Well, good morning, everybody.
Turn to Deuteronomy, chapter 32, please, if you want to follow
along. I want to read Deuteronomy 32,
9 through 12. I debated whether to use this
text or another one that I'm going to read as my text. We'll read both of them in time. Deuteronomy 32 verse nine. The Lord's portion is his people. Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. Now, I want to emphasize that
the people talking talked about here in that verse, the Lord's portion, the Lord's
inheritance is his elect. That may be you and it may not
be, but that's our Lord's inheritance. That's what that verse says. Jacob is the lot of his inheritance
and his refers back to the Lord there in that verse. He, the
Lord found him, his portion and his inheritance in a desert land
and in the waste howling wilderness. He led him about, he instructed
him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth
up her nest, fluttereth over her wing, over her young, spreads
abroad her wings, takes them and bears them on her wings. So the Lord alone did lead him. And there was no strange God
with him. In other words, he did it alone
and no one helped him. Last week I was sitting on the
back porch and there was a flock of vultures
flying over my backyard. A lot of things went through
my mind. concerning their interest in what might have been there,
what they could see that I couldn't see. I know they'll come down
on a mouse when you get out and bale hay, cut hay someday in
Danville, and they'd circle overhead and you'd find them literally
on a field mouse that they had spotted from 300 feet or more
in the air. Their eyesight's unbelievable. But primarily in watching those
vultures, it reminded me of seeing the mention of eagles in the
scriptures and that's where I want to go there in verse 11. An eagle
stirreth up her nest, flutters over a young, spreads her wings,
takes them and bears them on her wings. I found in reading
and referencing all the times that that word eagle is used
in the scriptures that sometimes it refers to the eagles, which
we're familiar with. And sometimes it refers to just
plain old, what we know as vultures. And that's what was flying over
my yard and reminded me of this. In our text in verse 11, the
Hebrew word for eagle there means to tear with the beak. And in
the day in which this was written, There were a lot of large birds
in that area of the world, and all of them were attracted by
dead animals. Animals which had been slaughtered
for tribal feasts and sacrifices. There was plenty of flesh around
for these vultures to feed on, and these eagles. But the eagle
family, I don't want to make too much of the natural aspect
of an eagle, but some of the points are interesting. The eagle
family of bird couldn't be separated then as it is now. We've got
names for families and species and all those things now. But
it couldn't be separated from the vultures by their habit of
feeding because they both eat dead remains of other animals
just as the vultures did. So the word eagle in the scripture
is used almost universally. It's interpreted as eagle to
include vultures. But there's one distinction that
always holds good if I read all this right. Eagles never flock. there won't be six or eight or
ten. And I picture that cow, that
dead cow that I knew of in Danville, where that there would be as
high as 20 vultures on that cow and it took them three months
to strip the bones off of it. I watched it. Eagles never flock. You'll see two of them because
they pair. together, a male and a female,
and it's for life. And they hunt for themselves.
A vulture's lazy, and they feed on what's already dead. And eagles
hunt. You've pictured them, seen them
swoop down, pull a fish out of a pond or a lake. And if you want to find an eagle,
you've got to look in the tallest tree, in the forest or the highest
crack in a cliff. It's there you'll find them and
their nest. They live in pairs in solitude. They hunt and feed. If they have young, one will
stay with the nest and the other one go, but there's always that
eagle there. and they bring that nourishment
back to their young and they feed it to them so that the young
can practice tearing that meat apart. Hopefully I can bring this together.
