I was just thinking about what
a wonderful blessing it is for believers to fellowship together
in Christ and how it is that we don't have to try to get to
know each other. We've got an instant bond. I'll tell you a real quick story. My father was born to my My grandfather
was a coal miner in Pennsylvania, and when my father was born to
the 12th of the children, his father died two years later.
He never knew his father, I never knew my grandfather. But my grandfather
died of black lung when my father was two years old, 1931. And my grandmother was forced
to give away all her children, she kept the baby, she kept my
dad. So my dad not only didn't know his father, he didn't know
his brothers and sisters. And I remember when I was probably
16 years old, we moved to California. My dad met one of his brothers
for the first time. And they became instant friends. But the bond they had is nothing
compared to the bond that we have. We've got brethren all
over this world we've never met before. And we're separated by
time and distance, and yet when we meet, we have an instant bond. Same father, same savior, we
believe the same thing. I spent many years in religion
where we were always trying to compete with one another, and
debate with one another over things, and that just doesn't
happen among believers. We have the same spirit, the
same word, same gospel, same Christ, and what a blessing. Thank you for letting me be here
with you this weekend, and I've been so encouraged. Will you
open your Bibles with me to Isaiah chapter 32? Isaiah chapter 32. I want to try to bring a message,
and I've titled it, A Man Shall Be a Hiding Place. A man shall be a hiding place.
Isaiah chapter 32, beginning at verse one. Behold, a king
shall reign in righteousness. That's the Lord Jesus Christ.
He's the king of kings. He comes riding on that white
stallion in the book of Revelation and he's got king of kings and
lord of lords written upon his thigh. And we bow to him as our
king and rejoice that he's a king in righteousness. He has established
all righteousness for his people. We have no righteousness apart
from the Lord Jesus Christ. David said, I will speak of thy
righteousness, even of thine only. And we know that all our
righteousnesses are as filthy rags before God. We look to the
Lord Jesus Christ for all of our acceptance, for all of our
law keeping, and for all of our righteousness. A king shall reign
in righteousness. He reigns in the hearts of his
people. He reigns sovereign, and they rejoice in bowing to
him and worshiping him. They're no longer raising their
fist in rebellion against their king. They're saying what Mephibosheth
said when he said, oh, what would the king have to do with such
a dead dog as I? They delight in having Christ
reign as their king. And he reigns in the churches,
and we have We have an audience of one when we gather together
to worship, don't we? We're not preaching to an audience,
we're worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ. Behold, that word behold
means put your blinders on. Don't be distracted by anything
else. This deserves your undivided
attention. Behold, a king shall reign in
righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment. Those are the
spokesmen for this king, and they're declaring a message of
judgment. Every time we preach, what are
we saying? We're saying the justice of God
has been completely satisfied by the sacrifice that the Lord
Jesus Christ made on Calvary's cross. That God saw the travail
of his soul and God was satisfied and justice has been met and
there's nothing we can do to add to it or take away from it,
it's finished. That's what the princes declare,
judgment and justice. And verse two, and a man shall
be as a hiding place from the wind and a covert from the tempest
as rivers of water in a dry place and as a shadow of a great rock
in a weary land. All this message is for those
who need a hiding place. Those who cannot survive in this
world without Christ. Those who need a way of escape.
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10, that there hath no temptation
taken you, but such as is common to all men. But God is faithful. who will not suffer you to be
tempted above that which you are able. I shared this verse
yesterday in the recording and people stop right there and they
say, well, God says he's not gonna put more on me than I can
bear. That's not what that verse says. If God doesn't put more
on you than you can bear, you'll never need him. And when he puts
your sin on you, you've got a burden that you can't bear. Because
the rest of that verse says, but will provide a way of escape. I am the way, the truth, and
the life. No man can come to the Father but by me. The Lord
Jesus Christ is that way of escape. All sinners need a way of escape.
Yes, they need help in their daily lives. But you know, troubles
that we experience in this world, they come and go. But our sin
problem, that never goes away. We bear this body of death on
our backs. Oh, wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from the body of this death? Thanks be to God,
through Christ Jesus I am free. There is now therefore now no
condemnation to them that are in Christ. To be found in Christ,
not having our own righteousness, which is of the law. but that
righteousness which is by the faithfulness of the Lord Jesus
Christ. I've got to have Christ as the
way of escape. I've got to have Him as my hiding
place. And here the Lord is telling
us, a man shall be as a hiding place. Not just any hiding place, a
safe hiding place. A hiding place where the waters
will not overflow you. A hiding place where there is
no fear of the wrath of God. A place where divine justice
has been satisfied. A place where God's holy law
has been perfectly kept and perfected. He's honored God's law. He's
the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. Oh,
this man. He's perfect. He's the perfect
man. A place of peace. Peace with
God. Oh, and that doesn't necessarily
mean we have peace in our troubles or in our circumstances, but
in the midst of them we have peace with God, don't we? And the peace of God surpasses
it. It's greater than any understanding. This is what this man gives us.
