And now let us look to the Lord
before we turn to the word together.
A moment of prayer as we reflect upon
the message to which we have just listened.
Lord, teach us the utter futility of prayer
which doesn't transform us into thy likeness.
O God, as we meet thee in the
secret place, surely we must bear upon us
the mark of thy presence and thy power.
Help us to meet with thee just there
in thy word this morning and speak to
our waiting hearts, our hungry souls.
For Jesus' sake we ask it.
Amen.
Would you turn with me in your Bible,
my dear friend, this morning to the prophecy
of Isaiah and to the 45th chapter.
Isaiah chapter 45.
We're going to read as our text this
morning the third verse.
Isaiah 45 and verse 3.
And I will give thee the treasures of
darkness and hidden riches of secret places that
thou mayest know that I the Lord which
call thee by thy name am the God
of Israel.
In order that we might receive all that
God has for us in this verse in
its spiritual application to our own lives, let
me just spend a moment considering its literal
meaning and its historical application.
These are words which were actually spoken by
Jehovah the living God to a heathen king,
Cyrus king of Persia.
This is the only place in scripture where
a man who is an unbeliever is called
the anointed of God.
He was given that title because even though
he didn't realize it himself, he was to
be God's chosen instrument through whom the people
of Israel were to be delivered from captivity.
Just as at one time God used the
mighty power of Chaldea to bring chastisement and
judgment and captivity upon his people, so he
will use yet another heathen power as his
instrument to set his people free.
In all the dynamic rise and fall of
kings and thrones and empires, one after another,
behind the outward event which any casual observer
could see, there was the unseen hand of
an omnipotent God, directing all the affairs of
men and nations for one supreme object, the
deliverance of his people.
Verse four of this chapter says, for Jacob
my servant's sake and Israel mine elect, I
have even called thee by thy name, I
have surnamed thee though thou hast not known
me.
Now I pause a moment to put in
this by way of parenthesis.
This is not only a fact of history,
it is the story of all history which
might well be called his story, that is
history.
It's the truth behind the breathtaking events of
the decade in which you and I live.
Cyrus is preferred in order that Israel may
be released.
Cyrus shall have a kingdom, but only in
order that God's people may have their liberty.
The Lord raises up one and he puts
down another.
And behind all the drama of human events
today, there is a God who is planning
for his church, through affliction and persecution and
chastening and tribulation, they are perfected and prepared
to inherit the kingdom of God.
In the early days of the Christian church
when Paul and Barnabas were confirming those who
had received Christ and were converted to the
Christian gospel.
As they went from place to place, confirming
them in their faith, exhorting them to remain
steadfast, they reminded them that it was through
much tribulation they would inherit the kingdom of
God.
He, our Lord Jesus, who has sold all
that he has to purchase a pearl of
great price, his church, is pressing that pearl
through the fiery furnace of persecution.
That one day, as the book of Daniel
says, it may shine as the brightness of
the firmament and having been used to turn
many to righteousness as the stars forever and
ever.
Beloved, it's only if you hold that truth
deep down in your heart and in your
mind today that you'll be kept sane.
For if you have that truth gripping your
soul, then in the midst of all tribulation,
you will have peace.
To return a moment to our text, at
the time when these words were written, were
spoken rather, Babylon was immensely powerful.
We are told that in circumference it was
45 miles around it.
That it had walls that were 32 feet
thick, so wide that six chariots could proceed
side by side and drive abreast on them.
And those walls were a hundred cubits high.
And within that vast citadel, within that enormous
concentration camp, Israel were captive for 70 years,
70 years.
But from that bondage, God would deliver them.
And so, these promises are given to the
one whom he has chosen to use as
his instrument for their salvation.
And the history of their subsequent deliverance is
of course given, as you may well remember,
in the book of Daniel and in the
fifth chapter.
At the time these words were spoken, the
words were considering, nothing would seem more improbable
there were of course evidences that the chastisement
of God was of necessity, leading his people
into captivity.
But in a mere 200 years, the whole
of everything that is said here was fulfilled,
was accomplished.
And accomplished because God raised up a heathen
power in order to do his will.
I have no doubt whatsoever, of course, that
God could have done this through someone who
was one of his own people, a Jew.
He could have done it through Zerubbabel, for
instance, the governor of Judea, who after the
captivity founded the foundations and the beginning of
the new temple.
He could have done it through him.
But I ask you to think about this
with me this morning.
May I suggest to you that never in
all history has God trusted his people with
a vast amount of material resources and material
power.
God does not operate in that level.
