Garments of Splendor
Read for This Week's Study: Isaiah 15, 6:18, 51:68, 61, Luke 4:16-20.
Memory Text:
"I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels" (Isaiah 61:10).
Living amid the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, Isaiah preached for more than four tumultuous decades, during which he produced some of the richest texts of the Bible. Written during a time of political, moral, military, and economic turmoil, Isaiahs book is permeated, not just with warnings of gloom and doom upon the unrepentant but with themes of salvation, deliverance, and hope - the hope found in 'the Lord, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel,' the One who says, "I am the Lord thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go" (Isa. 48:17)
Isaiah urged the people to put on the glorious garments of righteousness and to accept Gods salvation. Illustrations describing garments, coverings, and sackcloth help teach spiritual truths that have echoed through the ages. For Isaiahs contemporaries, and us, the question is, again: do we claim the garments for ourselves, or do we continue in the shame of our own defilement and nakedness?
By Permission of: http://www.ssnet.org/