Isaiah chapter 22. While you're
turning, you might mark your place in Romans chapter 9. I'm
going to have you turn there a little later in the message. Romans chapter 9. I titled this message, The Burden
and Hope of the Valley. the burden and hope of the valley. We begin in Isaiah 22, 1. The
burden of the valley of vision. Now, this is talking about Jerusalem. It is the valley of vision. It
is the valley because geographically surrounded by mountains and a
vision because this is the place where God sent His prophets,
His seers, who He gave a revelation of what would come to pass. And
it's contrasted from what we saw last week in Isaiah chapter
21, the burden of the desert of the sea. That was talking
about Babylon. Babylon is as wide and as vast as a sea. as
Peter was just talking about. It takes in all falsehood, political,
religious, civil, all falsehood of the earth, Babylon. But it's
dry, like a desert. It's without vision of God, without
understanding of God. But here we're dealing with the
burden of the valley of vision. This is a burden to Jerusalem.
So first we see the burden of the valley. He says in verse
1, What aileth thee now that thou art wholly gone up to the
housetops? Thou that art full of stirs,
a tumultuous city, a joyous city. It was full of people, full of
daily business and trade, full of joy, full of happiness. Everybody
going about their day-to-day routine just like we would every
day. And now everybody's gone up to
the tops of their houses. And you can kind of just picture
this house, this city has become silent. And everybody's quietly
on top of the houses and they're looking. They're looking out
over the walls and looking out as far as they can see. And he
says, why now? Why now have you stopped all
your merry feasting and all your important business and all the
affairs of your life that's going on all day? Why now have you
stopped everything and took the time to go up to the rooftop
and actually start looking? You remember last week we saw
the word of the watchman? He said, if you want to know
what's out there. If you want to know the enemy
that's approaching and the Savior that's going to save us, inquire.
Truly inquire. Return. Turn from your own wisdom,
from everything you're doing that's drawing you away from
God, and come. Return. Come and seek. Watch. Be watchful. Now, they've been
turned from all their day-to-day. Something's made them go up to
the house stops and actually start to watch. He says there
at the end of verse two, you're slain, men are not slain with
a sword, nor are they dead in battle. That's not what made
you go up to the rooftop. But you see, what happened was
they had made an alliance with Babylon to help them. And at
this time Babylon wasn't a superpower as it would become. Assyria was
the empire of the day. And what they've beheld is Assyria
is coming. Assyria is approaching the city. And the men weren't slain with
a sword that alerted them to this, they were slain with fear.
Verse 3, He says, All thy rulers are fled together. They are bound
by the archers. All that are found in thee, within
the walls of the city, that's coming to the city, are bound
together. They've all fled from far. The weakest of the enemy
force of Assyria was the archers, the ones that used the bow and
arrow. And they would send them forth first into battle, into
the forefront of the battle. And there was many of them. And
they came first into the heat of the battle. And when they
did, at the sight of the archers, the men of Judah fled from those
outlying cities around Jerusalem. Those cities could be easily
taken by the Assyrians, but they all fled and they all came to
Jerusalem. And this is what alerted all
the citizens in Jerusalem, and they got real serious all of
a sudden. And they went up to the rooftops to see. Verse 4,
Isaiah speaking, he says, Therefore said I, look away from me. I will weep bitterly. Labor not
to comfort me because of the spoiling of the daughter of my
people. For it is a day of trouble and of treading down and of perplexity
by the Lord God of hosts in the valley of vision, in Jerusalem,
breaking down the walls and of crying to the mountains. Isaiah
had gone forth as God's messenger and he had preached the gospel
faithfully day and night, warning the people. to turn from wisdom,
their fleshly wisdom, to turn from everything they put their
refuge in and to trust God. We've seen it throughout the
book of Isaiah. Isaiah, day and night, went and
preached and preached and preached, telling the people, this world
will not offer you any refuge. This world will not save you.
Your own wisdom won't save you. How you imagine God to be won't
save you. Go to God and ask God for mercy. Ask God to reveal himself in
you and to reveal to you in power and wisdom what it is that he's
going to do, how he saves his people. Ask God for that. That
was Isaiah's message from day one. And now he sees all this
and Isaiah says, don't come to me now. I'm weeping. He's cast down. This was the
thing that Isaiah said was going to come to pass. He had been
telling them all along and now everybody's tore up and they
don't know what to do. Verse 6, Elam bare the quiver
with chariots of men and horsemen, and Kerr uncovered the shield.
