Let us turn again to God's Word,
to that portion that we were considering this morning in Matthew
chapter 23. Turning again to verse 37, the
words of the Lord Jesus Christ as He approaches Jerusalem. He's making that final journey,
knowing all that would befall Him. He had set his face to go
to Jerusalem. And here, as he approaches the
city, we read these words in Matthew 23, 37, O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them
which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy
children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under
her wings, and ye would not. He was prevented from doing the
very thing that he desired. Well, that's nonsense. God's will is paramount. He doeth
according to his will among the armies of heaven and the inhabitants
of the earth. None can stay his hand or say
to him, what doest thou? And I remarked this morning that
The interpretation of the verse is to be found really in the
pronouns. Remember what we said, how that
he is speaking of Jerusalem, we have the third person. O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem thou, that killest the prophets and stonest them
which are sent unto thee. How often would I have gathered
thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens
under her wings. And then he turns from the third
person and speaks in the second person, and ye would not. ye
would not. Who is it that the Lord is speaking
to in this chapter where we see quite clearly from verse 13 how
he is beginning now to address himself particularly to the scribes
and Pharisees. At the beginning of the chapter
he is speaking to the multitude and to his disciples and he is
warning them against these leaders, these so-called spiritual leaders
of the Jews, they're sitting in the seat of Moses, he says,
there at verse 3, all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe,
that observe and do, but do not ye after their works, for they
say and they do not. And having warned of these wicked
men, we then have this solemn passage where we have repeated
woes. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites. And we see it there, verses 13,
14, 15, 16, verse 23, verse 25, verse 27, and so on. It's the
most awful chapter in the sense that it is the Lord
Jesus Christ, the only Savior of sinners, who is here addressing
himself to wicked men and pronouncing terrible words of woe upon them
and all their wicked deeds. And that is how we are to understand
this 37th verse. He speaks of Jerusalem But then he says at the end,
ye would not. He's still speaking of these scribes and these Pharisees.
They would, as it were, frustrate the grace of God. Remember the
words of verse 13. Well unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites, for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men,
for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are
entering to go in. Or are they they would frustrate
those who would come to the Lord Jesus Christ. And what is this? It's all part of God's purpose.
The Lord Jesus is that One who has come to His own, and His
own have received Him not. Though He is rejected of the
Jews, and the Lord is aware of all these things. Terrible judgments
are yet to fall upon the people there in Jerusalem. He says after
our text, Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. And then in the very next chapter
we're told how Jesus went out and departed from the temple
and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings
of the temple. Something of the glories, it
was as nothing compared with the glorious temple that had
been built by Solomon, destroyed by the Babylonians. But the temple
had been rebuilt in the days of Ezra It had been added to
subsequently even by King Herod. And here are the disciples drawing
the Lord's attention to these wonderful buildings, the temple.
And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? Verily
I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another
that shall not be thrown down to the ground. There's going
to come a terrible judgment upon the Jews, upon Jerusalem. It's
a consequence of their rejection of Him who is the promised Messiah. And so He came. He came in the
year 70 under the Roman legions, under the great General Titus. When He laid siege to the city,
the temple destroyed. All those things, of course,
were passing away. all that Old Testament worship
that now had its accomplishment in the coming of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Now the Lord is aware and He
speaks so so plainly, it's not only here we have a fourfold
gospel and look at what we're told also in Luke's account in
Luke chapter 19 and there at verse 41 following when He was
come Near, it says, he beheld the city and wept over it, saying,
If thou hadst known, even though at least in this thy day the
things which belong unto thy peace, but now they are hid from
thine eyes, God's judgment to hide these things from them.
For the day shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast
a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in
on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and
thy children within thee. And they shall not leave in thee
one stone upon another, because thou knowest not the time of
thy visitation. or they had over the years killed
the prophets, stolen them that were sent unto them and now they're
rejecting that one who is the promised Messiah, the Christ
of God. This then is something of the
historical context. When I concluded this morning,
I began to say something with regards to what we might term
an allegorical interpretation of this verse. And the key to
it is found in that portion that we were reading earlier in Galatians
chapter 4, because Paul tells us quite plainly that Jerusalem
is to be understood in that sense. Remember those words that we
read in Galatians 4 24 which things are an allegory for these
are the two covenants he's been speaking of Abraham the father
of the faithful and the two sons one that was born to Hagar the
bondwoman the other that was born to Sarah his true wife Isaac,
the son of promise, in contrast to Ishmael. And these things are an allegory,
says the Apostle. For these are the two covenants,
the one from the Mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which
is Agar. For this Agar is Mount Sinai
in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem, which now is, and is in bondage
with her children. Jerusalem, which now is. And
this is a Jerusalem that is being spoken of here in our text. And what do we have here? We
have the language really that belongs to that old covenant,
that legal covenant. What does it say? I would, ye
would not. That's what the Lord says. How
often would I have gathered thy children together? And ye would
not. There's the law. The law expresses man's duty.
