Hello, my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
Have you ever witnessed the coronation of a King or Queen? Our world witnessed this remarkable event with King Charles of the United Kingdom only a few months ago. But what would it be like if God Himself crowned normal people like you and me with His special anointing into royalty?
Come with me again, back to Jerusalem about 2700 years ago as the prophet Isaiah is writing the amazing message of hope he is receiving from the Holy Spirit of God. We find it in our Bible in Isaiah 61 and we’ve been taking this one phrase at a time for the past several days.
Today, let’s take the next phrase which sounds like a coronation: “The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to…bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes; the oil of joy instead of mourning; and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair…” (Is. 61:3) You’ll remember Jesus the Messiah was the fulfillment of this very significant message of prophecy from God, written by Isaiah.
But we’ve been considering that God intends for His people who have trusted Jesus for their salvation, to now carry on the work of Jesus under the same anointing of the Holy Spirit of God whom God has sent to live within and empower those redeemed by Jesus.
Therefore, this entire message of Isaiah 61:1-4 can apply to you and me if we are confident we are ‘born again’ by the Holy Spirit of God and empowered by the Holy Spirit to accomplish this God given mission.
So, what does it mean practically, in our modern world, that we, God’s people, anointed by His Holy Spirit would “bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes; the oil of joy instead of mourning; and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair…”? Well, who are the ‘them’ in this Scripture? They are the discouraged people in despair whom God has been describing in Is. 61:1,2. They’re the people who either have not yet trusted in Jesus for their salvation and are therefore living in desperate bondage and darkness of sin and the dark kingdom; or they are people who have trusted in Jesus but find themselves in the dark and desperate places of our world in their life journeys. Now today let’s seek to understand this coronation God urges us to participate in with these discouraged people.
We see three specific pictures in this phrase, right? People living in “ashes”; and people “mourning in grief”; and people with a “spirit of despair”. Perhaps you remember that in these times of Isaiah, when a person was in the deepest throws of grief, they would do several practical things to express their extreme grief publicly.
First, they would remove their normal clothing and put on sackcloth. That was what the poorest of the poor people or even people with leprosy would wear. It was the cloth of which sacks would be made. Sacks for carrying heavy loads or garbage or even the excrement of animals or humans. Sackcloth was shameful, humiliating and extremely uncomfortable.
Secondly, people in deep grief or despair would sit on the ground and pick up handfuls of dust or even ashes from burned out fires and splash the dirt or ashes on their heads over and over. It was an extreme sign of humiliation and despair. The symbolism was that they felt totally worthless, and they wished they would die, and their bodies would decay, returning to dust.
Now in contrast to that, do you see God urging His Holy Spirit filled people to bring great HOPE and even JOY to those people in despair? “Bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes; the oil of joy instead of mourning; and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair…”!!
No, God’s people were not supposed to begin fabricating crowns and passing them out to every discouraged person they saw. Rather, God’s people were urged to befriend and step in alongside those they knew were in desperate situations. By gaining an understanding of exactly what was causing their despair, God’s people would then be able to pray with and inform the desperate of God’s great love for them, even in their desperation; and God’s complete understanding of their desperate situation; and God’s resources available to help them in their desperation! God’s Word, of course, gives us those assurances!
All those truths, shared by someone who genuinely loved the person in despair, should awaken HOPE in the ashes. Then as the desperate reach to God, pour out their heart to God, and embrace God’s truth, the Spirit of God will begin working in their broken hearts and their minds to help them experience God’s help and hope in their desperation. Have you had that experience my friends?
The ‘crown of beauty’ was a reference to God’s powerful statement which He had made to Moses about His chosen people whom He viewed as His treasured possession. (Ex. 19:5,6) God had first spoken this to Moses and the rescued Hebrew slaves, who of course had been living in desperate bondage for generations!
Now in Isaiah’s day, with the northern kingdom Israel invaded and decimated by the Assyrians, and much of the region around Jerusalem under frequent attack by the Philistines, and even Jerusalem living in desperate times under the reign of King Manasseh, Jews felt despair very much like their enslaved ancestors in Egypt.
750 years later the apostle Peter, writing to desperate Christians in the first century, used the words of Exodus 19 to encourage both Jewish and Gentile Christians in the Roman empire, when he wrote: “You are a chosen people, a ROYAL priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God…” (1 Peter 2:9,10)
Can we understand how the truth of these words would be like God’s coronation or divine royalty for desperate people? Can you imagine how encouraging it is for someone in despair to understand that God loves them so deeply and understands their pain fully and wants to draw them to Himself, adopting them as His son or daughter, a prince or princess of the King of kings, and placing God’s Holy Spirit within them as divinely anointed royalty? That’s the powerful, despair defeating message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
When Isaiah used the phrase ‘the oil of joy instead of mourning’ of course Jews would be reminded of the powerful significance of the anointing oil the prophet Samuel had used when anointing David to be Israel’s king; (1 Samuel 16:13) or the sacred anointing oil Moses had used to anoint each of the golden artifacts used in worship in the Tabernacle! (Exodus 40:9-11) This great oil of joy was symbolized by the special oil used to keep the golden lampstands in the Temple alight generation after generation. (Ex. 27:20,21) Oil poured on the head of someone being blessed was a precious experience which always awakened great joy!! (Ps. 133:2)
And of course the phrase: ‘a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair’ for Jewish people brought to their minds the wonderful coat of many colors Jacob had made and given to his favorite son Joseph; (Gen. 37:3) or the special garments made for the priests and High Priest, (Exodus 28) I think it was a practical call to God’s people coming alongside those in despair to help them consider enveloping themselves with all the great attributes of the God of Israel and His promises to His people.
The apostle Paul was expressing something of this idea when he wrote to the Colossians: “As God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another…as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Jesus Christ rule in your hearts…” (Col. 3:12-17)
Now my “Walking with Jesus” friends, I have an important and simple question for you and me today, in 2024: do we understand and can we live DAILY this commissioning from Jesus to: “bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes; the oil of joy instead of mourning; and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair…” when we step into the pain of our world which is holding friends of ours in the clutches of despair? And here’s a song to help us reflect on this powerful, wonderful Isaiah 61…
Today’s Scripture: Is. 61:3.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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