I’d like to begin this session by reading
a portion from the Old Testament Scriptures from the book of Genesis from chapter 9, beginning
at verse 18. The Word of God reads: Now the sons of Noah who went out of the ark
were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah, and from
these the whole earth was populated. And Noah began to be a farmer, and he planted
a vineyard. Then he drank of the wine and was drunk, and
became uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness
of his father, and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid
it on both their shoulders, and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned away, and they did
not see their father’s nakedness. So Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what
his younger son had done to him. Then he said: “Cursed be Canaan;
A servant of servants He shall be to his brethren.” And he said: “Blessed be the Lord,
The God of Shem, And may Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth,
And may he dwell in the tents of Shem; And may Canaan be his servant.” And Noah lived after the flood three hundred
and fifty years. So all the days of Noah were nine hundred
and fifty years; and he died. Can we pray for a moment? Again, our Father and our God, we have been
blessed to hear from Your holy Word. Now we ask that the same Spirit who inspired
this Word originally may be present to illumine its contents for us, for our instruction,
and for our edification, and for our training in righteousness. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen. Noah, of course, is the one who is described
as having found grace in the eyes of the Lord. In the Old Testament, he and his family alone
escaped the universal deluge that destroyed the earth as an act of divine judgment. He is one of the few characters in Old Testament
history. He is described as being righteous. But in the passage that I just read for you,
we don’t so much a glimpse of Noah’s righteousness but more of his unrighteousness. So we are told that after the flood and the
waters receded, and he and his family left the ark and erected an altar to the glory
of God, that he undertook a new vocation. He had spent many long months, perhaps years
as a carpenter constructing the ark and was the greatest ship builder perhaps in all of
history. But now he turned his skills to another vocation,
that of farming and particularly as a vintner. He was a wine grower, and he grew his grapes
not for raisins, not for Welch’s grape juice, but for the production of wine because he
fell into the problem of overindulgence of his own produce. And as a result, he became drunk, dropped
down, knocked out drunk. And so he takes to his bed in his tent, and
in his drunkenness he is paying no attention to his clothing or the covers that were supposed
to conceal his naked body from anybody’s purview. And there in his stupor, he lay naked and
unconscious. Now one of his three sons walks in the tent
and sees his father’s compromising condition and apparently was somewhat amused by it. He goes out, and he calls his two brothers,
and he said, “You can’t believe the old man. I mean, he’s lying in the bed in there drunk
as a skunk and naked as a jaybird.” This was hardly a giving of honor to his father. And the other two brothers, Shem and Japheth,
were not amused. Instead they had a sense of compassion for
their father in his embarrassing and shameful condition and were devoted to the purpose
of covering his father’s shame. And so together they took a blanket, and they
spread the blanket between their shoulders and walked into their father’s tent backwards,
and as they were walking backwards, they were pulling this blanket over the body of their
father, while all the while keeping their head turned away that they not cast their
eyes on their father’s nakedness. Now we do know that in the Old Testament Levitical
law the looking upon one’s parents’ nakedness is a euphemism at times for kinds of incest,
but I don’t think that that was what was going on in this episode. I think the text is as plain as it sounds
and that the description that you’ve just heard is what happened. That the problem here was not some kind of
incestual, homosexual relationship that Ham was trying to carry on, but it was simply
his mockery of his father in this condition of nakedness. Many, many years ago I wrote a book that the
original title of the book was The Psychology of Atheism. It’s been reprinted since under the title
If There is a God, Why Are There Atheists?, this little book. In this book I have a chapter entitled “God
and Nakedness.” At the time I wrote this book, I made a survey
of the Scriptures of the use of the Greek word gymnos, which is the word naked, and
was extremely fascinated to see how this word and concept is found in sacred Scripture. And the import of it, I think, is extremely
fascinating for our consideration. And to get a glimpse of that, I want to go
even earlier in Genesis, back to Genesis, chapter 3, where we read this beginning…
the last verse of chapter 2 after the creation narrative, verse 25 of chapter 2. It seems like a concluding unscientific postscript
with no significant information in this verse. It simply reads, “And they were both naked,
that is the man and the wife, and were not ashamed.” So we read that statement of our original
status in the Garden of Eden when man and woman were created for each other, and we’re
told that they were naked and unashamed about it. Now before I read what follows in chapter
3, I want to hearken back to a book that was written by a zoological sociologist in the
20th century, whose name was Desmond Morris. And the title of his little book was The Naked
Ape. And in that book he indicated from a zoological
perspective that there are 193 known species of primates in the zoological world, and of
those 193 species of primates, one of them differs from all the rest. A hundred and ninety two of those primates,
although they are of different shapes and sizes and styles, nevertheless are covered
head to toe with thick growth of hair or fur. The lone exception to those 193 primates is
the one known as Homo sapiens, who is not so covered in hair head to toe, but rather
the unique characteristic of Homo sapiens is that he is garbed, and he alone among the
primates, in artificial articles of clothing. Did you ever wonder about that? Every animal, every bird in the world that
we see comes born in their birthday suit, and they live in their birthday suit until
the day that they die in their birthday suit. And even the other primates that we’ve studied
and Mead and the rest have noticed that some of these advanced primates, our ancestors
so to speak, have discovered to be using primitive forms of tools, just like our ancient cavemen
used. But among those tools has not yet been found
a sewing needle or a weaving loom because these primates, our monkeys’ uncles, have
not yet gone into the clothing business. They are perfectly satisfied to run around
the jungle beating on their chests and scratching under their arms, while being completely naked
and unashamed because they are covered with the covering that God gave them in nature. But not so human beings, human beings in every
society, in every nature, even those that run around almost totally naked in primitive
places, still wear codpieces and the like because it is basically common to human beings
to wear clothing. Of course, human beings have a certain fascination
with nakedness as the pornography business indicates, and the screen venues and girly
magazines and all the rest. And the advertisement business in America
uses some forms of nakedness to sell just about every product that can be commercially
distributed. Nevertheless, in spite of this preoccupation
with nudity, I’ve noticed in the audience today that everyone who is in here today is
to some degree clad. I haven’t seen anybody walking around yet
naked as a jaybird. We’re still wearing clothes. We had a fascination a decade or so ago of
those who indulged in the practice of what was called streaking, where all of a sudden
in the middle of a football game somebody would run out onto the field bare naked while
the police were chasing them across the area. But notice that even then it was call streaking,
not strolling, because we have a certain antipathy about being found publicly unclothed, naked,
and nude. Now where does that all come from because
in creation we have just read from the book of Genesis that when we were created, just
like the other 192 primates, which we are not to be included, nevertheless we were made
naked and unashamed. But something drastic happened to change all
of that and to explain the phenomenon that I’ve just mentioned of the universal desire
of human beings to under normal circumstances in public situations to be clothed. And I think it’s a wonderful thing that
we have that. [laughter] But chapter 3 begins with the ominous
words that are somewhat foreboding. Now the serpent was more cunning than any
beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed
said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may
eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the
midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it,
lest you die.’” Then the serpent said to the woman, “You
will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it
your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” That was the primordial temptation, the deification
of human beings, the quest for autonomy. You’ll be just like God. You’re not going to die. This is an unjust prohibition placed upon
you by your Creator. He doesn’t want to share His deity with
you, and He knows that if you eat this, you will be just like Him. So when the woman saw that the tree was good