Bear with me. In contrast to those eagles,
vultures are friendly with one another. And they collect and
they feed in flocks, as I've said. So the point is, in reading
the scripture, This is what I'm trying to say. Wherever you find
recorded in the scriptures that a flock came down on a carcass,
and that flock is called where the eagles gather. That's vultures. Now you might
find an eagle amongst them once in a while, but generally speaking,
that'll be a bunch of vultures. Our text in verse 11, refers
to the right bird, so to speak. It's an eagle in the truest sense
in which we know it. Now there's several different
types, but if you see an eagle, you'll know the difference just
by visual recognition, the difference between that eagle and that vulture,
if you look at him closely. It's an eagle in the truest sense
of which you and I visualize it, and at least as we understand
the bird anyway. Now I want you to turn to Exodus
chapter 19. Hold your place there if you
will, but turn to Exodus 19. And I want to read verse three
and four. Verse three says, Moses went
up unto God And the Lord called to him out of a mountain, he's
gone up to Sinai now, saying, thus shalt thou say to the house
of Jacob and tell the children of Israel, our Lord's passing
this word through Moses, who's a type of Christ, to his children. Do you see that? You've seen,
he said, Moses said here, verse four, you've seen what I did
to the Egyptians and how I bear you on eagle's wings and brought
you unto myself. In verse four, the admonition
for us to remember What we have seen, if you'll notice that,
is relayed through Moses and it's directed to the benefit
of Jacob, which is the children of Israel. You see that? Let's ask ourselves this question,
a couple of questions. Who is Jacob? Jacob is Israel. That's what
the Lord did when he renamed Jacob. He said, no more Jacob,
your name's Israel. Who's Jacob? He's Israel. And
who's Israel? He's Jacob, one and the same. Jacob and Israel are one and
the same, and we're assured in this language, here in this verse,
in these verses, that Jacob, or the Israel of God, if you
will, is or are the children of God, plural. I can't explain that, but it's
true. It's a type, it's a picture. These are the people whom God
himself, remember that? Myself, I brought them there. These are the people whom God
himself brought out of Egypt to himself, myself, and he brought
them out on eagles' wings. That's what I want you to see.
Our Lord in both of these passages, if you want to go back to Deuteronomy, is compared to an eagle. He's compared with an eagle with
respect to the protection and the safety of his people, if
you've noticed that. I brought him out on eagle's
wings. And he's talking about his wings.
With respect to the protection and the safety of his people
and the swiftness of his deliverances and his care and his affection. That's what's expressed in these
verses. Our Lord has lovingly supported,
now picture that eagle with you on his back, and cherished us
just as eagles do their young. Now, if you'll look back at Deuteronomy
32, where our text is, look at verse 12. The care of the children
of Israel, the Jacobs, or sinners to whom God has laid claim there,
is accomplished by Christ alone. You see that? He does not leave
it to others to lead His sheep. He doesn't employ a hireling
to do it. They are His and He will lead
them. He'll sustain them. He'll preserve
them. He'll keep them. He does. He
doesn't leave it to others. There He is, and He'll lead them,
period. He leads them by planting His
Spirit in them. That's a miracle. It only happens
with God's elect, God's people. He leads them by planting His
Spirit in them, the Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit of Christ, and
He's the leader and guider of His people. How will He lead His people?
By Spirit. He'll lead them by, what does
the Spirit do? It speaks of Him, it speaks of
Christ. He'll lead them by testifying
of Christ, as John 15 says. And 1 Corinthians, the Lord shall
lead them to himself, myself. Remember that in our text? I want you to freeze your thoughts
in these texts that we've read. Psalm 103 and verse five says,
he sanctifies thy mouth with good things so that your youth
is renewed like the eagles. But that's not as if an eagle,
now that's not saying that an eagle at some point in his old
age becomes younger. What's that saying is your faith
is renewed so as to be as vigorous as this eagle is in its flight
and in its regality and its royalty, so to speak. Isaiah chapter 40
and verse 31 says this, he said, but they that wait upon the Lord
shall renew their strength. That means renew means change,
change their strength. They shall mount up with wings
as eagles. They shall run, that's what it
