Dennis Tuuri

Okay, sermon text Isaiah 61 and we’ll read the last few verses, verses 10 and 11. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Isaiah 61:10 and 11.

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall be joyful in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness. As a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

For as the earth brings forth its bud, as the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations. Let us pray.

Oh Father, we thank you for this great truth that we have just read. We thank you that the Lord Jesus came to be your servant to effect redemption for your people. We thank you, Lord God, for this celebration of his ascension.

Bless us, Lord God, by your spirit and word. Transform us and beautify us, Lord God, that we might be a people of praise and beauty and glory to you today and forever. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, today marks the terminal point in liturgical churches, the first half of the church year. And today is the day celebrated as Ascension Sunday for this particular year, 2004. Ascension Sunday is a commemoration of the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This ascension is found described for us in the gospels and then primarily in the book of Acts. Ascension Day is 40 days after the resurrection of Christ. And it concludes the great first half of the church year.

Now, if you’ve been here long, you know that there are two great feast days of the church year: Christmas and Resurrection Sunday. Christmas is the so-called fixed feast, a set day, December 25th. Resurrection Sunday is the movable feast. It moves with reference to Passover in the calendar. And then around these two great orbs float this first half of the church year and in essence all of the church year. These are the two great festivals.

Christmas is preceded by four weeks of anticipation that we call Advent. And so there’s this anticipation of the birth, the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christmas moves on then to the celebration of New Year’s. Typically in liturgical churches, it is associated with the circumcision of the Savior on the eighth day, the beginning of his suffering—the beginning of the letting of blood and the great picture of the removal of uncleanness of old Adam and becoming a new creature. Circumcision definitively in the scriptures, eighth day is a new creation event. And so Jesus is pictured as bringing humanity into that new creation on the day of circumcision.

We refer to it as New Year’s Day. And then the great Christmas season ends with Epiphany as Jesus is revealed to the nation in the form of the magi. And so we commemorate that part of the advent of Christ, the history of Jesus Christ through that first quarter of the year beginning in December.

And then we move into the consideration of the movable feast, Easter. And that also has preparation time for it. But it’s a different sort of preparation. It’s a preparation that begins at Ash Wednesday and Lent. It’s anticipation of the suffering of Jesus prior to his resurrection. 40 days, but really about 46 because it was commanded by the early church that you could not fast on the Lord’s day. And so the 40 days of fasting were interrupted with the regular reminder that the fasting is in the context of the great feast that Jesus has accomplished.

That the meditation on the suffering and death of Christ and his ministry is always placed in the context, the weekly context, then of resurrection, strength, and delight.

So the days of preparation, considering what happened to our Savior historically and his death and resurrection. But that isn’t the end of that cycle. Resurrection Sunday is followed 40 days later by Ascension. For 40 days, Jesus in resurrected form walks the earth, doing things, being with his disciples.

Now that’s very significant. And the churches that celebrate this calendar, they have a wonderful thing to meditate on. And we do today, preaching as I do today on Ascension Sunday because 40 is always a picture of judgment, curse, and death. 40 days of rain in the flood, 40 years in the wilderness, 40 years of Philistine oppression before the picture of Christ—one of the pictures, Samson—comes forward to deliver Israel. 40. It’s always down. It’s bad. It’s a tough time.

And even in the celebration of the church here, 40 days of Lent, remembering the 40 days of Christ in the wilderness. But then you see, then we’re reminded that the 40 days themselves have been transformed from a time of fasting and remembrance of temptation and wilderness and judgment for sin. And 40 now becomes the mark of the resurrected Savior. 40 days of celebration. 40 days of instructing the disciples. You see tremendous picture of the movement of history from the old world to the new world in this transition from Lent to the 40 days leading up to ascension. 40 days of resurrection strength. Praise God. This is a wonderful thing to meditate and contemplate.

And then the ascension of the Savior, recorded for us as I said in a couple of the gospels and in the book of Acts. And then next Sunday in the church calendar begins a new cycle. This is the end of the consideration of the ministry of Jesus Christ. We’ve celebrated and look forward to his advent and incarnation. We celebrated his circumcision. We’ve celebrated his revelation to the nation. And during that period leading up to Ash Wednesday, we celebrate his ministry on earth. And then we celebrate his movement toward the cross, the lengthening of the shadows.

Even as our days lengthen in light, the lengthening of his shadows as he moves to the cross. And then the preparation for the great joy of resurrection through Good Friday. We celebrate all of that. And now we’ve celebrated 40 days of his resurrection ministry and thought maybe a little bit about how the world was completely transformed in this movement from 40 to now, the number of resurrection strength. And then we celebrate his ascension, and he ascends to the right hand of the Father, and there he is seated. And this completes the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then the next Sunday is Pentecost Sunday. 50 days—so 10 days after ascension—comes Pentecost. And now the Lord Jesus Christ, reigning at the right hand of the Father, pours down the gift of the empowerment of the Spirit for the task of the church, for the work of ministry. Now the church is robed with power and authority in the person of the Holy Spirit. Now the church is handed the baton to complete the work that Christ has definitively completed but leaves us to work out in the context of history.

The church refers to the next six months of the church calendar as days of ordinary time. Not ordinary in the sense of insignificant. But you see, the work of Jesus Christ has reestablished ordinary time when men and women, boys and girls are in the power of the Holy Spirit representing Jesus Christ, and the work of the ministry continues now. And all that begins with the celebration of Pentecost.