This is the God man. This is the Lord Jesus Christ
being spoken of here. This is the place of everlasting
mercy where all sin has been covered and hid even from the
face of God. This is the place where he has
sanctified forever, set apart, and made holy. A place where
fear and shame and guilt cannot find you. Cannot find you. The Lord Jesus Christ suffered
the shame of our sin. People say, well, you've got
to be sorry for your sins in order to be saved. Well, my question to that is,
how sorry do you have to be? We are sorry. But our sorrow
is so faint. Our sorrow is so, it's so shallow. Oh, we have pains of guilt and
shame, mostly when we get caught or when something embarrasses
us. But you know, our sorrow is just, but his sorrow? Lamentations
chapter 11 verse one, who sorrowed like me? In Psalm 38, He said,
I am sorry for my sins. When He bore our sins, He bore
them as His own. And He experienced the sorrow
that satisfied God's justice. Our sorrow, our repentance, our
faith. No, it's His faithfulness. It's
His sorrow. It's His work. He is our hiding place. Oh, He's
the place of liberty where there's no condemnation whatsoever. This hiding place, this man,
this is the place of pure love. Greater love hath no man than
this, that he lay down his life for his friend. And herein is
love, not that we love God. Our love for Him is so, again,
it's just like our sorrow, isn't it? We do love Him. We love Him
because He first loved us. But if my salvation is determined
by the sincerity of my love, I'm in trouble. Herein is love,
not that we love God, but that he loved us and gave his son
as a propitiation for our sins. Oh, what manner of love the Father
hath bestowed upon us. And we should be called the sons
of God. It's God's love. This is the
hiding place. This is the safe place. This is the place where we know
something about the love of God toward us. This is the place where Satan
is not allowed. No, he's not allowed here. Oh,
not when we flee to Christ. When the accuser of the brethren
starts troubling us over our sin, we flee to this hiding place. When he begins to tempt us, oh,
we flee to that way of escape. What a man. What a safe place, what a hopeful
place. A man shall be a hiding place
from the tempest. As a rock in a dreary land, this
is the place where sin loses its power. Scripture says that, Jay, you
quoted this, Jacob I loved, Esau I hated. And those two men represent
our two natures. And the Lord told Rebekah, when
Rebekah said, why am I thus? The Lord said to her, because
there's two nations in you. There's two manner of people
in you. And they're gonna struggle in your womb. And so it is with
us. But she said this, she said,
the elder shall serve the younger. Now the elder was Esau. And the
younger was Jacob. And the elder is our first man,
our earthy man, our natural man. And Jacob is our new man. You
know it was your old man that got you here this morning? It was. It was your man of flesh
that woke you up, got you dressed, and got you fed, and got you
here. Your old man served your new man, didn't he? And it's
the old man of weakness and sin. Paul said, his strength is made
perfect in my weakness. In our glory and my infirmities.
It's our old sinful man that causes us to flee to Christ.
The elder is always serving the younger. Oh, what a glorious place. And
when that happens, sin loses its power. When we're brought
to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that's not a one-time event,
is it? Peter said, to whom coming? Oh, this sin problem we have
is a daily struggle, isn't it? It's a daily battle. The spirit
wars against the flesh, and the flesh against the spirit. So
we cannot be what we would be. We would be perfect. We'd be
without sin. That's why we long to shed this
old man and to be made new, for this corruptible to be made incorruptible. for this mortal man to be made
immortal and for us to be clothed in his righteousness perfectly
and see him as he is and made like him. What a glorious, that's
why a sinner, that's why believers long to be with the Lord, to
shed this old man. This hiding place is a place
where the grave has been opened, and death loses its power. Oh,
grave, where is thy victory? The strength of sin is the law. The Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled
the law. He opened the tomb. He conquered death. He destroyed
the works of the devil. He's the hiding place. These
are our struggles, aren't they? These are our struggles in this
world. And yet God says to us, a man shall be a hiding place.
Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. A lot of
folks laboring in this world, but they've not yet become heavy
laden. Their labor has not yet become so heavy that they cannot
bear it, and so they will not flee to Christ. Only those who
have a burden that they cannot bear will flee to the Lord Jesus
Christ. And that's why the Lord says,
my yoke is easy, my burden is light. I've already bore the
weight of your sin, I put it away. Learn of me. Now we know that they shall all
be taught of God. We're not taught from a man.
