with Luke, if you would, chapter
10. I've mentioned before how it bothers me to hear those who
say Jesus loves you to the world. Jesus loves the whole world.
That's not the story of Scriptures. The story of Scriptures is not
about one who loves a people and then lets them go to hell.
The story of the Bible is about a Jesus who has all power and
has kept It's about the Jesus who loves
his people so much that he laid down his only begotten son's
life, God's only begotten son's life, that he laid down his life
for his people. His name shall be called, he
shall be called Jesus for he shall save his people. Isn't that wonderful news? I
want you to take a moment and compare that to what others are
hearing. We know, we've been in those other churches. Some
of us have come out of those other churches. We know what
they're hearing. If you'll just make a decision
that Jesus, who loves all the world, is waiting for you. If
you'll just do this, the God of all of creation is just waiting
for you to make your move. Wow, how sad their God must be. When all those ones who believe
that walk through that door marked death and head right into the
pit of fire. How sad. You know, we've talked
many times about our Lord and how He hungered, He thirsted,
He laughed, He cried, He was troubled. This morning we're
going to look at a characteristic of our God that I pray will just
blush your socks right off. Are you with me in the book of
Luke? We're returning to the book of Luke in our series of
studies. We took a break for a couple of weeks. And I'm going
to skip over a lot of what we see here in chapter 10 and come
back to it another day. I haven't felt led of the Lord
to preach from these verses yet. But what it is, the Lord has
sent out 70. 70 of his disciples. And he sends them out with instructions,
don't take anything with you. Now this is not the same as the
instructions that we saw in Friday night's study where he sends
out his 12 apostles. It's the same kind of thing.
He's sending out preachers, ministers of God, and then they've gone
out and he's given them authority to do certain things, like we
can read over here in Verses 18 and I beheld Satan as a lightning
as lightning falling from heaven behold I give unto you power
this is in verse 19 now Luke chapter 10 verse 19 I Give you
power to tread on serpents and scorpions and all over all the
power of the enemy and nothing shall be by any means hurt you
and then in those previous verses he tells him not to take any
money with them and He instructs them that if he goes into a house
and the house rejects you to dust off your feet and go on.
And then they come back. They've gone out. Imagine this,
these 70. They come back and they're all
standing around going, man. I don't know about you folks,
but I've shared with you how golf is with me. I hit it down
the fairway one time and I'm thinking, woo! I can play pretty good. I've
had a couple of good games lately as a matter of fact. I almost want to jump to the
message I have for you to prepare us for the table. That's the problem with John
Rhys having more than one message in his head at one time. All of a sudden I start thinking
of that other message and I almost went off into that. But folks,
these guys went out and they had no fear of serpents or scorpions. They had power over the enemy.
They had power to heal people. And here they are, they come
back to Christ now. Wow! You should have seen! That was great! Have you ever
seen a miracle happen? Like, you're going down the road
and something happens delays you for 10 minutes and you get
to that spot that you would have been 10 minutes earlier and there's
a bad accident and you think to yourself, wow, did you see
that? Did you see what God did there?
Did you see the power of God in my life what happened there
with that? I can imagine these guys doing the same thing. They
come back and they're all pumped up with, yeah! You can see it
too, can't you? Behold, he says in verse 19,
I give unto you power to tread on serpents, and scorpions, and
over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means
hurt you." But then he says this, verse 20, notwithstanding in
this, and you notice how he says it. He knew what was in their
hearts. He knew what they were thinking.
He's God. He knows all things before they
read it. He knew this was going to be the situation exactly how
that we're reading here. Before anything was ever created,
that's the God that we're talking about here in Scripture. The
all-knowing, all-powerful, all-everywhere God. Notwithstanding in this,
to rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you, but rather
rejoice because your names are written in heaven. Folks, I could easily see myself, if
it wasn't for God's grace, bragging about how I brought James Luper
into the services. How I brought James Luper to
the church and God saved him. I could easily be bragging about
that. I could see that. That's John Reeves. That's John
in the flesh. I've heard religious folks based
their entire belief on the fact that they bring people in for
Christ. They bring in souls for Christ. We brought in 30 people into
our church this week. Oh, it was so good! They all
committed themselves to God today. Oh, it was so good! I asked this
person that was telling me one time that. I said, how many were
there last week doing the same thing? Oh, don't you talk to
me like that. This was this week. How dare
you put down what God has done this week. I didn't put anything
down. I just asked you, how many of those people came back from
last week? I take it because they got so
mad at me that there were several that did. I got the feeling that
there were several who show up every Sunday just to eat. And
they're counted as souls, one for Christ. What a useless, pitiful
thing to rejoice in. How many souls you brought to
Christ. Notwithstanding in this, rejoice
not. that the spirits were subject
unto you, but rather rejoice because your name is written
in heaven. And then we read this next. Look
at verse 21 with me. In that hour, Jesus rejoiced
in spirit. Isn't that wonderful? Well, what would Christ have
to rejoice in? It's all His. Why wouldn't He
rejoice in everything? What would be any different?