The great commission will be accomplished. Exercise of dominion over the whole world will be accomplished. Had an interesting little tour on Saturday with a man named Von Longenecker about how, in a sense, the Oregon territory is the completion of the dominion mandate. The fur—the west expansion of civilization, of the gospel, has become complete at the time of the settling of Oregon in the 19th century. Not just Oregon, the whole Oregon territory here.

And it’s so interesting that the territory is essentially settled, has its first school, its first government, and first culture really, first birth through a man named Jason Lee, who was a Methodist Episcopal minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ responding to the call of Indians—some Nez Perce Indians—who had to travel across the land to ask that they wanted this book of heaven. They wanted the Bible. They wanted people to teach them the Bible.

The dominion mandate of mankind, in a sense, goes around the whole world after the coming of Christ. And this is where the end of it all happened. We now live in ordinary time when the church of Jesus Christ continues to transform the world. This is the great message of this transition now to the second half of the church year. The church year is a consideration of the work of the church now, based upon the first half, the consideration of the work of Jesus Christ.

Now I want to talk a little bit today about ascension in relationship to clothing, and I want to talk about the relationship of this to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the one ascended on high. The text I read from Isaiah is a text that is the completion of the first few verses of that passage. Chapter 61 of Isaiah begins, of course, with the statement of Jesus Christ that he preached—at his sermon recorded in the gospels—about the acceptable year of the Lord, the year of Jubilee being accomplished. He comes as the servant of the Lord to transform the world and to give the blind sight, etc. And so Isaiah 61 specifically refers, in the first place, to Jesus Christ who is speaking forth that he is the servant of God come to effect salvation.

Now the last few verses that I read—that we’re clothed with the garments of salvation—certainly apply to the church of Jesus Christ. Certainly there are verses to rejoice in the great accomplishment of salvation by our Savior, and that we are now clothed with garments of salvation. But that is only true because Jesus Christ, still speaking here in the first person, is the one who is essentially clothed with the garments of salvation, having accomplished his work.

We remember from the gospel of John the importance of the clothes of Jesus Christ—the burial clothes, the soldiers gambling for his robe. You remember being stripped naked on the cross, and we remember the significance of all that as we talked about a little bit at—Ezekiel’s baptism. How Jesus Christ takes upon himself the sin of the second Adam, and he is the one who is essentially stripped in identification with Adam’s sense of nakedness. He takes upon himself the sin of fallen humanity. And then in his resurrection, he receives light as a garment.

But then finally, at his ascension on high, he is clothed with the garments of rule and of power. And then when we see descriptions of Jesus in the ascended state, we see tremendous garments of glory, brilliance, and light. And so Jesus Christ is the one who is robed, I think, in the first instance in Isaiah 61 in our text. And he is then the one who is robed with the garments of salvation. And on the basis of his robing, then we robe ourselves. All of this based on our union with the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, last week we talked about ascension, didn’t we? We talked about the worship of the church and we talked about the central significant offering in chapter 1 of Leviticus being the ascension offering—that what the offering system was describing to us and what we reenact in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in Christian worship does not stop with forgiveness of sins. That’s the beginning. That’s the purification. But the essential purpose for which Christ comes is not forgiveness of sins in and by itself but linked to us becoming a new creature, to ascending to the Father as that animal representing us ultimately. Christ ascends with the ascension offering of Leviticus chapter 1.

And in fact, all of the offerings—the ascension offering, the tribute offering, the peace offering, the purification offering, the reparation offering—all of those offerings, at least in part, each of them is burned on an altar of some sort. And so all of them are essentially ascension offerings. All of them are picturing just what Leviticus 1 focuses upon: this transformation of the people of God and the new humanity of Christ, this transformation into the ascended state of the Savior. They all picture, ultimately, yes, the forgiveness of sins on the cross, the resurrection, but essentially then they climax as the church here climaxes in the ascension of Jesus Christ to the right hand of the Father.

Ascension is the central meaning. Then, can be seen from one perspective as the central meaning of the Christian faith. The ascension of Christ completes his work and informs us on who we are through the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Now the ascension of Jesus Christ is pictured in the ascension offering of Leviticus 1. And I want to just mention an important element of that ascension. Let me, before I do that, however, turn to Luke. The last chapter of Luke’s Gospel. And Luke concludes with this description from which we get the initial recording of the ascension of Jesus Christ. We read in verse 50 at the very end of the gospel that he led them out as far as Bethany, and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. And it came to pass when he blessed them that he was parted from them and carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God.

So the ascension of Christ is how Luke’s gospel ends. And then Luke’s second volume of his work, the book of Acts, begins, of course, with the ascension of Christ. So turn to Acts chapter 1, and we kind of repick the story back up that Luke closes out for us. And he talks in chapter one of the Acts that he’s writing, making this account of what the Holy Ghost has accomplished through Christ, and he describes that the coming of Jesus.

And then in verse 6, when they therefore were come together, they asked him, saying, “Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” And he said unto them, “It’s not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in his own power. But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.”

And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight. And when they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by him in white apparel, which also said, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? The same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.”

And this account from Luke’s Gospel, in the book of Acts, ties the ascension of Jesus Christ, of course, to next week’s celebration, the day of Pentecost. And Jesus says that on the basis of his ascension, then the Spirit will be given. John’s Gospel—remember, Jesus said that the spirit out of the midst of their bellies would come rivers of living water. This he spoke of the Spirit who had not yet been given because he had not yet been glorified.

