It's been a while since we've
looked at a question in our question series, and so that's what we're
going to do tonight. Let's begin reading here in Isaiah
10 and verse 1. Woe unto them that decree unrighteous
decrees, and that right grievousness which they have prescribed to
turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from
the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they
may rob the fatherless." God sent Isaiah to give this woe
to oppressors in Israel. Verses 1 and 2, God charged them
with making wicked laws. They decreed unrighteous decrees. They wrote unjust laws. And they did this, you have to
remember now, this is a people that had the best civil law any
nation ever had. They got it from God's hand.
We talk about our lawmakers up in Washington. These folks had
the best civil law that could have ever been written, given
by God. And with this, men wrote unjust
laws. Laws that they wrote to favor
them so they could rob the people. And the ones they were robbing
were, they were turning aside the needy from judgment. These
were poor people. These were widows and orphans
and they were writing these laws to take away the rights from
these poor folks so they could enrich themselves. That's horrible, isn't it? Those
were some mighty, awful scoundrels to do something like that. But
now I'm going to use the Apostle Paul's move. Remember, Before
anybody condemns these unjust rulers, remember that you and
I, by nature, are just like them. We're sinners, just like them. Paul said in Romans chapter 2
and verse 1, Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever
thou art, that judgest, for wherein thou judgest, wherein you condemn
another, You're condemning yourself because you do the same things. Somebody might say, well, I don't
do anything like that. I've never committed an act like
that. You've done it in your heart and it's what your heart
is. It's nothing but sin. We have
to understand that when our Lord said, it's not that which goes
in the mouth that defiles the man, it's that which comes out
of his heart. We have to understand our Lord
was teaching us, it's the heart that defiles. It's what we are
by nature that defiles. So we're just as guilty as these
awful oppressors were who oppressed these poor widows and these poor
orphans. We're just that bad, brethren. There's going to come a day and
God's going to judge every sinner who's found outside of Christ. There's going to come a day when
the Lord Jesus Christ, God's own Son, is going to judge this
world in perfect righteousness and He's going to judge everyone
who is outside of Him. Now what do I mean when I say
outside of Him? Are you without Christ? Are you
outside of Christ? A sinner is either in Christ
or he's out of Christ. One of the two. What I'm getting
at is we either believe on Christ, trust Christ, and are found in
Christ having no righteousness of our own, but only that righteousness
which is provided by Christ the Lord alone. or we're outside
of Christ. Or we may profess faith in Christ,
but if we're looking at any goodness in us, or trusting our hand for
anything, we're outside of Christ. You can only be in Christ if
you're totally trusting Him for everything, for all salvation. So if you're outside of Christ,
then it means you haven't cast your care on Christ and totally
trust Him alone. Now, if you are outside of Christ,
I want you to hear these questions that our God asks to everyone
who's outside of Christ. Listen to this, Isaiah 10.3.
And what will you do in the day of visitation? There's a lot
of different kinds of visitation. When the gospel is said in scripture,
when God makes the gospel to cross a person's path, that's
the day of visitation. God's visiting you with the gospel.
The preaching of the gospel. Whenever Christ came to this
earth and He walked this earth, He came to His own kindred. He
came through the lineage of Israel and He came to His own people.
That was the day of their visitation. Right here in our text, He's
talking about how He's going to send the Assyrians to totally
destroy and shred down Israel, except for a remnant. And he's
calling that a day of visitation. But the visitation I'm talking
about and the one that we're all going to face is when Christ
returns to judge this world in righteousness. And he says here,
what will you do in the day of visitation and in the desolation
which shall come from far? There's a day of visitation coming,
a day in which God's going to bring to light every sinner and
all his works. There's coming a day. And for
all outside of Christ, that will be a day of desolation. And the Lord says right here,
to you who are outside of Christ, what will you do in that day? What will you do in that day?
