Hello, this is James Tippins,
pastor of Grace Truth Church, and I want to thank you for taking
this opportunity to listen to this sermon out of the series,
The Horrors of Christmas. The reason for my little plug
in the beginning of this is that at the time of this recording,
I had gone on just a couple of hours of sleep due to the recent
birth of our fifth child and other things going on in our
lives. We had a sleepless night the night prior, and so it In
my mind, it sort of plays through and you can hear some sluggishness
and possibly even a lack of focus on the text. And I want to apologize
for that. But at the same time, the Lord's
grace is graceful. And I pray that this message
will be a blessing to you and a blessing for your opportunity
for worship. And through it all, take that
which is good and dismiss that which is not. And I pray that
the Lord would be with you this day. God bless you. All things
in life have seasons and cycles and even every day you see the
ebb and flow of many things. And as we're in this holiday
season, and I say that because it is a holiday, we are looking at the reality
that Christmas, as we so call it, the mess of Christ, the season
of Christ, has for some time now forgotten the true Christ
of scripture. We do not preach this series
so that we can say to ourselves, see, we've got it. And now we're
going to tell everybody else what they need to have, so we've
got it. There are some who would think
that. I don't know why. But they do. Why would you preach
on something entitled The Horrors of Christmas? Because I want
to get your attention. That does it. Why don't you just preach the
Bible? Well, I am. I'm going to show you how horrifying the advent
of Christ is in so many aspects. I want us to look at the gravity,
not just the glee of Christmas. I want us to see the reality
of what God has done on our behalf at the cost of Jesus the Son.
And that we are deserving of the wrath of God. A fellow brother, Shepherd, said to me yesterday
that he grew up Baptist, and he was sort of joking. He did
grow up Baptist. He was sort of joking by his
next comment when he stated, but as I became more into my
ministry, I decided to go Methodist. So he's a Methodist pastor. And my puzzled look, he continues
to talk and says, As I went into the Baptist church, my feet were
set on fire and as I came out the door, my head was burning.
I was sure every time I left church, I was already going to
hell and there was nothing I could do. And so I choose now as a
Methodist pastor to preach about the love of God, the good news.
And I said, that's right. The gospel is always good news.
And then he and I both agreed right there publicly in the store
that the good news only comes at the cost of the bad. And then I didn't get into the
idea that I have about this series and the horrors of Christmas
is that, friends, with the coming of Christ, he came to receive
the horrors of God's judgment so that you and I could be forgiven
and would not receive them. It was a very grave time in history,
a time where Palestine in the Middle East was very polarized.
You had Roman occupation and rule over Jewish people and other
peoples. They were not free, in a sense,
to worship and govern themselves as they had liked to. It was not a full slavery, but
it was very akin to the slavery that Israel had been in for the
most of their existence. God did not and has not seen
Israel free. as they are today, throughout history as a whole. The horrors of Christmas should
remind us of the joy of Christmas, for out of suffering comes glory,
as we see the apostles teaching. And there's no better place to
go, I think there may be good places, but there's no better
place to go in this particular step where I say Christ came
to be broken. Christ came to this earth to
be crushed. He came to this earth to be destroyed. He came to this earth to be accursed. Christ came to this earth through
the virgin birth so that he could be crushed and destroyed and
face the fullness of the wrath of God. in order to certainly save a
people from such wrath. In the time of Christ, the birth
of Christ was a horror for most children. Because as Herod, the king of
the Jews, ironically, heard of the one who was to be
the king He ordered him found and then when he could not be
found, he ordered all children of the first few years of life,
male, to be killed. This is what Christmas brought
to the world. As angels gloriously proclaimed
to the underbelly of society, the shepherds, Behold, I bring
you good tidings of great joy. For a child is born to you this
day in Bethlehem in the city of David. And we know the claim of what
the angels said, who Christ is, he is king. Upon his shoulders
shall rest the government." He is wonderful, glorious, magnificent,
and they go on and on and on, seek after him. They were horrified. And they were more horrified
when they went into the city to seek after the child and to
find that this glorious kingly child was not even received into
an inn or welcomed into the world, but that his mother gave birth
in the lowly area of the home where the animals slept. Much like your dog kennel, though
it was indoors. And how horrible were the people
of Jerusalem that day and during that season when they heard the
proclamation of Messiah from the mouths of shepherds. Jesus came to be broken so that
he would heal the broken. But what is brokenness? Ask yourself
and put it deep within your questioning heart today, what is brokenness? And then by the end of our time