And when we looked at John’s Gospel, we saw that on the cross water comes out of the side of Christ, a picture of what will happen in its fullness at his glorification, at the right hand of the Father. And there’s a glorification of the cross, but then essentially the glorification is completed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ and then his ascension. So ascension is linked in the scriptures to the gift, the clothing, as it were, of the disciples of Jesus for power, and the power specifically to carry out the great commission, to be witnesses of the Lord Jesus Christ in all the world, and to essentially change the face of all the world based upon his definitive work that he has accomplished in his ascension.

Now I mentioned that there’s a detail of the ascension offering given to us in Leviticus 1 that I wanted to mention briefly in this consideration of the ascension of Jesus Christ. He is, as I said, the perfect ascension offering, and he is the one who has ascended on high, and he is the ascension that is pictured for us rather in Leviticus 1.

Now in Leviticus 1:6 we read this about the ascension offering. Remember, it’s the one that’s called a whole burnt offering, but it’s not wholly burnt up. The purpose is not that it’s burnt. Rather, it’s an ascension offering, and it’s not really an offering—it’s a drawing near. But in verse 6 we’re told how it’s not totally burned up. It says he shall then skin the burnt offering and cut it into its pieces. So the burnt offering, the skin of the burnt offering, is removed, and then the burnt offering is placed—the ascension offering rather—is cut up into its constituent pieces. It doesn’t mean stew meat. It means that the body parts were cut apart and they’re kind of constituent elements, and then they were placed upon the altar and transformed through the fire, ascending then, ascends up to the right hand of the Father.

Why is the animal skinned? Well, in the scriptures, skin is linked to clothing. And what it reminds us of, of course, is the clothing of Adam and Eve. The fact that they recognize their nakedness. They try to provide skins of their own, clothing of their own. And it seems like what we have here in part at least is a recognition that when Jesus Christ comes, he will also be stripped, as it were. He will enter into the nakedness of Adam, taking our sins upon him on the cross. And then he’ll receive a new glorified body upon his resurrection, and when he’s ascended to the right hand of the Father, receives these garments and clothing of salvation and rule and reign.

Skin is linked to clothing. For instance, later in Leviticus, it talks about the effects of leprosy. And leprosy can attack a man’s skin, but it can also—there are specific regulations for finding leprosy in the garments of the man and in the house of the man. The house is an extended version of the garments of the man. So skin in the scriptures is linked to clothing. In fact, this very word used to skin the animal in Leviticus 1:6 is used later in Leviticus 16:23 and in 1 Samuel 19 to refer to the stripping off of garments.

So the same word that says you remove the skin from the animal is the same word, the exact same Hebrew term, that’s used for the removal of clothes. And then this leprosy idea. So skin and clothing are connected in the context of the scriptures. And so the idea is that as God had Adam and Eve strip themselves of their attempt to clothe themselves and then clothe them with new garments in Genesis 3, so also Jesus Christ, the ascension offering—there’s this stripping that goes on to the end that he will put on new and better garments at the right hand of God the Father.

So skin and clothing are analogous to one another. The offering, the ascension offering of Christ, reminds us again of the removal of clothing and then the remedy: that God will clothe our Savior and clothe humanity in the context of our Savior, certainly in his resurrection, but then finally and fully in his beautified state at the right hand of the Father.

So the scriptures picture Jesus Christ as the perfect ascension offering who is stripped of his seamless garment or skin, dressed in shame as it were, crucified naked, and then receives the garments of glory and praise and salvation that are described for us in Isaiah 61, ascends to the right hand of the Father to the place of rule and authority, and his garments there are pictured for us as brilliant white, shining garments.

We read, for instance—look at—well, let me just list. As I read Daniel 7:9, “I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of Days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool. His throne was like the fiery furnace, and his wheels as burning fire.”

Now, frequently—and I’ll get to this summer when I preach through the book of Daniel—but we normally associate the Ancient of Days with the Father. But notice that this text tells us explicitly, and this is a prophetic text of what’s going to happen after the restoration of God’s people and when Messiah comes, this is what’s going to happen. Daniel starts these visions up in chapter 7. They go through the end of chapter 12, and this Ancient of Days is described several times. But notice the detail of what verse 9 says.

“I looked until thrones were cast down, man’s empires, and the Ancient of Days did sit.” So the Ancient of Days here is somebody, a personage, who sits at the same time as the empires of the world are dealt with definitively. This is the Lord Jesus Christ, is my point. The term “Ancient of Days”—we think of Jesus in terms of his incarnation and humanity, certainly. But Jesus Christ is eternally begotten of the Father. He is, as old as we could say, as the Father is. But this term “Ancient of Days” is probably not a very good translation. A better understanding of the Hebrew now has the emphasis of eternalness—that this is one who has been eternally, forever and ever, before time, outside of time. This seems to be a reference to the work of Jesus Christ. The Father doesn’t sit. Jesus Christ, in his glory, in his ascension, then sits at the right hand of the Father.

Verse 13 we read that “one like the Son of Man came at the clouds of heaven and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him, and there was given him dominion and glory and a kingdom and a people.”

So one like the Son of Man comes. And verse 22 of that same text says this: “Until the Ancient of Days came and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High, and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom.”

So the message here is that this eternal personage is seated. Someone like the Son of Man. Now, the Son of Man was Ezekiel. He’s identified—Ezekiel, this contemporary of Daniel—a person it comes to the Ancient of Days and receives power. And verse 22 tells us who it is. Verse 22 identifies this person receiving dominion as the saints of the Most High. We are one like the Son of Man. We are Christians. And as Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father and is seated in those glorious robes of power and glory, we are the ones. The time comes that the saints then possess the kingdom of God.

