And this is Leslie Curran saying hello and welcome once again to the program. I'm glad you've tuned in and I hope that you will stay with us for the next 15 minutes as we let the Bible speak. If you've got a question concerning salvation or perhaps you're a backslider and you need to return to the Lord and know again the joy of God's salvation in your heart, but there are questions that you need help with, then do feel free to make contact with us and we'll be glad to help you from God's Word.

And now here to let the Bible speak is the Reverend John Greer. May I say that it is a great pleasure to come again with the Word of God and I pray that as we consider the Lord's truth today, he will write that word of his upon all our hearts. I welcome you also.

It is a joy to have you listening in to this program. We encourage you to continue listening today and in times to come as we come weekly with this broadcast and present to you the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Now in Isaiah 61 verse 10 we have the prophet Isaiah rejoicing.

It's a good situation when a man is able to rejoice and here is this man Isaiah who was of course only a man, certainly a great man, a prophet of God, but a man nonetheless like all other men and a man who was a sinner and who felt his sinfulness before God and yet he is able to rejoice and able to exult within his soul over all that his Savior meant to him. And the verse says, 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. This is very picturesque language, very graphic language, but it's dealing with a great need in the life of any man, that is to have a covering for the soul, a covering for the soul.

You see Isaiah speaks here in poetic language in the latter part of the verse where he says this, he hath covered me, that is God had covered him, then he says with the robe of righteousness, with the garments of salvation, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels. Now obviously there is the figure of marriage here in these closing words of this verse, he talks about the bridegroom, he talks about the bride, he speaks of them both being adorned, decked with ornaments and adorned with jewels, and of course in many many cases in Bible times people were exceedingly rich, and certainly the terms here are the token and the evidence of the richness of the eastern marriage situation where the young couple, the bridegroom and the bride, as they're going to be brought together would actually as part of their covering, their adornment, be decked with ornaments and with jewels. And this of course was a feature of Jewish marriage that is taken here by the prophet Isaiah and used in a spiritual sense.

And what he's really talking about is in the spiritual sense is that man in himself is poverty stricken, he is bare and naked before God as it were, and he needs the richness and the wealth of Christ to be his own. And you see this is one of the ways in which the gospel is presented, it is set forth in the Word of God under these kinds of terms, jewels and riches. We read in the New Testament about the unsearchable riches of Christ, we read about the riches of his grace, the riches of his glory, the riches of his love and so on.

And therefore the Bible does take this language and this kind of terminology to convey to us that when a man is saved his soul is given this richness before God because of the merits of Christ being applied to his heart and to his life, the unsearchable riches of Christ. In the parable we read of the pearl of great price and the pearl of great price is Christ, the gospel, his salvation. We read of the treasure hidden in the field and Christ is that treasure.

Christ is of course not seen by men as he really is, he is like a treasure hidden in a field and he must be sought out and when men find him then they find that they have come into possession of the greatest spiritual blessing and benefit and it's termed as a treasure. So the Bible uses this language and we need to understand this and when the Lord talks here about the bridegroom and the bride he's therefore talking about a marriage and they're brought together, they're united one with the other and they're decked in all their ornaments and in all their jewels and the Lord is saying that when a man is saved it is like coming together, the coming together of the bridegroom and the bride. Now in the Bible the bridegroom is Christ, he's clearly spoken of that in Matthew 25 where it says behold the bridegroom cometh but in the Bible those who are saved, the whole company of the saved are referred to as the bride.

So the language begins to make a lot of sense, there is the Lord, he's

“The message centers on the glorious truth that every sinner needs a spiritual covering before a holy God. Drawing from Isaiah 61:10, Reverend John Greer explains that Isaiah rejoiced because God had clothed him with "the garments of salvation" and "the robe of righteousness." Using the imagery of a bride and bridegroom adorned with beautiful garments and jewels, he illustrates how Christ, the heavenly Bridegroom, clothes His redeemed people with His own righteousness. Humanity, because of sin, stands spiritually naked, guilty, and unacceptable before God, unable to earn salvation through personal merit. However, through Christ's perfect obedience to God's law and His sacrificial death on the cross, a complete covering for sin has been provided. Christ fulfilled both the demands and the penalty of the law, making His righteousness available to all who trust in Him. The sermon concludes with a heartfelt invitation for listeners to seek Christ, receive His gift of salvation, and find forgiveness, acceptance with God, and eternal life through faith in His finished work.”

