Isaiah chapter 32, and reading
from verse one. Behold, 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,
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 hearken. The heart also of the rash shall
understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers shall
be ready to speak plainly. The vile person shall be no more
called liberal, nor the charl said to be bountiful. The vile
person will speak villainy, and his heart will work iniquity
to practice hypocrisy and to utter error against the Lord,
to make empty the soul of the hungry, and he will cause the
drink of the thirsty to fail. The instruments also of the churl
are evil. He deviseth wicked devices to
destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy speaketh
right. But the liberal deviseth liberal
things, and by liberal things shall he stand. Rise up, ye women
that are at ease. Hear my voice, ye careless daughters,
give ear unto my speech. Many days and years shall ye
be troubled, ye careless women, for the vintage shall fail, the
gathering shall not come. Tremble, ye women that are at
ease, be troubled, ye careless ones, strip you, and make you
bare, and gird sackcloth upon your loins. they shall lament
for the teats, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine. Upon the land of my people shall
come up thorns and briars, yea, upon all the houses of joy in
the joyous city. Because the palaces shall be
forsaken, the multitude of the city shall be left, the forts
and towers shall be for dens for ever. a joy of wild asses,
a pasture of flocks, until the Spirit be poured upon us from
on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful
field be counted for a forest. Then judgment shall dwell in
the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field,
and the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect
of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever. and my people
shall dwell in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in
quiet resting places. When it shall hail, coming down
on the forest, and the city shall be low in a low place, blessed
are ye that sow beside all waters, that send forth thither the feet
of the ox and the ass. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. There is such a variety of wonderful
themes and pictures in this chapter that I want to, as it were, dive
straight in so that we can get as many mentioned as possible. So that the very first thing
that I want to draw your attention to, if I may, is that Isaiah
begins with a behold. And we've mentioned this in the
past, that that's a sort of punctuating mark. It's an exclamation. He's drawing particular attention
to a matter of some weightiness. Isaiah has in view a king. But this is no ordinary king. This is Christ the King. This is the Messiah that Isaiah
is drawing the attention of his readers to. And remember what
we have said many times in this book. The people had to endure
much trouble. The nations of Judah and Israel
are yet to suffer great persecution and disruption. Evil days lie
ahead. Yeriziah foresees a time when
a new ruler will come to establish a kingdom that is particularly
and peculiarly characterised by righteousness. This king will himself be righteous. He will rule righteously. His rule will establish righteousness
throughout his kingdom. and righteousness is being emphasised
in order to contrast with the evil kings and kingdoms both
of Isaiah's day and of course of the whole of history. Isaiah
is pointing his readers to a time when the hurt and the sadness
and the weariness of this fallen world will be replaced with a
kingdom established in righteousness, ruled in righteousness and populated
by righteous citizens. is a vision of the Church of
Jesus Christ in the Gospel Age. A vision of a time when Christ
reigns amongst his people and princes rule in judgment when
they minister according to the Word of God and when they preach
to hearers whose eyes are open, whose ears are unstopped, whose
hearts are receptive to the gospel of God's grace. They preach God's
grace and they administer the business of Christ's spiritual
house according to gospel patterns. So Isaiah has in view the church
and the gospel age ruled by Christ and he writes of these things
to the encouragement and comfort of the Lord's remnant people. The kings of the nations ultimately
bring trouble on their people. But the rule of the righteous
king brings blessings upon his people. And those blessings are
some of the things that I want to turn your attention to today. These blessings are revealed
in numerous ways and they're set out here by Isaiah. These pictures that he paints
for us, they take on added luster when we spiritualise them and
remember that Isaiah has just, in the previous chapter, told
the remnant people how the Lord of Hosts is coming to fight for
them. the man that is here spoken of,
is Christ the Messiah incarnate, who is both God and man, truly
God and truly man. In his humanity, our Lord Jesus
bridges the gap between the physical, natural world and the spiritual
realm of divine holiness. Our Lord Jesus Christ fulfils
a role that no mere man could accomplish and yet he is a man
amongst us in order to represent us before the holiness of the
triune God. And so here is this picture painted
by Isaiah so many years before the coming of Christ in order
to show how these two aspects of our spiritual need come together
in this one single person. The Lord Jesus Christ does what
no one else does. can do. By his death as our substitute,
he supplied every spiritual need of his people. The Saviour proved
to be a shelter and a hiding place for elect sinners from
the attacks of all our enemies. He who came to the cross to fight
for his people, says Isaiah, also thereby hides and covers
and refreshes his people in this wilderness world, preserving
them in safety along our pilgrim journey. So that all these images
that Isaiah sets before us in this chapter point to the nature
and extent of the Lord's care and provision for his church
and people. Isaiah is showing us how Christ's
righteous reign brings with it, in particular, three gracious