And it shall come to pass that thy choicest valley shall be
full of chariots, and the horsemen shall set themselves in array
at the gate. We saw last week Elam is the
Elamites, or the Persians, and Kir is Media, they're the Medes. Now, at this time, they're under
the rule of the Assyrians. They're not yet... Eventually,
they're going to grow, and it's going to be the Persians and
the Medes that's going to actually conquer Babylon. But not at this
time. At this time, the Persians and
the Medes, the Elamites and the Moabites, they are the Medes,
I mean, they're under the power of the Assyrians. They're fighting
for them. They had a lot, the Elamites were the ones that had
the archers and the horsemen and the ones that made the people
in the outlying cities flee to Jerusalem. Verse 8, and he discovered
the covering of Judah. This has two things in meaning.
The covering of Judah literally meant they put all those cities
outside the walls, outlying areas like suburbs, like cities out
of Jerusalem. And they served as a buffer,
sort of. So when the armies were coming
up to fight them, they had to deal with those cities first.
They had to take those cities before they could ever get to
Jerusalem. And this would give the inhabitants of Jerusalem
time to prepare for the battle that was coming. Well, when those
outlying folks saw those archers come up, Elam uncovered their
covering. This was what they were using
to cover them, to keep them to be that shield out there. They
uncovered it, because now those cities were just left. We read
in 2 Kings 18.13, let me quote this to you. In the 14th year
of King Hezekiah, that's when this is. Hezekiah is on the throne. And that's when Sennacherib,
king of Assyria, came up against all the fenced cities of Judah,
that's those cities out there, and he took them. Now it was
the Elamites and the Medes that he sent out there to do the work,
but they were working under the king of Assyria and they took
them. There was nothing to take them, the people fled and ran
to Jerusalem. But the covering of Judah here
also refers to the hypocrisy of the people dwelling in Jerusalem. The inhabitants were claiming
to trust God. They went through everyday religious
activities, going into the temple, doing their sacrifices, praying,
going through all their forms of religion, everything that
they did. But then what they did here, in the face of this
danger, manifest uncovered their hearts. God uncovered their hearts. Verse 8, He discovered the covering
of Judah, and thou didst look in that day to the armor of the
house of the forest. Here's the first thing they did.
This was the first thing that revealed their hypocrisy. The
armor of the forest is a building that served as an armory. That's
what it was. And it's called the building
of the house of the forest because it was a house made out of the
cedars of Lebanon. So it looked like a forest. It
looked like a log cabin. I think what we would kind of
picture it as. And so this was their armory
though. The first thing they did was they went to their armory
and they began to look at how many weapons they got, how many
shields they have, take an inventory of how many weapons they have
available at their disposal. And it says, and then in verse
9, you have seen also the breaches of the city of David, that they
are many. And you gathered together the waters of the lower pool,
and you have numbered the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses
have you broken down to fortify the wall. You made also a ditch
between the two walls for the water of the old pool. The second
thing they did was They took an inventory of the walls around
Jerusalem, and they saw that there were some walls that were
falling down. They needed to be repaired. They were open to
access. And so they began to rebuild
the walls, to build the towers to the defense around Jerusalem.
And they had an outer wall, and they had an inner wall, and during
the time of peace, families would build houses, poor families would
build houses in that area between the inner wall and the outer
wall. So what they did here is they broke down those houses.
They just went out there and did a count of how many houses
they had and how many people were there. And they brought
those people into the inside of the walls. And they said,
we got to have your materials that your houses are made out
of and use those materials that we have here available to repair
these walls. And so they went to repairing
the walls. And then they looked to water. Water was immensely
important in this time because They had to have water to survive.
