If you would, turn back in your
Bibles this morning to Psalm 91. Psalm 91. There is a hymn that says something like this,
there is a place of quiet rest near to the heart of God, a place of safety, a place of blessing and security. And I believe the psalmist Here
in Psalm 91 makes reference to that place. He calls it the secret place. That's what I want to talk to
you about this morning. The secret place. If you notice
in verse 1, he says, He that dwelleth in the secret place
of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." Whenever we look at any Old Testament
passage, my prayer is always that the
Lord would be pleased to enable us to see the spiritual truth,
the gospel message as it pertains to the Lord Jesus Christ and
all those spiritual blessings that are in Him. This passage speaks of that safety
and that security that is in Christ Jesus. Some seem to think that Moses
might be the one God used to write this psalm or this song,
And they base it on the fact that his name is ascribed to
the previous psalm. They sometimes say that if no
name is given to the next psalm, then it was authored by the name
on the previous psalm. I don't know that. Maybe more
than that, they seem to believe that this is a psalm of David,
and that David is actually talking here to Solomon. That the second
verse is a response by Solomon. I don't know that either. But
I know this, I know that our Lord, would have us always to see,
in all these Old Testament Scriptures, Christ and Him crucified. As a matter of fact, after His
resurrection, when He revealed Himself as the risen Lord with
those early disciples, He said something to them that we ought
always to remember. He said, "'These are the words
which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all
things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses
and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning me.'" It's all concerning Christ. And then it says, "...then opened
he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures."
Now, I know how religious people are. They take a verse like this
and they make it almost to be a kind of mystical, un-understandable
thing, this secret place. But the measure of our understanding
of this verse and every verse in the Bible is only as great
as our understanding of how it is concerning Christ. We might be able to tell who
actually did write it, or when it was written, or what the circumstances
were, but that's of no good. if we do not see what is spoken
of concerning the Lord Jesus. And it is even more important
because what he has to say here about this secret place is also
so very important because he calls it the secret place of
the Most High. What a sad thing it is in our
day that men and women, most especially religious men and
women, they neither hear anything about or know anything about
the Most High. The Most High. Because the God
of this book, the God of all glory, He is not just a God,
and this is not just any place, it is the secret place of the
Most High God. And that's a description that
is found time after time in the Bible about the God of the Bible. If we know anything about Abraham's
God, this is who he is, the Most High. And when Melchizedek, king
of Salem, brought forth bread and wine and blessed Abraham,
it says, he was the priest of the Most High God. And he blessed him. And he said,
Blessed be Abram of the Most High God, possessor of heaven
and earth, and blessed be the Most High God, which hath delivered
thine enemies into thy hands. This is the triune God. This is the creator God. This is the possessor of heaven
and earth. And He is the God. The one true
and living God with whom every one of us, whether we want to
acknowledge it or not, whether we view Him as such or not, He
is that one God with whom the Bible says we have to do. He's the God of all the earth. And the psalmist says of Him
in another place, he says that what He does, He does that men
may know that He alone is Jehovah and the Most High over all the
earth. You see such things as so-called
free will? They are nothing but assaults
and attempts to dethrone the Most High God. And that is exactly
what that one called Lucifer sought to do when he was cast
down along with a third of the angelic host. It was for rebellion
against the Most High God. Isaiah says, recording Lucifer's
very word and will, that this is what it was. He says, I will
ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most
High God. But he didn't, and he wasn't. And he cast him down to hell. Why? Because he alone is the
Most High God. And it is within this very name
and title that we see so often that He is shown to be the absolute
sovereign ruler and dispenser and disposer of all things. In Deuteronomy, Moses is shown,
it says, when the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance,
You mean it wasn't fate? You mean it wasn't luck? You
mean it wasn't chance? You mean it wasn't evolution?