for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she
took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and
he ate. And what happened with the first bite. Did they die? No. With the first bite, with the first act of
disobedience, with the first recorded sin in human history, the immediate consequence
was this. Listen carefully. Then the eyes of both of them were opened,
and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves
coverings. The first experience of sin was an awareness
of shame, an awareness of guilt, provoking within the heart of the sinner a profound
desire to hide, to find a place where their nakedness of which they were now ashamed could
be concealed. And dear friends, from that moment to this
day human beings have been fugitives from the presence of God, seeking desperately to
find a way to hide. We are cosmic fugitives searching out the
places of darkness where we cannot be seen, where we cannot be known. This is why John tells us that the reason
why God’s judgment is upon the human race is because we love the darkness rather than
the light because our deeds are evil. And what salvation involves is being brought
out of that darkness into the light where we can experience once again the sense of
being naked without being ashamed. You know, one of the things that frightens
me, that touches the very fabric of our humanity is the assault on the sacred institution of
marriage that has been unprecedented in Western civilization, in fact in the history of the
whole world, that what we see today is multitudes of people who decide to live together outside
the bounds of matrimony, outside the place where covenants are made in the presence of
the authority and the witness of God. People have a cavalier attitude where they
come together and be naked with each other without a sacred vow, without a sacred promise. People say, “What’s the whole thing about
a marriage certificate? It’s just a piece of paper.” It’s not just a piece of paper. It’s a solemn vow and covenant made in the
presence of God where two people with God as their witness can afford to be completely
naked with each other without fear and without shame. And we’ve lost that holy condition that
God has given to us in His grace, given us a place where His blessing is that here you
can be naked with each other, without hiding, without being concealed, without cowering
in the darkness, with the lights on but the curtains drawn, in the privacy of your relationship
where you can be the most vulnerable of any place that you can be as a human being, naked
and unashamed. We’ve lost something extremely human and
extremely important, and do not be deceived by the godless culture that promotes this
sort of thing. So those of you who are pastors need to preach
to this point. I hear people all the time talk to me about,
“Well, I’m a member of this church, and I’m a member of this church, and I love
my pastor, and my girlfriend and I go to church every Sunday, and then we’re going together
on a cruise next week,” you know, and they’re just so cavalier about it. And I’m just saying, you’re in the church
and you’re living like this without any kind of discipline, without any kind of admonition
from the Word of God. Shame on you. And worse than that, shame on your pastors,
who aren’t calling you to a godly way of life. But again, that initial condition of being
naked and unashamed was immediately lost with sin. And so when they knew that they were naked,
here’s where the garment industry began. They sewed fig leaves together, so that the
first tools that we find out in Scripture were needles to make clothes. And so
they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves, notice it doesn’t say clothes, it said coverings. They weren’t making these clothes because
they were cold. They weren’t making these clothes because
there were mosquitoes in the Garden of Eden. They were making these clothes to cover their
nakedness. They were making clothes not for adorning
but for concealment. And then they heard the sound of the Lord
God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Now listen, every time they heard that sound
before, think of it, there is Adam and Eve there in the garden paradise of Eden, the
lush and beautiful place where no sin had invaded, no evil had been made manifest, and
in the cool of the day, they would hear footsteps. And they would say, “The Lord is coming.” And you could see the countenance of Adam
and Eve immediately change to pure radiance in anticipation of the visit into their domain
of the Lord God Almighty. But on this occasion when they heard the footsteps
of God, when they heard the presence of the Lord in the midst of the garden, instead of
being filled with joy, they were filled with abject terror. And the only thing they wanted to do was to
get out of there, to get away from there as fast as they possibly could. And so Adam and Eve and his wife [sic] hid