Look at the next question. Now listen to this. If you don't
flee to Christ now, if you don't flee to Him now, when the day
of God's judgment comes, look at the question, to whom will
you flee for help? If you don't flee to Christ now
for help, when that day comes, to whom will you flee for help? Look over at Revelation chapter
6. I want you to see this. Revelation 6. I want you to remember who's coming
to judge now. Look at Revelation 6 and look
at verse 15. The kings of the earth, and the
great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the
mighty men, and every bondman. He just went from the highest
height to the lowest low. And every free man hid themselves
in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains and said to
the mountains and rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face
of Him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of His wrath
is come, and who shall be able to stand? You see, if we reject
Christ the refuge, the only refuge, if we reject Christ the refuge,
in that day of judgment, to whom will we flee? Because it's going
to be Christ Himself doing the judging. It'll be too late to flee to
Him. Then it'll be Christ doing the judging. Hebrews 10.26 says,
If we sin willfully, if we willfully reject Christ, after that we've
received the knowledge of the truth, that is, after we've heard
this gospel preached in truth, and we reject Christ, there remaineth
no more sacrifice for sin. He's the only refuge there is. He's the only sacrifice for sins. Once you've heard this gospel
and willfully reject Christ, there's no more offering for
sin. But there's only left then a fearful looking forward to
judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries. So to whom will you flee in that
day? Then look at this next question,
Isaiah 10, and look at verse 3 again. And where will ye leave your
glory? What's he talking about? He's
saying, where will you leave all that you went after all your
life in this world? All that you accumulated, those
things that you coveted, those things you adored, those things
you labored for, those things you fought for and lived for
and died for and rejected Christ for. Where are you going to leave
those things? Talking about material glory,
stuff. Talking about the glory of rank
and position and power and influence. Some people reject Christ because
they spend their whole life going after those things. I get so
sick of hearing people make excuses for not coming and worshipping
God and assembling with His people because of their job. I hate
that. So what you're saying to me is
that's my life. Christ is not. What about the
glory of career and the glory of pleasure? What about intellectual
glory? What about the glory of fame
and fortune? What about the glory of every
vain religious work a man ever did for salvation? What about
that glory that should have been our chief concern our whole life?
What about our soul? We can't commit it to Him for
safe keeping. We won't be able to do that.
Where will you leave your glory? Go back to Isaiah 2. Look at
verse 20. God answers it for us. Isaiah
2 and verse 20. All those things are idols. That's
what those things are. Anything that comes between a
sinner and Christ is an idol. He's worshiping that thing. Listen
to this, Isaiah 2.20. In that day a man shall cast
his idols of silver and his idols of gold, which they made each
one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats, to
go into the clefts of the rocks, into the tops of the ragged rocks,
for fear of the Lord and for the glory of His majesty, when
He ariseth to shake terribly the earth." A man will try to
hide himself in a cage. And everything that once was
so valuable to Him and He could not part with it to seek Christ
for nothing, He's going to part with it to try to get as far
away from Christ as He can. The Lord our Savior answers these
questions Himself. Now listen to His answer to them.
Look at Isaiah 10 and verse 4. He answers these. He asks these
questions and then He answers these questions. Without Me. Without Me. They shall bow down
under the prisoners, and they shall fall under the slain. And for all this, his anger is
not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. It means
without Christ. He says, without me, they shall
perish forever as prisoners in chains of darkness. And he says,
And as they're suffering everlasting destruction, His hand will be
stretched out still in divine justice because they won't ever
satisfy that justice. They'll have to suffer it forever
and ever and ever. I don't want to suffer that justice,
do you? I don't want to come into that
awful wrath of God's justice. How can I be saved from it? There's
only one refuge for sinners to whom we must flee, to whom we
must flee right now. That's Christ Jesus the Lord. He's the refuge. So I want to
tell you about Christ the refuge. I want to tell you what kind
of refuge the Lord Jesus Christ is. First of all, He's an appointed
refuge. He's an appointed refuge. Go
with me to Romans chapter 3. I'm going to preach on this on
Sunday, but I'll just give you a little foreshadowing of it
right now. Romans chapter 3, it says, In verse 25, speaking of Christ,
verse 24 said, redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God
hath set forth a propitiation, satisfaction, a mercy seat through
faith in His blood to declare His righteousness. Now what does
it mean when He says He set Him forth? Look at the margin. If
you have a King James Bible, it says He foreordained Him. Before this Word was made, God
appointed the Lord Jesus Christ. He ordained Him and He appointed
Him to be the refuge of God's own chosen people. Ephesians 1 says if you're a
believer, Ephesians 1 says if you are a believer in Christ
and really trust Christ, here's why. It's because God hath from
the beginning chosen you in Christ Jesus the Lord. He chose us in
Christ and blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly
places according as He chose us in Him before the foundation
of the world. He chose us in Him before the
foundation of the world. So He appointed this Redeemer.