You mean it wasn't one of a host of other things that men ascribe
these things to? Absolutely not. He says, "...when
the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when
He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people
according to the number of the children of Israel, For the Lord's
portion is his people, and Jacob is the lot of his inheritance."
In other words, Moses said he's sovereign in not only creation
and disposing and dispensing and sustaining of all things,
but also in grace and mercy. Daniel records what happened
to that great king Nebuchadnezzar. And he said, you will be cast
out and live and be viewed as the very beasts of the field
until you are taught something and come to know something. He
says, until you know. that the Most High rules in the
kingdom of men and gives it to whomsoever He will." Have we learned that? Nebuchadnezzar learned that when
God taught him. He says, "...and at the end of
the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and
mine understanding returned unto me." And by the way, that was
an understanding he never had before this. This is that understanding
that God alone can give us. He says, "...and mine understanding
returned unto me, and I blessed the Most High." And I praised
and honored Him that lives forever, whose dominion is an everlasting
dominion, and His kingdom is from generation to generation. He is the High and Holy One that
inhabits eternity. But there is one here that is
described as the secret place. And this secret place, it says
that those who dwell in the secret place of the Most High, they'll
abide under the shadow of the Almighty. Now there are a lot
of various pictures within this text wherein God the Most High
condescends so low to describe Himself and His blessing and
His salvation and security in even such as a chicken. He speaks
of himself as a God who is like a mother hen who spreads her
wings and all her chicks gather under her wings. He speaks of
this one as a refuge and a place of safety. And in so many ways,
he shows us not only that this is the only place of safety and
salvation, this is a sure place of safety and salvation. This is the secret place. And
it's not some mystical place, it's not some meeting place like
that of a secret society, it's not some state of a man's imagination
or invention, but a real place. A place represented and pictured by a place that
both Moses and David would be familiar with. And that was the Holy of Holies
in the tabernacle. There in the midst of the camp
of Israel was a tent that was so uninviting on the outside,
made of old, dried, weathered badger skins. And then inside
of that was this court, and inside of that was another, and there
in the midst of this tabernacle was a place where nobody could
go except that one high priest, the great high priest. He could
go and was to go one time a year. with a specific God-ordained
sacrifice, and there he would make atonement for the sins of
the people. I've often wondered how those
Israelites might, when they knew that the priest was going in,
how they might wonder what might be going on, or how they might
wonder how God would deal with them on this basis, or how God
would bless them, or how He would show Himself their God, simply
on the basis of what was going on in this tiny little area separated
by curtains in which this one man went once a year. And He'd sprinkle that blood
on the ark of the covenant lid, which was called the mercy seat.
And either God would reject it, and therefore reject them, or
He would accept it, and therefore accept them. God says to Moses, and thou shalt
put the mercy seat above the ark, and in the ark thou shalt
put the testimony I shall give thee, and there, and there I
will meet thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy
seat, from between the two cherubims, which are upon the ark of the
testimony of all things, which I will give thee in commandment
unto the children of Israel." He said, that's where I'll meet
you. A little later on, when David,
it says, and all Israel, when they went up to Bala, that is,
to Kirjath-Jerim, which belonged to Judah, to bring up the ark
of God the Lord that dwelleth between the cherubim. In other
words, God, in this very obscured and you might say secret place,
He set His testimony and said that's where He dwelt and that's
where He would speak to men and be spoken to by men by means
of a sacrifice that God had appointed. He said, you can't go in on your
own. You can't offer up a sacrifice on your own. The only one who
can come into that place is that one priest appointed by God,
with that one sacrifice approved by God, and with that one work
that would be accepted by God. He said, because that's where
I dwell. That's where I dwell. And that
was the secret place, I guess you'd say, of Moses' day and
of David's day. But it represented the true secret