Does He change? Did all of a sudden, one moment,
something change different than what was before, a moment before?
No. What then is Christ rejoicing
in? Look what it says next. And in that hour, Jesus rejoiced
in spirit and said, he's going to tell us right here, he's going
to tell us, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that
thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast
revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for it seemed
good in thy sight. He rejoiced, and his father,
revealing to his people the truth about who Christ is. People want
to say, oh no, he was rejoicing in hiding these things from the
wise and the prudent. No, he wasn't. No. What did he do that the Father
looked down upon the world and spoke in a cloud saying, this
is my Son in whom I am well pleased, hear ye Him. What was he doing? blinding people that they couldn't
see the truth? Was that what He was doing that
made His Father so pleased with His Son? No! He had come in the
flesh! God was manifest in the flesh! My Son, who I've been with through
eternity, has now become a man! So that He can go to the cross! Did you know that? Christ didn't
come here for any other reason but to become the life of His flesh. Nothing
could hurt His Spirit. His Spirit was the Spirit of
God. Nothing can hurt Him. Somebody has to pay the price
for our sin. And if it's not our substitute,
the Lord Jesus, it'll be us. And we'll deserve it. And we'll
get what's right. But God. Isn't that a wonderful
word? But God. God Almighty rejoiced
over us, folks! Do you get that? He rejoiced
over us! How could God love this ugly,
sinful piece of rag that stands here today? I'll tell you how.
Through His Son, our Savior, that's how. Did you know our
Lord is only spoken of as rejoicing one time in all the Scriptures?
He talks about Him weeping over in Luke 19 and John 11 and Hebrews
5, but this is the only spot in Scripture where it says Christ
rejoiced. And then He goes into why. I
thank Thee, O Father. Do we not rejoice in the same
way? Do we not give our God thanksgiving in all things? I know sometimes
that's not easy, don't we? Some pretty tough stuff for us
to go through at times. I have no doubt that Jonah, when
he was swallowed up by that whale, and the reeds of the ocean were
wrapped around his neck, and the waves were splashing over
his head, and it had to stink in that belly of that fish. It
had to smell bad. Fish smell bad anyway, but any
other stuff, ugh. It had to be a bad situation, but still, salvation
is of the Lord. Thank you, Lord. Thankfulness. Oh, how thankful we are. We rejoice
in what He's done in becoming flesh and walking this earth
and humbling Himself and becoming flesh that He might lay down
His life for His people. He's the Good Shepherd who lays
down His life for the sheep. There's no doubt that there was
much in this world for our Savior to grieve over, not just in the
wickedness that he saw in the world, but the sorrowfulness
that he saw in his people, sorrowfulness that he saw in John Reeves, the
sorrowfulness that he saw in this flesh. But when he saw A few men and women receiving
glad tidings of salvation, his holy heart was refreshed. And he rejoiced. He rejoiced. Folks, I want you to turn over
to Micah chapter 7 for just a moment. Turn to Micah chapter 7. Our
Lord was rejoicing that the Father was going to reveal certain things
to His children. to babes. It says, what does
it say there? Let me read it again for you,
and then I'll join you back in the mic. It says, I thank thee,
O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these
things from the wise and the prudent. You know what that's
saying? It's saying that he's hiding it from the self-righteous,
those who don't need a Savior, those who don't need any righteousness
because they have some of their own. I thank thee, Lord, for
hiding it from the wise and the prudent, and revealing it, revealing
it unto babe. Even so, Father, for it seemed
good in thy sight. Look at these words here in Micah
chapter 7, beginning at verse 18. Who is of God like unto thee,
that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgressions
of the remnant of his heritage? He retaineth not his anger forever,
because he delighteth in Mercy. It delights Him. He rejoices
in the salvation of His people. He hadn't come to the cross yet,
but believe me, Christ knew exactly where He was going. We just read,
I think it was in Friday night's Bible study, where three times
the Lord had told His apostles, we're going to Jerusalem. I must
go to Jerusalem. In fact, it says in Matthew,
in the chapter we're studying, it says He set His face like
a flint. Like steadfast. Strong. That's where He was going to
go. He knew He was going to go to the cross to die. And He knew
that these ones and the ones who would come after were to
be saved by Him would be saved. And here the Father is going
to reveal that unto some babes. Oh, who is a God like unto thee
that pardoneth the iniquity, and passeth by the transgressions
of the remnant of his heritage? He retaineth not his anger forever,
because he delighteth in mercy. Verse 19. He will turn again. He will have compassion upon
us. He will subdue our iniquities, and that will cast all their
sins into the depths of the sea. Is there any sinners here today
who hear this and say, Amen! Lord, let that be for me that
He speaks of. Let this be for me. Verse 20,
thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham
which thou hast sworn unto our fathers from the days of old."
