good to see you all and to be seen by you I'd like to begin this session by reading a portion from the old testament scriptures from the book of Genesis from chapter 9 beginning at verse 18 the word of God reads now the sons of Noah who went out of the ark were shem ham and Japheth and ham was the father of canaan these three were the sons of Noah and from these the whole world and earth was populated and Noah began to be a farmer and he planted a vineyard then he drank of the
wine and was drunk and became uncovered in his tent and ham the father of Canaan saw the nakedness of his brother of his father and told his two brothers outside but Shem and Japheth took a garment laid it on both their shoulders and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father their faces were turned away and they did not see their fathers nakedness so Noah walked from his wine and knew what his younger son had done to him and then he said cursed be Canaan the servant of servants he shall be to his brethren
and he said blessed be the Lord the God of Shem and they Canaan be his servants may God enlarge Japheth and may he dwell in the tents of Shem and make Aenon be his servant and Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years so all the days of Noah were 950 years and he died can we pray for him again our Father and our God we have been blessed to hear from your Holy Word now we ask that the same spirit who inspired this word originally may be present to illumine its contents for
us for our instruction and for our edification and for our training in righteousness for we ask it in Jesus name America no of course is the one who is described as having found grace in the eyes of the Lord in the Old Testament he and his family alone escaped the universal deluge that destroyed the earth as an act of divine judgment he's one of the few characters in Old Testament history he is described as being righteous but in the passage that I just read for you we don't get so much a glimpse of Noah's righteousness
but more of his unrighteousness so we're told that after the flood and the waters receded and he and his family left the ark and erected an altar to the glory of God that he undertook a a new vocation he had spent many long months perhaps years as a carpenter constructing the ark and was the greatest ship builder perhaps in all of history but now he turned his skills to another vocation that of farming and particularly as a vintner he was a wine grower and he grew his grapes not for raisins not for Welch's grape juice
but for the production of wine because he fell into the problem of overindulgence of his own produce and as a result he became drunk dropped down knocked out drunk and so he takes to his bed in his tent and in his drunken nests he is paying no attention to his clothing or the covers that were supposed to conceal his naked body from anybody's purview and there in his stupor he lay naked and unconscious now one of his three sons walks in the tent and sees his father's compromising condition and apparently was somewhat amused by it
he goes out and he calls his two brothers and he said you can't believe the old man I mean he's lying in the bed in there drunk honest as a skunk and naked as a jaybird this was hardly a giving of honor to his father and the other two brothers Shem and Japheth were not amused instead they had a sense of compassion for their father in his embarrassing and shameful condition and were devoted to the purpose of covering his father's shame and so together they took a blanket and they spread the blanket between their shoulders
and walked into their father's tent backwards and as they were walking backwards they were pulling this blanket over the body of their father while all the while keeping their head turned away that they not their eyes on their fathers nakedness now we do know that in the Old Testament Levitical law the looking upon one's parents nakedness is a euphemism that times four kinds of incest but I don't think that that was what was going on in this episode I think the text is as plain as it sounds and that the description that you've just heard
is what happened that the problem here was not some kind of in sexual homosexual relationship that Hamm was trying to carry on but it was simply his mockery of his father in this condition of nakedness many many years ago I wrote a book that the original title of the book was the psychology of atheism it's been reprinted since and under the title if there is a God why are there a theist this little book in this book I have a chapter entitled God and nakedness at the time I wrote this book I made a survey
of the scriptures of the use of the Greek word gum nas which is the word naked and was extremely fascinated to see how this word and concept is found in Sacred Scripture and the import of it I think is extremely fascinating for our consideration and to get a glimpse of that I want to go even earlier in Genesis back to Genesis chapter 3 where we read this beginning the the last verse of chapter 2 after the creation narrative verse 25 of chapter 2 seems like a concluding unscientific PostScript with no significant information in this verse
it simply reads and they were both naked that is the man and the wife and were not ashamed so we read that statement of our original status in the Garden of Eden when man and woman were created for each other they were told that they were naked and unashamed about it now before I read what follows in chapter 3 I'm gonna harken back to a book that was written by a ZOA logical sociologist in the 20th century whose name was Desmond Morris and the title of his little book was the naked 8 and in that