Now, the point I’m trying to make is that we have here a description of the glorified Jesus Christ at the right hand of the Father in robes of beautiful brilliance and glory. The same thing is told to us in Revelation 1. John hears Jesus talking to him. He turns to see who is talking to him. And we read in verse 13, “In the midst of the seven candlesticks are one like the Son of Man.” Now, this is Jesus clothed with a garment down to the foot, girt about at the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire, and his feet like fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters.

The scriptures, when they describe the resurrected and ascended Lord Jesus Christ, use terminology to describe Jesus being clad with brilliant white robes of power and authority, golden girdle, all that stuff. Those are the garments of glory and praise that Jesus Christ receives as he’s seated at the right hand of the Father.

And so there is this relationship in the scriptures of ascension, stripping off of one kind of clothing, putting on of a new kind of clothing. And in the ascension of Jesus Christ and in his seated state at the right hand of the Father, he has these brilliant robes of glory and power placed upon him.

Now in Exodus chapter 28, for both Aaron and his sons, God commanded that there might be holy garments made for Aaron “for glory,” we read, “and for beauty.” For glory and for beauty. The Old Testament priests ministered in garments that were, of course, a prefigurement of the work of Jesus Christ. Hebrews takes great pains to describe Jesus as the better priest, the Melchizedek priest, but as a type of Aaron—Aaron, of whom rather Aaron was a type. And the brilliant garments and clothing of Aaron are typological of the Savior in his ascended state. And so Aaron and his sons, the priests, have garments of glory, garments of beauty. This is a description of what Jesus will be clothed with upon his ascension.

And this tells us that clothing, particularly the clothing of Jesus, but also the clothing of his ministers, has a direct connection to glory. We think of clothing today, and in our day and age as Christians, as kind of a utilitarian thing. But the scriptures connect clothing to glory, power, and beauty—or to shame. On the other hand, clothing can be understood in its scriptural teaching as being a picture of beauty and glory.

You know, when we dress ourselves this morning, I didn’t just put on something, you know. I’m not a BMO, before you—a black moving object. I didn’t just put on something to cover myself. No, we believe that clothing is a representation of beauty, don’t we? We know that. We know it instinctively. But the scriptures tell us explicitly that God’s people are clothed with beauty and glory, represented by their priests. Not just Aaron, but his sons, the priests as well. And in fact, the whole nation of Israel is a nation full of priests. He said, “I’ll make you a nation of priests.” And all of the nation of Israel had particular clothing, distinctive clothing. They had to wear a tassel, indicating their priestly nature that they were. And so these garments are garments of glory. Our clothing is a representation of glory, is my point here.

We don’t get up and just dress ourselves for utilitarian purposes. Now, some young men typically do, but they don’t have to get very far in their teenage maturity before they realize that there is a degree of attraction that women will have or not have for the way you dress. And they begin to contemplate then what clothing is all about, and the scriptures tell us that clothing is linked to glory and beauty. It’s a good thing. Now it’s not a good thing to have our only glory and beauty be in our clothing—that’s the other side of the coin that Paul addresses. Let your attire not just be with these beautiful items that you put on. But we do put beautiful items on, and there’s absolutely no reason to feel bad about that. God commanded that his priests, representing himself and the new creation, the new humanity in Christ, be clothed in these clothes—clothes of glory and beauty.

And in fact, if we think about clothing in the Old Testament, many men are robed in such beautiful garments. We think of Joseph, for instance, and his robing by his father rather. So clothing is related in the scriptures to glory. And this is because essentially then Jesus, and the ascended, in his ascended state at the right hand of the Father, is the ultimate representation of clothing is glory.

But Jesus Christ also—his clothing is a picture of rule and authority. And in the scriptures, clothing is often associated with rule and authority. For instance, we know that Joseph was robed on three separate occasions. He was given a robe by his father to indicate his rule in the context of the father’s house. He was robed by Potiphar as he was placed in charge of Potiphar’s household and Potiphar’s position in the land of Egypt. And then finally, Pharaoh robes Joseph with the robe of authority. He gives him this robe, indicating his power and authority.

So robes are specifically connected in the scriptures to rule and authority. For instance, in 1 Kings 22:10, “the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, having put on their robes, sat each one on his throne.” So the robe is specifically connected to power and authority and the glory of rule and authority for the king of Israel and the king of Judah.

Ezra the elder wore a robe and he tore it in Ezra 9:3. He says, “When I heard this thing of the sinfulness of God’s people, I tore my garment and my robe.” So Ezra, as a man of God, is robed with a sense of authority and power. He’s a covenantal head, a ruler of the people, and as such, he has this robing and authority, just like Joseph did. And so robes and garments are linked not just to glory and beauty, but specifically they’re linked to rule and authority.

Even the one whom the king favors—Joseph—when he receives his robe, we’re told in Genesis 41:42, Pharaoh took his signet ring off of his hand. He put it on Joseph’s hand, and he clothed him in garments of fine linen and put a gold chain around his neck. So it is also a bestowal of honor from another ruler to be robed in this way.

King Ahasuerus honored Mordecai in Esther 6:8 and 9. In the same way he says, “Let a royal robe be brought which the king has worn and a horse on which the king has ridden which has a royal crest placed on its head. Then let the robe and horse be delivered to the hand of one of the king’s most noble princes, that he may array the man whom the king delights to honor.” So robes are a picture of the king’s delight, honor, and in a sense a transferal of authority.