themselves from the presence of the Lord God. This is our original retreat from the presence
of God, and that retreat mechanism has passed from Adam to his sons and daughters to all
generations, so that we are born in original sin. We are born with this desperate need to flee
from the immediate presence of God. Nothing is more terrifying to a sinful human
being than the immediate presence of God. That’s why we hate to talk about His holiness
because nothing exposes our nakedness more, nothing drives us more deeply towards concealment
than the presence of a holy God. That’s nothing new. That’s what happened with Adam and Eve. They hid themselves among the trees of the
garden. And the Lord God called to Adam and said to
him and asked him a question, “Where are you?” Now if you
push that narrative too far, you get the idea that God didn’t know where they were. He knew exactly the tree behind with they
were hiding. They had no hope of escaping from His gaze
or from His knowledge. He knew what they had done, why they had done
it, and where they were at that moment because, ladies and gentlemen, the first mission impossible
attempted by a human being was the attempt to hide from Almighty God. What a fool’s errand that is. We simply cannot do it. David understood it. He said, “Lord, if I… where can I flee
from Your Spirit. If I ascend into heaven, if I make my bed
in Sheol, behold Thou art there. And before a word is formed on my lips, You
know it altogether.” You just can’t escape Him. Wherever you are, wherever you’re hiding,
He knows. And He doesn’t just stand on the mountain
and say, “Ollie, Ollie, in come free.” You know, here you come ready or not in your
hidey-hole or not. He knows your hidey-hole. That reminds me of a friend of mine who was
a soldier in Iraq. And after Saddam Hussein had fled from one
of his many palaces and went into hiding, my friend and a group of his troops were marching
in the outskirts of Baghdad, and they were walking down the road and off to the side
one of them noticed a strange, unusual indentation in the ground, and they went over to investigate. And they peered down, and in this spider hole,
cowering in fear and filth was Saddam Hussein. And my friend was involved in the capture
of that man, and of course, the rest is history. You can’t hide. There’s no place to go. The darkness is not dark enough to conceal
me from the gaze of God. So God said, “Where are you?” And Adam said, “I heard Your voice in the
garden, and I was afraid.” What? “I was afraid. I was afraid of my Creator. I was afraid of the One who gave me this garden. I was afraid of the One who created my wife. I was afraid of the One who gave me my soul. I was afraid of the One who breathed life
into my nostrils, the One who has given me nothing but goodness. I was afraid when I heard Your voice
because I was naked. I was afraid because I was naked, and so I
hid myself.” And God said, “Who told you that you were
naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded
you that you should not eat?” Well, you know what happened then. The man said, “The woman that You gave me,
she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” So God said to the woman, “What is this
you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived
me, and so I ate.” Then what comes from this is the curse of
God, the curse on the serpent, the curse on the woman, the curse on the man, and the curse
on the land. You know, one of the phrases of the Christmas
hymn, “Joy to the World,” has that refrain, “far as the curse is found.” How far is that? God’s curse in this instance extends to
the whole world. That’s why Paul tells us that the whole
creation groans together waiting for the redemption of the sons of men, as we live in a universe
that is under the curse because of this violation of the law of God. And then it ends like this, “And Adam called
his wife’s name Eve because she was the mother of the living… of all living.” Now, do you want to hear the gospel? The protoevangelium would have been found
earlier in the context of the curse of the serpent, the promise that God made that the
seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent while bruising His heel in the
process. That’s the first promise of the gospel. But the first action of the gospel, the first
redemptive act in all of human history takes place right here in verse 21. “Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God
made tunics of skin and clothed them.” Wow. What an act of mercy where the Lord God stooped
over and said, “Adam, let me have that needle. These clothes that you’ve hastily put together
from fig leaves, don’t you realize these leaves will wither and die and fall away? They’re really inadequate articles of clothing. Let me do it for you.” And just as God had made the coat of the deer
and of the bear and of the peacock, He condescended to make clothes for His embarrassed, ashamed,
