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Well, hello again, and let me say how much I appreciated the hymn and the special music. It is a privilege to come before our great God every Sabbath, isn't it? I know we come before Him during the week in prayers and Bible study, but to come before Him each week is a tremendous privilege, and I hope we all appreciate the Sabbath day for what it means, what it pictures, and the opportunity that we have to be together. As that hymn we sung by the Lord, and the opportunity to come before our God.
Before I begin, let me just say how nice all of you look today. It's good to see all of you out there in your Sabbath wear. Our clothes say a lot about us, don't we? We spend a lot of time thinking about what we're going to wear. It's kind of one of those things in life that just kind of plague us sometimes.
It's fun to go to your closet and see what you're going to put on other times, you think, and I hear it, and I do it. What am I going to wear today? But our clothes say a lot about us. We wear different things for different occasions, right? We all have times where we come up dressed up, and for years of my life I had to put on a suit every single day of the week when I went to work, and I would run into people, and even today I'll run into people who are used to seeing me in a suit and they don't recognize me and think, oh, we're just used to seeing you something else, and maybe we do that to each other, right?
Because we're used to seeing us in our clothes say a lot about us, but we get dressed in suits all the time, and we don't come the way we're dressed to Sabbath all the time, but we dress for the occasion. And if you see people, you kind of know what they're up to.
They're just working in the yard, or they're out playing tennis, or they're out at the beach, or whatever it is. We dress for the occasion, and today we all have too many clothes. Every time we do one of our boutiques, I think we have way too many clothes, and every year we have some to give away. But it wasn't like that all the time. In time past, and throughout biblical times and through much of history, clothing was a very valuable item to people. You know, you're through the Bible, and you see how you remember how Samson, when he was dealing with the Philistines at that time, they were vying for those articles of clothing that they were made available.
When Christ died, you remember the people? They were casting lot for his clothes. Clothes were a valuable thing. Today, they're just kind of there, and we have plenty of them, and they're relatively inexpensive, so that we can have as many as we want. But that wasn't always, always the case. Well, clothing is an important part of our life.
It's been an important part of our life. Jesus Christ even said, you know, don't worry about what you're going to wear. God will provide what you're going to wear. But clothing and garments is important in the Bible, too. It's not just the day and age. It has a significant part to play when you look through the Bible and see the events that are there.
And there's a lot we can learn physically, more importantly spiritually, from clothing and how it's pictured in the Bible and the things that it says in the Bible. You know, Jesus Christ, or God, when he created the earth, he created man, male and female. And he gave a very distinct command in Deuteronomy 22 to the Israelites who were coming out of Egypt to command, you know, to us today. And let's go back to Deuteronomy 22, a command that we see in the world around us beginning to dissipate in people, you know, taking this thing that has been really in place since the beginning of time and challenging it even.
In Deuteronomy 22, in verse 5, God says to the Israelites, he says to us today and his disciples and mankind everywhere, clothing means something. Clothing means something, what you mirror means something. In verse 22, verse 5, he says, A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman's garment, for all who do so are an abomination to the Lord your God. You're detestable to God.
If you're a man and you put on women's clothes, that's detestable to God. It means something. What we wear means something to him, and he gave that edict. Same thing to women. If you put on the things that pertain to a man, it's an evil thing in his sight. What we wear, we wear and it identifies us in more ways than one. It certainly identifies us as male and female.
And as we look at the world around us today, as we see the unisex movement, and even as you read articles in the paper or hear things, you see this movement toward everyone will wear the same thing. In some school districts, they're even talking about uniforms should be exactly the same for boys and girls. You scratch your head and you think, why? What is going on here? This is something that stood for all the time that mankind's been on earth.
But Satan, in time, eventually goes against everything that God pronounces, everything that he says. And so we look at these things, and that doesn't apply to any of us here, except that we're going to come in, you know, that's going to become more and more in vogue as time goes on. And we're going to be faced with, well, is this wrong? Is this right? Well, we have what the standard of the Bible is. But you know, back at the beginning of mankind, when God created Adam and Eve, they were there in the Garden of Eden.
And you remember, everything was at peace in the Garden of Eden. Animals and man were in perfect harmony. God and man were in perfect harmony. The entire creation was in perfect harmony. And as we observe the Sabbath day, we look forward to that time when everyone and everything is at peace. There's a song, you know, that oftentimes the choir at the feast will sing called, Creation Will Be at Peace. And that should conjure up a picture and a vision in our minds of a time when everyone will be at peace.
Well, that's the way it was when Adam and Eve were first created. And when they were there in the Garden with God, Adam and Eve were naked. They didn't think a thing about what they were wearing. Everything was innocent. And it was when they came and sin entered, when they chose Satan over God, then all of a sudden it's like, wait a minute, we need to cover ourselves up.
We need to cover ourselves up. We can't be this way anymore. And so they chose fig leaves. Later, God dressed them in tunics of skin because clothing was going to be an important thing to them, and it was going to be important from then on out. And so as we go through the Bible, we see that clothing plays a part in some of the key events in history.
You know, let's just look at a couple of them in the Old Testament, then we'll go to the New Testament. Let's go over to Genesis, or I guess back to Genesis, and back in Genesis 37, we have the well-known story of Joseph, Jacob, and his favorite son, Joseph. And we know that Joseph, or Jacob, you know, to his detriment, he let it be known, and it was obvious that Jacob, well, Joseph was his favorite.
