“The Garments of Jesus“
The Garments of Jesus
Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
December 21, 1958
Let us turn to the second chapter of Luke and read the familiar but still very wonderful story. Luke 2, we’ll read the first 18 verses responsibly and all join on the last verse, that would be verse 18.
Luke 2: And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, everyone into his own city.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.
Now let us pray.
Dear Father in heaven, we thank Thee for this Scripture. It’s as fresh and as imperishable, more so than the stars that shine. Nothing, nothing is as imperishable but the throne, the throne around which the rainbow curls.
For this, this is Thee, this is Thee speaking. These words are Thy words. Thou hast spoken to us. Thou hast told us this most wonderful, most wonderful story. We thank thee for all that it means. We thank thee, Father, that if the world were to dissolve today, there would be a victory that the ages would hear because of all who have believed it and all who have been saved. And that great multitude that no man can number, ten thousand times, ten thousand and thousands of thousands out of every tongue and tribe and nation and people around all the world for all these centuries.
So, nothing Satan can do now can hinder. Nothing, nothing, Lord, can stop us. And if the cause of missions should end now and Thou should close and slam shut and lock every door, we thank Thee that the gospel has found its people and they have come out from all tongues and tribes and nations and have joined themselves unto the Lamb and they shall stand on the sea, by the sea of glass, and they shall wave their palm branches and sing and their song shall be worthy as the Lamb that was slain. And we can only say Thine is the victory, Thine is the Kingdom, Thine is the power, and Thine is the glory. And, O Lord, Thou shalt yet take unto Thee Thy great power and reign.
And we thank Thee, Lord, our eyes are upon Thee and we’re looking to Thee, Thou baby Jesus who became a man, Christ Jesus, and who died and rose and lives and pleads with love in all His words and deeds. And we’re victorious, we thank Thee we’re victorious, and Thy church is victorious, and Thy throne is victorious, Thou hast established Thy throne, O Lord. And the world and the things thereof and the sun from the rising to its setting tells the story.
And we bless Thy holy name that we are celebrating this hour, the coming of God to the world, the advent of Jesus Christ who is the Eternal Word and is now made flesh. And we know what it’s about and we’re not puzzled and we’re not caught in the whirl of it, but our feet are on the ground and our hearts in the heavens. And we can give account of why we feel like this about it and we can tell the people why we believe what we believe. And we have the solid theology of the Scriptures underneath our feet.
Blessed be thy name, blessed be the Triune God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And blessed be all His will and His purposes and His plans and His desires and His everlasting predestination, having predestinated all things after the counsel of Thine own will. And all the mysteries of these things we don’t understand, but we can stand with our hands raised to heaven and cry, it shall be done. Thou art God and nobody can stop Thee. And we thank Thee for Thy son, Jesus, now on the throne.
Oh, we pray that we may worthily celebrate. And Father, we pray for those who have had hard times and troubles over the last times, the last hours, the last days. We pray Thee, the tatters, Lord, who’ve lost this wonderful, fine, godly, old gentleman from them who’s gone only ahead a little while.
Bless them all, we pray Thee, and in thy kind love, fill the vacancy until they shall gather at the throne. Thank Thee for that home, for these people, for the influence and the stream of spirituality and godliness that has come down from this patriarch who is now with Thee.
And we pray Thee for Dorothy Elder of this church and her home and her people, Lord, with her father having died. And we pray thee, Father, thy blessing upon that home, too. Bless them all most graciously, O God, and undertake, we pray thee, and let thy blessing be upon them and upon Dorothy and upon her sisters and brothers and the wife, the mother. Let grace be upon them all.
Keep thy hand upon us today, may we honor Jesus Christ, our Lord, in a manner worthy of Him. Bless our country, we pray, our God, this northern part of our country lying under the great heavy snows and with very great cold.
And we pray thee, Lord, Thou wilt help and bless again, we ask Thee, out on the highways and up in the air and wherever people are traveling, for many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall be increased. Lord, this is happening in our time, and we pray Thee for all who are traveling and all on the sea and all in the air. And let Thy blessing now be upon this service as we wait further on thee, in Christ’s holy name. Amen.
Now, I have a number of texts this morning, and I want to read them. Luke 2:7, She brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger. Mark 9:3, And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow, so as no fuller on earth could white them. Psalm 22:18, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture did they cast lots. John 20:6-7, Then cometh Simon Peter, following him, and went into the sepulcher, and seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. Revelation 1:13, In the midst of the seven candlesticks, one like unto the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. Psalm 45:8, All thy garments, smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia, out of the ivory palaces. Isaiah 63:1, Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Basra? This that is glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength.
You will notice that each one of these verses which I read mention clothing. And I’d like to talk a little today about the garments of our Savior and let what I have to say revolve around this central verse, All thy garments, smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia, out of the ivory palaces. It’s one of my favorite verses, and no doubt I have quoted it very, very frequently and referred to it often in my preaching. But today I want to talk about seven garments which our Savior wears, or wore, and what they mean.
Now, in the text, all thy garments smell of myrrh, David is addressing one whom he calls one that is fairer than the children of men, and he describes him in radiant, beautiful language. He is fairer than the children of men. Grace is poured out by his lips. He is blessed forever. He has a sword girt upon his thigh. He is mighty and glorious and majestic. He rides prosperously in truth and meekness, and his throne is God’s throne forever and ever. And God has anointed him with the oil of gladness above his fellows.
Now, that’s the One who is described, and we know who that One is. It is none other than Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Now, garments, as you know, express two things. They express office and character. In the Bible we learn of the wedding garment. We learn of the white, spotless garment. We are told not to get our garments spotted, which is not to get our hearts soiled. We learn of the bride and her beautiful white garment, and we learn of the efforts of the sinner to make garments for himself, but they are filthy rags.
So, character is described here in the garment of Jesus, but there is more than character. There is office as well. For men dress as kings or as generals or as what they are, and so we see here in the garments of our Savior, His offices and His character. I’ll sing the character he wears and all the forms of love he bears exalted on his throne.
Now, this means then that His offices are many, for He’s the Infinite God, and that His character is perfect, and that He has an infinite variety of changes. Do not think that in talking of these seven garments, there are many more, that I am exhausting the possibilities, for He is an Infinite Savior, and being infinite, He has an infinite variety of changes.
Now, it says about His garments, all of His garments, no matter which ones, that they smell of myrrh and cassia and aloes. And in the Bible, we find that myrrh is used to describe bitterness and tears, and cassia is a healing herb that was medicinal in its use. And aloes, there was nothing about aloes that could heal, nothing about aloes that suggested character at all, but there was one thing about the little flower, it was fragrant and beautiful. No mortal can with him compare among the sons of men. Fairer is he than all the fair that fill the heavenly train.
So, we have these three fragrances, that of myrrh, which, while it is sweet to smell, has an undertone of bitterness, and cassia, while it is also fragrant, is used for healing, and aloes, which is just fragrant and beautiful.
Now, let’s look at these garments rather briefly, that our Savior wore, or that He wears, or that He shall yet wear. The first is in Luke, and she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes.
Now, the swaddling clothes worn by our Savior are emblematic of His true humanity, for our Lord Jesus was human, became human, and dwelt among us. He loved the title, the Son of Man. He loved it more, I think, than any other, because He referred to Himself in the third person often as the Son of Man, His favorite title.
Now, our Lord came clear down. I’ve often said, and I repeat now, that I am glad that we are redeemed not as a slumming project on the part of God, that God didn’t decide that we poor slum dwellers in the slums of the universe here in earth, that we needed help, and so he didn’t organize a do-good uplift organization, get them together and say, let’s try to help the underprivileged. But He came clear down where we were, and He took upon Himself all our limitations and took upon Himself all that we are except sin.