And so the water of the lower pool mentioned here, it flowed
out of Jerusalem. So they took that water and they
dammed it up so it flowed back into Jerusalem because they didn't
want that water going out there because that would supply water
to the Assyrian. That would supply water to the
enemy. So they stopped all that. The old pool was outside of the
city, and they drained the ditch from the old pool into that area
between the inner wall and the outer wall. They drained the
water into there, where those houses were that they had torn
down, and they filled it up, and that would provide water
for the city, extra water for the city, and it would also serve
as sort of a moat for when the Assyrians, if they penetrated
the first wall, they had to cross that ditch of water to get over
the second wall. And so, they took great measure. This was some wisdom involved
here that they went to work preparing for this. And the Lord doesn't
fault them for doing that. He doesn't fault them for making
these preparations. That's not what He faults them
for. Here was what He faults them for, verse 11. And this
is the covering. This is what He uncovered. This is the hypocrisy. But, verse
11, But ye have not looked unto the Maker thereof, neither had
respect unto him that fashioned it long ago." Now get this wisdom. Get this wisdom. This is the
best wisdom that we can muster. This is the best wisdom that
natural man can come up with to save himself. The best that
he can. They took that water. did all
that work to bring that water into them. They did all that
work to build those towers and those walls and to gather in
those weapons and to have all those things ready. But they
didn't look to the Lord who made the water. They didn't look to the Lord
who made the earth. from which all the materials
were gathered to make those walls and to make those weapons. They
didn't look to the Lord who is the very one who Isaiah had been
declaring all along. He's brought this people upon
you to try you to prove who His people are and who His people
aren't. He's brought this people upon you to purge this Valley,
these people of all the chaff, of all those that don't serve
Him, to separate the wheat from the chaff. And you've looked
to the water, and you've looked to the walls, and you've looked
to the stones, and you've looked to the weapons, and you've looked
to the Assyrians, but you haven't looked to the Lord who's over
everything that's taken place here. That's the best wisdom
we have. the best wisdom we have if God
does not intervene and make Christ to be our wisdom. What does that
mean when it means Christ is our wisdom? It means you and
I realize we don't have the wisdom to fight the battle. We don't
have the wisdom to save ourselves. We don't have the understanding
to present ourselves before God, we totally, thoroughly, completely
believe Christ is the wisdom. He is the captain. He has the
understanding. He has the power. He is the wisdom
that will save His people and present us to God. Now, verse
12, And in that day did the Lord God of hosts call to weeping,
and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth.
That's why he sent the Assyrian Empire up against Jerusalem and
he sent his prophets. It was for this one purpose.
It was so that Judah would be brought to see their helplessness,
to see their utter need of the Lord and to confess their sins
and their rebellion for looking to themselves and trusting in
their own way. It was so that they would humble
themselves under the mighty hand of God and stop trying to resist
Him, which is exactly what we do any time we try to save ourselves. It doesn't matter. It can be
a... He's given us a great trial here. He's given us a great example
of a trial here with a whole nation coming up against a whole
other nation. It could be you got a flat on
your car or you stumped your toe. It could be some simple
everyday thing. When we start looking to our
own wisdom, we've resisted God, whatever the trial is. And that
he sent it to turn them from that, from that self-confidence,
to totally cast themselves upon the Lord. That's what the gospel's
about, brethren. The gospel of Christ Jesus the
Lord in a nutshell, if I could just give you a simplistic phrase
to say it is, is turn from you and trust Christ. I mean everything. I mean for
everything. But here's what all men will
do unless God personally, irresistibly, turns us by His power. Verse 13, And behold, here's
what happened, joy and gladness, slaying oxen, killing sheep,
eating flesh, drinking wine. I live in a town, I grew up in
a town called, y'all would call it El Dorado. Most everybody
would call it El Dorado, but if you're from that little town,
you call it El Dorado, El Dorado, Arkansas. And El Dorado came
about overnight. It was a boom town. What happened,
you know, oil, they struck oil, and all of a sudden overnight,
it went from just a couple of hundred people to thousands and
thousands of people in El Dorado. roughnecks, prostitutes, gamblers,
the gamete, businessmen from the smartest, wisest businessmen
to the most vile, lewd, base folks. Everybody showed up there.
And that's sort of what happened here at Jerusalem. When those
outer cities, all this didn't take place just in a day or two,
this took place over years. When those Outer cities began
to be approached, and those people left those cities. They came
to Jerusalem, and all this work needed to be done. So everybody
went to work doing all this stuff. Well, when all that happens,
there's a lot of business involved. It's just like everyday life.