guilty creatures. Do you see how important that is for understanding
redemption? God could have said, “Yes, now you’re
naked, and now you know it. Now you’re naked, and now you’re ashamed. Too bad. You’re out of here. No more Eden, no more paradise, and you can
roam the earth till the rest of your days looking for a place to hide, but you will
live in constant shame and in constant embarrassment because you will find no safe place of concealment.” No, the first act of redemption was God stooping
to cover the shame of His creatures. Now take that motif, which I trace in this
book and don’t have the time to go thoroughly into this afternoon, trace it throughout Scripture,
and you will see the covering motif. Go if you will to the worship of Israel in
the tabernacle. Go to Yom Kippur on the Day of Atonement. Go when the blood of the animal was carried
by the high priest one day out of the year into the Holy of Holies. What’s done with that blood? Where does it go? There is a hilasterion. There is a katallage, a reconciliation on
the top of the throne of God. It’s the mercy seat. And the blood of the animal is poured on top
of the throne of God. Why? It covers the law. It covers the judgment. An atonement has been made. A blood offering has been made, a blood offering
that in and of itself, ladies and gentlemen, is completely, utterly worthless. The author of Hebrews tells us in the New
Testament that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin. These were figures pointing beyond the bulls,
pointing beyond the goats, pointing beyond the lamb to the Lamb without blemish who would
come, who alone had the kind of blood that would really cover our sin. The atonement of Christ is dramatized in this
act in the tabernacle and later in the temple, where the blood of Christ is shed as a cover. It’s prefigured in the animal skins outside
the Garden of Eden among the trees, so that human beings from Adam on would look forward
to the day where their nakedness would be covered, not in part but in whole, so that
at least under the gaze of God once again we can be naked and unashamed. You know I said earlier that nobody in this
world knows me like my wife, but even her knowledge of me is imperfect, incomplete. And yet I feel more safe in her presence than
I feel in the presence of any human being in the world. I can be naked in front of her. It’s not always that safe, not always. About a year ago I was stepping out of the
shower, and my wife looked at me, and she said, “Honey, I’ve got to say something.” She said, “When I married you, I knew that
as long as you were alive you would be involved in some kind of sport, but I never thought
it would be sumo wrestling.” [laughter] It’s not always safe. So I went to weight watchers the next day. Sumo wrestling. But you know, there’s nowhere where I feel
more safe than in the presence of God. I come with nothing in my hand, no place to
hide. I know He knows me altogether, and it’s
a wonderful thing. I think one of the most penetrating books
written in the 20th century by an atheist was Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre,
where Sartre gives some rather unusual arguments against the existence of God, which I won’t
get into right now. But Sartre was obsessed with the idea that
human beings find their humanity in being free functioning subjects, not objects. And the difference between monkeys in the
zoo and people is that you can go to the zoo and stand outside the bars and stare at the
monkeys, and the monkeys don’t get embarrassed. But if you’re walking down the street and
you see another person, and you stop there and start staring at them and staring at them,
they’re liable to slap you or call a policeman. We have conventions in society where we know
how long we can hold eye contact before that eye contact becomes offensive. You know, the number one phobia listed in
America is not the fear of bugs, or the fear of water, or the fear of fire. Do you know what the number one phobia is? The fear of public speaking. And one of the reasons of that is this, is
that when I’m sitting here or standing here speaking to you, everybody… most everybody in here is looking at me. You’re staring at me like I’m a monkey
in the zoo. And… and half the time you’re woolgathering. You’re not thinking about what I’m saying. You say, “Why does he buy those ties that
he wears? Why does he… Why does he wear his hair that way? And maybe he ought to be a sumo wrestler.” And if I knew all that things that went through
your mind while I’m speaking to you, I’d run out the door and never try to do this
again. And yet at the same time, one of the rules
of public speaking is that the speakers try to maintain eye contact with the audience. And I remember when I was in school, in seminary
in speech class, the speech teacher would try to drill that into the guys, and say,
