All right. Yeah, Matthew 23.
Through the week as I look at scriptures, quite often I light
upon several scriptures with the idea that's what I'm going
to preach on. And I had, last night I had something
else planned. I was going to preach on the
blood of the everlasting covenant. And I'll get around to that. It's not like I'm going to skip
it. But then I got a text from Nathan, and he asked a question
about this portion of Scripture. And it's a good question. The
Lord said, O Jerusalem, this is verse 37, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you. How often I have longed to gather
your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her
wings, but you were not willing. And his question was this, how
can the Lord want something and not have it? And given the nature of our theology, That's a good question, because we claim that our Lord
Jesus Christ is our God. We're not bashful about that.
People say, you worship a man. Yes, we do. He's not just a man,
but he is indeed a man, a human being, flesh and blood. He was Tried in every point like
we are, but without sin. There was no sin in him, he never
desired sin, he never planned to sin, he never wanted to sin,
he never did sin. Yet he went through all of the
difficulties of a human being living in this world. And though he is the sovereign
God, Yet, as he is here, having entered our reality of space
and time, he has subjected himself to space and time. Our Lord was
in one place at a time. He wasn't everywhere. He didn't know everything. Now
that sounds odd. We always say, are God's omniscient?
He knows everything. Well, it says in the book of
Luke that he grew in stature and wisdom and in favor, and
that's the word grace, by the way, grace with God and with
man. Now how does God grow in grace
with God? Now my answer to Nathan, and
I've given this answer in one form or another several times
here, but when we come to the person of our Lord Jesus Christ,
we're simply going to have to accept the fact that we cannot
fit Him into these brains. We can understand His humanity
because He has that in common with us. We know what it is to be humans,
don't we? We know what it is to suffer.
We know what it is to be surprised. We know what it is to be hurt.
We know what it is to feel good. We know what it is to rejoice.
We know what it is to just wish you could crawl back in a cave
and never see anybody again. Our Lord knew those things too.
What we can't understand and it shouldn't surprise us that
we can't understand it, is how can he experience all those things
and at the same time be that Jehovah God who said, I am Jehovah,
I do not change. Therefore you sons of Jacob are
not consumed. And the only way that I can settle
my mind about it, if that's the right word. Well, there's two
things. First of all, just accept the
fact that your mind is never going to say, oh yeah, OK, I
understand now. Because you will never understand.
We won't even understand that in eternity, friends. We can't. And one reason that we, creatures
of time and space, will never be able to understand that, not
even in our everlasting existence in the presence of God, is that
the God we worship exists outside time and space, and we can't
even think of that kind of stuff. It's not possible for us. So
anytime you bring that God into something you're trying to understand,
you're not going to be able to understand it. And it only gets
worse when you claim that the One who is that God and exists
outside of our creation interjected Himself as part of that creation,
putting upon Himself all the natural limits of anything in
this creation. The limitless God limited Himself.
You say, how does He do that? I don't know. I just know He did. And you know, Philip said, show
us the Father and that'll be enough for us. And the Lord said,
Philip, have you been with me so long and you still don't understand? If you've seen me, you've seen
the Father. Now they recognized the Father
is the God out there. What they didn't understand was
the one standing before him then is the same God. It is written in the book of
Hebrews, He is the radiance of God's glory. Now, what does radiance mean? Well,
radiance, you know, if anything glows, if anything puts out light,
the radiance is very simply the light that it's putting out.