In that sense, Belshazzar in the book of Daniel, after Daniel interprets the vision, Belshazzar is pictured as coming to faith in the God of Daniel. He had—he was the false son. He had thrown off a consideration of Daniel. He was mocking God with the use of the temple instruments in chapter 5 of the book of Daniel. Daniel gives him the vision, tells him the judgment of God is upon him, and then Belshazzar, we read, gave the command and they clothed Daniel with purple and put a chain of gold around his neck and made a proclamation concerning him that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.

So again, robing garments—not just for glory and beauty—but associated with strength and rule.

Even the king’s virgin daughters, David’s virgin daughters, in 2 Samuel 13:18, we read that “she had on a robe of many colors, for the king’s virgin daughters wore such apparel.” And so robes identify the king’s daughters who are virgins. And so robes are given for particular purposes to show particular honor and glory.

Robes, clothing are related to glory and beauty, but they’re also related specifically to function. And so when the Lord Jesus Christ ascends to the right hand of the Father, the description in Revelation 1 and Daniel 7 is that he has beautiful, glorious robes as Aaron’s high priest would have. But these are robes of rule and authority that he’s been given as well. And they’re a picture in the scriptures of his rule and authority from the right hand of the Father.

And in fact, in his ascension, he’s described as leading captivity captive. He takes a train of those who he’s conquered in his train, so to speak, in his robe. He’s robed with the demonstration, so to speak, of his power and authority over even his enemies.

And so the ascension of Christ is linked to his clothing. It’s linked to glory, beauty, and power and authority to reign. Robing then, and clothing, is specifically, as I said, related in the scriptures to office and calling as well.

Jonathan, when Jonathan learns that David has been chosen by God to have his throne of Israel, he takes off his robe—Jonathan does—and he places the robe upon David, signifying that David has now taken his place.

The great story of Shebna and Eliakim in Isaiah 22 is a similar thing. Remember, Shebna is the man that feathers his own nest. He’s an unfaithful steward. And specifically, we read in Isaiah 22, “I will drive you out of your office, and from your position, I will pull you down. Then it shall be in that day that I will call my servant Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah. I will clothe him with your robe and strengthen him with your belt. I will commit your responsibility into his hand. He shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. The key of the house of David will I lay on his shoulder. He shall open and no one shall shut. He shall shut and no one shall open.”

Clothing represents calling. And very specifically, of course, in the story of Hilkiah, we see the story of Jesus Christ. Jesus explicitly identifies himself in the epistle in Revelation 2 and 3 as the one who has this key of David that opens and no one shuts, shuts and no one opens. He identifies himself specifically to Eliakim, who has been given the robe of authority by the Father. And so Eliakim is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ and specifically a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ in his ascension, receiving the robe of authority, the key of David that unlocks and locks.

So robes and clothing are specifically related to the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ to beauty, glory, power, and calling.

Now, there are also specific occasions in the Old Testament that are given over to consideration of clothing, and in the New. For instance, in Matthew 22:11, “when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment.” The parable of the wedding ceremony is one that tells us when you have a wedding ceremony, a particular ceremony, you’re supposed to put on a particular kind of garment, a garment of joy, beauty, and glory.

And so specific occasions in the scriptures call for specific garments, special garments. Tamar had widow’s garments. The garments identified the fact that she was a widow, and she took them off after her days of widowhood were completed. So we have these pictures of clothing and the importance of clothing throughout the scriptures.

And finally, as I referred to earlier, the priests of Israel were to wear specific distinctive garments—not just the high priest and his sons, but the entire nation of Israel. They were all priests. And as a priestly nation, they represented God to the gentile God-fearers and to the rest of the world.

You know, priesthood in the Old Testament is like priesthood in the New Testament. The word presbyteros, or the Greek word presbyterion, comes to our English word presbyter. The English word presbyter is essentially the same word as the English word priest. They have the same root. Pres is a priest. How can this be? Because the priest in the Old Testament was never the sort of priest that we think of—that somehow you have to go through the priest to get to God. That was never the case with the Old Testament priesthood of Israel, the high priest or his sons. The priesthood of the priestly nation in the Old Testament was a representative priesthood to the nations.

In other words, when the priests did their thing in the temple and in the sacrificial system, they represented God to the people. But when the people went home, they didn’t need to get a priest to pray through. They didn’t need to get a priest to get blessings from God or grace mediated through the priest. The priest simply represented God in the formal worship of the church of the Old Testament.

And in the same way, the nation of Israel represented God to the gentile nations. They weren’t somehow dispensers of grace themselves. They were simply representatives of God to the Gentiles. And then they would, in a picture of what Jesus would accomplish, they would represent the congregation through the work of Jesus, the coming sacrifice, to God the Father as well.

So the Old Testament garments to the priests, you know, we’re told explicitly in the scriptures that the Old Testament, the nation of Israel was to be a nation of priests. And so we don’t have special priests who are mediators with the high priest and his sons. The entire culture of Israel was composed of priests. They were a priestly nation. They had priestly garb to represent that to the gentile God-fearers. And that was distinctive from the actual priests who ministered in the tabernacle and temple. They had, as I mentioned earlier, this tassel upon them. Priests in a biblical sense, representatives to the gentile God-fearers of the person and work of God.

Ultimately, of course, all of those things picture the work of Jesus Christ and what he has accomplished in the context of his ascension.

What do we see in the glorified worship that happens in the book of Revelation? We see the saints of God gathered around the throne of God, those that have died and gone to heaven, the church triumphant in heaven, and we see them robed in white robes, robes of whiteness.