He appointed this refuge before He ever made anything. Before
a sinner fell, there was a Savior. He already appointed him. He appointed him to be the refuge. Whenever God established Israel,
He chose and He appointed six cities in Israel. God chose what
cities they'd be. And He appointed six cities to
be cities of refuge. Cities of refuge. And what they
were for is, if there was a man slayer, who realized he had killed
somebody unaware. And that's what Christ said the
Holy Spirit's going to convince His people of. He said, when
He's come, He'll convince you of sin because you believe not
on Me. He's going to convince us that
we've killed Christ and we were unaware of it. We've crucified
Christ and we were unaware of it. So for the manslayer, God
pictured this, for this man who killed somebody unaware, He appointed
six cities of refuge. And when justice was pursuing
this man to execute him and put him to death, this man, when
he came to realize that he had killed somebody, he could flee
into that city of refuge and that avenger of blood could not
touch him as long as he stayed in that refuge. That's a picture
of Christ. That's a picture of His people.
We've crucified the Lord of glory and we've rejected Him and tread
on the foot our Lord Jesus Christ and crucified Him afresh by our
unbelief. And when He makes you aware of
it, He makes you know justice is on your trail. There's one
refuge you can flee into and be saved and that refuge is Christ.
And He was appointed by God. God the Father appointed Him
to be the High Priest of His people. The purpose of a High
Priest, God showed in the Old Testament, was He was the only
one who could represent the people, the children of Israel, to God. And the only one that can represent
God's people to God is Christ our High Priest. And He comes
with His own blood and enters into the holiest of holies, into
God's own presence. And He alone can enter in and
make atonement for our sin. and then He appointed him to
be the prophet of His people. That means if you and I or any
believer in this world believes the gospel and truly comes to
faith in Christ, it will be to the praise of the glory of Christ
Jesus whom God appointed to be the prophet to teach His people
in our heart. That's what the prophet was for.
He's the one that teaches us. He gets the glory. and he appointed
him to be the king of his people, to protect and defend and rule
in sovereign power. So Christ was appointed. He's
the refuge. He's the prophet, priest, and
king of his people. That means he's everything his
people need. So He's an appointed refuge,
brethren. The reason I say He's appointed
is to say this. If He saves us, if we're brought
to believe on Him, we're going to confess it was not by accident. God didn't just send Him forth
and leave it up to us. God had the whole thing purposed
from the beginning. And He is the glory. Secondly,
Christ is an able refuge. He's an able refuge. Now many
sinners seek safety in false refuges that they find in this
world or in their flesh or in their works where they're not
shielded and they're not protected. Men look for refuge in the world. Men try to find some and it's
just temporary refuge if it's anything. Men try to look for
refuge in their works under the law. trying to earn God's favor,
earn a righteousness. They do the same with religious
works. Lord, Thou trustest in the staff
of this broken reed, on Egypt, on the flesh, on sinners, whereon
if a man lean it will go into his hand and it will pierce it.
