This message was recorded at
Grace Chapel Ministries, O'Brien, Florida, March 16, 2014. Brother
Mike McInnis, Isaiah, Chapter 61. Chapter 61 says, The Spirit
of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me to
preach good tidings unto the meek. He hath sent me to bind
up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, the
opening of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the
acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all that mourn, to appoint unto them that mourn
in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for
mourning, the garment of praise for the Spirit of heaviness,
that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting
of the Lord, that he might be glorified. And they shall build
the old ways, they shall raise up the former desolations, they
shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations. And strangers shall stand and
feed your flocks, and the sons of the aliens shall be your plowmen
and your vinedressers. But ye shall be named the priests
of the Lord. Men shall call you the ministers
of our God. Ye shall eat the riches of the
Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves. For
your shame ye shall have double, and for confusion they shall
rejoice in their portion. Therefore in their land they
shall possess the double. Everlasting joy shall be unto
them. For I the Lord love judgment.
I hate robbery for burnt offering. And I will direct their work
in truth, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.
And their seed shall be known among the Gentiles, and their
offspring among the people. All that see them shall acknowledge
them, that they are the seed which the Lord hath blessed.
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall be joyful
in my God, for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation.
He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom
decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself
with jewels. For as the earth bringeth forth
her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it
to spring forth, so the Lord will cause righteousness and
praise to spring forth before all nations." To say that this is a prophetic
scripture would be an understatement. And of course, we know that prophecy
is not necessarily meant for the future, but the fulfillment
of prophecy is for the present. Now, I believe there are perhaps
the applications of some prophecies that can be found applicable
to a time future to the present. But I am convinced of this, and
that is that most all of the prophetic Scriptures that we
find in the Word of God have their fulfillment already. I
know this, that all Scripture, all prophecy has its fulfillment
in Christ. Now, He may yet unfold some things
that He has not yet unfolded, that we have not yet seen, but
even those things are the prophecy of Christ. And so we see here
that Isaiah actually speaks in the first person of Christ. He speaks as Christ spoke, because
Christ spoke these very same words in the temple when he went
there to speak. And he said, The Spirit of the
Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me to
preach good tidings unto the meek. The Lord sent His only
begotten Son into the world to preach the gospel. Now, he preached
it in his own flesh and blood. I mean, he set it forth not simply
in words, though he taught among the people, but he set it forth
in the manifestation of his own self as the Savior of sinners.
And so such a blessed prophecy as that cannot be exceeded by
anybody that comes along later and unfolds any sort of prophecy. So it is an error to think that
there are men who are prophets in the present day, because there
is only one message of prophecy that has been given unto us,
and that is what is revealed in the Word of God, and it is
the prophecy of Jesus Christ. And even as we read in the book
of the Revelation, the Lord said, close up the book. He said, it
is done. And there is not anything to
be added to it. Nobody can come along with something
new and give us something that Christ has not already set forth. He is that unfolding of all prophecy. And so in this we see it. And He sets it forth here. And
I wanted us to look at the last few verses here. as the prophecy
is given and then the response of those to whom the prophecy
is given. In verse 10 he says, I will greatly
rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall be joyful in my
God, for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation. Now
once again, While this Scripture has a two-fold application, number
one, I believe that it is Jesus Christ speaking as the man who
came and walked among his people here in the earth. But it also
is the Church of God speaking unto the Lord as thankful for
that which they have been given. Because as we understand, the
salvation of God is the salvation of God. Not that God needed to
be saved. We were the only ones in need
of anything. But it is still God's salvation. It belongs to Him. And the Lord
Jesus Christ came clothed in the garments of salvation. He came. If you see a judge in
a courtroom, he doesn't go there in a pair of overalls and sit
up there on the bench, but he has on the robes of his judicial
office. And Jesus Christ came into the
world clothed in the robes of salvation. He came as that One
who was fit and ready as a Savior, because as we read in the Scripture,
He was ordained unto this from the beginning, before the foundation
of the world. He came into the world as a Savior,
as a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. He came in with
the purpose to redeem His people. And He came clothed with the
garments of salvation. And He has been covered with
the robe of righteousness. He is righteous. How would a
man define righteous? How do you define righteousness?
