Amazing Bargains

Today, I'm going to talk to you about how to get rid of the negative energy in your life. This reading is taken from Isaiah 61, and starting at verse 1. Isaiah 61. The spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. To proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God. To comfort all who mourn and provide for those who grieve in Zion.

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. They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated.

They will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations. Aliens will shepherd your flocks. Foreigners will work your fields and vineyards.

And you will be called priests of the Lord. You will be named ministers of our God. You will feed on the wealth of nations, and in their riches you will boast.

Instead of their shame, my people will receive a double portion. And instead of disgrace, they will rejoice in their inheritance. And so they will inherit a double portion in their land, and everlasting joy will be theirs.

For I, the Lord, love justice. I hate robbery and iniquity. In my faithfulness I will reward them and make an everlasting covenant with them.

Their descendants will be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples. All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the Lord has blessed. I delight greatly in the Lord.

My soul rejoices in my God, for he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the soil makes the young plant come up, and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations. May the Lord bless his reading.

There is a measure of inspiration granted to a man, to a woman, when expounding Scripture in faith and dependence on the Spirit. But when our Lord preached, he had full inspiration, never a careless statement, never a wrong conclusion. And his preaching debut, so to speak, occurred in his hometown of Nazareth.

You read of it in the Gospel of Luke and the fourth chapter. He mounted the pulpit steps in the synagogue and he unfurled the parchments having had handed to him the prophecy of Isaiah. And he read from the first two verses of this chapter that we have considered the whole thus far.

And our Lord shocked everyone when he said that what the prophet was predicting in that chapter had now come to pass. In other words, the one that was being referred to is none other than the preacher in the synagogue in the northern town of Galilee, Nazareth. Now that must have been sensational.

You imagine someone coming in and pointing to one passage of Scripture and saying, I have fulfilled that. Probably you will him away or you will be a little bit more kindly in your treatment of him. But our Lord does fulfill Scripture and he opens up not just his ministry but shares the blueprint of his life as he finds it encapsulated in this chapter from the prophecy of Isaiah.

He talks to his congregation in Nazareth about who he is and what he has claimed or what he claims he is going to do. Our Lord Jesus knew the filling of the Holy Spirit in all its wondrous fullness. Thus in the first verse he says, the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me.

In the opening chapter of Hebrews he says that I have been filled with the Spirit or it is said of him that he is filled with the Spirit more than all his fellows. It was the blessed Holy Spirit that anoints the Lord Jesus and empowers him to engage in the ministry that he did so remarkably well in the three years that he was here on this earth. And in Isaiah I say, you have prophesied what will not only be the essence of his teaching but the blueprint of his life's work.

There is not time to go through the whole of the chapter, but let's have a look at the third verse and then pick up from the tenth verse. For in the third verse we read this of our Savior, that he has come to provide for those who grieve in Zion, to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, 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.

Here the Lord makes provision for his people. In the tenth and the eleventh verses you will discover the praises that the people offer to the Lord having received of his bounty. I love wandering around market places, don't you? I rarely buy, but I like to look.

And if you go along to our market stall, where I hope you'll not have my sort of habit of not generally buying in markets, perhaps you'll go there on a Saturday and encourage the people who are selling craft and Christian literature. But if you move away from that particular stall, you'll find that there's a fellow who comes in a massive white van and he sells food cheaply. And he gets your fray bentos, pies or whatever they call the things.

He'll get samples of ice cream and what have you and he'll say, not five pound, nor four pound, not even three pound. And he has you on the tiptoe of expectancy as you wait for the clinching of the deal. And you hand over your two pounds and you get what he's offering in terms of a bargain.