Very seldom, very seldom has the Christian church
been possessed of wealth, as the world calls
it wealth.
God knows the snares and temptations that are
attached to such.
And so he seldom has seen fit to
entrust his people with it.
Rather he has made good use of it,
made friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, good
use of it in the hands of other
people for the good of his own.
And so for the sake of his people,
as the first verse of this chapter says,
he will hold the right hand of Cyrus.
He will, if you follow the text a
moment, he will subdue nations before him.
He will loose the loins of kings.
That means strange phrases.
What it means simply is that he'll terrify
them.
You remember the story of Belshazzar in Daniel
chapter 5 at his drunken feast, who saw
a writing on the wall and were told
that his loins were loosed and his knees
smote the one against the other in terror.
Cities would surrender to Cyrus.
Gates would open up before him.
The longest of marches apparently would be made
easy as God made the crooked places straight
in front of him.
No opposition would be able to stand in
his way.
Gates of brass and bars of iron, of
which there were no less than a hundred
in Babylon, would all be severed and broken
in pieces before his triumphant march.
Not only so, but treasures of gold and
silver buried underground.
The wealth of many nations collected and stored
in this vast wealthy community of Babylon.
All of this would come to Cyrus.
God seems to pay, to pay good wages
for doing his work.
And Cyrus was going to be much wealthier
because he did the work of God.
And very honestly when it was all accomplished,
one day Cyrus acknowledged that God had done
it.
I quote from Ezra, the first chapter of
Ezra and the second verse when the whole
story was complete and this has been accomplished.
This is what Cyrus said, the Lord God
of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms
of the earth and he hath charged me
to build a house at Jerusalem which is
in Judea.
What Cyrus aimed at in his victories we
may well guess.
But what God was aiming at we're not
in left any doubt about that.
We're told in verse 3b, the second part
of verse 3, that God's purpose was that
Cyrus might come to know that the Lord
is God.
That I the Lord which call thee by
thy name am the God of Israel.
Furthermore in the next verse in verse 4
he says that Israel might be released and
that in the day of the great victory
and great conquest Cyrus might know that all
he'd been doing was fulfilling the purpose of
God.
Here was God's objective therefore in using this
man.
Here then beloved is just a very brief
glimpse into the moving of the hand of
God that moves the world.
Things that were going on behind the scene
and the purpose of them.
Our sovereign Lord to whom the nations are
only a drop in the bucket and who
will set his king upon his holy hill
of Zion and give him the heathen for
his inheritance and the uttermost part of the
earth for his possession.
What amazing words they are in Matthew 25
that I would just like to take a
moment to read to you.
Matthew 25 and 31.
When the son of man shall come in
his glory and all the holy angels with
him then shall he sit upon the throne
of his glory and before him shall be
gathered all nations and he shall separate them
one from another as a shepherd divided his
sheep from the goats and he shall set
the sheep on his right hand but the
goats on the left then shall the king
say unto them on his right hand come
ye blessed of my father inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the
world.
I trust that as you have listened this
morning that you may with a spirit anointed
mind you may see the maze and confusion
of all current events from the standpoint of
the throne in heaven.
Our God is on the throne not even
crucial can lift a little finger without permission
from our risen victorious coming faith.
He will raise up one he will put
down another all of this that his purposes
of redemption for his people might be brought
to a wonderful triumphant conclusion.
But beloved the words of this text have
a much more intimate and personal application than
this but I think they will be more
meaningful as you consider them against the background
of what I've just been saying.
I will give thee the treasures of darkness.
I don't want you to listen to these
words spoken to a heathen monarch.
I want you to listen to them as
spoken by the spirit of God to your
own heart this morning.
I will give thee the treasures of darkness
and hidden riches of secret places that thou
mayest know that I am the Lord which
called thee by thy name even the God
of Israel.
Do you think that darkness has any treasure?
Isn't darkness something of which you're all afraid?
You remember the words of the Lord Jesus?
Men prefer darkness to light because their deeds
are evil.
Darkness, physical darkness, suffering, mental darkness, mental agony,
spiritual darkness, a cloud between ourselves and God.
Don't you think that these are things to
be avoided at any cost?
Surely and yet our text says I will
give thee the treasures of darkness.
I want to speak to you very briefly
this morning, intimately, personally about some of the
treasures I have found as a Christian in
days of darkness.
The first I would say is this that
it takes darkness to put a man in
his right perspective.
It takes darkness to put a man in
his right perspective.
You know how much the darkness reveals?
Maybe you hadn't thought about that.
It only reveals just a little bit less
than the light.
