The Good News of Isaiah 61:3 = Beauty for Ashes
The Good News of Isaiah 61:3 = Beauty for Ashes.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me to… provide for those who mourn in Zion, to comfort and care for the needs of all who grieve in Israel; to give a crown of beauty to replace their ashes. I will anoint them with the oil of gladness to replace their sorrow and grief. And I will give to them a garment of splendor and praise to replace their spirit of burdened heaviness. Then they will be called magnificent oaks of righteousness, planted by the Lord to glorify Him.” (Isaiah 61:3).
“Beauty for Ashes = A Biblical view of beauty includes the quality of outstanding excellence in appearance, in usefulness, in moral character, in creative expression. Beauty brings delight to the senses; is well-designed and constructed; reflects a harmony that reveals a true aspect of creation; is extremely attractive and inspires awe, wonder, admiration, praise; is profoundly pleasing and satisfying; is an act of pure goodness; demonstrates the presence of loveliness and grace; is something exquisite in form, function, and proportion; that which contains glory and splendor.
Mission Continued. The first verses in Isaiah 61 were quoted by Jesus to clarify His mission and ministry. But His life purpose does not stop with the first couple of verses. His mission continues in verse three. The Holy Spirit is upon Jesus to provide an exchange that is difficult to reject if we have our heads on straight and know what’s good for us. Beauty for ashes, taken in context, means that the Messiah will take away our ashes of hopeless defeat, of lifelessness, and then provide for us a crown of beauty. Our ashes, symbols of the ugliness of death, is to be exchanged by Jesus with a crown of beauty, something beautiful to replace something dreadful. The Spirit’s anointing oil of gladness and joy will replace the sorrow of our sinful nature. And He will cover us with festal attire, with garments of praise and rejoicing, to replace our fainting spirit of weakness and heaviness.
Chris McClarney – Beauty For Ashes (Acoustic) – Jesus Culture Music
Daily Exchange. This is not a one-time offer from Jesus. This process is a vital part of our daily renewal. This is a daily exchange of going to the feet of Jesus every day and giving to Him the ashes in our lives, those parts of us that are broken, or hopeless, or spiritually unhealthy. And He has promised that He will take those ugly ashes that were placed on the heads of those in mourning or despair, and replace them with a beautiful crown to wear on our heads instead. When we come to Him every day and offer to Him our ashes, He will give us beauty as His replacement. As we participate in this daily exchange, our inner lives in Christ will continue our daily renewal. Christ wants to substitute our ashes of our death-dealing brokenness with the beauty of His wholeness.
Renew, Restore, Redeem. God has proven Himself to be in the business of redemption all through history. He yearns to take the bad and turn it into something good, to restore what is broken into something whole, to take what is disfigured and make it become beautiful. God takes our weakness and uses it as a springboard for His power. He uses the ashes in our lives to construct something glorious and beautiful. Astoundingly, in the ultimate act of redemption, God has already proven that He can take death and make it come alive.
“… Oaks of Righteousness for His glory.”
“Oaks” = The Hebrew word implies something magnificent and full of splendor, strong and mighty in stature, and so the rare word used here has usually be translated as oak tree, because the oak was considered the most magnificent and strongest of trees in their part of the world. Oaks drop acorns, of course, which grow slowly but surely to produce magnificent trees, massive as well as old. Oaks are known for their long life, and were useful in that area for providing hard wood for ships and farming implements. So, in the Bible, oaks were associated with power, usefulness and longevity. Isaiah seemed to love oak trees, for he mentions them throughout his book. He famously referred to believers in this passage as “oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord Yahweh for the display of His splendor that He may be glorified.” What a meaningful picture of solid, steady, persistent goodness, strong and true, useful for Kingdom purposes. So it wouldn’t hurt to pray to that end in our intercessory prayers. May we be oaks of righteousness, Lord, planted by You for Your glory.
“… they delight in the instruction of the Lord, and on His teaching they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit in each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do.” (Psalm 1:2-4).
