Sermon Tone Analysis

(Read Isaiah 61:10-62:3)

Introduction

So, by a show of hands, how many people here this morning are wearing something that they got for Christmas yesterday?

Getting clothes for a Christmas gift can either be exciting or boring, depending on your age—though there are some kids who love getting new outfits for Christmas, more often than not you can discern just a glimpse of disappointment in a child’s face when they open up a box and find a new shirt instead of the toy they’ve been asking for.

The older you get, the more you start appreciating getting new clothes—and you really know you’ve grown up when you start asking for new clothes for Christmas!

Reading Isaiah’s words here in our text this morning, we see that he really got excited over new clothes, didn’t he?

Isaiah 61:10 (ESV)

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

A few verses earlier in this chapter, we see that the reason that Isaiah was so glad to be clothed this way was because it represented God’s favor instead of His anger:

Isaiah 61:3 (ESV)

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.

Throughout this book, Isaiah has been prophesying to Israel that God was bringing judgment on them for their sin of rebelling against Him and breaking the Covenant He made with them.

The general breakdown of Isaiah is that the first 39 chapters focus on how God will bring the Assyrians and Babylonians down in judgment, and then Chapters 40-66 present the hope that God will show mercy and restore them.

Here in Chapter 61 the focus is on the righteousness that God will give His people—if you look down through the four verses of our passage you see the word righteousness repeated four times.

(And remember one of our basic rules of Bible study—when you see a word or an idea repeated over and over again in a passage, that’s your cue to pay attention to what God is saying about that topic.)

So the point of these verses is righteousness from God.

In the Old Testament, the word righteousness carries the idea of

RIGHTEOUSNESS: Being faithful to a standard of MORALITY or CONDUCT; particularly regarding God’s CHARACTER and MORAL nature

So when Isaiah rejoices in the new clothes God has given him and his people, he is rejoicing over the righteousness that God is giving him—he is exulting over the fact that he has been made perfectly right with God.

And so this passage is a call for you this morning to

Rejoice in the GIFT of RIGHTEOUSNESS you have received through FAITH in Christ

As I want to show you from the Scriptures this morning, these verses have been fulfilled in the work of Jesus on the Cross—His coming to earth as a baby and His earthly ministry here among us was the way that He accomplished the righteousness that He has clothed you in—in fact, Isaiah 61 begins with the verses Jesus read when He began His ministry (we read that account together a few minutes ago):

Isaiah 61:1–3 (ESV)

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.

The Incarnation of Christ that we celebrate at Christmas was the means by which He secured the righteousness that you rejoice in.

So let’s look together at the reasons we have to rejoice in the gift of righteousness you have received by faith:

First, as we have already noted, He has given you

I. A New Righteous WARDROBE (Isaiah 61:10)

Isaiah 61:10 (ESV)

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

As Matthew Henry points out in his commentary on this passage,

Observe how these two are put together; those, and those only, shall be clothed with the garments of salvation hereafter that are covered with the robe of righteousness now (Henry, M. (1994).

Matthew Henry’s commentary on the whole Bible: complete and unabridged in one volume (p.

1204).

Peabody: Hendrickson.)

In other words, these garments come as a set—if you don’t have the robe of righteousness, you cannot put on the

Garments of SALVATION

This righteousness that God promised to the remnant of Israel here in Isaiah was perfectly fulfilled in the work of Jesus Christ—and the New Testament speaks of the righteousness of Christ as something that we put on as a garment:

Galatians 3:27 (ESV)

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

Philippians 3:9 (ESV)

and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—

Jesus perfectly kept not only the letter of the Law, but the Spirit of the Law as well—as Hebrews 1:3 tells us,

Hebrews 1:3 (ESV)

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature...

The perfect righteousness of God was found in Jesus Christ, and He gives that righteousness to you when you come to Him by faith.

Jesus came to earth in flesh—the perfectly righteous God Man—so that He could offer that flesh on the Cross as a sacrifice for sins He never committed.

There’s a hint of Jesus’ act of offering Himself as a sacrifice here in our text as well.

You’ll notice in verse 10 that Isaiah further describes the garments of righteousness—

Isaiah 61:10 (ESV)

... as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress...

We receive our garments of salvation because Jesus took on the

Garments of a PRIEST (Hebrews 8:1-2)

In Exodus God describes the priestly garments worn by Aaron as he ministered in the tent of the Tabernacle—including Exodus 29:6 “the turban on his head and... the holy crown on the turban” (Exodus 29:6) with the inscription “Holy to the LORD” (Exodus 39:30).

Here Isaiah says that part of the righteous wardrobe includes the garments of the One who became our High Priest and offered the sacrifice that purchased our righteousness:

Hebrews 8:1–2 (ESV)

Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man.

Jesus Christ is our perfect High Priest—he wears the priestly garments that represent His offering Himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

But Isaiah adds yet another layer to this picture—He is also the “bridegroom that decks Himself like a priest…” The righteous wardrobe that you receive from God through faith in Christ is also the

Adornment for a BRIDE (Ephesians 5:26-27; cp.

Rev. 21:2; 18-21)

Isaiah rejoices because of how God has clothed His people in His righteousness “as a bride adorns herself with jewels” (Isa.

61:10).

Our High Priest has not only presented the perfect sacrifice to God for our righteousness, He is also preparing us as His Bride: When the Apostle Paul wanted the men in Ephesus to understand how to act as husbands, he pointed to the way Jesus Christ treats His Church:

Ephesians 5:25–27 (ESV)

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

Isaiah describes Jerusalem decked out in jewels as a bride when her bridegroom comes to receive her—and this is precisely what we see in the description of the New Jerusalem in Revelation:

Revelation 21:2 (ESV)

And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And a few verses down we read that the walls of the city are adorned with “every kind of jewel”—jasper, sapphire, agate, emerald, onyx, carnelian, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysophate, jacinth, amethyst—with the gates of pearl and the streets of transparent gold.

And all of that splendor and beauty and purity and holiness was purchased by the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ!

Rejoice, Christian, in the gift of righteousness that God has given you through faith in Christ—you have a new wardrobe, and in verse 11 of our text we see that we can rejoice because we have been given

II.

A New Righteous CREATION (Isaiah 61:11)

Isaiah 61:11 (ESV)

For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.

The word here in Hebrew is the same word that we find in the account of the Creation of the World in Genesis 2--

Genesis 2:9 (ESV)

And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up (there it is) every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food...

Just as God caused the trees and grasses to “sprout up” in the First Creation, so He is promising that there will be a New Creation that will sprout up righteousness—and just like the first creation

He CAUSES it to GROW

It will not be up to the will of man—God will cause that righteousness to grow in the earth.

And He will do it through the One that “sprouts up” from King David’s family tree—Isaiah uses this picture of a “sprouting branch” to speak of the coming of Jesus in back Chapter 11:

Isaiah 11:1–2 (ESV)

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.

And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

We read in 1 Corinthians 15:23 that Jesus was the “firstfruits of the Resurrection”—His Resurrection marked the beginning of the New Creation that God has been inaugurating in this world.

And in the Gospels, Jesus talks about the growth of the Kingdom in terms of a growing and spreading mustard plant that sprouted up and became larger than all of the other plants in the garden—a tree that the birds could come and nest in (Matthew 13:31-32).

This Kingdom, this New Creation, is a kingdom that has been planted by Christ by His death, burial and resurrection, and it is a Kingdom of righteousness that He is growing to this very day!

Isaiah rejoices because he sees God clothing His people in righteousness, and he sees “righteousness and praise” sprouting up as God causes it to grow in the midst of His people.

And at the end of verse 11 we see that God is causing this righteousness and praise to sprout up “before all the nations”—in other words, the nations that saw the fall of Israel and Jerusalem to its enemies in the judgments God poured out on them will now see God bringing His righteousness through them!

In causing this righteousness and praise to sprout up,

He CONFRONTS the NATIONS

with His righteousness.

For generations past, Jerusalem and Israel had served as a warning to the other nations of what happens to a people who break covenant with YHWH—now, Isaiah says, they will see what happens when a people have been forgiven by YHWH!

This new creation, this new Kingdom of Righteousness that God is causing to spring up and grow and flourish before the nations is a Kingdom that is going to overtake and displace those nations!

This is what is in view in the book of Daniel, when Nebuchadnezzar has a dream that the marvelous statue he saw was shattered and blown away by a stone not cut by human hands that “became a great mountain and filled the whole earth”.

Daniel explained the dream to Nebuchadnezzar, saying that someday

Daniel 2:44 (ESV)

...the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people.

It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever...

After Jesus rose from the dead, He told His disciples that “all authority in Heaven and on earth” had been given to Him, and He authorized them to go and extend that Kingdom throughout the whole earth,: