Let me invite you today to turn to Isaiah and the chapter 26. The book of Isaiah and the chapter number 26. And we're going to begin our reading at the verse 12 of the chapter. So let me encourage you, young and old, men and women, boys, girls, and teenagers to take your Bible and turn to Isaiah and the chapter number 26. And let's read from verse 12. Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us, for thou hast also brought all our works in us. O Lord our God, other lords beside thee have had dominion over us, but by thee only will we make mention of thy name. They are dead. They shall not live. They are deceased. They shall not rise. Therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them and made all their memory to perish. Thou hast increased the nation, O Lord. Thou hast increased the nation. Thou art glorified. Thou hast removed it far onto the ends of the earth. Lord, in trouble have they visited thee. They poured out a prayer when thy chastening was upon them. Like as a woman with child that draweth near, the time of her delivery is in pain, and crieth out of her pang, so have we been in thy sight, O Lord. We have been with child, we have been in pain. We have, as it were, brought forth wind. We had not wrought any deliverance in the earth, Neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen. Thy dead men shall live. Together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust, for thy Jew is as the Jew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead. Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee. hide thyself as it were for a little moment until the indignation be overpassed for behold the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity the earth also shall disclose her blood and shall no more cover her slain. Amen, and may the Lord bless the public reading of His precious word. Let's again unite in a short word of prayer together, please. Our Father, we do come before Thee in our Savior's holy name. We cry to Thee for the help of Thy Spirit. We pray that He might minister through the word today. Grant, dear God, Thy blessing upon the public preaching of the word. Grant, dear God, our hearts to be strengthened, our faiths to be enlarged and deepened. And may, O God, thy word have free course and be glorified. Come now then and fill me with thy spirit. Take away the awkwardness and father the abnormality of the meeting. grant dear God blood-bought liberty we cry to thee these are petitions in and through the Savior's precious name amen and amen I want to take as my text for today's message words that I am sure you've maybe seen on Facebook posts You've maybe been sent them by a friend or even heard other ministers preach upon them in recent days. Those words are found in Isaiah chapter 26 and the verse number 20. Come my people, enter thou into thy chambers and shut thy doors about thee. Hide thyself, as it were, for a little moment until the indignation be overpassed. We've heard much in recent days about self-isolation and that term has become part of our vocabulary as we continue to face this coronavirus pandemic within our world. These words are a divine directive for God's people to spiritually self-isolate. Today I want us to then look at these words in the verse 20 of Isaiah chapter 26, using the four WH words that are so familiar to us. Who, what, where, and when. And I trust that what I will say to do will be a comfort to you as you self-isolate within your homes for a little longer. My message title is simply, A Hiding Place. A Hiding Place. Our first consideration is who? Who? Now we can consider that who in two different ways. Firstly, we can consider or think about the who and who the speaker is of these particular words. And then secondly, we can think about who these words were spoken to. And so that's how I want us to look at them. I want us to look at them in that way and in that particular order. And so firstly, I want you to think about with me, who spoke these words? Who spoke these words? I believe that the author and the speaker of these words, though they were sung by the choristers of Judah, is none other than God himself, because he speaks within the verse of my people. This is a phrase that he often employs in the scriptures, my people. We find it in the book of Exodus when God said about the crying and the sighing and the groaning of his people there in Egypt's bondage. He spoke about how he had heard the cry of my people. We read there in the book of Corinthians, that we are to come out from among them and be separate, saith the Lord, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. This is a term that God often uses concerning his elect, and so these words, when it is spoken of, my people, I believe these words are then from the very mouth of God. These words come to us from the very lips of the Almighty. Now there are things that we come to appreciate about the divine speaker here from the chapter in Isaiah chapter 26. The one who speaks these words in verse 20 is the one who keeps him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusteth in thee according to the verse number three. This is none other than the Lord Jehovah of the verse number four. Trust ye in the Lord forever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength. It is the one It is the one who we can obtain everlasting strength from. It is the one who ordains peace for us according to the verse number 12. The one who speaks these words in verse 20 is the one who visits and destroys and annihilates our enemies and makes all of their memory to perish according to the verse 14. It is the one who cometh out of his place punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity according to the verse 21. What I glean from these verses then in the book of Isaiah chapter 26, what I glean about the one who speaks these words in verse 20 is that it is one who desires the well-being and the welfare of his own redeemed ones. He desires their peace. He desires their strength. He desires their faith to be increased. He desires to defend his people from their enemies. He desires to see unrighteousness destroyed and righteousness to be exalted within the nation. In times of ignition, in days of trouble, God does not leave his people to feel such alone. What a blessing it is to have the Lord as our God in these days. How the ungodly live from day to day without him is beyond my understanding. And God the Christian has one who seeks their welfare, one who said, for I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Jeremiah 29 verse 11. And so we are to heed this divine directive. We are to heed this directive from our all-loving and our wise God. Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee. Hide thyself, as it were, for a little moment, until the indignation be overpassed. This is God speaking to our hearts. But secondly, as we think about the who of the verse, we ask, who were these words spoken to? And I've already indicated to you who they were directed towards. These words were spoken by God to his people. He says, come my people. What a wonder, what a mystery that God delights to own his people here as he calls them my people. They are my people. Now I remind you this Lord's day, And if you're a Christian, we are the Lord's people in three different ways. We are God's people firstly by creation. We're His by creation. Every person in this world, sinner and Christian, whether they want to acknowledge it or not, are God's by creation. In Isaiah chapter 45 verse 11 and 12 we read, Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask of me things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands, command ye me. I have made the earth, and created man upon it. I even my hands have stretched out the heavens and all their hosts have I commanded. God here in Isaiah chapter 45 of the verse 12 he makes the claim to have created not only the earth but to have created every man upon the face of the earth. This is again verified in Psalm 103, sorry, Psalm 100 and the verse number three. Know ye that the Lord, he is God, and it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. He hath made us and not we ourselves. And so we are gods by creation Because he is our creator He has brought us into existence and therefore he has the he has rights over us as the creator we are but the creature and Obviously the creature is lesser infinitely lesser than the creator we are his we are his possession by creation, but secondly we are God's by covenant and Those of us who are saved, we are God's by covenant. In the covenant of redemption, God the Son was given a people by God the Father as the reward of his sufferings on the cross of Calvary. Those who are saved, they belong to that company of people having entered into a covenant relationship with God by the new birth. John chapter 17 verse 9, Christ in his high priestly prayer, he said, I pray for them. I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they are thine. Christ speaks about a people that have been given unto him, given to him in the covenant of redemption, in the covenant of grace. Christ was given a people. And thank God we are His by covenant. Child of God, you are in covenant relationship with God today. And nothing and no one can disannul or destroy that covenantal relationship that you have with your God. You are His by covenant. Find rest for your soul then in the covenant when light storms are howling around you, and it seems that everything else is going awry. This is a covenant between you and your God that will endure as long as God will endure. You're his by creation, you're his by covenant, but thirdly, You're His by conquest. You're His by conquest. Having been given to God the Son in eternity by God the Father, we all have to be personally drawn to Christ in time. When that happens, the Spirit of God comes and conquers us and establishes a reign of righteousness within our hearts, and so we are gods by conquest. There's a moment in our lives when God has subdued us unto himself, a time when grace has triumphed in our souls. And having fought so hard to win us, We can be assured that he's not going to leave us when life storms environ us. When life storms surround us. Remember then this truth, when all else around you is being shaken. Remember that you are the Lord's one possession, W-O-N. his one possession and therefore he will keep you safe and sound these are my people they're mine because i have created them they are mine because i have been given them in the covenant of redemption they are mine because i conquest I triumphed in their lives by my grace and now they are mine by the new birth they are now mine by salvation and thus this promise in Isaiah chapter 26 in the verse 20 is only then for God's own redeemed people sinner you cannot expect to find a refuge in God if you're still in your sin this afternoon. No, no, this refuge is only for those who are the people of God. Only those who have been redeemed. Only those who have been regenerated by the Spirit of God and brought into saving union with Jesus Christ. This promise is for God's people. This is not for you, sinner. So let me encourage you. If you're not a Christian to become one of God's people today, how do I do that preacher? You do that by walking the road of repentance and exercising faith exclusively in the work and in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you have done that, if you're a Christian, If you're a child of God, if you're one of God's people, then rest in the fact that you're His, and that He will keep you, and He will secure you, and He will protect you in these calamitous and uncertain days. If He cares for the sparrow, And if he cares for the lily of the fields that have no souls, that have never been redeemed, that have never been brought into covenant relationship with him, are we not much better than they? And shall our heavenly Father leave us in the day of indignation with no refuge, no shelter, and no place of safety. Our second consideration from our text is what. That's the second WH word, the what. What are God's people encouraged to do here by their God? What are we to do? Well, if you underline the action words within the verse, the verbs, they'll reveal to you what you are to do. Come. enter, shut, hide. Those are all of the verbs in the verse. Come, enter, shut and hide. Let me give you a few thoughts on each of those particular words. In the day of God's fury, in the day of God's righteous anger, in the day of indignation, I am to come, I am to come, come my people. Now I want you to notice that God does not say go, but rather he says come. We have a similar thought there in the book of Genesis in the chapter 7. Remember whenever Noah had built the ark, 120 years and then 7 days? God had give to that generation a preacher of righteousness, the opportunity was afforded to all, the door opened, that all could enter the place of safety and the place of rescue. Then came the day that God's long-suffering came to an end. His patience with a sinning world had come to an end. And as a result of that, he says something to Noah and to his family over there in Genesis chapter seven in the verse one. Notice what he says. Come thou and all thy house into the ark. Come. The thought in Genesis 7 is the same thought here in Isaiah chapter 26. Just as God was in the ark and was inviting Noah to come to him and on to him, God already in the ark, so God is in this place of refuge in Isaiah chapter 26. He's in the chambers. He's behind the closed door. In other words, child of God, you'll meet your God in the place of refuge. He's going to be there. He's inviting you to come to him. What wonderful words. God does not say to his people in the day of indignation, go and seek a shelter where you can, but rather he says, come, come to me. For I am thy refuge, and I am thy shelter. And the study of the scriptures reveals to us that God is a refuge and God is a shelter for his people in troublesome times. Not only in troublesome times, but in every day, in every circumstance, God is a refuge, a shelter for his people. I think of those words there in Deuteronomy 33 in the verse 27, the eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms. Psalm 9 in the verse number 9, the Lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble. You think of our motto tax for this year. Need I remind you of it? Psalm 46 verse 1, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Psalm 61 verse 3, for thou hast been a shelter for me and a strong tower from the enemy. Psalm 91 verse 2, I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge and my fortress, my God in him will I trust. Days of adversity, times of affliction, seasons of sorrow, are times when we ought to find ourselves driven to God and not from God. Think for a moment who we're coming to. We are coming to an all-wise, to an all-loving, to an all-knowing, to an all-powerful God. This is who we're coming to in the day of indignation, in the time of trouble, in the hour of crisis. This is the one that we're coming to. He who is all-wise, all-loving, all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-wise. This is the one that we come to. We're coming to our God. We're coming to our savior. We're coming to our redeemer. We're coming to our friend. We're coming to our advocate. We're coming to our shepherd. We're coming to our counselor. We're coming to our heavenly father. This is who we're coming to, child of God. God invites you to come to him and to leave your cares whether those cares are great or small, and to leave them at his feet. And so let me encourage you to draw near to God, and on the basis of the promise of God, when you do that, he has promised that he will, he will draw nigh to you. James 4 verse 8, draw nigh to God. And he will draw nigh to you, come. The second thing he says, and we're encouraged to do is to enter, to enter. Though a place of refuge was provided by God for his people, they had to enter into it in order to benefit from the protection that it obviously supplied. It was no good standing outside the refuge, no good in admiring the refuge from the outer view, from the outer place, but rather they had to enter in. enter in the verse says enter thou into thy chambers entering there are a number of examples in the bible wherein entering into the into a place of refuge made all the difference i'm thinking about and i've already mentioned noah and his family and how they entered into the ark so that they may be so that they might be spared the waterly deluge that came upon the world. I think about the children of Israel that night in Egypt, who entered into their blood-marked homes and kept themselves indoors while the destroying angel passed through the land of Egypt, slaying all of the firstborn. I think of Rahab. and her extended family when the Israelites came against the city of Jericho and whose God saw Jericho's walls collapse except the part of the wall that the house of Rahab stood upon. Here were individuals a place of refuge provided, and yet all had to enter in order to procure and secure for themselves the shelter, the refuge that the very place provided for them. Can I say to those who are unsaved, we're speaking here about entering into the place of refuge, joining ourselves, coming into the place where there is a place of safety. Can I say to you that the church is not the refuge for the soul? The sacraments are not the refuge for the soul. Your good works are not the refuge for the soul, but Christ alone is the refuge for the soul. However, an admiration of Christ, the refuge, is simply not enough. There must rather be an entering into that refuge if you are to know the benefits and the blessings that God has provided for sinners through his redemptive work. If you know nothing then of those blessings, let me encourage you to enter in, enter in now, confess your sins, rest your soul on the finished work of Jesus Christ. William Bacon Stevens wrote, the tempest which was due to us was poured in its fury on him We are spared its blast because our surety has borne its brunt and now offers to all who believe in him the sheltering refuge of his atoning grace. As believers, let us by faith enter into the place of refuge in these days. Let us hide ourselves in the rock of ages until the indignation may overpass. There's a third thing that we're to do, we're to shut the doors. When we shut the door, we're doing two things. We're shutting everything that is in the world out, and we're shutting ourselves in. This is what we are to do in our daily lives. We are to shut out the world and we are to shut ourselves in with God. That's not to say that we become hermits in our homes having no interaction with the outside world, but rather we are to be wary of the world's influence on our hearts and to make sure that our minds are renewed by the word and by God's Holy Spirit. These words in Isaiah 26, in the verse 20, shut thy doors about thee, bring our attention to the words that the Lord Jesus Christ spoke in the disciples' prayer, concerning prayer there in and on the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 6, verse 6, the Savior advised his disciples, but when, but thou when thou prayest, Enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. Here in Isaiah 26 verse 20, we're told to shut my doors, and I believe that Christ gives us the very meaning of what he's speaking of in Isaiah 26. Here in Matthew 6 and the verse number six, he's saying, pray, pray. The shutting of the door speaks of privacy, solitude, isolation, all of which aid us when we come to this great activity of praying, praying to God. And surely in these times, God would have us to be men and women, boys and girls and young people of prayer. I'm sure you've been praying. I and others have felt the benefit of that praying, but let me encourage you to continue instant in prayer, to pray without ceasing, to pray for us. Let's make the effort to shut the door, closing out the world, closing yourself into God and into His presence and spend time alone with God in prayer. May we come forth from these weeks, these months of isolation as men and women, young people, boys and girls of prayer. Shut, shut thy doors. Shut thy doors. The fourth thing that we're encouraged to do is to hide. When we hide in the refuge, all our trust is placed in that refuge. We're not hiding in self, we're hiding in God. In Psalm 27 verse 5 we read of the Psalmist David's confidence in God. For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion. In the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me. He shall set me up upon a rock. Here David finds a secure, a safe, a strong hiding place in the time of his trouble. And thank God we can find such a refuge, such a place of safety in our time of trouble. God is our hiding place. It is in him and him alone that we hide. The hymn writer William Cushing took up that very theme when he wrote the words, O safe to the rock that is higher than I, my soul in its conflicts and sorrows would fly, so sinful, so weary, thine, thine would I be, thy blessed rock of ages, I'm hiding in thee, hiding in thee, hiding in thee, thy blessed rock of ages, I'm hiding in thee. Are we hiding in our God today? Have all other hiding places been forsaken and have we placed our complete trust in Him who is the hiding place of His people? Let us run into the loving care of our Heavenly Father and hide ourselves in Him during these days of great uncertainty and fear within our nation. Oh, there's a hiding place, a hiding place in God. Our third consideration is where. Where are these people to enter into and where are they to hide? We are told that they are to enter into their chambers and there hide until the indignation be overpassed. The chamber within the verse is most likely the bed chamber, for that is how the Hebrew word is translated elsewhere in the Old Testament. When we think about the bedchamber, when we think about the bedroom, we think about a place of what? A place of rest. God is encouraging his people to enter a place of rest in turbulent times. To spiritualize what we have before us, we could say that God has many chambers, places of rest. chambers of security that we can enter and hide in while the storms of life rage around us. Let me mention just a number of them to you. Child of God, you can hide yourself today in the chamber of God's power. God's power. God's power is like himself. It's self-existent and self-sustained. his unlimited power and creation and preservation and providence and redemption we can even get to view his power and judgment may well then the Saint of God trust in such a God one who is almighty A.W. Pink wrote, if God were stinted in might and had a limit to his strength, we might well despair, but seeing that he is clothed with omnipotence, no prayer is too hard for him to answer, no need too great for him to supply, no passion too strong for him to subdue, no temptation too powerful for him to deliver from, no misery too deep for him to relieve. Oh, child of God in