spiritual privileges. The first one is spiritual protection. Next comes spiritual wisdom. And thirdly is spiritual rest. And I'm going to take those three
headings and for the rest of our time together today, I just
want to draw a few strands together under these headings to show
us how Isaiah points both to his own age and to us today. lessons from the righteous rule
of Christ in his church and amongst his people. We have, in Christ,
spiritual protection. And Isaiah beautifully describes
this spiritual protection in four very apt metaphors. He speaks of Christ's spiritual
protection as being like a hiding place from the wind. This is the first of those four
metaphors. A hiding place from the wind. And finding a hiding place from
the wind in an open or in an exposed place is an experience
that I imagine we've all enjoyed at one time or another. Stepping in out of the wind is
such a relief. So Isaiah employs it of Christ. I'm sure we all appreciate the
benefit of windbreaks to protect and to defend. And spiritually
speaking, there's warmth and shelter and comfort and protection
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm sure that it's only believers
that can truly understand that. I think that the people in this
world would scoff at such a notion of us hiding in Christ. But for a child of God, that
is such a meaningful concept. For a child of God to be hidden
in Christ is to be mercifully shielded from the wrath of divine
justice and the searching, penetrating holiness of God. We identify with Moses being
hid in the cliff of a rock. And Christ, says the psalmist,
is the rock of my refuge, the rock of my salvation. So that we delight to think of
this picture, this metaphor, of the Lord Jesus Christ being
a hiding place from the wind. But Christ's spiritual protection
is also a covert from the tempest. And a covert is a covering, that's
all it means, a cover. And believers are not only shielded
from divine wrath, but we are covered by the blood and righteousness
of our Saviour. We're hidden in Christ, Paul
says. Our life is hid with Christ in
God. So that Christ, his blood, his
righteousness has become a covering for the people of God. So remember
what we're saying here, that here in this gospel age, here
in this kingdom ruled in righteousness, the Lord Jesus Christ is a hiding
place from the wind, the wrath of God, and he is a covering,
a covering of blood and righteousness. Christ has endured the whole
force himself of the storm of God's wrath against the elect
and he has enclosed us, he has immersed us. He has caused us
to be shut up with his blood and righteousness so that his
people are seen covered in Him. Justice comes, the law comes,
the accuser comes, but sees only the merits of the Saviour when
it comes to discover and examine our sin. And thirdly, we are
told metaphorically that Christ supplies rivers of water in a
dry place. And this is the sustaining and
refreshing grace of God to nourish and to flourish what would otherwise
be dead and dying. Water in a dry place is the difference
between life and death. And Christ to his people is the
difference between spiritual life and spiritual death. These rivers of water in a dry
place are rivers that are rivers of grace that run from the mountains
of God's love. And they're plural, they're rivers
because they're plenteous and they're sufficient for every
need. If you're thirsty, you can drink
from these rivers. If you're dirty, you can wash
in these rivers. If you're barren, you can find
irrigation in these rivers. If you're lost, you can navigate
upon these rivers. The Lord's people find grace
sufficient in Christ for every need. And we often worry about
what is going to happen next. We panic, we agonise, we fret
over all manner of deficiency and every drought that we foresee
and we imagine. Only to learn that when we get
there, even to the driest places in our life's experience, that
those places are filled with grace because the Lord never
forsakes us and the Lord never leaves us without streams of
living water. Ordinarily, a desert is a dry
place and a desert traveller has to carefully travel between
watering holes whereas a believer carries rivers
of water in our own heart and soul when we see Christ in every
circumstance and in every situation. And the fourth little metaphor
that the prophet gives us here is that Christ is the shadow
of a great rock in a weary land. We all like shade on a hot day
and we all enjoy resting in the shadow out of the glare of the
sun. All of these descriptions that
Isaiah gave would be instantly identifiable to desert people
accustomed to travelling in the heat. and God's people too are
on a spiritual journey of life that leads us by many paths in
wild places. But the promise is that Christ
will sustain and protect us in every case and every place. Even when we momentarily panic
and imagine that he has somehow lost us, or left us alone. So the first point I want to
remind us of here in this chapter is that Isaiah is teaching us
that the Lord Jesus Christ gives us spiritual protection in all
our life's experience. The next thing that we are taught
by Isaiah is that the Lord also provides for us in his righteous
kingdom spiritual wisdom. And this is what we are talking
about where the prophet speaks in verses 4 or 3 through to verse
8 about this contrast between those who have eyes to see and
ears to hear and the vile and the churl as opposed to those
who are liberal. The prophet is speaking here
about the giving of spiritual wisdom to the remnant people. There is more from Isaiah concerning
Christ's righteous kingdom in this church age and the benefits
of the gospel amongst us. So that as well as Christ being
made unto us righteousness, sanctification and redemption, he also is made
of God unto his people spiritual wisdom. If you are a believer
in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have spiritual wisdom. And this is true in our conversion
at the first and it is also true for our ongoing discernment. Here's what I mean by that. If
you are a believer in Christ, it isn't because you're naturally