place. That's where I'm trying to get
you. It represented, as every other picture and type of the
Lord Jesus Christ does, it represented the secret place revealed in
the gospel of Christ and Him crucified. Turn over to Hebrews chapter
9. Hebrews chapter 9, and listen
to how, as is all through this book of Hebrews, how the Spirit
of God takes so many of those Old Testament things like the
priesthood and the king, and all those things that were under
that mosaic economy, and shows us that they were really just
pointing to Christ. Hebrews chapter 9 and verse 21. He says, "...moreover, he sprinkled
with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry,
and almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and
without shedding of blood is no remission." Now, he's pointing
us back to that Old Testament priesthood. And he said there was a reason
behind everything that God appointed by Moses of this priesthood and
these sacrifices. He said, it was therefore necessary
that the pattern of things in the heavens should be purified
with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better
sacrifices than these. When it comes to actually satisfying
God, when it comes to God being a just God and a Savior at the
same time, when it comes to God dealing with those He'd saved,
He said, all these things on earth, they only picture that
which is required of the heavenly things. For Christ. is not entered into
the holy places made with hands." He neither entered into the holy
place of the tabernacle, nor did he enter into the holy place
of the temple. Why? Because that's not where
his work was. For Christ is not entered into
the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the
truth. but into heaven itself, now to
appear in the presence of God for us." In other words, that
priest represented that people. And he was but a type of the
one great high priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, who represents
his people before God. And he says, in either place
it is shown that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. That means there is no forgiveness
of sin. And we can try to have some kind
of gospel, or some kind of feeling, or something like that, that
bypasses, if you will, this necessary work of Christ, which is the
shedding of His blood in the atonement of our sin. We can
try if we will, but He still says the same thing. Without the shedding of blood.
There is no remission of sins. But unlike these priests that
were on earth, he says, "...nor yet that he should offer himself
often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year
with blood of others. For then must he have often suffered
since the foundation of the world." They were many priests. They
had many sacrifices, they went many times year after year, and
all their work never put away one sin. You say, well, what good was
it? Well, it was good because God commanded it. And in that
sacrifice, and in those types and pictures, he showed the one
way by which he puts away sins, and he pointed to the one who
would come and do that for his people. Verse 26, he says, "...but now,
once in the end of the world, Now that seems almost strange,
because we've been so snowed, if you will, by religionists,
as to think that somewhere way down the road, there's going
to be the end of the world. When in truth, the end of the
world, or the end of the age, began when Christ came into this
world. And he says, but now once in
the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself. If your sins were ever put away, If your sins are ever dealt with
in such a manner that God would be pleased and His justice satisfied
and you accepted, it had to be done by the Lord
Jesus Christ. If you and I were ever allowed
to come into His presence, If you and I are ever to have a
refuge from His judgment and justice and wrath in the matter
of our sin, if you and I are ever to have a place of safety,
it's got to be in Christ. It's got to be in Him. And when you look at this book
again and again, he shows us... By the way, this secret place,
I guess you could say it is such in two senses. Number one, men
and women are naturally blind to it. Naturally blind to it. And number
two, the only way that it is ever known, Christ Himself being
the way, is by this divine revelation. It's like being out in the midst
of a place that's being shelled and bombed and everything going
off all around, and you look around and you can't see the
bomb shelter, and you can't see a place to run and hide, you
can't see a rock or a place to get under in a safe place. But that doesn't mean it's not
there. That doesn't mean it's not there. You see, the word secret here
has to do with a covering. That's what it's associated with,
a covering. It has to do with a cover or
a hiding place, and the same word is used in Isaiah 32. Isaiah 32 and verse 2. And you know how that verse begins?
