Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2856
“And a man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a cover from the tempest.” Isaiah 32:2.
[When the Tabernacle was thrown open to all comers.]
ONE who is really worthy to be called “a man” is a rare creature. There are great numbers of human beings who come under the generic name, “men,” who do not possess those noble, manly characteristics which would entitle us truly to speak of any one of them as “a man.” When God gives “a man” to any nation, it is a grand gift. There are many names in history which remind us how much blessing may be conferred upon a race and upon an age by the raising up of one
man.
It is possible that in the first instance my text refers to Hezekiah the king of Judah. The Assyrians had invaded the land and the army and the nation were powerless to defend their territory. It seemed as though the homes of the people would be utterly destroyed by fire and that the inhabitants would be either slain by the sword or carried away into captivity. But there was one man, named Hezekiah, who, though he had not a great army, had great faith in the power of prayer to God. And so he took Rab-Shakeh’s blasphemous letter and spread it before the Lord in earnest supplication. He sent word to another true man, the Prophet Isaiah, begging him to also lift up his prayer to God—and the Prophet sent to the king the cheering intelligence that the Assyrian monarch would not be able to enter Jerusalem, but would be driven back to his own city of Nineveh—and should be slain by the sword in his own land! Hezekiah and Isaiah were, for Judea, a hiding place from the wind and a cover from the tempest in that time of stress and storm.
Nor is it only in sacred story that we find illustrations of such an experience as my text describes. I might remind you of some of our kings and other great men who have been a hiding place and a cover to our own land in the day of danger and of distress. The name of Alfred the Great will always shine brightly in our national history and, much later, there was “a man” who wore no regal crown, but who was the greatest and best of all the kings. Oliver Cromwell was a real hiding place and cover to this land in the days when the crowned king was unworthy to rule. In him, God raised up “a man” who risked everything in defense of the liberties which we still enjoy. What a hiding place from the wind and what a cover from the tempest he was to the little company of persecuted saints in the valleys of Piedmont! The Duke of Savoy had determined to extirpate the Protestants, but Cromwell heard of his cruelties and resolved that he would do all that he could to rescue them from their persecutor’s power.
He sent for the French ambassador and told him to let his master know that he must have those persecutions stopped immediately. His majesty replied that Savoy did not belong to him and that he could not interfere with the Duke. “Nevertheless,” replied Cromwell, “if you tell the Duke that you will go to war with him if he does not cease persecuting the Protestants, he will soon stop his butcheries. If you will not do that, I will go to war with you, for, in the name of the Lord of Hosts, I will defend His persecuted people!” Of course such a brave message as that speedily took effect. Oh, that, in every age, in every land—whenever and wherever there is oppression or persecution to be rebuked and tyranny to be overthrown—God may always find “a man” who shall come boldly to the front and speak and act for truth and righ-
teousness, and so become “a hiding place from the wind, and a cover from the tempest,” to the people whom he has the honor to protect in such a time as that!
I have no more to say upon that view of our subject except to pray God to make us all manly in that sense, so that all of us may, through His Grace, take our proper place in the battle for the right and the true against the wrong and the false.
I have, however, to speak of another Man to whom this text more especially refers. It is the Messiah, the Man Christ Jesus, the Mediator between God and men—God’s greatest gift to men, the Nazarene, Jesus Christ of the house of Da-vid—who is the true Hiding Place from the wind, and Cover from the tempest to all who take shelter in Him. If my lips are Divinely helped to extol Him and if your hearts are Divinely taught to rejoice in Him, we shall all be blessed! In speaking about my text, I want to show you, first, that this life is very liable to storm. Secondly, that from all these storms, the Man Christ Jesus is our Hiding Place. And that, thirdly, our wisdom is to shelter in that Hiding Place.
I. First, then, THIS LIFE IS LIABLE TO MANY STORMS.
He that reckons upon a calm from his cradle to his grave reckons altogether amiss. You may set sail upon a sea as smooth as glass, but I doubt not that, before your voyage is completed, you will often have to reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man—and be at your wits’ end by reason of the fury of the storm!