Jesus Christ is described as having this brilliant white appearance in Revelation and Daniel. White is the picture and visual representation of purity, and these garments of glory and beauty that Jesus attains to at his ascension. Whenever the messengers are given to us in this account in the gospels of the resurrection of Christ, the angels come in garments, not of black, but in garments of white, garments of brilliance—the brilliance of heaven. And the church itself, as it participates in the heavenly worship in the book of Revelation, this church is pictured as having white robes. And then the 24 elders that are described for us in the book of Revelation, they also have white robes upon them, but they also explicitly are said to have crowns. The elders are distinguished by way of function in the worship around the throne of God.

Now, here’s where I’m going with all of this. Ascension is about robes, beauty, glory, honor, and power. And ascension is a reminder that Jesus Christ has robed us, as Isaiah tells us, with robes of glory and power. The church has in the context of church history, at various times, thought it a good thing—most of the last 2,000 years—for the ministers of the church to be robed as they minister in the context of Lord’s Day worship.

And I want to talk very briefly now, having laid this foundation in the scriptures of garments and their meaning and purpose, I want to give several pastoral reasons why I think it may be a good thing for this church to begin a discussion of ministerial garb in the context of formal worship.

You know, the Reformers put off vestments. They put off the kind of glorious robes the Roman Catholic Church used. They didn’t put off all robes. Instead, they adopted the Genevan gown, a black gown, a judicial gown essentially. But the Reformers understood that the kind of clothing used in worship is a matter of pastoral perspective. They considered it to be a good thing pastorally for a period of time to put off glorious robes and put on rather, you know, non-glorious robes as they ministered in worship.

They thought it was proper to fast from the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church for a season because of the pastoral concerns for the people, so the people would identify—now that this ministry does not consider themselves high and exalted as the Roman Catholic priests did—but rather they were demonstrating in their clothing office to the people, and not their personages. It is a pastoral matter whether churches should or should not robe their ministers and how that robing should look.

In a way, every church robes their ministers. If I would have shown up in a t-shirt and jeans today, as some people do, you probably wouldn’t have appreciated that very much. You expect a certain sense of decorum from the officers of your church. You expect a certain pastoral consideration from your officers in the context of formal worship as a model to you. And what I’m suggesting is that at times, most in church history, most of the times, the church has said it is a good thing to clothe her ministers with these white robes, robes of beauty and glory, representing Christ in the context of the formal worship of the church.

Let me tell you why I think that may be a good thing for us to talk about again.

First, robing of ministers in worship garments helps combat Gnosticism. Now, here I use the term Gnosticism for the idea that Christianity is a set of beliefs or intellectual thoughts rather that don’t really have that much significance to what we do in life. It may seem a little odd, but I think that when our clothing becomes somewhat irrelevant to us in the formal worship of the church, and as clothing gets less and less a matter of importance to us, I think that’s because in part we have this worldview that what we do with our external bodies, what we do with how we work, how we eat, how we clothe ourselves, is somewhat irrelevant—because the spiritual state is beyond clothing, beyond food, beyond bodily elimination, beyond conjugal relationships and marriage.

All these things kind of bother us as we have some Gnostic holdovers from the Greek influence on the church for 2,000 years. And I think that robing ministers may help in some small way, but a significant way, to remind us of the importance of everyone’s clothing.

Secondly, I think that it may be useful in combating egalitarianism and statism. You know, the elders who robe up in the context of the Christian church and do it properly are not saying that they’re better in person than the person who is sitting in the pew. They’re saying that they have a difference in function. Egalitarianism wants to eliminate all differences in functional superiority and inferiority in the context of the world. Egalitarianism wants a family to be democratic, to have no head. Egalitarianism doesn’t want to see the cooperation of people in the context of hierarchy. And yet we have at the heart of the Christian faith a tremendous statement against egalitarianism because the Savior is subordinate to the Father—not in terms of essence but in terms of function.

As a culture moves away from Trinity, it moves toward a radical egalitarianism. And the result of egalitarianism usually is first seen in statism. Who do we want to see robed up in the context of our culture today? When we go to a courtroom, we expect the judge to wear robes. We see the authority, the civil state. We know that he has real power and real authority. But when we come to church to have some sort of symbol of real authority, functional authority in the context of the church, this rather grates upon us.

The church has it at an absolute low point, from my perspective, in terms of being seen as important in the life of mankind in our day and age. It’s at a very low point. And to robe ministers once again, to see them in the same stature in terms of authority in office—not in terms of personage, but authority and office—along with judicial robes of judges, the robes of doctors who heal people, the robes of academicians who at these graduation ceremonies will always wear their ministerial robes—these will, I think, pastorally help us to see the church as an important institution alongside these other important institutions.

So I think that we’ll combat Gnosticism with this direction. I think we may combat egalitarianism and statism as well. I think this will have the end result of promotion of the institutional church. The church as an institution, I think, will be furthered by seeing ministers in clerical garment.

Now, I could be wrong about all of this. It’s a pastoral call. It’s a pastoral call that the elders of your church, in conjunction with discussions with the members of this church, will have to talk about. We have liberty, you know, to dress in respectable ways before you. But I think if you think about the egalitarianism, statism, Gnosticism of our culture, you can see how it’s possible at least that a proper robing up of ministers in the context of Lord’s Day worship would help to combat this.

Another pastoral concern is that this would add weight and beauty to our worship service and a sense of timelessness as well. You know, I dress in the fashion of the day. My pants had holes in them. I went and got a new suit. I went down to Men’s Wearhouse. “What’s the fashion of the day?” you know, and they may ask you what you’re going to do in this suit, but it’s fairly irrelevant. You know, 40 years ago, I suppose a lot of preachers were, you know, plastic leisure suits or something—I don’t know. But it’s a fashion statement.