means to bound up with wings of eagles. They shall run and
they're not even gonna get tired. They'll walk and they won't even
be faint. Just keep on walking. Keep on
running. How does it do that? Because
of the Spirit teaching us and giving us comfort in Christ,
we're renewed daily. The fact is we get younger, the
older we get. How do I explain that? Well,
it comes with age, number one. It causes you to think on more
elementary things, more important things than there is around you
in this world. And second of all, we're never
going to die. We're always going to be young. Now, having given some justification
to this point now, for associating this eagle as a picture of Christ,
I want to bring your attention to the fact that this eagle,
oddly enough, was included in the list of unclean animals forbidden
in the Old Testament dietary laws. And I'll just read you
this. In Deuteronomy chapter 14, And
verse 12, if you want to write it down, these are they which
you shall not eat, the eagle. And then there's about
three or four more, the osprey, the hawk, all of them in that
same family. And in this list, I want to point
out that the eagle is the first one that's listed. I don't know
what the significance of that is, but it is the first one listed. The eagle is unclean according
to the dietary laws of the Old Testament. And when I read that,
it kind of threw me for a loop. Immediately my mind questioned
why this should be so. And I want you to remember this
bird is used of God himself to describe himself in his work
and his work in his preserving grace. The old timers called
that prevenient grace of a sinner. His preserving grace of a sinner
to whom he will eventually reveal himself and on whom he will lay
his saving grace and finally his sustaining grace. He finds
us where we are and there's never been a day, never been a time,
in time or eternity. where that the Lord has viewed
us as anything other than children of His. God doesn't change. Before you were ever born, His
eye was on you. Now look back at Deuteronomy
32 and verse 10. Our Lord found us in a desert
land. And he was looking down from
on high. That's where that eagle flies. Our God's in the heavens. And he looked down from on high
into this howling wilderness, verse 10, where we are slaves
and he preserved us and he kept us to the day of his salvation,
the experience of grace. He led us about, we didn't even
know He instructed us and he kept us as the apple of his eye. And then he birthed us. He born
us and he gave us life and he stirred up our nest and he fluttered
over us and he covered us with his wings and he bore us up on
his wings. He sustained us in all of our
rebellion, and in all of our hatred. And
then he birthed us. Personally, I don't think this
verse in Exodus, that verse in Exodus 19 and forward, this verse
and the one in Deuteronomy 32 and verse 11 are speaking literally
of how an eagle carries its eaglets I can find only two instances
in my research, if you call it that, where someone ever claims
to have witnessed an eagle flying with its eaglet on its back.
It's never been observed except by these two that I can find
a record of. It's never been documented or
filmed. I don't know, but it doesn't
matter. The question of those two witnesses,
their character falls into question in my own mind, but in any case,
it doesn't matter. I can tell you what it does mean.
Now listen to me. It means that by the strength
of the powerful wings of God, he brought us to himself. It can be said for certain, this
can. Vultures never carried anything. They feast on something that
they find dead and then they regurgitate what they've eaten
to their young. Our Lord found us in a desert,
in the desert of Egypt. Egypt is a type and a picture
of this world. Egypt was the nest, the nest,
get that now. Egypt was the nest in which these
young ones, the children of Israel, were hatched and where their
first existence was nothing more than an egg, an embryo of what
would become a whole nation of slaves to this world. just as
we were before God birthed us, gave us eternal life, spiritual
life. I remember as a child, when I
was a kid, I found a bird's nest in a rosebush that mom had. It was the first one I can remember
seeing or that I could actually reach anyway. It had been abandoned
and I took it out of the bush and I carried it inside to show
my mom. I walked into the kitchen with it full arm's length out
in front of me to show it to her. I was so proud of that thing
I could bust and I wanted mama to see it. She wasn't as excited as I was.
That just didn't happen. When she saw that thing, she
screamed like a banshee and told me to get that filthy thing out
of my house. Well, I cried. I admit I did.