book he indicated from a zoological perspective that there are a hundred and ninety-three known species of primates in the ZOA logical world and of those hundred and ninety-three species of primates one of them differs from all the rest 192 of those primates although they are of different shapes and sizes and styles nevertheless are covered head-to-toe with thick growth of air or fur the lone exception through those 193 primates is the one known as Homo sapiens who is not so covered in hair head-to-toe but rather the unique characteristic of Homo sapiens is that he is garbed
and he alone among the primates in artificial articles of clothing never wonder about that every animal every bird in the world that we see comes born in their birthday suit and they live in their birthday suit until the day that they die in their birthday suit and even the other primates that we've studied and made and the rest have noticed that some of these advanced primates are ancestors so to speak have discovered to be using primitive forms of tools just like our ancient cavemen used but among those tools has not yet been found a sewing
needle or a weaving loom because these primates are monkeys uncle's have not yet gone into the clothing business they're perfectly satisfied to run around the jungle beating on their chests and scratching under their arms while being completely naked and unashamed because they're covered with the covering that God gave them in nature but not so human beings human beings in every society in every nature even those that run around almost totally naked in primitive places still wear codpieces and the like because it is basically common to human beings to wear clothing of course human beings have
a certain fascination with nakedness as the pornography business indicates and the screen venues and girlie magazines and all arrest us and the advertisement business in America uses some forms of nakedness to sell just about every product that can be commercially distributed nevertheless in spite of this preoccupation with nudity I've noticed in the audience today that everyone who is in here today is to some degree clad I haven't seen anybody walking around yet naked as a jaybird we're still wearing clothes we had a fascination decade or so ago of those who indulged in the practice of
what was called streaking all of a sudden in the middle of a football game somebody would run out onto the field Barenaked and while the police were chasing them across the area but notice that even then it was called streaking not strolling because we have a certain antipathy about being found publicly unclothed naked and nude now where does that all come from because in creation we have just read from the book of Genesis that when we were created just like the other hundred ninety-two primates which we are not to be included nevertheless we were made
naked and unashamed but something drastic happened to change all of that and to explain the phenomenon that I've just mentioned of the universal desire of human beings to under normal circumstances in public situations to be closed and I think it's a wonderful thing that we have that but chapter three begins with the ominous words that are somewhat foreboding now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made and he said to the woman has God indeed said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden and
the woman said to the serpent when we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden but a fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden God has said you shall not eat it nor shall you touch it lest you die and then the serpent said to the woman you will not surely die for God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil that was the primordial temptation the deification of human beings the quest for
autonomy you'll be just like God you're not going to die this is an unjust prohibition placed upon you by your Creator he doesn't want to share his deity with you and he knows that if you eat this you will be just like him when the woman saw that the tree was good for food that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree desirable to make one wise she took of the fruit and ate she also gave to her husband with her and he ate and what happened with the first bite did they die with
the first bite with the first act of disobedience with the first recorded sin in human history the immediate consequence was this listened carefully then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves covering the first experience of sin was an awareness of shame an awareness of guilt provoking within the heart of the sinner a profound desire to hide to find a place where their nakedness of which they were now ashamed could be concealed and dear friends from that moment to this
day human beings have been fugitives from the presence of God seeking desperately to find a way to hide we are cosmic fugitives searching out the places of darkness where we cannot be seen where we cannot be known this is why John tells us that that the reason why God's judgment is upon the human race is because we love the darkness rather than the light because our deeds are evil and what salvation involves is being brought out of that darkness into the light where we can experience once again the sense of being they could without being
ashamed you know one of the things that that frightens me that touches the very fabric of our humanity is the assault on the sacred institution of marriage that has been unprecedented in Western civilization in fact in the history of the whole world that what we see today is multitudes of people who decide to live together outside the bounds of matrimony outside the place where covenants are made in the presence of the authority and the witness of God people have a cavalier attitude where they come together and be naked with each other without a sacred vow
