Why is the prophet naked? Why
did the Lord tell him to do that? That's what I hope to answer
by looking at our Redeemer this evening. Now, this chapter does
not begin a new thought. This chapter is a continuation
of Isaiah's message that he has received from the Lord. And really,
this chapter is an illustration of what Isaiah has been preaching,
that salvation and is found only in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now
you remember in these previous chapters the prophets told the
people, don't look for refuge anywhere but in Christ. Don't
look to your wisdom, don't look to your religious works, don't
look to your allies, don't look to the strong walled cities and
your mighty armies because they won't give you any refuge. In
verse 1, chapter 20 is a perfect illustration of what he's been
saying. And the year that Tartan came unto Ashdod, when Sargon
the king of Assyria sent him, and fought against Ashdod, and
took it." Now, Sargon, all the writers say, is probably King
Sennacherib. He's the Assyrian king that the
Lord's been using to cause all this destruction and mayhem and
do all this conquering and carry out the Lord's will and purpose
in this. And Sennacherib sent this man
Tartan to take the city of Ashdod. Now, Ashdod is a Philistine city.
And it's known for being a very strong city. It's known for being
a very, very well-defended city. And Ashdod, this strong, mighty
city, came under siege. And eventually, it fell. John Gill said it took 29 years. Some general had more patience
than me besieging the city for 29 years. I wouldn't have been
able to do it. Twenty-nine years they besieged that city. And
finally, it fell. Isn't that our flesh? Isn't that
these bodies? They might hold out for a while,
but eventually they'll fall to sin. Eventually they'll fall
to judgment and death. Sin is besieging our bodies,
constantly tearing down our defenses. Well, what will our refuge be
in that day? In that day of judgment, when
the body dies and we stand before the judgment seat of Christ,
in that day, what will be our refuge? Well, is our refuge Christ? Is it Christ alone? Or is our
refuge in something else? Now, the theme of Isaiah's message
to all these different people has been Christ, and I want to
show you how subtle that this can be. To seek refuge in Christ
and nowhere else. Do you know that even applies
to our church membership? You know, the Jews, they felt
like because of their national heritage, they were somehow Automatically,
you know, part of God's elect, they were, you know, kept the
law and the ceremonies and they had this refuge. Well, that doesn't
really apply, you know, mostly to our lives today, but this
thing of, where's your refuge? Where's your confidence? Can
even apply to our church membership. Many people think, well, I'm
fine here. You know, the Lord's always blessed us here and He
always will. I'm safe because of it. You know where I attend,
who I listen to, what doctrine I hold to? Well, just be careful. Maybe he will, maybe he won't.
I don't know. That's the Lord's will. But I do know this. He
definitely won't bless us if our refuge becomes something
other than Christ. If our refuge becomes where we
attend, God's not going to bless it. The beauty of this place. I was thinking about driving
over here this evening. I was anxious. I was excited.
I was excited to come here. I was excited to see you all. What a blessing. This is an opportunity
to open God's Word and see, thus saith the Lord, to sing His praises,
to be of His people. Well, you know what the beauty
of this place is? It's Christ. It's Christ who is the message
that's preached here. That's the beauty of this place.
And the moment we quit preaching Christ, this place will be useless. And eventually it'll fall. Henry
used to say someday there'll be a motel here. Well, if we
quit preaching the gospel, if we quit preaching Christ here,
someday there'll be a motel here. It's just so. So what does that
tell us? Run to Christ. Run to Him. Flee to Him. And stay in Christ. Don't ever leave Him. Don't ever
graduate to something other than Christ. Because every other refuge
will ultimately fall. I'm sure they never thought Ashdod
would fall after 29 years it did. And at that time when that
city finally fell, the Lord told his prophet to do a very strange
thing. And the timing of when he told
his prophet to do this ties to this city falling and where our
refuge is. Verse 2, at that same time spake
the Lord by Isaiah the son of Amos, saying, Go and loose the
sackcloth from off thy loins. and put off thy shoe from thy
foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot." Now, that's a strange thing,
isn't it? Now, Isaiah had been wearing sackcloth because he
was mourning over what he knew was going to happen to Israel.
