(Thanks to those of you who prayed for me this weekend.  I participated in an event that we had at church yesterday.  It was a women’s event.  I was asked to be in charge of the fashion show.  Seemed like a fun idea when I was asked.  But as I prayed about it, God revealed things to me about the meaning of clothing and garments in the bible that carried so much deeper meaning.  So I went a whole new direction.  The models, instead of modeling clothes, modeled my props.  They were awesome and added a very fun element!  Such good sports and not afraid to play it up. This is the basic gist of my “talk”.  The bold numbers are the numbers of the scripture references that are provided at the end.  The word PURSUE, the key word throughout, was shouted out by the women in the audience at the given times.. It was a fun, and hopefully meaningful day. Thanks to my wonderful models and to DP, the one who put all the music and beautiful slides for the big screens together.  You guys added the special touches! ) 

The Pursuit

Clothes say a lot about a person.  They can reflect our personality, style, and attitude

Throughout the bible God references clothing and garments and uses those terms as pictures or analogies of bigger, deeper things.  Just like our clothes reflect who we are, God uses the idea of clothing to illustrate His love and plan for us.

The key word for women’s ministry this year is Pursue.  It’s being used in reference to our pursuit of God and going after a heart like His.

But today we are going to turn that around.  Today we are going to look at how God pursues us.  After all, we love Him because he first loved us, right?

At the beginning of time, God created us.  And He created us naked.  (#1)

There were no issues with being naked because everything was perfect – the world, the people, everything.  Eve didn’t have to ask, “Does this make my butt look big?” because her butt could never look big – it was perfect.  Can you even imagine?

There was no shame or sin to hide.  There was no need for covering because everything, literally, was out in the open.  Perfect communication between God and the first man and woman.  The way that God had created and intended life to be.  Perfection.

Until…Eve decided to take a taste of the forbidden fruit from the forbidden tree and to share it with her husband.  (#2) Wasn’t that nice of her?  Sharing the joy and dire consequences of sin with her hubby.  What a giver.  And gullible Adam took it willingly.  What a pair.  And they represent us.  Sweet.

This was the first rebellion against God.  Suddenly shame overtook.  Their “eyes were opened” and they were exposed in every way to things they’d never seen.  Evil.  And what was the first thing they did?  They covered themselves with the first thing they could find.  Leaves.  Somehow they thought this would trick God into not knowing that they’d done anything wrong.

So what was the first clothing of all time?  Fig Leaves. (#3).  MODEL WITH LEAVES  FANNING.  They should be called BIG leaves instead of fig leaves!  Have you ever seen a real fig leaf?  Those things are HUGE!  Which probably tells us a little something about how well Adam and Eve were endowed!!!

They tried to cover up their sins in their own way – a measly, temporary fix for a now eternal problem. Such a representation of all mankind trying to cover up with something temporal and something that God can see right through.

Knowing what had happened and what they had done God chose to pursue them.  This is precisely where God began to pursue us for all time.  Up to this point He hadn’t had to pursue man because there was perfect communication and connection between them.  From this point on He would seek us out and invite us back to Himself.

After confronting them and telling them the consequences of their behavior, God provided Adam and Eve with a more lasting alternative to their wilting fig leaves.  He made clothes for them out of animal skins. (#4) MODEL WITH FUR COAT.

Isn’t that interesting?  In order to cover their shame, an animal sacrifice had to be made.  A life had to be given.

Hmmmmm…sounds like foreshadowing of some kind, don’t you think?  This would be the mode now for forgiveness of sin and reconciliation with God.  Animal sacrifice.  Blood  would be required to cover the transgressions of mankind.

But eventually even animal sacrifices fell short of God’s eternal plan to destroy sin and its power.  His plan to pursue us.  He longed to be able to enjoy an ongoing, uninterrupted relationship with mankind.  So He sent His Son to accomplish the task. (#5).  Once again, God pursued us in spite of, but more importantly, because of what we’d done.

God Himself, came as Jesus, in human form.  And not just human form, but BABY form!  Like us he was naked, helpless, vulnerable, small.  Everything the opposite of who He really was.  God reduced to a crying, dependent little person.  Just to be one of us.  Because God wanted to  pursue us.