Now, the Pharisees thought they could define righteousness. They
said, well, righteousness is somebody that acts like we do.
Righteousness is somebody that keeps the Sabbath. Righteousness
is somebody that doesn't company with publicans and winebibbers. That's what righteousness is.
And if you took a survey in the world today, that's basically
about what most people would think of as what righteousness
was. But the Lord, He didn't come
with that kind of righteousness because that wasn't righteousness.
He came with true righteousness. And He came with impeccable righteousness. He came with righteousness that
couldn't be impugned, though men thought in their little religious
ways that they could impugn. They said, well, he's a friend
of publicans and sinners. And they looked at that as being
some sort of a knock against him. But he said, you're right. He says, I am a friend of publicans
and sinners. I am the friend of the weak.
I am the friend of those who are not righteous in the eyes
of men. But it says, I came to clothe
them in garments of righteousness. So you see, He came clothed with
the garments of salvation. And keep in mind that the Lord
Jesus Christ did not come for His own benefit, but He came
for the benefit of His people. It is like we talked about a
few weeks ago. I mean, He demonstrated pure
love because he showed a love that was not in any wise designed
for his own good, but it was designed for his people's good.
And so the garments that he came to give, you see, they took his
garments off and they cast locks for them. Now that's how the
religious world treats the robes of righteousness which Christ
has. They look at them as something you can buy or gamble for or
get in some fashion. But there is a picture in the
fact that the robe of Christ was taken from him because the
robe of Christ's righteousness has been put upon His people. He has imputed His righteousness
to us. He put it on us. And He no longer
wears the robe of righteousness in the sense of that One who
came to clothe His people, but He is the righteous Savior who
does clothe His people. And we are wearing the very robe
of righteousness which is His. Now it's impossible to take His
robe of righteousness away from Him, but He clothes upon us with
the same righteousness, the same Righteousness which he stood
and had with his Father before the foundation of the world.
Now what is that righteousness? It's perfect. It doesn't have
any... There's no flaw in it. There's
no measure of it. There's no almost to it. Either a man is in the righteousness
of Christ, or he has no righteousness at all. If he has any of the
righteousness of Christ, he has all of the righteousness of Christ.
So what a glorious thing it is to consider, dear brethren, that
it's not on the basis of what men look at other men and say,
well, he's righteous enough. He finally got rid of that problem
or this, that, the other, and he finally was able to ease on
in. No, if a man stands in the righteousness
of Christ, he stands perfect before Almighty God. What other
place could we stand and be acceptable to Him? There is no partial righteousness
that will do it. It must be that which is His. And so the church speaking here,
even as the Lord speaks in the first person, the church speaks
and says the same words that Christ says. They said, teach
us to pray. He said, Our Father which art
in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Are not those the same words
of the people of God as they pray unto the Lord? Well, sure
they are. That's what He said to say. So
He said them, but they are our words as well. And so because
He causes those words to become our own, so He hath clothed us
with the garments of salvation. He hath covered me with the robe
of righteousness." Now look at what he says here, "...as a bridegroom
decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself
with her jewels." And so as the bridegroom adorns himself with
ornaments, the Lord Jesus Christ will be glorified. Now, He came
into the world meek and lowly. He came despised of men, but
He came in order to be glorified because the Father purposed that
the Son would have glory through the ages to come. That is the
whole purpose of salvation. That is why the Lord saved sinners,
that He might be glorified through the ages to come and His grace
might be magnified. The angels cannot look into it
and understand it. I mean, the Lord cast out a third
of the angels of heaven with one swoop of His hand. Just cast
them out. And you don't think that the
rest of the angels that were left, they're kind of wondering,
well, what's going on? And here's the Lord. He comes
and sends His only Son into the earth to become a man and die
like men. for the sake of redeeming them
back when He cast these angels which are a higher level of creature
than man is. Man is lower than the angels,
is he not? I mean, it is what the Scripture
says. But yet here is man, this lower level of creature. It is
like here we are, we think of ourselves as a higher level of
creature than say the roaches that you spoke of there a moment
ago. But compared to the angels, we
are worse than the roaches are, because they have never sinned.