There was nothing that He did not take upon Him. He was born as we are born. He grew as we grow. He ate as we eat. He slept as we sleep. He developed and matured as we develop and mature. He stood on the earth. He watched the sun rise and set. He spoke the familiar language of His people. He wore the common garments of his people. Jesus, our Lord, was in every sense a human.
You see, the church has made two mistakes. She hasn’t meant to do it, but she’s made two mistakes. One is to talk too much of His deity, and the other to think too much of His humanity. We’ve got to keep them in balance.
We’ve got to remember that while He was God, He yet came to the world and was wrapped in swaddling garments to tell all the world, I was born into the human race. And I was immediately picked up and swaddled, covered over with the garments they call the swaddling garment.
And they took the little baby Jesus, and I don’t think there’s anything that’s quite so fragrant as a newly bathed and newly powdered and newly dressed little baby. And when they took the baby Jesus up after they had oiled Him and rubbed Him and washed Him and then had wrapped Him in His baby swaddling garments, if they had been as sharp and as penetrating, and probably there were some that were, they would have noticed a fragrance about His little baby garments that they had not put there. If indeed they had scented powders in those days, I know not. But if they had, they would have noticed three fragrances here. There was the smell of myrrh.
When we take a new baby in our hands, we don’t like to think of its future being sad or bitter or tearful or heavy. But when they picked the baby Jesus up, if they had had prophetic foresight, they would have known that this baby was born to suffering and to bitterness and tears.
But if they could have gone on and detected this other fragrance, they would have known that there was cassia there, for cassia was the medicinal herb, and aloes they would have seen and perhaps they did. I doubt whether they did at first, for the Scripture says there is no beauty in Him that we should desire Him.
I think therefore that our Savior did not show up until the time of His death any unusual marks of beauty. The only marks He showed were His moral beauty, and of course that in itself was wonderful. But just as they broke the alabaster box to release the fragrance that filled all the house where they were sitting, so when they broke Him on the cross of Calvary, they released to the world a fragrance like the aloes, a fragrance that was also a beauty, because you know it is possible that which is fragrant and that which is beautiful, they’re very closely related.
I have said to you in times gone by that when I was young, I don’t know what’s happened to it, maybe it’s atrophied since, but I used to be able to see color in music. When I heard an organ or an orchestra or anything, I heard not only the music but saw the color of it. And I thought it was just one more eccentricity on my part, until I learned that they can transmute the, what do they call it, across, the little impulses across, and that actually they are the same. Actually, all the five senses are one.
I thought that out when I was a young chap, and then later on I found out I had been right about it. That’s always comforting, but I had that the senses are all the sense of touch. They all go back to the sense of touch.
Something touches the olfactory nerves, and we smell. Something touches the ear, and we hear. Something touches the eye, and we see. Something touches the taste buds, and we taste. It all goes back to the sense of touch, and it can all be reduced to this one thing.
And so, when we say fragrant and beautiful, we are saying one thing. For we are saying that Jesus Christ is to the heart of a man that which fragrance is to the nose, which beauty is to the eye, which sweet sound is to the hearing. So He is that, and all this was in His clothing, if they could only have known it, when he became a babe and dwelt among us.
But then I ask you to note the second one, and that is in Mark. And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow, as no laundry, no fuller on earth can white them. Now here were His lustrous garments, the insignia of His very Godhood. If His swaddling garments were the emblem of His humanity, then His lustrous garments were the emblem of His true Godhood.
Would it be out of order if I quoted again that which I guess I have quoted once a year for the great many years, that glorious form, that light unsufferable, and that far-beaming blaze of majesty wherewith he was wanted heaven’s high council table to sit in midst of Trinal Unity, he laid aside and here with us to be, forsook the courts of everlasting day and chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.
And this far-beaming blaze of majesty got out of hand only one time while He was on earth. He had become man so completely and so fully and perfectly did His humanity veil His deity that it never got out of hand but one time.