So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him. And what
God is saying is, if you trust in earthly refuge, anything in
this earth, you, someone else, some other sinner, a priest,
a preacher, a church name, anything else you look for refuge, it's
going to be a broken reed that's going to go into your hand and
pierce you through. It won't help you. But our Lord
Jesus Christ, of Him, God said, I've laid help upon one that
is mighty. He's mighty. He's not a broken
reed. He's mighty. I've exalted one chosen out of
the people. What's He able to do? He was
able, the Son of God was able to take flesh and under the law,
like unto His brethren, and fulfill all righteousness for His people. He said, don't think I came to destroy the law and the prophets.
I didn't come to destroy, I came to fulfill. And except you have
a righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes
and the Pharisees, that's like saying except you have a righteousness
that exceeds the most holy and pious and religious person you
can imagine, Unless you've got a righteousness better than theirs,
you can't come into glory. He's saying there's not a man
on the face of this earth that can earn the righteousness he
needs to come into God's presence. But Christ came and He's able
and He established that righteousness for His people. He fulfilled
the law for His people, so there's nothing left for His people to
do. Are you one that He did that for? How do I know, preacher? Trust Him to have done it for
you. Believe Him. He's able to go to the cross
and take all the sin of His people upon Himself and be made a curse
for us and justify His people from all our sins. He was able to do that. He did
it. He accomplished it. And now He's
risen. and He ever lives as the great
high priest of His people, Scripture says, wherefore He is able also
to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing
He ever liveth to make intercession for them. He's able when His
people suffer. He's able to comfort us because
He suffered it. Scripture says in that he himself
has suffered being tempted, he's able to comfort them that are
tempted, to succor them, to save them from the temptation and
comfort them in the temptation. Succor or succor is a better
word really than comfort because it includes saving you from the
temptation as well as comfort. He's able to heal poor sinners
like us and make us completely totally whole. He illustrated
this with a physical disease that nobody could cure. Scripture
says there came a leper, bowed down before him and said, Lord,
if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. Now here, this leprosy
represented sin. Here's a picture of sin. Leprosy at that time, there was
no known cure for it. Nobody could cure it. If you
got it, you had it until it ate you up and you died. And this
one comes to Christ. It wasn't even lawful for him
in the law to come to a person like this. And he comes to Christ.
Christ didn't jump back and run away from him. He said, if you
will. He didn't say, he didn't make
any demands. He didn't come bragging about
himself. He said, if you're willing. He exalted his will. If you will,
you can make me clean. And Christ said, He put forth
His hand and touched him. That was the last thing you want
to do to a leper, if you were just any old man, because you
got it as soon as you touched him. Christ reached forth His
hand and touched him, and he is of so much ability that instead
of it making him have leprosy, it made that leprosy dry up.
He said, I will be thou clean and immediately his leprosy was
cleansed. Just like that. And that brethren
is a picture of something that he does that is so much greater
than that even. He heals his people of our sin. He's able. Thirdly, Not only
is He an appointed refuge, not only is He an able refuge, He's
a refuge at hand. He's near. When God appointed
those cities of refuge in Israel, He placed them, He appointed
certain cities, so many on this side of the river, so many on
the other side of the river, so that wherever you were in
Israel, and you killed somebody by accident, You were near that
city where you could flee right into it. It was near always. Why did He do that? Go to Romans
10. I'll show you why He did it.
It was to picture something. Everything God's ever done in
this world, all through the Old Testament, was to picture His
Son. We were talking about how sovereign
God is on Sunday. Scott and I were talking about
this, about how not only did God give us these pictures of
Christ, but think of what all God had to arrange, whole nations
sometimes, and turn the hearts of individual men, do all these
different things He did to paint a picture. for us of Christ. It's just like if you took up
a paintbrush and you dipped it in some paint and you painted
a picture for somebody. That paintbrush in God's hand
was nations and men and armies. He's just using them like a paintbrush.