You ever asked yourself what a strange world
it would be if it consisted of 24
hours of daylight and if the sun shone
all the time?
If it was like that, we would assume
that this little earth is all that there
is and it has above it a great
big fiery globe which gives us heat and
gives us light.
How ignorant we would be of the rest
of God's creation.
How ignorant of our real position in the
universe.
But how much more fully do I understand
the glory and power and mind of God
when darkness falls?
It's then I know how small I am.
When the Lord dropped the mantle of darkness
in David's time, this is what the psalmist
said.
When I consider thy heaven, the work of
thy fingers, the moon and the stars which
thou hast ordained, what is man that thou
art mindful of him?
Psalm 8 verse 3.
You see, listen, it was the glory of
something that he had been unable to see
until darkness fell, that taught him most about
God and most about himself.
How great thou art, how insignificant I am.
It took darkness to reveal that truth to
him.
It's darkness that puts a man in his
right perspective.
Let me say again, it's darkness that pierces
the mystery of suffering, the mystery of pain.
Darkness has great healing power.
I'm not a botanist, some of you may
be.
But I believe I'm right in saying that
there are some kinds of trees which, when
they are planted on streets which are lit
all through the night, they just don't grow.
They suffer from a kind of insomnia, from
which trees can suffer.
You see what happens when the sun goes
down, the lights go up.
And they're never in the dark and they
languish.
They get exhausted being constantly in a blaze
of light from which there's no relief and
no rest.
And so they have to stay awake.
Darkness you see is not merely negative, it's
not merely the absence of light, it's the
source of growth and personal enrichment.
Listen to this word from Psalm 119 verse
67.
Before I was afflicted I went astray, but
now I have kept thy word.
It is good for me that I have
been afflicted, that I might learn thy status.
What a tremendous amount of light is shed
upon some baffling, mysterious experience, against which I
have fought and said I must avoid this
at any cost, and it must stop.
What an enormous amount of light is shed
upon that experience by the treasures of darkness.
Furthermore, darkness prepares me for my home in
heaven.
You know it was out of that strange,
awful darkness, from the sixth until the ninth
hour, from midday until three in the afternoon,
on the cross of Calvary, where our Lord
was made sin for us.
When God, even God, turned away his faith
from his Son as he identified himself with
the sin of mankind, it was out of
that darkness that heaven opened its gates so
wide to every believing heart.
Oh how could you or I ever begin,
ever begin to value the treasure that come
out of that darkness.
Every gift of God, every blessing of his
Spirit, everything we have in Jesus Christ, you
can go right back to its source, and
there you find the force in that blackness
of Calvary.
God who commanded the light to shine out
of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to
give the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ.
Now, as I suggest to you this morning
that darkness prepares us for our home in
heaven, that darkness penetrates the mystery, the mystery
of pain, that darkness does these things.
Let me just ask you today to share
some things with me.
Is God taking you today among some dark
experiences?
Is he?
Is it, is it deep sorrow of heart?
I wonder.
Is it the absence of any sense of
his presence in your life at all, even
though you've been a Christian for years, and
yet somehow it seems so dark these days?
Is it personal bereavement?
Even though perhaps that bereavement was years ago,
it's left you so alone, so utterly alone.
Is it discouragement?
Is it perhaps misunderstanding and misrepresentation by other
people, especially by Christian people?
Is it that your service for the Master
seems so fruitless, not seen much blessing if
any lately?
Is it a problem in your life and
there seems no answer to it?
Is it a pain from which there seems
no release at all?
Is it circumstances somewhere and there's no escape?
Is there temptation which is so relentless that
there's no relief from the pressure of it?
Is it one or other of these things
and today you're in the dark?
I wonder.
Why does God do that to us?
Why has he done it to me?
Many times.
Why does he do it to you?
Well, let me suggest, and I think that
I may make this suggestion because these are
things that are precious to me in my
own heart.
They're not just something I happen to read
in a text, but something that I've proved
in the years of my life.
I think God puts us into the darkness
in order that we might possess the hidden
riches of secret places.
I think he's been obliged to do it
that I might, as it were, see the
star and see his greatness and my smallness.
Do you remember the word that that Moses
spoke on behalf of the Lord before the
people entered into the land?
You would read it in Deuteronomy 8 and
verse 2.
Listen.
Thou shalt remember all the way which the
Lord thy God led thee these 40 years
in the wilderness, to humble thee, to prove
thee, to know what was in thine heart,
whether thou wouldest keep his commandments or no.