Have you ever thought that sometimes in Isaiah, it's almost the language of the marketplace that is used to tell us about the ministry of the Messiah when he comes on earth? For instance, in the fifty-fifth chapter, which is parallel to the one that Joyce read, come all you who are thirsty, come to the waters, you who have no money, come buy and eat, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why spend your money on that which is not bread and your labor on that which does not satisfy? Come, buy, eat, without money, without price? You never get that sort of bargain in Worthy Market. And here in the provision that our Savior is offering as his life's work is predicted for us, he suggests that he can give beauty for ashes, oil instead of mourning, a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

This really isn't the language of commerce, is it? This isn't really the language of bartering because our Lord is preparing to take what is valueless and give to you in exchange what is priceless. When Messiah, the word which means the Anointed One, comes into this world, part of his job, so to speak, will be to come into the lives of ordinary people like you and me and expunge the worthless and replace it with that which is so valuable it's hard to put a price on it. So this is the provision that our Lord offers as we read of him in almost a marketplace context in the Old Testament.

He speaks in the third verse of those who are in Zion. By Zion he refers, he is referring not just to a geographical location, though it was that, but to a spiritual condition. In other words, as you read it from the New Testament vantage point, here is the word of the Lord, here is God's provision offered to all those who are prepared to place saving faith in him.

And he says, I'll take your ashes and I'll give you beauty. You remember the story of Cinderella? Where did she spend most of her life until Prince Charming came along? Cinder, the cinders, Cinderella sitting amongst the cinders, sitting amongst the ashes. Is there not a sense in which when our Lord came on earth he saw people just like that? He saw people whose lives were really lived out on an ash heap.

What do ashes speak of? Well, of great despair. In Old Testament times when people had found that life had dealt them a cruel blow, sometimes they would pick up some ashes literally, throw them up in the air and allow the ashes to fall on them as an indication of the despair that they were feeling. Sometimes ashes indicate self-loathing.

A daughter of David was raped by her step-brother and as she comes away from the incident feeling so unclean, she takes some ashes and she daubs them on her face. Ashes speak for that which is disfiguring. And there are strange what the old poet would call defeatures on the faces of many a person in our world.

Ashes of unbelief, ashes of distrust, ashes of superstition. Ashes speak for something that is spent. You go to the fire and it's all ashes.

There's no last spark still surviving. You rake in the embers but there is no glow. Ashes speak about something that used to be but now no longer is.

And when our Lord moved around the towns and the cities in His day, He discovered people whose lives were like that. Once perhaps there was something to count, once there was something to live for, but so many problems fell in on their pathway. Their lives are now like just walking through the embers, dead embers.

The point will come when we look at the remains of Mrs. Mildenhall to the elements on Thursday when we will say, dust to dust and ashes to ashes, for that's what ashes speak of, not so of death. Now take all these negatives, put them together, because this is what our Lord is implying as He says, I will receive the ashes, the worthlessness of your life, and instead of them I will offer you a crown of beauty. You'd be a fool not to clinch that deal.

The oil of gladness instead of mourning. Mourning was almost an art in biblical times. They had professional mourners, you've heard of this haven't you? You remember on one occasion our Lord cleared out the mourners before He went into somebody's home and ministered to the person who was sick, actually who was sick unto death.

Mourning was something that the Hebrews entered into with strangely enough great spirit. Sometimes a person who was mourning would put on sackcloth and tear the sackcloth and show the degree of the sorrow which they were feeling. Now when Jesus came into our world He empathized with those who were sorrowful, blessed are those who mourn.

Our Lord is spoken of in Scripture as the man of sorrows. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, forever. You remember the Scripture we looked up last Sunday morning? Now because He's the same yesterday you can say that the attitude He showed to those who mourned yesterday He still shows today.

We have a high priest who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, who offers instead of our ashes His beauty, instead of our mourning He offers oil of gladness. That's the antidote, the oil of gladness. Do you know quite recently I have been given three bottles of aftershave lotion.

Now when I first received the initial present I was pleased. But when two weeks later I received another one I began to be a little bit questioning. And when the third one came it sort of clinched it.

Maybe my friends were trying to tell me something. In Old Testament and New Testament times of course they didn't have aftershave lotion or the feminine equivalent but they did have oil. And sometimes the oil would be perfumed oil.

Thou anointest my head with oil. Sometimes after you've been on a trip or you'd entered into a friend's house having journeyed to get to where he resided he would take oil and rub it into your face and it would be very, very refreshing. Sometimes he would just anoint your head or even anoint your feet.