They have never had thought towards
sin. They have had thoughts toward
God. And yet they look at us and they
see those that did transgress against the Lord who were cast
out of heaven, and the Lord never designed any redemption for them,
but He did redeem men. And you know, when men get to
thinking of their own worth, they need to think of themselves
in comparison to those heavenly creatures and how much lower
than the angels we are, but yet how favored we are with this
salvation which the Lord is pleased to bring. So the bridegroom decketh
himself with ornaments. He adds to His glory as only
He can. Now, men can't add to His glory. See, we want Him to be glorified,
but we know that He can only be glorified with the glory that
He has with the Father. But we want that to be magnified
and manifested among the earth. But He glorifies Himself. He says, I will glorify Myself.
So he decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself
with jewels." Now, this is kind of interesting here because he uses the same illustration.
As a bride decketh himself with ornaments, and as the bride adorneth
herself with her jewels. The bride, in modern times, the
bride is the central point of the wedding. But among the Jews, the bride
was not the central point of the wedding. The bridegroom was. Who were the virgins, the five
foolish and the five wise virgins, who were they waiting on? They
were waiting on the bridegroom, weren't they? The bridegroom
was coming because, you see, he was the central point of the
wedding because he was the one that had the power and he was
the one that had the wealth. And he was going to bestow that
on the bride, was he not? See, all that he had was going
to become the bride's. And so, we kind of got it backwards
nowadays. I mean, I don't want to get off
into that, but in the picture of what's going on. Now, there's
a lot of beautiful pictures in the fact that the bride is the
central point of the wedding, because insofar as the purpose
of God is concerned, In the manifestation of the salvation of men, he would
have his bride to be glorified. He would willingly hide himself
off to the side that the bride might be magnified because he
knows that in the magnification of his bride that he is exalted. And so it is that we see here
the bridegroom decked with ornaments, and the bride adorneth herself
with her jewels." Where did she get her jewels? She didn't bring
jewels to the wedding. She had the jewels that the bridegroom
gave her. Remember when Eleazar went to
get Rebecca from a far country? What did he do? He carried jewels
with him, did he not? And he gave her those jewels. And he put a ring of gold in
her nose. And he decked her with the finery
of his master. And he brought her to the place
where his master was. Because you see, that is that
one who adorns his own bride. Why does he adorn his bride?
Because she doesn't have anything to adorn herself with. See, the
religious nature of man thinks that he brings something of value
to God. But the Lord brings all of the
value to His people. And all of the glory belongs
to Him. For as the earth bringeth forth
her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it
to spring forth, So the Lord will cause righteousness and
praise to spring forth before all the nations. Now listen and
think about that. For as the earth bringeth forth
her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it
to spring forth. How does the garden bring forth the corn and the beans and whatever
else? Because it was planted there. Now the Scripture plainly says,
the garden is the Lord's. He said, this is my garden. And
the Lord, He hath hedged about it, and He has tilled the ground,
and He has fertilized it, and He has made it a fruitful place. He planted His vine there. And
as the earth bringeth forth her bud, as the garden causeth the
things that are sown in it to spring forth, So the Lord will
cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the
nations as the Lord plants it, as He has planted it. He will
cause it to spring forth. Now men look and they have a
notion of how the Lord will cause praise to spring forth before
all the nations. And it's just ingrained in men
to think that when the Scripture says it's going to be brought
forth before all the nations, that it's going to be brought
forth before all the nations in a manner that they will see
and understand it. Now, the Scripture says that
every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus
Christ is the Lord. But they shall not do that with
understanding as the people of God. They do it as those who
are conquered and vanquished and put down. They do it as those
who are overwhelmed. And when the Lord says here that
He will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before
all the nations, it is not that men will have an understanding
of it or even see it, but He will cause it to happen in spite
of whether they see it or not. The Lord said, By this shall
all men know that you are my disciples, because you have love
one to the other. Now does that mean that the world
will have respect unto the people of God? Not at all. In fact, the world
will more or less despise it. They despise Christ. He manifested
the greatest love to His disciples of anybody that has ever had.
