THE GREAT ROCK

R.Hibbert

Isaiah 32: 1,2; Song of Songs 2: 3,4; Psalm 23: 4

The reference to "a great rock" is the link with the subject in our reading... stability. The reference to "a man" is very affecting to me: "a man shall be as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the storm". How wonderful that is, beloved brethren, that God has provided a Man! We speak reverently; He is God and yet He is a Man, a Man in heaven, and He is a Man who is there on our behalf, available to us and active towards us. I think this links with the priesthood of Christ in Hebrews, but of course it is a very big subject. I would like to hear a preaching on this; it is a fine gospel subject. The brethren will have to forgive me if I forget that this is supposed to be an address and start preaching the gospel, because when we start thinking about this Man and all that is available in Him, and all that He is, what it says about Him here, what it means to His lovers, how we love to speak about such a Man! Surely He is a King reigning in righteousness, but that a Man should be as a hiding-place from the wind and a covert from the storm, well! what is included in all that would take a lot longer than we have time to deal with in one occasion. It would include all His work in redemption, all that He accomplished on the cross: "a covert from the storm", our Deliverer from the coming wrath. So no believer ever needs to have any worries about his sins - never. I do not say that all believers are free of worrying about them, but if they are not it is because they are not intelligent. There are lots of persons who love Christ who are not at all clear about their sins. Some will say, Well, I realised after I was converted that those sins committed before I was converted are all settled, but what about the sins afterwards? O, some will say, You are going to suffer under the government of God about that. I do not know where they get that from, I cannot find it in Scripture; it says, all our sins, iniquities, all of them. So that a believer, one who has real faith, has faith in the blood, for him the question of sins, all of them, is settled. I do not mean to say he will never sin again, but the blood of Jesus covers them all. You say, Perhaps they will suffer governmentally. But if you suffer governmentally that is not punishment for your sins. Which one of us does not suffer governmentally? But that is the Father's chastisement because He loves us. It says "And a man shall be as a hiding-place from the wind"; you are conscious of that. We sing about our sins being met by Jesus when He died on Calvary; that is, the whole question of our sins is met. It is a wonderful matter to be conscious of that; that is, there is not a cloud above; and there is not a spot within either. Well, that is another subject but it is all included; that is, the moral question for the believer. The believer will never come into condemnation. Why? Because of this Man, this wonderful Man who has taken on the matter of our sins, the one Man Christ Jesus - that is a wonderful expression. There is another expression - I am going to quote Mr Darby - he is speaking about men's history, and then after he has detailed it all, the hopelessness of man, the incorrigibility of the flesh, he says, But, there is another Man. There is another Man and this is the One. So it says, He "shall be as a hiding-place from the wind". If you have a conscience about sins of any kind, if you have a link with Christ you should get to Him about it, because it says "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness", 1 John 1: 9. That is part of the glory of this blessed Man, the sin-bearer.

Then it says "a covert from the storm; as brooks of water in a dry place". So that He is up there, beloved brethren, on our behalf sympathetically in relation to every burden; everything that comes upon the believer the Lord is ready to help in relation to, every sorrow. What sorrows there are! All the matters of divided homes, children leaving their parents, husbands leaving their wives, all these sorrows the Lord enters into perfectly. We do not want to be stoical; stoicism has no place in Christianity. It appeals to our pride to be stoical, but Christianity is a system of sympathy and feelings. While the word of God, as we have often noticed in Hebrews, tries us and convicts us and reaches our consciences as it should, immediately you get that we have such a High Priest who is able to sympathise (see chap 4: 15). So what a thing it is to have this Man as a hiding-place from the wind and a covert from the storm! We all know what the winds are; there are always going to be these winds as long as we are left here. Satan is against us and he will never leave us alone for very long, that is if we are going on with the truth. So we need a defender, and the Lord is the defender of His people, especially confessed sinners. Luke 7 is a fine example of that; that wretched proud Pharisee talked about this poor sinful woman in her tears and the Lord defended her. Great as He was, the King, yet He came down, you might say, in wonderful condescending grace, not only to comfort her but to defend her. He does not have much to say to her; He says "Thy sins are forgiven.. Thy faith has saved thee; go in peace" (vv 48,50). But He has a lot to say to Simon, and it is to defend this woman. He says "Seest thou this woman?" (v 44); He brings her right under Simon's attention, and He says she treated Me like a lady (you will excuse that expression), she gave Him proper hospitality, from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss My feet and you have not treated Me like an ordinary guest. The Lord defends His people; that means that they do not have to defend themselves; that is quite a relief because defending yourself is a very onerous job; you do not get much edification out of it even if you are wrongly charged. Taking up your own defence is not a very happy job; and not only that, it is a waste of time because there is Someone else who is able to defend you far better than you are yourself.