this month, we will look at it. We will see it some today. When
we think of brokenness, brokenness in our first response is always,
oh, that's bad. If we go outside to our automobile
and we turn the key and it makes a weird click but does not crank,
it's broken, it's bad. If we turn on our television
and it starts to smoke, it's broken, it's bad. If we fall
down a stair and we see our bones sticking through our skin of
our arm, we go, oh, it's broken, and that's bad. So I cannot see that in the mind
of most people that brokenness would bring good thoughts of
great times and wonderful opportunity. Brokenness in its foundation
needs a response to repair something. And that's what Jesus came to
do. He came to be brokenness, to be broken, so that He could
heal and restore those who are broken and in need of repair. But all Jesus has done so much
more than repair and restore. He has recreated. The reality, friend, is that
all mankind is broken. We saw that some last week. We
see the scripture where the Old Testament teaches us that there
is none righteous. No, not one. No one seeks after
God. No one does good. We see Paul
in Romans reiterating the exact same words as he quotes and alludes
to the Old Testament. When he says that we have all
sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We're broken. I saw at the Christmas
parade yesterday several wonderful little floats. Centered around the Christ child. One of them. Looked at the reality
that Christ came. And that he was the gift And immediately my mind, as I
stood there on the road and I saw that, went to John 3. Went to John 4, where Nicodemus is so perplexed
that Jesus has said, You must be born again. And John 3, 16. After Jesus has said, as Moses
lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted
up, that all who believe will have eternal life. For God so
loved the world that He sent His Son, the only one He had,
that all who believe in Him may have eternal life. This is the giving. God loves,
therefore God gives, and that which God gave is Jesus, His
Son. That whoever are those who believe
and are believing have eternal life and will not perish, but
those who do not believe and are not believing are already
condemned, for they do not believe on the Son. whom God gave. Do you see that? Jesus, at the
well in John 4, as he's sitting outside of Sychar, Samaria, the
region of Samaria, and the woman is there and he says, may I have
a drink? How is it that you, a Jew, ask
me, a Samaritan, for a drink for Jews who have no dealings
with Samaritans? And Jesus says, if you knew the gift of God, And who it was asking you for
a drink, you would ask him for a drink and he would give you
living water. The gift of God that heals the
brokenness was given that it might be devoured by his wrath. Isaiah 61, follow with me. There's
much here. I am not a scholar on Isaiah,
so I will not claim to deal with all the interesting things here.
I do know that in my studies of Isaiah, that this text, the
first three verses, are indeed unique. Verses 1 through 3 of Isaiah
61. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me. because the Lord
has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent
me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim
the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our
God, to comfort all who mourn, to grant to those who mourn in
Zion, to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the
oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead
of a faint spirit, that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified. Oh, how
I want to continue to go, but for what we need this morning,
that is enough and plenty. Here, as Isaiah speaks, he speaks
as though he's speaking of himself, If you will, in some sense, Isaiah,
the prophet, the mouth house of God, he is sent by God. He is proclaiming something.
He is preaching. Thus saith the Lord. But then.
We know who it is that Isaiah truly has prophesied, as we will
clearly see in just a moment. There are many things that are
Necessary to understand here many things that are gloriously
beautiful for our worship. And I want you to see that specifically. What this text teaches us is
that one is coming who is sent of God to do some things for
those people who are weak and poor and broken. So, let's look at them one at
a time. First, understand, as we see, the Spirit of the Lord
is upon me. Oh, how we could preach just
messages and enumerable messages about what that is and how that
works. And we should go all through
the New Testament and all through the Gospels and all through the
epistles and the worship of praise and the doxologies and the sending
of the apostles And we can see how the Spirit of the Lord is
upon the men of God to do the bidding of God, and here it is
no different. The Spirit of God is doing something
here. Here Isaiah is not saying, oh,
look at what I'm doing. Here, the prophet is not saying,
look at what the one who goes is doing. The prophet is saying
very clearly, the Spirit of the Lord, God, is upon me. And so now we see the actor of
this entire passage is not a man. It is not the one who is sent
yet, but rather it is the Father, God, the Lord Almighty, doing
the work. So before there was anything
to be, God purposed in the awesomeness of His wisdom to send one whom
He would give the fullness of His Spirit, and God has put forth
this plan before the foundations. of the world. The Spirit of God,
God in His fullness, the whole of the Godhead is immutable.