It was his favorite, and he had 11 other sons, and the other 11 other sons were all aware that Joseph was the favorite as well. Well, Jacob wanted to give Joseph, you know, something special to set him apart. And verse 20, verse 1, I guess, let's pick it up here, in Genesis 37, says, Jacob dwelt in the land where his father was, a stranger in the land of Canaan.
And this is the history of Jacob. Joseph, being 17 years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers, and the lad was with the sons of Billah and the sons of Zilpah, his father's wife, and Joseph brought a bad report of them to his father. Not a good thing to do if you're a sibling. Now, Israel loved Joseph more than all his children because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a tunic of many colors. A coat of many colors, we refer to it.
And this was a special coat. Again, this isn't something that he went to, what is it, Burlington Coat Factory and said, you know what, let me pull this off the rack, Joseph will like this. This is something that took some time to put together. This was a valuable piece of clothing. And it made a statement to Joseph, and it made a statement to everyone around Joseph. It was a statement from Jacob, this lad is special. And even today, when you read about a coat of many colors, they still practice that in the Middle East, and people will give people a coat of many colors.
We could look at a coat of many colors, we might say, man, I don't want a coat of many colors, I just want a plain black coat, I just want a plain leather coat or whatever it is, a coat of many colors, but it had significance. The other 11 brothers didn't have a coat of many colors, only Joseph was given that, and Joseph gave it to Joseph as a symbol of what he thought of him.
And the brothers knew it. Joseph is dad's favorite. Dad sees Joseph as special and above all the rest of us. The commentaries will suggest some things that probably had some merit. Some of them will suggest that when you got a coat of many colors, it signified that your parents or whoever gave it to you saw that you were a man of many talents, that you had a ton of potential. And that would make sense that as Joseph, as Jacob looked at Joseph, he would think, this is the special kid.
This kid is just gifted in every way. I want to set him apart. I want him wearing this coat. I want him when he feels to realize what I see in him. It's a symbol of my appreciation, a symbol of what I see in him. To Joseph, it would have been a very valued gift, just like if you and I received that commendation. How good it would make him feel to be in that coat and know what his dad thought of him.
But to the brothers, that coat meant something far, far different. Far, far different. They looked at it as a symbol that they detested. This is a symbol that Joseph is above us. This is a symbol that Joseph is the favored one. We're already jealous of him. He brings Brad reports to us. He has these dreams, as it goes on and tells us here in chapter 37. He's a guy that we already don't like, and now he's been set apart. Now when we see this coat, it just irritates us to no end. And when Jacob gave Joseph that coat, things changed. It wasn't long after Joseph received that coat that the brothers went on a mission.
We're going to get rid of Joseph. We want him out of our lives. The first plan was kill him. Kill him. But Reuben stepped up and said, we can't kill him. Let's just trade him to the Midianite traders that come through. And so they threw him into a pit. And what they did was to prove that, to get Jacob's mind off of Joseph, they brought back this coat of many colors stained with blood. Let's turn over to chapter 37, down to verse 29 of the same chapter.
37, verse 29. Picking up on the story here, Reuben returned to the pit where they had thrown Joseph, and indeed Joseph wasn't in the pit, and he tore his clothes. Oh, the symbol of grief. And he returned to his brothers and said, the lad is no more.
Where shall I go? So they took Joseph's tunic, they killed a kid of the goats, and they dipped the tunic in blood. And then they sent the tunic of many colors, and they brought it to their father and said, we found this.
Do you know whether it's your son's tunic or not? And Jacob recognized and said, it's his. A wild beast has devoured him. Without doubt, Joseph is torn to pieces. The symbol of Joseph, he's gone. I see his coat and I know he's dead. Our clothing can be a symbol of us, can be a symbol of our attitudes, can be a symbol of many, many things, as we'll see in the Bible.
So the gift that Jacob gave Joseph, which was supposed to be a joyous gift, turned into such heartbreak for him that lasted many, many years until he learned that Joseph was alive. All based on that one coat. All based on that one coat. Well, you know what happened to Joseph. He was sold into slavery. He was in Potiphar's house. He rose to the top of the slaves in that house. But he ended up with a problem when Pharaoh's wife took a shine to him.
And she was going to make a false accusation for him. And again, his clothes were an issue. Let's go to chapter 39. And verse 11. But it happened about this time when Joseph went into the house to do his work, none of the men of the house was inside. And she, Potiphar's wife, caught him by his garment, caught him by his garment and said, lie with me. But he left his garment in her hand, and he fled and ran outside.
He did the right thing. And so it was when she saw, hey, Joseph has left his garment in my hand and fled outside. But she called to the men of her house and spoke to them, saying, look at this. My husband has brought into us a Hebrew to mock us. He came in to lie with me, and I cried out with a loud voice.
When he heard, he fled. And look, I've got his garment. I've got his garment, the symbol of Joseph. Look what he did. This is proof. He was here. He left his garment behind. Of course, he was falsely accused, but someone used that garment to prove falsely that he was there. And so Joseph started over. He turned in the, he turned in the garments of a slave to the garments of a prisoner.
And he was in prison for a while. A lad who had a coat of many colors that symbolized so many great things became a slave. Then he became a prisoner and wore those garbs. And then as he was in prison and he began to reveal the meaning of dreams to people, it came to Pharaoh's attention who was having dreams. That there's a lad in prison who can interpret dreams. His God helps him to interpret dreams.