There's people got to eat. Somebody got smart enough to
say, hey, I can take a hot dog stand out here and feed these
fellows that work on this wall, and I can make a killing. So
they started making money doing that. And other fellas came along
and said, hey, I can make shoes. I'm a cobbler. I can make shoes
for these fellas. These sandals they're wearing out, I can make
a lot of money. Man, we like all this. This is good for business. And it was like a boom all of
a sudden in Jerusalem. And they began to eat good. Commerce
was flowing. It was prosperous. It looked
like, this is a good thing. And instead of seeing what was
happening and seeing what the Lord was doing and turning to
the Lord and mourning that they weren't trusting God, which is
a true fast, which is what the Lord had called them to here,
to baldness and shaving of the head, which were all signs of
repentance and mourning and fasting from me, from mine, from trusting
in me to trust God. Instead of all that, they reveled. It turned into a big feast, into
a big boom. So, Verse 13, they said, let
us eat and drink for tomorrow we shall die. Now, they didn't
really think that they were going to die tomorrow. What they were
saying is, let us eat and drink and ignore that idiot Isaiah
who's been telling us that we're fixing to die, that we're coming
to the end, that we're fixing to be taken over. Look around. Look at the prosperity. Look
at everything we've got going on. Look at the wealth that we're
making. Look at how prosperous this city is. Do you think we've
got any reason to believe that fool Isaiah and what he's been
telling us? Verse 14, And it was revealed
in mine ears by the Lord of hosts, this is what the Lord said, Surely
this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye die, saith the
Lord God of hosts. Now, the sin of all God's elect
was purged by the Lord Jesus Christ. And our God delights
to show mercy, and he visits his children with the rod of
correction, and he turns them to him by his grace. If any man
sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous. But right here, our Lord shows
us that the sin of unbelief of scoffing at the gospel of Christ,
at his witness, that stiff neck that goes on in rebellion in
the face of God, is unpardonable sin. What you just read in that
verse is God turning over Israel and Judah to the enemy, to be
no more. He said, that's it. They're done. I'm done with them. They're not
my people anymore. Whosoever speaketh a word against
the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him. But whosoever speaketh against
the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this
world, neither in the world to come." That's what God said. I've turned them over to the
second death. They're dead in sin and trespassing sins. Now,
I've turned them over to the second death. Separation forever. Well, you might say this. Well, if that's what sinners
will do, unless God intervenes in sovereign grace. Why then
does God blame anybody? Haven't we just done what God
made us do? Turn to Romans chapter 9. Romans
chapter 9. Romans chapter 9. Verse 19. Let's read verse 18. Therefore
hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will
he harden. Back up. Let's go to verse 17.
I've got to read this. The Scripture saith unto Pharaoh,
even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might
show my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout
all the earth. Everything we just saw in Judah,
everything we just saw in Judah, the Lord raised them up, the
Lord put them where He put them for the same reason He put Pharaoh
where He put Pharaoh, was to show you sitting here in the
year 2009 His power to save. He left them alone. And that
shows you our depravity. It shows us what we will do unless
God in mercy intervenes. He's not unjust to leave them
alone. He's not unjust to leave Israel and Judah where they are.
He's not unjust to leave them where they are. Now read the
next verse. Therefore hath He mercy on whom
He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardeneth. If the
whole lot is unjust, if the whole lot is sinned against God, if
the whole lot has rebelled against God, is God unjust because He
saves some and doesn't save others? Is He unjust to save some? That will say then unto me, this
is that question I just asked you, why doth He yet find fault? For who hath resisted His will?
If we can't turn to Him unless He turns us, then all we've done
is what He allowed us to do. It's His fault that we hadn't
turned to Him. If the only way we'll turn is if He turns us,
how can He find fault with me for not turning to Him? You see
that? Listen, here's the answer. Nay,
but, O man, who art thou that replies against God, that argues
against God, that disputes against God, Who are you? Shall the thing formed, that's
what you are. You're a thing formed. Shall
the thing formed say to him that formed it, that's who God is.