He never changes. He doesn't come up with new things
to do, new ways of new ideas. He doesn't interject an idea
or a thought of His own into the history of creation and say,
Oh, this is what I need to do. God does all that he does from
the foundations of foundations. Before there was anything, he
was self-sufficient, self-satisfied, self-existent, and the fullness
of his fullness satisfied him fully with the greatness of joy,
and there was no need in his heart, no desperation in his
mind, no boredom with his hands. He was fully glad to be glad
to be God. But then he acts and he sins
through his spirit. God is the actor. He is the one
who is doing. He is the being who is establishing
this. Why is that so important? Because
the very next portion of this text, the Spirit of the Lord
is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news
to the poor. And so the message of the gospel
is at stake here. God is sending the gospel to
the poor. He's sending the gospel, the
good news to those who are desperately in need of good news. He is sending
the wealth of the graciousness of the riches of the treasure
of heaven to those who have not even dillard to call their own
to eat nor sleep upon. So. Friends, the Spirit of the Lord
God is upon me. This should give you great joy
because that which God does in the power of himself through
the Spirit is a guaranteed success. And so what we're about to see
here, there's no doubt, there's no wonder, and so now for us
who are broken, for us who are downtrodden, for us who are festering,
for us who are frustrated, for us who are irritated, for us
who are depressed and diseased and cancerous in our soul, If
we just read through this text, OK, God has promised it. Where
is it for me? It might not work for me. It
may not be that way for me. It will be that way for you. And if it's ill effect in your
life today, the problem is not with God, the problem is with
your unbelief that God fully has established the fullness
of your joy through Christ and in Christ. Maybe you're looking
at something else. Just as, brother, you prayed
earlier, Jesse, that we need to stop accepting mediocrity
in the way the Word of God moves us and changes us. Let us forever
look at that idol which stands before Christ or rather sits
next to him on equal proportions. Maybe just a little lower. The glory and the fullness of
God lowered himself to be even lower than angels so that he
could be the heralder of glorious gospel to the poor. Friends,
God fully secures the outcome of his duty. Do you see that? I believe that's the message
of Christmas. Because the Lord has anointed
me to bring good news to the poor. Let's look at that anointing.
What is the anointing? The anointing is the filling,
the empowering, the sending. God is doing something through
the Spirit and He is anointing a one, an individual. One who
will do His bidding fully and successfully. It's very easy
for us to try to apply this to even the prophet Isaiah. Of course,
in some sense, in a lower sense, even what we do today as we share
the gospel, God is anointing his word and he's sending us
there and proclaiming as we preach the good news of Jesus with the
full success of that which God has ordained and promised to
fulfill. He will bring people to life
when the gospel is preached. And if he doesn't, it's because
at that moment it is not his time. So what do we do? We keep preaching. This anointing, this holy applying
of perfection and ascending and apostolic authority, if you will.
This is so we understand that it is not just this one going,
but it is God going with God's message. And this one is a vehicle
to fully envision the fullness of that which God wants to see
and to show and to say. And so, therefore, we know that
the anointing of God is indeed given. And it will be yes and amen. What is this anointing do? To
bring good news to the poor. So we see we've seen two things.
We're about to see three. The first thing we see is the
Spirit of God is the actor. The second thing we see is that
God anoints one to be the one to go with the actions and the
power of God. Thirdly, we see that God is sending
preaching. I need to be more Not ADD and
give you the outline as I go. God sends preaching. He doesn't
send this poof. We're not just there like a bomb
blowing up. Boom! And just we wake up with
this knowledge. He doesn't come through miracles. He doesn't send miracles. We don't seek after miracles.
We seek after the message of the gospel. God doesn't perform
miracles that save people. He preaches the gospel that saves
people. Christmas is about not as much
as the miracle of the virgin birth, that it is a miracle and
it is part of it, but it's about the message of the virgin birth.
It's about the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's about the
good news that God has incarnated himself and he sent his son that
we might have life in Christ. And this is the gospel. And he's
preaching the gospel. Notice who gets the gospel. Jesus says in the New Testament,
I came to seek and save the lost. Jesus says, I come to the sick
for doctors come to the sick, not the well. I come not for
the righteous, but for the wicked. Jesus is clear. The word of God
is clear, just as it is here in Isaiah 61. It is clear that
the The thing that God is doing, that the way that God is anointing,
that the spirit as he operates is operative through the preaching
of the good news to a people. And the people who hear the message
of the gospel are those who are poor. Are you poor? Are you poor in
spirit? For Jesus says in the Beatitudes,
in Sermon on the Mount, he says, Blessed are the humble. Blessed are the meek. Blessed
are the poor in spirit. For they shall be comforted.