And oil did a number of very wonderful things not only would it refresh but it would also release a perfume, a fragrance into the whole of the house. So that all your friends would be glad actually that you were there. Now here is our Lord and he's contrasting this person.

Can you see him? So mournful and so sad. And he said my provision is to take your mourning and to exchange it with the oil, the oil of gladness. What's more he says I'll give you a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair, instead of a spirit of dullness, instead of a spirit of heaviness.

The world in which our Lord found himself was one in which there was a great deal of heartache and the whole of the Old Testament dispensation as well as the years that were to come in the New Testament era would also find people in a similar state of despair, this heaviness of heart. When David weeps before the Lord because Absalom his deceitful treacherous son has been done to death. Oh Absalom, Absalom my son, my son.

Heaviness. Do you have heaviness because of your family circumstance this morning? He will take that spirit of heaviness. Heaviness because of the consciousness of the sin of the society in which you live.

Isaiah said I walk amongst the people who have foul and unclean lips and I realize that this is obnoxious to you and it fills me with a spirit of heaviness. Consciousness of personal sin. Is that your problem? Are you in the category of so many of us here who for years have fought with sin and found it so difficult to slay it once and for all? Are you amongst those of us who identify with the publican as he stands at the back of the synagogue or at the temple and he beats his breast as though he hates the sin that's there and recognizes that he has no right to be in the holy place? When Messiah, the one who is anointed with oil above his fellows, the one who knows the spirit of God not only on his head but on his beard and on his shoulders and down on his chest and flowing out, so to speak, from his feet, the man who is saturated with the spirit, he alone can come into our world to deal with these disfeatures amongst humankind, to take the ashes and to give them beauty, to take the mourning and to give them gladness, to lift the spirit of despair and give them a garment of praise.

Says Charles Spurgeon, grace like its God delights to be a trinity. First, there is the adornment of the face with beauty. Second, the anointing of the head with oil.

And last, the covering of the whole person with a garment of praise instead of spirit of despair. Now put all that together and what do you have? Well, you have the justification for the final metaphor in terms of the provision which this divine merchant is offering to those who will believe on him. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor.

What does an oak speak of? It speaks of that which is mighty. It speaks of that which is firm. And some of us need the firmness and the stability that only the gospel can bring.

It's rather a blunt bit of humor, but I once remember reading, I think, in the tomes of the Reader's Digest, remember the mighty acorn was once a nut like you. Isn't it amazing what God can do through the most insignificant person? When our Lord is on earth, He speaks to Peter in terms of, thou art and thou shalt be. He sees not just what we are at the moment, but what we can become.

And so here, I say, is spelt out prophetically for us the blueprint of the ministry of Messiah, the Anointed One. When He comes on earth, all these things He will do. You would be a fool to hear the offers that are made and not to clinch the deal, the Lord's provision.

Well, the people's praise. You see, you drop down. I'm not giving you a full exposition of the chapters as I've indicated.

There isn't time. But maybe even my style will help you in your own study of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, how to read it, to read it from a New Testament perspective, to see Christ on the pages, and to see how the Old Testament not only predicts what Christ will be and do, but it also describes the results of and blessings of Christ as experienced by ordinary people as they submit to what He has to offer as the deal is closed. So you drop to the tenth verse and the style of writing changes.

This is no longer the Lord speaking. Here is the church responding, I delight greatly in the Lord. Well, why do I delight in the Lord? Who wouldn't delight in worthy market if for one pound you were able to have sufficient food to feed your family of four or five for the next week? It would be a magnificent deal.

Well, here is a deal that is far greater than that in value. Here is a deal that costs nothing apart from your own faith and confidence in the One who offers the provision. And so here the church responds to Messiah as He comes, I delight greatly in the Lord.

My soul rejoices in my God. The former verse, well, it spoke of the action, here is reaction. The one spoke of promise, here is performance.

The one indicated pronouncement and here is assessment. How do you respond to the fact that you are saying? Listen to the Anglican book of common prayer, never been bettered. It is right and it is our right, meet and our bounden duty at all times and in all places to give thanks to Thee, O Lord.

