We have abilities that we barely even use. Our senses are capable of doing much more than we allow them to do.
I want to try a short experiment with you. I want to test your eyes and your ears.
First, I am going to give you thirty seconds to look around this room and take it all in. Many of you are here every Sunday. Some of you have been in this room on Sunday mornings for years and years. And yet I wonder how many of us are really using our eyes to see what is here. I am going to give you thirty seconds to look around, and we’ll find out if you can tell me whether anything is different from the usual arrangement.
The flags! They are reversed from their usual placement. Rev. Wilson gets to be the patriot today and I get to be the Christian! During Vacation Bible School, on the first night we were approaching the point in the program where the children were to say the pledges to the flags, and I looked at the social hall platform, and saw that there were no flags in place! So a couple of us retrieved a set of flags from the Galilean Room. But when I told a member of that class where we had found the flags, she said she had never even noticed that there were flags in that room! We have abilities that we only partly use. We don’t always see what there is to be seen.
And now do we hear what there is to be heard? I’m going to give you another thirty seconds. We’re going to close our eyes to shut out extra distractions, and we’re going to be silent. No singing, no musical instruments, not even any preaching (watch it with those “amens”); just silence. And let’s find out what there is to be heard. What are the sounds of silence?
There really isn’t complete silence, is there? What did you hear? Maybe you heard someone sniffling with a summer cold. Maybe you heard traffic on Piney Branch Road. Maybe you just heard, for the first time, the sound of your own heart beating! Kind of reassuring, isn’t it?! Where I grew up in Louisville, our church was directly across the street from a fire station. Always, right in the middle of the pastor’s most crucial point, or in the quiet time of prayer, the fire station siren would go off, and we might as well have shut down the service, because every mind wandered away, drawn by another sound. In fact, since our Assistant Pastor was also a volunteer chaplain for the fire department, he would leave the platform and go chase the fire truck! Sister, don’t even think about it!
Distracted by the sounds of the world, caught up by the sights and sounds of all our responsibilities, captured by what grabs our attention, it’s easy to be distracted. It’s hard to stay on target; it’s hard to feel together and focused. We get unsettled and uneasy with everything. There’s too much to see, so we see nothing; there’s too much to hear, so we hear nothing. We are uneasy and insecure.
God’s word then encourages us to find a hiding place. God invites us to discover a secure spot, to receive a protection. A hiding place from which we can see and hear what’s real.
I
Margaret and I had just been married a few weeks when we were asked to accompany the youth of our church on a recreational outing. They were going to go swimming at Butler Dam State Park in northern Kentucky. Off we went, brave little chaperones, to supervise the youth and to keep them safe. The only problem was, who would keep the safekeepers safe? Putting me in charge of swimmers is a little like sending the fox to guard the chicken coop. I had never learned to swim. Nonetheless, off we went, and at the lake all went swimming, except for yours truly, who stayed pretty close to shore. However, as the day wore on, and others were having a great time, I began to show off a little and waded farther out. Unseen and unknown, there was a dropoff in the lakebed, and in a fraction of a second, I was in over my head and I was in trouble. I could see nothing; I could hear nothing. I remember flailing away with my arms and legs, frantically trying to find something to hold on to. It was one of the most frightening moments of my life. The fact that I am here today is testimony to that Scripture that says, “The Lord preserveth the simple.” Or, as one of my friends puts it, “The Lord looks out for preachers and other idiots.”
I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear. All I could do was to reach out in panic and grab for something. You’ve had moments like that too. Not necessarily moments in which you thought you were going to drown in water, but moments in which you believed you were drowning in something else. Too much debt or too much work. Too much conflict or too much anxiety. Too many people depending on you or too many expectations where you work. Too many assignments in school – has anybody in the balcony had the kind of teacher who seems to think you have nothing else in life but her course?! Too many, too much; we feel we’re drowning!
And when that happens, you cannot see and you cannot hear. Oh, your eyes may be working, but you cannot see your way out of too much. The answers to your problems may be right in front of you, but when you panic, you really can’t see them. The other day I was repairing a piece of electrical equipment, and my fingers fumbled one of those tiny but crucial parts that needed to go back in there. I fell to my knees to find it, but I couldn’t see it. I ran my hand all over the floor, but there was nothing. I turned on a brighter light, but that gizmo was nowhere to be seen. I had visions of ending up my repair work with a pile of useless junk in my hands. I looked harder, I swept the floor, I said some unBaptist things, but nothing helped. So I started to pack up my work and throw it away – and there was my little gizmo, right on the workbench, six inches from where it was supposed to be.
