When Luke was reading out of
Isaiah 53, probably the most glorious account of the substitutionary
sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he was thanking the Lord
for that sacrifice, I thought of what Joe Terrell said in Rocky
Mount last week that just hit me like a ton of bricks. He said,
when the Lord was dying on the cross, he wasn't fighting a battle.
It was a sacrifice. Wow. Well, we are just so thankful
to have Frank with us tonight. Frank and Janet are here. Savannah
graduated this year, and this weekend they went to her graduation. Frank's claim to fame is he's
Holly and Savannah's dad. I've said that before. We sure
love Holly and Savannah. Frank, you come preach to us.
We're so thankful you're here. He's the pastor of the Hurricane
Road Grace Church, and everybody knows that. Come on, Frank. If you would open your Bibles
with me to Isaiah chapter 20. As you're turning, let me tell
you how honored I am to be here. I wish you knew how often I pray
for you. Thank God for you. And our daughters were deciding
where to go to school, where to go to college. It was my heart's
desire that they go to the University of Kentucky. Not because I'm
a basketball fan, but because of Todd's Road Grace Church.
And I thank you for your faithfulness to preach the gospel, for your
faithfulness to the cause of Christ. I'm very thankful. The
title of the message this evening is, Why is the Prophet Naked?
In the preceding chapters, Isaiah has been preaching warning of
God's judgment that's coming. And he has good news, that there
is salvation to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Isaiah's message
is trust Christ. Don't look for refuge anywhere
but Christ. Don't try to find refuge in your
wisdom. Don't try to find refuge in your
religious doings. Don't try to find refuge in making
allies with the surrounding nations. Don't look for refuge in your
strong walled cities, because none of those things will give
you any refuge. Isaiah's message is trust Christ,
look to him, rest in him. And this chapter 20 gives us
an illustration of his message. What does the scripture have
to say about our spiritual nakedness? And what does the scripture say
about can our nakedness be covered? So let's begin looking here in
verse one of Isaiah chapter 20. In the year that Tartan came
unto Ashtad, when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him, and
fought against Ashdod and took it. Now Sargon, more than likely
from what I read, is King Sennacherib. He's the Assyrian king that the
Lord is using to conquer most of all of the known world, especially
in this region at that time. And Sennacherib sent this man,
Tartan, maybe he was a general or something, to take the city
of Ashdod. Now Ashdod was a Philistine city,
known to be a very strong, very well defended city. And it came
under siege. and it eventually fell. John
Gill says it took 29 years for that siege to work, but it finally
worked and the city fell. Now that's our flesh. This flesh
may hold out for a while, but eventually it will fall to sin. It'll fall to judgment and death
because of our spiritual nakedness. And the question is, in that
day, in that day of God's judgment, what will be your refuge? What
will be our refuge in that day? Will our refuge be Christ? Will
it be Christ alone? Or is our refuge going to be
something else? Is our refuge going to be Christ plus what
we've done? Christ plus anything? I mean, what's your refuge going
to be? Now the theme, remember, to Isaiah's
message to all these different people has been Christ. Trust
Christ. Seek refuge in the Lord Jesus
Christ and nowhere else. And the importance of that message
applies to our day just as much as it applied in Isaiah's day.
Now, you know, you are well taught. If you've been here very long,
you're well taught. You know that there's no refuge
from God's wrath in our so-called righteousness, in our religious
deeds. There's no refuge there. There's
no refuge to be found from God's wrath in our church membership.