You have it repeated in the words of
Job when he says in the 42nd chapter
of his book, verses 5 and 6, I
have heard of thee by the hearing of
the ear, but now mine eyes seeth thee.
Wherefore I repent, I abhor myself, and I
repent in dust and ashes.
It was darkness that broke.
Oh beloved, I wonder if it needed darkness.
I can tell you in bare testimony, humbly
to this, it needed darkness to humble me.
It did.
You ever get resentful with people?
Do you ever know in a particular situation
they're telling lies about you?
You're right, they're wrong.
You get mad, really mad, angry?
Do you?
I wonder.
You find yourself being misrepresented, misunderstood and even
misquoted, publicly as well as privately.
You find people scandal mongering with their tongues
about you and you know all the time
it isn't true.
You get mad?
I used to get mad.
I don't now, by the grace of God.
He put me into a dark place to
teach me how small I am, how small
I am, how insignificant I am, and how
great he is.
It's lovely to leave your cause with Jesus.
It's lovely to leave the case with him.
I'll let him work it out.
But maybe, maybe when you react as you
do and you get mad and resentful, God
has to put you right in the dark
to show you that you're not really important
at all.
That you're only a very little insignificant person.
And he has to teach you that the
very circumstances and people whom you resent and
would try to escape from and run away
from, are the very nails which God is
using to crucify the flesh.
Darkness humbles us.
Or let me share something else.
Going through the dark recently, has it been
to stop you wandering and going astray?
Has it been to make you say with
a full heart, and with tears in your
eyes, I've wandered far away from God.
Now I'm coming home.
The paths of sin too long I've trod,
now I'm coming home.
Beloved, did it take the darkness to make
you afraid of yourself?
Did it take some dark experience to make
you absolutely terrified as to where life was
taking you?
Did it?
I wonder if it took the darkness to
make you so afraid that you began, listen,
nestling instead of wrestling.
Did it?
Did it take darkness to press you into
the heart of Jesus?
I wonder.
The light has been fierce.
The glare of publicity has been unbearable.
Many, many times how gladly you would have
withdrawn from it all and hidden yourself a
mile away.
So I put you in the dark.
The secret of the Lord is with them
that fear him.
Did it take the darkness to stop you
wandering?
Did it take the darkness to stop your
sinning?
Did it take you the darkness to press
you into the heart of Jesus?
I wonder.
Or perhaps he sent the darkness, as our
text says, that thou mayest know that I
am the Lord which call thee by thy
name.
I hope you got every word of the
message that was sung to us this morning
by Mrs. Lowry.
That's the message.
Oh the treasures of the secret place of
communion with Jesus Christ.
What a thrill it is if you happen
to travel in another country, a strange land,
and maybe you're in a crowd somewhere, perhaps
with people if you don't know, and suddenly
somebody from among the crowd calls you by
your name.
And you find you've met an old friend
in an unexpected place.
And a place where you thought you knew
nobody, and nobody knew you, suddenly somebody greets
you.
Why?
That person who perhaps was only a casual
acquaintance.
You might, if you're not too careful about
the bounds of propriety, you might go up
to that comparative stranger, yet you knew him
and he knew you, and you might hug
him.
You felt so far away from home and
there you met someone whom you knew.
I will give thee the hidden riches of
secret places.
It's taken darkness in my life, darkness in
my soul many times, to take me into
an intimate fellowship with the Lord, who calleth
his own sheep by name and leadeth them
out.
I hope I do not surprise you or
shock you, but I never would seek to
preach above my own experience.
And I would tell you no more than
the truth, when I say that if I
only prayed when I felt like praying, I
wouldn't do much praying.
Ah, but it's times of darkness that have
driven me into a deep fellowship with the
Lord Jesus, to discover some of the riches
of secret places.
You know, the wisest of all men, part
of course from the Lord who is unique
in his path all by himself, but the
wisest of all earthly rulers, Solomon, once said
in Proverbs 25 and verse 2, it is
the glory of God to conceal a thing,
but the honor of kings is to search
out a matter.
The glory of a king is not his
little power, not his little palace, not his
automobiles, not this, but his ability to search
out something.
And that's the glory of every king and
every priest unto God, the glory of your
life and mine.
You watch the little child grow.
Do you remember a day when you were
little children?
I do.
Oh, it seems so long ago now.
We just sort of couldn't look above the
level of the table, and had to stand
on tiptoe to see what was going on.
My, and they got to a time when
a few months late, at that time, well
you could leave them perfectly safely doing that,
but in another month or two you couldn't.
If you did, I tell you, the ice
cream would go, and something else would disappear
when they began to be able to see
over the top, and began to be able
to reach out.