You know who do not need comfort? Those who are fine. Those who
are rich do not need treasure. Those who are full do not need
food. Those who are clothed do not need clothing. Those who
are righteous do not need salvation. And so, friends, if you find
yourself not poor, not blind, not crippled, not lame, you don't
need the gospel. And you don't need God. And you
certainly won't hear it if it came. What is this preaching? It is preaching the good news
to the poor who are hopeless, hungry, hurried, haggard, horrified. What does it do? He comes and
he anoints. In order to bring the good news
to the poor, he has sent me to bind up the broken hearted. And you might say, well, what
does that mean? Well, think about it. What do we use when we get
a cut on our hands or on our toes? We use a band-aid, a binding
aid. If we break our arm, we put a
splint on it. We bind the arm up. We put bandage. We bind up that
which is broken. We bind up that which is hurting. so that it may heal. So the gospel
of the Lord God heals. The preaching of the gospel heals. This One will come to bring good
news and He will bind up the brokenhearted. So now we start
to see that it's not just the message. of God, but it's the
Spirit of God moving, fully anointed, and now this One who is bringing
the message is even doing the healing. What are broken-hearted people?
Broken-hearted people are those who are despondent, who are depressed,
who are bruised, destroyed, who are bitter and abandoned. And
at this time in Israel's history, they felt abandoned. They felt
bruised. They felt like there was no hope
for them, and they wondered where the covenant of their God was.
Where was he going to come? They missed it, though. And if
we apply this to Israel and forget about it, we lose out the idea
that God had a certain restoration in mind for them. But it was
just like the sacrifices of the temple, and it was just like
the shadow of the things of the old. It was pointing to that
which was to come. Who is Jesus? The fullness of
all things. The next thing I want you to
see. Is freedom. Because the Lord has
anointed me to bring good news to the poor, he has sent me bound
up at Broken Hearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and the
opening of the prison to those who are bound. So we see the
captives and we see those who are bound. We see freedom. The coming of Christ brings freedom
to those who are bound, brings freedom to those who are captives.
Friends, we can understand this in Israel's sense. We know they
were slaves. They were captive to their captors.
They were not able to live on their own and be free. And in
that sense, they were thinking, yeah, we're going to be free.
But oh, the fuller sense of what Isaiah is saying here is not
just that we are going to free the slaves of Israel, but we
are going to free the slaves of the world. Those who are enslaved
to sin, those who are enslaved to lust, those who are enslaved
to the flesh, those who are enslaved to the bondage of death, those
who are bound in order that they must die. They are dead and do
not know it. They are blind and cannot see
that they are blind. They think they have life. They
say, peace, peace. Well, there is no peace. And
Jesus came to set them free. How? So we see what God said
he is doing through Jesus Christ. How does he do it? Look at verse
two. Preach. We know how it is certain and
possible. We know how the gospel is empowered
through Jesus Christ, the Holy Anointed One of God. The word
Christ, English transliteration of Christos in the Greek, means
Holy Anointed One. Christ and Messiah are equal
in word, they're just different languages. They're equal in meaning. So when you see someone say Christ
in Greek, they would say Messiah, if you would, in the Old Testament.
That's why you see the parenthetical in John 4 when, after Jesus gives
her the gospel, and she says, there is coming one Messiah,
and he shall teach us all things. And the parenthetical there,
the one who is called Christ. Christ. Christ is the one who comes and
it is his life that is preached, it is his living and holiness
that is preached. It is his willful obedience to
the cross of Calvary that is preached. It is his joyful acceptance
of the sins of all who believe on himself. And it is his eager
expectation and reception and passive obedience to receive
the judgment of the Father so that he might liberate the captive
and give sight to the blind and give life to those who are dead.