Did anybody pay any attention to that? No, they said crucify
Him. I mean, the world can't see the
spiritual things of the Kingdom of God. It's there. I mean, did not Jesus Christ
come as the Savior of sinners? Was He not manifested in the
earth? Was He not put before the eyes of all who dwell here
upon the earth? Of course He was, but did they
see it? Did they know it? No, but that doesn't change the
fact that His praise is known in all the earth, does it not?
But you see, His praise is known in the earth among those whom
He has been seen fit to show it to. And He has manifested
His righteousness and His praise, and it springs forth before all
nations. The Scripture says that out of
every nation, tribe, and kindred in the earth, the Lord has manifested
to show forth praise. He has called men unto Himself. And He has manifested the glory
of His grace in the earth through His people. And by this shall
all men know that you are My disciples because you have love
one to the other. It doesn't mean that they will
approve of it. It doesn't mean that they'll
sit back and say, boy, we admire those people. Now see, this is
where God's people often get into a problem, is they think
that there's somehow coming some halcyon day when people will
sit back and say, what a wonderful thing it is for God's people
to love one another and follow the Lord. No, not according to
what Scripture says. There's no indication of that.
See, that's occurring at the present time, but they don't
know it. The Lord said, by this shall all men know that you are
my disciples. He didn't say, by this shall
all men approve that you are my disciples. He said, it's just
a matter in which you are known. Now, I believe that's occurring
in the earth at the present time, even as I believe the Lord came
preaching and teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ into the ears
of men. And He said, seeing they see
not, hearing they hear not. To those that are given to hear,
they hear. To those that are not given to hear, they don't.
I mean, it's just like water off a duck's back. It doesn't
mean anything to them. But by the grace of God, He causes
the earth to bring forth her bud. And as the garden causeth
the things that are sown in it to spring forth. If the Lord sows peace, He'll
bring forth peace. If He sows love, He brings forth
love. Now these are the things that
He says that He gives to His people. And He manifests them
among His people. And you know, it is an amazing
thing how the world has no regard. In fact,
they think it's kind of stupid for seven people to wad up in
a car and drive 200 miles to sit around with some folks for
a few hours and sing some songs and talk about the Word of God. I mean, what regard does the
world have to such a thing as that? They think you're wasting
your time. I mean, you could have been fishing or you could
have been doing anything. But what is it that moves men
to do such things? I believe it's exactly what he's
talking about here. It's the love of the brethren. It is that that cannot be denied. Now, you know, oft times our
flesh will seek to rob us of those
things that God has put for our good. And it will convince us,
well, you don't need to do something like that. You've got too many
other things that are important to do. Don't waste your time
on me. You know, it's all right for
some people to do that, but you've got better things to do than
that. Now brethren, what is there better for God's people to do
than to benefit one another and build one another up in the most
holy faith? I mean, what could be more important
than that? I don't know of anything. Now,
there might be some things I don't know, but I don't know what it
would be. But I know one thing, and that
is that I don't believe that God's people are ever benefited
by anything more than they are with the fellowship of God's
people and the work of the Spirit of God in the midst of God's
people. You know, it doesn't take a preacher to cause that
to happen. I mean, that's kind of like,
that's just something maybe that's added on to the side. It's not
for that. You know, that's not the purpose
of it. We don't come together to preach
to one another. We come together that we might
benefit one another. Maybe through preaching we are
benefited. Hopefully we would be. But that's
not why we're coming together. We come together because we want
to fellowship with one another. We want to build one another
up in the most holy faith. We want to minister to one another.
