Isaiah 61:10 1 will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be
joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation,
he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom
decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her
jewels.
	  Last week, we began to consider what the Lord needs to accomplish
in us through His ministry of searching our hearts. He needs to bring us
to the point at which we earnestly desire for Him to show anything that
needs to be cleansed from our innermost being before Him. The focus is
not singularly limited to what needs to be done in me, or in you, but
most especially includes the corporate us as the Body of Christ. What
the Lord is doing in the one, will be accomplished in the whole. None of
us are alone in undergoing the effective ministry of the Holy Spirit.
we are joined, as one, in Christ, then we are all being fully blessed
with the sovereign accomplishments of the Lord as He manifests Himself
in preparing all His fullness in us, His body.
	  The key to everything in this living relationship in Christ, as His
workings surely evidence, is an earnest desire, no a hunger, no an
unquenchable zeal to know the complete depth of Christ, in all His
abundance. If that is our heart's passion, He will make Himself known
without restriction, in all the glory of the GodHead. Again, not we
becoming gods of ourselves, but rather experiencing in reality, a
completeness of the relationship that is God's intent with man, in Jesus
Christ. The Lord will never force us to go farther in Him than our heart
desires to go. He does not take us into the depth of Himself unless we
ask, even beseech Him to do so. As we ask Him to penetrate into our
innermost beings, the resulting and increased knowledge of Him causes us
to want to know Him more and more. That was the gist of what we were
taking into account last week. It was with the view of how we need to
stand together, in Christ, because He is actively working to accomplish
His will and His purpose in all of us.
	This is not, and never will be solely fulfilled in you and in me.
God's intent has always been the corporate union of Christ and the
church. The relationship that God has always planned and will have with
mankind in Christ is only possible in the relatedness of the union of
the church and Christ.
    It is at this point that we will continue to consider the working
of God on behalf of His church, His Beloved, His Bride. This is the
reason that we are so actively seeing the Hand of God operating in all
of our lives. There is no doubt that we are witnessing the culmination
of God's preparation of the Church to manifest His glory throughout
creation. We should not be audacious enough to try to place a timeframe
on what God is doing. It would never do to try to bracket God within any
set limitations. Rather, suffice it to say, that He will accomplish,
what He needs to accomplish, when it pleases Him to accomplish it. All
that we can say for certain, is that He is doing everything that He said
He would do. The scriptures are being completely realized in His active
achievements. All that is contained in His Word is finding fulfillment
as Christ is ever more revealed in the victory of His resurrection
power. It is that power which is working to establish His Body of
Believers, the Church, into its revealed spiritual position at the right
hand of the very throne of God.
	  This brings us to the passage that we will be concerned with this
evening in Isaiah. We will reflect on some key texts in line with the
reality of God's effective ministry of His glory in Christ. Our verse in
Isaiah, holds forth the elements of how God has saved us unto Himself
... for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath
covered me with the robe of righteousness,... No work of ourselves in
any manner. Notice, He has done the clothing in salvation and in
righteousness. Not my doing, not your doing, but His doing. He is the
way of salvation. He has made it available and He is its very basis. We
are robed in His righteousness. Our right standing with God is in
Christ. Nothing of ourselves! Not us doing anything to earn it or to
manifest it or to keep it! God alone has become our very uprightness in
Christ Jesus.
	  We are brought into the very presence of God in Christ, standing
before the throne of His Holiness without fear or trembling. It is not a
matter of wondering if there is anything that we are trying to hide from
God. It is not a matter of seeking to divert His gaze. Rather, we bask
in the love that He is because we are there in the beauty of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Is. 61:3 To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give
unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of
praise for the spirit of heaviness; that we might be called trees of
righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified. He
clothes us in the radiant essence of His allencompassing triumph over
anything that would detract from the purpose of God in us.
