Let us read a verse from Ecclesiastes 9:8, “Let your clothes be white all the time, and let not oil be lacking on your head.” Garments always white and fullness of oil always – What a blessed life this is! This is the life God wants from us. Keeping our garments white means ‘to not be defiled by anything in this world’. The fullness of oil shows being filled by the Holy Spirit. We live in a crooked and perverse generation and Satan is always trying to get our garments filthy. But we have to keep our garments always white – not just when we are with believers but when we are out in the world. The verse says ‘at all times’, which means we need to keep our garments clean daily. How many of us are really willing to have this blessed life?
We should walk in the same manner as Jesus. In Revelation 3:4,5 we read, “But you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their garments; and they will walk with Me in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes will thus in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.” In the church of Sardis, there are 2 types of people. One group has received and heard; and keep and repent. The other group had their garments soiled. We also hear a lot of messages – Are we careful to keep our garments clean based on what we hear? Do we keep the word in our hearts and repent of our sins? In Revelations 16:15 we read that blessed is the one who keeps His clothes clean at the coming of the Lord. In many places in the book of Revelation we see that God gives emphasis to keeping our clothes clean – Rev 22:14, Rev 7:14. In Eph 5:15 we read that we should be careful in the way we walk. In verse 8 it says that we should walk as children of light. When we live in this world, we need to daily examine ourselves with the word in order to keep our garments clean. We should be holy as He is holy.
In 2 Corinthians 7:1 we see that we should cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord. We are not perfect, but we press on to perfection. Ephesians 5:26,27 reads, “so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless”. This is how we should be – without any spot or wrinkle in our garments. There is a prayer of David in Psalms 139 where he asked God to search him, try him and examine his thoughts to see if there is any hurtful way. This should be our prayer too. We have to put our lives before God for him to scan. If he shows any dark areas in our lives, let us examine and repent.
Let us look at 2 examples from the Old Testament that talk about the plumb line. We know the plumb line is an instrument used in masonry to check the verticality of a building. In Amos 7:7,8 “Thus He showed me, and behold, the Lord was standing by a vertical wall with a plumb line in His hand. The Lord said to me, “What do you see, Amos?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said,“Behold I am about to put a plumb line In the midst of My people Israel. I will spare them no longer.” In Amos 4 we read in verses 6,8,9,10 and 11 that God gave many chances to the Israelites but they didn’t come back to the Lord. Finally in verse 12, the Lord says – Prepare to meet your God, Israel! When we also finally meet our Lord he will be standing with a plumb line and he will check us. He will check to see if our robes are white, spotless and not wrinkled.
In the book of Zechariah, God’s servant Zerubbabel holds the plumb line. We read this in chapter 4:10. Zerubbabel held the plumb line to check the construction of the temple. We also can not build our lives without using this plumb line. God will judge based on this plumb line. We have to use this inspection tool to check that our lives are right as per the word of God. And finally when we are in front of God for inspection, our lives should be in accordance with this plumb line. In Zechariah 4:6 we read that we can live by His power even though we have many obstacles in our lives. He will complete the work and put the capstone. May God help us to keep our garments white and to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. God bless us all.