And what was Jesus’ first outfit?  Swaddling Clothes (#6) MODEL WITH SWADDLED BABY).  So symbolic.  His arms and legs being restrained as was His power and majesty.  He gave up heaven and his rightful place on the throne to come and save us from ourselves.  He laid it all down to once again  pursue us right where we were at.

But he didn’t just stay a baby.  He went from toddler to child to teen and faced all the same challenges that come with each of those ages.  The God of the universe dressed in carpenter’s clothes as he grew up and worked alongside his foster father, Joseph. (#7) People recognized him as a carpenter, not as a king. A picture of God not being afraid to truly get his hands dirty on us.  He  pursued the working man as a working man.

Isaiah 53:2 tells us that Jesus would come as someone common like us – (#8)  He didn’t dress to attract attention to himself.  He dressed to relate to us. To draw our attention to God.  His clothing once again representing his mission – to pursue us.

In fact, not once while He was on earth did this King dress like royalty.  At least not until He went to the cross and they mockingly put a purple robe on him and wove together a crown of thorns that they put on his head. (#9) MODEL CARRYING CROWN AND PURPLE. Here again, the symbolism is obvious.  Purple represents royalty and in scripture, thorns represent sin so the king of kings was wearing our sins.  Only a loving, more than we can fathom, God would  pursue us in such a crazy way.

Jesus tells a story about this kind of love.  The kind of love that God has for us.  The kind of love that a father has for his child.  Remember the story of the prodigal son?  A rebellious, bratty kid who demanded his inheritance early and then squandered it away to the point that he had no choice but to come back to his father.

What did his father do?  Did he wait until his son came and groveled at his feet?  When he saw him coming in the distance did he scheme about how he would yell at him and punish him with his attitude toward him and cruel words?  No.  He ran to him.  (#10)  He RAN!  Now to really grasp what this story means, you have to know a little bit of Jewish history.  Men wore long tunics and robes in that time and culture.  In order to run in them (which was, itself, a disgraceful thing) you had to lift the garments up out of the way.  It was a dishonor to show your bare legs, so Jewish men never, ever ran.  It was shameful.  And yet he ran.

He then embraced this filthy, formerly wayward son.  This son who had been living and eating with pigs. Actual pigs.  MODEL WITH PIG. This son who had turned his back on his father.

In this story, the father depicts God, who, through Jesus, bore the shame that we deserved, to restore relationship with us.  What happened with the clothing in this parable, tells the whole story of the God who pursues us.  Exactly what Jesus did on the cross.

Once Jesus was crucified, the soldiers divided and cast lots for his clothes.  They had already ripped apart his body, his spirit and his dignity.  Now it was time to tear up his clothes. (#11) MODEL WITH STRIPS OF CLOTH. The purple robe that they had put on him to mock him was valuable, so instead of destroying it, they gambled on who would take that piece of clothing.  What they didn’t realize was that the only true value was not in his clothes but in what he had just done on the cross for them.

When Jesus was buried he was wrapped in burial linens. MODEL WITH LINEN. Does this look familiar?  Just like at his birth, in his death Jesus’ power as God Almighty was symbolically restrained by being bound like a mummy and put in a sealed tomb.  He had experienced our sin, our brokenness at the cross.  Now he would experience death for us as well.  When He  pursued us it took him to the darkest place it could. Separation from God his Father.  It was there that he buried with his own body, sin and its power.

Three days later, Jesus rose from the grave.  The disciples found his grave clothes in a pile, but the cloth that had been on his face was set aside, folded nicely. (#12) MODEL WITH FOLDED NAPKIN.  Legend has it that when the master of a Jewish household threw down his napkin after a meal that meant he was finished and the servant could clean up his dishes.  But if he folded his napkin and left the table, it meant he was coming back.  Is that the message that Jesus was giving us when his face cloth was set aside nicely?  I don’t know.  But I do know that those grave clothes were empty.  He had conquered death and shattered the illusion that all was lost when he died.  In fact, nothing was lost – instead on that day we were found.

Jesus gave us life that day.  He gave us a relationship with God.  He changed history for all time by fulfilling the prophecies and the plan that God had been working on since the beginning of time.  And when he returned to heaven he left us with instructions to dress as Jesus and continue the work he had started to love God and people. (#13, #14) MODEL WITH LOVE GOD LOVE PEOPLE. To tell people that he passionately loves them and is coming back for them.  That he pursues them.

