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Garments of Splendor
It’s always easy when reading the Old Testament to get caught up in all the warning of gloom and doom. Critics of the Bible love to point these things out and claim, “Who would want to worship or love a God like that?”
Yet, this is selective reading. Time and again the Lord, amid the warnings, offers a way out of the doom. Yes, rebellion and disobedience bring the fruits of destruction. But always the Lord pleads with His people that this doesn’t have to be: salvation, righteousness, and security are there, if only we would claim them in the name of the Lord.
Read Isaiah 52. What is the message there? What hope is being offered? In that context, what is the meaning of those “garments of splendor” (NIV) that the people are told to wear?
Again, we have the Lord calling His people back to repentance, obedience, and salvation. The “garments of splendor” are the garments of righteousness, the covering that all have who are surrendered to the Lord and who live by faith and obedience to His commandments. It was never complicated: from Eden onward, all God has asked of His people is to live by faith in obedience to Him.
What’s fascinating about Isaiah 52 is how it ends and what comes next. It’s no coincidence that, right after calling the people to put on “garments of splendor,” Isaiah leads into what is the Old Testament’s greatest prophetic description of the substitutionary death of Jesus, the very act that has made the “garments of splendor” available for all who seek them. Only through Christ’s life and death, and all that they involve, could humanity be saved from the ruin that sin has brought.
Interesting, too, how earlier on, in Isaiah 52:3, the gift of salvation, as something we can’t earn or buy, is alluded to. “For thus says the Lord: ‘You have sold yourselves for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money’” (NKJV). How true—we do sell our souls for nothing, for things of this world, a world that will perish like a garment. And this has created a dilemma for us, because it’s a situation that we can’t buy our way out of or work our way through. It has to be only by God’s grace that we are saved, a grace revealed through the incredible sacrifice made for us on the cross.
| WEDNESDAY | May 18 |
It’s always easy when reading the Old Testament to get caught up in all the warning of gloom and doom. Critics of the Bible love to point these things out and claim, “Who would want to worship or love a God like that?”
Yet, this is selective reading. Time and again the Lord, amid the warnings, offers a way out of the doom. Yes, rebellion and disobedience bring the fruits of destruction. But always the Lord pleads with His people that this doesn’t have to be: salvation, righteousness, and security are there, if only we would claim them in the name of the Lord.
Read Isaiah 52. What is the message there? What hope is being offered? In that context, what is the meaning of those “garments of splendor” (NIV) that the people are told to wear?
Again, we have the Lord calling His people back to repentance, obedience, and salvation. The “garments of splendor” are the garments of righteousness, the covering that all have who are surrendered to the Lord and who live by faith and obedience to His commandments. It was never complicated: from Eden onward, all God has asked of His people is to live by faith in obedience to Him.
What’s fascinating about Isaiah 52 is how it ends and what comes next. It’s no coincidence that, right after calling the people to put on “garments of splendor,” Isaiah leads into what is the Old Testament’s greatest prophetic description of the substitutionary death of Jesus, the very act that has made the “garments of splendor” available for all who seek them. Only through Christ’s life and death, and all that they involve, could humanity be saved from the ruin that sin has brought.
Interesting, too, how earlier on, in Isaiah 52:3, the gift of salvation, as something we can’t earn or buy, is alluded to. “For thus says the Lord: ‘You have sold yourselves for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money’” (NKJV). How true—we do sell our souls for nothing, for things of this world, a world that will perish like a garment. And this has created a dilemma for us, because it’s a situation that we can’t buy our way out of or work our way through. It has to be only by God’s grace that we are saved, a grace revealed through the incredible sacrifice made for us on the cross.
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