	  The analogy of a couple being prepared for matrimony is not new in
Isaiah, neither is it unique to just this passage. It can be traced
throughout thescripture, as we will soon see in part, because it is an
active representation of what God's intent is in the church. It's
outcome is not so much set in the bride's portion, but in the
relationship that is to develop between the bride and groom. It is the
same relationship that we have been targeting to this point, God's
relationship with mankind in Christ Jesus. Marriage, true marriage and
all that it entails, does an admirable job of beginning to illustrate
what this whole spiritual relationship is about. Hence, the preparation
of both the bride and the groom for what is being entered into.
Let us forget all the baggage that is being put onto the marriage
relationship by today's society. As with anything that deals with
spiritual matters, this world has sought to corrupt and to defile the
wonderful bond that is ours in Christ. The idea of marriage is even more
affected by the insidious powers of this realm. Marriage has been
trivialized and adulterated from the true substance of God's intent in
two becoming one. So much emphasis has been placed on the
individualities and the selfresponsibilities of marriage that the real
emphasis of giving up everything unto the wholeness of the marriage bond
is no longer seen to be necessary.
	  It is not our direct purpose to continue this vein of what should
be in our personal relationships. Rather, let us strive to see how the
example of Christ and the church so perfectly reflect a
singlemindedness after the wholeness of God. He has prepared the groom,
Christ, for the full extent of His own glory in being wed to the church.
Christ has made Himself utterly available, without any reservations or
restrictions to His bride. Eph. 5:23 For the husband is the head of the
wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the savior of
the body.
	  It would seem that even Christ needed to be prepared for this
placement. He emptied Himself of His position and His rights as God,
took upon Himself the body of flesh and suffered all that this world had
to issue forth in all its fury and hatred in order to become the Savior
of the church. Please understand, He did not need saving Himself. He is
the Son of God. At any time He could have utterly destroyed all those
forces seeking His annihilation, but He rather chose to become our
Salvation in all His Being of Love. He chose to take the route that
would forever secure the rightful place of honor and glory for the
Father, in the giving of the Son to redeem fallen man unto Himself. This
was an extreme time of preparation in which Christ emptied everything of
Himself for us, His Body. That is why God placed Him at His own right
Hand on high.
	  That is why God made Him the Head of the Body, His Beloved. It was
not a position that Christ usurped, or forced His way into. It was given
to Him in all the glory of God. It was the place which indicated the
fulfillment of the preparation that was required in order for God, the
Father, to be so pleased as to establish that place in eternity for
Christ. And, it is the place that the true church holds forth unto
Christ, willingly placing Him at the position of Lordship, because He so
fully loved us and made us partakers of Himself in saving us unto
Himself.
	  Yes, Christ was prepared as the bridegroom. He took upon Himself
the task of being made ready to receive His beloved Bride. Everything
that would not perfectly suit the relatedness that is required in God's
grace and mercy and love was not part of Him, at His own determination.
Look again, and afresh at the temptations that He faced as His ministry
was to take full bloom.
	  There are many spiritual truths that are part of everything that
Christ did and continues to do. It is not and never will be possible to
put a single meaning or aspect on all of his perfectly accomplished
statements and truths. We must first take in to consideration that
Christ had been fasting for forty days. It created a hunger in Him that the
tempter tried to use for his own gain. Christ's response to the desire
to feed Himself at God's expense is found in Matt. 4:4 It is written,
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out
of the mouth of God. In this response, there is contained the reality
of how He was being prepared to care for His Bride. He was putting aside
his personal needs and putting first the truth that what is required in
order for growth and development unto that which is fully pleasing to
God is the recognition that He is our full sustenance. Our Lord did not
succumb to the immediate needs of his physical body, but rather looked
to God to supply every need through the effective ministry of His Living
Word, the very Bread of Life. It is the spiritual picture of the grace
of God that met the physical needs of the Children of Israel as they
wandered in the wilderness. They were supplied with the sustenance of
God's Manna. So Christ experienced and became the example of how we are
to utterly rely upon God for all our needs, physically and most
importantly, spiritually. He became grounded in the manner in which to
provide for us, His Body, His Bride.