God says, do this, do this, do this. But no man does it. They're not keepers of the law,
they're breakers of the law of God. Or the law expresses what
man's duty is, not what God's purpose is. What is the language
of the law? We have it there in Leviticus
18, 5. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, which if a man do
them, he shall live in them, if he does them. But you would
not. Men do not do these things. But
then there's a contrast, you see. And there's a contrast there,
in that passage that we read in Galatians 4. Look at what
follows in verse 26. Jerusalem which is above is Frey,
which is the mother of us all. And that Jerusalem above is a
reference to the New Covenant, the Covenant of Christ. And we
have the promise of that New Covenant, we have it of course
in the Old Testament. We're not to think of the Old
Testament simply in terms of that old covenant, the covenant
of works, the legal covenant. There's gospel throughout the
scriptures. And there are great promises
there in the Old Testament prophets. Think of the language that we
find in the book of the prophet Ezekiel there in Ezekiel 36. Look at what he said at verses
26 and 27 of that chapter. A new heart also will I give
you and a new spirit will I put within you and I will take away
the stony heart out of your flesh and I will give you a heart of
flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk
in my statutes and you shall keep my judgments and hear them. Oh, this is not the language
of the Old Covenant, this is the language of the New Covenant
it's all the works of God It's what God gives, it's what God
does. I will give you, he says, a heart
of flesh. I will put my spirit within you. I will cause you to walk in my
statues. It's the great work of God, even
that work wherein he brings salvation into the soul of the sinner. And so as we turn again to this
text from this morning, here in Matthew 23, 37, O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them
which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy
children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her
wings, and ye would not. Well, coming to the words, I
want to follow that allegorical interpretation, and to deal with
simply two simple points. First of all, to see how here
the Lord sets before us a figure of the gospel. That's what's
in the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ all the time, the gospel.
I want to speak then of a figure or an allegory of the gospel,
and then secondly, to say something with regards to the fullness
of that gospel of the grace of God. Look then at these words,
how often would I have gathered thy children together even as
a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings. Now what does
it remind us of? Thinking of the wings. And here
is the hen gathering her little chicks and sheltering them under
her wings. And we think of gospel there
in the Old Testament and where do we see the gospel? We see
it of course in the tabernacle, we see it in the temple of the
Lord. We can think of that mercy site.
Do you remember how they are given specific instruction, the
children of Israel? Moses is there in the in the
mount with God receiving all that instruction and it's in
Matthew chapter 25 that he is told just how they are to make
a mercy seat and how on each end of that mercy seat there
are to be those cherubim. You know the passage there in In Matthew 25, 17, thou shalt
make a mercy seat, it says, of pure gold. Two cubits and a half
shall be the length thereof, a cubit and a half the breadth
thereof. And thou shalt make two cherubims
of gold of beaten work, shalt thou make them, in the ends of
the mercy seat. And make one cherub on the one
end, and the other cherub on the other end, even of the mercy
seat, shall ye make the cherubims on the two ends thereof. It's
one piece. It's a great covering for the Ark of the Covenant,
containing the tables of stone, the Ten Commandments. That's
where the commandments are to be kept. And here is the covering. It's all of one piece, and a
cherub on each end. And it says, the cherubim shall
stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat
with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another toward
the mercy seat. shall the faces of the cherubims
be, and thou shalt put the mercy seat upon the ark, and in the
ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee, that's
the Ten Commandments, and there I will meet with thee, and I
will commune with thee from above the mercy seat from between the
two cherubims, which are upon the ark of the testimony of all
things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children
of Israel. And doesn't this figure that
we have here, of the hen gathering her chickens under her wings
and sheltering them, think of those cherubs with their wings
stretched over the mercy seat, looking down upon the mercy seat,
and how significant it is. Now it speaks so plainly of the
grace of God, it's the place of meeting. It's the place of
meeting. He was to be put there in the
Holy of Holies. And what does God say? There
I will meet with them, and there I will commune with them upon
the mercy seat between the two cherubims. And how we see the
true Israel of God in the Old Testament understanding the real
spiritual significance of all of these things. We see it there
in the 80th Psalm, Givero, shepherd of Israel, says the Psalmist,
although the dwellers between the cherubim shine forth before
Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh. Stir up thy strength and come
and save us. Turn thy face, look upon us,
save us. All the prayer is addressed to
God, there you see, in the place of meeting. God dwelling as He
were in the Holy of Holies to be found at the Mercy Seat and
He wasn't only the place of meeting, He was the place where atonement
was made. That's the significance of it.
