My soul will exult in my God;
For He has clothed me with garments of salvation,
He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness,
As a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,
And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its sprouts,
And as a garden causes the things sown in it to spring up,
So the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise
To spring up before all the nations.
Isaiah 61:10-11
Many of us know how Isaiah 61 begins, in part because Jesus publicly read a portion of it to announce the start of His earthly ministry. Until this past week, I had never taken much notice of the glorious ending of this same chapter of Isaiah. Isaiah's words in verse 10 soar in praise to the Lord God, exalting Him prophetically for the salvation that would come many centuries later through Jesus, the Messiah.
Verse 11 then switches gears to speak of a garden. The two passages are linked by "for," indicating that what has been described in verse 10 is the outflowing or perhaps the illustration of what comes in verse 11. And the lesson of verse 11 is deceivingly deep.
On the surface, verse 11 is simply a lovely garden metaphor. We could almost skip right over it, as yet another wonderful image of the Lord's beautiful handiwork, evidenced by the rebirth of plant life as winter ends.
But the phrase "as a garden causes the things sown in it to spring up" begins to reveal a secret, which (as with most of God's secrets) not everyone comes to know, because it costs something to learn it. The secret is this:
To be used of the Lord, we must first allow Him to humble us.
Who on earth (no pun intended) would think that frozen, dead-looking dirt would make the perfect environment to protect and prepare a plant to bring forth tender green shoots in the spring? Well, God thinks so. In the "dirt" (pain of life) He wants to teach us to be patient and to trust Him. If we're always protecting our own understanding, our own comfort, our own ego, He can't even plant us in the sort of dirt that brings forth holy shoots. And if we're in the dirt but get too impatient for spring, we miss many of the sweet lessons He has for us about Himself, down in the lonely but sanctifying darkness of winter.
If verse 10 reveals the outcome or illustration of the garden metaphor in verse 11, then how glorious is this: Verse 10 could never have happened if the Lord Jesus had not allowed Himself to be humbled and broken, enduring the coldest, most hostile darkness imaginable in anticipation the unspeakably triumphant spring which was to come.
Praise God, let us then rejoice greatly in the Lord and exult in our God! For through Jesus' death and resurrection, He has clothed us with garments of salvation, and has wrapped us with a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.