Brother Gary Sunday Morning 4/29/12

Brother Gary Sunday Morning 4/29/12

Psa 22:18  They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.

Psa 22:19  But be not thou far from me, O LORD: O my strength, haste thee to help me.

Psa 22:20  Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.

History records that they took Jesus’ outer garment and divided it up into four pieces.  They left the undergarment in one piece and they cast lots for it.

Mat 27:26  Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

Mat 27:27  Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers.

Mat 27:28  And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe.

What a sad, sad fulfillment of the Word of God.  There is nothing more embarrassing than to be naked. 

Gen 3:7:  After Adam and Eve sinned and lost fellowship with God they realized that they were naked and they hid themselves.  Jesus sewed hides together and made them a covering. 

This scarlet robe, it is wonderful yet it is sad, because of the witness of the Word of God.  All the prophesies of the Old Testament of Christ He fulfilled.

Think of the sufferings of Christ!  It speaks in Acts of the passion of Christ.  When you study the passion of Christ, all the references go to His suffering. 

Why did he suffer?  He already was the son of God.  He never had sinned.  He came into this world without a carnal nature but His life was one of intense suffering.  He suffered for you and for me.  He bore my sin.

I thought of the brokenness of Miami.  He bore their griefs.  There wouldn’t be anyone in this audience that has reached much of an age that doesn’t know what it means to be emotionally hurt.  Even children know what it is to be hurt. 

Jesus didn’t suffer for Himself.  He suffered because He knew that everyone that was born into the world would know pain.  If that pain and sorrow isn’t dealt with according to the teachings of the Word of God it will lead to bitterness.  There is no worse garment than the garment of bitterness. 

You never visit with hardly anyone that isn’t saved for any length of time that bitterness doesn’t surface.  Jesus suffered for us. 

There was a reason they dressed Him in a scarlet robe.  One of them was to mock Him and the other is because of Isaiah 1:18. Probably everyone in this audience appreciates an invitation.  Here is an invitation for us:

 

Isa 1:18  Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

They put upon Him a scarlet robe.  “Though your sins are as scarlet...”  He bore our sins.  Those sins of our childhood, through our teenage years, of our adult life, up to the point where you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you confessed and repented of your sin and that you were forgiven. 

Many people pray, “Oh God forgive me of my many sins.”  They don’t pray in the thought of, “I realize that you put on the scarlet robe and suffered so that I, whose sins were as scarlet, could be saved.”

Most of us were taught as a child that you don’t make fun of anyone.  One of the most humiliating things that you have ever done or has ever been done to you is to be mocked.  This one that they put the scarlet robe on came from heaven to save those very people that mocked Him.  That scarlet robe included their sin.

It is marvelous that we know that all of the sin of any person is part of that scarlet robe that Jesus put on.  Each of us had a great part in that scarlet robe. 

Though your sins be as scarlet!  How deep sin and the affects of sin goes into the mind and the life!  Some say, “I could never forgive myself of this thing that I did that was so wrong.”  Let me help you.  Jesus put on that scarlet robe in order that all manner of sin could be forgiven those that came to Him.

Though your sin be as red as scarlet they shall be as white as snow.

The writer of Acts and Luke wanted to know everything that He could know about Jesus.  He felt that there were valuable things that they left unsaid so he wrote the Gospel according to Saint Luke.  He wrote Acts to Theophilus. 

He wrote that Jesus lift up his hands and blessed them and told them that as he was taken away so would He come again.

Act 1:1  The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach,

Act 1:2  Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen:

Act 1:3  To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God:

Jesus suffered.  Why?  Isaiah 64:6.  All our righteousness is as filthy rags.

Isa 52:1  Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean.

We are blessed to not only live in the Gospel Day but we are blessed to understand that in the Gospel Day you can have a change of garments.  You don’t have to wear those old dirty garments anymore.

Isa 61:10  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 her jewels.

When we come to Jesus Christ and are born again the old garment must be laid aside.  Many times people try to make themselves better:  become a better individual.  In order to be right with God you must have a change of garments.  This text describes the garment of salvation.

Salvation has five aspects. 

1. It is a garment of deliverance.  Once saved, you are not the same anymore.  David said, “He lifted me out of the miry clay.”  The reason that men and women cannot quit sinning is because they are still of the foundation of the earth and are not born again.  When you are lifted from the sinking sand and the miry clay and are delivered then you are clothed with the garments of praise and of salvation.

2. The garments of salvation are a provision that gives you help.  No one can live for God in their own strength.  How many times from that day that you got saved?  How many times from that moment that I knelt at the altar of prayer and became a child of Jesus Christ has He helped?