without a sacred promise people say what's the whole thing about a marriage certificate it's just a piece of paper it's not a people it's just a piece of paper it's a solemn vow and covenant made in the presence of God where two people with God as their witness can afford to be completely naked with each other without fear and without shame and we've lost that holy condition that God has given to us in His grace giving us a place where his blessing is that here you can be naked with each other without hiding without being
concealed without cowering in the darkness with the lights on but the curtains drawn in the privacy of your relationship where you can be the most vulnerable of any place that you can be as a human being naked and unashamed we've lost something extremely human and extremely important and do not be deceived by the godless culture that promotes this sort of thing so those of you who pastors need to preach to this point I hear people all the time talk to me by while I'm a member of this church and I'm a member of this church
and I love my pastor my girlfriend and I go to church every Sunday and then we're going together on a cruise next week you know and it's just so cavalier about it and I'm just saying you're in the church and you're living like this without any kind of discipline without any kind of admonition from the Word of God shame on you and worse than that shame on your pastors who aren't calling you to a godly way of life but again that initial condition of being naked and unashamed was immediately lost with sin and so when
they knew that they were naked here's where the garment industry began they sewed fig leaves together so that the first tools that we find out in Scripture or needles to make clothes and so they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves notice it doesn't say clothes it said coverings they weren't making these clothes because they were cold they weren't making these clothes because there were mosquitoes in the Garden of Eden they were making these clothes to cover their nakedness they were making clothes not for adorning but for concealment and then they heard the sound of
the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day oh listen every time they heard that's that sound before think of it there is Adam and Eve there in the garden paradise of Eden the lush beautiful place where no sin had invaded no evil had made made made manifest and then the cool of the day they would hear footsteps and they would say the Lord is coming and you could see the countenance of Adam and Eve immediately it changed to pure radiance and anticipation of the visit into their domain of the Lord
God Almighty but on this occasion when they heard the footsteps of God when they heard the presence of the Lord in the midst of the garden instead of being filled with joy they were filled with abject terror and the only thing they wanted to do was to get out of there to get away from there as fast as they possibly could and so Adam and Eve and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God this is our original retreat from the presence of God and that retreat mechanism has passed from Adam to
his sons and daughters to all generations so that we are born in original sin we are born with this desperate need to flee from the immediate presence of God nothing is more terrifying to a sinful human being than the immediate presence of God that's why we hate to talk about his holiness because nothing exposes our nakedness more nothing drives us more deeply towards concealment than the presence of a holy God that's nothing new that's what happened with Adam and Eve they hid themselves among the trees of the garden and the Lord God called to Adam
said to him asked him a question where are you now I've pushed that narrative too far you get the idea that God didn't know where they were he knew exactly the tree behind which they were hiding they had no hope of escaping from his gaze or from his knowledge he knew what they had done why they had done it and where they were at that moment because ladies and gentlemen the first Mission Impossible attempted by a human being was the attempt to hide from Almighty God what a fool's errand that is we simply cannot do
it David understood it he said Lord if I where can I flee from your spirit if I ascend into heaven if I make my bed and shield behold thou art there before a word is formed on my lips you know it all together it just can't escape it wherever you are wherever you're hiding he knows and he doesn't just stand on the mountain and say Olly Olly in come free you know here you come ready or not in your idea all or not he knows your hidey-hole that reminds me of a friend of mine who
was a soldier in Iraq and after Saddam Hussein had fled from one of his many palaces went into hiding my friend and a group of his troops were marching the outskirts of Baghdad and they were walking down the road and off to the side one of them noticed a strange unusual indentation in the ground and they went over to investigate and they appeared down and then this spider hole cowering in fear and filth was saddam hussein my friend was involved in the capture of that man and of course the rest is history that you can't
hide there's no place to go the darkness is not dark enough to conceal me from the gaze of God so God said where are you and Adam said I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid what I was afraid I was afraid of my Creator I was afraid of the one who gave me this garden that's afraid the one who created my wife I was afraid of the one who gave me my soul I was afraid the one who breathed life into my nostrils one who's given to me nothing but goodness I