When you go back to Isaiah 10, read the rest of Isaiah 10. He
sent the king of Assyria in there to chasten Israel, and the king
of Assyria started bragging, thinking, I've done all this,
I'm so powerful, my idol gods are stronger than Israel's idol
gods, that's how I accomplished this. And the Lord said, does
an axe, does it boast that it chopped down the tree? And he
said, the king of Assyria is just an axe in my hand. That's
all he is. Well look here, this is why He
made those cities of refuge to be near, Romans 10, 6. The righteousness
which is of faith speaks on this why. It says, is God convinced
you you need righteousness? Is God convinced you that you're
a sinner and that you need a perfect righteousness to enter into God's
presence? Well look here, the righteousness
which is of faith, the righteousness freely given to us through faith,
Watch this. It speaks on this wise. Say not
in your heart, well who's going to go up into heaven for me?
That is, to bring Christ down from above. Or who's going to
descend in the deep to bring Christ again from the dead? In
other words, who's going to go this great distance for me? How
am I going to get near to this righteousness? Look at this.
Here's what the righteousness of the faith says. The Word is
near you. How near? Even in your mouth
and in your heart. That is the word of faith which
we preach. Here it is. That if thou shalt
confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine
heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be
saved. For with the heart man believeth
unto righteousness. It's not with the hand that you
work unto righteousness. It's with the heart. You believe
unto righteousness. And with the mouth, confession
is made unto salvation. Do you see that, brethren? You
believe on Christ. You rest on Christ. And God says,
here is free righteousness. Freely, freely provided just
for you. And that's so. Everybody that
believes on Him, that righteousness was provided by Christ just for
them. Just for them. And if you are
already resting in Christ, when you find yourself in troubles
and you're in trials and afflictions, Scripture says, God is our refuge
and our strength, a very present help in trouble. Very present help. Alright, fourthly,
He is a refuge for all kinds of sinners. Now understand what
I said. I didn't say He is a refuge for
all sinners. You see, we are going to have
to be brought down off this high horse to feel like we deserve
to be saved. He ought to give me a chance
and everybody else a chance. Well, salvation is not a chance.
It is on purpose. God saves on purpose. And God
saves a particular people, one of the reasons is to stain our
pride. We don't deserve anything but
damnation from God. We lost all our rights in Adam
in the garden when Adam sinned and transgressed. The whole human
race was in that one man as our federal head and our seminal
head and we died in him. We became guilty in him. And
so God imputed guilt to us. He imputed sin to us because
we were made sin. We were made sin in Adam. So now if I'm going to be made
righteous, it's going to be because God sent Christ forth to work
out a righteousness just for me. And then He called me by
His grace and He taught me, I have provided you the center of righteousness. But He is a refuge for all kinds
of sinners. Not for every sinner. Christ
said, I laid down my life for the sheep and He looked at those
Pharisees and He said, and you don't believe me because you're
not my sheep. My sheep, I make them to hear
my voice. I know them and they follow me.
You're not my sheep, that's why you don't believe. He's saying
to them, it's on purpose that you don't believe. I haven't
given you faith, you're not my sheep. But here's what I'm saying,
He's a refuge for all kinds of sinners. That means, now listen carefully,
whether you're young or you're old. Whether you know some doctrine
or whether you don't really know that much doctrine at all, just
like that thief on the cross. To all kinds of sinners. The
Spirit and the bride say, come. Let him that heareth say, come.
Now listen, and let him that is a thirst come. And whosoever will, let him take
the water of life freely. What's God telling us? He's saying,
don't ever imagine that you have to experience some great experience
and some great feeling. He says, are you thirsty? Are you thirsting for a righteousness
that you can't provide? Are you thirsting for forgiveness
that you can in no way earn by anything you are or anything
you do? Then come, take the water of
life freely. Never imagine you have to reach
a certain level of doctrinal knowledge Don't ever imagine
that. Salvation is not in what you
know. Not in what you know. Paul said,
I know whom I have believed. Salvation is in a person. Do
you know Christ? Do you believe He is the Son
of God? The Son of God. God the Father
who is Spirit, His Son. came down and took flesh and
dwelt among us. Do you believe He's the Son of
God? Do you believe that He accomplished the salvation that He came to
accomplish? Do you believe He's successful? Do you believe He's triumphant?