“… of Righteousness” = The Hebrew word here is rooted in the word for righteousness and saving justice… a person who is upright, just, godly, in right standing with God; who lives according to God’s standards; who embraces a life that is in conformity to God’s moral order. This word, “tzeddek” is actually a title in Judaism that is given to people who are especially outstanding in piety, holiness and righteousness, and the “tzaddik” has been described as someone who oozes goodness, who takes joy in justice, who loves to blamelessly puts things right. A righteous person is one who lives a life pleasing to God. A tzaddik is a believer who recognizes that a righteous God has created a moral universe and expects His followers to live righteously and justly to reflect His purposes for mankind.
Righteousness and Justice are Kissing Cousins. It seems righteousness and justice are each used to accompany the other in Scripture, and both are often said in the same breath. A righteous person reveals his/her righteousness by practicing justice. A just person is certainly that way because s/he is filled with righteousness. And both qualities together form a central characteristic of God’s character. To be just and righteous is to live in a way that is consistent with the moral demands of God. To do what is right and just is to be in synch with the very Spirit of God. For the only possible Source of justice and righteousness, the only perfect example we have of those qualities, is the Lord Himself. Taken together, justice and righteousness are demonstrating “the perfect rightness of God,” the holiness of the Lord, and is deserving of highest honors and acclaim. As the prophet Isaiah exclaimed earlier in his book, “Yahweh Sabaoth, the Lord of Hosts, is exalted through His justice (mishpat); God the Holy One proves His holiness through His righteousness and justice (tzaddeq).” (Isaiah 5:16).
“… For His Glory.” The word for glory means the weighty splendor of God’s personal presence in the world. The bottom line is that the weight of God’s presence outweighs the world; His presence is more substantive and heavier than the universe. To give God glory is to glorify Him… to acknowledge and applaud the awesome reality of God’s presence in the world; to make His presence heavier and more obvious; to magnify Him by enlarging His name and reputation in the world; to live in a way that strengthens God’s credibility; to honor God in a way that reveals the truth and makes Him less hidden; to live in a way that preserves God’s glorious name and Personhood; to follow God in a way that helps others to recognize God as the ultimate Person of Substance; to publicize and promote His glorious name by demonstrating His character; to be a guardian of God’s goodness and spiritual power in the world. So the whole point of becoming an oak of righteousness is to glorify God, to point others to Him, to reflect His character, to reveal His splendor. We were created for His glory, to glorify Him, to discover what we were made to do, to find ultimate satisfaction in bringing honor and splendor to the only One in the universe who is worthy of such praise.
Dwelling on His Beauty. It’s not enough to simply appreciate or admire the beauty of Christ. Instead, we need to fix our eyes on Jesus and His beauty, to gaze upon Him and worship His beauty, to allow His beauty to be formative in our lives. David exclaims in Psalm 24:7 that he has ‘one thing’ he wants more than anything else, there is one thing that would help form and direct his life… “to gaze with complete focus upon the sweet and delightful beauty of the Lord.” There’s a good chance that centering our life on the beauty of Christ, of worshiping His beauty, of allowing His beauty to change our lives into one like His, is indeed our ‘one thing most needful.’
The Cross. Could there be a more profound example of ‘beauty for ashes’ than the Cross of Christ? Jesus embraced the ugliness of sin and it led to the beauty of forgiveness and eternal life. The ugliness of the Cross led to the beauty of the empty tomb. As dead as Christ was on the Cross, the early Christian church had a habit of referring to it as the Tree of Life. They said the Cross was the Tree that healed the Tree, the Tree that healed the sin of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, and the Tree that restored the Tree of Life in the paradise of the new creation. The death of God led to the life of the world as He conquered death itself, beauty replacing ashes.
The Beautiful Tree of Christ.
“Faithful cross! above all other, one and only noble tree!
None in foliage, none in blossom, none in fruit thy peer may be;
Sweetest wood, and sweetest iron! Sweetest weight is hung on thee.
Bend thy boughs, O tree of glory! Thy relaxing sinews bend;
For awhile the ancient rigor that thy birth bestowed, suspend;
And the king of heavenly beauty on thy bosom gently tend.” (Honorius Fortunatus, 569 AD).
Help us, O Lord of beauty, to receive beauty from You that will only result in others recognizing Your beauty and bring glory to You. May we display splendor only to reveal your glorious presence in the world. Amen.