There's not a refuge in the fact that we attend the place where
Christ is preached. Christ is the refuge. We must
be in Him. We must be found in Him. There's
no refuge in us giving mental agreement to the facts and figures
of the gospel. We must believe Christ. We must
be given heart faith in Him. So our message is run to Christ. Flee to Him. Find refuge and
safety in Him because every other refuge just like Ashdod, every
other refuge will fall. Now at the time Ashdod, this
well-defended city, fell, God told his prophet Isaiah to do
a very strange thing. Look at verse 2. At that 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 seems mighty strange
to me, does it you? Now up to this time, Isaiah has
been wearing sackcloth. He's been mourning over what
is getting ready to happen to Israel. And many of the Lord's
servants dress like this, don't they? Elijah, he wore a coat
made of hair. John the Baptist wore a camel
hair coat. That makes these men stand out from TV preachers wearing
thousand-dollar suits, doesn't it? But now here's God's prophet. This is God's prophet, Isaiah. And he's been bringing a message
of God's judgment against sin, that there's salvation to be
found only in Christ. Isaiah's message to these Jews
is no matter how good you think you've been, you have not pleased
God. He's not pleased. God would punish
every sin with death. So Isaiah's message has been
repent, now run to Christ. Christ is the only refuge a sinner
can have. But I tell you another thing
is true in our day, just like it was Isaiah's day. People don't want
to hear that message. Hey, you just are not going to
get a hearing preaching that message. Isaiah has been having
a hard time getting hearing. And now the Lord tells him to
walk around naked. Well, Isaiah, nobody's going
to listen to you now. I mean, you're naked. Everybody's
going to make fun of you. Everybody's going to say you're
a crazy man. You're walking around naked. All you're doing is revealing
your shame to the world. You'll never get a hearing now.
Now, why would the Lord have his servant walk around naked
like that? Well, there's three reasons I
can think of. I'm sure there's many, but there's
three reasons I can think of. The first one is to be a type
of Christ. Look at verse three. The Lord
said, like as my servant Isaiah had to walk naked and barefoot
three years for a sign and a wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia.
Isaiah is going to walk around naked and barefoot as a sign
and a wonder. Now look back at Isaiah chapter
seven. We know this. Christ is the sign and wonder.
In Isaiah 7, God told Ahaz that Sennacherib, he's not going to
enter into Israel. He's not going to enter into
Jerusalem. And he told Ahaz, you ask me a sign. You ask anything
you want, and I'll do it to prove to you I'm going to keep my word.
Ahaz refused to ask for a sign. Ahaz was an evil king. He didn't
want God giving him a sign. He didn't want God to deliver
him. Ahaz wanted to deliver Israel. He, with his political connections
and his making allies in these countries, Ahaz wanted to deliver
Israel. He went and asked for a sign.
God said, I'm going to give you a sign anyway. Look at chapter
7, verse 14. Christ is 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 Emmanuel. Christ is the sign. Christ born
of the Virgin is the sign. And Isaiah going naked is a sign
and a wonder. So Isaiah is a type of Christ.
As a type of Christ, Isaiah didn't walk around naked for just an
afternoon. Isaiah spent three years walking around naked and
barefoot. For three years, Isaiah had to
endure the humiliation of being naked in public. He had to endure
the humiliation of being mocked by people, constantly being made
fun of for three years. Isaiah did not go around in the
nice robes that I'm sure a prophet was entitled to wear. He went
stripped of his sackcloth because Isaiah is a type of Christ. Christ
our Savior walked in this world as a man in this sense, naked. He came to this earth as a man. He stripped himself of his glory
as God. When people saw him, they saw
a man. This is the son of Mary and Joseph.
We know him. He's a man. They thought he was
a man. He's still God. But they thought
he was only a man because he humiliated himself and stripped
himself of his glory as God and allowed himself to be seen by
the creature in his humiliation. Now he was a real man, bone of
our bone, flesh of our flesh, yet at the same time as God Almighty,
but he stripped of his glory. As a man, he grew hungry and
thirsty, just like we do. As a man, he grew tired. He felt
emotions. He felt pain and sorrow. God
doesn't do that, but a man does. So God stripped himself of his
glory and came as a man in the weakness of human flesh. And
that's how Christ came, as a man, naked of his glory as God. Now you think of the courage
that it took Isaiah for three years. Every day, I would imagine,
and this would be for me, he had to summon the courage to
walk out of his house naked and barefoot. Why was Isaiah willing to do
such a thing? Because he's a type of Christ.
Isaiah pictured the obedience of Christ our Savior. Isaiah
was obedient to the Lord to humble himself in this way because he
was a picture of Christ. Our Lord Jesus Christ was obedient
to his Father in every way. He was obedient to strip himself
of his glory, to humiliate himself, to come as a man so that he could
save sinful men and women. He was obedient to be humiliated. Can you imagine the humiliation
of the son of God to suffer the limitations of our flesh? What
humiliation? He did that in obedience to his
father. And as if that's not enough,
he went further than that. Before he put his glory back
on, Christ our Savior was obedient even unto death. He was obedient
to suffer and die as a sacrifice for the sins of his people so
that their nakedness and their shame would be covered. You'd think Isaiah would be subject
to catching a cold if he's walking around naked all the time, wouldn't
you? The Lord Jesus Christ didn't just expose himself to suffering
a cold. He gave himself. He gave his
body. He gave his soul to suffer death
for his people so that they would never die in shame. As our Lord
suffered and died on Calvary's tree, He literally fulfilled
His promise. You know, we see these people,
they paint pictures and they try to depict the scene at Calvary
on television. I promise you, they're not doing
that justice. Our Savior didn't even look like
a man hanging on that cross, beaten beyond recognition. He
didn't have a loincloth on. Those soldiers stripped him naked
just to add to his humiliation and his suffering. And that's
just a small glimpse of what he was really suffering. Christ
was suffering, not just physical nakedness. He was bearing the
spiritual nakedness and the shame of the sin of his people. Well,
now, how did we become spiritually naked? Christ, if he was going
to be our substitute, he must suffer our nakedness and our
shame. How did we become without a covering?
How did we become spiritually naked? Look back at Genesis chapter
3. What's the very first thing Adam
realized, Adam and Eve both realized when Adam sinned? He realized,
they both realized, they're naked. We became naked because of Adam's
sin. Genesis 3 verse 6, and when the
woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant
to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she
took of the fruit thereof and did eat. Nothing happened then,
did it? She gave to her husband with
her and he did eat. He's the federal head. Adam's
the representative. And when Adam sinned, verse 7,
and the eyes of them both were opened and they knew They were
naked. They knew they needed a covering.
That's why they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves
aprons. But Adam knew that didn't work,
didn't he? He knew that covering wasn't
enough. What did he do when God came walking in the cool of the
day? He ran and hid in the bushes. Because even though he had those
fig leaves on, Adam knew he was naked. He had no covering before
God. And every son of Adam has been
born just like Adam. naked. We've been born spiritually
naked with no righteousness, with no covering before God.
And as the Savior hung on the cross, he hung there naked, not
just physically. He hung there naked, spiritually
naked before his father, suffering the shame of the sin of his people,
fully exposed to the all seeing holy eye of his father. All you and I know is sin. We can, just from a great distance,
get the smallest hint of an idea of how humiliating that was for
the Son of God. And I know from Scripture, the
Father loves the Son. How the Father perfectly, infinitely
loves His Son Why would the father, who loves the son, cause his
son to suffer such humiliation? Why would the father make his
son endure this suffering and shame? Because that's what every human
being deserves, to suffer eternally in our shame. And the only way
God's elect could ever be saved from their sin, the only way
God's elect could ever be saved from the punishment and the shame
and the sin that our sin deserves is for Christ to suffer it for
us. He took the sin of his people
in his own body on the tree and he suffered everything that sin
deserved. He suffered the punishment. He
suffered the shame. He suffered the humiliation.
He suffered being separated from his father. Now this shame and
this humiliation, this nakedness is what every one of us deserves.
We deserve eternally to bear our shame before God. And that
is what every son of Adam outside of Christ will suffer. Look at
verse four in our text. So shall the king of Assyria
lead away the Egyptians' prisoners and the Ethiopians' captives,
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." Now,
the Egyptians and the Ethiopians, they think they're safe now.
They think they're too far away. Snack grab's not going to get
to them. But the hand of God's justice is coming for them and
they will be led into captivity just as naked, just as barefoot
as Isaiah was for those three years. Now this nakedness is
a picture of shame. The Israelites who trusted in
Ethiopia and Egypt to come help them, the Egyptians and Ethiopians
themselves, they're all going to be ashamed for this reason. They're going to be ashamed because
they trusted in their own strength. They trusted in their own defenses
rather than obey Isaiah's message and trust in Christ. So they're
going to be taken away captive, and they're going to be taken
away captive naked, ashamed of themselves. They're going to
be ashamed because they should have known better. The Lord sent
his prophet to tell us, and we should have known better, but
we didn't. And they're going to be led away
in shame. And look what they say in verse six. And the inhabitant
of this isle shall say in that day, Behold, such is our expectation. We expected Egypt and Ethiopia
to come help us. That's where we were going to
flee for help. Whither we flee for help to be delivered from
the king of Assyria. And how shall we escape? Now the shame that men feel in
hell when they're sent there eternally ashamed in their nakedness
is going to be compounded because they were told They should have
known. They should have known to turn
to Christ, and they didn't. So their shame will be compounded.
And men see this punishment coming to all men. And this is our question. How shall we escape? That punishment's
what I deserve. That punishment's what you deserve.
How shall we escape? That's the question that they
ask. And the answer is only in the Lord Jesus Christ. We will
only escape God's justice, not because God chose the people
and he said, you know, I'm just going to overlook their sin.
They didn't mean it. That's not how God's going to
deliver his people. God delivers his people by satisfying justice
in their behalf, by punishing fully Christ our substitute. He took the punishment. He took
the nakedness. He took the shame his people
deserve and put it away. How shall we escape? Only in
Christ. Salvation is only in Christ and
salvation. God's salvation of his people
can only be heard in one message, in the message of Christ crucified,
in the message of the gospel. Well, I'm interested in that.
Are you? I'm interested. How can I hear
that message? How can I hear the message of
the Savior? How can I hear of the way of
escape that God has provided? God's preachers preach that message
all the time, every time they speak. And that's my second point.
Isaiah walked around naked to be a picture of God's preachers.
Now, I'm sure just like our day, Isaiah's day was the same. There
are many people going around saying they are prophets. But
I know this, Isaiah stood out from all of them. Isaiah is the
only one naked. All the rest of them were, boy,
they were living in fine houses and fine clothes. Isaiah was
the only naked prophet of the day. He stood out. And that's
God's preachers. God's preachers stand out from
the false prophets that are out there. But the reason is not
our dress. I mean, unless they wear robes
or something, your pastor looks like every other preacher, you
know, everybody wears a suit and tie, right? It's not our
dress. It's our message. God's preachers stand out because
they preach the naked truth. They don't, Todd mentioned this
in the preacher school yesterday, they don't try to package it
together to make it appealing to get somebody to buy something
they don't want. They preach the naked truth. Our message,
the message of God's servant is all of us are naked, without
a covering before God, the preacher included, the preacher included. You beware of a man whose message
is for you and not for him. You just beware of a man who
tells you you're naked and he's not, who tries to get you to
be like him instead of trying to win you to Christ and pointing
you to Christ. You just beware of that man.
Because God's preachers, their message is, we're all naked. I'm naked. I mean no righteousness,
nothing but sin. But I can tell you where a covering's
found. I can tell you that. All of us are sinners. All of
us, we've got nothing to cover our sin. All we are in ourselves
is shame, the shame of our nakedness. And the message of God's servant
is we need a covering. Now, most people kind of figure
that. I know I need a covering. But
the message of God's servant is Christ is our righteousness. Christ is our covering. How should
we escape God's wrath against our sin? only by being found
in Christ. Now run to Him. Beg Him for mercy
for your soul. Run to Christ and don't ever
leave Him. Because God's holy. God must punish sin because He's
holy. God's angry with the wicked every
day. And we talk about God being angry
with the wicked. Don't think it's everybody out
there. There's nameless masses of people out there now. God's
angry with the wicked. That's you and me. Our nature is wicked and God
must punish our sin. He will by no means clear the
guilty. He must punish our sin. And we
will either see ourselves as naked and we'll be ashamed of
ourselves because of our sin now or we'll see it in that day
of judgment, one or the other. And if we do not see ourselves
as sinners, if we, you know, we say, I'm a sinner. I'm not
just saying I've made some mistakes. I'm saying everything I do is
sin. Everything I am by nature has
left me naked before God. If I don't see that in this life,
by God's grace, if I don't see it until judgment, I'll be damned.