It says, and a man. And a man. Not just any man. The one who's that one mediator
between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. But he says in
this text, he says, "...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 the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." Do you understand that? All those
are references to safety and salvation. All those are references
to the kind of deliverance and salvation that you and I as sinners
need. And what he's not saying there,
he's not saying, well, what you need to do is chisel you out
a rock, or erect you a tent, or do something like that by
your own hands. He said, a man. a man shall be as a secret place,
a hiding place." How did Moses, since we mentioned
Moses, how did Moses, when God was about to reveal Himself to
him? Now, if you ever want to know
how God really is, and find out how he is in direct contradiction
to how men make him to be some namby-pamby God who's manipulated
at the hands of men. Moses asked him, he said, Lord,
show me your glory. Show me your glory. And before
he could reveal himself, to whatever degree it was, and in however
way it was, and I don't think it was by the natural eye, but
more about what he said about himself. But he said, you go
over there and you hide in this broken place in the rock. That
was a type of Christ. Oh, you go hide in the cleft
of the rock. That's what the hymn writer is
saying, rock of ages, cleft for me. In Christ. He said, I'll pass by you. I'll
reveal my name to you. What is that? He said, I will
have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will be gracious
to whom I will be gracious. That's a stunning thing to our
day. When men and women have been told so much that God is
helpless and weak, and how He needs them, and how He wants
to bless them, and how He's trying to do this for them, where they'll
not let Him, no, He said, I'm the Most High, and I'll do with my own what
I will. And He says a man is a hiding
place, a covering. And that is a wonderful picture
of Christ Jesus the Lord and His sin-atoning blood. And the only way that Moses or
any Israelite or any sinner can ever deal with God as He is and
enter into His presence is in Christ. And it's not in what I know about
Christ, it's in what Christ did for me. It's not in what I can give to
God, it's in what God has given to me. It isn't by my free will, it's by
His divine will. It's not by my works, that which
I do, or try not to do, or whatever that is, it's by His works. which is described as a work
of righteousness. Because when the Lord Jesus Christ
entered into that holy place, He entered into the presence
of God on high as the one to whom God had imputed all the
sins of His people to Him. As Isaiah said, He made all their
iniquities to meet on His head. And when He went to that cross
as the one who bore the sins of His people on His own body
on that tree, He put them away by His death for them. Now, I can tell you one thing
this morning. I'm not a very smart guy and I'm certainly not
a good preacher, but I know this. Every one whose sins were upon
Christ when He hung on that cross to satisfy the debt that was
due them, they don't have any sin anymore. You say, well, I just don't feel
like that. Well, I got news for you, you
had no feeling at all when He died for your sin. We weren't even alive. And you
see, that's the glorious thing of God's salvation. The way we
can enter into this secret place in God's presence, in God's fellowship,
is in Christ, because He's already accomplished the work outside
of us and before us. And I'll tell you this, if you
ever find out what your sin is, if you're ever brought to realize
the only thing you can do is sin more. And that's the way
it is. Did you know that it seems like?
The more we set our minds to not sin so as to please God,
guess what we do? We sin more. Because that very notion is so
contrary to the way we are in our flesh, that it just stirs
up what we are. Just tell your children, whatever
you do, don't you touch that glass figurine on that end table. Come in tomorrow. Now I'm telling
you, do not touch that glass figurine at the end of that end
table. Guess what? You'll come in one
day and there lies shadow. Because God never intended to
trust in anything that we do or don't do. Oh, we have great
admonitions in Scripture of things that we are not to do and things
that we are to do. But He said, when man at his
best state is altogether vanity. on his best day, doing the best
he could. That's what people like to hide
in. Well, preacher, I just do the best I can. I hate to tell
you, but that's not good enough. God will only accept Christ's
best, which is perfect, holy, righteous, glorious, and grace
to His people. Oh my friend, if you remember, I love to think
about Christ in all His pictures, in where we run to, to be safe
from divine judgment and wrath. When that flood was about to
pour out on the earth, and destroy every living soul on this earth. There was just one refuge, there
was just one secret place, there was just one hiding place, and
that was the ark. You say, well, I'll tell you,
preacher, I just believe God loves everybody. Well, just imagine
if you can, on the back of that ark, when the waters get about
neck high to the tallest person on this earth at that time. Just
imagine a bumper sticker on the back of that ark that says, Smile,
God Loves You. God loves His people in Christ,
and outside of Christ, He's a consuming fire. He had mercy. Because that ark
was simply a picture of Christ and Him crucified. That ark bore
the wrath and the judgment of God, the wind and the storms
and the water all tossed against that ark. But Noah and his family
were safe inside. They had a refuge. You look there
in the law of Israel, and here's a manslayer who's chopping wood
one day, and the head flies off the axe and hits another man
there, and he's killed instantly by that blow, and all of a sudden,
his brother comes along, and he becomes the avenger of blood. Is there any place for that man?