Do you believe He is salvation? Do you believe He is righteousness?
Do you believe He is everything you need? That's what it is to
believe He's the Son of God. That doesn't take knowing a whole
lot of doctrine, does it? To know, I'm a sinner. I don't
have any way I can be anything but a sinner. He's righteousness
and I need righteousness. I believe I'm going to be made
righteous. Believe on Him. Come, take the
water of life freely. Come to Him, He said. So that
means if I won't come to Him, It's not because the way is not
open, is it? It's not God that's preventing
me to come. He says, Whosoever will, come
and take this free water. It reminds me when we were down
on Main Street, and we had that water, and we had these tracks,
and we had these sermons, and we would say, free water! Because
that's what the gospel is. Christ is the everlasting water
of life. And then we had bottled water.
Free water! People would say, I want the
bottled water. I don't want that other stuff. I tell them, you
can't have the bottle if you don't take this other. I'm not
going to give you the bottle if you don't take that. Only
hope you got. to read what's written there. So He's not stopping anybody
from coming. If a man don't come to Christ,
brethren, he doesn't want to complain that God elected the
people to salvation. He's not stopping anybody that
wants to come. The people that He didn't choose
to come, they didn't want to come. The people He chose didn't
want to come until He gave us a new heart. He's not stopping
anybody from coming. It's our will not to come to
God. We won't confess we're sinners.
We won't come out into the light and have all this work that we've
put our confidence in and all this false refuge that we got
some hope in. We won't come to Christ the light
and have Him say, everything about you and what you've ever
done won't save you from anything. It wouldn't save you from a flea,
much less from God. We won't do that. Christ said
that. Man loves darkness. He hates
the light. He will not come to the light
lest his deeds, his very own self-righteous, self-sanctifying,
holy deeds may be reproved and be called nothing but sin. He
won't do it. But if you're that sinner who
realizes that's true of me, then you're thirsty. And God says,
here's the water, come get it. It's free. It won't cost you
anything. The one thing required about
you is that you be a sinner unable to do one thing to save himself. Don't imagine now that you have
to reform your life, put away some sin before you can come
to Christ. No, no, no. Paul said, I was a blasphemer
and a persecutor and injurious, but I obtained mercy. Paul was
on his way to kill Christians. He didn't clean up his act, Christ
cleaned it up for him. Christ said, I didn't come to
call the righteous, I came to call sinners to repentance. We've
got to be a sinner. If you're a sinner, come take
the water of life freely. Fourth thing, I could say so
much. Christ is an unchanging refuge. He's a refuge open. He's an eternal refuge. But I've
got to tell you this, He is the only refuge. Listen to this,
neither is there salvation in any other. For there is none
other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be
saved. Salvation, justification, holiness,
redemption is not by works under the law. It's not by religious
works. No other could justify us from
our sins. There's no other that could have
made atonement for the sins of His people but Christ. God's
own Son. That's who God chose. That's
who God sent. And He came and He accomplished
it and He said it's finished. Nothing to be added to it. Be
it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through
this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. And
by him all that believe are justified from all things from which you
could not be justified by the law of Moses. Let me ask you this. If you went
to work tomorrow and your boss said, I'm going to let you choose
which one you want. I need you to go out there tomorrow
and work 14 hours in the hot sun, and I'm going to give you
$100. Or, if you'll just take this
free $1,000 bill I have right here, I'm going to let you have
it for free and go to the house and sit in the shade. Which one
would you take? Refusing this gospel is like
refusing that $1,000 and saying, no, no, I'm going to go out here
and work in this hot sunshine now so you can give me less. I'm going to take the $1,000.
They do make a $1,000 bill, by the way. It's got Samuel Chase
on it. Go look it up. All right, lastly. What is it to flee to Christ
for refuge? It's to flee to Him with a need.
It's to flee to Him with a need. Now let me illustrate this. Imagine
if you were out in the middle of the ocean and your boat sank.