was afraid when I heard your voice because I was naked I was afraid because I was naked and so I hid myself God said who told you that you were naked have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat well you know what happened then the man said the woman that you gave me she gave me of the tree and I ate so God said to the woman what is this you have done the woman said the serpent deceived me and so I ate then what comes from this
is the curse of God the curse on the serpent the curse on the woman the curse on the mane the curse on the land you know one of the phrases of the Christmas hymn joy to the world as that refrain far as the curse is found how far is that God's curse in this instance extends to the whole world that's why Paul tells us that the whole creation groans together waiting for the redemption of the sons of men as we live in a universe that is under the curse because of this violation of the law
of God and then it ends like this and Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of the living of all living now you want to hear the gospel the protoevangelium we would have been found earlier in the context of the curse of the serpent that the promise that God made that the seed of the of the woman would crush the head of the serpent while bruising his heel in the process that's the first promise of the gospel but the first action of the gospel the first redemptive act in all of human
history takes place right here in verse 21 also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them wow what an act of mercy or the Lord God stooped over and said Adam let me have that needle these clothes that you've hastily put together from fig leaves don't you realize these leaves will wither and die and fall away they're really inadequate articles of clothing let me do it for you and just as God had made the coat of the deer and of the bear and of the peacock he condescended to
make clothes for his embarrassed ashamed guilty creatures do you see how important that is for understanding Redemption God could have said yes now you're naked and now you know it now you're naked and now you're ashamed too bad you're out of here no more Eden no more paradise and you can roam the earth for the rest of your days looking for a place to hide but you will live in constant shame and in constant embarrassment because you will find no safe place of concealment no first act of redemption was God stooping to cover the shame
of his creatures now take that motif which I trace him in this book and don't have the time to go thoroughly into this afternoon trace it throughout the scripture and you will see the covering motif go if you will to the worship of Israel in the tabernacle go to yom kippur and the day of atonement go when the blood of the animal is carried by the high priest one day out of the year into the holy of holies what's done with that blood or is it go there is a Hamas Terry on there is a
coddled egg a a reconciliation on the top of the throne of God is the mercy seat and the blood of the animal is poured on top of the throne of God why it covers the law it covers the judgment an atonement has been made a blood offering has been made a blood offering then in and of itself ladies and gentlemen is completely utterly worthless the author of Hebrews tells us in the New Testament that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin these were figures pointing beyond the Bulls pointing beyond the goats putting
beyond the lamb to the lamb without blemish who would come who alone had the kind of blood that would really cover our sin the atonement of Christ is dramatized in this act in the tabernacle and later in the temple where the blood of Christ is shed as a cover its prefigured in the animal skins outside the Garden of Eden among the trees so that human beings from ad and onward look forward to the day where their nakedness would be covered not in part but in whole so that at least under the gaze of God once
again we can be naked and unashamed you know I said earlier that nobody in this world knows me like my wife but even her knowledge of me is imperfect incomplete and yet I feel more safe in her presence than I feel in the presence of any human being in the world I can be naked in front of her it's not always that safe not always about a year ago I was stepping out of the shower and my wife looked at me and she said honey I got to say something I watched she said when I
married you I knew that as long as you were alive you wouldn't be involved in some kind of sport but I never thought it would be sumo wrestling it's not always safe so I went the Weight Watchers to the next day sumo wrestling but you know there's nowhere where I feel more safe than in the presence of God I come with nothing in my hand no place to hide I know he knows me altogether and it's a wonderful thing I think one of the most penetrating books written in 20th century by an atheist was beating
in nothingness by jean-paul Sartre where saw Sartre - gives some rather unusual arguments against the existence of God which I won't get into right now but Sartre was obsessed with the idea that human beings find their humanity in being free functioning subjects not objects and the difference between monkeys in the zoo and people is that you can go to the zoo and stand outside the bars and stare at the monkeys and the monkeys don't get embarrassed but if you're walking down the street and you see another person you stop there and start staring at them