He knew this judgment that was coming. And many of the Lord's
servants dressed like that. Isaiah dressed in sackcloth.
Elijah wore a coat made of some sort of hair. garment made of
camel hair. And that makes God's preachers
stand out from these TV preachers wearing thousand-dollar suits.
Isaiah in his sackcloth, that made him stand out, didn't it?
Well, here's God's prophet. I mean, this guy's not just nobody. This is God's prophet, Isaiah. And he's been bringing God's
message to God's people and God's judgment that's coming against
sin and that salvation, refuge is in Christ alone. And Isaiah's
message is that no matter how good you think you are, no matter
what your religious background is, what your moral history is,
you have not pleased God in yourself. Apart from faith in Christ, you
have not pleased God, and God is going to punish all sin with
death. So Isaiah kept telling anyone
who would listen, repent and run to Christ. The Lord Jesus
Christ is the only refuge a sinner will ever have. What a wonderful message. What
a gift of God's grace he'd send his prophet with that message.
But people don't want to hear that message, do they? Not by
nature, they don't. And Isaiah's been having a hard
time getting a hearing. And now, the Lord wants Isaiah
to walk around naked. Well, I say, if you do that,
nobody's going to listen to you now. Everybody's just going to
make fun of you. They're going to ridicule you.
They're going to say you're crazy. You're going to be just the laughing
stock of the town. You're revealing your shame to
the whole world. You'll never get a hearing now.
Well, why would the Lord tell his servant to walk around naked? There's three reasons I can think
of. First, the Lord told his servant to walk around naked
to be a type of Christ. Verse 3, And the Lord said, Like
as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years,
for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia. Now the sign
and wonder, that's Christ. Remember we saw this first back
in Isaiah chapter 7. God told Ahaz what he was going
to do. And he told Ahaz, you ask a sign. Ask for a sign, whatever sign
you want, and I'll do it. To show you I'm going to perform
my will, I'm going to do what I promised I'd do. Ahazel wouldn't
ask for a sign, remember? In Isaiah 7, verse 14, God said,
I'm going to give you a sign anyway. Here's the sign. Therefore,
the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall
conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
God with us. God with us. The Lord Jesus Christ. He's the sign. And Christ and
His work for His people, His work in His people, that's the
sign of wonder to the world. Look over in Isaiah chapter 8.
We looked at this a few weeks ago. Isaiah 8, verse 18. This is quoted in Hebrews chapter
2. This is the Lord speaking. Behold,
I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and
for wonders in Israel, for the Lord of hosts which dwelleth
in Mount Zion. So the sign and wonder is Christ. Isaiah is told to do this as
a sign and a wonder, as a picture of Christ. But now, you'll notice
when we read this, Isaiah didn't just walk around naked for an
afternoon, did he? For three years, Isaiah walked through
town naked. For three years, Isaiah had to
endure the humiliation of being naked in public. being mocked
every time he went out, being made fun of everywhere he went.
For three years, Isaiah had to go around town, not just stripped
of the nice robes that a prophet ought to be wearing, but even
stripped of the sackcloth, naked. Now why would the Lord tell his
servant to endure such a humiliating experience? Because Isaiah is
a type of Christ who is the believer's shelter and hiding place from
our nakedness. Our Savior walked around this
world naked. He stripped Himself of His glory
as God. The Son of God, one day, stripped
Himself of His glory and appeared on earth as a man. Now, He was
still God, wasn't He? He was always God, but that glory
as God was hidden. And the Lord made Himself seen
in His humiliation. He was naked of His personal
glory and appeared as a man. And He was a real man. He was
God. He was truly Almighty God. Yet, He was a real man. And as
a man, He was naked of His glory as God. He was a man. He got hungry. I was studying
today. I got hungry. Get much done. Oh, it's 1230. I should eat.
It's past my four hour feeding schedule. You know, I gotta get
something to eat. Our Lord got hungry. He got thirsty. He grew tired. He felt pain and
sorrow. God doesn't do that. But a man
does. God has none of those weaknesses.