these days, hide yourself in the chamber of God's power. Child of God, you can hide yourself today in the chamber of God's wisdom. We could find ourselves questioning God's wisdom in these days. And yet all things that befall us are guided by His on-airing wisdom. How we need to be reminded of those words there in Isaiah 55, verse 8 and 9. For my thoughts, God speaking here, my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts your thoughts. What God is doing may be known only to Him. But whatever he's doing, we can trust that it is all being guided by infinite wisdom. And so hide yourself in the chamber of God's wisdom. Hide yourself, child of God, in the chamber of God's faithfulness. I read there in Deuteronomy 7, in the verse number nine, that our God is the faithful God. Christian, think for a moment how faithful God has been to you since the moment you first trusted in Christ. He has faithfully forgiven you. He has faithfully restored you, faithfully provided for you, faithfully upheld you, faithfully comforted you, faithfully assisted you, faithfully guided you, faithfully empowered you, faithfully restrained you down through the years. He has been a faithful God every day, through every circumstance. He has been faithful. In light of his unchangeable faithfulness in the past, I asked you, will he be unfaithful to you and your family now? I think not. Even when we believe not, he abideth faithful. You get the idea, don't you? You get the idea without me saying anything further about the chamber of God's love? You can hide in there. Or the chamber of God's goodness, what a blessed chamber that is. Or the chamber of God's unfaithfulness. Sorry, God's unchangeableness. We could run into the chamber of God's mercy. We could run into the chamber of God's grace. We run into the being of God. That's what we do in the day of indignation. In the being of God, we have all the chambers in which we can hide until the calamities be overpassed. It is then to your God, fellow believer, that I direct you to, as to where you are to hide yourself. The fourth and final consideration from our text, weyen. Did you notice a time period mentioned in our text that refers to how long we are to hide ourselves? Look at the words at the end of the verse. Until, The indignation be overpassed. No, let's go a little further. Hide thyself, as it were, for a little moment until the indignation be overpassed. James Strong, in his Concordance, translates the word moment to mean this, a wink off the eyes, a wink of the eyes. He's speaking about a very short period of time, just the blink of the eye. That's how long we hide ourselves. Our troubles and our trials, and this is a delightful thought, child of God, so don't miss it as we come to a conclusion of this service. Don't miss this delightful thought, this blessed truth to your heart today. Our troubles and our trials will not last forever. They will not last forever. Now, it may be the case that they will extend to the end of life's journey. But even if they do, compared to eternity, they are only brief in their duration. They are only but for a little moment. Similar sentiments were presented by the Apostle Paul when he spoke of the afflictions of the child of God there in 2 Corinthians 4 verse 17. For our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Paul speaks of the afflictions of the child of God being but for a moment. Look then at your troubles and trials as being momentary. They will soon pass, maybe in this world, certainly in the world that is to come. It is this that enables the child of God who suffers to call their afflictions light because they are only for a moment. I only bear them for a moment. May God help us to remember this in these days. May God strengthen our faith in the storms around us rage. And may we take comfort that we only need to hide ourselves for a little moment until the indignation be overpassed. And so, Christian, listen to these words from your God today. Come, my people. Enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee. Hide thyself, as it were, for a little moment, until the indignation be overpassed. May God be pleased. Bless his word to our hearts. And may this text of scripture and the thoughts presented from it, may they be a comfort to your hearts today. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Let's pray. Our loving father, we thank thee that thou art our refuge for thy people. We understand that these are days of heightened fear and worry and anxiety within our hearts. And yet we thank Thee that we can hide ourselves in Thee. Oh, give us the faith to do that. Lord, to leave all other refuges behind, that we might trust Thee in these days. Bless Thy word, though interrupted briefly, we pray that the Spirit of God will apply it with power to the soul. Answer prayer, glorify thy Son, and grant dear God the blessing of heaven to be upon the preached word. Answer prayer. We offer prayer in and through our Savior's precious name. Amen. Let me apologize for the falling out of the internet link just halfway through there. I trust that you were able to join us again and that the word of God has been a comfort and a blessing to you. Let me encourage you to pray that this will not happen and that we'll be able to broadcast the whole service through. These are things that happen. We don't understand the reason why, but we're trusting that you've got the message and it has been a blessing and a comfort to your heart. Join us again tonight, six o'clock for gospel service and please make the meeting known and may the Lord bless you as you remember his day and let us honor his day as we try to do and may God help us to honor him and his day in these days. May the Lord bless you until we gather again for worship. Rrrrgh!