This is no easy task.  We still live in a broken world.  We still wrestle with getting rid of our “old garments” and exchanging them for new.  Trading old, ugly habits for new ones.  Living out the life we were meant to have (#15, #16, #17,) MODEL WITH NEW AND OLD JEANS.

Do you ever feel on this planet like you’re trapped in an outfit three sizes too small or too big? Do you feel “naked”?  Or does the garment you wear feel ill-fitting or heavy?  Is it stained or torn?

C.S. Lewis said it like this – (#18) And we were.  That’s why we long for something more – (#19, #20)  This is why we feel uncomfortable in the “clothes” of this world.  Restless.

But one amazing day all of that longing will be fulfilled when we see Jesus face to face.  In His rightful kingly garb.  And what will we be wearing?  The tattered, dirty, mismatched, ill-fitting, scratchy clothing that we’ve experienced on earth?  No way!  We will be dressed in white linen. (#21, #22) MODEL WITH VEIL. White.  The color of holiness and perfection.  His bride.  Clothed in the color that Jesus died to give us. Linen is a symbol of purity, as well.  I looked up whether or not white was truly a color.  And you know what I found? That white actually reflects all of the colors of the visible light spectrum.  ALL of them.  That tells me that we will be dressed in something that reflects all that Jesus is.  The colors of him that we know now and the colors of who He is that we can’t even imagine yet.  We will be dressed in something that finally fits us perfectly.

I have a little surprise for you.  Just something little but something to represent what we’ve talked about today.  About the God who  pursues us.  It’s a clear little bag of pink, red and white M&M’s tied with a purple knot.  The clear bag reminds us that when we come to Jesus, when we respond to his pursuit of us, there is no longer a reason to hide.  Now I have two things that the M&M’s represent.  Her is the first scenario – red represents man and the stain of sin.  White represents God and his holiness.  Jesus came as a combination of both God and man (pink) to  pursue us.  The second scenario is this – We came into this world at the beginning of time naked (pink).  But by jesus’ blood (red) we will one day be his bride and wear white.  You pick which works for you.  The purple ribbon represents the King who came to “tie the knot” with us, to ask us to be his bride.  The bride He has forever pursued.

Reflect on that for a moment as you listen to this song by Brooke Fraser.  It’s called the C.S. Lewis song and each of you got a copy of the words when you walked in.  It speaks to how we long to trade in our nakedness, our uncomfortable garb of this world, our fig leaves, for the glorious clothing that we will wear as Jesus’ bride in heaven one day…

# 1 – Naked – Genesis 2:25 – the man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

#2 – Forbidden Fruit – Genesis 3:6 – When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.  She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

#3 – Fig Leaves – Genesis 3:7 – Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

#4 – Genesis 3:21 – And the Lord God made clothing from animal skins for Adam and his wife.

$5 – John 3:16 – For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

#6 – Luke 2:7 – And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

#7 – Matthew 13:55 – Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?

#8 – Isaiah 53:2 – He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

#9 – Matthew 27:28-29 – They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him. They wove thorn branches into a crown and put it on his head, and they placed a reed stick in his right hand as a scepter. Then they knelt before him in mockery and taunted, “Hail! King of the Jews!”

#10 – Luke 15:20 – So he got up and went to his father.  But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

#11 – John 19:23-24 – When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they divided his clothes among the four of them.  They also took his robe, but it was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.  So they said, “Rather than tearing it apart, let’s throw dice for it.”  This fulfilled the scripture that says, “They divided my garments among themselves and threw dice for my clothing.” So that is what they did.

#12 – John 20:6-7 – Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb.  He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head.  The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen.

#13 – Romans 13:14 – Rather clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.

#14 – 2 Corinthinans 4:10-11 – We always carry around in our bodies the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.  For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that His life may be revealed in our mortal body.

#15 – Matthew 9:16 No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse.

#16 – 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 – Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

#17 – Ephesians 4:22-24 – You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

#18 – C.S. Lewis – If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.

#19 – 2 Corinthians 5:1-5 – For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.  Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.  Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

#20 – Romans 8:22-23 – We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.

#21 – She has been given the finest of pure white linen to wear (for the fine linen represents the good deeds of God’s holy people.)

#22 – To bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.  They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.