Once up yonder on the mountain where Peter, James, and John were with Him, He prayed. And as He prayed, His raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow. And the result, you remember, on Peter and the rest of them, they spoke not knowing what they were saying.
And they said, let us dwell forever here, build us three tabernacles, and bring back Moses and Elijah, and let’s live here forever. As soon as the lustrous glory of His Godhood shone forth, they wanted to stay where He was. And so, Jesus, who is man, is also God.
We must hold these two thoughts in careful balance. We must remember His swaddling garments. When we seem so poor and weak and human, we must comfort our hearts by remembering that He once wore our baby clothes. And when we become too bold and sure of ourselves, we ought to take a quick look at the mountain where He shone forth in His lustrous garments, whiter than any fuller on earth could make them.
So, He is not only man, but He is God, very God of very God begotten, not created. He was at home among the angels, and He was at home among men.
If we had sent a man to heaven to try to see God and intercede for us, that man wouldn’t have been at home there, for earth is his home, not heaven. If He had sent an angel to earth, the angel wouldn’t have been at home here, for heaven is the home of the angels, not earth. But Jesus, being God and having His home in heaven, and being born in the form of a man, thus could have earth as His home, we have united in the two, heaven and earth–God, God and humanity reconciled.
So now we have the two garments, and even yet if you could have seen or they could have gotten control of their faculties and could have remembered a little there His lustrous garments, they’d have noted they would smell of myrrh, because though He were God, He was not going to finish His redeeming work without tears and bitterness and sorrow. And, of course, cassia, for that’s why He came, and aloes for all the beauty of His wonderful nature.
Can I ask you to note John 19:23, His seamless garment? We read about that in the Old Testament, they parted my raiment among them and for my vesture did they cast lots. We have that garment of Jesus, that garment that was woven. It wasn’t woven as a piece of cloth and then sewn together leaving seams. It was woven or knitted in some manner so there was no seam, all one piece.
You women are familiar with that kind of thing. I guess they do that with sweaters and other garments that are knitted to the general shape they want and thus have no seam.
So, this was the seamless garment of Jesus, and this was the only garment He had. When our Lord went on a trip, He did not take a suitcase. When He went on a journey, He did not take a bag with Him. They had no need for He wore His total wardrobe on His back. And wherever He went, He carried all He owned with Him. The foxes have holes and the birds have their nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
Think of it, my friend, his seamless garments were the emblem of His voluntary poverty, for He could have robed Himself in light.
You know, if Shakespeare had written this story, how different it would have been, or Aeschylus, or any of the other great dramatists, how different it would have been. He would have come down like some planet from afar, blazing round the earth and startling the world. But instead of that, He divested Himself of light and He laid aside His glory and came down with us.
He might have robed Himself in light. He might have had the sun for His covering. He might have had the moon under His feet and the stars round Him as a crown round His head. But our Lord came down and had but one seamless garment, the emblem of His voluntary poverty. And when He went to the cross, He didn’t even take that garment along with Him.
Think of it, my friends, this we don’t often talk about. And the artists, when they paint Jesus, out of common decency, manage somehow to drape over His holy form some ribbon of cloth to shield Him from the naked gaze of men. But actually, Jesus died naked. As He was born naked, He died naked. He died on a cross naked. They took off from Him all that He had.
And so, He died, and atonement was made. If those Jews or those Roman soldiers that took His last garment, his seamless garment, if they could have had the sense of smell that a prophet had, they would have smelled myrrh, and they wouldn’t have had to argue about that. The bitterness and the tears and the blood were there in evidence. But they would have smelled cassia, too, for that seamless robe smelled of cassia, the symbol of healing and of aloes, the fragrance and beauty.
Nobody looks good when he’s going out to die. They said of the man who was executed last Friday, last Thursday night at midnight, six minutes after midnight, they said of him that he cut a ridiculous figure as he walked with shaven head and with these trousers cut off a little above his knees as he walked and was guided, blindfolded to the chair.