And you saw the only thing around, there was nothing around. I mean
it sank. There was nothing around. There
was just one little plank floating. How would you flee to that one
little plank that's floating in the ocean? You'd flee to it
with a need, wouldn't you? That's how you flee to Christ,
with a need. To flee to Christ is to believe
on Him for all your need, for all your forgiveness from sin,
for all your free justification from all your sin. for the righteousness
wherein you can appear before God and be received, for holiness,
for mercy, for grace, for peace, for strength, for comfort, for
all things, to believe only for everything. We don't believe
only for some things and depend on ourselves for other things,
we believe only for everything, for all. And to flee to Christ
is to believe only with urgency. If you was that man's slayer,
if you was out there working one day and you're chopping wood
and all of a sudden that axe head flew off and it hit Kevin
and it knocked him out and killed him and you saw it, immediately
you know justice is after you. You're fixed to be executed because
that's what the law stated. You killed him by accident. The
avenger of blood, that man's family or whoever, they can come
and they can kill you. And you know they're coming.
You can hear the dogs barking. Are you just going to stroll
to that city of refuge? and say, well, you know, I've
got time. I've got to go over here and work today. I'll come
over and meet with you when I have time. You're going to flee to that
city of refuge. Come to Christ with urgency.
You know why? Because you're in imminent danger.
If you don't have Him, you're in imminent danger. The avenger
blood is on your heels and if He overtakes you before you get
to Christ, you're a goner. What do you mean, preacher? I
mean, there is no certainty in your life whatsoever. Brother David Collier's day of
visitation was this week. He was in the city of refuge. You don't know when that day
of visitation is coming. See, you are in imminent danger
if you are not in the city of refuge. Don't take a leisurely
stroll. And you won't if you see where
you're at. To you who fled to Christ, now
let me say this. Don't ever stop fleeing to Him. Don't ever stop coming to Him.
We have strong consolation who fled for refuge to lay hold on
the hope set before us. Don't ever get caught outside
of Christ our refuge. Scripture says, we are not of
them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the
saving of the soul. We are made partakers of Christ.
How are we going to prove we are truly made partakers of Christ?
If we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast until the
very end. That's how it's going to be proven
you were truly a child of God. You started believing in Him,
in Him only, and you'll never stop right to the end. One last
thing. I want you to go back to Isaiah
10. I want to answer those questions for the believer. What will believers
do in the day of visitation when desolation comes to all those
outside of Christ? What will a believer do then?
We're going to just rest safe and secure in Christ our refuge.
We won't be alarmed. We'll be in Christ. We won't
be alarmed. Where will believers flee? We won't have to flee. We're going to be safe in Christ
our refuge. Our judgment was settled at the
cross. We're not scared of judgment. It was settled already. He came
to deliver us from a fear of death. We haven't received the
spirit of bondage again to fear. We've received the spirit where
we can cry, Father, Father. Like a little child sees his
father coming. across the field and he hasn't
seen Him in years. And he runs out there, Father, Father, Father! That's how it's going to be in
the day of visitation. We're going to flee to Him. That's
what we're going to flee to. Just like we've always done.
And where will we leave our glory? Christ is our glory. We don't
have anything in this earth we've been trying to let come between
us and Christ. He is our glory. And he prayed,
Father, I will that they be where I am, that they might behold
my glory. And scripture says when his glory shall be revealed,
we shall be glad with exceeding joy. Then shall the king say
unto them on his right hand, Come ye blessed of my father,
inherit the kingdom of prayer for you from the foundation of
the world. Prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
And then Christ will present you faultless before the presence
of His glory with exceeding joy. And here's the best part. When
He shall appear, we shall be like Him. Just like Him. Because we're going to see Him
as He is. So I'll leave you with the question.
What will you do on the day of visitation? It could be today. Every believer here, I guarantee
you whatever believer here thought when I said that, they thought,
wouldn't that be great if it was today? And everybody else thought, oh
I hope it's not today. What will you do? Amen.