God formed you. Shall the thing formed say to
him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus? Here's a simple
illustration. The potter has power over the
clay of the same lump to make one vessel into honor and another
into dishonor. He can make one a saucer. He
can make one a toilet bowl if he wants to. He can do what he
wants to with it. It's his. That's what mankind
is to God. They're lumps of clay in his
hand. He's the potter. He can fashion
it however he will. And we don't have any right to
say, why'd you make me this way? What if God, willing to show
His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering
the vessels of wrath that He made up to be destroyed, and
that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels
of mercy which He had afore prepared, made up unto glory? You see,
God is just to turn over rebellious sinners, and He's just to save
some from among rebellious sinners if He so chooses. But here's
the lesson to give. Instead of cursing God for doing
what is just and right, behold in what God is showing us through
a people that He has formed for destruction, behold in this people
that we must fall at His feet and beg Him to have mercy on
us. That's how you're going to come
to God. We've seen it throughout the
book of Isaiah. Everything that is woe to the
wicked is well for the righteous. If you're a vessel of His mercy,
if He prepared you before the foundation of the world by putting
you in Christ Jesus and determined to have mercy on you, It's going
to be made known one way. You know how it's going to be
manifest? You're going to come to Him as a mercy beggar. Empty handed. Cowed down like
a dog, like the dog that we are. Coming to Him begging for the
Master to just drop a crumb from His table of grace. That's how
we're going to go. You're not dealing with somebody
that's this gentle giant that religious world makes him out
to be that's just going to... He can be swayed one way or the
other. This is who God is. If you die today, this is the
God you're going to face. You're going to come to Him begging
mercy. And He delights to show mercy.
He delights to show it. But He shows us something next
that what He does for those that He purposed to save. Everybody
in Judah was not His elect, but everybody in Judah wasn't wicked
either. There were some there that He
prepared beforehand, before the foundation of the world, to glory.
He was going to cover them in the glory of His own righteousness.
Now watch this. I call this second division the
hope of the valley. We just saw the burden of the
valley. Here's the hope of the valley. Verse 15. Thus saith
the Lord God of hosts. This is the Lord's word to Isaiah. I'm here this morning preaching
to you. Just a man preaching to you.
That's who Isaiah was. That's what Isaiah was sent to
do. Just go and tell the people what
the Lord has said. Don't make up anything on your
own. Don't try to get them to do anything. You go tell them
what I told you to tell them, I'll do the work. That's what
the Lord said to Isaiah. That's what He says to His preacher.
And what He does next is what God does through His Word. Verse
15, He said, Go, get thee unto this treasurer. Unto Sheepna,
which is over the house." Now, I looked some words up here.
I wanted to get an idea of this. Treasurer means master of revenue
and profit. That's what the word is. Treasurer is translated from
a word that means master of revenue and profit. And it means, in
this case, dangerous. Shibna, Shibna means dangerous,
means vigor, dangerous. Shibna was the master of revenue
and profit over King Hezekiah's house. He was under the king,
but he was over the whole house. He was the head of the whole
house. He was a dangerous man. He was full of vigor and he was
out for his personal gain. His counsel was vain counsel. He's the one who was saying,
build the walls, look to the water, look to the carnal weapons,
eat, drink, take your ease, pay no mind to the word of Isaiah.
That's who this one was. He was chief among the scoffers
of God and his gospel. That's a picture of every one
of God's elect in their unregenerate state under Adam. Under Adam. Adam was set forth
as a master of revenue and profit, but Adam failed. And by having
his nature, all that we have to govern and reign us is this
old, fleshly, dangerous, vigorous, charlatan that's out for personal
gain. That's who you and I are by nature. That's who we are
by nature. We heeded our own counsel, we
looked to our wisdom and to our defenses. Paul said, where in
time past you walked according to the course of the world, according
to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now
worketh in the children of disobedience. And like he did here with Shebna,
for a time God left you who believe, you who know him, he left you
for a little while under the deceitful master of revenue and
profit to rule over the house. But all along, you were God's
house. You were the king's house. The
house still belonged to the king all along. And so he came in
mercy. He sent his prophet to us just
like he did Shebna. He sent Isaiah to Shebna. Now,
we know the Scripture, the Lord said, no man can enter into a
strong man's house and spoil his goods except he first bind
the strong man, then he'll spoil his house. When Adam fell, he
fell under the dominion of Satan. We have here a picture in Shebna,
a picture of Satan, a picture of our fallen nature in Adam.
This is what ruled us before. I pictured here when I see these
next words, what I pictured in my mind was the Lord dealing
with Satan dealing with the powers and principalities of the air,
dealing with the ones we war against, that we didn't even
know we were up against, when He came to us in power and spirit
by His grace to regenerate us and give us life. That's what
I picture when I read this. Watch this, verse 22. I'm sorry,
verse 16. He said, What hast thou here?