Well, I hope the brethren will agree with what I am saying about this Man; we cannot really say enough about Him, we certainly cannot say too much; but this is all true, and it is not just true abstractly but it is true experimentally, and I can humbly say that what I am saying I have to some degree experienced, I know that it is the truth. It says "as brooks of water in a dry place". Well, this is a dry place. That poor woman in John 4 found that; she was thirsty and the water she was getting was not helping, it was really a dry place; and this is a dry place. If we become thirsty we have a source of constant refreshment in Christ - the rock that followed them was Christ. That is the humble service of Christ in following His own, so that He is available right there. He says, am I a God afar off, or am I a God at hand? (see Jer 23: 23). He is a God at hand; we just have to reach out and His service is available, you just avail yourself of it. So "the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land"; what a fine thing that word 'great' is in there! - "a great rock", not just a rock. That great rock: what it must have been in those eastern countries in the desert and the sun beating down! There was no water and they came to an oasis, the shade there, a great rock and springs - that is Elim really.

Time is going and I do not want to weary the brethren, so we will go on to the Song of Songs. You might say, What has this to do with stability? I can tell you from experience because I know what it is to be shaken and not to be stable. Things that have occurred, tragedies and all that, shook me, but do you know where I found stability? I found stability where the Lord is, and that is what holds me now. You say, You have a few troubles in your area: does that trouble you? Well, in a way it does but it does not shake me a bit. What I am held by, what keeps me steady, is the consciousness of the presence of Christ. That is the one thing I look forward to every week, the time when I shall be together with the brethren and the Lord will come in. Some brothers may be a bit out of line with their hymns; that does not trouble me either. The point is the Lord's presence, you are conscious of that.

Then it says "In his shadow I have rapture and sit down", just restful and settled, overshadowed by Christ. It is like David anointed amongst his brethren; he is signalised. Of course that is only a weak illustration; it is more than that because it is "So is my beloved among the sons; In his shadow have I rapture and sit down". I would like to ask the brethren, how many experience this? Because if you are missing this you are missing the best; the best is to have rapture as sitting down under the shadow of Christ; there is nothing to equal it. It might not be for very long and you might say the meeting was not such a good meeting, but if you go there with a true heart for Christ, I do not think you will ever miss a sense of rapture, ecstasy. Ecstasy is not a common thing, but then Christianity is not a common thing either, and we must not be afraid to face what is special. You may say, You are talking now in a sectarian way, but I am not; the fact is, beloved brethren, that we are special. I do not mean in any way of pride, but what concerns me is where the Lord is, where He comes. That is spoken of in 1 Samuel 30, the places where David and his men were wont to haunt (see A.V. v 31). There were certain places where David went and he sent a present to the elders of those places. That was after the victory; place where David and his men are; that is the place we want to be. We do not have to argue as to where else He is so long as I am satisfied to be where He is, and that is what cheers. Here it says "In his shadow I have rapture and sit down; And his fruit is sweet to my taste"; that is more, it is His presence and He is a wonderful entertainer, you know; He provides the very best fruit. This book is full of what is exotic; it was not like a soup kitchen where you get just enough to keep body and soul together; it was the very finest quality because it was the king's table. King Solomon imported stuff from all over the world; I suppose there was no table to match Solomon's, though Nehemiah's was pretty close to it, and we can be at each. Then it says "And his banner over me is love"'. How fine that is, the personal love of Christ! This, mind you, is collective, it is His love for the assembly, His personal love for the assembly, that is His banner. So that is what she finds under the shadow, but not the shadow to shade us from the heat and the trials and sorrows - He is available as the Great Rock in the thirsty land in that regard - but this is the compensation and there is really nothing like it, it is really heaven; there will not be anything better in heaven than to be in the presence of Christ, to be in His presence with rapture.