But to have robes, you see, the kind of robes that the church has been using for 2,000 years. And if we want to look at the robe, the specific robes of the Old Testament church that the church has been using throughout its entire corporate services, you see, this puts a timeless element to the worship service that reminds us that we really do enter into this timeless perspective of heaven so that we can go back into time with these timeless perspectives and truths brought into our forefront as we change history.

Then I think that it would beautify our worship and add weight and dignity to it. You know, we had a graduation ceremony, and people tend to dress up for those. We go to a wedding, and people always dress up for weddings. Why? It’s an important function. Or we’re at the wedding feast of the King today. We’re coming before the Sovereign of all the world. We’re not coming before President Bush. We’re coming before the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This is what convocative worship is.

Hebrews 12 says that we’ve come together with the assembly of angels, the church triumphant in heaven, militant on earth. Everybody assembles together. In reality, Lord’s Day worship service. If we could see with the eyes of faith, we would see that there are no walls. We’ve been brought up into heaven. Jesus has come down, but we’ve gone up as well. And we enter into the throne of God and join the worship of the angels around the throne of God.

That’s who we sing with in Lord’s Day worship. That’s what that great cloud of witnesses I talked about in Hebrews 12. That is very specifically the place where that focal point is made—is in the context of Lord’s Day worship. This is what the Hebrews are being called to go back into: the place where the eternal witnesses of the church triumphant in heaven and the angelic host around God’s throne perceive us.

This is worship of the church. And if your ministers stand before you in garments that are singular, timeless, and that are representations and reminder to you of the ascension power and authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, this will add a dimension to our worship services of proper formality—a proper formality and a proper weightiness and beauty to the service—that I think will have an effect on what we do in corporate worship.

You know, there’s an upward modeling that we’ve talked about here for a couple of years that we hope to accomplish. We like the officers of the church to dress in a way that brings to mind this great honor of Lord’s Day worship, the significance of it, the formality of it, the joy of it, with garments of glory and beauty. I hope you wore good garments today. This is, you know, moving in the power of the ascended Savior.

And when your ministers represent Christ to you in those robes, I think it will have that effect. Pastorally, I think it helps to add weight, timelessness, and eternal perspective and beauty to our worship services.

I think another pastoral reason why robes are effective and a good thing is that robes put the pastors in their place. Robes put the pastors in their place. Now, can a man wear a robe in a showy way? Yeah, he can. But a man who wears a robe as personal glorification is missing the entire point of the robe.

When the judge puts on the robe of authority, when the policeman puts on his uniform, you don’t obey for the policeman because you know he’s a man of integrity. You obey because he has the mantling of office. It’s not his personal abilities that cause you to respect him or to obey him. It’s not the judge. You don’t know him from anybody else. But you know that in the providence of God, God has robed that judge with authority and office. That’s his place.

When you take the robe off of the minister, now this doesn’t have to happen, but again, we’re talking pastoral considerations here, then the individual personalities of the elders tend to come to the fore instead of the office and mantling of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then you start to think in terms of the personality of this elder preaching or that elder preaching, or him or him or him, because all you see before you in the worship of the church right now are individuals. And you have to imagine the invisible mantling of Elder S. and Elder W. and myself.

You have to consciously remember: “It’s not Dennis talking to me, but as he’s consistent with the word of God, Jesus, he’s talking as Jesus’s representative to me. John isn’t praying for me and leading me. He’s representing Jesus Christ, pleading to the Father on behalf of his people.” You have to think about that, and you’re going to forget it most of the time. And you’re going to think in terms of me and my words on Sunday and John’s prayer and Pastor W.’s leading of the officient part of the first part of the worship.

Robes put the pastors in their place by reducing the perception of their personal worthiness and by cloaking them with the calling that Jesus Christ has placed upon them. And that’s what you’re to respond to—not to the man, but to the mantling of office.

You know, Jesse’s getting married, and they’re going to do a non-nostalgic thing Friday night. No advice. I have a party. That’s good. I like parties. That’s right. There’s a good deal of truth to that. Jesse said it on an awful lot of advice nights for young men who are going to get married. And one of the most important piece of advice that I tell young men getting married, and I tell men who are married who are having marriage problems, is: look, when you get right down to it, you’re going to lead your wife and your children, not because you’re such a great guy, not because you’ve got great gifts, abilities, you’re smart, you’re powerful, you have wisdom—no, none of that. You are going to lead your family because God has called you to that task. He has mantled you as the covenantal head. And you to think of all those covenantal heads in the Old Testament being mantled with power and authority.

That’s why you lead, not because of gifts and abilities. Wives are frequently more spiritual, more devoted to Christ, smarter, wiser—all those things—than men are. That doesn’t mean the wife should lead. The man leads not because of his abilities, but because of his calling.

Your pastors are not here ultimately because of our abilities. Your pastors are here because we’ve been called to this office, and ministerial robes are a way to put them in the right place—to take them down a peg from personal considerations and at the same time to raise them a peg. Because if you consider me as an individual up here, and as merely an individual representing you, or John is merely an individual, and you forget that invisible mantling you have to put upon us now, you’re going to be tempted to sin in the other ditch—to think worse of us than you should—because we’re not here for ourselves. We’re here representing Jesus Christ to you in his word, and we’re here to represent Jesus Christ leading you in prayer and worship and song.