Now, I wouldn't advise this. Not good for your eyes, but if
you were to look at the sun, you wouldn't really see the sun,
because the sun's 93 million miles away, and you're right
here. What you see is the radiance
of the sun, that light that comes from it all the way to here,
and that's what touches your eyes, the light. And that is one way that the
scriptures try to explain to us nature of our Lord. Here is God who dwells in a light
to which no man can approach, says the scriptures. Like the sun, you dare not approach
that. But the light that comes from
the sun reaches us. It is our Lord Jesus. He is the radiance of God's glory. And then he goes on to say this,
he's the express image of God's person. And the answer that I gave to
Nathan, hang on, I got it right here on the phone. Sometimes I'm more clever when
I'm writing than when I'm talking. So it pays to read. If I can find that part. Yeah. It said, there are some
mysteries about the Lord that we cannot fully resolve. The
best I can say is that the Lord Jesus is what God would be like
If He came to exist within the framework of time and space,
for that is exactly what our Lord is. He's the eternal God
existing in time and space. And that is naturally going to
fill our minds with contradictions. And we have to learn simply just
to accept that. How does the omniscient God learn? I don't know, but he did. How
could he marvel, be surprised by what someone did? I don't
know, but he did. How could God, now here's one
for you, how could God fall asleep, lose consciousness? I don't know,
but he did, here on earth. It says in the Old Testament
scriptures, he never sleeps. And he doesn't in his timeless
existence, but when he came here, he slept. How could the source of all life
die? I don't know, but he did. And that hymn on the mystery
of the incarnation, The last two lines, he who could never
die has died, and thus our ransom paid. So we look here at this
story, this account, and we see our Lord saying, oh,
Jerusalem, Jerusalem. Now you don't say someone's name
twice. unless there's a whole lot of
emotion in what you're saying. In fact, you don't say that unless
there is a mixture of sadness and loss in what's being expressed
afterward, disappointment. if he were going to chew Jerusalem
out, he'd say, Jerusalem, and that'd have been it. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. Nathan asked me that question,
and I thought on a minute, and I said, you know, I said to myself,
we can get so tied up in our theology. And I'm not talking
against theology, but theology has its limits. Theology can
make us understand doctrines and certain things, but doctrine
will never lead us to an understanding of the God we worship. It'll
never cause us to know Him. In fact, Brother Mahan used to
say, doctrine doesn't teach you Christ. Christ teaches you doctrine. You can learn all the doctrines,
and so far as being able to answer their questions appropriately
and pass a theological exam, do a fine job, but the truth
of the matter is, you don't know the doctrines right until you've
come to know Christ, for He is the one in whom all the doctrines
of truth are rooted, and they mean nothing apart from Him. Yet we cannot understand Him. Our God, way beyond what we can
wrap our minds around. David said, such things are too
wonderful for me. They're high. I can't attain
to them. It was reported that Martin Luther
once was reading the passage of scripture in which the Lord
said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And it said
that he sat there and stared at that scripture for three hours.
finally threw up his hands and said, God forsaking God, who
can understand that? Nobody. But here's what we know about
our Lord Jesus. Inasmuch as He that has seen
Him has seen the Father, and that He's the radiance of the
glory of God, and He's the express image of God, this is what we
know about Him and how we're to relate to Him. We are to look
at Him gaze on him with eyes of faith, and however he acts toward us,
assume that's how God acts towards us. In other words, we aren't
gonna ever be able to understand God in that out there sense,
except to say he's out there. Like Solomon said, the heavens
of the heavens can't contain you, much less this house that
I've built. But I can tell you what can contain
God, our Lord Jesus Christ. And whatever we can know about
God is in Him. And all our relations with God
are through Him. And so if we look on this and
we hear him lift up his voice, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, and
say that to a group of people who he has, well, beginning back
here in verse 13, I think it is, seven times, woe to you. teachers of the law and Pharisees,
you hypocrites. 15, woe to you, teachers of the
law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. And he goes down, all the way
down here till he gets to verse 33, and it's, I think there are
seven times he says woe, woe to you. He is really tearing
them up. He has been listening to them
rebuff him, rebel against him, reject what he says. and he is
righteously indignant of what they've done. And rightly so. I have absolutely
no problem with our Lord pronouncing woes on these men. Do you have
any problem with that? I understand it perfectly well.