For, don't you know, Martha, that I am the resurrection and
the life? And all who are in me, all who
believe in me, they will live." And she says what? John 11. Yes, I know that in the resurrection
we shall live. She missed it. Jesus was about
to say, come out, Lazarus. I'm telling you people, I am
the resurrection. I'm not going to be. I am. I am the life. I'm not going
to bring life one day. I am the life today. Let me show
you. Lazarus, come out. Lazarus was dead. Lazarus was
smelly. Lazarus was unable to hear the
call of man with his ears. They were decaying. And you and I could stand outside
in the cemetery all day long, and we can say, Come out! Come
out! We can stand in the morgues of
every hospital in the nation, and we can put our hands on people,
and we can call their names, and they will not hear us. Their
corpse is dead. But when the Lord God Almighty,
through the power of His Spirit, through the preaching of the
good news of Jesus Christ, says, Hey! The dead here. and they come alive. And so, this one Son of God,
Jesus, comes, verse 2, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor
and the day of vengeance of our God in order to comfort all who
mourn. What does that mean? That means
the day of the Lord is here. The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. Sound familiar? John
the Baptist as he proclaimed the coming of the one who was
to come and the spirit of Elijah. Here is the baptizer saying now
the Lord has come. His kingdom has come. It is here. There's a new day in the world
today. Brethren, there's a new life. You who are dead, come, see,
believe, live. God comes and restores. He makes right. God will bring
justice. This is the year of the Lord's
favor, the word there better translated in the New Testament
as grace. This is the year of the Lord's unmerited favor of
his graciousness, of his glorious kindness, of his love and affection,
of his mercy and warmth and forgiveness and forbearing. All of that there. It's also the day of wrath. For
those who have been wronged by the enemies of God, God has made
right. I personally believe in my eschatology
that the day Jesus rose from the dead, the devil was bound. So what's that mean? Well, we've
got to look at the whole of Scripture. The devil will never be tied
up where he cannot operate until the day he's cast into the lake
of fire with every unbeliever who ever lived. God will bring judgment and wrath. And here's an amazing thing,
church. The horror of Christmas, if you will, the birth of Jesus,
is that Jesus lived his life in the shadow of that day. Be very careful not to forget
that Jesus was born that he may taste the vengeance of God. See
it! Let it hit you and then have
no thoughts about it. Just let it go. Turn the headlight.
I can't think about that. I don't know what to say. Good. That should be your response. I believe sometimes in our dumbfounded
silence, we glorify God the greatest. And it's in that. The day of
God's vengeance has come. God brought the year of grace
and the year of vengeance there on the Christ. And so as Christ
swallowed all the wrath of God, we received all the grace of
God. And the outcome of that is that
those who mourn are comforted. There's hope. There's peace. Friends, I look at that comfort
as justification. We have been set free. We have
been made alive. We have become the righteousness
of God. Be, be, be, be slow to forget
that we are all deserving of the justice and wrath of God,
but the grace of God abounds in Christ, whom he has sent.
What else do we see in that comfort? Those who are abandoned, those
who feel alone, God brings an end to that mourning. God brings
an end to that sorrow. He brings an end to the horror
of his wrath by facing the wrath in Christ. What's the outcome? The outcome is glorious praise. Listen. Listen to Isaiah 57,
two verses, 18 and 19. I have seen his ways. But I will heal him. I will lead
him and restore comfort to him and his mourners, creating the
fruit of the lips that say, and I added that, peace, peace to
the far and to the near, says the Lord. I will hear him. And I believe that God, as he
restores us, though he sees our ways, he puts on our lips praise. So is this message of Isaiah
just a message for any preacher? Is this just talking about anybody
who gets up and proclaims the gospel? It's for them, but it's
talking about Jesus. Look at verse three. You have
to pick it up. Let's start like the Spirit of
the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring
good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the
brokenhearted. He has sent me to proclaim the liberty. He's
anointed and sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives. He's
anointed me and sent me to bring the opening of the prison to
those who are bound. He's anointed and sent me. To proclaim the year of his grace,
he's anointed and sent me to declare the day of his vengeance.
He's anointed and sent me to comfort all who mourn. He's anointed
and sent me to grant. You see. Now there's a granting. Oh, friends, how I would love
to be able to teach you some Hebrew here, but I don't know
any. So it's extremely difficult to teach that stuff when it's
You just go, I don't know what that says, so you look it up.
Now, Hebrew is just, I didn't spend a lot of time there. So
the Old Testament, when I studied, I studied the Septuagint. The
Greek. Because that was Jesus' Bible,
was Greek. His Old Testament was Greek.