When we got saved we were challenged.  I was challenged; I was challenged many times because of my own personality.  But there was help.

In the hour of difficulty, an hour that is heart wrenching when you are in despair before God, in that hour there is help.  I wouldn’t want to face anything where that robe of salvation and that help isn’t right there. 

There aren’t any of us that know what might be on the answering machine when we get home.  There may be a great hurt and there may be a great blessing.  We need help to receive each in the way we should.  We need help in our mind to get it out of the state that we are in so that God can pour out a blessing on us and we can receive it.

God loads us daily with benefits, Ps 103.  Bro Maconahae preached that we must be in a position to receive the benefit or they can fall and our mind is distracted on our self or the position that we are in and we cannot receive the blessing. 

Every one that is alive needs the help of God.  That is a part of salvation.

3.  Salvation means safety.  I think of the times that we live in.  I live a very sheltered life.  I don’t know much that is going on outside of Paradise, simply because I cannot handle it.  I desperately need help from God in my daily life to think right, to meditate right, and to not try to judge what is none of my business.  I need help from God to follow the path that is laid out for me on the highway of holiness.  I am a husband, a father, a neighbor.  I want to fulfill my responsibilities with the help of God.

4.  Salvation means victory.  The message here is to keep the garment of salvation on.  We are creatures of choice and have lots of choices.  When something is presented to us that we would be tempted with then we look up to God and ask for His help.  We need help from God that we don’t put ourselves into the position where we should not be so that we are tempted.

When we think of the mockery of them putting the scarlet rob on Jesus, all the sin.  When we turn our back on Jesus after we have been saved we crucify Jesus again.  God help us never to do it.

5.  Salvation means health.  God wants you to be healthy physically, emotionally, spiritually and mentally.  That doesn’t mean that there won’t be times when we need to climb and have no strength to climb.  He gives strength to those that wait on the Lord.

Zec 3:1  And he shewed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him.

When you decide to seek after God it will not be easy.  Satan will be there to resist you.  When you desire to seek, seek with the attitude, “I know God is and is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him.”

Be determined that not only do you want to come to Mt Zion but you want to climb Mt Zion.  We must have a determination not that we have arrived but that we are going to climb.  We must be as the scripture says, “The spirit of just men made perfect.”  If you allow a spirit of pride to get a hold of you that you have arrived and that no one can tell you anything then you are in trouble.  God hates pride.

Zec 3:2  And the LORD said unto Satan, The LORD rebuke thee, O Satan; even the LORD that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?

Yes.  I think of my father.  His testimony was that He was a bootlegger and was in West Virginia hauling booze from a wet state to a dry state.  When he began to seek after God, the devil thought he had him.  He married a woman that in a process of time sought God and got saved.  She prayed for him.  The devil didn’t give up easy but God was on my dad’s side.  God told him one day that he needed to go out to the barn and pray.  God saved Him and changed his life. 

Joshua was clothed with a filthy garment; he, as all mankind, had sinned.  God made a provision as he stood there before the angel.

Zec 3:3  Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel.

Zec 3:4  And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.

They said, “Take the filthy garment and clothe him with a change of raiment.” 

Pro 6:16  These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:

Pro 6:17  A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,

Pro 6:18  An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,

Pro 6:19  A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

Mat 9:16  No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse.

Let’s say that someone says, “Things aren’t right in my life.” So they say, “I’m going to start doing good deeds.”  You cannot put a little bit of Jesus as a patch in your life.  There is only one thing that we can do when things are wrong in our life and that is to say, “God there is nothing righteous in my garments, I need a change.”

One day a father had a prodigal son that went out and wasted all his inheritance and lived bad.  He ended up in the hog pen feeding swine.  What do you think that his garment looked like?  What do you think that he looked like? 

This father kept looking for his son.  I don’t know how long the prodigal fed pigs.  I don’t know what he smelt or looked like.  This father loved him. 

This is a real message to us as the church.  One day that prodigal started home.  The father looked way down the road and saw him.  He couldn’t wait.  He took off for him. 

The father said, “Bring the best robe and put it on him.”

Jesus was stripped.  They put a scarlet robe on Him.  They were mocking Him as a king, yet the underlining thing was that it was a fulfillment of prophecy.  He was bearing our sin.

How are our garments?  Are they spotless?  Have we taken care of everything that God is talking to us about?  Are we enjoying the robes of salvation and the garments of praise?  If we are not then we are living so far below what God has for us.  Jesus suffered and was stripped as part of His passion. 

Some here were loved by their family and some I don’t know much about, but Jesus loves us all.  He suffered so that we could have that filthy garment taken away and be clothed with the robes of salvation.