And so Joseph, who had been humbled all these years from being a lad who was seen as the cream of the crop, heads and tails above everyone else, who down was at the bottom of the pile and then to the top, down at the bottom of the pile, and then to the top again. He found himself now ready to be in the presence of Pharaoh. And in Genesis 41 and verse 14, they begin to prepare Joseph, who's been in prison for a while, to come and meet Pharaoh. Now Pharaoh knew he was a prisoner. Pharaoh knew that that's where he had been the last several years.
In verse 14 it says, Pharaoh sent and he called Joseph. And look what they did, because Joseph was going to meet with the king of Egypt, probably the reported greatest man on earth at that time, and they brought him quickly out of the dungeon and he shaved, changed his clothing, and he came to Pharaoh. I can't come to the king without shaving. I can't come to the king without a change of clothing. Even the prison guards knew that. He has to be presentable. And so there's Joseph standing before Pharaoh and he interprets the dream. And Pharaoh is in awe that this could be revealed to him, and he makes the proclamation that Joseph, you're going to be the one to see Egypt through this time of famine. Joseph, you're going to be second in command to me. No one will be greater in this land than you, Joseph, except Pharaoh. And down in verse 39, 39 of chapter 41, says, Pharaoh said that Joseph, inasmuch as God has shown you all this, there is none, no one is discerning and wise as you. You will be over my house and all my people shall be ruled according to your word. Only in regard to the throne I will be greater than you. And Pharaoh said that Joseph see I've set you over all the land of Egypt. And then Pharaoh dressed him. Even though you look nice, Joseph, you united the clothes befitting the office that you were going to be serving in.
Pharaoh took his signet ring off his hand and put it on Joseph's hand. And he clothed him in garments of fine linen and put a gold chain around his neck. And then he gave him the other trappings of the office. And so Joseph, from 17-year-old lad to several years later who became second in command of Egypt. His clothing, his garments, played a part in many of the key events of his life.
And as we look at Joseph's life, we see what God was doing with him, but it leaves a lesson for us.
You know, when God calls us and when God singles us out, he sees you and he sees me as a special people, as we read in 1 Peter 2 verse 9. He sees us as someone with so much potential, we don't even realize the potential that we have. And he might put on us, symbolically, a coat of many colors. You, you I have called, you I am going to work with, you are my own special people, called out of darkness into light. And that's a tremendous calling. It's a tremendous blessing to have that calling of God. And those who respond to it and are baptized and take up those things, and where are the garments of baptism? We find often that it's not as easy a road as we thought. That along the way, we will be humbled. Along the way, we may have persecution. Along the way, we find there are people who really don't like us. And simply because we have that coat of baptism on us, they don't like us at all. They hated Christ, and he said, if they hated me, they're going to hate you. He didn't do anything wrong. He didn't do anything but love people, but they hated him. The spiritual clothes he wore and what he represented, they hated him.
Just like Joseph's brothers hated him and the symbol that he had. And so we go through the same thing. And through life, we may wear and have our clothes changed. We become prisoners. We may become slaves. We may be downcast. We may be downtrodden. But like Joseph, if we keep our eyes on God, no matter what situation that we're in in our lives, if we keep our eyes on God, no matter where the twists and turns are, no matter how low we may go, God says, I'm going to bring you out, and I will make you kings and priests in my kingdom. But you have to keep your eyes on me.
And you have to follow what I'm doing. You have to keep wearing the clothes of righteousness, and perfect those more as time goes on. And so Joseph did that. Joseph, we're told, when he was faced with those obstacles, he chose God. He loved God more than himself, and he loved God more than trying to get out of the situation that he was in. And so there's a lesson for us today, but that's not the only lesson that we can talk about. Let's look at Israel as they came out of Egypt. Let's go forward to Exodus 19. Exodus 19. Israel at this point has been slaves in Egypt for centuries. They've lost much of the knowledge of God's way of life.
They had to. They had to do what Egypt, what their Egyptian master said, but God has brought them out. They couldn't look to themselves and say, we did it to ourselves. They knew it was simply God that did it, and here they are at the base of Mount Sinai. The base of Mount Sinai, and God is about to give them the Ten Commandments the basis of their way of life. In Exodus 19 and verse 10, the people are preparing to come before God and meet Him face to face, if you will, at Mount Sinai. Exodus 19 verse 10, the Eternal said to Moses, go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their clothes.
Important to God? When they come before Me, I want them in clean clothes, and let them be ready for the third day, for on the third day the Lord will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. Set bounds for them, saying, take heed to yourselves that you don't go up to the mountain or touch his base. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death. Not a hand shall touch him, but he shall surely be stoned or shot with an arrow. God was crystal clear in His commands. Whether man or beast, he shall not live. When the trumpet sounds, they shall come near the mountain. So Moses went down for the mountain to tell the people, and he set them apart. He sanctified them, and they washed their clothes. They washed their clothes. God wanted them to come before Him in clean clothes. Something we would certainly do is we're coming before of anyone of any importance. We wouldn't go out with filthy clothes to meet someone of importance, a boss, an interview, or whatever it might be. God said, clean clothes. Let's go back to Zechariah 3. And we can say that there's a spiritual meaning to these clean clothes. Certainly there's a physical meaning to it, but we learned a spiritual meaning of this back in Zechariah 3 when God is working with the high priest at the time, Joshua. Zechariah 3, in verse 1, Zechariah writing, says, then He showed me Joshua, the high priest, standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing in his right hand to oppose him. Isn't that what always happens? When we're standing with God, Satan is always there to oppose Him. He's always there to try to tempt us to lead or to trip us up in some way. And the eternal said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you, Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Isn't this a brand plucked from the fire? Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and he was standing before the angel. He was standing there with filthy garments. And he answered and spoke to those who stood before him, saying, take away those filthy garments from Him. When you come before God, if you're walking with Him, you come in clean clothes. Take away the filthy garments from Him. And to Him, he said, see, I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes.