They deserved every woe he pronounced upon them. They despised him. They tried to deceive him and
it would not be long before they would lie about him and get false
witnesses to come in and testify against him for the express purpose
of getting him crucified so that they would never have to hear
or see him again. I can understand the woes. I can understand him saying,
you snakes, you brood of vipers. Our Lord did not often speak
this harshly, but it was time for it. Sometimes, well, I remember watching
him. a basketball game in the early
years here, and it had to be in the first two or three years,
because that's all that I ever bothered watching, the basketball
games, the high school basketball games. And we were playing Hull. And it seemed like every year,
Hull and Rock Valley, they were so close. Either one of them
could win on any given day. It's just who's having the best
day. So we were playing then, and
of course, whenever we played Hall, that meant, you know, all
of Hall and all of Rock Valley was in the gym. And it was one
of these things, we are separated by one point. We're down one
point. All it takes, one basket, and
we're leading. But Rock Valley plays aggressive
basketball, and I don't want to be one of these guys that
any time you lose, you blame it on the ref. but I'm also not
blind. Now, I understand referees, they're
not always at the right angle to see what's going on. But our
guys would steal the ball, and they'd call a foul. And our side was getting upset
over that, because it was happening over and over again. And that
happened again, and our coach stood up He tore into the ref. And the ref went. And those ho-boys, they don't
miss foul shots. And the coach kept going after
him. Another one. And in so doing, and this was
in the final seconds of play, he gave Hall the opportunity
to get out of reach. And I thought he should have
held his temper, because he might have had a chance to win. And
so I asked the father of one of the players out there why
he did that. And he says, once in a while, a coach simply has
to stand up for the team. He has to let the boys know he
knows what's going on, and that he's not gonna let it go on unanswered. And our Lord, oh, he put up with
so much abuse from these people. And the disciples had seen it.
And it wouldn't be that long before he'd be leaving them. And so it was time for him to
render his verdict. against these who withstood him. He called them a brood of vipers,
and he said, how will you escape being condemned to hell? I'm
going to send you prophets and wise men and teachers. Our Lord,
he'd already picked 12 disciples. One would defect, but he'd get
another one. But he sent others. And here, 2,000 years later,
he's still sending them out there, isn't he? that I'm going to send
them to you, and you know what you're going to do with them?
You're going to kill and crucify some of them. Others you'll flog
in your synagogues, and you'll pursue them from town to town.
Does that remind you of anybody? Do you remember what Paul said
about his formal life? I pursued them from place to
place. And they did. And so he says this, and so upon
you, meaning that generation upon you, will come all the righteous blood
that has been shed on earth from the blood of righteous Abel. That's going back to the first
human blood shed. All the way from that blood, to the blood of Zechariah, son
of Berechiah. And that was someone, a contemporary
of the Lord, who, and I don't know the whole story, but he
had run to the temple, trying to escape these people. And he grabbed hold of the horns
of the altar, because that was considered a place of safety. That's not a place of safety
when these kind of guys are after you. They'll desecrate their
own temple to kill you. And he said, all the blood of
the righteous shed from Abel to him will be exacted on this
generation. This will come upon, he said,
this generation. Now here's the interesting thing. The next blood they shed was
the Lord's blood itself. And from the cross, our Lord
said, Father, forgive them. They do not know what they're
doing. I do believe that the Lord gets
anything that he asks the Father for. And the Father forgave that generation. And for a generation, this curse
of the Lord never fell on Jerusalem. And then in 70 AD, the woes and
the condemnations that our Lord pronounced upon that city fell
on the city. Because of the Lord's merciful
request for forgiveness from the cross, His own judgment was
put off for a generation. And the generation to whom the
curse was spoken, they, in their national, political, natural
lives, they never experienced it. But when there weren't many of
them left, roughly 40 years later, God sent Titus, Roman general,
and a good portion of the Roman army. And they destroyed the
place. And they tore down the temple.
And they tore it down. I don't mean they just messed
it up and you can go back in and do a remodel job. It was
a pile of dust by the time the Romans got done. And you know
what's there now? A mosque. It sits right on the
temple mount. If they wanted to build the temple
now, they couldn't. Not without creating quite the
war, because they'd have to go in and blow up a mosque to do
it. And yet, and here's what I want
to convey, if I don't convey anything else. Behold the compassion
and the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ. That after he pronounces
all those woes, and lays into those people who deserve every
hurtful word he has said, he says, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
how I would have gathered you as a hen doth gather her chicks,
but you would not. You know, if a man or a woman is saved,
he can't take credit for that in any respect. It's totally
a work of God. Yes, he called on the name of
the Lord, but he only did so because the Lord worked in him
to do contrary to his own nature. But if a man perishes, he's got
no one to blame but himself. Our Lord had just about skinned
these guys alive with what he said. But at the end of all those
harsh words, what did he say? And seeing as there's no break
here, We assume that the very Pharisees and leaders and whatnot
he was talking to, he was indicating them again. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you. They'd
already done that. Tradition says they put Isaiah
in a hollow log and sawed him in half. Not a magician's trick,
the real thing. And others of the prophets, they
treated the same way. We don't suffer much persecution.
It's getting a little more tense, but still what we deal with is
nothing compared to what some believers have had to deal with
in the past, though it could be Maybe within our own lifetime,
my lifetime, I might see some really serious stuff going on,
I don't know. But the world has always been
opposed to God and to his Christ, and therefore to real, honest
Christians. The real, they don't like them. They don't like them because
what they say they know to be the truth. You know, if someone
says something utterly stupid, you don't get mad at them. I'm telling you the truth. I
saw Bigfoot. If somebody came up to you and
said, listen, you Christians are crazy. Zeus is the true God. Would you get mad? No. I just say I'm sorry you believe
that, because it's not so. Why do they get mad? Not because
they think we're wrong. Because they know we're right.
Or shall I say, the God we worship is right. That's what gets them
upset. Men love darkness rather than
light because their deeds were evil. And the gospel we preach
shines the light and the darkness and the shadows of their own
hearts and reveals them not to be the wonderfully good people,
the wonderful Christians that they're posing themselves to
be. It proves them to be sinners, vile, wicked, worthy
of eternal wrath. And they don't like that. And yet, as such as that, and
let us take a lesson from our Lord and try to have some of
this attitude towards those who oppose the truth. There's no
use breathing fire at them. First of all, the fire isn't
ours to breathe. Oh, Jerusalem. Oh, Jerusalem. Our Lord could see what was going
to happen. It was either Elijah or, I think it was Elisha. He
saw a man, I get my history details
wrong sometimes, but I think his name was Ben-Hadad. And he was, going to overthrow
the king of the little area he came from, and that king had
been pestering Israel, and that sounded good. But when he and Elijah came face to face,
Elijah began to weep. And he said, why are you weeping?
He says, because I know what you're going to do. And our Lord wept. In his heart,
if not actually with his tears, he wept because he knew what
God was going to do to that place and to the people that lived
there. And for all their rebellion, for all their murderous actions
against him and the prophets of the past and the apostles
and pastors and teachers of the future, He had compassion on
them. I would have gathered you. I didn't come to destroy. I came
to save. But you don't think you need
saving. I know that belief in the sovereign
grace of God, if we take that truth and just let our human
intellect run with it, we can back ourselves into a corner in which we think we worship
a God who doesn't care. Has God planned to save everybody? Well, not God out there, I know
that. Is God going to be all upset
when most humans don't repent and He consigns them to eternal
punishment? No, He won't be. But at the same time, and here
again, we just gotta accept it, his heart breaks. The heart of
our Lord breaks over the stubbornness of humanity. Too sinful, too
stubborn, too stupid to recognize who he is. and that He did not
come to bring them harm, that He did not come to do them
evil, but to do them the best good that could ever be done. Now, what does that have for
you and me? Well, first of all, let's make
sure we're not Jerusalem. There's been a so-called revival
going on Asbury College in Kentucky, I don't know if you've seen the
news stuff about it. I've been asked about it by a couple of
people, and I've seen some comments made about it. There was a time
I would have been the first to jump on it. Well, they aren't doing this,
and this is always present in revival. Well, there's no use
me saying that, because I haven't been there. I don't know what's going on
there. I've seen some videos supposedly casting out a demon.
Didn't look like anything I've ever seen described in scripture,
but that was what one person videoed. That movement, whatever
it is, been going on for several weeks now. I don't know what
anybody's preaching. So I can't tell you of a certainty
what's going on there. I know this. If we get too big for our britches,
I don't know if that's a phrase from around here. We use it down
south. You're getting too big for your britches. The Lord can
leave here and go somewhere else. And where he goes, might not
be the kind of place we thought he would go. They thought he
would certainly appear in Jerusalem, and lo and behold, he passed
Jerusalem by and appeared in Bethlehem. They thought he would
grow up at the temple and pat all the temple leaders on the
back He went to a town called Nazareth, evidently meaning despised. That's where God was. And when the gospel did come
in its full-blown form, you'd think, well, certainly Jerusalem
will be the center of God's new activity. Well, a little while
it was. I don't know just when it was,
God called Paul. Paul took it on up farther north,
and it got spread everywhere, and I dare say you'd have a real
hard time finding an honest-to-God church in Israel right now. I'm not saying these things because
I think we're going astray here. We have to stand for the truth.
We have to tell what the truth is. But I wouldn't speak out
against what's going on in Asbury College for two reasons. I don't know what's going on
there. And number two, I don't want to be found. finding fault
with a work of God simply because it did not match what I thought
a work of God should be. In talking to one person about
it, I said, I don't know if it's a revival, but wouldn't it be
wonderful if it was? Wouldn't it? Oh, I'm ready for
God to just blow the world up anywhere he wants to start. Oh, let us have the same attitude
as our Lord. Jerusalem, Jerusalem. You hate
the gospel. You hate the people that believe
the gospel. You hate the Lord who brought
the gospel. Oh, but he would gather you.
He would. And I'm telling you here this
morning. He would gather you too. If you end up in hell, it's not
because he wouldn't have you, it's because you wouldn't have
him. It's that simple. You young children
here, maybe you get the idea that you've got to achieve something. Maybe you're not interested at
all in any of this, you know, and that wouldn't be surprising
either. But maybe, well, I've thought of these things and sometimes
it concerns me, but, you know, I'm not a grown-up yet, got nothing
to do with it. You can understand words. And our Lord says, I will gather
you as a hen doth gather her chicks. So far, you won't. You won't. I hope I'm getting across what's
in my heart. This kind of caught me off guard
because sometimes I forget just how compassionate the Lord is
and how open He is to receiving the worst of sinners. Whom has He chosen? I don't know. But I am convinced of this. There's
no one out there. No one. No one in here. whom
he will not receive if they come to him. The problem
has never been him. It's always been us. In the early years here, I know
that a lot of you struggled very hard with the idea that you might
be among the elect because the churches you came from always
had you looking at yourself. And I'll tell you, if you look
at yourself, you have good reason to wonder whether or not you're
of the elect, but not when you look at Christ. And I remember saying this, and
it may have surprised some of you, consider we talk about how
God always does His will, but I said this. God is more willing
to save you than you are willing to be saved by him. And how do I know that? He sent
his son into the world. And he beat the life out of his
son that he might be just and justify them who have faith in
Christ. And so far, some of you have
done nothing. You've not called on His name. You've not asked for the forgiveness
you so desperately need. I have no problem saying, come
and dine. All things have been made ready. There's food plenty. Plenty enough
for you. The problem's not with the host
of the feast. The problem's not with the servants
who try to serve up the feast the best they can. The problem's not in the food,
because it's just wonderful stuff. The problem's you. The problem's us. We're so wrapped up in ourselves,
we can't see how glorious and wonderful He is. If you leave here today without the confidence that your
sins are gone, there'll be no one to blame but you. Seriously,
no one. It'll be because He was willing,
but you were not. Oh, Jerusalem. Oh, Rock Valley. Oh, Grace Community
Church. How I would have gathered you
as a hen doth gather her chicks. May the Lord never have to follow
that up concerning us with, but you would not. Heavenly Father, we are surprised both at your
open arms and our stubborn refusal to run into them. Oh, may we learn something of
that gracious spirit you have. May our hearts be filled with
love for you and others, with the joy of the Lord and with
the peace of God that passes all understanding, because truly we have seen you
as the compassionate God who is a pardoning God like you. who passes over the transgression
of the remnant of his heritage. Who is a God like you that delights
in mercy? Lord, burn this truth in our
heart, and may the fire that you build in us be felt by others. May you make of us and of the
people among whom we live not a Jerusalem to be destroyed, but a leper colony to be saved,
full of people knowing their uncleanness, but happily saying, Lord, if
you're willing, you can make me clean.