The Rabbi's Old Testament was Greek. It was good enough for
me. So, if you want to study Hebrew, more power to you. The
point there is that word, that I will not try to pronounce in
Hebrew, Grant means to assign rights. The word grant means
to assign rights to. So this one who was anointed
by the Spirit and sent has been sent to grant rights, to assign
rights to. Where does that come from? Do
you hear, John, when you heard that? He came to his own, and
his own did not receive him. But all who did receive him,
who believed in his name, he granted the right to become the
children of God by the will of God. He granted the right. What does that mean? He assigned
the privilege. He gave them the role. He plugged
them with the authority. He provided them with the credentials. He gave them. What does it mean
to be a child of God? What are the credentials that
are required for someone to be saved and walk justly? What is
the credential for someone to be blessed and to be alive and
to be favored? What is the credential? You must
be holy for God is holy. See how salvation is so much
more than just a little phrase or a prayer or an attitude or
a decision. It's everything that God has
ever done for you. And when we level it up with
stupidity and wicked and sinfully demonic man-made devices, we
are spitting in the face of the Almighty God who gave all he
is in Christ to kill him so he could save you. How dare we take
credit for such a salvation? I just love baby Jesus. He came
to live so I could choose Him and live. Jesus gave me life,
now we can share presents. As God gave Jesus, I give you
the watch I'm about to give you." How weak! Give gifts. It's good to give. But don't
compare our giving to the giving of God and the Son that He gave. There is no comparison. And honestly,
in my mind, it is incomprehensible. So now here is granting. What is the authority? What does it look like? Jesus
makes you holy, church. He does the will of the one who
sent him, God the Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit.
that has been given you through the preaching of the gospel,
when Jesus' words through the apostles, when you hear you were
once dead in your trespasses, and you were dead, and you were
dead in your sins, and you were just like the whole of humanity,
objects of destruction, but God in His mercy that is richly His,
and because of the love that He loved you with a great love
You have been made alive in Christ. That is the gospel message. You
want to see your friends come to faith? You preach the gospel
of Jesus Christ. You want to see your marriages
be reconciled? You preach the gospel first to yourself, then
to your spouse, and then you pray that the God of heaven might
find mercy to have it have full effect in the hearts of those
who hear it. And when that one comes and is
transformed and Jesus is then their total prize, it's because Jesus has granted
them holiness at the cost of his own life and flesh and blood. Drink of my blood and eat of
my flesh. Let's see how Isaiah is given
the word to orchestrate what this looks like. What does it
look like to be made right? To grant to those who mourn so
we see the position of mourning What it looks like is that Jesus
now is giving them a beautiful headdress, what is that? Instead
of ashes the ashes, you know, you see certain groups of people
put ashes on the forehead. It's a sign of mourning Sackcloth. They put it on nasty clothes.
They tear it. They put ash on their forehead. They put ash
on their forehead and it would show the world that they were
in mourning. You ever got ash on you? It just
stayed there. You had something catch on fire
and you clean it off and your collar brushes it and then you
go over here and you do like this and it's down your face.
You wipe it off your face. You do like this and it's on
the table. And you clean that off the table, and they're saying
it's on your elbow. And you look, it's on the chair, and it's on
your shirt. You take your shirt off, you've got this, and then you put it
in the wash, and the whole wash is ashy. I mean, it's just, it's a comical
thing. So imagine having ash on your
head as a sign of mourning. And as you walked around, others
would mourn with you. And the gospel says here in Isaiah
61 that Jesus gives you the privilege of being the children of God,
and he grants you justification through his finished work, through
his obedience, through his righteousness, through his willing sacrifice.
Now you are made alive, and you are just like him. As he is the
head, you are his holy, righteous, anointed, Christ-like body. And
you are His, and He is yours, and all are in Him, and we are
one. And that ash is given up and
is put on Jesus, and then God destroys the mourning of wickedness
and the mourning of sin and the downheartedness. And the opposite
of that is a beautiful headdress. Friends, you want a New Testament
reference to that? The crown of glory. The diadem that is put on the
head of Jesus Christ, if you will. I'm saying that in a sense,
think of it that way. I don't think we're going to
get crowns. Jesus is the crown of life. We get to adorn ourselves with
his righteousness, not the ash of mourning. There'll be no weeping,
there'll be no tears, there'll be no crying, there'll be no
mourning, there'll be rejoicing, and forever and ever and ever,
all of creation and all of the body of Christ will worship the
Lamb of God. Holy, holy, holy. Worthy, worthy,
worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive honor and glory and
wealth and majesty and power. forever and ever, while the ashes
now are over on the other side, where the wrath of God, where
it says in the Revelation, in John's Revelation, where it says
that the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever and ever. So to give them a headdress glory,
a crown of life instead of ashes, and the oil of gladness instead
of mourning. This is frustrating because I
could get real bogged down, but ultimately understand this, that
oil was of course used in cooking and used in burning things and
being prepared and all. But this oil of gladness, as
we see in the New Testament, you see where people would anoint
Jesus. You see, after the resurrection,
I'm alluding here to John 11 and 12, because it just fits.