Oh, so here we see there's a symbol of the clothes, the clean clothes. We're clean before God.
Sins washed away doesn't mean that we're perfect people and that we don't ever get our soils, our clothes soiled. They do get soiled. They do get washed. And when we have stains, and when we have spots, and when we have wrinkles on our clothes, we take care of them if we want to be presentable. God said, Zechariah, or Joshua, you're standing before me in filthy clothes. I will take your iniquity away from you and clothe you in rich robes. You know, God does that with us. When we come before Him, when He calls us, there's filthy garments that we come before Him in.
And when we repent and when we yield to Him, He clothes us in clean clothes, in rich robes.
In verse 5, I said, let them put a clean turban on His head. So they put a clean turban on His head, and they put the clothes on Him. And the angel of the Lord said by, and said, verse 7, if you will walk in my ways, if you will keep my command, then you will judge my house, and likewise have charge of my courts. I'll give you places to walk among those who stand here. I've given you rich robes. Continue wearing them. And the way you wear them is you walk in my way. You walk in my way, day and night. You continue to do that and please me. Then your robes will be rich. Then your clothes will be clean. Then when I look at you, I see you, God says, as someone who's worthy, if I can use that word, to stand in my presence. So clothes, clean clothes and filthy clothes, we see that alliteration in the Bible. Let's go back to Genesis 37. Let's revisit Jacob in his sorrow.
We see another well-known type of clothing in the Old Testament.
We don't physically do today, but it's all over the Old Testament when you look at it. In Genesis 37, last we saw Jacob. He was in misery. His son had been killed. He has this tunic presented to him, and in his mind, as he sees this tunic, the symbol of Joseph, it's covered in blood.
Joseph must be dead. In verse 34 of Genesis 37, this is Jacob's reaction. Jacob tore his clothes.
He tore them. He's in misery. Literally tore them. These are important things to me, but I'm in misery. He tore his clothes. He put sackcloth on his waist, and he mourned for his son many days.
I'm in mourning. I'm sorry. My life is not good right now. I'm not happy right now. And as I come before God, I'm going to come in sackcloth and, as it often says, in ashes. And you see that throughout the Old Testament. When Job was tried in the way that he was tried, what did he have on when he was sitting on that ash heap? Sackcloth. He was in a terrible time in his life. He wasn't dressed up as if he was going to a party, or he wasn't dressed up as if he was going to church.
He was sitting there in sackcloth. It symbolized what he was going through and the attitude and the mood that he was in. And you know, our lives, while overall they're marked with joy, there are times in our life that are very somber. When we come to the realization of who we are, what we've done, or tragic things that happen in our life, or times that we've been humbled, it can be a time where our mood is a little bit somber. And today we don't put on sackcloth and ashes, but you can see it on someone's face. You can see the clothes they're wearing and the fact that life just isn't as good right now as it should be. And that's part of all of our lives. There was a time in the Old Testament that people wore sackcloth and ashes. There's a time in our lives that we symbolically wear sackcloth and ashes. When they wore those sackcloth and ashes, the people who came by Job, they knew exactly what state he was in. When people saw Jacob, they saw exactly what state he was in. They could tell by his clothes, this man is in mourning. Or maybe this man is humbling himself, or this man is repenting. This man, something is going on with him, because as you read through the Bible, you see occasions where Israel, when they were faced with an army, I think it was back in 1 Kings 20, what did they do? This army was overwhelming, and they humbled themselves before God. They dressed in sackcloth to show God we rely on you. We are helpless against this trial that's coming against us. We are helpless. We need you, and we will symbolize that by what we put on. Not in our wonderful clothes, not in our party clothes, but to symbolize you to you the humility that we have before you, that we would dress that way. And you and I do the same thing, or should do the same thing today. Not come in sackcloth one week. But we feel that way. And sometimes we see it in people's, and we think something's going on. Something's going on, and we all go through it. And that's okay. That's why we're here to help each other and encourage each other, as we talked about last week, when we see someone going through some hard times to be there for them. You know, it's a symbol even among the Gentiles. Let's go back to Jonah. Jonah. And we see something that's kind of unique here. Of course, you know the story of Jonah and the people of Nineveh that repented. And there was a man of God who was really upset that the people of Nineveh would repent. And yet the people of Nineveh, when they heard God's message, they did. In Jonah 3 and verse 5, after Jonah prophesied to them and said what God was going to do if they didn't repent, in verse 5 it says the people of Nineveh believed God. That came as a surprise to Jonah.
The people of Nineveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast. And they put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When we repent before him, when we're submissive to him, when we are yielding to him, when we humble ourselves before him, we put on sackcloth. We put on sackcloth, and all the people of Nineveh did that. Verse 6, the word came to the king of Nineveh, and he rose from his throne, and he lied aside his robe.
Forget my throne right now. Forget my priests, my kingly garments. He covered himself with sackcloth and satin ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published throughout Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. The entire nation and everything living in it, let's submit to God. Even our animals, don't let them eat or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth and cry mightily to God. Yes, let everyone turn from his evil way and from a violence that is in his hands.
Who can tell if God will turn and relent and turn away from his fierce anger so that we may not perish? God saw the attitude. He saw their commitment through the physical acts that they did.