There was to be that great day in the seventh month the month
of so many ceremonies and feasts. In the seventh month they were
to observe Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. And we have the
detail recorded in the 16th chapter of Leviticus. You can read through
that remarkable chapter. But see what he said there in
that chapter, Leviticus 16, Just read a couple of verses
from the chapter. Verse 15, here is instruction
given concerning the sin offering. Remember two goats were to be
taken on the Day of Atonement. Two goats chosen, one was to
be a scapegoat, the other was to be the sin offering. And the high priest is to confess
all the sins of the people over the heads of those goats. The
scapegoat is then taken by a strong man into the wilderness and released. It's a removal. A picture of
the removal of all the sins of the nation that have been committed
in the past year. And then the other goats serves
as the sin offering. And here, verse 15, then, shall
he kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people, and bring
his blood within the veil, and do with that blood as he did
with the blood of the bullet, and sprinkle it upon the mercy
seat, and before the mercy seat. And he shall make an atonement
for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children
of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins.
And so shall he do for the tabernacle of the congregation that remaineth
among them in the midst of their uncleanness. For it was the only
day when the high priest was permitted to go beyond that veil,
that second veil, and enter into the holy of holies. And he must
take that blood of sacrifice and sprinkle it both before the
mercy seat and upon the mercy seat and his gospel. It's all
gospel. And this is what the Lord is
speaking of here. The Jerusalem that now is. That Jerusalem that will be gone.
The old covenant passing. And the new covenant. The Jerusalem
which is above. And that's where the Lord Jesus
is. He is the mercy seat. Remember in The opening part
of Hebrews 9 we find the Apostle Paul speaking of the tabernacle
and the various furnishings. In the tabernacle he acknowledges
he's not the time to go into all the detail, but he makes
mention of the mercy seat and the particular word, the form
of the word that he uses there in Hebrews 9.5, that form of
the word is used just one other time in the New Testament. It's also found in Romans 3.25 but the word is not translated
as mercy seat there in Romans when we read it in our authorized
version. Romans 3.25 speaking of Christ
and God have set forth to be a propitiation through faith
in his name And the word propitiation is that same word that's rendered
mercy seat in Hebrews 9, whom God has set forth to be a mercy
seat. Oh, that's the place, you see,
where the propitiation is made, the blood, the blood of the sacrifice
sprinkled upon the mercy seat. What does it indicate? That God's
wrath has been propitiated. that God's justice has been satisfied,
sacrifice has been made. Oh, the mercy seat, it is really
the great place where the atonement is sealed. And Christ, the fulfillment
of all of these things. How often, he says, would I have
gathered thy children together as a hen gathereth her chicks
under her wing? Oh, to be those who are gathered
to that place of safety, to the mercy seat, to be found sheltering
beneath the wings of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is Shiloh. Oh,
He is Shiloh that was to come, and unto Him shall the gathering
of the people be. How often would I have gathered
this? Oh, the Lord gathers the people. And here is the Lord,
you see, He addresses Jerusalem, all Jerusalem. Jerusalem, thou
that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto
the Jerusalem sinners." Aren't Jerusalem sinners the greatest
of all sinners? What city was favored like Jerusalem? That's what the Lord is saying.
How God had sent His prophets throughout the Old Testament
How the Lord Jesus Christ had come and ministered there in
the temple in Jerusalem so many times. Remember, Oponion speaks
of the Jerusalem sinner. The Jerusalem sinner saved, or
the salvation. Salvation even for the greatest
of sinners. And Jerusalem is associated with
that. We turn back here to chapter
16. Verse 21, from that time forth
began Jesus to show unto his disciples how that he must go
unto Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and chief
priests and scribes and be killed and be raised again the third
day. It's all at Jerusalem. This is
where the Lord must suffer and bleed and die. That very place
where the Jews are demanding crucifying, crucifying all Jerusalem
sinners. And where does the Gospel begin?
Where is the Gospel first to be proclaimed? At Jerusalem.