	  The husband is the provider, taking care for the needs of his
Beloved. He opens his heart unto her and does all that is necessary to
see that she is receiving every possible provision for health and for
life. The husband can only do this as he has placed all his needs and
desires aside, and seeks wholeheartedly after God, and trusts God to
make every provision to abound unto the Beloved. Look at scripture, look
at the Word of God. Study it, eat it, devour it, and trust it! It
contains every aspect of what we need in order to flourish into our
spiritual life. And, Who is it that makes this nourishment our very
life? It is by the provision of the Holy Spirit, sent by our Beloved to
meet our every need. He showed us, through His living example how our
lives are to be lived in Him. He opened Himself unto us, in all the Love
that He is, by setting aside His needs for our needs.
	  The second temptation, as recorded in Matt 4 was that of tempting
the Lord to cast Himself from the pinnacle to prove that He was the Son
of God. There was no need to prove who He was. Christ knew it, the
tempter knew it, and God knew it. But the temptation was to prove it to
the world. Show what He was made of, show just how powerful He was. This
is an urge that Christ set aside, in rather submitting Himself
completely unto God. In His response ... Thou shalt not tempt the Lord
thy God, He didn't try to prove anything of Himself, and neither did He
seek to make God the Father, prove anything of Himself. Christ learned
to rest in the knowledge of the place into which God had put Him. He set
aside any need for selfglorification before man, and rather counted on
the Father to establish that which pleased Him.
	  Christ learned to become the instrument through Whom the Father
could fully express Himself without fear or without hesitation and
especially without doubt. Christ manifested just how fully His desires
were the Father's desires by a complete trust in Him. Not tempting the
Father to prove anything, but relying utterly upon the guidance of the
Father in all His workings. As the husband of the bride, Christ does not
seek to prove His place. He doesn't strive to put us in a standing of
subservience so that He can assume a place of mastery. No, He loves us,
and He cherishes us, and He works to establish us into that relatedness
with God that He holds dear. What is so vital to Him, He works to make
vital to us, a complete reliance upon God in everything. It is the
innermost knowledge that God is worthy of our complete trust simply
because He is God.
	  The third temptation that worked to show the preparation of Christ
as the Bridegroom was that of having the whole world placed before Him
if He would but give the tempter His worship. It is the temptation of
putting other gods before the Father. The idea of gaining the whole
world while losing the soul. That was not possible to Christ. He was not
about to put Himself and His glory before the glory of the Father. To
worship the tempter to gain the adoration of this realm was abhorrent to
Christ, and it was at this point that the trials ended. Then Jesus saith
unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, thou shalt worship
the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve.
	  The tempter's trials had not swayed the Love of Christ from the
Father or from the bride, for whom He was being prepared. The Son, Jesus
Christ was counted as worthy before God and before man. The Bridegroom
was ready to become the very salvation of the bride, yet to be prepared
for her husband. This did not mean that Christ was never again without
the strain and the stress of this world order abounding around Him, but
He would never account it as anything more than what was necessary in
order for the will of God to be accomplished.
	  He endured the suffering of the cross in order to make a way for
us, you and me to come into right standing before God. He took our sin
upon Himself, even became our sin and left it in the grave for eternity.
It was His love for the church that bade Him to lay down His very life
for the church, for those who would be vitally joined to Him in His
resurrection power of life. In so doing, He created the only avenue for
us to receive the miraculous working of the Holy Spirit to indwell us in
order to prepare us, as we have seen, for the glorious position into
which we are placed by that allsufficient and effective work of Christ.
	  Rom. 7:4 Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law
by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him
who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.
Consider the fact that we are taken out from under the law of sin and
death by the very love that is Jesus Christ. Our being joined to Him has
caused everything about us to become new, created anew in the lifeblood
of the One Who so loved us that He gave His only begotten Son to die for
us. We have been redeemed in order to be joined, even in the effective
analogy of a husband and wife, as we will continue to examine in the
next week. It is by the Holy Spirit that we are now being made that
spotless church, the bride of Christ for eternity. This is what is
happening in our midst as we are experiencing these days. The purpose is
yet to be, but the working is effectively in progress unto the glory of
God.
	  I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my
God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath
covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh
himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.