and staring at then they're liable to slap you or call a policeman we have conventions in society where we know how long we can hold eye contact before that eye contact becomes offensive you know the number one phobia listed in America is not the fear of bugs or the fear of water or the fear of fire do you know what the number one phobia is the fear of public speaking and one of the reasons of that is this is that when I'm sitting here or standing here speaking to you everybody in most everybody in here
looking at me you're staring at me like I'm a monkey in the zoo and and and and half the time your wool gather you're not thinking about what I'm saying you say why is he by those eyes that he wears them why does he wise away why does he wear his hair that way maybe you ought to be a sumo wrestler and if and if I knew all the things that went through your mind while I'm speaking to you I'd run out the door and never try to do this again and yet at the same
time one of the rules of public speaking is that the speakers try to maintain eye contact with the audience and I remember when I was in school or in seminary in speech class the speech teacher would try to drill that into the guys and saying you guys have to start looking at people engaging them as you're in dressing them sprawl disregard that I said what do you mean he said you need to remove your gaze from your audience and look at the wall from time to time because you bore a hole in their head and
give him you're relentless in the hider that's the way it is we don't like to be stared at do we because when we're stared at like objects in an art museum we're reduced to objects and we lose our subjectivity and that's why Sartre said if God is omniscient then he sees us and knows us all the time beneath his gaze we're reduced to objects we lose our humanity God is like a cosmic boy or looking through a keyhole from heaven watching our every move and he couldn't stand that thought if ever there was a philosopher
who sought to find a tree to hide behind it was jean-paul Sartre and and when I read that in being in nothingness I thought what a shame that sword has never experienced the benevolent gaze of God has never understood what David said when after he was exposed in his sin and in his nakedness and once he received the mercy of God he said to God Oh God search me and know me see if there be any wicked way within me purge me in the secret places of my soul see that's the cry of a saint
that's a cry of a saint who's been clothed by the mercy and the grace of God at the same time that we had this image we find throughout Scripture not only the image of nakedness but the also the image of the inadequacy of the clothes that we wear if I can look first of all at Zakaria you know I've written 70 some books I don't know how many I don't count them I don't know who he has the time to do that and I don't ask you to read them all just buy them I'm kidding
please but people often ask me you know of all those books which one do you think is the most important or which one do you do you love the most I said I really don't know but it might be my little children's book the priests were 30 close because in that I have a little child's story about imputation about the clothing of a priest where the Prince exchanged his royal garments for the filthy garments of the priest and that captures for me the essence of our salvation and you know one of the things for which
I'm extremely grateful to John Piper is he's written a lot of things but nothing more important in my opinion than his little book on imputation you know in the last 10 or 15 years even in the so-called evangelical world and it can only be called so-called at this point there has been a large assault made against the doctrine of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ and even against the doctrine of the perfect act of obedience of Jesus which is absolutely deadly to biblical Christianity and when I saw that John undertook to write a defense
of imputation I was so grateful for that volume if you haven't read it you make sure you get it because it's it develops what I'm talking about here so much more thoroughly than I can in these brief moments together but the inspiration for my little book on the priests with dirty clothes comes from the book of Zechariah from the third chapter where we read this account then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the aims of the Lord and Satan standing at his right hand to oppose him so he sees this vision of
the high priest and the priest the standing in the presence of the messenger of God the angels of the Lord but there's somebody else there and it's Satan and Satan is standing there to oppose this priest know what's the purpose of his opposition what is it provokes this antagonism from the Prince of Lies and the Lord said the Satan the Lord rebuke you Satan the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you is this not a brand plucked from the fire you ever have a marshmallow roast when you were kid maybe go out sleep overnight you
tense and you make a little fire and you bring the marshmallows and hot dogs and you cook them up over the fire and then it's it's time to put the stick in the marshmallow and you put it in the fire and you take the marshmallow off and then sometimes your hand gets on the end of that stick and you pull your hand off and it's burning but not only is it hurting but it's black as soot you've just taken a brand out of the fire and God says to Satan about this priest he said don't