And the Old Testament says, render unto the Lord the glory that is due to His name. And the Apostle Paul will say, rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice. And when he gives us just a little cameo of the early church as she comes together to meet for worship, he tells us that as they do so, they speak to one another with psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, they sing, they make music in their heart to the Lord.

Why? Because they are drunk, yes, because they are drunk. But not with the intoxicant of alcohol which dulls the senses, but rather they are drunk with the Spirit of God which clarifies the mind, which sorts out the important things from the unimportant things and enables them to home in on this, that as a child of God they have been blessed beyond anyone else in secular society. And as they review the whole panoply of gifts that God has granted to them, so they engage in rapturous praise.

The best description I ever came across of the church of Jesus Christ was in Latin America, when the church was known as God's singing house. I delight greatly in the Lord. Why? Well, because I've got a handful of bargains.

I've come without money. I've come without my credit card. Thank God money and credit cards can't buy you what is on offer.

The only way in which you can be blessed and benefited by what the Lord Jesus has to give is by your expression of faith in Him. So I delight greatly in the Lord. My soul rejoices in my God.

It was predictive, that third verse. Verse ten is anticipating the fulfillment on the part of ordinary people. Don't you think that Mary could have sung this song? Here she was, told by the angel that she amongst all women would be blessed.

And so she releases what we now call the Magnificat when she speaks of the Lord having done so much for her. You remember how she puts it, let me give it you in the words of Scripture in the Gospel of Luke. She responds to what the angel has said.

My soul glorifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for He has been mindful of the humble estate of His servant. You see what's happened in Mary's life? The ordinary has been made extraordinary.

The ashes have been taken away and beauty has been granted. The mourning has been displaced by the oil of gladness. What about the man born blind? Do you remember in John's Gospel you come across him in the ninth chapter? And on one occasion the authorities bring him before them because they're uncomfortable at the thought of what's happened.

And he gives them a short testimony as to how he perceives it. This man Jesus, this anointed one, He has been the person who has completely changed my life. Here is another fellow who is delighting in the Lord.

Our Lord said He will give beauty for ashes. Here is His beloved Martha and Mary and they're in great anguish of soul. Why? Well Lazarus has died and Jesus comes along.

And surely they can find in these tenth and eleventh verses, if you like, a prophetic anticipation of their response to all that Jesus has done for them. We delight greatly in the Lord. Our souls rejoice in our God, for He has clothed us and so forth.

Go to the Apostle Peter. He writes in his epistle to Christian people in the Roman Empire and he speaks of their experience in terms of joy unspeakable and full of glory. In other words, here is the people's praise responding, if you please, to the Lord's provision.

Let's try just for a moment or two as we conclude this address to see what the heart of the praise is. Why is it that these people are so thankful to God? Well, I argue this. They're thankful because He's given them a wardrobe.

Understand me spiritually. They're thankful because He's contracted them into a marriage. Again, understand me spiritually.

They're thankful because He's placed them in a garden. A wardrobe? He has clothed me with garments of salvation. Didn't He do that for you? You see, the one thing about our Lord Jesus is He will always deliver what He promises.

I'm not too sure about these guys in the marketplace. Sometimes the bargains are utterly unbelievable. The only thing that makes a bargain believable is the credibility of the person who offers it, not so? When man first needed a garment, he made it himself.

And it never covered his embarrassment. I refer to Adam with Eve in the Garden of Eden. The garment that you and I need to make us comfortable in the presence of God is the garment of salvation.

In other words, having the experience of sins forgiven. Who can do that? Only the Lord's anointed. Who dies on the cross of Calvary with His righteousness intact and so drops that righteous garment so that you and I, Josephs of the new dispensation, can come along and adorn ourselves in this ornamented garment of righteousness.

So, we need to praise our Lord because He has granted to us a wardrobe making us comfortable in the presence of the Lord. What's more, He's invited us to a marriage as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. You remember the address that I preached some time ago from Revelation on the marriage supper of the Lamb, how I tried to show you the significance of hospitality and meetings and banquets in the Old Testament.

That remarkable illustration of Moses and the elders of Israel sitting down with God. And I said to you that that was a prophetic foretaste of the end of the age when the Lord Jesus shall be back. When, if you like, that the banquet shall be spread for all those who have confessed Him as Lord and Savior.