“You guys have to start looking at people, engaging them as you’re addressing them. Sproul, disregard that.” And I said, “What do you mean? He said, “You need to remove your gaze from
your audience and look at the wall from time to time because you bore a hole in their head
and give them…. You’re relentless in how you do it.” That that’s the way it is. We don’t like to be stared at, do we? Because when we’re stared at like objects
in an art museum, we’re reduced to objects, and we lose our subjectivity. And that’s why Sartre said if God is omniscient,
then He sees us and knows us all the time. Beneath His gaze, we’re reduced to objects. We lose our humanity. God is like a cosmic voyeur, looking through
a keyhole from heaven, watching our every move. And he couldn’t stand that thought. If ever there was a philosopher who sought
to find a tree to hide behind, it was Jean-Paul Sartre. And when I read that in Being and Nothingness,
I thought, what a shame that Sartre has never experienced the benevolent gaze of God, has
never understood what David said, when after he was exposed in his sin and in his nakedness,
that once he received the mercy of God, he said to God, “Oh, God, search me and know
me. See if there be any wicked way within me. Purge me in the secret places of my soul.” You see, that’s the cry of a saint. That’s the cry of a saint who has been clothed
by the mercy and the grace of God. At the same time that we have this image,
we find throughout Scripture not only the image of nakedness but also the image of the
inadequacy of the clothes that we wear. If I can look first of all at Zechariah. You know, I’ve written 70 some books. I don’t know how many. I don’t count them. I don’t know who has the time to do that. And I don’t ask you to read them all, just
buy them. [laughter] I’m kidding, please. But people often ask me, you know, of all
those books which one do you think is the most important or which one do you love the
most? And I say, “I really don’t know, but it
might be my little children’s book, The Priest with Dirty Clothes,” because in that
I have a little child’s story about imputation, about the clothing of a priest where the prince
exchanged his royal garments for the filthy garments of the priest. And that captures for me the essence of our
salvation. And you know, one of the things for which
I’m extremely grateful to John Piper is he’s written a lot of things, but nothing
more important in my opinion, than his little book on imputation. You know, in the last ten or fifteen years
even in the so-called evangelical world, and it can only be called so-called at this point,
there has been a large assault made against the doctrine of the imputation of the righteousness
of Christ and even against the doctrine of the perfect act of obedience of Jesus, which
is absolutely deadly to Biblical Christianity. And when I saw that John undertook to write
a defense of imputation, I was so grateful for that volume. And if you haven’t read it, you make sure
that you get it because it develops what I’m talking about here so much more thoroughly
than I can in these brief moments together. But the inspiration for my little book on
The Priest with Dirty Clothes comes from the book of Zechariah, from the third chapter
where we read this account, “Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before
the Angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to oppose him.” So he sees this vision of the high priest,
and the priest is standing in the presence of the messenger of God, the Angel of the
Lord, but there’s somebody else there, and it’s Satan. And Satan is standing there to oppose this
priest. Now, what’s the purpose of his opposition? What is it that provokes this antagonism from
the Prince of Lies? “And the Lord said to Satan, ‘The Lord
rebuke you, Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?’” Did you ever have a marshmallow roast when
you were a kid? Maybe go out and sleep overnight in your tents
and you make a little fire, and you bring the marshmallows and the hot dogs and cook
them up over the fire. And it’s time to put the stick in the marshmallow,
and you put it in the fire, and you take the marshmallow off. And then sometimes your hand gets on the end
of that stick, and you pull your hand off, and it’s burning, but not only is it hurting,
but it’s black as soot. You’ve just taken a brand out of the fire. And God says to Satan about this priest, He
said, “Don’t you know who this priest is? He’s a brand that’s been pulled out of
the fire. I’ve rescued this man from the burning. Of course, he’s covered with soot. What would you expect after having been in
the fire? Then we read, “and Joshua was clothed with
filthy garments.” He was clothed. He wasn’t naked. But his clothes were filthy, filthy. Is that metaphor found elsewhere in Scripture? All of our righteousness is what? Filthy rags in the sight of God. And he’s standing there in these filthy