You're not gonna learn anything from my voice. You're not gonna
learn anything from any of these brothers' voices. God's gonna
have to speak. He'll use an audible voice, but it will be ineffectual
unless the Spirit of God blesses it to our hearts. That's the
way of the eagle in the air, isn't it? Oh, but we learn of him. I'll give you rest for your soul. He's not only the subject, he's
the teacher. This is where the fires of hell
have been extinguished. They've been put out when the
prophet called fire from heaven on Mount Carmel. The fire consumed
that sacrifice. But you know what else happened?
The sacrifice quenched the fire. As soon as the sacrifice was
consumed by the fire, the fire went out. The fire lost its power. And the Lord Jesus Christ, hanging
on Calvary's cross, received the full fury of God's wrath
and quenched that fire so that there's no fear. Oh, what a hiding
place we have. The book of Hebrews speaks of
those who lived all their lives in fear of death. He's set free. This man who is our hiding place
is the place where the light of truth shines bright. He's
the light of the world and he shines in our hearts. the glory
of God in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now we're not looking
at a physical man. We don't know what he looked
like. Any attempts that men make to portray him physically, that's
not what we're talking about. We're talking about the eyes
of faith. We're talking about who he is
by his nature and what he's accomplished in his work and how glorious
he is. These are not things we try to
fashion a physical picture of. We're not gonna try to put flesh
and blood on this man. One day we'll see him. And we'll
see his scars and we'll know the only reason we're there is
because of what he did. But we're not trying to do that
now. Oh. This hiding place, notice
with me in our text, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes
shall rule in judgment, and a man shall be as a hiding place from
the wind, and a covert from the tempest, and as rivers of water
in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.
And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim, and the ears
of them that hear shall not hearken. Paul, we were talking about this
on the way here this morning, Isaiah chapter 6, when Isaiah,
after seeing the Lord, said, the Lord said, who shall go for
us? And Isaiah said, here am I, send me. And the Lord said,
OK, you go, and you preach the gospel. And they will have ears,
but they will not hear, and eyes they will have, and they will
not see. That's the most often quoted Old Testament passage
in the New Testament. and you just look at your family
members and your religious friends, people come to our services,
and they hear words, they hear Jesus, and they hear grace, and
they hear heaven and hell, and the Bible being a word of God,
and they don't listen to the interpretation or the definition
that we're giving to these words, and they'll go away saying, well,
he preached the same thing my church preaches. They have ears,
but they do not hear. Eyes they have, but they do not
see. And Isaiah said, Lord, how long? How long am I gonna have
to preach to this stiff-necked people? And the Lord said, until
the cities be without inhabitants and the land be utterly desolate.
Long as there's one man there to preach to, Isaiah, you just
keep preaching the truth. And that's what we're doing. But how glorious it is when God
does open the eye And when he does the seeing eye and the hearing
ear they're both of the Lord when he unstops the ear and the
voice of God is so crystal clear You hear this message, and you
say yes, I believe that more than I believe anything else
I I believe it more than I believe that I'm saved. You see, faith
is not believing you're saved. We kind of go back and forth
on that one, don't we? Faith is believing that the Lord
Jesus Christ is the successful Savior of sinners. And that the
only hope you have of standing in the presence of God is for
Him to be your advocate, your sin bearer, your substitute,
your surety. And without Him, you have no
hope whatsoever. Man's always been looking for
a hiding place. At the very beginning, when Adam took that forbidden
fruit from his wife Eve, and sewed for himself aprons of fig
leaves. We were talking about planting
a fig tree in Florida. You ever seen the leaf of a fig
tree? I used to have one in my yard. I pulled a leaf on one
time, laid it on my hand, that leaf was exactly the size and
shape of my hand. Isn't that amazing? That Adam
would take the leaves of a fig tree and sew them together. And
that's exactly what men do. They take the works of their
hands and they try to hide themselves before God. God knew what tree
Adam was behind when God came into the garden and said, Adam,
where art thou? He wasn't looking for Adam. He
was exposing Adam. Adam, did you eat of the tree? Lord, I did eat. The woman gave
it to me. Oh, we've been playing the blame
game ever since, haven't we? You know, Adam was really accusing
God. The woman that you gave me, it's all your fault. Man's
been excusing, justifying himself and blaming someone. When God
makes you to be a sinner, You know that it's all on you. You can't blame anybody else. There's no excuse. There's no
justification. You're like Job when Job said,
behold, I see something I've never seen before. I am vile. You're like Daniel when he said,
oh, my comeliness has turned into corruption. I thought I
was somebody, now I know I'm nobody. Oh, the way up is down,
isn't it? God makes you to be a sinner.