More on this epiosde

the bridegroom, there is the church, the company of the redeemed and they comprise the bride of Jesus Christ and here we have this idea of the loveliness of Christ and the beauty of the bride because what belongs to the bridegroom also belongs to the bride, that's the thought here. The bridegroom is decked with ornaments but so is the bride and the thought is that when a sinner is saved, when a sinner is brought to Christ, that sinner is given the beauty of Christ in terms of Christ's righteousness being made over to that person's account all the richness and benefit and blessing of the finished work of Christ becoming the possession of that soul and as we think about this then begin to see what this verse is saying because in the earlier part of the verse Isaiah is rejoicing because God he says has clothed me with the garments of salvation, covered me with the robe of righteousness and what he's saying is that salvation and righteousness are the rich jewels that God gives to sinners, to clothe them, to cover them, to give them an acceptance with him at his heavenly bar of justice. So he speaks here of the garments of salvation, he speaks of the robe of righteousness.

In the Bible we therefore are being told that salvation is like a covering, this is the whole idea of this verse, a covering, you have the jewels, you have the ornaments covering the person, you have the garments of salvation, the robe of righteousness covering the individual and salvation you see provides a covering left to ourselves. We are ugly, sin has made man ugly, sin has robbed man of everything that he had in Adam. Adam fell and the whole race fell in and with Adam.

The whole human race has been stripped and robbed of all that is right, all that is pure, all that is holy, all that is decent, all that is glorifying to God. All men are vile and loathsome and sinful before God. They have no standing with him, they have no acceptance with him.

They deserve only eternal wrath because they live in constant rebellion against his word, against his will, against his truth and therefore man does need a covering for his soul and this covering is found in Christ. It is described here as the garments of salvation, the robe of righteousness. What marvellous terms these are.

Now our Lord Jesus Christ is the one through whom this covering is provided and he does so because of his own perfect obedience to the law and to the will of the Father. God requires perfect obedience. He requires that the sinner will give a full compliance with his will, with his mind, with his word, with divine truth and unless this is the case then the sinner will truly perish and will be lost forevermore and therefore you need a covering for your soul.

Your soul is bare and naked and ugly before God. There's nothing attractive about man in his sin. There's nothing that is of any value or any worth or any merit about man in all his sin.

He is ugly and I use that word deliberately. Sin has left man in a state of ugliness in the sight of God. There's nothing nice about sin.

There's nothing that is attractive about sin. People think that there is. They think that sin is glamorous and it's dressed up of course by the ungodly world in which we live through various means to make it have this attractive appearance, this seeming beauty and yet sin is that which is heinous because it is the transgression of the law of God.

There's nothing nice. There's nothing right. There's nothing proper.

There's nothing that is good about man's sin. Whatever sin you care to mention, his adultery, his murder, his theft, his lying, his deceit, his drunkenness and so on. There's nothing nice about that.

There's nothing appealing there. It should be repulsive to us if we only could see it as it is and this is the state that we're all in by nature and therefore we need our souls covered over, our guilt dealt with and of course the corruption of our sin also taken away and the Lord does it through his own dear son's obedience. Christ came into the world to live for men and then die for men.

He came into the world to give himself in order to save them and in giving himself, he gave himself to perfect obedience. The law of God has been fulfilled exactly. It has been honored.

It has been obeyed in totality and therefore there is a positive righteousness for men but the law also demands satisfaction in its penalty. Death must be suffered for a broken law and Christ suffered that death at the cross and therefore he has given a full obedience which means that for sinners like you and me there is a righteousness, there's a covering that will conceal our guilt, that will lead to our acceptance with God and the forgiveness of our sins and eternal life. You must seek the Lord today for this covering.

May you do so. May you trust Christ. May you hasten to him and rest alone in his finished work and may that be so today for Christ's sake.