You see, so a proper, I think a proper pastoral perspective on whether ministers should be robed is it puts the ministers in their place—in their correct place. There are men that I know who are very uncomfortable when called upon to preach without the robe, because the robe for them is a reminder to them every Lord’s day: “Hey, you know, I’m representing Christ here. And if I start thinking it’s my gifts, my ability, my study, my whatever it is that I’m going to bring into this pulpit, I’m not getting up here. It’s too scary. I can’t do it.” Just like the husband, there’ll come a time at which all husbands say, “I can’t do this. I don’t have near enough intelligence, wisdom, whatever to lead this family.” But God says, “Remember your calling. Remember your calling.”

So I think that there’s a pastoral consideration both for the elders of the church as well as for the members of the church that puts the pastors in their correct place—to reempower them then pastorally in their specific callings.

Jesus has ascended to the right hand of the Father. He’s given this robe. He pours out the spirit on the people to robe them for power and authority. And specific ones of those are robed as ministers of the gospel. We talk about defrocking ministers. Well, if we—if I get, you know, kicked out of office, you’ll say I was defrocked, but I had never had a frock to begin with. The idea is the frock is supposed to represent office. And I think it’s time we talked about doing that very thing.

Many of you know that I wear a collar. Now, you know, it’s interesting because the robes are white. I was thinking about this on the drive here today—that the robes are white. And you know, whether we choose to mantle ourselves or not, God does. He does in ways—just in the way we dress it represents us. But he does too in our very bodies. Remember, I talked about this connection between skin and clothing.

You—I have this decorative item that God gives me, this hair. And this hair is going white. And in our culture, we don’t like that. In our culture, we want to stop the transition to robes of white by making them black and look young again. Now, I know, you know, I’m not trying to step anybody’s toes here. Attractiveness to your husband or to your wife—I’m okay with all that. But just think about the big picture here.

The way God works is as you mature, he puts a robe of glory upon you. He puts a robe gray, and then white. You move from Gandalf the Gray to Gandalf the White. You move and mature, right? God mantles us. I think it’s really important that we think about how we mantle ourselves and how God is mantling us as this picture of the ascension of Jesus Christ is being given to his people pastorally.

It helps put the pastor in his place, and it helps empower his calling. And I think very significantly—this nearly last point here—I think pastorally it is good for the individual person in the pew to see the vocation of the pastor represented in his clothing, and a clothing of beauty and power, because you’re going to go tomorrow, and you’re going to put on a uniform. The moms will put on aprons, clothes to change babies in, whatever it is. They’ll put on a particular garb for the work they’re called to do. Mechanics will put on mechanics garb. People that work on cars will have coveralls. It’s a mantling. It’s a picture of vocation.

All this stuff about the Old Testament clothing and calling, it’s all a picture of vocation. We see it mostly in terms of kings or virgin daughters or whatever it is, but it’s a picture of calling. The baker puts on a uniform. He puts on a mantling as he goes to his work. The businessman puts on a three-piece suit or whatever is good for his corporate environment that he enters into. And he’s sensitive—if he’s a wise man and not a rebellious, independent, egalitarian man—he’s sensitive to the culture of the community he works in, and he dresses. He mantles himself in that way.

I think pastorally, if the pastors before you in Lord’s Day worship mantle themselves in terms of their vocation, it is a picture to you of your mantling tomorrow when you go about your task—that this is not fixing cars and this is not baking bread and this is not signing purchase orders. This is not, you know, turning out paper for Post-it notepads that you’re doing. This is the tribute offering picture again—that your calling is holy before God.

Jesus is the ascension offering, and he ascends and gives garments, a vocation to us, so that our vocation now becomes that tribute offering picture, holy calling before God, and that beautiful transition answering those major questions of life: “Can I be a new man and do I have purpose?” You see, those things find their fulfillment as we conclude this six-month consideration and meditation on the life of Christ—that he is mantled for his job, and he mantels us. He clothes us with the garments of salvation, praise, beauty, and honor. And those are the very garments that you take with you tomorrow into your work.

You see, the part for the whole—the special officers representing the general office of the priestly nature of all of God’s people. The vocational robing of ministers before you on Sunday as a visual reminder of your own calling to be a holy priestly nation for him, when you put on your, you know, your businessman’s suit or your mechanic’s garb or your doctor’s outfit or your judge’s robe. It’s all seen in relationship to Jesus Christ.

The mantling of God’s ministers in worship is a presentation and proclamation of the gospel. The good news is that humanity has been definitively moved from 40 days of fasting to 40 days of rejoicing, and then being empowered by God to change the face of the world. The gospel is not just that you’ve been saved from your sins. That was true in the Old Testament. The gospel is that the mantling of power and authority now comes upon God’s people, so that in the simplest of tasks—changing diapers, baking bread, signing purchase orders, fixing cars, whatever it is—in the simplest of tasks, you are transforming the face of the world when you do those tasks in the mantling and power of the Holy Spirit for the purposes of the one who sits at the right hand of the Father, clothed in garments of beauty, power, and glory.

Those are the—that’s the gospel that God has transformed us.

Next Lord’s Day, Pentecost—we’ll think about that. The transforming power of the Holy Spirit, clothing us with power from on high to fulfill the great commission. And the presentation of ministers’ robes and the worship of the church can pastorally be one large picture to you every Lord’s day of the gospel that Jesus Christ has come and transformed the world.

Let’s pray.

Father, we pray that you would be with us in our meditations and discussions about this aspect of our church life together. And we pray, Lord God, more than anything else, that tomorrow as we go forth to whatever labors you call us to do, we would feel ourselves clothed with the righteousness of Christ, with his glory and power in whatever calling we go to. Lord God, we thank you for clothing your people with salvation and praise.

In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.