Nobody going to die, put to death by society, can ever do it with any great dignity. And you’d have had to have the spiritual insight of an apostle to have seen any beauty there, any beauty there, as they tugged off of His warm body, the last garment He had and exposed Him to the sneers and leers of the public and flung Him down flat on His back and nailed Him on a cross and raised the cross and put it like a telephone pole into a hole with a jar, a sickening, shocking jar, and there He hung in nakedness. And the modest women looked aside, and the men grinned and little boys tittered, and God died.
And He died there in darkness and in thirst and in nakedness and in poverty. He died in darkness though the stars were His and all the trillions of suns and galaxies that lie out there, He had made them by the word of His power and all the shining light from all the multiplied heavenly bodies could have been His to light Him out of the dark.
And yet He died in darkness voluntarily and the garment that was had been His, smelled of myrrh and aloes, myrrh for bitterness and cashew for healing and aloes for fragrance. He died in thirst and cried out, I thirst, and the seven seas were His and all the rivers and all the waters in the world and yet He died in thirst. He died in nakedness and in poverty though the cattle on a thousand hills and all the beasts of the forest and all the metals hidden away in the hills and the mountains, and all the wealth of the universe was His.
He might have spun himself a robe out of sunlight. He might have made Himself a garment of stardust for it was all His, all His. But in voluntary poverty He went down as far as He could go.
They say some are poor and we hear of the poor and they tell us of the poverty that are in other countries and even when visitors come here from England, or from any of the more fortunate and advanced countries of the world, almost always when they’re being interviewed or when they’re making speeches, somewhere they put in the bracket, a little word saying, we were getting on fine in our country, of course nothing like America.
So, we’re very rich here but not as rich as He could have been. They could have brought Him orders from Edom, gold from Ophir, peacocks from Africa, singing women and playing men and choirs, all that Solomon had before him He could have had multiplied into infinity. But He died in poverty and blood.
The next is John 20:6,7, I read that to you also. And came Simon Peter following him and went into the sepulcher and he saw the linen clothes lying in a napkin, not lying with the linen clothes but wrapped together in a place by itself. I’m not going to go into detail here, but every Bible student knows what this means.
It means that Jesus Christ did not get up like another man and undress. It means that He came out without disturbing the garments. It means that the metamorphosis, the marvelous transfiguration, the change that came over the dead Man as He lay in the tomb, put Him where He was both matter and still non-material. Put Him where He weighed something and yet could slip through closed doors as though they were open. This wonder I shall never be able to explain. I only know that God did not allow an angel to come down and roll the stone away to let Jesus out.
Therefore, if He had, the angel would have had part of the glory. Somewhere in heaven there would have been an angel. And when the earthly choirs composed of the red and yellow, black and white, round the whole world for all human history, when they got together in a great hymn sing, to hymn the Lamb, it was slain but that had risen again.
Somebody would have pointed to an angel and said, there’s the angel that helped Jesus get up. There’s the angel that rolled the stone away. But when they rolled the stone away, they found He was already out.
And if they had sent someone to unwrap Him after He was dead, they wrapped Him in the garments of the dead. If they had sent some archangel to unwrap Him and let Him go free, as they had unwrapped Lazarus before Him, always when we celebrate in yonder glory, somebody would have remembered and said, there goes the archangel that unwrapped the Savior and let Him get out.
But just as nobody helped Him die, so nobody could help Him rise. He dismissed His spirit, and He rose from the dead. And His garments showed it. Lay a dead body down, wrapped in certain ways, and then take it away without immaterialize it and take it away and you have your garments where they were before, as though the shape of the body is there, but the body is gone.
So that was Jesus. What does that mean? Those burial garments, lying as they were lying, they are symbols of His triumph. He conquered all that men now deny.
We try to get on with ourselves and stay reasonably comfortable by denying the very ghosts that haunt us and the very dragons that threaten us but, Jesus Christ denied nothing. He denied not the devil. He said there’s a devil. He denied not sin. He knew there was sin. He denied not man’s lost condition. He knew man was lost. He denied not hell. He spoke of hell. He denied none of that which was against Him.