Well, here is the church responding to His provision. We thank you for the wardrobe. We thank you for the invitation.

We're brides. We're bridegrooms. We've been called eternally to enter into and benefit by the presence of God and the best is yet to be.

The wardrobe, the marriage, verse 11, the garden. For as the soil makes the young plant come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations. Go back to the third verse, here's the prediction.

They will be called oaks of righteousness. In other words, a planting for the Lord. How do you understand Peter? How do you understand Thomas? How do you understand all the women in the New Testament? How do you understand people in church history? How do you understand yourself right now? How do you describe yourself? Well, you say, I've trusted Jesus as Savior.

I've entered into His life. I've become a partaker of the divine nature. What are you saying? Well, in the language of agricultural metaphor, you're saying this.

I have been planted out by the Lord. Do you see yourself like that? So often in the Old Testament, you read of trees by rivers, their roots nourished by the soil and the water. Blessed is the man, this is Psalms, the first Psalm, who keeps counsel with the Lord.

He's like a tree, planted by the banks of a river, planting out. That's what Messiah does. He comes into the world and He brings this disparate group of people.

The New Testament church, the twentieth century church, people here in Worthing Tabernacle, and He makes us to be what we could never have been apart from His largesse, apart from His provision. He gives us beauty for our ashes. He gives us joy for our mourning.

He gives us garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Where can you get a deal like this? And the answer is you can't. And the credibility of the deal is found within the person who offers it.

And there is no subtlety or guile in our Lord Jesus. What He promises, He delivers. The provision that He offers, He enters into.

And when you submit to what He says, then you leave His company also blessed. Blessed in what sense? Well, because you have this garment to wear. You have your wardrobe full.

You have a marriage invitation. You have the seal of eternal life. You live your life on this present scene as a plant planted out by the Lord.

Is not that reason to delight? Is not that reason to sing unto the Lord with all the gusto that there is? Let those refuse to sing who never, never understood the gospel, says Isaac Watts from Southampton. And when he was caught up in a great revival, he wrote his hymns, and the church in that day didn't want to sing. They called them the Whimsies, Watts' Whimsies.

They wouldn't have them in their book. Well, you see they hadn't been written for 100 years or 200 years. You couldn't have what was new.

But Watts' Whimsies are still with us today. Come ye that love the Lord. And you remember how, well, one of the hymns we're going to sing in a moment or so, we've got the concept of the body of Christ, those who've been enriched by Him, marching through this world, their destiny sealed in Zion.

Here is a great exchange, I say. Is there a better bargain? Come then, you who have no money, you who have no righteousness, you who feel so utterly uncomfortable in the tabernacle, it's to you that this message is addressed, as much as it's to address to the speaker who also feels that discomfort and looks in the spiritual mirror and sees his own defeatures. Lord, give me beauty for ashes.

Turn my mourning into gladness. Lift this spirit of heaviness which I shouldn't be bearing and grant to me the garments of praise. Well, let's go to Watts and let's sing his hymn.

363. Come we that love the Lord and let our joys be known. Join in a song with sweet accord and thus surround the land.

Let those refuse to sing that never knew our God. You can't sing these hymns unless you've an experience. But children of the heavenly King, but children of the heavenly King may speak their joys abroad.

I've got a feeling that Watts actually wrote, may shout their joys abroad. Maybe we've tamed him down, but nonetheless we'll sing it as it's written and we'll enjoy it. 363.

Beautiful day, O Zion. We're marching to Zion, beautiful day, O Zion. We're marching upwards to Zion, the beautiful city of God.

Full of sorrows, full of life, we rise to the praises. Created by the Lord's design, created by the Lord's design. We're made from flesh and blood, we're made from flesh and blood.

We're marching to Zion, beautiful day, O Zion. We're marching upwards to Zion, the beautiful city of God. Let those refuse to sing that never knew our God.

But children of the heavenly King, but children of the heavenly King may speak their joys abroad. High in the high, great in the low, but we must both be God's hosts, but we must both be God's.