Now I'll see it in that day, but that day I'll be damned and
I'll be eternally ashamed. But if in His mercy God makes
us see our nakedness and the shame of our sin in this life,
you know what He'll do? He'll clothe us. He'll clothe
us in His Son. If God's the one who strips you,
He'll clothe you. But before He strips you, before
He clothes you, He will strip you. Now that message is very
different than the message of false prophets today, isn't it?
Just some time, turn on your TV. What's their message? Everything's
okay. That's their message. Just have
a positive attitude and everything will be fine. If you just follow
these simple rules, you'll live a rich life of success and have
plenty of friends and everything will be wonderful. Now that's
not so. That's a lie. They're like the
people standing around that store, the emperor's new clothes. Here
the emperor's parading around naked. Everybody's afraid to
tell him, King, you're naked. Somebody had to have the courage
to say, King, you're naked. That's God's preacher. God's
giving the courage and the faithfulness to say, brethren, we're naked. God's preachers stand out because
they do not ignore our sin and our shame. Well, who's going to hear that
message and believe it? Nobody in their right mind is
going to listen to a naked preacher. You're right. Nobody in their
natural right mind will, but everybody in their right mind
will. After the Lord met that demoniac,
Everybody left. They ran off and they came back.
How did they find him? In his right mind. Somebody in their
right mind is going to listen to this message, the message
of salvation in Christ alone. People who see themselves as
naked, I mean naked, needy sinners, they will hear and they'll love
the message of salvation in Christ alone. And that's my third point. Isaiah walked around naked as
a picture of all of God's elect. Every one of God's elect, they're
naked. Every one of them. When God saves
his people, the first thing he does is strip them. He strips
them of everything they are. He strips them of every hope
they'd ever had. Outside of Christ, he's gonna
take away every hope his people have ever had. And once we're
fully stripped naked, once we're completely exposed, now there's
no hiding, is it? Our sin's exposed. We're ashamed. There's no pretending. There's
no pretending we're something we're not now. We've got to confess,
I'm naked. I'm a sinner. And I can't do
anything to clothe myself. God must strip his people. And you know why? We'll never
run to Christ until he does. We'll never seek Christ until
God strips us naked. We'll never have our hope pinned
on Christ alone until God takes away every other hope we have.
Everything we take pride in has got to be stripped away. And
then and only then will we run to Christ. Now Christ is the
sign and wonder, that's what he saw there in verse three.