When you are overwhelmed, you can’t see. And when you panic, you can’t hear either. Your ears may be working, but you cannot hear words of counsel. You are overwhelmed and that’s all there is to it. We are drowning in too much and can neither see clearly what we are to do nor hear clearly any word of wisdom.
It must have been like that in the Kingdom of Judah around 700 years before Christ. Judah’s northern neighbor, Israel, had been completely swamped by the Assyrian armies twenty years before, and now Judah too was overwhelmed by the brooding Assyrian presence. It was huge. Its armies had defeated nation after nation, its bloodthirsty king, Sargon, had shown no mercy. Judah was still alive, but she had no freedom; she had no room to breathe.
Now, however, Sargon had died; and in the confusion as Assyria was sorting out its leadership, some in Judah thought there was an opportunity to break free. They urged that Judah create an alliance with Egypt, so that Egypt’s military muscle could be used against the Assyrians. It seemed like an answer, to the impetuous and the hot-headed. But to the prophet Isaiah it was a counsel of death. To Isaiah it would have meant that Judah would be crushed in the conflict between these two superpowers. Isaiah warned against this alliance, as he also warned against rebelling against Assyria. Isaiah told the people of Judah that neither rebellion nor alliance was what they needed. What they needed was to be centered in God, secure in His love, focused on His capacity to take care of them. What they needed, said Isaiah, was a leader who would present their unseeing eyes and their unhearing ears to God and would create for them a hiding place until they could recover.
See, a king will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule with justice. Each will be like a hiding place from the wind …Then the eyes of those who have sight will not be closed, and the ears of those who have hearing will listen.
Righteousness … a hiding place … eyes and ears. When you feel as though you are drowning, you can neither see your way out nor hear anybody’s counsel. Someone must be your security; someone must be your centering point, your hiding place. Someone must give you a quiet and stable heart. You need a vantage point from the hiding place.
II
Then what kind of someone? Who can do that for you? Who could be your eyes and your ears, to look out for you, to listen to your life, to stabilize you? What kind of person?
Isaiah speaks of someone who committed to righteousness, someone who invested in justice, someone who cares about you. The prophet hopes for someone who knows who he is; someone who has a sense of his own personal security; someone who is comfortable in his own skin; someone who is at peace in his own soul. Isaiah speaks of someone who will offer a very special gift, the gift of his own innocence.
Again, then, who can offer us this gift? How do you find that kind of person? The other day I had just about had all I could handle. It was a full day, pressed down and running over, with appointments to keep, conflicts to mediate, phone calls to receive, meetings to prepare for, and folks just walking in with this and that on their minds. I did all I could for everybody and kept on functioning the best I could, but, in the immortal words of Pogo Possum, “The hurrieder I go the behinder I get.” So do you want to know how I handled that mess? I left it. I walked out. My work unfinished, my desk piled high, phone call messages still on the answering machine, a list of people who needed attention -- I left it all and I went home for one reason and one reason only. I went home because I knew my little five-month-old granddaughter would be there. Somehow I knew I needed to be with her.
When those innocent eyes looked up at me, I knew what that was all about. Those young eyes do not see complicated and mysterious things. They look at you full in the face with trust and with wonder. Other people may look at me with downcast gaze, feeling guilt or fear or mistrust or anxiety or shame … but this child looks at me with confidence and trust. I needed that from somebody. It is a salvation experience to have that from somebody. Eyes that look out from an untroubled soul and radiate purity. I needed that. That saved me. I remembered the Lord Jesus and how he said that in order to enter the Kingdom one must be like a little child. I remembered and saw it in her eyes.
And when I spoke to her, knowing full well that she is not able to comprehend what I am saying, I felt that in fact she did understand what I was feeling. Do you catch the difference? The words themselves may be meaningless to her; but her ears can hear the feelings. Her ears can pick up the heart behind my words. Her ears will listen to the core of who I am. I needed that. We all need that. We need somebody to listen to us, even when we do not ourselves know what we are talking about.