And he did relent. When God tells us repent, whether it's as a whole people that we need to repent of something that's going on or us individually, when he sees our attitude and we're clothed in repentance and humility before him, and he sees our attitudes yield to him.
It's symbolic of us wearing the sackcloth and ashes today. We don't don those things physically. Maybe we dress a little differently when we're somber and not happy than we do when we're upbeat and cheerful.
But in the Old Testament, the clothing said a lot about the man. It said a lot about him.
Now we could go back to Exodus. Let's go back to Exodus again and visit Israel as they came out of Egypt. Because as they did, God instructed Moses, they're going to build me a tabernacle, later a temple. And as he gave the instructions for that tabernacle, he was pretty detailed in what they were going to have in it. He left nothing to the imagination, nothing to man's devices. He said exactly what was going to be, describing in detail how he wanted every aspect of that building and that tabernacle, later temple, to be. Even the priests who were going to serve him in that temple, he had an idea or he had a pronouncement of what they should be. Let's look at Exodus 28 or how they should dress when they come before him. Exodus 28 verse 1. Now take Aaron your brother, he says to Moses, and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel, that he may minister to me as priest. Aaron and Aaron's sons, Nadab, Abihu, Eliezer, and Ithamar. And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty. This is what Aaron is going to wear.
I'm not going to leave it to his devices. This is how he will appear before me. So you shall speak to all who are gifted artisans, whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom, that they may make Aaron's garments to consecrate him, that he may minister to me as priest. And these are the garments which they shall make. A breastplate, an ephod, a robe, a skillfully woven tunic, a turban, and a sash. This is what he's going to wear. He'll put them on. He'll submit to me. Even in this detail, Aaron, if he's yielded to me, will do exactly what I say. So they shall make holy garments for Aaron, your brother and his sons, that he may minister to me as priests. They shall take the gold, blue, purple, and scarlet thread, and the fine linen. They will make the ephod of all these different colors. And he goes on and on through this chapter, describing in detail what Aaron is going to wear and his sons when they come before God. Are clothes important to God? Sure. How we appear before God is important. He made sure that Aaron was going to come before him exactly the way God wanted to do. And all those elements of what Aaron's priestly garb was have meaning. That would be an old other sermon in itself. What all that means, the ephod and the robe, and what they signified, and what God was showing through what Aaron wore. And it wasn't for the general public. It was just Aaron. These are his garbs. These are his garbets. When he comes before me to serve, this is what he's wearing. And it would be a good Bible study, and maybe somewhere down the road we'll have a sermon on that. But all those things have a spiritual meaning for us, who God is preparing to be, kings and priests. Not necessarily in the physical elements that are there, but certainly in the spiritual elements that he would do. And so he goes on and on in that. If we go down to verse 43, you can read Exodus 28 at your leisure. Verse 43 sums up this instruction. It says, They shall be on Aaron and on his sons when they come into the tabernacle of meeting, or when they come near the altar to minister in the holy place, that they do not incur iniquity and die. That means that was important to God. Aaron, you can't slack off on this. Aaron, this is what you need to do. You can't forget the ephod one day. You can't forget the things of that. You've got to wear it all, because if you don't do it, you could die. Make sure that they do this, that they don't incur iniquity and die. It'll be a statute forever to him and his descendants after him. And as the temple was being ministered, that was what they did. It was important to God.
Well, let's look at one more in the New Testament, another well-known story. This has to do with David and Saul. You can be turning back to 1 Samuel 24. 1 Samuel 24.
And you remember David. He was anointed to be king when he was a teenager.
And Saul was there as king. And it was years, years before David was installed as king, or when he was appointed king, Saul continued to be king. And God wasn't in his purpose to remove Saul immediately after David was anointed. And David learned a lot of lessons during that intervening period before, between the time that he was anointed to be king and he actually was coronated being king. Well, Saul, Saul learned and lost a lot during that period as well.
You remember that Saul got to the point he wanted to kill David. He knew what was going on with David, and he wanted to kill him. And so David spent considerable time running from Saul. In chapter 24, we have the occasion where Saul and David—Saul doesn't know it, but they come basically body to body in the cave. Let's read the first five or six verses here, or seven verses of 1 Samuel 24. It happened when Saul had returned from following the Philistines that it was told him saying, Look, David's in the wilderness of Ngedi. And Saul took three thousand chosen men from all Israel, and went to seek David and his men on the rocks of the wild goats. So he came to the sheepfolds by the road where there was a cave, and Saul went in to attend to his needs. David and his men were staying in the recesses of that cave. Then the men of David said to him, This is the day which the Lord has said to you. Behold, I will deliver your enemy into your hand, that you may do to him as it seems good to you. You know what they were thinking?
Look at this, David. God has delivered Saul into your hands. In their minds, kill him.
Kill him. God must have set this up. But David didn't kill him. Look what David did. David arose and he secretly cut off a corner of Saul's robe. Just a corner.
