here.

In Romans and Hebrews and Ephesians, Colossians and in Revelation, there is, but especially in the first four, there is this language of a putting off and a putting on, that we're putting off the old garments and putting on the new, okay?

And we don't have time to read all of those today, but we have gone extensively through the passage in Colossians, but we are to put on the clothing of light, put on the clothing of Christ, to put on the way of living, the way of following after Christ, and to put off the old way.

And it's the language of clothing. And that's a decision, right? We're deciding what to put on every day. We're deciding what to put on in our moments. Am I going to put on the way of Christ, or am I going to put on the old way of, you know, look out for number one.

And to wrap it all up, I wanted to focus on the authentic faith and repentance, the authentic godliness, the authentic holiness that are to cover our way of life, that are to be the, is to how people know who we are.

You know, Jesus said, by this all men will know that you are my disciples, by the love that you have for one another. There used to be a very clear way to identify Christians, and it's this authentic life of repentance and faith, a life of authentic godliness, full of compassion and humility.

And this is something that God has decided the dress code, okay? He's determined it based on his own character, revealed in the son Jesus Christ. But he is the one who decides the dress code. He's the one who provides.

He's the one who actually provides the garments. Remember Genesis 3? He's the one who provides the garments. Psalm 132, verse 13, for the Lord has chosen Zion. He has desired it for his habitation. This is my resting place forever.

Here I will dwell for I have desired it. Now we get into provision, verse 15. I will abundantly bless her provision. I will satisfy her needy with bread. Now listen to what God does in verse 16. Her priests also I will clothe with salvation.

God is the one who clothes them with salvation. And their godly ones will sing aloud for joy. There I will cause the horn of David to spring forth. I have prepared a lamp for mine anointed. Verse 18, his enemies I will clothe with shame.

God not only clothes his people for salvation, he clothes their enemies with shame. God decides and he provides. But upon himself his crown shall shine. So the crown of Christ will not be diminished. And you read in Zechariah 3, God is the one who provides the white robe for the high priest Joshua, which is kind of a extrapolation of Psalm 132.

I will look at Revelation 19 and then we'll conclude with Matthew 22. In Revelation 19, verses 7 through 9, we are coming out of the fourfold hallelujah at the fall of Babylon, the harlot. There's praises in heaven at the destruction of Babylon.

And verse 7 says, let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to him for the marriage of the lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. So we're already thinking wedding, right? Thinking of a wedding day and the special occasion for the clothes.

Now listen, it was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean. Who gave it to her? God did. This is a divine passive. It was given to her. It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean.

And what is this fine linen? The fine linen is the righteous act of the saints. See, sanctification is all of grace too. Holiness is a gift. Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 are famous, but verse 10 is also there.