When we come to the end of the Gospel, when we come to the words
of the Lord Jesus after His resurrection, What does he tell his disciples
before he ascends again to heaven? He tells them that repentance
and forgiveness of sins is to be preached in his name among
all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. The very place where he is rejected
and crucified, beginning at Jerusalem. And so it was. Also it was, we
see it so evidently in the ministry of the Apostle Peter there on
the day of Pentecost as the Spirit comes and we have that wonderful
record of the sermon Acts 2 14 Peter standing up with the eleven
lifted up his voice and said unto them ye men of Judea and
all ye that dwell at Jerusalem all ye that dwell at Jerusalem
Be this known unto you, he says, and hearken to my words. And then, ye men of Israel, hear
these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you
by miracles and wonders and signs which God did by him in the midst
of you, as ye yourselves also know him, being delivered by
the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken ye have
taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain why the language
is so similar is it not here in our text and ye would not
oh the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ in the gospel who is this
gospel for? it's for sinners He has ascended
on high, he has led captivity captive, he has received gifts
for men, it says, and for the rebellious also. He has gifts
for rebel sinners, gifts for those who have been rejecters
of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the wonder of the grace
of God in the Gospel. You know these things. Or you
know these things only true where sin abounded, Christ did so much
more about. And isn't that what we see here?
There's no grace in the law of God. Since to convince and to
condemn is all the law can do. All the grace is in the Gospel.
But the old covenant is gone. Jerusalem that now is in bondage
with her children It's a Jerusalem from above that is free, the
mother of us all. I say, can we not, in the light
of what the Apostles say in there in Galatians 4, allegorize this? Don't despise allegory. What
is Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress if it's not an allegory? What
a wonderful allegory it is. Setting before us what the Christian
life is, the journey. that a Christian must make from
the city of destruction to the celestial city. But let us turn
from the figure and look now at the fullness
that we see in the Gospel. The Lord says here, how often
would I and ye would not. As I said, that's the language
of the Old Covenant. That's the language of the Old
Covenant. Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the
law, that the man which doeth those things shall live by them.
If they're done, there's life. But there's nothing of life there.
There's no salvation in our own deeds, nothing in our own imagined
merits, what our righteousness is. They are filthy rags. They fade away. We have nothing
of ourselves. Jerusalem, which now is, is in
bondage, and always in bondage. That's the law. It's administration. And what's it administration
of? Administration of condemnation. Paul calls it the ministration
of death, written and engraven in stone. And we refer to that
passage just now in Ezekiel 36, the Gospel, is that it is engraven
on fleshy hearts of men. There's the difference. All that
law, it's nothing but condemnation. Paul says, we know that what
things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under
the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world
become guilty before God. Stops our mouths, what can we
say? We have to plead that we're guilty. We're transgressors of
the Lord of God. In us, as it is in our flesh,
there dwelleth no good thing. We have nothing that we can come
and barter with. We have to come and beg mercy
from God. That's the lawful use of the
law. It's not made for a righteous man. It's made for the unlawful,
the disobedient, for sinners, for the guilty. That's the ministry
of the law, you see. To show us what we are. to bring
us in before God as those whose condition is utterly hopeless
and helpless. And how Paul is having to deal
with those legalists who had crept in. That's the whole point
and purpose, of course, of his epistle to the Galatians. Now
that old covenant is gone. It doesn't mean that the law
doesn't stand. Of course the law still stands.
It's for them who are under the law. Believers aren't under the
law. Men are under the Lord of God.
It's not just for the Jew. That verse that we've quoted
already from Romans 3, what thingsoever the law saith, it saith to them
who are under the law, it says that every mouth may be stopped.
It stops the mouths of men. It condemns men. But when men
come condemned before God and plead, all that Christ is and
all that Christ has done, they are delivered from that. They now know that Jerusalem
which is above, which is free, which is the mother of us all.