But He conquered it, and that’s a different thing. That’s quite a different thing. Instead of denying it and trying to dissolve it in thought, He met it head on and died under the impact of it, but God raised Him from the dead the third day. And because He came out so completely triumphant, He met and conquered all. And now we can say the three sad days are quickly sped. He rose in triumph from the dead. Hallelujah!
Well, then there is Revelation 1:13. John said, I turned, and when I turned, I saw. To see the voice, I saw seven golden candlesticks, and in the midst of the seven candlesticks, one like unto the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.
He goes on to describe them, and what are these garments? They are the garments of His priesthood, and insignia of His priesthood, for the priest offers and prays. And this One who was born into our flesh, now is at the right hand of God, our Priest, offering Himself, not offering the blood of others, but offering His own blood. And He bears our names in three places: on His hands, and on His breast, and on His shoulders. On His hands, emblematic of work, and on His breast, emblematic of love, and on His shoulders, emblematic of strength. And the government shall be upon His shoulder, singular.
I’ll never forget when Dr. H. L. Zimmer was still preaching in the apex of his power, that great German voice of his boomed out once, and he preached, says, the government shall be upon his shoulder. Then he asked the rhetorical question, why do the governments of the world rest upon one of His shoulders? Then he lowered his voice and smiled, and said, so I can rest upon the other. He carries the world upon one shoulder, and His people on the other.
And then, for I must be brief, there’s His wedding garment, I’ve read about that, emblematic of His relationship to His people. You will find in that psalm, her garment and his garment. His garments smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia, and her garments, very, very beautiful they are. The king’s daughter is all glorious within, that is, she sits within, all glorious. And her clothing is of wrought gold. She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework. And the virgins, her companions that follow her, shall be brought unto thee.
There’s the wedding garment. Let us not get bogged down in politics. Let us not limit our thinking by the conquest of space. Suppose they do, and they will. Suppose they do visit Mars or Venus or the moon. Suppose they do.
There was a day when America seemed as far from Italy or Spain as the moon seems now from the earth. They’ll get there one of these times. Never say they can’t do it, they’ll do it.
I know one fellow won’t be on board when they go, but they’ll do it. But my brethren, when they do it, don’t let that bother you. Don’t let the voice of a president speaking out of outer space bother you.
There is one coming, wearing a wedding garment, with His sword girded on His thigh, and He’s coming not from Venus or Mars or some far galaxy. He’s coming from the throne of God, wherever that is. And I do not care geographically or astronomically where that throne is.
He is coming from there, and when He comes, He will be wearing His wedding garment. And His wedding garment will smell of myrrh. What? You mean that when He stands with His bride and presents her to the Father in great glory, that there can be a faint trace of myrrh on that garment? For myrrh stands for bitterness and suffering and woe.
Yes, it’s there, my brethren. All thy garments smell of myrrh. And in the hour of her triumph, His bride will remember with a tear that won’t hurt and with a sigh that won’t be sad and with a sorrow that isn’t grief, that she was there because He was there.
She wore her golden robes because He wore His cotton ones. That she stood before the throne because He stood before Pilate. And she’s infinitely rich because He was tragically poor. But she’ll never suffer again because He suffered beyond description. She’ll never quite forget that. Any of you that want to go to heaven and get where you’ll be happy, all happy, always happy, happy, happy, happy.
If you want to go to heaven so you’ll never remember the cross, I don’t think you’d better plan on going. For I’m sure that when they sing, worthy is the Lamb, to every redeemed mind, there will come the picture of a bleeding Lamb. But there’ll be no sadness anymore, no tears, and nobody will cry. But rather they will break out loud and laugh, laugh with holy laughter, to know that the Bridegroom by their side is the same One who once was wrapped in swaddling bands in poverty.