In fact, as I was reading that, listen to what it says here.
This is in verse 6. It says, But ye shall be named
the priests of the Lord. Now who is he talking about? Is he talking about a certain
class of people or a certain class of men? that has been given
us, talking about all of the children of God. He said, ìYe
shall be called, named the priests of the Lord.î Does not Peter say that we have
been made kings and priests? The book of Revelation says we
have been made kings and priests unto our God. We are a holy nation. But then look at what it goes
on to say, "...men shall call you the ministers of God." See,
we are ministers. We are ministers one to the other.
And that is why the Lord has called us together that we might
minister to one another of the things that God has given us.
And that might simply be something as simple as just an encouraging
word. It doesn't have to be somebody
taking a text. I mean, it might be something
as simple as a pat on the back or a hug or a greeting. You know, whatever it is. But
I believe the Lord has ordained these things. And He said, You
shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall you
boast yourself. See, the Jews, of course, have
always been a persecuted people. And they've always looked at
the Gentiles. Of course, if you've got the
Jews and the Gentiles, everybody else has to be against you because
whoever would be against you would be a Gentile, so the Gentiles
would be the ones that would be against you. He says, you
shall eat the glory of the Gentiles. You see, the Lord has designed
the earth for the benefit of His people, and He causes all
things to work together for good to them that love God, who are
called according to His purpose. And that is what he is doing.
Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks. Sons of the aliens
shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers. Now what does he
mean by that? He means that all of the nations
of the earth shall bow down and serve the people of God. Now, they don't serve the people
of God at our command. Wouldn't that be nice if we could
go out and if we needed, you know, if the tow had a flat tire
and we needed the tire changed, we could just stop traffic and
say, get down there and change that tire. No, that's not what
this means. But you see, the Lord causes
all things to work together for good to them that love God who
are called according to His purpose. So He causes all the actions
of all the people in the world outside of Christ to benefit
the people of God. Everything that they do. Now
I don't know if the guy that invented the car, if he was a
believer or not, Or you know, first maid cars and all these
different inventions that we have. But I know this, if there
is some benefit that is derived to the people of God by it, then
that person was ordained as a servant of the sons of God. Now we know
that he was ordained as a servant of the sons of God in a greater
picture of being a servant of God. But the purpose of God for
him in the earth was to serve his people. And that's what he
said there. Strangers shall stand and feed
your flocks. You won't even have to go out
and put hay out for the cows. They're going to do it for you. But ye shall be named the priests
of the Lord, and men shall call you the ministers of our God,
and ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles." Do you remember
when Pharaoh finally let the Israelites go out of Egypt? The Israelites, the Scripture
says they spoiled the Egyptians. That is, they went in and they
got all their riches. They said, give us this gold
and these earrings and this kind of stuff so we can go out in
here and worship God with it. And the Egyptians said, here
man, take it. We just want to get rid of you. Get out of here.
And so the riches of the Gentiles came to the Jews, did they not?
And in that same picture, in that same way, the Lord has called
the people of God to reap the spoils of this world. And that's why Paul says, you
know, using this world but not abusing it. We've been given
the riches of the Gentiles. I mean, the riches of the world
have been put at our disposal for our benefit. May the Lord
show us that these things and the spiritual application that
they're given to us. that we might know what a blessed
place that we have as the sons of God. That we have no righteousness
of our own. We can't boast in knowing anything
or doing anything either, but we've been given some things.
And what a sweet thing it is. You see, we've been given just
a foretaste of it. Sometimes these things are given
to us in a fleeting glimpse. I mean, maybe just in singing
a song and all of a sudden we have just a clear vision of that
truth of God's mercy revealed to us. And it might only be for
a moment, and then we wish we could get back to that one little
spot, moment, place and time. But you see, that is the mercy
of God poured out upon His people. Oh, what a blessing it is when
He sees fit to do so. May He give us a mind to seek
after Him.