Preaching

‘Rags to Riches ‘

Our reading is Ezekiel 16:8 – 14 where the Lord is saying, through Ezekiel, that He has cleansed and covered all the weaknesses, defects and shortcomings of our humanity and made us His bride beautiful in His sight.

Now when I passed by you, and looked upon you, behold, your time was the time of love; and I spread my garment over you, and I covered your nakedness: I swore an oath to you, and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord GOD, and you became mine.

Then I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and I anointed you with oil.
I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put shoes on your feet. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments.

I adorned you with jewellery: I put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck, and I put a jewel on your forehead, ear-rings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. So you were adorned with gold and silver; your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric…because of the splendour I had given you, I made your beauty perfect.

I presume we all know the story of Cinderella and perhaps have seen the story played out in pantomime at Christmas. I was surprised to learn that this folk tale, in various forms, has been told in numerous civilisations throughout history. I think its fair to say we all love a rags to riches story. We don’t even have to have rags to want riches. Is there anyone here who wouldn’t want more. But did you know even the poorest one here belongs in the 10% of the worlds richest people. Do any of us realise how rich we are, especially when we consider the riches we have as children of God.

In Joh 4 Jesus said to the woman at the well, You have natural water, I have spiritual water. He told the disciples, You have natural food, I have spiritual food. However at that point neither the woman nor the disciples could even see the spiritual and I reckon to all of His disciples, including all of us here, Jesus could say us, ‘You have natural riches more than 90% of the world, but I have spiritual riches.’

I wonder do we know or appreciate how rich we believers are? For a start Eph 1 tells us in verse 7 we have ‘the riches of His Grace’ and in verse 18 we learn that we have ‘the riches of His glory’. We have His riches, His Grace, His Glory right now as children of God not sometime in the future as we grow in our Christianity, or when we die and go to heaven. We have God’s riches right now.

In Chapter 1 of Genesis the text tells us that humanity was made in Gods image, in chapter 3 the text says that after eating the forbidden fruit humanity sees their nakedness. Does this means that beforehand they were clothed? Clothed in spiritual clothes perhaps in what we now recognise as the garments of salvation. In an attempt to to cover themselves they covered their nakedness with fig leaves, was this a vain attempt to regain their image of God.

As God came strolling in the Garden He asks a rhetorical question, Where are you? He asks because He was looking for Himself, the image of Himself. God had expected to see the splendour He had given them, that had made their beauty perfect. God had expected to see His mirror image but His image was no longer there.

God had to wait 4000 years until His image was restored in His Son Jesus. Paul writes in Col 1:15; Jesus is the image of the invisible God. Paul says in this verse that God is invisible, which is understandable because right now we know that God is here with us, though we cannot physically see Him. Paul saying Jesus is the image of the invisible God, literally means Jesus is invisible. We can understand that statement because we know that Jesus is here, though we cannot physically see Him.

Now lets go back to Genesis were the text says that God made humanity in His image. Taking that statement literally there was a spiritual and invisible dimension to humanity. In the Genesis story when humanity eats the forbidden fruit ‘their eyes were opened’. For the first time they can see their humanity and they’re nakedness. So from being able to see the spiritual and the invisible, they could now only see their natural selves. To me this means that they lost their ability to see spiritually, finding only the ability to see naturally.

God sent Jesus to restore humanities sight. Jesus had to open the spiritual eyes of the spiritually blind, enabling humanity to once again see the invisible. In the synagogue Jesus read this from the book of Isaiah, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel… and restore sight to the blind…’ Lu 4:18

Paul wrote 1Co 15:49 Just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, (past tense) so we have the image of the man from heaven (present tense). That’s confirmed in 2Co 3:18 We …all reflect the Lord’s glory, we are transformed into his image. Jesus has restored our sight, we are no longer blind to the spiritual realm we have the capability to see the spiritual, we are able see the invisible.

In Ga 3:16 it says, God made a promise to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say “and to seeds”, meaning many people, but “and to your seed”, meaning one person, Christ.

The writer emphasises that the promise was not to Abraham’s many natural descendants but to one spiritual descendant, Jesus. In addition Ro 4:16 says this, that the promise was to ‘all the seed’. Meaning all the spiritual descendants that came from that one seed. The verse ends by saying Abraham is our spiritual father. So to make this point clear, Paul says that Abraham is Jesus’ spiritual father and our spiritual father.

If we look at it in the natural, if out of one seed comes more than one child, twins would be produced and they would look alike. According to what Paul writes, that is also true spiritually. There is one seed out of which more than one child is produced, twins that would look alike. The offspring would be in the likeness and the image of each other. No wonder the preacher said, ‘When God looks at us He sees Jesus.’ Its obvious that God sees only Jesus, we’re the spitting image of Him, God can’t tell us apart.

So going back to 1Co 15:49 that said, ‘Just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so we have the image of the man from heaven.’ We can interpret that as, Just as we have been birthed in the image of the earthly man, so we have been born again in the image of the man from heaven. This means that we are human beings and we are spiritual beings, we have a human nature and we have a divine nature. We have visible appearance and we have an invisible appearance. With our spiritual eyes we can see that our nakedness is covered. Because of the splendour He has given us, He has made our beauty perfect.

Isaiah says; that in our natural state Isa 64:6 ‘we are all as an unclean thing, and all our human efforts are as worthless filthy rags.’ But Isaiah also says this about our spiritual state; Isa 61:10 ...my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness…

With our natural eyes we can see the worthlessness of our man made filthy rags, with our spiritual eyes we can see the splendour and perfect beauty. We can see our garments of salvation. We can see the riches of His Grace and the riches of His glory. A Cinderella story if ever there was one. The Gospel of Jesus, truly a rags to riches story.

The story of John: Several years ago a young man named John came to Liberty. HE KNEW THAT Jesus loved him but had received the message since childhood that God hated him being gay. He loved being at Liberty and feeling free to worship God as he was. One day he said to Nina ‘ When I’m worshipping I keep getting this picture in my mind’s eye of me dressed in this amazing, dazzling white robe that’s shining like diamonds, its absolutely stunning! What does it mean?’ Nina said ‘John that’s your Robe of Righteousness, your Garment of Salvation, Jesus is showing you how you look to Him and you look amazing!’