That wasn't my intention. But after the resurrection of
Lazarus, and they go back to Bethany, and they're sitting
there in John 12, and all the world had heard about the resurrection
of this man who once was dead, who's now alive, and Jesus. And
when they heard about it, and the Jews and the Pharisees and
the Sadducees, they heard about this man whom Jesus had raised
from the dead, and their first thought was, we must kill them.
Find that ridiculous? He came back, so let's kill him.
But Mary goes and gets a bottle of nard. And it was a year's
salary, is what it was worth, that you typically just put your
finger over the top and do like that, like a teacher. You would
put, and whatever residue was on the tip of your finger, you
anointed. It was a sign of honor. It was used for, sometimes it
had medicinal purposes, some types of oils. But either way,
it was a sign of joy. Gladness, like wearing perfume. You don't put cologne on to go
work in the yard. You don't, you know, I got this,
you know, $20 bottle of perfume. I'm just going to spray myself
down. You don't put gel in your hair to go take out the trash.
You just sort of do it and hope nobody sees you in your bathrobe.
And, you know, and so when the oil of gladness is given, imagine
it being like Mary as she took that year's salary and she dumped
it all over Jesus Christ. And one of my favorite lines
there in John 12 is this, And the aroma of the nard filled
the house. And I preached on that some years
ago, and it overwhelmed me and helped me see just how joyful,
even long after Jesus had left that house, as she sopped up
the oil as it went into the dirt, went into the floor of that home,
as it smelled for weeks on end. The joy of her worship remained
there. Friends, instead of mourning,
we are anointed of God. We're given the crown of life
and we're anointed by the Spirit. And that's the final, the most
important aspect of what oil represents. It represents the
presence of God in His Spirit. God, the Holy Spirit. And look at the final thing.
or garment of praise instead of a faint spirit. We shall not faint, we shall not be weary,
we shall mount with wings as eagles. You know that text. Do not worry about what you should
say when you go to the king, Moses. Go. Do not worry about what you
should say, apostles, when you stand before rulers and governors
and kings, for the Spirit of God will give you the words in
your mouth. Just go. The garment of praise. is a full
package of restoration. We don't have the taggered set
of cloth. We don't have this faint spirit of barely able to
move. And I'm not talking about physical,
folks. As long as we are on this side of eternity, our bodies
will rot and they will die. And only by the grace of God
that we're not all going to die before we leave this room. The garment of praise. The rite
rose. Much like Luke 15, when we see
Jesus teaching the parable of the prodigal son who had gone
and squandered all that the Father had given him. The Father's wealth,
the Father's righteousness, the Father's name, and he took it
and selfishly just squandered it. The purpose of that parable
is to show the difference between those who were coming to Christ
now, to the gospel, to God, and the Jews who had had the oracles
of God. So we don't want to go into that, but in a very soft
parallel, What do we see is the father saw the son from a far
distance and he ran and he met him. He girded up his loins.
He picked up his robe and he ran with his hands, holding his
garments full speed. And he got to his son and his
son was going to say, Father, forgive me for I've sinned against
heaven and I've sinned against you. Make me a slave that I might
eat the pods of your pigs, per se. But the father embraced him and
said, My son who was dead is now alive. Quick. Get a ring,
put it on his finger. Get new shoes, put it on his
feet. He has no foundation. Put a robe and put upon him and
kill the fatted calf for my son has come back to life. We are
going to celebrate. Friends, we get the garment of
praise. And look at the second part of
verse three in closing. In order that. God does all this. Christ accomplished
all this. The preaching of the gospel effects
all of this. In order that they may be called
Oaks. Church, there may be waningness
in your spirit today. There may be temptation in your
life. There may be frustration with your walk. Friends, you
are in Christ. You are an oak. As macabre as it might sound,
every car that I've ever seen that hit an oak tree did not
win the fight. When tornadoes pull through a
section of forest and pull out the evergreens like toothpicks
from a cupcake. And you look and you see what
in the middle of all that you see the oak. And it may be twisted
and it may be turned, but it's there. and its roots are deep,
and its roots are long and thickly drawn into the reaches of the
nutrition of the soil. And this is what God has said
you are, that they may be oaks, and not just oaks in strength,
but oaks of righteousness. And it's not the planting of
man, it's not the giving of man, it's not the cutting of man,
it's not the practice of man, it's not the preaching of man,
it's the preaching of the gospel through whom God plants them. Look at the next phrase. The
planting of the Lord. Who is the Lord of the artists?