Oh friends, how different, how different is the Gospel. What
does the Lord Jesus say? He says, and ye shall know the
truth. and the truth shall make you free. And Pilate asked that
question, what is truth? And the Lord Jesus has told us,
I am the why, the truth and the life. Oh, it is the Lord Jesus Christ,
he said, blessed truth of of the Gospel and that Gospel which
centers all together in the person and the work of our Lord Jesus
Christ. We have no other message. It's
the same old message. Tell me the old, old story. It's the old, old story. It's
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the work of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Thank God for that. And oh, that
we never tire of hearing of Him and all that He is, all that
He has done. If the Son therefore shall make
you free, ye shall be free indeed. Oh, that's the liberty, where
the Spirit of the Lord is, the Spirit of Christ is. There is
liberty. And again, we see how these things
are spoken of, how these things are constantly being promised. Back in the Old Testament we
referred to the language of Ezekiel 36, but look also at the language
of another prophet. Look at the words of a man like
Jeremiah. There in Jeremiah 31, verse 31, Behold, he says, the
day is come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. not
according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in
the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the
land of Egypt, which my covenant they break. Although I was a
husband unto them, saith the Lord, but this shall be the covenant
that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days,
saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward paths, and
write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall
be my people." The early teachers say, I will, they shall. I will, they shall. So different to what we have
here concerning the old covenants. Christ says, I would, and ye
would not. But now the Gospel is so different. Oh, what a difference, friends,
we see here in the very language of the Gospel. And how God works
so tenderly when He comes in all that grace of the Gospel. He doesn't drive people to Himself. In the Gospel He draws people
to himself. That's the gospel. No man can
come to me, says Christ, except the Father which hath sent me
draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written
in the prophets, and they shall be all taught of God. Every man
that hath heard and learned of the Father cometh unto me. Which
drawings? That's the way in which God works
in the Gospel. We're not driven to the Lord
Jesus Christ. Or what do we know of those drawings
of His grace, that gathering to Him? It's not by force and
yet always with power. It's so mighty, it's so effectual. He makes His people a willing
people in the day of His power. That's how the Lord works. Again
Jeremiah says it's the Lord hath appeared of old unto me saying
I have loved thee with an everlasting love therefore with loving kindness
have I drawn thee and that word oh that wonderful word that we
find so many times in the Old Testament with loving kindness
it's that word that's so fallen so pregnant in meaningless There's
not an adequate word that can be used in our English language
to bring out all that's contained in that word. It's so bound up
with the covenant, the new covenant, the loving kindness of God, the
tender mercies of God, all God's faithfulness. This is how God
draws his people onto himself, not by might nor by power, he
says, but by my Spirit. And it is, as you know, the blessed
work of the Spirit to come and to apply all that Christ has
done. This is not a wonderful thing
when we think of what salvation is. It's bound up in the very
doctrine of God. It's there in the doctrine of
the Trinity. I think it was J.K. Popham who
said, that salvation is really rooted in the distinction between
the persons in the Trinity and it is the electing love of the
Father the Father who makes choice of a people in that eternal covenant
of grace and He commits that people into the hands of His
only begotten Son the eternal Son of His eternal
love and then that's work that the
son comes to accomplish in order to save his people or it is the
son who is incarnate not the father nor the spirit it is God
the son who condescends and in the fullness of the time he is
manifest in the flesh and as a man he accomplishes all that
is necessary for the salvation of his people and then risen
from the dead he ascends on high and then on the day of Pentecost
he is the one who sheds abroad the Holy Ghost, that's what Peter
says being by the right hand of God exalted he has shed abroad
this which he now see and hear, he gives the Spirit and now the
Spirit though he be God and equal with the Son and equal with the
Father oh how his ministry is such a self-effacing ministry
how He doesn't draw any attention to Himself, the Blessed Spirit,
how He takes of the things of Christ and reveals them to sinners,
testifies of the Lord Jesus. Oh, this is the Gospel, is it
not? This is that new covenant, and it's all the work of God.
It's all the work of God. God's work in eternity, the love
of the Father, God's work in time, the love of the Son, God's
work in the soul of the sinner, the experience of the sinner,
the love of the Spirit. It's all of God. So different
to the law. Run, run and work the law commands,
but finds me neither feet nor hands, but sweeter news the gospel
brings. It bids me fly and lends me wings. Oh, not only wings here, you
see, to shouter under, the wings of Christ but wings given to
the sinner whereby that sinner is constantly flying to Christ
or that we might be those friends who are favored then in some
measure to to enter into the text to feed upon the Lord Jesus
Christ or the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ the tenderness of
his heart how we see him here as a real man I spoke of that
this morning We see so much of his humanity here. He was a Jew. And he must have fell for his
people. He knew what would befall the Jews. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent
unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together,
even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would
not. Behold, your house is left unto
you desolate. For I say unto you, ye shall
not see me henceforth till ye shall say, Blessed is he that
cometh in the name of the Lord. Or that we might be those who
can truly utter those words, Blessed is he that cometh in
the name of the Lord. Amen. Okay.