Oh, go to the right in your books, there are just a couple of pages
to Zephaniah. You've gone to Haggai, you've
gone too far. Just go to Zephaniah. I want you to read a couple of
verses there from chapter 3. Zephaniah chapter 3, beginning
at verse 14. Sing, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O Israel! Be glad and
rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord hath taken
away thy judgments. Oh, this is so full of good news! This is the Gospel! This is the
Gospel! Christ came to save sinners of
whom I'm chief. This is me it's talking about.
The Lord hath taken away thy judgments. He hath cast out thine
enemy. The King of Israel, even the
Lord, is in the midst of thee, and thou shalt not see evil any
more. Verse 16. In that day it shall
be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou not? and to Zion let not thine
hands be slack. In the day it shall be said to
Jerusalem, fear thou not, and to Zion let not thine hands be
slack. Verse 17, the Lord thy God in
thy midst of thee is mighty, he will save, he will rejoice
over thee with joy, he will rest in his love, he will joy over
thee with Do you see where our Lord is rejoicing in here? Most
people get it backwards. They say that He's rejoicing
over the fact that God the Father hid it from the prudent and the
wise. No. No. He's rejoicing that God
Almighty is revealing some things to His people. Not to everybody. Not to all the world, but to
those who are in Zion, it says. Those who are called Jerusalem,
it says. The Lord thy God in the midst
of thee is mighty. He will save. He will rejoice
over thee with joy. He will rest in his love. He
will joy over thee with singing. One more, if I may. Turn over
to Hebrews, and there's one verse over there we'll read. Hebrews
12. Our Lord rejoices over the revelation to his people. What
did he say to Peter when he asked Peter, who do you say that I
am? And Peter said, thou art the Son of the living God. The
Christ. He said, blessed are you, for
flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father.
Every one of us here today and those who are online know this.
I don't have any new folks here today that have not heard this
gospel. I don't have any new people who've never heard the
truth of God's word. You folks have heard it, and
you folks have loved this very fact, that God chose you because
you know you would have not chosen Him. You know it. You know it in your
own heart. Every one of you. Verse 12 of Hebrews, verse 1,
chapter 12. Wherefore, seeing we also are
encompassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us
lay aside every weight, What that's saying is that if the
Lord God Almighty, our Savior, is rejoicing over the revelation
of God unto His people, we should lay aside every weight, every
trial. And the sin would just so easily
beset us. Folks, sin's not going to make...
You're not... Another thing that bothers me.
Things are going to be so much better if you'll just start walking
in the feet of Christ. No, they won't. Knowing the Lord
Jesus, you never saw your sin as much as you do now. You never
saw the greatness, the magnitude of your sin against God until
you saw the Lord Jesus as your great substitute. Let us run
with patience the race that is set before us. Go back to your
text now if you would in the book of Luke. The fact ought
to encourage sinners to seek God's mercy and grace in His
Son at all times. If He delights in mercy, if He
rejoices in the salvation of us as sinners, if the conversion
of lost souls makes the Son of God rejoice, why should any sinner
doubt that He will be gracious to him? Why would we have any
doubt? He laid down His life for us.
How can we have any doubt that He's not going to take care of
us until the end? It's my prayer that the Spirit
of God would impress upon our hearts the image that we see
of our Master. Give me the grace to follow His
example. Did the Son of God weep over
the lost? You bet He did. Shouldn't we
care as well? Did He have compassion upon the
rich young ruler who walked away from Him? Yes, He did. Shall
we harden our hearts against such things as that? I know we
talk about that lady who came here with her granddaughter And
she got up and she said, I'm not a sinner like that, and walked
out with her granddaughter in tow. Some people think we're
being harsh about that. I'm telling you, we're saddened
by it. What a sad thing, you know? That was John Reeves. Can you say that about yourself?
That was me that walked out that day. You all know this. The only time
I would go to church is once a year to make my mom happy for
Mother's Day. Or maybe twice a year if it was
her birthday. She said, you know what I want
for birthday? I want you to come to church with me. Okay. I guarantee
you that was me walking out of that church immediately afterwards
thinking to myself, I can't wait to get home and have a beer or
do whatever else I was missing out on on a Sunday afternoon.
Could have been me. But by God's grace, He wouldn't
let it be. Why? Because He rejoices in saving
His people. Rejoice not in the spirits that
are subject unto you, but rather rejoice because your names are
written in heaven. That's something to rejoice about. And the only way it can be written
there is by the blood of our Savior. I'll tell you, our Lord
is exercising His divine sovereignty here when He says, Thank you,
Father, for revealing it. That's what He said to Peter.