When I go to one of our elderly members whose mind is just about gone, I know that it makes very little difference what words I say or what Scripture text I read, for they are unable to think about concepts. But it makes a huge difference simply that someone is there, someone is listening, someone is speaking calmly and lovingly about eternal things. We need to be heard. I needed to be heard, and by someone whose heart is pure and whose care for me is unquestioned. I went home that day and I got centered because this baby was centered and pure and whole. I restored my security because she was secure. I got my eyes opened looking into her clear eyes; I heard music for my soul in her little coos and cries.
See, a king will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule with justice. Each will be like a hiding place from the wind …Then the eyes of those who have sight will not be closed, and the ears of those who have hearing will listen.
III
Friends, if I can get that much for one day from a little child, how much more I can get for eternity from Jesus Christ. This is who He is. This is what the cross does for us. This is what His cross is about. On the cross there is one who is all-knowing, who understands us, sin-sick as we are, but who loves us nonetheless. One who sees us with total truth; one who hears all our complaints; one who knows that we are storm-tossed and tempest-turned, but who is a hiding place for us. The cross means that God in Jesus Christ, who sees our failures and hears our terrible secrets – despite it all, He hides our souls and gives us ground on which to stand. He is a centering point, He is a hiding place, where we find ourselves in Him.
The cross! How much we need the cross! The cross means that the one who is altogether lovely and completely righteous, without sin – that one whose eyes are too pure to behold iniquity – that one has become sin for us. Incredible! But wonderful! That one was made to be sin for us takes upon Himself all of our guilt, all of our anxiety, all of our shame, all of our garbage. And we are made new. Our old mess is taken care of. We are made new. The swamp in which we are drowning; it’s gone. “If anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation. Old things are passed away. All things are become new.”
See, a king will reign in righteousness, and princes will rule with justice. Each will be like a hiding place from the wind …Then the eyes of those who have sight will not be closed, and the ears of those who have hearing will listen.
The righteous for the unrighteous; the perfect for the imperfect; the whole torn through and through for the fragmented. The cross a hiding place from which we can see and hear new hope. Our vantage point the hiding place.
This Friday morning, still feeling a bit buffeted by all that was happening, I went out on the deck behind my house, with Bible in hand and the usual books and paper and pens, to push that sermon stone up the hill one more time. I tell you, when I get to heaven, I am going to ask the Lord why He had to put a Sunday in every single week of creation! It’s overwhelming sometimes.
But something happened in the cool of that morning. I looked out and saw that I was nearly surrounded by trees; nearby houses were almost invisible. The great canopy of tulip poplar and beech spread over me. It felt as though I were in a retreat, a sanctuary. It felt like a hiding place.
I sat quietly and listened – really listened. The crackling caw of a crow split the silence, raucous and unwelcome, crude. But in a moment I heard the chirps of a little band of sparrows slicing through. In the midst of all the things to do, the people to see, the concerns to worry about, my soul heard in the chirp of the sparrows, “Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come? … His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.” His eye; my eye. His ear; my ear.
In the midst of all that must be done, responding to that most demanding taskmaster of all, my own self, I find a hiding place like no other. I find one whose eyes see me but do not reject me; one whose ears hear me but do not misunderstand me. I find one who receives me just as I am, in my blindness, my foolishness, my brokenness, my ambition, my laziness, my need to be acknowledged, my need to be anonymous, my confusion. I find one who sees and hears all the uncertainty in which I am drowning and He nails it to the cross. He nails it to the cross. It is no more. It no longer has any power over me. It’s gone. Praise God, it’s gone.
“I take, O cross, thy shadow for my abiding place; I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of His grace; and from my smitten heart with tears two wonders I confess, the wonders of His glorious love and my unworthiness.”
Unseen and unknown, there was a drop-off in that lakebed, and in a fraction of a second, I had been in over my head and in real trouble. I could see nothing; I could hear nothing. I remember only flailing away with my arms and legs, frantically trying to find something to hold on to. It was one of the most frightening moments of my life. When they pulled me out of the water, I was still drowning, but not in water. I was drowning in embarrassment and fear and remorse. But my bride was hovering over me, saying that she had a hard time with my flailing arms, but that somehow she found the strength to pull me out.
I know what that’s about.
“I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore, very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more; but the master of the sea heard my despairing cry, from the waters lifted me, now safe am I.”
For it was “love lifted me.” Now my eyes see; now my ears hear, for my vantage point is the hiding place.