And He speaks too; that is something we sometimes miss; we should have our ears open. We sing about having our ears and hearts open (see hymn 131); that is to the cry of the rapture; but this is rapture too, and do you think the Lord would come to us and not have anything to say to us? That would be a peculiar greeting for a relation of love, would it not? And that is what this is, so that He speaks: "The voice of my beloved!" (v 8). Note the exclamation; it is an ejaculation, it is the movement of emotion. "The voice of my beloved!": there is no voice like that and there would not be any mistake about her recognising it. "Behold, he cometh Leaping upon the mountains, Skipping upon the hills".

Well, much more could be said by others who are much more able than I am, but that is the impression I would like to convey to the brethren, that what holds me stable - stability is our subject - is the experience of the coming of Christ to His company, that is to His assembly. You might say that we do not claim to be His assembly, but the assembly is there in character, He comes to the assembly, and we are conscious of it, and, as I said, if we are not conscious of it we are missing something. We should go back over the track and see where we missed the cog because this is normal; this is not special in one sense, it is in another, but it is normal to lovers of Christ.

Just a word now about Psalm 23. This verse, along with Psalm 90, has been much in my mind since I had my seventy-fifth birthday about two weeks ago. I began to realise that I am getting an old man, and there are a lot of old men amongst us. The prospect of an old person is to have the Lord's company in the valley of the shadow, "the valley of the shadow of death". Most of us are getting up there; Moses only gave us seventy years, and if we are over that we are in the valley of the shadow. We might be in the valley of the shadow much younger than that because we are all mortal, but what a great privilege to be accompanied in that! It says "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me"; that is the clue, the Lord with us. I do not think any genuine Christian would fear the article of death because it is just a change, just going to be with Christ; but the valley of the shadow involves the weakening of our bodies, these bodies of humiliation. You begin to feel that way when you get older; your knees start to wobble, especially when you are giving an address. But not only that; Scripture speaks about the feeble knees and of strengthening them (see Isa 35: 3). Anyone who is getting up there has some of these symptoms. The great thing is that they are not just reminders of our mortality, they are reminders that the Lord is committed to us and He will carry us right through to the end. So in the valley of the shadow of death He is with us, and in the final article it is Jesus that puts us to death; it is not just a struggle of mortality, it is a divine Person with a touch of love that puts His own to death, those who are put to sleep by Jesus. It does not say 'put to death', it says 'put to sleep', put to sleep by Jesus (see 1 Thess 4: 14). What a thing to have a sense of the Lord's company! I remember a well-known brother in Winnipeg saying, I hope I am going to die before the rapture because I would like to have that experience.

I would not say that, and I am not commending it to anyone else, but that was his thought, that he so valued the experience in that moment of extreme weakness that he would have the company of this One. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me". This is a very practical matter. I was speaking to a brother from not far from here a few weeks ago; I said to him, Are you retired yet? He said, No, but I am just about to, and you know what Mr Taylor said, that what we have to face at retirement is dissolution. So I said, Well, I am ten years older than you are so I guess I will have to face it. I recommend to the brethren Mr Taylor's remarks on dissolution (see Vol.40, p.212). It is a very helpful and important thing for every old person to read. The point of it is that, when you realise the symptoms of dissolution, you do not give up, you do not retire, you do not say, My time is done and I will just wait for the call; you carry on. I remember our brother at Chicago having a cable from a brother in England which said, Go on, go on, go on; and that is what he did, and that is what we are to do. Mind you we have to have a little bit of prudence; some of us try to do too much; we have to be sensible about our bodies. But then we do not want to give up, we want to go on because this is through the valley of the shadow; it is not actual death, it is the valley of the shadow of death. We can count on the Lord to support us. You may be invited to do something and you think you could not possibly do it, your body is not equal to it. Then you turn to the Lord and you find He gives you strength to get through; He is with you in it too. David says "By my God I leaped over a wall" (2 Sam 22: 30); not scrambled over but leaped over. So you find that you do not just scramble over but the Lord gives you strength to leap over. Well, beloved brethren, I just leave these thoughts with us that it might be an encouragement to us to avail ourselves of the resources we have in this wonderful Man as the Rock.

 

SOUTHEND

13 October 1979