You ever noticed how your little child begins
to grow and grow and grow like that?
He's always, she's always searching out, searching out,
searching out.
Different levels, deeper experiences, and that's life.
And we're all doing that.
Now, now it's the glory of the king
to search out a matter.
I once had a faith in the Lord
Jesus, which is little more, was little more
than a light-hearted statement of doctrine, which
was perfectly sound.
But my faith is not that now.
It took darkness to make my faith real.
It took darkness to bring all that I
believe in doctrine to be part of my
very life and my very being.
Do you see what I mean?
I wonder if it's taken darkness to make
your faith your very own.
I'm sure that a Christian home is a
great blessing, but I'm sure that the children
of Christian parents are in great peril of
a second-hand faith.
And very, very often God has to put
such people, dear folks, how we'd love to
spare them from it.
How dear mothers would love to spare their
sons and daughters from it.
But very often a mother with a broken
heart has had to watch her son go
right away from God, until in darkness his
faith has become real.
Don't despair, dear mother and father here today.
Don't despair of that boy, that girl, who
at this time may seem to be at
the other end of the earth, miles away
from God.
Don't despair of them.
You cannot talk to them about Jesus, but
you can talk to Jesus about them.
You cannot argue with them about Christ, you
waste your time.
The moment you talk with them, they answer
back and shut you up, and you feel
so helpless and bereft, and you cannot but
believe that the boy, the girl for which
you've spent, for whom you've spent so much
and cared so much, could be in that
position today.
Oh beloved, it takes darkness to make their
faith their own.
A superficial, creedal statement isn't enough, and there
comes a day when that which you have
taught, when there were little children at your
knee, there comes a day when in brokenness
of heart and brokenness of spirit, they discover
that you were right and they were wrong.
I grant that that may be true of
any dear child of yours today, who seems
far away from God.
It took darkness to do that for me.
You see in the early church, they built
their doctrine on their experience.
Their doctrine was required to explain their experience.
Now we have our doctrine, but we haven't
got much experience.
We try to build an experience on doctrine.
There was a day, you remember, that our
Lord spoke about it, when there was a
man who had treasure in a field, and
it was hidden.
And oh, what joy and what wealth were
his when it was found and discovered.
I often wish that the Lord had told
us how he found it.
I think it was probably when his hand
was on the plow in the heat of
the day, in some lonely furrow, as he
was digging up the ground and furrowing and
working.
Then he found the treasure, in the time
of stress and darkness.
You see the Lord says in Psalm 18
verse 11, he makes the darkness his pavilion.
Still times in my life, when God puts
me through experiences like this, I used to
be afraid of them.
Still times when he just seems to take
me into the dark, for a moment, and
I begin to say, now Lord, what are
you going to show me here in this,
in this experience right now?
Because I've discovered this, you see, that when
you look at the dark cloud from the
outside, it's all so dark, and the experience
so dreadful, that when you get right in
the middle, it's as bright as noonday sun.
He makes the darkness his pavilion.
He's there, right in it, to reveal something
more of himself.
May I conclude just by saying this to
you.
You never can have a safety first campaign
in the life of faith.
Never.
Absolutely impossible.
In the venture of a soul with God,
there's no such thing as safety first.
You discover God in Jesus Christ, he takes
you on by one step of faith, a
succession of steps, in the dark, one after
another, and yet he promises that he that
followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but
shall have the light of life.
Jesus said, I thank thee, O Father, that
thou hast hid these things from the wise
and prudent, and revealed them unto day.
I do pray, dear friend, today, I don't
know to whom this message may have had
particular application, except to my own life, but
I do pray that any of you whom
God has been putting through days and months
and years of darkness, I do pray that
you may be discovering secret riches in secret
places, and laying hold of the treasures of
darkness that come to you, and only come
to you, in communion with God.
Sometimes I like to sing this hymn.
I only do it when I'm alone, don't
worry, but I do like to sing this
hymn.
I sing it to a tune that you
wouldn't know, so I wouldn't even think of
singing it to you at this point, but
listen to it.
You know it?
In heavenly love abiding, no change my heart
shall fear, and safe is such confiding, for
nothing changes here.
The storm may roar without me, my heart
may low be laid, but God, but God
is round about me, and can I be
dismayed?
Green pastures are before me, which yet I
have not seen.
Bright skies will soon be o'er me,
where the dark clouds have been.
My hope I cannot measure, my path to
life is free.
My savior has my treasure, and he will
walk with me.
So, dear soul in the dark, hallelujah anyway.