Well, good morning. Welcome to
our continuing Bible study in the book of Luke. We're in chapter
22. And last week, we covered starting in verse 39,
and we kind of got started on that, but we didn't get a chance
to go through the all the wonderful detail that's in there. And so
we will kind of continue our study from last week. And so
beginning in Luke chapter 22 verse 39, he came out, remember
they were up in the upper room and they had the Lord's Supper
and then adopted the the Lord's Supper after they'd
had the Passover, and then they came out and went up to the Mount
of Olives. So in verse 39, they came out,
and as he was wont, or as was his custom, he'd been teaching
in the temple by day, and retreating to the Mount of Olives, up to
the garden area up there by evening. So he went to the Mount of Olives,
and his disciples also followed him. And when he was at the place,
he said unto them, Pray that you enter not into temptation. And he was withdrawn from them
about a stone's cast, and he kneeled down and prayed, saying,
Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me, and nevertheless
not my will, but thine, be done. And there appeared an angel unto
him from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony, he prayed
more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops of
blood. falling to the ground. And when
he rose up from prayer and was come unto his disciples, he found
them sleeping for sorrow. And he said unto them, why sleep
ye? Rise and pray, lest ye enter
into temptation." So he kind of mentions that twice there,
that beware of that. And So our lesson today, actually
the title of it comes from Hebrews chapter 5 verse 7. And the title of it is, Strong
Crying and Tears. And it has to do with him in
his agony. And we covered that quite a bit
in our last lesson about that agony of all the sins, him who
knew no sin being made sin for us. And taking all those on and
contemplating the separation that he would experience from
God the Father with whom he had been at one from eternity and
all those things that were foreign to his nature that he, for the
joy that was set before him, endured all of that stuff. So we kind of continue that line
of thought here, and we compare what's written here with, as
our pastors always want to say, the book of Hebrews is such a
commentary on the Old Testament. And we find that Jermaine here
in Luke 22, and we go to Hebrews chapter 5, and there's a strong
statement there made regarding the completely human aspect of
Christ when He was tabernacled among us in the fullness of time,
made of a woman, made under the law. and His eternal high priestly
office as God. And in Hebrews chapter 5, if
you'd turn there please to Hebrews 5, and we'll read a few verses
from there. Again, it's kind of tough to
just leap into the middle there, but in Hebrews 5, 6, as He saith
also in another place, which again is from the Old Testament,
thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. So he makes a point about Christ
being a priest, an eternal high priest. And then he says, then
he makes this parallel note here that says, who in the days of
his flesh, which says that our high priest came down and tabernacled
among us, who in the days of his flesh, when he offered up
prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears, what
a potent thought that is, came in the days of his flesh, offered
up prayers and supplication, was strong, crying in tears unto
him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in
that he feared, though he were a son." Every word in that sentence
is just filled with deeper meaning than we can contemplate. Though he
were a son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.
And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation
unto all them that obey him, called of God a high priest after
the order of Melchizedek." So, some things that we might consider
today as we look at this It says that he feared. He had
deep respect for God and for the righteousness and the holiness
of God. And not that he was afraid of
Him, but that word just intimates a a godly respect for him. And we might consider that Christ
never entered into any endeavor partially, but was totally engaged
from eternity. And so we must at least understand
that as much as we're able when it's written, he offered up prayers
and supplications with strong crying and tears. And he sweat,
as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground from Luke 22, 44. And I was really
in awe when I was reading Robert Hoffer's commentary on this. And I'm going to paraphrase him
a bit here. about how we might consider this
and recalling from our previous lesson titled, In the Garden
Again, where in the garden began the fall and the sin and in the
garden we have the cure, the redemption coming in. And how
that the first Adam under the curse of sin and the fall would
by the sweat of his brow eat physical bread. And we find that
in Genesis 3, verse 17, 18, and 19. And we'll read that real
quick here if you turn in your Bibles there. And unto Adam, he said in Genesis
3, 17, Because thou hast hearkened unto
the voice of thy wife, and eaten of the tree of which I commanded
thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it. Cursed is the ground
for thy sake. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it
all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it
bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat of the herb of the
field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou
return unto the ground, for out of it thou wast taken. And for
dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return. So as we look at this second Adam
in the garden and compare that to what was
written in Hebrews, that the second Adam overcame the curse
of sin for his people. And by this, his sweat brought
to them the bread of life. What a wonderful thought. The
exact opposite things that were caused by the first Adam, the
second Adam overcame as he sweat great drops of blood, as it were. and being in agony, prayed more
earnestly, said, and his sweat was, as it were, great drops
of blood. And, you know, we observed the
bread of light in our previous studies in Luke chapter nine
and also in John chapter six. And I think it's important that
we note the effects of the fall here, because that just has everything
to do with why we're where we are and why we're at this point
in Luke. We're allowed to see the agony
and the grief of the Son of God in this garden as he approached
judgment for all whom the Father gave him. And consider the words
of the Holy Spirit regarding the natural man as he directed
them to be written down in Psalms and in the New Testament as well. But in Psalms 14, it says, the
fool has said in his heart that there is no God. They're corrupt. They've done abominable works.
There's none that doeth good. And in Psalm 36, verse 1, a psalm
of David, the servant of the Lord, the transgression of the
wicked saith within my heart that there is no fear of God
before his eyes. Recall that we read that in our
previous a verse from Hebrews 5-7, and was heard in that he
feared. The Son of God had fear. The
Son of God had respect, but the natural man does not have that.
That part of him was removed in the fall. That part of him
was disabled, we'll say, became defective, became killed in the
fall. And the part of him that would
reverence God and would respect God and that would have an understanding
of these things was removed. In the garden he hid himself
and lied to him and blamed him and blamed others and all those
things that are effects of the fall. The wicked saith within my heart,
there's no fear of God before his eyes. And, you know, the
answer of Christ to this is revealed in Luke chapter 23 and Luke chapter
23 verse 27. And there followed him a great
company of people and of women. which also bewailed and lamented
him, and Jesus turned unto them and said, Daughters of Jerusalem,
weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.
For behold, the days are coming in which they shall say, blessed
are the barren and the wombs that never bear, and the paps
which never gave suck. For they shall begin to say to
the mountains, fall on us, and to the hills, cover us. For if
they do these things in a green tree, referring to himself, What
shall be done in the dry? A green tree where the life is
still in it in the dry, kind of a metaphor for a dead dead
in trespasses and sin, person or dead stick. And so in Hawker's
commentary, he said, if Christ was thus brought into such agony
while bearing only the transgression of others, what must be the terror
of those who bear their own? But they won't have any concept
of that until that actually occurs. They'll go right to the grave
saying, I'm okay. It wasn't that big of a deal.
If there is a God, well, I'll tell him. I'll set him straight when I
get there. We've all heard that. We've all
dealt with that. So the effect of the fall is
to make man to disregard sin and the effect of it and to be
totally ignorant of and to disregard the holiness of God and the penalty
for sin. That's the difference between
Psalm 36 where it says there's no fear of God, there's no respect,
there's no understanding, there's no concept of sin really, every
day we see evidence that sin becomes more, it changes. The concept of sin
changes from day to day. What was tolerable today is The
fact, tomorrow, what was intolerable 10 years ago is now a matter
of course. And so we see that sin just gets
diluted down to, in our mind, we rationalize it to, well, eh,
it's nothing. But they totally disregard. God never changes. His attitude
towards sin is the same now as it was in eternity, as it was
thousands of years ago, and as it will be thousands of years
in the future if the time goes on that long. Sin must be dealt
with either at the cost of the individual or at the hand of
a substitute. which is Christ who died for
us while we were yet sinners. The high priest, as we read here
in Hebrews, that offered himself for us. And as it was written
back in the Old Testament in Genesis 22, Abraham said, my
son God will provide himself. a lamb for a burnt offering. And so they went, both of them
together. God provided the only thing that's satisfactory. He determined what would be acceptable. Back
to Hebrews, again, our commentary on the that are transpiring in
Hebrews chapter 9. But Christ, being come, and high
priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect
tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building,
there in Hebrews 9.11, and continuing on here in verse 12, neither
by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered
in once into the holy place having obtained eternal redemption for
us. For if the blood of bulls and
goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling in the unclean sanctifyeth
to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood
of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without
spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the
living God. And for this cause, He, and you could just underline
that in your Bibles if you want to, He is the mediator. He's the only mediator. There's
no other mediator. He is the mediator of the New
Testament that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions
that were under the First Testament, they which are called might receive
the promise of eternal inheritance." So again, there's salient words
there that it's not a universal application. It's specifically
applied to those which are called that that blood being applied,
that atonement being applied for those transgressions. You
know, in the natural man, he just does not consider having
to appear before God Almighty without such a mediator. And furthermore, he's deluded
by sin and the fallen to thinking that If such a meeting were to
take place, he would be able to act as his own mediator and
negate the issue of sin entirely. Well, it wasn't that big a deal. And they don't consider that
the biggest, the main, it's not so much that, well, yeah, I stole
a pack of gum when I was like six, but you know, The Scripture
says, he that believeth not in whom God has sent, that is the
issue. It's Christ is the issue. And
saying that not only do I not believe that he is or that you
sent him or that he's my mediator or that he could be the mediator,
or that's the only mediator that's acceptable, you say, Let's just
work this out between us. Like God says, you thought that
I was altogether such a one as yourself, and we could negotiate
this, but it is not an understanding of God. There's no fear of God. no understanding either of sin
or of the righteousness of God. They're foreign concepts to natural
man because of the fallen. The Apostle Paul, once again,
is our example in explaining and regarding this very fact.
In his old nature, Paul was deluded into thinking he could appear
before God and present his works in the form of keeping the law.
And, you know, keeping the law, we talk a lot about that, but
it's really a term that's synonymously used in the scriptures for really
any kind of works that a person brings forward to justify themselves
before God. Keeping the law was what the
Israelites deluded themselves into saying, well, I've kept
the law from my youth up. Well, that's a big violation
of the one that says, thou shalt not lie. And well, I didn't know
about it back then. It only counts from when I became
aware of my, but no, it's, It's from the beginning. And the Scripture
says that if we say we have no sin, we're just liars. It's just
the truth of it. But Paul was deluded into thinking
he could appear before God and present his works in the form
of keeping the law, and even was used to declare this fact
in Philippians chapter 3. He just comes out and says, look,
my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. And to write the same things
to you, to me, indeed, is not grievous, but for you it's safe,
in Philippians 3.1. Beware of dogs, beware of evil
workers, beware of the concision, and that word is mutilators. take the gospel and mutilate
it by chopping it up and doing things to it to make it not be
the gospel anymore. For we are the circumcision,
and the circumcision is just a metaphor, a picture of removing
the things of the flesh that keep us from God. We are the
circumcision which worship God in the Spirit and rejoice in
Christ and have no confidence in the flesh. And that's what
circumcision pictures, just cutting that away and doing away with
it. We have no confidence in the flesh. No confidence to do
what? To meet God based on our own
fleshly merits, our own works. He says, though I might have
confidence in the flesh, he said, if anybody in the world ought
to have confidence to meet up with God in the flesh, it would
be me. Because I, he says, if any other man thinketh that he
hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more. He said, I
was circumcised the eighth day, just like the law said. I was
of the stock of Israel. I checked that box that I am
in the Abrahamic lineage of the tribe of Benjamin, specifically
a Hebrew of the Hebrews as touching the law. I was a Pharisee. I
was zealous of the law. Concerning zeal, persecuting
the church, touching the righteousness, which is of the law, blameless. That's how I looked at myself
under those conditions, under the conditions of being in an
unregenerate state. And I just thought that was normal.