garments before the Angel, and God answered and spoke to those who stood before Him saying,
“Take away the filthy garments from him.” And then He said to Joshua, “I have removed
your iniquity from you, and I will cloth you with rich robes.” “And I said, ‘Let them put a clean turban
on his head.’ And they put a clean turban on his head, and
they put the clothes on him. And the Angel of the Lord stood by.” Do you know that if you’re a Christian this
is what God has done for every one of us? That He looked at us, looked at our nakedness,
looked at our coverings, looked at our clothes and saw filthy rags, rags totally inappropriate
to be wore in His presence. That’s something else I have to say. It drives me crazy in this 21st century how
people dress when they go to church. They would never go to the Whitehouse dressed
like that, but they’ll go into the presence of the living God in the sloppiest clothes
they can find. And they’ll appeal to James about, you know. Hey, if a poor guy can’t have a shirt, that’s
fine. He’s welcome in my church anytime. But you’re not poor. You don’t come into the presence of God
like a slob. Get dressed up or dressed down, but for heaven’s
sake get dressed when you come to church and into the presence of God. What’s wrong with us today? We have no sense of who we’re worshipping. We have no sense of the presence of God. And yet He’s the very One who’s clothed
us in the garments of the Prince – the finest garments there is, finer than linen, finer
than gold, the garments of the righteousness of Christ. Turn with me quickly to Isaiah, chapter 61,
where we have the Old Testament record of the mission set forth for the Messiah that
is to come. Remember in the New Testament Jesus goes to
the synagogue, and they ask Him as a visiting rabbi to read the text for the day and comment
on it, and he reads the text from Isaiah 61. “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me,
Because the Lord has anointed Me To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all who mourn, To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes, The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.” And after the text was read, Jesus gave the
shortest homily ever on record, where He sat down to speak, and He said, “Today, this
text is fulfilled in your midst.” What was Jesus saying? He was saying, “I am the One that Isaiah
is talking about here. I am your Messiah.” But if we go later on to the end of the chapter,
Isaiah writes this: I will greatly rejoice in the LORD,
My soul shall be joyful in my God’ For He has clothed me with the garments of
salvation, And He has covered me with the robe of righteousness. You know when I stand before God on the judgment
day, my Lord Jesus is going to come right out and as my defense attorney, He’s going
to say, “R.C., I got you covered.” Boy, oh boy, to be covered with the righteousness
of Christ, it doesn’t get any better than that. As a bride adorns herself with jewels,
As the earth brings forth its bud, As the garden causes the things that are sown
in it to spring forth, So the Lord God will cause righteousness and
praise to spring forth. This is our salvation to be clothed in the
righteousness of Jesus. Let me finish this by doing something I never
do at these conferences and that is I don’t read poems like Ravi does. He’s great at that. I’m no good at that. But I want to read a passage from this book
if I can find it. Here it is, written by the 19th century Danish
gadfly philosopher Soren Kierkegaard that speaks to the ultimate of the New Testament,
the hope of our final covering, of the permanent clothing that we will get that will be immortal,
that we will be freed forever from the threat of nakedness and be able to freely enjoy the
gaze of God. Kierkegaard celebrates this covering dimension
when he wrote these words. Hear them please. Oh, sure hiding place for sinners, oh blessed
hiding place, especially if one has first learned what it means when conscience accuses
and the law condemns and justice pursues with punishment, and then wearied unto despair
to find repose in the only shelter that is to be found. A man, even the most loving man can at the
most give the extenuation an excuse, leaving it to thee to make what use of them you aren’t
able, but himself he cannot give you. That only Jesus can do. He gives you Himself as a shelter. It is not just some comforting thought He
gives you. It is not a doctrine He communicates. No, He gives you Himself. And as the night spreads concealment over
everything, so did He give up His life and become a covering behind which lies a sinful
world that He has saved. Through this covering justice does not break
as the sun’s rays break through colored glass merely softened by refraction. No, it impotently breaks against this covering,
is reflected from it, and does not pass through. He gave Himself as a covering for you and
for me.