Christ is the sign and the wonder. So in that way, Isaiah is a type
of Christ. He was walked around naked as
a sign and a wonder. And God's preachers, they're
signs and wonders. God's preachers are signposts,
pointing men to Christ, preaching a message that's a wonder. Grace for the guilty. Luke, that's
a wonder. Grace for the guilty? What a
wonder. A robe of righteousness for the
naked? That's a wonder. And then all
of God's people, they're signs and wonders to the world. Noah
was a sign and wonder, wasn't he? Noah was out there building
an ark in the middle of dry land when rain had never fell. He
stood out in stark contrast to the rest of the world. He was
a sign and wonder. and Noah's obedience to God in
building that ark condemned the world. And in that way, every
believer is a sign and wonder. Look in Isaiah chapter 8. Christ
and his work for his people and in his people is a sign and wonder
to the world. Isaiah 8 verse 18. Behold, I and the children whom
the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel
from the Lord of hosts which dwelleth in Mount Zion. A believer stands out in stark
contrast to the world because we're naked and we admit we're
naked. I was, I don't know, it's been
15, 16 years ago, I was driving to work one winter morning and
in the turn lane I saw this fella, and it was so shocking, my mind
couldn't comprehend it at first. I mean, it's bitter cold, and
this guy's walking down the street naked. He stood out from everybody I
saw that day. I don't remember anybody I saw
that day, but I remember that guy. Believers stand out in this
world because we admit I'm naked. I mean, I'm nothing. I've got
nothing. I've got no righteousness. I'm
naked. I've got no covering. There's
nothing about me but sin and shame. Yet at the same time,
in Christ, we're saved. I've got no righteousness at
all. Yet in Christ, I'm righteous. I'm naked. I stand before you
naked. Yet in Christ, I'm clothed in
the King's garment, Christ's robe of righteousness. Now, when
we say Christ's robe of righteousness, don't think that we're just the
way we are, naked, our corruption and our shame, and we just put
Christ's robe over top of it to hide it. That's not Christ's
righteousness. Christ's righteousness is being
made righteous. Being made the righteousness
of God in him. Rick, that's one of those things
I don't understand. But I sure believe it. He's all my hope.
I stand before you, I'm telling you, nothing but sin. I freely
admit that. Yet in Christ, I'm justified. Not just as if I'd never sinned.
But in Christ, I have no sin, because Christ, my substitute,
bore it away. He bore my sin. He bore the guilt
of my sin. He bore the shame of my sin and
took it away through his sacrifice on Calvary's tree. Now, how shall we be saved from
the wrath to come? How are we going to escape? In
Christ, the Son of God. who came as a man and obeyed
God's law perfectly and gave his perfect righteousness to
his people. We shall escape standing before
God's throne naked because Christ has already stood there as a
substitute for his people. He stood before his father naked
so his people would be clothed in his righteousness. Christ
humbled himself to come to this earth as a man Naked of His glory
is the Son of God. And He humbled Himself to hang
naked between heaven and earth, suffering for the sin of His
people. That nakedness of the Redeemer
at Calvary is how He bore the sin and the shame and the guilt
of His people away, so they'd be clothed in Him. Now that's
the message of the Gospel. If you believe that message,
you're a wonder. You are a wonder of God's grace. The only way you can believe
that message is God's been merciful to you. That's the only way. You're a wonder to the world
that people say, you really believe that stuff? By God's grace, yes, I do. Lord, help my unbelief. By his
grace, I believe him. I believe that message. Look
at Hebrews chapter 2. Many of you have been hearing
this gospel, you believed it, you've been looking to Christ
a long time. No matter how long you live on
this earth, that hope will never change. Your hope today is the
same hope you had the first day you ever looked to Christ. We'll
never have anything but Christ. We'll never have any covering
but Him. This Hebrews 2 is written to believers. You who have been
saved by grace, now you continue believing Christ alone. Hebrews
2 verse 1. Therefore, we ought to give the
more earnest heed to the things which we've heard, lest at any
time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels
was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just
recompense of reward, 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. How shall
we escape if we neglect so great salvation? We won't. We won't. Because the only way of escape,
the only way of salvation is in Christ alone. Christ the God-man,
a sign and a wonder. What a wonder. that God would
become a man. He stripped himself of his glory
and appeared naked before men so that he could save sinful
men and women like us. That's a wonder. What a wonder
that the Lord Jesus Christ, the holy, perfect Son of God, would
agree to be made sin for his people so that he could put the
sin of his people away through the sacrifice of himself. Christ
agreed to suffer the punishment of the sin of his people so they'd
never die. And he agreed to bear the humiliation
of the sin of his people so they'd be eternally clothed in his righteousness. What a wonder. What a wonder. that the Lord would give this
glorious message of His Son to men to preach to other sinful
men and women. What a wonder. What a wonder
that the Lord has given His people faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,
faith to believe and love this message. You can only attribute
that to grace. God's amazing, infinite grace
that's found in His Son. God help us, God help us to look
to Him. Alright, Lord bless you.