smarter than the next person. It isn't because you're better
at making good decisions. If you're a believer in the Lord
Jesus Christ, The Holy Spirit has made you wise unto salvation
through faith which is in Christ Jesus. It's as simple as that. Remember, we were speaking earlier
about how when the sin was taken away, God went to Joshua. And when Christ takes away the
sin of his people, the Holy Spirit, God comes to his people and he
informs his people not to be afraid because he shows all that
we will possess in Christ. Spiritual wisdom is God's gift
of grace by which those who once blindly wandered in ignorance
and darkness are given truth, understanding and spiritual light. First of all for conversion and
then for our growth in grace. The Gospel brings truth and by
it the Holy Spirit makes us wise in spiritual matters. The tinsel and the baubles of
the past no longer dazzle us as they once did because we see
beyond them. The enchantments that we once
craved no longer soothe our soul as it once did because we've
heard better things and we're no longer satisfied with the
superficial stuff of the world. We discover a hunger after righteousness. deep in our soul and a spiritual
thirst for truth that causes us to seek after divine realities. Like we never did before, like
we never knew before, like we couldn't comprehend before. We're no longer satisfied with
shallow, empty religion. And actually, what happens is
that we develop a kind of sixth sense, as it were, a spiritual
touchstone for false doctrine. The self-righteousness that once
satisfied us now makes us sick. Mere legal obedience chills us
to our very heart. Free will and the notion of free
will and free will preachers mock our great salvation. And it isn't that we suddenly
all become great theologians. It's simply that in Christ's
righteous kingdom, We just know the truth when we hear it. And we're given a nose that can
smell the foul odour of error and enables us to discern villainy
when we hear it. That's what Isaiah is teaching
in these verses. That's the contrast that he is
making for the people. that not only does the Lord Jesus
Christ give us spiritual protection, but the Lord also gives us spiritual
wisdom. True faith makes men and women
what they never could make of themselves. It reveals itself
in a desire for true doctrine, for true occasions and opportunities for
service and it implants a desire for
true spiritual fellowship both with God and the Lord Jesus Christ
and the Holy Spirit and with our fellow believers. That's
what attracts us together. That's what holds us together
and binds us together and causes us to want to come week by week
under the sound of the gospel. And true faith exposes hypocrisy
in religious matters. And it honours the clear, simple,
honest preaching of the gospel of grace. The Lord gives us spiritual protection
and he gives us spiritual wisdom. And Isaiah goes on to say he
also leads us into spiritual rest. I just want to read verse
17 and 18 to you again. These verses have stuck with
me all this week as I've been preparing it. Hey, have I never
read these before? I think maybe I've never read
them before. Isn't it amazing how the scriptures
just jump out at you sometimes? But look at verse 17. The work
of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness
quietness and assurance forever. And my people shall dwell in
a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet
resting places. How beautiful is that? These
are wonderful verses. These are verses to mark with
a little pencil mark. and meditate upon. Meditate upon
these. Maybe you'll go back to them
during the week and just use these to think upon. The work
of righteousness isn't works that we do. They're not works
that flow from us. They're not works which make
us feel satisfied or accomplished or, God forbid, proud. The work of righteousness is
God's work in us, making us righteous in Christ. Making us righteous in Christ. Easing our conscience, giving
us a vision, giving us a view of cleansing and forgiveness
and peace. And knowing our standing, knowing
our righteousness in Christ brings us peace in this world and quietness
in our souls despite the accusations, despite the mistakes, despite
the failures, despite the foolishness. And it reassures our hearts,
even in the midst of all the storms and all the winds and
all the tornadoes and the hurricanes and the blasts that we face in
this life. Reassurance that the Lord will
never leave us nor forsake us. Now I'm not foolish enough to
think that that means that believers don't have troubles and that
we're free from distress. On the contrary, it means that
the Lord leads us through the trouble to experience rest in
spite of the trouble. He tutors us that we might keep
our balance the midst of the storm. He steadies us, he prepares
us to discover grace in time of need and he gives us views
of him in those moments of distress and signs of his presence when
things get stormy and when things get dark. We've spoken before about this
and I'm repeating myself because I believe that Isaiah is repeating
himself. Yes, Christ is our hiding place. He is our covering. He is our rivers of water and
our great rock of defence. He is our comfort insofar as
our salvation is concerned. And we should never ever lose
sight of these great pillars, these great foundational truths. But He is all of these things
also experimentally, day by day, minute by minute in our Christian
walk. Yes, we have atonement with God. Yes, we are reconciled to God. Great truths by which our faith
is strengthened and grows. But faith also teaches us to
translate these gospel doctrines, these truths, into practical
benefits for everyday situations. When the wind of worry howls
in our mind, when the life of our family gets stormy, when
the valley is dry, When the heat gets turned up, it is then that
trusting Christ will bring peace and quietness and assurance. Your Lord Jesus Christ has promised
you, whether the storm breaks and floods, or the earth dries
up and cracks, my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation,
in sure dwellings and in quiet resting places. That's a promise. Amen.