That's what God was doing to Adam. What'd Adam say? Adam said, I was naked, and I
was afraid, and I hid myself. I hid myself. Now that's what
men try to do. Oh, what a futile thing it is
to try to hide yourself from God. But that's what shame will
do, that's what sin will do. Isaiah chapter 28, turn to me
there. We're right there in Isaiah 32.
Turn back just a couple pages to Isaiah chapter 28. Look at verse 14. Wherefore,
hear the word of the Lord. This is God's word. Yeah, that's
all God's people need to hear, isn't it? Thus saith the Lord.
We're not here to try to explain, we just say, thus saith the Lord.
If God's given ears to hear and eyes to see, you'll just believe
what God says. You won't need to have it explained to you.
Hear the word of the Lord, ye scornful men that rule this people
which is in Jerusalem, because we have said we have made a covenant
with death, and with hell we are in agreement, and when the
overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto
us, for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehoods
have we hid ourselves. What a picture. What a picture
of aprons of fig leaves. We've hid ourselves. We made
a covenant. You know, a covenant is a promise.
That's what a covenant is. And that's what man-made free
will religion is all about. Works religion is man making
a promise to God and putting the hope of his salvation on
a promise that he made. The covenant of works goes something
like this. I will believe God and he will save me. And the
covenant of grace says, I will save you and you will believe. The covenant of works goes like
this, I'll repent of my sins and God will forgive me. And
the covenant of grace goes like this, I've already forgiven you
and you will repent. The covenant of works goes like
this, I'll serve God and he'll bless me. And the covenant of
grace says, I've already blessed you and you will serve me. What
a difference. But these scornful men, they're
hoping for their salvation in a promise that they've made.
I believed, I repented, I'm serving God. You talk to your religious
friends, what do they do? They want to tell you all about
things they're doing for God, don't they? And you just can't hardly listen
to it. Verse 16, therefore thus saith
the Lord God, behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone,
a tried stone. God Almighty is saying I've tried
my son and I found him to be perfect. He lived his whole life
under the law and he kept it. You were talking about keeping
the first commandment, love the Lord your God with all of your
heart and all your mind and all your soul all the time? The Lord Jesus
Christ did that. He did that. That's what's required. My wife and I were talking to
a Jewish friend some years ago, and she was complaining about
her friends saying, well, they pretend they're living under
the law, but I know they're not. They're not keeping the law.
She said, nobody can keep the law. And I said, well, one can.
And she immediately, she said, you're right. The difference
between you and me is that you think he's already come, and
I'm still waiting on him. I mean, there was an unbelieving
Jewish woman who knew what that woman at the well knew. When
Messiah comes, he's gonna make all things right. He's gonna
keep the law. Oh, what a hiding place we have.
He has come. And he has satisfied the demands
of the law. And he has bore our sins away
by the sacrifice of himself. And God, seeing the travail of
his soul, got satisfied. A man shall be a hiding place.
But this is what the world does. They don't know that there's
a stone, a foundation stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone. This is the stone that's been
rejected by the builders. God's made him to be the head
of the corner. Look at verse 17. Judgment also
will I lay to the line. I've done some construction work
over the years and we've got a lot of modern tools now that
we didn't used to have. But you know there's one tool
we still use that's been used for thousands and thousands of
years? It's called a plumb line. And
it's always right on. I mean it's perfectly accurate.
I remember one time I was building a house down in Virgin Islands
and our level broke on us. And so I had to get on the roof
of the house, because we were setting a beam over the garage.