Whom hast thou here, that thou hast hewed thee out a sepulcher
here, as he that heweth him out a sepulcher on high, that graveth
inhabitation for himself in a rock?" Shebna had taken advantage of
his office. He had taken advantage of the
people. He had taken advantage of all Jerusalem. The Lord comes
to him. The Lord is speaking to him.
But it's not the Lord speaking to him, it's Isaiah speaking
to him. But it's the Lord speaking to
him. Who's speaking to you today? I pray it's the Lord speaking
to you. Here's what he said, what business do you have here? This is the king's house. That's
what he said to Sheba. That's what the Lord said to
Satan. That's what the Lord said to that old carnal man that's
ruling you when he came in power and grace. What business do you
have here? This ain't your house. Whom hast thou here? Apparently
Shebna didn't have any children. What fruit have you brought forth?
That's what God asked you. Who here is going to save you?
Why have you made this the place where you think you're going
to live and die, where you built your sepulcher? Why have you
decided this is where you're going to live forever? The end
of your reign over my house has come. That's what the Lord sent
Isaiah to tell Shebna. I pray the Lord would tell somebody
that this morning. Tell somebody's old fleshly nature
here this morning, the end of your reign has come. Tell the
prince of the power of the air, you got no business in this house
anymore. Your reign is over. This is my house. Look at verse
17. Behold, the Lord will carry thee
away with a mighty captivity. and will surely cover thee, he
will surely violently turn and toss thee like a ball into a
large country. There shalt thou die, there the
chariots of thy glory shall be the shame of thy Lord's house,
and I'll drive thee from thy station, and from thy state shall
he pull thee down. The Lord has to bind Satan from
reigning over his elect. He subdues the old nature within
a sinner even as he did Shebna right here. He covers him. That
flesh has got to die. That flesh is under a curse.
That flesh has got to die. It's got to return to the dust,
to that far country of the grave. It's got to be separated from
the new man, from who we are. It's got to be a new creation
that God makes. so that we become ashamed of
the chariots we trusted in, of the glory we trusted in. Like
Paul said, how do you appreciate now that
fruit and that glory that you're now ashamed of? You used to glory
in those things, now you're ashamed of those things. That's where
we have to be brought, from thy state. Shall he, the Lord of
hosts, pull Shebna down? He got to pull him down. This
is Isaiah's word to me and to you. And it's my word to you. It's God's word to you. Now look,
when he does this, when God takes that old master of profit and
revenue away, you know what he does then? He puts in place a
new master of profit and revenue. Watch verse 20, and it shall
come to pass in that day that I will call my servant Eliakim,
the son of Hilkiah. He's also known in scripture
as Azariah and other places. Eliakim means my God will raise
up. That's what his name means. He
stands here as a type of Christ. He's God's servant. You see here,
God said, I will call my servant Eliakim. and he'll come. Christ, we read, glorified not
himself to become a high priest, but he was called of God. He
was chosen and called of God to be God's high priest, just
like this Eliakim was. Verse 21, he says, and I'll clothe
him with thy robe and strengthen him with thy girdle. He's the
second Adam. He's the glory of profit and
revenue of profiting for his people belongs to him. And he
said, I'll put the robe on him. That robe signifies that he's
the chief officer. Shebna had a robe he wore, so
when you saw him, you knew this man is the, he's the guy, he's
the man right under King Hezekiah. Well, when you, this robe that
he speaks of means that he's God. He's God's servant. He's God's man. And this girdle
symbolizes his faithfulness. We read back in Isaiah 11, 5,
"...righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness
the girdle of his reins." He's faithful through and through.
That's with the girdle. Shebana came walking, he had
his long robe, and he had a girdle. The robe let everybody know,
this is the officer. And the girdle, it represented
that he's faithful to his office. But he wasn't. Shebna wasn't.
But this one is. When John saw him in Revelation,
he said he was in the midst of the seven candlesticks. You know
where that is? In his church. He was in the midst of his church.