I just thought that was the way it was. To me, that was just
how things are. And he says, wrong. When I pleased
God to reveal His Son in me, he said, I found out that was
all done. It was worthless. In the 10th chapter of Romans,
verse 2, he says, he's talking about his brethren, the children
of Israel, and he says, I bear them record, they have a zeal
of God. Boy, we know people that are real zealous about religion,
but they are just totally wrong about it. They have a zeal of
God, but not according to knowledge. All their zeal is based on a
false concept of God, a false concept of their own situation,
their own sin, their own religious circumstance that they count
on. They have a zeal of God, but
not according to knowledge. There's no true knowledge, and
the fleshly knowledge they do possess is defective, it's faulty,
it's erroneous, and it's distorted by sin and the fall. But that's
how they look at it. It's like looking at it through
the rose-colored glasses. Everything looks rosy. When you
take those glasses off and see things how they really are, you
see clearly it becomes different. For they, in verse three of Romans
10, they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and that's how
we are in our natural sense, they being ignorant of God's
righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness
have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.
For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone
that believeth." And boy, do we see that brought out here
in Luke chapter 22. He says, not my will, but thine
be done. He had an understanding of the
righteousness of God because they were one. And he had an
understanding of what was going to be the requirement to pay
for that, to redeem the people that God gave him in the covenant
of grace. And the Holy Spirit, through
Paul, addresses this in 1 Corinthians 2.14. We say this, we repeat
this verse all the time, but it's just so true. The natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto
him. Neither can," that means that
word speaks to ability, neither can he know them because they're
spiritually discerned. He doesn't receive them. They're on a different channel.
They're on a different frequency. They're coded, as sometimes we've
been wont to say here in our lesson. You can't get them. And it comes across as gibberish
or foolishness. It's kind of like the Enigma
machines in World War II. The Germans sent out these coded
messages over their Enigma machine, and unless you had an Enigma
machine on the other end to translate it into something understandable,
it was just gibberish, a bunch of unrelated numbers or letters
that made no sense. You say, well, this is foolishness. This is no good. What good is
this? But when you get the Enigma machine
that translated into We're going to sink a troop ship tomorrow
with a U-boat." They say, oh, that makes perfect sense. So
their foolishness unto him, neither can he know them because they're
spiritually discerned. So what's the difference then
between confidence in the flesh confidence in the law, and confidence
in the flesh regarding any self-originating work which is outside of the
regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. What's the difference? One is effectual and one is totally
not. And, you know, we talked a lot
about, as we mentioned earlier, that the keeping of the law and
works, Paul uses those kind of synonymously. It's not by works
of righteousness, which we have done. We're not saved by any kind of
works. Over and over and over and over
and over again, that phraseology is used in the New Testament.
And in Hebrews it says, he that enters into Christ's rest has
ceased from his own works, not just the keeping of the law,
but any work that can be tied to self, work of trying to appease God
in His righteousness. There's a guy on TV, there's
several of them that come on and say, all you've got to do
is repeat these words. All you've got to do is say,
repeat after me, and he tells you the words, or you send for
this card, and I'll mail them to you, and you can just repeat
this phrase, and then God is obliged to react to that phraseology,
and leave the Holy Spirit out of it altogether. Can professing membership in
a body of believers suffice? Well, I've been a member of this
Baptist church all of my life, since I was two, or three, or
six, or I've been coming here, whatever. You know, Norm mentioned
the parable of the tares and the wheat here a while back,
and in any great What was that phraseology? There's tears. And they said, well, shall we
pull them out? He says, I'll take care of it. You don't have
to worry about it. So we leave that to him. So can
baptism? No. Nothing suffices except for what
God himself has declared satisfactory, my son, God will provide himself
a lamb. And that has that dual meaning
of not only does he provide the lamb, but he is the lamb that
he provides. You must have a substitute that
meets all the requirements. And Christ only is the satisfaction. He's the lamb that was slain
from the foundation of the world, an eternal substitute after the
order of Melchizedek. You know, I pay tithes and I
do this and I do that. And in Hebrews 7, it says in
verse 4, now consider how great this man was unto whom even the
patriarch Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils. And verily they
that are the sons of Levi, who didn't come along until much
later, who received the office of the priesthood have a commandment
to take the tithes of the people according to the law that is
of their brethren, though they come out of the loins of Abraham.
And we find that recorded for us back in We'll look at a couple
of verses here in Genesis and Leviticus and Numbers. In Genesis
14, 18, Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and
wine, and he was the priest of the Most High God. And he blessed
him and said, Blessed be Abraham of the Most High God, possessor
of heaven and earth, and blessed be the Most High God, which hath
delivered thine enemies into thine hand. And he gave him,
that's Abraham, gave him tithes of all, Well, who gets tithes? Well, we find out that in Leviticus
2730, in all the tithe of the land, whether the seed of the
land or the fruit of the tree, it's the Lord's. It is holy unto
the Lord. And then in Numbers 18, the Lord
commands that those tithes be shared with the Levites. In the tithes of the children
of Israel, which they've offered as a heave offering unto the
Lord, I, because they're His, they're His possession, I have
given to the Levites to inherit. Therefore, I've said unto them,
among the children of Israel, they'll have no inheritance. And so we see all these things
that that people try to adopt for themselves and substitute
them for the very real substitute of Christ being of no effect. And then he goes on to praying
about this. And the key there is aligning
our will with God and not the reverse. We're not trying to
get God to align himself with the way we think things ought
to be because we're pretty clueless on stuff. We don't have an end
view of all the things. And we've used this example many
times where Ananias I'm sure he probably prayed to God that,
don't let Paul come here, because he's going to arrest us all and
throw us in the clink. And some of us is going to be
caused to be killed, and others are going to be maltreated. And if he were able to persuade
God to listen to him and realign God's work, we wouldn't have
the New Testament. But he says, hey, you know what?
He's a chosen vessel unto me, and all the things that he's
been a party to, it's all been part of my bigger purpose that
I purposed from before the foundation of the world. He's a chosen vessel
to bring my word to the kings and to the Gentiles and the people
of Israel. So here's what I want you to
do. And in an eye, I said, OK, I'm
aligning my will with yours. You said it, I'll go take care
of him when he gets here, and we'll do what you said. So back
in Luke chapter 11, the disciple says, teach us to
pray. And he said to them, well, when you
pray, And it's not of a kind of a, here's another repeat after
me kind of a clause. He says, when you pray, say,
our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. There's
a principle to adopt that we ought to fear God and respect
him and consider his holiness. Thy kingdom come, thy will be
done as in heaven, so in earth. That's how our prayer ought to
go. But, you know, Paul wrote in
Romans, he says, we don't even know how to pray right. He says,
thank God that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us in our prayer
with utterances that can't be understood. And he converts our
prayers to align with God's perfect will and purpose because we'd
mess it up. Because we don't know. Who would
have guessed that Paul, who would have guessed that this guy that
was such an offense would turn out to be who he was? That's
why that's there for us in the New Testament. That's why Paul
says it often in Acts and in Philippians. He brings it up
all the time. Look what I used to be. But when
it pleased God to reveal His Son in me, what a difference,
what a change, what a remarkable thing. And he says, before, I was unafraid to meet God. I had no fear of God. I had no
respect. I had no understanding. And when
the Son of God is in the garden and He's in agony and crying
with strong tears, because he's faced with bearing
the sins and burdens of all his people. Again, how little we
understand how we would be trying to do that for ourselves. In Psalm, the 40th chapter, he
said, I delight to do thy will, my God. Thy law is within my
heart. Lo, I come in the volume of a
book. It's written of me. All these
things that were caused to be written thousands of years before
what we find here in Luke chapter 22, and concerning Psalm 40, "...sacrifice and offering
thou didst desire, mine ears thou hast opened, burnt offering
and sin thou hast not required." Then I said, lo, I come in the
volume of a book that's written of me. I delight to do thy will.
And again, we have the commentary from Hebrews in chapter 10 explaining
that context of Psalm chapter 40. And I'm not going to read it.
You can read that since we're out of time, but I'll just paraphrase
or sum it up for you that it speaks entirely and only of Christ. And it notes the total inefficacy
of any sacrifice, of all sacrifices, of any works except the work
of Christ. He's the only one all-sufficient
sacrifice by which he forever perfects them that are sanctified. I believe that's what it says
in Hebrews 10, 14. For by one offering, he hath
perfected forever them that are sanctified. Hallelujah. So we'll stop there. We've gone
over our time just a little bit, but appreciate your patience
until next time.