The Lord. Who is the sower? The Lord. He fully puts his Spirit upon
them. He fully anoints those who preach. He fully sends the Son through
the preaching. We are just vessels. No man has ever saved another
except the man Jesus Christ, the God-man. We are planted by God. Friends, the gospel does not
waste away in the oaks of righteousness. It gets deeper and that tree
gets fuller and it produces fruit or it's cut down and cast in
the fire. Have hope. God has affected this
in you. How? through the preaching of
the gospel, through the proclamation of the year of the Lord's favor
and the year of the coming of his wrath, so that he may be glorified. Who? It's inclusive of the fact that
we will be glorified. Paul promises that in Romans
8. From whom he... What? Turn there, Romans 8. Last thing we'll see today. Verse 28. There you go, one of
those verses. Yeah, this is a verse. And we
know that for those who love God, all things work together
for good. It's the only place you'll see the
word synergy in Paul's writing. Synergism. For those who are
called according to his purpose. Verse 29. What most of us weirdos
call the golden chain of salvation. for those whom he foreknew he
also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order
that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those
whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also
justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified." Friends, God has saved you unto
holiness, unto righteousness, and he's done so fully and effectively
through the sending of his Son Jesus into the world. That is
the picture, one of the many pictures, of what the true coming
of Christ is and has done and will continue to do. And God
has saved His people so that we would sing to the praise of
His glorious grace. And as Christ is glorified, we
glorify the Father. Christ glorifies the Father.
We glorify us. We glorify Christ. And He glorifies
us. In our glory, if I could dare
be so bold to just play with some scriptural words, as we
have seen in John 1, and from His fullness, we all receive
grace upon grace, where it says there, and we have seen His glory. Glory as of the only Son from
the Father. We could truly say, one day,
when we see Christ, for scripture teaches this, John, even in 1
John, when we see Him face to face, we shall be like Him, we
can say that day we will see his glory in us. God created his people so that
he might look fully on them and see the fullness of his glory
in his work in salvation and be pleased with himself. For
he is satisfied in himself. Why would he do that? Why would
he take unworthy? Rebellious, wicked, sinners and
make them righteous by sending Christ to become sin because
of his great love for us. And it is not wrong to tell people
that God loves them, but you must show them the trueness of
God's love that he came, that he sent his son and his son came
to die. His Son came to swallow His wrath,
because you deserve it. Everybody thinks God loves them,
because most people think they're worthy of such love. But God loves in the giving of
His Son to pay for our sin. If we do not receive that, we
don't receive the love of God. If we do not believe that, we
do not believe the love of God. If we do not trust in that love,
we do not trust in the love of God. And the wrath of God remains. And if the wrath of God is on
you, this Christmas is surely horrible, for you are spurning
the very Son whom He sent to save you. And so my plea for you is to
repent and believe in the Son. who gave you life. Blessed are you who are hungry
now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now,
for you shall laugh. Jesus in Luke 6.21. Let's pray. Father, as you were, teaches
us so clearly. And that promise you gave to
Abraham and his children that. And his offspring, as Paul says. That his offspring, that Abraham's
offspring would be the heir of the world. God, you teach us
that that did not come through the obedience of the law, but
through the righteousness of faith. Father, that means for us that
only by believing does that righteousness apply. And it's not faith in faith,
it's faith in you. and your work and your call and
your glory. Father, speak to our hearts.
Those who sit here listening, all of us, speak to our hearts.
Revive in us a fire of absolutely glorious proportions Put a fire
of salvation in the hearts of the children in the sound of
this room, Lord, that you would save them gloriously for your
glory, for your namesake in Christ. Let us mourn when we see the
sorriness of our faith and the sorriness of our memorial of
Christ. But let us rejoice because You
are faithful. Lord, we thank You that through
the horror of the cross, You give us holy, holy, holy places. Holy access. And Father, You
give us holiness. Let us rise from this time of
worship in the fullness of the beauty of Christ. And let us
love You with that love that first loved us. It's in His name
we pray all these things to You. Amen.