But a man does. And that's how the Lord Jesus
came. As a man. As a man naked of His glory as
God. And our Lord, not only did He
just grow thirsty, He humbled Himself even further than that,
didn't He? He humbled Himself. The One who
created water humbled Himself to ask a sinful Samaritan woman
to give Him a drink of water. And then a little while later,
as He hung on the cross, suffering for the sins of His people, He
cried, I thirst to show us how fully naked he was before the
Father. He was suffering the hell his
people deserve. Our Lord's public ministry lasted
about the same amount of time as Isaiah walked around naked.
Three, three and a half years. Now, why would Isaiah do such
a thing? We know why the Lord would tell
him to. Why would Isaiah agree to do such a thing? Can you imagine
The courage it took every day to set foot out of his house
naked without a stitch of clothing on. Why would Isaiah do such
a thing? Because he was a picture of Christ.
He may not have understood why he was doing what he was doing,
but as a picture, now our Lord did, but this is how Isaiah is
a picture of Christ. He was obedient. He did what
the Father, what God told him to do. Isaiah was obedient to
humble himself in this way that God told him to do. And our Lord
Jesus Christ was obedient to his Father. He stripped himself
of his glory, the glory that is rightfully his as the Son
of God, and he came to earth naked. He came as a man with
all the limitations of human flesh because he was obedient
to his Father. And then he went further than
that. His obedience was perfect. Before He put His glory back
on, there is a time the Son of God is going to put His glory
back on. You and I are never going to see Him naked again.
We're never going to see Him in the limitations of flesh again. When we see Him, He'll be in
glorified flesh with no limitations. There came a time He's going
to put His glory back on. But before He did, He showed
His perfect obedience. He was obedient even unto death
to suffer and die for the sins of his people, so that their
nakedness and their shame would be eternally covered. So they
would never endure the humiliation and the embarrassment that our
Lord endured as he hung on that cross naked. You know, Isaiah,
he'd catch a cold. Janet told me some people disagree
with this, but I think they're wrong. If you walk around out
there today, in the weather we're having today, naked, you're going
to catch a cold. I don't care what anybody says,
you're going to get a cold. Our Lord didn't just expose Himself
to getting cold. He gave Himself to suffer death
for His people. He gave Himself to suffer the
nakedness, not just the physical nakedness, the spiritual nakedness
of His people when He was made sin for them so that they would
never die in shame. He died in shame, so his people
will never die in shame. And as our Lord suffered and
died, he did literally fulfill this prophecy. He hung between
heaven and earth naked. I know these paintings that men
paint, it's an idol. It's a hippie who's an idol hanging
there with a loincloth on. Our Lord did not look like that.
The Savior looked like a piece of meat. butchered and hanging
there naked between heaven and earth, bearing the nakedness
and shame of His people. Why would He agree to do that?
They couldn't take Him against His will. He went willingly. All through His earthly ministry,
He told people, My hour has not yet come. My hour has not yet
come. My hour has not yet come. Then
one day He said, Father, the hour has come. And He's going
willingly. Why did He do that? to bear the
nakedness and the sin and the shame of His people. Because
much worse than being physically naked, Christ our substitute
suffered the shame, the holy, perfect Son of God suffered the
shame of being made sin for His people. You and I can't enter into that.
The depth of the shame and the humiliation that the perfect,
holy Son of God suffered being made sin and then fully exposed
before the all-seeing eye of His Father's justice, suffering
for all the sin of His people. That's why the Lord agreed to
come naked and suffer and die for His people. Well, why would
the Father cause His Son not cause, but make His Son, send
His Son, purpose His Son to suffer such humiliation and shame. Why
would the Father determine His purpose is for His Son to endure
such suffering and shame? Any parent here, we'd want to
spare our, we'd do anything we could to spare our children,
man. But the Eternal Father purposed His Son to suffer like this.
