The Ragman

THE RAGMAN

TEXT: Psalm 45:8

Psalms 45:8 – “All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.”

l. INTRODUCTION – THE CLOTHES OF A MAN

-I am told that clothes make the man. Whether or not that is true (which I sincerely doubt), I cannot say. However, I will say this that there are times that clothes do seem to give a man a sense of presence.

-The last few weeks, most of us, probably unconsciously have found that we do pay attention to the clothes that others wear. President Bush in his speeches before the nation has been very conservatively dressed and his clothes have seem to portray to us his position.

-The military uniforms that our generals of the Armed Forces also indicate to us that there has been a place of power associated with how they have been dressed.

-We would never expect our great leaders to dress themselves in rags. Such a thing would be shocking to us. And yet I would like to preach to you about the world’s greatest man, The Ragman.

-Not a lot is said in the Gospels about the clothes that Jesus wore.

We know that John the Baptist was a man dressed in camel hair.

We can infer that Isaiah probably dressed in royal robes as his presence was primarily in the courts of the kings.

We can presume that Peter, Andrew, James, and John probably wore the clothes of working fisherman.

-But little is said of what Jesus dressed in. Yet, there is one reference to something that He wore. That is found in John 19:23-24. It speaks of a robe that was seamless. One that was gambled on by the soldiers at the foot of the Cross. Other than that we are left to our own imagination.

-But before we fully look at Psalm 45, to go back to look at some of the clothing and garments that men wore in the Bible would serve us well.

ll. THE GARMENTS OF GOD

A. Joseph and His Coat

-It is a story that has been told a thousand times in the Sunday School rooms. It has been told by parents to children and by grandparents to grandchildren. The story of old Jacob and his construction of the coat of many colors for Joseph. It seemed that coat caused him more difficulty than what it was worth.

-The beautiful coat isolated Joseph from his brothers. It separated him to such an extent that they decided the thing to do would be to kill him. When those brothers saw that coat it caused jealousy to surge within them, it caused hatred to choke the life from their souls, and it gave rise to a spirit of envy.

-So they set out and when the end of the scene had been played, when all of their evil plans were accomplished, Joseph was at the bottom of the pit and his coat had been shredded and saturated with the blood of a lamb.

-When the coat had been presented to Jacob, he went into mourning thinking that his favorite son had been destroyed. Gone was Joseph, gone was the dreams of the father for his son.

-Joseph was taken from the pit by a roving band of Ishmaelites and sold into Egypt as a slave to Potiphar. But the pit taught a very valuable lesson to Joseph. He learned that the garments supplied by men will fail you. It does not matter how beautiful and how extravagant the coat may be there is coming a time that your garment is going to fail you if it is not supplied by God. They are not really coats as much as they are bank accounts, CD’s, cars, houses, paychecks, careers, and insurance policies. Joseph, put your trust in the Lord.

Psalm 118:8-9 -- "It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man." "It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in princes."

Psalm 146:3-4 -- "Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help." "His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish."

-Man made garments are described in Scripture:

Original but not sufficient -- Genesis 3:7 -- "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons."

Natural but not clean -- Zechariah 3:4 -- "And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment."