I'd like in our time of Bible
study to turn to the one time in the Scriptures where we find
the Lord Jesus Christ rejoicing. He had a lot to rejoice over,
but he was a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. But
in both Luke chapter 10 and in Matthew 11, there is the story
which is so like the stories we're reading in Acts, where
the Lord Jesus Christ sends his people out, he sends his servants
out, he sends them out to preach the gospel, he sends them out
to towns, and when they come back in Luke 10 verse 21, it says, in that hour,
these men came back, they came back having preached the gospel,
and he says, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth. He rejoiced in his spirit and
he thanked, that word thank is the word for praise. 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 so it seemed
good in thy sight. 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 He to whom the Son will
reveal Him." He said to his disciples, blessed, are the eyes which see
the things that you see." So these disciples had gone out
and they came back rejoicing that the devils are subject to
us, verse 17, through your name. And then he says to them, he
says, I saw Satan fall from heaven and he gave them power. But then
he says to them, these great words in Luke 10, 20, notwithstanding
this, rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you, but rejoice,
but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven. The Lord Jesus Christ. sends
out his gospel, and he sends it out as a sovereign king, and
he sends it out as a commandment, and he commands his people to
go. We just delight in the fact of
the sovereign grace of God. We delight in the fact that God
in sovereign grace both reveals and hides. I wanted us to look
at these verses in light of the fact that it is a remarkable
privilege to hear the word of God and hear the truth of God
proclaimed. But it's an especially remarkable
privilege when God himself comes and speaks to the hearts of his
people, which is what he's promised to do. You cannot worship a God who
is not absolutely sovereign. You cannot worship a God unless
He is the God who has your life and the life of all of humanity
in His hands. You cannot worship a God who
is not absolutely sovereign. I love what Horatio Bonar said. He said, deny God's right to
choose whom he will, and you deny his right to save whom he
will. Deny his right to save whom he
will, and you deny salvation is of grace. If salvation is
made to hinge on any desert or fitness in man, seen or foreseen,
grace is at an end. Salvation is either entirely
by the grace of God, or in the sovereign activities of our triune
God, or there is no salvation whatsoever, none whatsoever. So as we said earlier, as we
journey through Acts, we're actually seeing the biography of the church
and the churches throughout time. We are seeing the autobiography
of all of God's children. God in provenient grace, grace
from eternity, grace from the time that we came from our mother's
womb, grace that ordained all of the activities and the places
that we go. Sovereign grace ordains. And
sovereign grace brings people to what the scriptures declare
to be the time of love. A time when God does his revealing
of himself to his people. We have in the declarations of
the Gospel and in the revelation of the Gospel, we have two things
exposed all the time. We have the hearts of men exposed. It's only the Gospel that exposes
the hearts of men. Men can look religious and righteous,
as these people that the Lord sent these apostles out to minister
to. But when the Gospel comes, when
the Lord Jesus Christ comes and He reveals Himself in His glory,
the hearts of men are exposed. and the sovereign hand of our
God is exposed at the same time. When you meet the Lord Jesus
Christ, you will meet yourself as you really are. And until
you meet the Lord Jesus Christ, you won't have a clue who you
are and you won't have a clue who He is. Man is dead. Man is dead and he needs rebirth. Man is dead and he needs a life. He needs life. And God's children
end up rejoicing where God rejoices. That's why I wanted us to think
about these things here. He sent his disciples out to
places where he himself would go. He sent them out and says
in Luke chapter 10, verse 21, there's a remarkable verse in
Luke 10, 21. He sent them out. I've got the
wrong verse. It's on verse 5 of chapter 10. He says in verse 3, he sends
them forth as lambs among wolves, and he tells them not to carry
anything. And he says in verse 5, and into whatsoever house
you enter, first say, peace be to this house. Then he says,
and if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it. If the Son of Peace is there,
when the Lord Jesus Christ sends His Gospel, it finds a home where
He, the Son of Peace, is. And your peace rests there. And it says in verse 8, and into
whatsoever city you enter and they receive you, eat such things
as are set before you, heal the sick that are therein, and say
unto them, the kingdom of God has come nigh unto you. But into whatsoever city you
enter and they receive you not, go your ways out in the street
of the very same and say, even the very dust of your city, which
cleaveth on us, we do wipe against you. Notwithstanding, be ye sure
of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. That's what we've seen in this
journey through Acts, isn't it? The gospel is sent to city after
city, to people after people, and there is this division among
humanity. There are people that receive the gospel warmly. There are people who, like Lydia,
sitting beside that river, was much religious for a long time,
and there she'd moved all the way from Thyatira, and there
she was in Philippi, and the Lord opened her heart. The Lord
opened her heart. The Lord pierced the heart of
the Philippian jailer, and he was about to commit suicide.
And he rejoiced. He started rejoicing. But with the gospel coming, there
is this division. If you read on in Luke 10, verse
13, he says, woe unto thee, Chorizon. Woe unto thee, Bethsaida. For
if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which
have been done in you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting
in sackcloth and ashes. But it shall be more tolerable
for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum,
which art exalted to heaven, shall be thrust down to hell. He that heareth you, heareth
me. And he that despises you, despises
me. And he that despises me, despises
him that sent me. So where the Gospel comes, there
is a division among people. And there are countless multitudes
in this world who would have been better off if they had never
heard. Our topic is Hearing the Word of
God. Are we rejoicing where God is
rejoicing? When we go out and we share the
gospel with people, we often feel so often that we let them
down and we let our Lord down more than ever. It is just an
impossible thing to exalt the Lord Jesus as he ought to be
exalted, and we are made to feel the weakness and the frailty
of our flesh. that the Lord Jesus Christ says.
If you turn over to Matthew 11, it's a remarkable statement that
he says there. We keep thinking that somehow
if we get this formula right of evangelism, somehow out the
other end of all of that formula will pop belief. But we have
one task as a church, one task as believers in this world, and
that's Paul's declaration in 1 Corinthians 2. We sought to
know nothing, we desired to know nothing among you except Jesus
Christ and him crucified. The greatest preachers of that
time 2,000 years ago were John the Baptist, and there was no
one born of a woman greater than John. In this turn to Mark 11, 16,
he says, What shall I liken? Whereunto shall I liken this
generation? It is like unto children sitting
in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, and saying, We
have piped unto you, and you have not danced. We have mourned
unto you, and you have not lamented. For John came neither eating
nor drinking, and they say, He has a devil. The Son of Man came
eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous
and a wine-bibber." And then we have this wonderful description
of our Saviour. This is their accusation against
him. When they accuse him, they exalt his people. A friend of
publican and sinners. And then he goes on to say, but
wisdom is justified. Wisdom is set right by her children. The reality is that God's truths
are hidden, according to our Lord Jesus Christ. They are hidden
from a group of people in Matthew 11 and in Luke. They've hidden
them. In Mark, Matthew 11, 25, you
have hidden these things from the wise and prudent. God's truth is hidden from people. And God's truth is revealed unto
babes. So I just want to have a quick
look at what these words wisdom and prudent and babes mean. And the context of course is
hearing the word of God and the Bereans were more noble and they
received the word of God. But what are the whys? So God
actually actively hides his truth from wise people. Isn't it remarkable
that in Jerusalem the Lord Jesus Christ just walked through crowds
of people? He could just be there as God
Almighty and declaring himself to be God Almighty and they missed
him altogether. Just outside Jerusalem he raised
Lazarus from the dead. A mighty miracle done in such
a public way that there was no question that only God could
do this. He was dead for four days and stinking in a tomb.
And what was the response? There was two responses, like
there always are with the Gospel, there are two responses. He said
to Mary and Martha, if you believe, you'll see the glory of God.
If you only ever see the glory of God in the face of the Lord
Jesus Christ. They saw him exalted. They had
been weeping, weeping and distressed. They'd spent that time thinking
that he had abandoned them and didn't care. And yet, he came. and what rejoicing there must
have been. We're not told about the party. We're not told about
the party they had that evening, but there would have been a remarkable
celebration. And what was the response of
the Pharisees to that very same thing? That exact same event,
they knew all of the circumstances. This is how wise people can be. These men were wise when it came
to Scriptures. They knew doctrine. They were
Calvinists. They were strict, they were moral,
they were religious and they paraded it around. They had their
Bible colleges and their mission organisations and they travelled
across land and sea and they brought them back and the Lord
said they made them twofold the child of hell that they were
at the beginning. They were pagans, children of hell, and now they
are religious children of hell. What was their response? Let's
kill Lazarus again. Isn't that brilliant? He's been
dead four days in a tomb. Let's get rid of him. Let's kill
him one more time and see if that works a bit better. And
let's kill the Saviour. Let's kill him. So what are the
whys? Who are the whys that the Lord
Jesus Christ are talking about? The whys are obviously whys in
their own eyes. They are man exalting man himself,
and man being exalted by man himself. They had lots to say,
didn't they? Look what we have created, look
what we have achieved, look what we have gathered to ourselves. They see the gospel of sovereign
grace as beneath contempt. But in the context of Matthew
11, the Lord Jesus Christ always in the scriptures is talking
to religious people. So let's not think that he's
talking about the pagans, he's talking about the religiously
wise. You see, it's possible, isn't
it, like Nicodemus and like countless others, to actually know the
Scriptures and know them incredibly well. Greg Elmquist was telling
me about a fellow who could recite the Hebrew Old Testament in Hebrew. The greatest Greek scholar of
the last 20 or 30 years wrote volumes like this on the Greek
New Testament and knew it better than anyone else. Both of those
men died in unbelief. I have a book in my car that
I was given some years ago, or recommended to get some years
ago, and I've been searching, and it's called the Pentateuch,
the First Five Books as Narrative. And so I've been going, looking
at it, and I've looked at all the famous passages where the
Gospel is declared, all throughout those five, not all of them,
but I've looked at a dozen or more of them, and I keep looking
in vain. You know what I'm looking for? I'm looking for one thing. in all of those accounts, whether
it's the Passover or all of the other accounts. I'm looking for
him to say something about the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
He's missing, brothers and sisters. He's missing. And this is a great
scholar. They are hidden from the wise. It is possible to know an awful
lot about God by human reasoning and not to know the Saviour at
all. It's possible to do all sorts
of things. We know that the world is full of denominations. The
Roman Catholic Church has been wise for this past 1700 years
and doesn't have a clue about who God is. It's possible, like
the Pharisees, to establish these great learned schools and do
all these great things. And it's possible to even see
the remarkable gifts of the Lord Jesus Christ. To hear him speak,
what would it have been like to have been there? Don't you
think about it, and don't you wish you had been there on the
Sea of Galilee? Don't you wish you'd been on
the mountainside just to hear him speak? No one ever spoke
like him. No one ever spoke like him. And when he declared himself
to people in John chapter six, What happened? The more he declared
it to himself, the more they went away, and then he turned
to his disciples, you can go as well if you like. And Peter
made that remarkable statement, we've got nowhere else to go.
See, the other people had somewhere else to go. They enjoyed his
food, and they missed him. And they missed him. It's possible
to have an intellectual understanding of the doctrines of grace and
all those things. As I say, the Pharisees were
Calvinists. You ask them about who the Lord
Jesus Christ died for. This notion that the Lord Jesus
Christ died unsuccessfully is not a Jewish notion at all. They
had no doubt whatsoever that their Messiah was going to be
successful. That's a Gentile heresy that's
come into the Church. that they didn't know Him. The
reality is there is nothing that blinds men more effectively to
the power of eternal things than introducing fleshly wisdom into
divine things. The Word of God is spirit, brothers
and sisters. We worship God in spirit and
in truth. As he said, flesh gives birth
to flesh. Fleshly wisdom and fleshly understanding
gives birth to flesh. There is, as Proverbs 30 says,
there is a generation, and there's been a generation ever since
Cain went to church. There is a generation that is
pure in their own eyes and yet not washed from their iniquities. The wise are so wise in their
wisdom and their learning that they think they have him.
They think they have him. He said to them, didn't he, you
search the scriptures because in them you think you have eternal
life. But the scriptures speak of me.
Eternal life's him. Eternal life's knowing him. Eternal
life's being in relationship with him. And it's not achieved
by human wisdom. It is one of the wonders and
the delights of true salvation, isn't it? that it doesn't come
with human wisdom and human perspiration. It comes as a divine gift from
God. He comes to his own in the preaching
of the gospel and he reveals himself as Colossians says, what's
the hope of glory? Christ in you. He takes up residence
in his own. because his own are a perfectly
fit residence for a holy God, because they have no sin in his
sight. I love that verse in 1 John 4,
normal to me it's verse 19, isn't it? As he is, so are we in this
world. Is he holy? As he is, so are
we in this world. Is he perfectly righteous? As
he is, so are we in this world. Is he perfectly accepted in heaven's
glory? As he is, so are we in this world. Did he keep the law of God absolutely
perfectly? He was examined for three and
a half years by those enemies and they had Judas to help them
at the end. What did they find? Holiness,
absolute holiness, perfection before the law. As he is, so
are we in this world. He reveals himself to his own. As the text says here, he makes
them to be babes. And like little babes, they drink
in his word. But there is another group of
people we just look at very briefly, the prudent. See prudent people... Now those who organise their
course in this world in the most consistent way with their worldly
interests, they're not much interested in extremes, they're ones that
say for moderation. I don't know how many times I've
been told in one way or another over the last 20 odd years, just
don't take it quite so seriously. Don't take it quite so seriously.
The prudent are zealous for their moral character. They don't want
to bear any reproach from others. They have enough religion to
pacify their conscience. They have enough religion to
speak peace to themselves, and they have enough religion to
have peace spoken to them. and they steer themselves a path
in this world, and you can steer a path in this world where you
don't have to meet with the trials that our brother Paul met with
and the trials that the Lord Jesus Christ met with. You stand for the Gospel, brothers
and sisters, and stand for it passionately. The Word of God
promises that you're going to be persecuted. The Word of God
promises that this world is not going to accept it. There is nothing in the natural
man that accepts the Gospel of God. The prudent man is a nice
man. Every false teacher that's ever
been on this planet has been really, really nice. They're not narrow-minded. They're
not wanting to be judgemental. They greet others on the broad
road, and they are greeted warmly. And according to our text, the
wise and the prudent have God hidden from them. His word hidden
from them, even though they can recite it. Him hidden from them,
even though he's in plain sight. Oh, Heavenly Father, don't let
that be the course of the people that I love. And what's the solution? They're hidden from them, and
it's revealed to babes. What are the characteristics
of babes? Adeline's just been with Lucia
and Sean, she knows about babes. Babes are helpless. Babes are
ignorant. Babes are humble. Babes are vulnerable. Babes are teachable. That's what babes are. I was
so, so, so thankful when I went to India that I felt so strongly
that I was called there, but I was so thankful to the Lord
that I felt so strongly that I was called there to look after
the little ones. And then I was so thankful, sometimes
I wasn't, but I was thankful to the Lord that he made me to
teach Mark, Mark's Gospel in my first Years there, and I taught
it for five years, and in Mark, I think it's in chapter nine,
there's that verse that says, if you lead one of these little
ones astray, you're better off, in the text it really means,
you're better off to be a rotting corpse on the bottom of the Sea
of Galilee than to lead one of these little ones astray. And
I had a bunch of little ones. Adeline's all right now, but
she was cute when she was 12. She's cute now, but she was really
cute. And I went there telling these little ones that God loves everyone and Jesus
died for everyone and had all my tracts and all of my religious
stuff from here. And those words in Mark's Gospel
And my love for the little ones caused me to have sleepless nights
after sleepless nights and spend a whole bunch of times like a
babe saying to God, please, please, please, whatever it is and how
much it costs, just teach me the truth. Don't let me lie. Don't let me lie to these little
ones. They're not mine. The little
ones belong to him. But babes, the babes here are
babes with old bodies and grey hair as well as babes who are
young, like the babes we have in our midst here. See, little
ones and babes are those that are brought low, aren't they?
They are brought low, and they're brought low to be utterly dependent
upon God. The God must supply everything
that they need. The God must come and minister
to their hearts. The God must come and be their
teacher. The God must come and fulfil
the promises that he's made to them. The God must come and show
his son in clarity to us. There are things in this world
hidden, and our Lord Jesus Christ, in these verses before us, rejoiced. He rejoiced that He hid things
from religious people. He rejoiced that He hid things
from wise people. And He rejoiced that He hid things
from prudent people. He rejoiced and He praised His
Father and he declared that it was a good thing his father had
done. Do you rejoice? Has God made
you to rejoice in the things that the Saviour rejoiced in? Time is running out, but there
are things that are hidden. There are things that are hidden.
So what are some of the things that are hidden from the wise
and prudent? He hides himself from people. And he causes people to have
hidden from them a sense of who he is so that they don't approach
him with godly fear. There's no reverence for Jehovah
because they haven't met him. There's no trembling at his word. There's no spiritual meeting
with Him. We hear so little of the fear
of the Lord, but if you actually look it up in your scriptures,
the most extraordinary promises are attached to the fear of God
in the scriptures. In fact, in Acts 9, it speaks
that the church was edified, the church was growing and being
esteemed, walking in the fear of the Lord, walking in the fear
of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost. The fear of
the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Ghost go hand in hand. Where there are wise and prudent
people there is no godly fear. Where there are wise and prudent
people they can look at themselves and look at their own activities
and think that somehow they have some righteousness of their own.
That's the offence of the cross. That's the offence of the gospel.
It says to you that your righteousness is filthy rags. It says to people
that your religious righteousness is filthy rags. People think
that somehow they can do acts of obedience that will somehow
cause God to respond to them. See, the law is holy, and the
law is just, and the law is good. And these people knew the law
inside out and they could recite it. But the law never made anyone
holy. The law never made anyone just.
And the law never made anyone good. And the response of the
religious people, when they had their legalistic righteousness
taken away from them, was hatred of God and hatred of His servants. What's hidden from people is
real faith. What's hidden from people is
real hope. What's hidden from people is
divine love and spiritual affection, because when you meet Him, you
love Him. When you meet him, you love him. And if you don't
meet him and you don't love him, then you can have his truth compromised
for the sake of your well-being. And if he leads you down that path,
you will stay there. There is hidden from people the
power of the truth of God. See, the Thessalonians that we've
just been studying, God says in 2 Thessalonians 2 that he
sends them a powerful delusion because they've received not
the love of the truth. They knew, they knew a whole
bunch of doctrinal truths, but they didn't love the truth. There's a revealing of ourselves,
a revealing of ourselves as children of Adam that never get any better. And there's a revealing of ourselves
as children of God who can never get any worse. Perfect in his
sight, as he is, so are we in this world. May God make us babes,
make us weak, make us dependent, make us helpless, and then make
us to rejoice in the things that God rejoices in. Believers, rejoice in the things
that God rejoices in. Are you a babe? Have you been
made to be a babe? One of our delightful books has
been the Song of Solomon, and I'll close with a couple of wonderful
words. Song of Solomon is the gospel
of Solomon, and it's the book that's just before the gospel
of Isaiah. And the very last plea of the
Shulamite, who's a picture of the church in the Song of Solomon
in chapter eight, is she says, make haste, my beloved. And you
come to me. What she says in the verse before,
he says, thou that dwellest in the gardens, he dwells in the
gardens of his churches. The companions hearken to thy
voice. All the companions hearken to
his voice. And then she says, she has this
plea. Cause me to hear it. She'd heard his voice and she'd
had the most remarkably intimate communion with him. Grace causes
the children of God to long for more grace. Grace causes the children of
God to long to have his presence so we can lean on him. This is
a babe, Psalms 8 verse 5. Who is this that cometh up from
the wilderness? Leaning on her beloved. Lean on him. Lean on him. Heavenly Father, we pray that
you might take your words and make them spirit and life to
us and make us to be babes, Heavenly Father. We know that we came
from Adam's loins as kings, standing in judgment of you and your glory
and doubting your word. Make us to be babes, Heavenly
Father, that drink your word in. as our necessary life, because
it reveals the glories of your dear and precious Son. Bless
your words to the hearts of your people, our Father, for we pray
in Jesus' name. Amen. We're going to have a cup
of tea.