And he looked like the son of man. He looked like a man, John
said. And he was clothed with a garment,
with a robe down to his foot. And he was girt about the paps
with a golden girdle. That's who this Christ Jesus
is. He's God's servant, called of
God, God's high priest who is faithful to the office. God has
to take away that old Adam nature from you. He's got to take away
Satan's dominion of you, bind him, cast him into a far land,
and call Christ. Christ comes forth in righteousness
and faithfulness, and He sets up dominion in the hearts of
His people, and in His church, and over His kingdom, over His
house. It's His house. Verse 21, he
says in the middle of the verse there, he says, And I will commit
thy government into his hand, and he shall be a father to the
inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. We thought
the government was in our hands. That's what we were going about
glorying in, that everything, all the rule and the dominion
was of us. He said, I'm taking it all out
of your hands and I'm putting it in His hands. I'm taking it
out of your hands and I'm putting it in Christ's hands. And He
said that He's going to be the government, the Father to the
true inhabitants of Jerusalem, to the true house of Judah. He
came forth and He faithfully finished the work God gave Him
to do. He faithfully was made sin, he faithfully bore the wrath
of God, he faithfully purged his people of their sins, and
in the process he faithfully declared God just and justifier.
But that's not all. Verse 22. And the key of the
house of David will I lay upon his shoulder. The key. You know what the key does? He's got the key. That government
is on his shoulder too. So he shall open and none shall
shut. And he shall shut and none shall
open. Christ alone rules in his house. Let me tell you what absolute,
uncontrollable, irresistible, sovereign grace is. Christ opens
the treasures of His Word and of His grace to dead, helpless,
hell-deserving sinners. He does it. And when He opens
it up, it can't be shut again. And when He shuts it, it can't
be opened. That's who we're talking about
here. He gives wisdom. He increases knowledge. The Father
Judgeth no man, he said, but he has committed all judgment
unto the Son. That all men should honor the
Son even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son
honoreth not the Father which hath sent him. You get the picture
with Hezekiah and Eliakim? Hezekiah walks along and folks
come running up to him and they say, King Hezekiah! Would you open up the treasure
house today? My people need bread so they
can eat." And Hezekiah says, you see Eliakim? He's the one
you need to go to. The key's in his hand. The government's
on his shoulder. God the Father says, You can't
come to Me but through My Son. The government's on His shoulder.
The key's in His hand. He opens and no man can shut.
Look at verse 23. And I will fasten Him as a nail
in a sure place, and He shall be for a glorious throne to His
Father's house. Christ is the nail in the sure
place. You know what? In that wilderness that they
went through, It's called the Waste Howling Wilderness, just
desert. When they were wandering in the
wilderness, and tornadoes would come, whirlwinds would come up
through there. I've seen whirlwinds and tornadoes
where I've lived in the South, but I've never seen them in the
desert. I hear they're just as destructive. They come through and they just
take everything in its path. But they had to have something
to hold that tabernacle in place. They had to have something to
hold that tent, to hold that covering, to hold that shelter
to protect them in that wilderness. You know what it was? A cord
went down out from that tent and a nail was hammered into
the ground. And those nails held that tabernacle,
and you don't read of one time in the scriptures where one of
those nails ever came loose. It was a nail in a sure place.
And they had nails in the tabernacle that were hammered in place where
they took those sanctified vessels, those holy vessels, those precious
vessels. And those vessels had to be put
on a sure nail in a sure place because you did not want one
of those precious vessels to be treated with disrespect, to
be harmed in any way because they're God's vessels. He sanctified
those vessels and they had to be secure on a sure nail in a
sure place. He said, Christ is that nail. My son is that nail in a sure
place. And he said, and he's going to
be a glorious throne. He's the king to his father's
house. Verse 32 says, A king shall reign in righteousness
and princes shall rule in judgment. A man shall be a hiding place
from the wind and a covert from the storm. Some hear the gospel
that God has mercy on whom He will and that He hardens whom
He will. Some of you have heard me say that this morning. And
in your heart, you argued against God, you're fighting against
God, you're questioning God, you're striving against God,
you're debating against God, you're probably aiming it at
me. But in your heart, you're doing it to God. That's what
he said. And the reason you're doing it
is because you can't get your little fickle, wormy mind to
calculate big enough to understand that this is the very glory of
the riches of God. Our minds won't calculate that
high. We can't put all that together and come out with a sum total
that this is the very glory of God, to have mercy on whom He
will. I said to you before, instead
of raging in your enmity toward God, turn from yourself and beg
God for mercy. But this is one thing I know,
and I know this from experience. I'm telling you this and I don't
have a problem standing here and telling you this as offensive
as I know it is to the natural man. I don't have a problem telling
you this as boldly and as plainly and as simply as I know how to
say it because I sit there raging in my enmity furious and angry
that God saves whom He will and hardens whom He will, that I've
got to come to God on His terms, not my terms, begging God to
have mercy on me and to trust His Son. I sat there in that
place angry and hating God for that until God came in sovereign
grace. I went back and found some notebooks
from when the Lord first saved me. where I wrote down things. And you know my gospel hadn't
changed from the first hour till today. It's been the same. It's been the same. I pray I
know more today about His glory and His grace than I did then,
but the gospel that I believe now hadn't changed from then.