Why? Because that's what every human
being deserves to suffer. And the only way God's elect
could escape suffering, that punishment, is if Christ suffered
it for him as their substitute. And he did. That's why the Father
sent him. Now the shame and humiliation
of this nakedness, this is what everybody deserves. This is what
we all deserve. We deserve to bear our shame
before God eternally. Eternally suffering in our shame.
And that is exactly what every son of Adam will suffer outside
of Christ. Look at verse 4 in our text.
So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptian prisoners
and the Ethiopian captives, young and old. There is no age of accountability
here. Young and old, naked and barefoot,
even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt. And they
shall be afraid and ashamed of Ethiopia, their expectation,
and of Egypt, their glory. The Egyptians and Ethiopians,
they might think they're safe right now. They think they're
safe from old King Sennacherib. He can't reach them. He's got
too much ground to cover between them and him. But the hand of
God's justice is coming. It's coming just as sure as the
sun is going to rise in the morning. And they will be led away into
captivity naked. Just as naked as Isaiah was for
those three years. Now, this nakedness is a picture. of our spiritual shame. I try to spend some time thinking
about how ashamed I'd be to stand naked before a crowd of people.
That'd be embarrassing, wouldn't it? But I'll tell you what's
worse. Having our thoughts and our desires
and our motives, the motives that come from our sinful, depraved
heart, Black, wretched desires of our nature to be publicly
exposed, naked and open for everyone to see. How humiliating. How I'd be so ashamed. That's
the way the Ethiopians and Egyptians will be. They'll be ashamed.
They'll be ashamed they trusted in their own defenses when they're
taken away captive. They'll be ashamed of their nakedness.
They'll be ashamed of themselves. One day, you know what the Egyptians
and Ethiopians will say when King Sennacherib's army comes?
We should have known better. Isaiah warned us, and we wouldn't
listen. We should have known better.
Verse 6, And the inhabitant of this isle shall say in that day,
Behold, such is our expectation, whether we flee for help to be
delivered from the king of Assyria. And how shall we escape? Now
the shame Men will feel in hell will be compounded. Because they
were told they were pointed to Christ, they should have known
better. Nature told them there's a God they should have known
better. They should have turned to Christ and they didn't. So
their shame will be compounded. Now, how can we escape that punishment? Today is still the day of grace.
How can we escape that punishment? That's the question that's asked
here. Well, you want the answer? It's what Isaiah has been giving
us over and over and over. Only in Christ. By Christ satisfying
God's justice and suffering everything our sin deserves, this is the
only way of escape. Salvation is only in Christ. Salvation can only be had through
faith in Christ. Faith cometh by hearing, by hearing
the message of Christ. Anybody interested in hearing
that message? How can I hear that message of
salvation is only in Christ? I'm not the smartest guy in the
room, but I know I need to hear of him then. If salvation is
only in Christ, will somebody tell me about him? Somebody,
can somebody tell me about the only way of escape that God's
provided? God's preachers do every time
they get up and speak. Every time. Here's the second
reason God told Isaiah to walk around naked. To be a picture
of God's preachers. Now, I'm sure Isaiah's day was
pretty similar to ours. There are many people going around
saying they're prophets and claiming to have a message and dressed
up in all the religious garb and all these things. You know,
you make good living that way. But don't you think Isaiah stood
out from all of them? I guarantee you he did. Isaiah
is the only one naked. He stood out from all those false
prophets. And God's preachers, they stand
out. from the false prophets that
are so prevalent in our day. And the reason is not our dress.
It's our message. The reason we stand out, it's
our message. Our message tells us we're all
naked. God's preacher included. You
beware of a man whose message is for you, but not for him,
because somehow, you know, he's on a higher spiritual plane than
you and he's already arrived and you're naked and he's not.
You just be wary of him. He's trying to get you to be
like him instead of be like Christ. Isn't that right? God's preachers
stand out because our message is we're all naked from the pulpit
to the back row. We're all naked. We're all sinners
and we don't have anything to cover our nakedness and our sin
and our shame. Our message is we need a covering,
but we can't produce it. Our covering is Christ our righteousness. He is our covering. How shall
we escape God's wrath against sin? Only by being in Christ. So run to Christ. Beg Him for
mercy for your sinful soul. Run to Him. And don't ever leave
Him. Because God's holy. God will
punish sin. God's angry with the wicked.