Why? Well, we say to prove to Saul that he could have killed him. He really was in David's mercy at that point. But he just cut off a corner of Saul's robe. David showed some tremendous restraint. How many of us would have had the same restraint that David had to just cut off a corner when we might have been lured into thinking God delivered him to his hands. Just kill him. Just kill him and finish it. Well, David didn't. He cut off a corner. Verse 5 says it happened afterward that David's heart troubled him because he had cut Saul's robe. Well, if anything, David, you would think would be, you know what? Thank you, God, that I didn't take matters into my own hands and kill him. Thank you that I just cut off a corner of his robe so that I can show him what I could have done. And yet it says David's heart troubled him just because he cut off a corner of his robe. Why would David's heart trouble him just because of that? That seems like such an insignificant thing. But there was something in the corner of the robes of Israel that had meaning. And I won't take the time to go back to Numbers and talk about what was sewn into the corner of robes during that time. That was to remind people that they were gods and that they were gods as in G-O-D apostrophe S, not G-O-D-S, that they were God's people. And to remind them of who they were. And David cut off that corner of the robe, or a corner of the robe. Now if you read through some Jewish websites and Jewish commentaries, you can get some meaning of what it meant, why the significance of that had an effect on David and later an effect on Saul when he saw that what David had done. Let me just read from one of them here that talks about this event. It says, in the case of King Saul, we find that David humiliated him by sneaking up to him in a cave at the spring of Vengetti and cutting off the corner of his robe, a symbol of Saul's authority.
Why was David upset with himself? Because he understood that to steal someone's corner was to steal his authority. Snip, snip. Two little things in his garment, and when I cut that off, I'm doing something and saying something to you that troubled David later when he did it.
Even though David did this to prove to Saul that he was not trying to kill him, the symbol of taking the corner fringe would be humiliation to Saul. This bothered David. David immediately went out of the cave and prostrated himself in humility before Saul to prove to Saul that he was not trying to kill him. Just by taking that corner of that robe had a symbolic meaning that is lost on us today. I didn't understand that until just a few weeks ago when I was putting this together. That just by doing that, just that little piece of that garment, that it would have that meaning and have that kind of an effect on David and that kind of an effect on Saul as well because the clothes had meaning. Now what happened at that time?
We'll see it a minute here. It had an effect on Saul. Well, the word that's translated corner there is really from Hebrew 36-71. It means the edge of one's garment. Let's look at down here in verse chapter 24, down in verse 19. Look at Saul's reaction.
We don't need that in verse 19. Let's pick it up in verse 17. Saul said to David, You are more righteous than I, for you have rewarded me with good, whereas I have rewarded you with evil. And you shown me this day how you have dealt well with me. For when God delivered me into your hand, you didn't kill me. For if a man finds his enemy, will he let him get away safely?
Therefore, David, may the Lord reward you with good for what you have done to me this day.
And now I know indeed that you shall surely be king, and that the kingdom of Israel shall be established in your hand. Now I know you spared my life.
A regular human without God's Spirit would have surely taken my life. But God allowed you to take my authority. Snip, snip. He knew what had been taken from him, and it was an important thing to him, that edge of that garment, the symbolism that it had to him, what it meant to David, and what it meant to Saul as well.
You may think of other places where the edge of someone's garment is mentioned. Let's look for a minute at Ezekiel, or go forward to Ezekiel. And I'll just read one thing here that'll be food for thought for you later. Ezekiel 5, speaking of a time yet ahead of us, because remember, Ezekiel prophesied after the nation of Israel is already taken into captivity. So when he speaks of Israel, these are prophetic events that he's talking about, things that have not yet occurred. In Ezekiel 5 and verse 1, read through the first three verses.
So then you, Son of Man, take a sharp sword, take it as a barber's razor, pass it over your head and your beard, and take scales to wade and divide the hair. You shall burn with fire one third in the midst of the city when the days of the siege are finished.
Then you shall take one third and strike around it with the sword, and one third you shall scatter in the wind. I will draw out a sword after them. Verse 3, You shall also take a small number of them and bind them in the edge of your garment. Take a small number of them and bind them away in the edge of your garment, the very same Hebrew word that's used in that incident between David and Saul. Let me leave that there and let you just kind of think about that.
Let's also go forward to Malachi. Let's go to the New Testament. We're talking about corners of garments. You may have thought about another incident in the New Testament this time, where the corner of someone's garment had significance and played a significant role in things, and the symbolism of it provides a lesson we learned today. Luke 8. The story of the woman who had been plagued with an illness for 12 years and found no healing or relief from the places that she looked. Luke 8 and verse 43. Now a woman having a flow of blood for 12 years. It's a long time, isn't it?
A woman having a flow of blood for 12 years who has spent all her livelihood on physicians and could not be healed by any. She's spent all her time. She spent all her money. What is this cure that this doctor has to say? What is the cure that this doctor has to say? For 12 years, this went on, and nothing changed. It just kept going on and on and on.
She came from behind and touched the border of Christ's garment. The border of Christ's garment. The Greek equivalent of the Hebrew, 3671, edge. She just touched the border of His garment, and immediately her flow of blood stopped.
Immediately, just by touching the corner of that garment.
Was there something magical in that garment? Well, if you had that garment today, you'd never have to think about money again, would you? Just come here and touch this garment.
What was that garment a symbol of? It doesn't say she grabbed him out and caught him by the back and pulled the garment toward her, didn't tap him on the shoulder. What she was going for was the corner of that garment, where the symbol of God's law and who they were was. Christ said, who touched me? When all denied it, Peter and those with him said, Master, the multitudes throng and press you, and you say, who touched me? But Jesus said, someone touched me. I perceived power going out from me.
And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling. And falling down before him, she cleared to him in the presence of all the people the reason she had touched him and how she was healed immediately. After twelve years out of there spending her life's fortune, and he said to her, Daughter, be of good cheer. Your faith has made you well.