It broke my heart. I couldn't understand why in
the world she'd be so upset and disappointed with me trying to
show her something I was excited over. I suppose it upset me so
much that she sat down and tried to explain things to me. Well,
she didn't have to. All she had to do was show me
that nest. I hadn't really looked at it,
except out from a distance. It was a cesspool. It was nothing
but a cesspool. It was full of feces, it was
full of mites, and it was full of maggots. Is that enough said? That's where we were when our
Lord came to us. Can you picture that chick in
that nest? Totally oblivious to the filth
that it was existing in. When Jacob, the children of Israel, increased in their numbers, which
I believe signifies their growth to some maturity, they were carried
out of that nest. They were carried through the
Red Sea with the pillar of cloud, with the pillar of fire, and
they're all tokens of God's presence and his preservation and his
sustenance. He inserted himself between the
Israelites, his children, and those who were chasing him. He
fluttered over them. That's what he did. And he carried
them out on his wings. That is a glorious and humbling
thought to me. Picture God's wings on which
we're carried as being strong. His shoulders are the strongest
of all the birds. God's wings are walls of defense,
walls that can't be penetrated. Their ways, our ways, were paved. They were guarded, they were
miraculous, and they were glorious. but their end, our end, is even
more glorious. And I want you to see this. You
remember what our Lord said in Exodus 19, four. Our Lord said,
I brought you to myself. I brought you unto myself. They
were brought not only into a state of freedom and honor, but into
a covenant relationship and communion with God, just as we his children
are. And now the question becomes,
how did he do that? This bird's unclean. The fact
that it's named as unclean would almost discourage the use of
it as being a picture of Christ in the Old Testament. Because this eagle is declared
in the Levitical law to be unclean along with the different species
or family members named with the eagle, including the vulture
and the hawk, I believe it's certain that the Lord, and I
mean the Lord as he existed on this earth as the God-man, condescends
to make use of the picture of an eagle in describing his care
over his people. He said, I bear you on eagle's
wings and I brought you to myself. I think there's something very
comforting that's implied, this is my last point, in picturing
these affections of our Lord by this royal bird that we can
picture in our minds. When he speaks of bearing his
redeemed on eagle's wing, do you think this might be in reference
to our Lord taking our uncleanness on himself because he got in
that nest with us? You see that? There's no true worshiper in
all of God's redeemed people who doesn't rejoice in the glorious
assurance that it was our Lord who bore our sins, carried our
sorrows, when the Lord Jehovah laid on Him the iniquity of us
all. He was made unclean. He hath made Him to be sin. who knew no sin, that we may
be made the righteousness of God in Him. Christ has redeemed
us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. And
as our text says in verse 12, He did it alone. And the Word
was made flesh, John said, and dwelt among us. Can you picture
that filthiness in which He dwelt with us? and we beheld his glory. And the glory is of the only
begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Never has
there been such love and grace expressed than by this being
made sin and a curse for his people." Never an expression
like it of love. He pictured himself as a serpent on a pole, high and lifted up
by his very own words in John 3 verse 14. And that being true,
I don't think it's unreasonable for us to see or compare this
eagle, an unclean bird, to our Lord. He does for himself, God
does. In studying this, I read that
eaglets, small ones, the children, they sleep a lot. I've seen videos
of these little birds nodding off, but when mama hits the edge
of the nest, or dad in this case, they perk up. They have to be roused, and that's
the language used here. Just as the eagle does, our Lord
does so by disturbing them in their nest. where they live,
he flutters over them, covers them, teaches them how to fly.
Our Lord stirs us from the sleeping in the dangers of the cesspool
in which we live and causes us to flee from the wrath to come.
You ever thought about that meaning an eagle fleeing? Just as he
delivered his children from the bondage of Egypt, he's bringing
all his redeemed ones out of their sin and death in this world.
And when Christ uses the picture of bearing us up on Eagle's wings,
his wings, it also teaches us that it's impossible for them
to ever fall. Not gonna happen. These little
ones are carried on wings at such a great height that no weapon
that's formed against them shall prosper. And every tongue that
shall rise against thee in judgment, thou shalt condemn. This is the
heritage of the servants of the Lord. And their righteousness
is of me, saith the Lord. It's my righteousness. Nothing
can touch Christ's little ones without first destroying Christ. And we all know that that ain't
gonna happen. How precious the pictures of
this Old Testament are. I made a comment to Linda the
other day, a couple of weeks ago. Sometimes I wonder and even
complain. Why, Lord, did you wait till
I was 73 years old before you showed me some of these things? Well, I've got two more verses
to read. And I'll just read them to you. You can turn if you'd
like. And they were written especially for Jacob and the children of
Israel, obviously. And I'll just ask, does that
include you? I want you to try to picture our Lord as this eagle
in Isaiah 40 and verse 31. Isaiah 40 and verse 31. That
verse says, they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their
strength. They shall mount up with wings
of eagles, Isaiah 40, verse 31. They that wait upon the Lord
shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings
as eagles. They shall run and not be weary
and they shall walk and not faint. And the other one is in Psalm
103. It says this, verse one, Psalm
103 and verse one. Oh my soul, and all that is with
me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and
forget not all his benefits, who forgiveth all thine iniquities,
who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction,
who crowns thee with loving kindness and tender mercies, who satisfies
your mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed
like the eagles. Hopefully that's renewed your
strength and made you a younger person.