He said, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood
have not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven.
Folks, it takes a sovereign God to make life in a dead person. It took the Word of God, the
Word of the sovereign God, for you to hear it and Him to give
you a heart to understand it. And then like we've been looking
at in our Bible studies. Folks, I'm telling you, those
of you who missed out on Bible study are really missing out
on some good stuff these last couple of weeks. We're talking
about faith. The evidence of our salvation. That's what it says in Hebrews
11.1. Go look it up on your own time.
Faith, the evidence. What is that faith? It's not
the faith that I have, but the faith in the One that I'm talking
about. It's who my faith is in. It's
in Him. And if He rejoices over His people
that are saved, He's rejoicing over me. And I believe that.
Oh, we are objects of grace. We are objects of His grace.
We learn a little something here. about the objects of saving grace.
In these words, our Lord commonly hides the gospel from the wise
and the prudent, and He reveals it under babes. It says, our
Savior said, Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent,
and revealed it under babes. Those words do not simply, do
not imply that some are naturally more deserving of God's grace
than others. Folks, if you were deserving people who preach to all these
different religions today is, if you'll just do this, God will
save you. If you'll come down and pray
the prayer, God will save you. He'll give you the grace. If
you'll get into the baptisms, God will save you. If you'll
make your decision today, that's not grace. Grace is unmerited
favor. And there's absolutely nothing
you can do to earn it, or merit it, or it's not grace. Have you
read God's Word? What does it say about salvation?
Come on, you guys know. I read it almost every Sunday.
You are saved by grace. Period. It stops right there. It can't be grace plus something
else. And it's God's sovereign grace that saves His people.
Our Lord passes by some. We're all self-righteous, wise,
and prudent people in our own minds, are we not? Why did he
pass by them? Why did he pass by them and not
me? Because he rejoices saving his
people. There's a lot of stuff that we
could read through these things. and break it down as a Bible
study and bring out all kinds of spiritual points and applications. But folks, there's only one thing
that matters to a sinner. And if you're a bonafide, true-blooded
sinner, and you can only be that if God has made you that. A babe
in Christ. then to hear the words that He
rejoices over you has got to be great news. Look at verse
22 and I'll try to wrap this up. It says, all things are delivered
to me. Now remember, we've got to take
this in context with what we're reading. We began with reading
how the Lord told His disciples, don't be all worked up and all
big headed over the fact that you can do this and you can do
that. No. Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.
And then the Lord Jesus Christ Himself says, He rejoiced. It says, He, in that hour, Jesus
rejoiced in spirit, thanking the Father, the Lord of heaven
and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes, even so, Father,
So it seemed good in thy sight. With that in mind, all things
are delivered to me of my Father. What seemed good in the sight
of the Father when He just mentioned about a moment ago, it's all
been turned over to Him. This is the one who the Lord
spoke in the cloud and He said, this is my beloved Son in whom
I will please hear ye Him. All. If all things are delivered
unto Him, can anything take you away from Him? No! That excites me. That brings rejoicing to my heart. Because I know if there was anything
that could take me out of His hand, it would be this guy who
stands before you, and He would do it. But not even John. can
get in the way of God's purpose. I like what one of the pastors
of the conference said. He said, if you leave it up to
me, I'll make a mess of it. If you leave it up to John, I'll
make a mess of it. I told Pastor Gene one time,
he had me replace a toilet in one of the ladies' stalls. I
may have shared this with you, I don't know. I've been around
a little bit now to where I can't remember. I go to new places.
It's like I've never told them this story before. This is great.
I can tell them a story. So Gene tells me, he goes, I
need you to go replace that toilet in the ladies room. I said, brother
man, you don't want me to do that. You really, really don't. I pay people to do those things.
I'll pay somebody. John, just go do it. The toilet's there. All the stuff's
there. Just go do it. Guess what? I
broke it. It's still broken, by the way. I'm not going to
tell you which one. Really, John? You're not going to tell us which
one? No, it's not broken in a way that's going to hurt anything.
But it's still broken. You leave it up to me, I'm going
to mess it up. All things are delivered to me of my Father,
and no man knoweth who the Son is but the Father, and who the
Father is but the Son. And then he talks about a particular
people. People that He is gracious to.
People who have no right to His grace, but yet He's gracious
to us anyway. But the Son, and He whom to whom
the Son will reveal Him. Babes. Babes. Babes haven't figured out how
to do anything yet. They're still just babies. All
they can do is lay there and go, ah! Give me something to
eat! Ah! Ah! Babes are completely,
100% dependent upon the one taken care of. That's us, completely,
100% being taken care of by our Good
Shepherd, the Lord Jesus.