And that's every one of us by nature. None of us are accepted
from that. We're all naked. We're all wicked
by nature. And by nature, God's angry with
us. And we will never see ourselves
as naked. We'll never see ourselves as
full of shame and sin until somebody tells us. And we'll either see
it now or we'll see it in judgment. And if we don't see ourselves
as sinners, I mean as vile, If we don't see ourselves as naked
before God until that day of judgment, we'll be damned. We'll be eternally ashamed. But
if in God's mercy, he lets us see our sin now. He sends you
to that man who stands out with his message saying we're all
naked. We're all full of shame. If God
in his mercy lets us see our nakedness and our shame now,
He will, I guarantee you He will, clothe us in the righteousness
of Christ. When God strips a man or a woman,
He always clothes them. And He clothes them in the same
dress, His Son. Now that message is very different
than the message of false prophets. We were at a bookstore there
a day and it's like a car wreck. I can't help it. I shouldn't
do it, but I do. I go to a religious session.
I look at all these preachers writing all these books. And
you know, it really is true. This struck me. They're motivational
books. Just as motivational as any basketball
coach that writes a book. It's a motivational book. And
I was looking at one. And I thought, well, all I've
got to do is just convince myself everything's okay. And have a
positive outlook on life. And I'll have a rich, happy,
full, successful life. If I could just do that, you
know. Except I don't think so. People like that are, I should
have looked this up, I think I got this right. They're like
the people in the story of the Emperor's New Clothes. Everybody
was afraid to say the truth. You don't have any clothes on.
And somebody finally had the courage to say it. God's going
to send a man with the courage to say it. We stand out because
God's preachers don't ignore sin and don't ignore shame. That's
the message. Well, now, who's going to hear
that message? Nobody in their right mind is going to hear that
message, are they? Well, nobody in their right mind is going
to want to listen to a naked preacher. Well, in their natural mind,
they won't. But God's elect will. People who see themselves as
naked. People who see themselves in
need of a Savior, in need of a covering. They're going to
hear this message of Christ and they're going to love it. And
that's the third reason the Lord told Isaiah to walk around naked.
To be a picture of God's elect. When God saves His people, He
always strips them of everything that they are. He strips them
of every hope that they have outside of Christ. God's going
to undo What our mom and daddy kept telling us, oh, you're a
good boy. Oh, you're a good boy. Oh, you're a good boy. No, you're
not. God's going to strip us of that.
And once we're stripped naked, we're exposed. God's going to
expose us for who and what we are. And when we're exposed,
we're ashamed. Everyone is ashamed when they're
exposed. We're exposed for who we are. We're sinners. There's no pretending
and hiding our faults now. Everything's laid bare. And when
that stripping happens, I'll tell you what we do. We run to
Christ. Everything we take pride in,
everything that we have some hope in, even if it's just a
little measure of hope, has to be stripped away before we'll
run to Christ. But when God strips us, we start
running. We start running to Him. Now,
we've seen that Christ is the sign and the wonder, isn't He?
Isaiah was a picture of Christ. He was the sign and wonder. And
God's preachers, they're signs and wonders. God's preachers
are signposts, pointing sinners to Christ. We're preaching a
message that's a wonder. God has preserved grace for the
guilty. That message is a wonder. Every
other message is God has blessings for those who do good. God has
blessings for those who take the first step. God has blessings.