And this I know from experience, when this king exercises absolute
sovereign wisdom and power in you, you're going to certainly
do what he says next. Look here, this is the sure result
of sovereign grace. Verse 24, And they shall hang
upon him, this nail in the sure place, all the glory of his father's
house. the offspring and the issue,
all vessels of small quality from the vessels of cups even
to all the vessels of flagons, all the glory of the Father's
house. When He comes in power, you shall
hang all the glory of God the Father's house on Christ Jesus,
the Son of God, your Savior. You will hang all the glory on
this nail in the sure place. You'll rejoice in the glory of
electing grace for this reason, because He elected you unto salvation
in Christ Jesus His Son. Without Christ Jesus His Son,
election don't mean a darn thing. And for a lot of people, it's
just some reason to argue with folks. They like to be offensive. If it ain't Christ where it receives
its glory and to whom the glory goes, it's nothing. You'll hang
all the glory of God's sovereign predestination in this. He predestinated you to be conformed
to the image of His Son. His Son, His Son is the end purpose
of it all. You'll hang all the glory of
God's irresistible call, of His irresistible grace in exercising
this power and dominion in you because He called you unto the
fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ. This is scripture. I'll
just quote scripture to you. You'll rejoice in the glory of
God the Father's preserving grace for keeping you all your days
because as 1 Corinthians 1 says, Because He's preserving you until
the end that you might be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus
Christ. So He can glory in His Son and what His Son's done for
you. That's why He keeps His people.
God the Father does. All the glory of the Father's
house hangs one place on that sure nail, Christ Jesus. And
you'll hang all the glory there. It'll cease hanging on you, it'll
hang on Him. He says, will all his people
rejoice this way? Will they all rejoice this way?
Listen, the offspring and the issue. That means all the children
and all the children's children in his house. And all those children
in the mix, two or three generations down, and two or three generations
down, and two or three generations down, to you. All Abraham's children,
and Abraham the child, and Abraham's grandchildren, all the children
and the children's children, all of them, hang their glory
right here. Well, all kinds of sinners, all vessels of small
quantity, from the vessels of cups, even to the vessels of
flagons. no matter what kind of vessel. That means some will
be Jew and Gentile, some will be bound, some will be free.
That means some will be rich, some will be poor, but all of
them, from the cups to the flagons, the big vessels, all of them
are going to hang one place, on the nail in the place. All
their glories, glory of the Father's house, Christ Jesus, all of them.
This is what Isaiah 32.3 says after he said that about that
king reigning in righteousness. He said, "...the eyes of them
that see shall not be dim, 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."
No, as far as I can tell, just simple English, there's no ifs,
ands, or maybes in that. They said, this is how it's going
to be. All the glory of the Father's house hangs on it. It all hangs
on it. So He's going to do that. And
what about your former confidence and your former refuge? What
about all that other stuff you put confidence in? Verse 25.
In that day, saith the Lord of hosts, shall the nail that, and
you can put in parentheses, was thought to be fastened in the
sure place, be removed, and be cut down, and fall, and the burden
that was upon it shall be cut off. All your dependence on that
nail, it'll be gone. Because it wasn't a nail in a
sure place. It could be removed, and God said, I took it away,
and I replaced it with the sure nail. My son, Christ Jesus, I hope I'm speaking plainly and
I hope I'm speaking to you as somebody who's telling you from
experience, from having this power and this grace exercised
in me personally that I know this is how it happens. Are you
sure about this preacher? Are you sure this is going to
happen this way? How are you so sure? Look at
that last phrase, verse 25. The Lord hath spoken. That's how I know. That's how
I know, and that's how you'll know. All right.