Go in peace. Your faith has made you well. You sought me after everything else had been tried, after you went everywhere else, you finally realized it is only in Jesus Christ. If I can just touch what the symbol of that garment is, if I can just touch him, he can heal me.
What does that say for you and me today? Do we all need to have a corner of our garment that we touch? No, it tells us if we would just have faith in God. If we would just do the things that he said and didn't have a divided faith, she was done with everything else. She had spent twelve years doing it. She knew nothing else was going to heal her. Only God. And that was the symbol in that corner of the garment.
Nothing magical about that piece of cloth. Nothing magical about the threads that were there physically. No magic. Faith. Faith in God alone. As symbolized by what she taught and what she needed to touch, and she knew it. She knew it. No divided thoughts and no separation. If I can just touch that, he can heal me. And immediately, she was healed. If we go back to Mark, Mark 6, we find another similar discussion here. You know that when Christ was on earth, all that were brought to him, he healed. Mark 6, verse 56, it says, When we engage God, though we have faith in Him, there is no corner of any man today, of any man's garment that you're going to touch and be made well. There is one who heals. When we reach out and touch Him, without divided loyalty, without divided faith, He'll heal. But none of us are there, are we? We live in a world where we have to perfect that faith. And Christ Himself, as people came to Him, you remember the one that came to Him about His daughter, and He said, you don't even have to go and touch her. I believe that if you just speak the word, she'll be healed. And Christ said, I don't have been found faith like that, and even in Israel. And you have it. The woman who touched Him after 12 years, she had it. We need to work toward it. We need to work toward it, and symbolically have that in mind that when we reach out to God, we come before Him and know that it is Him. It is Him that we are coming before, and who will provide healing. Let's go back to Malachi, last book of the Old Testament. Last book written before Jesus Christ was born, before John the Baptist was born in Malachi 3. Sorry, Malachi 4. I find it interesting prophecy that goes right into what we just read about Jesus Christ. Malachi 4, verse 1. It says, Before the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, they will leave them neither root nor branch. But to you who fear my name, the Son of righteousness shall arise. Those who fear my name, the Son of righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings. You know what Hebrew word wings is? 3671. The same word that it uses to talk about the David and Saul incident. The same Greek equivalent that's talked about in Jesus Christ. The same word that we read in Ezekiel 5.3. And when Jesus Christ went on earth, healing was in His wings, in His edges.
Healing is still in Him. And you shall go out, He says, like well-fed calves.
Well, Jesus Christ had a lot of things to say about garments as well. I'm not going to hit on all of those. You can be thinking about some of those. You know, when He was on earth, people, as I mentioned earlier, they cast lots for His garments.
Valuable things at that time. They didn't like Him, but they liked His garments. And He would talk about things like wedding garments. Let's go back to Matthew 22. Or forward to Matthew 22.
Matthew 22. We recently had a daughter who became engaged, so wedding garments will be, I'm sure, a topic in our household.
Here within the next few months. Matthew 22, verse 11. People are gathered at a wedding feast.
And it says, when the king came in, Matthew 22, verse 11, this is Christ speaking. When the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who didn't have on a wedding garment.
He wasn't dressed for the occasion. So he said to him, friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?
Why are you here? He came inappropriately dressed, and the man was speechless. And the king said to the servant, bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, for many are called, but few are chosen.
Because he didn't have on the right color of suit? Didn't have on the right color of mashing tie?
What was Jesus Christ talking about? Of that wedding? Well, we know what the symbolism is there. We go back to Revelation 19, and we read about writing garments again.
Revelation 19, speaking of the Bride of Christ. The Bride of Christ, Revelation 19.
Verse 7, Let us be glad and rejoice, and give him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his wife has made herself ready.
And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.
That's what their clothes in. That's what defines them.
Not just the physical clothes, important, but the spiritual clothes that we wear, the spiritual garments that we put on.
That we put on and cleanse and perfect and make white through the occasions of our lives.
That's what they're clothed in. But when we go down a little further, this Bride of Christ, we find Jesus Christ returning to earth.
And the Bride is with him. Verse 11, I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And he who sat on him was called Faithful and True.
And in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns.
He was coming back to take over the kingdoms of this world. He had a name written that no one knew except himself, and he was clothed with a robe dipped in blood.
What did that symbolize? He was coming to make war. He was coming to defeat the armies of this world that were gathered against him.
He was coming to take the kingdoms of this earth. He was clothed in blood. Appropriate for what he was coming to, but the armies in heaven, verse 14, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed him on white horse.
The victory would be his. The victory would be his, but his bride, and those dressed in those white clothes would be with him, supporting him.
So Christ uses clothes to, again, show the mood that he's in.
And so God speaks of the spiritual clothes that we wear.
I'm going to go back here because I'll tell you what generated this sermon. It's based on a scripture that I gave a few weeks ago when I spoke back in Isaiah 61.
So let's go back to Isaiah 61 and revisit that.
In Isaiah 61, we have the words that Jesus Christ spoke in Luke 4.
And as he spoke them to the temple people assembled in this temple there that day, he said, Now these are fulfilled in your hearing.
Isaiah 61, verse 1, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he has appointed me to preach good tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted.
And we've talked about the brokenhearted, the melancholy times that we can be in, the downtrodden times.
He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.
And all of us can find ourselves in a prison of sorts where we are held down and we are slaves to whatever is going on.
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the ashes that so many wore when they were in a state of mourning or repentance or humbling, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.
And I put together that sermon, the garment of praise kept sticking in my mind. The garment of praise.