That's not really so much a wonder. The heathen do that. Here's a
message of wonder. Grace for the guilty. A robe
of righteousness for the naked. And it's God's peoples through
the suffering and the death of His Son. But it's not just God's
preachers who are signs and wonders. Every believer is a sign and
a wonder to the world. Noah was a sign and a wonder. Noah stood out in stark contrast
to the rest of the world. Noah's obedience in building
that ark condemned the world. Well, you're a sign and a wonder
that way when you got to work tomorrow morning. Every believer
is a sign and wonder who stands out in stark contrast to the
world. We stand out in stark contrast
because we freely admit we're naked. We're sinners. We have
no righteousness. We have no covering. We have
no hope. In ourselves, there's nothing but sin and shame in
us. But in Christ, we're saved. We're made righteous. We're not
just covered with the robe of righteousness. We're made the
righteousness of God in Christ. I may not be able to see it,
you may not be able to see it, but it's so, because God said
it. Made righteous. In Christ, we're
justified. Not just as if I'd never sinned,
but made without sin. All you see of me is sin, but
in Christ I'm justified. No sin. We have escaped God's
wrath, not by doing good, not by keeping the law, not by being
better than somebody else, we have escaped God's wrath against
our sin by being in Christ, by Christ suffering and paying for
our sin with His death as a substitute on Calvary's tree. So how shall
we escape? How are we going to be delivered
from the wrath to come? We're going to be delivered in
Christ, in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. who stripped
himself of his glory and came to this earth as a man. And he,
as a man, he obeyed God's law perfectly for his people. And
he gave that perfect righteousness to his people. He covered them
with his righteousness. His people shall escape because
in Christ we're covered. He bore our sin and our shame
and our nakedness and in him we're covered. Our Lord humbled
Himself to hang between heaven and earth, suffering for the
sin of His elect. And in His death, He put that
sin away. It's gone. The nakedness of our
Redeemer is a picture of how He bore our sin. He bore the
spiritual nakedness and shame of His people so that they would
be clothed, made righteous in Him. Now, do you believe that
gospel? Do you believe that salvation?
Well, if you do, you're a sign of God's grace. The only way
you can believe that is by grace. If you believe that message,
if your hope is that Savior, you're a wonder to the world.
The world in its natural wisdom says, I don't understand that.
You're crazy. You really believe that? By God's
grace, with all my heart, weighing with all my heart. I believe
in Him. I cling to Him. I trust Him.
He is my only hope. And that hope never changes. That hope of escape, that hope
of salvation never changes. Look over in Hebrews chapter
2. The writer to the Hebrews asked this question. Hebrews chapter 2 is written
to believers. It's not written to unbelievers,
this is written to believers. Telling us, you've looked to
Christ. Now don't look anywhere else.
You're saved by faith, now continue believing Christ. Continue in
faith in Christ alone. Hebrews 2 verse 1. Therefore
we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we've
heard. Have you heard the gospel over
the years? We ought to give the more earnest
heed. Who ought to give them more earnest
tea? Who should be more well-taught,
more well-grounded in Christ than us? We've heard the gospel. Don't let it slip, lest at any
time we should let them slip. For the word spoken by angels
was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just
recompense of reward. The angels there are the Old
Testament messengers, Old Testament prophets. If everything God said
through those Old Testament prophets came true, Don't you reckon the
rest of it is too? Of course it is. So verse 3,
how shall we escape? If we neglect so great salvation,
which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord and was confirmed
unto us by them that heard him. Was confirmed unto us by the
apostles and the writers of the scriptures. How shall we escape
if we neglect so great salvation? If we neglect this One way of
salvation, this great way of salvation for sinners will be
damned, eternally ashamed, because there is no other escape other
than in the Lord Jesus Christ. But in Him, salvation is sure. In Him, the way of escape is
certain. Christ the God-man is a sign and a wonder. What a wonder
that God would become a man. that God would strip Himself
of His glory and appear on earth as a man. And what a wonder that
the Lord would give that message of Christ, what He accomplished
for His people as their substitute, as their representative. What
a wonder that the Lord would entrust the message of His Son
to sinful men. Do you reckon we can be faithful
with it? I hope so. What a wonder that
the Lord has given His people faith to believe His signs. You
believe. I can tell, this is the gospel
that you believe. You're a wonder when you believe
the message of Christ. What a wonder that the Lord has
made His people signs and wonders on this earth. The only thing
you can contribute any of that to is God's grace. God's grace in Christ Jesus.
May God help us to run to Him first.