And we leveled that beam to the horizon of the ocean. We were
on a small island. We could see the horizon. I just
leveled that beam. I said, go up a little bit here,
down a little bit here. We had that thing right on the
horizon. It's always accurate. It's always right. That plumb
line's always perfect. Later on, we got a good level
and laid it on there. Sure enough, it was straight on the bubble. That's the Lord Jesus Christ. And he said, you're like a teetering
wall put together with undaubed mortar. And when it's put to the plumb line,
it's not going to be true. It's going to fall. And that's
the covenant that men are made with God. What a hiding place
we have. And he says here, judgment will
I also lay to the line and righteousness to the plummet. The Lord Jesus
Christ is that plummet. He's that righteous standard
by which we all must be measured. And if we're not perfect in Christ,
that's why Paul said, I'm not yet apprehended that which has
apprehended me, but there's one thing I do for getting those
things which are behind, I press towards the prize for the mark
of the high calling in Christ Jesus. Said, oh, to be found
in him. to be found in Him. He's my hiding
place. Not having my own righteousness,
which is of the law, but that righteousness which is by the
faithfulness of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's my plumb line. And if God doesn't judge me in
Him, I'm... If God doesn't find me in Christ,
I'm going to hell for eternity. You show me an unbeliever that
believes that they are hell-deserving sinners. I mean, really believes
that. That they have no right to heaven,
and no claim on God, and nothing to present to God on their own. And that every child of God says,
if Christ doesn't do everything, that's what a surety is. A surety
is one who covers all of it for us. Look at the rest of this. And the hail shall sweep away
the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. When I was a kid, we had a big
culvert that we used to play in. Boy, if it ever started raining,
my mother would come out there and get us out of that culvert.
You know, you boys get caught in that thing, and you're gonna
drown in there. That's the picture here. He shall
be a hiding place, a covert from the storm. And God's saying,
when I send my storm, it's gonna flood that covert, and everybody
in there is gonna drown. I'm gonna sweep away your lies.
Oh, Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 23, can any hide himself in secret
places that I shall not see him? That's a rhetorical question.
Adam, I know where you are. You can't hide from me. A man
shall be a hiding place. Revelation chapter 16. The unbelievers
at the last day of judgment flee to the mountains and cry out
for the mountains and the rocks to fall on them. that they might
hide them from the wrath of the Lamb. That's what the scripture
says. Now what's that a picture of?
Is that man physically running to a mountainous place and trying
to hide out in a cave? No. No. It's exactly what the
Lord said when he said, when I separate the sheep from the
goats, the goats are gonna say, but Lord, We've done many wonderful
works in thy name. We've cast out demons in thy
name. We've prophesied in thy name. And the Lord's gonna say
to them, what are they doing? They're hiding in the mountains.
The Lord said, you have the faith of a mustard seed. You say unto
this mountain, be ye cast into the sea. That's our sin. That's what separates us from
God. And faith in the Lord Jesus Christ
puts all that away. Puts all that away. But because
they have no faith in Christ, they're looking, depart from
me you workers of iniquity. Now if you own a home and you've
got some equity in your home, that's the difference between
what you owe on it and what it's worth, right? You know, inequity,
that's what iniquity means. That means you're upside down.
That means you owe more on it than what it's worth. That's
a bad place to be. And they're trusting in their
works and in their rocks and in their mountains to save them,
and they're running to the rocks and the mountains and saying,
fall on us and hide us from the wrath of the Lamb. And the Lord
says, depart from me, you workers of iniquity, I never knew you.
And then he says to the sheep, I was hungry and you fed me.
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was naked and you
clothed me. I was in prison and you came and visited me. I was
a stranger and you took me in. And what did the believers say?
Lord, when did we do that? You see, we're not engaged in
going down to the soup kitchen or going down to the prison every
day and trying to fulfill this for our righteousness. If God
gives you an opportunity to help somebody, help them. But we're
not looking to these things as physical things. What are we
doing right now? The unbeliever comes in here,
he's a stranger, we take him in. We feed him the bread of
life. We preach to them the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ. We give them the fountain of
the water of life freely. We clothe them with the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here's the glorious truth, brethren.
Everything that the church does, I'm talking about the church
universal. I'm talking about every time
the gospel's preached in Orlando, Florida, every time it's preached
here, every time it's preached wherever, you know, wherever
God's raised up a congregation. You know, every member of the
body of Christ, we oftentimes read that passage of the hand
and the eye and the foot, and we think about individuals, but
think about it like that, individual congregations. There's one body. There's one God. There's one
baptism. There's one Lord, one faith.
And so though you may be the hand, though church in Orlando
might be the foot, the church in Lexington might be the eye,
and we're all part of the body of Christ. And whatever the body
of Christ does, every part of the body of Christ glories in.
And so every time we preach the gospel, you are clothing the
naked. and you are feeding the hungry,
and you are giving drink to the thirsty, and every time you do
it, we are. And that's how the Lord reckons
it. That's how He reckons it. And
He says, enter in to the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation
of the world. Oh, this kingdom's always been
prepared. We have a hiding place, a man,
the God man. We can't provide for ourself
a hiding place, but oh, what a safe hiding place He is. A
safe place He is. The Lord Jesus Christ, seated
at the right hand of the majesty on high, our advocate, our righteous
one, our sin bearer, our substitute, our surety, our savior.