God says, wear the garment of praise. When I come back, people will wear the garment of praise and you know what? It will replace the heaviness that they feel.
Now we pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We talked about that a little bit last week.
You know what happens in heaven, the pictures that we have of it? We have the hosts of heaven praising God.
We can go back and we can read through any number of verses in Revelation. Let me give you a few.
Revelation 4, 11. Revelation 5, 9 through 13. Revelation 7. Revelation 11. Revelation 16. Revelation 19.
You see the hosts of heaven as a community, as a fellowship, all as one, praising God.
As each step of the plan unfolds, as the end of the age comes and the time for Jesus Christ to return comes, they praise God.
They praise God. And the people on earth who are going through these horrific times, they should praise God because they know what the end is.
And there are hard times, and God says there will be heaviness. Praise Him.
Praise Him. Don't lose sight of the fact of who it is that is going to deliver you from these times.
Let's look at Revelation. Let's go back to Revelation and see one verse there. In Revelation 15, speaking of the firstfruits that we had just talked about, and the wedding garbs that they'll have on, in Revelation 15, verse 3, they, and as you see the context is, the firstfruits, they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvelous are your works, Lord God Almighty.
Just and true are your ways, King of the Saints. Who shall not fear you, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations shall come and worship before you, for your judgments have been manifested.
Terrible times on earth. The hosts in heaven praise God. Terrible times that we may go through. What do we do? We praise God.
We recognize who He is. We recognize this is what has to happen. His will be done.
And we replace the garment of heaviness with the garment of praise.
That helps ease some of those situations that we are in because we realize it is God who delivers.
You know, we see a very good example of this back in Acts.
Acts 16.
Paul and Silas find themselves in a situation that I don't think any of us have found ourselves in.
Perhaps sometime in the future, you know, we will find ourselves in this situation.
But they find themselves in prison. They're preaching the Word of God. They're told to stop. They don't. They get thrown into prison.
And in Acts 16, in verse 22, again, people hated the words that Paul was saying. They hated them.
Verse 22, the multitude rose up together against them, and the magistrates tore off their clothes and commanded them to be beaten with rods.
Here's my symbolic thing. I am appalled at what these men are saying. Just get rid of my clothes and let me show you how angry I am. They commanded them to be beaten with rods, and when they had laid many stripes on them, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to keep them securely.
Having received such a charge, you put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks. Can you even imagine? It hasn't happened to me.
But they found themselves in an untenable situation, and all they were doing was God's will.
But at midnight, you know, they could have been moaning. They could have been complaining. This isn't fair. I didn't deserve this. What's going on? Blah, blah, blah.
But at midnight, Paul and Silas were praying, and they were singing hymns to God. They weren't moaning and complaining. They were wrapping themselves in garments of praise.
We'll sing to God. We'll sing praises to Him. We'll sing hymns to Him. And the prisoners were listening to them, thinking, what? These people should be miserable.
They should be doing anything but. But look at them. Look what they're doing. They're singing to their God. Yet their God allowed them to be in this situation.
How can they be singing? How can they be acting like everything is okay?
Suddenly, there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately the doors were opened, and everyone's chains were loosed.
And they went free. And the jailer wanted to be baptized. When he saw this, what a witness!
Look at what they did. I can't even imagine that when you were in prison, you praised God. You clothed yourself in the garments of praise.
Not in misery. Not in woe is me. Not in this isn't fair. This is God's will. This is God's will.
And I'll sing praises to Him, because I believe His will will be done, and as a result of this, I will be more ready for the kingdom of God and the position that He has for me in it.
And they were delivered. They were delivered. Maybe sometimes we need to stop and think. When things aren't going right, when we get that bad health diagnosis, when financially things are troubled, when relationships aren't going right, we praise God.
We look and seek His will, because to wear those garments, we need to be doing God's will and not ignoring God's will.
We need to be putting on the clothes of righteousness. If we expect God to respond to us, let's go back to Isaiah 61.
Isaiah 61. We'll finish verse 3. The garment of praise, He says, I'll give them the garment of praise for the Spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness.
They'll be called trees of righteousness. When they learn this, when they do this, that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.
Giving the glory to Him.
We drop down to verse 10.
It says, I will greatly rejoice in the eternal. My soul shall be joyful in my God, for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation.
When I do His will, when I follow His principles, you know what He'll do to me? He'll clothe me in the garments of salvation.
He will cover me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
That's how God will dress us.
When we do our part, when we have faith in Him, when we look to Him, when we're cognizant of what we're wearing symbolically.
Filthy clothes or clean clothes?
The garments that He wants us to shroud ourselves in?
Or the garments of our own making? Or the garments that the world would teach us that we should clothe ourselves in?
Clothes make the man. Clothes say a lot about us. God says a lot about us. And the things that we do spiritually, physically, the attitudes we display and what we clothe ourselves in is important to Him.
Should be important to us. I ask myself, what am I wearing?
And it's a question we all need to ask ourselves. What are we wearing?
Rick Shabi (1954-2025) was ordained an elder in 2000, and relocated to northern Florida in 2004. He attended Ambassador College and graduated from Indiana University with a Bachelor of Science in Business, with a major in Accounting. After enjoying a rewarding career in corporate and local hospital finance and administration, he became a pastor in January 2011, at which time he and his wife Deborah served in the Orlando and Jacksonville, Florida, churches. Rick served as the Treasurer for the United Church of God from 2013–2022, and was President from May 2022 to April 2025.