you know who this priest is he's a brand that's been pulled out of the fire I've rescued this man from the burning of course he's covered with soot what would you expect after having been in the fire when we read and Joshua was clothed with filthy garments he was clothed he wasn't naked but his clothes were filthy filthy is that metaphor found elsewhere in Scripture all of our righteousness is what filthy rags in the sight of God he's standing there in these filthy garments before the angel and God answered and spoke to those who stood
before him saying take away the filthy garments from him and then he said to Joshua I have removed your iniquity from you and I will clothe you with rich robes and I said let them put a clean turban on his head and they put a clean tournament on his head and they put the clothes on him and the angel of the Lord stood by do you know that if you're a Christian this is what God has done for every one of us that he looked at us looked at our nakedness looked at our coverings looked
at our clothes and saw filthy rags rags totally inappropriate to be worn in his presence that's something else I have to say drives me crazy in this 21st century how people dress when they go to church they would never go to the White House dressed like that but they'll go into the presence of the Living God and the sloppiest clothes they can find and those appealed of James about you know hey the poor guy can't have a shirt that's fine he's welcome my church anytime but you're not poor you don't come into the presence of
God like a slob get dressed up or dressed down but for heaven's sake get dressed when you come to church and into the presence of God what's wrong with us today we have no sense of who worship no sense of the presence of God and yet he's the very one who's closed us in the garments of the prince the finest garments there is finer than a linen finer than gold the garments of the righteousness of Christ turn with me quickly to Isaiah chapter 61 where we have the Old Testament record of the mission set forth
for the Messiah that is to accompany Testament Jesus go to the synagogue and they asked him as the visiting rabbi to read the text for the day and comment on it and he reads the text from Isaiah 61 the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor he sent me to heal the brokenhearted to proclaim Liberty to the captives the opening of the prison to those who are bound to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord the day of vengeance of our God
to comfort all who mourn to console those who mourn in Zion to give them beauty for Ashes the oil of joy for mourning the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness that they may be called trees of righteousness the planning of the Lord that he might be glorified and after the text was read Jesus gave the shortest homily ever on record where he sat down to speak and he said today this text is fulfilled in your midst what was Jesus saying he was saying I am the one that Isaiah is talking about here I
am your Messiah but if we go later on to the end of the chapter Isaiah writes this I will greatly rejoice in the Lord my soul shall be joyful in my god for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation he has covered me with the robe of righteousness you know when I stand before God on the Judgment Day My Lord Jesus is going to come right out and as my defense attorney he's going to say are see I got you covered boy oh boy to be covered with the righteousness of Christ it doesn't
get any better than that as a bride adorns herself with jewels as the earth brings forth its bud as the garden causes the things that are sown in the spring forth so the Lord God will called righteousness and praise to spring forth this is our salvation to be clothed in the righteousness of Jesus let me finish this by doing something I never do at these conferences and that is I don't read poems like Ravi does he's great at that I'm no good at that but I want to read a passage from this book if I
can find it here it is written by the 19th century Danish gadfly philosopher søren kierkegaard that speaks the ultimate hope of the new testament the hope of our final covering of the permanent clothing that we will get that will be immortal that we will be freed forever from the threat of nakedness and be able to freely enjoy the gaze of God Kierkegaard celebrates this covering dimension when he wrote these words hear them please oh sure hiding place for sinners Oh blessed hiding place especially if one has first learned what it means when conscience accuses and
the law condemns and justice pursues with punishment and then when we read under despair to find repose in the only shelter that is to be found a man even the most loving man can it the most give the extenuation an excuse living it to thee to make what use of them you aren't able but himself he cannot give you that only Jesus can do he gives you himself as a shelter it is not just some comforting thought he gives you it's not a doctrine he communicates Ino he gives you himself and as the night spreads
concealment odhh over everything so that he give up his life and become a covering behind which lies a sinful world that he's saved through this covering justice does not break as the sun's rays break through coloured glass merely softened by refraction no it impotently breaks against this covering is reflected from it and this not passed through he gave himself as a covering for you and for me let's pray father how we love this exchange that you took upon yourself our filthy garments of sin and gave to us through your grace the imputed righteousness the perfect
obedience of your dear son Jesus Christ so that when we stand before you we stand clothed in his clothes covered by his garments Oh Oh what wonderful mercy and grace amen