He strikes out in a run. He flees. Why would he run? Because there are seven cities
in Israel that were called the cities of refuge. And if this
man who is guilty of manslaughter, as it would be, if he can make
it into one of those cities, it says that he is safe there
and the avenger of blood cannot touch him as long as the high
priest lives. One thing I love especially about
that as a picture of Christ, those cities of refuge, is that
He is our great High Priest. It says He lives forever. Saved forever. Saved forever. That old hymn writer said, the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ shall never lose its power till
all the ransomed church of God be saved to sin no more. It's just one place to hide. Just one secret place. That's in this crucified Christ. How can I be saved from that
inflexible justice of God? He satisfied it in my place.
How could I ever deserve, being the sinner that I am, what is
described on one hand as all spiritual blessings and on the
other hand as an eternal inheritance? In the Lord Jesus Christ. An old preacher friend of mine,
who is now dead, had a woman come up to him one time and ask
him after he got through preaching. She said, preacher, she said,
is Christ really enough? He responded, he said, if He's
all you got He is. You add anything to Him, you
take away anything from Him. You add anything to grace, there's
no more grace. If He's all you've got, He's
enough. And I'll have to say for myself,
He's all I've got. My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest
frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name." And I'll tell you this, He'll
be our refuge in times of sickness. It's just one. He'll be our refuge in times
of sadness, grief. He'll be our refuge in all the
circumstances of our life. And He'll be our refuge in death. He said, I give to my sheep eternal
life, and they'll never perish. They're safe. They're in the
Father's hand, and no man can pluck them out of His hand. Well, do you know what the Father's
hand is? That name Benjamin, the tribe of Benjamin, Benjamin
as he was there in the book of Genesis, that name means the
son of my right hand. The son of my right hand. We're
in Christ. We're safe. We're not. We're not safe. I can remember when I was a boy,
I always liked to have a little special place. We'd build us,
go out in the woods, maybe we'd build us a little secret place. Richard did too, I can tell by
that expression. I mean, you just had a little place, you
know, where nobody else could get to you or knew where you
were at. Just had a little secret place. I think that's something that's
natural with us. But it's only satisfying. in
Christ. And when you look back over the
ages at all of how God's people met the greatest opposition,
challenges, suffered the greatest persecutions and tortures and
all these things, where did they hide? Where did they find any
consolation or peace? Only in Christ. Only in Christ. I had a funeral one time of a
young person that was killed tragically. And you stop and try to think about what can you say,
what can you tell a person, family. The only thing is to seek refuge
in Christ. Hide in Him. Because he's the secret place
of the most high. And if you're having trouble
with some of the lower highs, a lot of people
in this world, a lot of governments in this world and all, they think
they're the most high. No, no. He's the most high. And His secret place is in His
Son. Run to Him and hide. I don't have a big formula. Well,
if you do this, God will save you. If you'll do that, God will
save you. Either He's saved you or He's not. But if you need refuge, especially
in the matter of your sin, And you want Him as your Savior,
because He has saved you. Father, this morning we cannot
but praise and thank You for Your goodness and Your mercy, and for making a place of safety
and blessing for such wretched sinners as we are. We thank You and we praise You.
We give to you all the glory. Grant to us faith that we might
look to this crucified Christ and find peace and safety and
blessing in Him. For we pray and we ask it in
all things in His name. Amen.