Last of all and I’m finished. His garment dipped in blood, that’s in Isaiah, the 63rd chapter.
Who is this that cometh from Edom? The dyed garments from Basra that this that is glorious in his apparel traveling in the greatness of his strength. I that speak in righteousness mighty to save I am he. Ah then the question wherefore art thou red in thine apparel and thy garments like him that treadeth out in the wine fat? Then he replies I have trodden the wine press alone and of the people there was none with me.
Understandably this verse has been misinterpreted and we talk about Christ on the cross treading the wine press. No, no. He trod no wine press on Calvary’s hill. How could he? His two feet were nailed there on the tree, and they were treading Him, not He them. I will tread them in mine anger and trample them in my fury and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments and I will stain all my raiment. Ah my brother, the garment dipped in blood is a symbol of His ultimate conquest.
The world with all its ocracies, its dilemma. Nobody’s good enough or big enough or strong enough to rescue us. But He is coming to rescue us. He’s the only one who has the right. He’s the only one who took on Him all our sorrows.
If there could rise in the world whether he be red or yellow, black or white or whatever race, if there should arise a man with a heart so big and great and wonderful that he could take into that heart all that’s wrong with us, all that’s wrong with us.
All our hates and our jealousies and our malice and our bitterness and our lusts could take them all into his heart and say I suffer with you. I suffer with you. Whether he was an American or an Englishman or a Vietnamese or a Chinese, I’d say there’s your man. There’s your man. I’d follow him. I’d vote for him if you could vote. There’s your man. I’d smell of myrrh. He knows my grief.
But politicians and kings and leaders and prime ministers and all the rest, they want power. They want authority. They want to go down in history. They’re not trying to help us. They’re trying to help themselves. And there’s nobody in the world that can take into his heart my grief, my weakness, my sorrow, my sadness, my loss, my terror. Nobody can do that.
There was One that did it and his name was Jesus. And He could do it because He came as a man. He’s the only one that has the right and he’s the only one I’ll vote for.
So, you needn’t fear to come to Him for He knows more about you than you know about yourself. And one of these times He’ll come back. I wish it were not so. That is, I wish it didn’t have to be like this. But He’ll come back and when He comes to reign, He’ll not fool with summit conferences. He’ll not fool with ultimata, ultimatums. And He’ll not fool with kings and ministers and diplomats and ambassadors and other liars. He’ll walk down and demand His right.
And the meek shall hear His demand and fall at His feet. And the proud and the God-hating shall feel the weight of His mighty brazen feet as He treads the winepress alone and sets up His own throne, King of Kings and Lord of Lords on this earth.
So, we can only close by reminding you that in the 18th of Revelation there is that passage where someone shouts out, take unto thee, take unto thee thy great power and reign.
He’s going to do that one of these times. I don’t know how far God is going to let the world go. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m not wise enough to know how far God will let us go. But I know that one time soon He’ll get enough.
But even when He comes and tramples down the world in blood and reigns in peace over a peaceful earth, if you come close, you will smell myrrh. For He purchased that right in darkness and blackness and bitterness and tears and blood. And you will smell cassia, for He does it to heal the whole world.
Wonderful if we could wave a wand and heal the whole world. Wonderful if that Pullman car that’s flying around up there 17,000 miles an hour could diffuse healing to all the nations. And as it whistles by, every nation could be healed. All the hospitals empty, all insane asylums, all the old folks’ homes.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if when it passes around the world it could diffuse healing to all below? I’d go down and help shoot them up, wouldn’t you? I’d go down there and help shoot them up if I did nothing but carry water to that scientist in order to get them going around this world to heal all the poor world. I’d send him over Russia. We wouldn’t have any trouble with him then. I’d send them everywhere and heal the world, but we can’t do it.
But when He comes to reign, He’ll do it. He’ll go like lightning flash around the world and His goings forth will be for the healings of the nations. He will do it.
Blessed be God and blessed be His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. All His garments smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces.