So once again we've been moving
through Luke chapter 6 and this Sermon on the Plain as it's known. And we've been examining the
contents of this Sermon on the Plain. as recorded in Luke 6. And in our last lesson, we learned,
we've been learning about the things that
he wrote in here. And let's just read through a
few verses here in Luke chapter 6, beginning with verse 20. And he lifted up his eyes on
his disciples and said, blessed be ye poor, for yours is the
kingdom of God. And we spent one whole lesson
on the kingdom of God, just what that means. And we found out
that that is nothing less than the person and work of Christ.
And where Christ is, there is His kingdom. And he said, blessed
be you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. And then we spent
the next lesson on what that meant to be poor, poor in spirit
and not necessarily just poor in a physical sense. And regardless
of the circumstances of the Lord's people, those that possess the
Lord have been made poor, poor in spirit that they know that
they had nothing and that they were... made aware of their abject
poverty in spiritual matters and concerning salvation. There's no works that they can
supply, no good deeds will satisfy God the Father in the place of
that substitutionary sacrifice of Christ on their behalf. And
so they come to Christ in this abject poverty and say, I have
nothing in my hand, no price I bring. And we're just solely
dependent on the mercy of the Lord. And they're made aware
by the Spirit of God and they're told that yours is the Kingdom
of God. Yours is Christ. So now we're
looking at verse 21. Blessed are ye that hunger now,
for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now,
for ye shall laugh. So again, it's the Spirit of
God that makes us to know our spiritual poverty, and at the
same time makes us to know that through the riches of His grace
in Christ, the debt has been paid in full. It's always interesting to look
through the Gospel. It's always attached to, here's what God
has done, here's your condition, here's the problem, and here's
what Christ has done to take care of that. The good news always
accompanies that. In the conclusion of our previous
lesson on the Kingdom of God, I had that quote from Martin
Lloyd-Jones that said, Indeed, the Kingdom of God comes to us
in the person and work of Christ Jesus Himself, His substitutionary
death on the cross, and His triumph over death and sin. So now as
we're in verse 21, and we're always taking this approach that
these things are talking about spiritual matters, they're not
so much physical, they can't incorporate the physical. but
not necessarily connected to it all the time. Blessed are
you that hunger now. Well, does that mean you just
didn't have breakfast this morning, or you missed a meal, or whatever? No, it's much more than that.
Blessed are you that hunger now. When you look up now, it says, in
this present time. And that's always, time starts
now for us. It's always now. And He says, for ye shall be
filled. That's one of those things that
we always sometimes overlook when we're looking at the Word
of the Lord. When He says something shall occur, it shall occur. And we don't have to doubt that. We can count on it. We can be
sure of it. And He says, blessed are ye that
weep for now, for ye shall laugh. And recall that when we began
this, that our definition of blessed was from the Greek word
that means supremely blessed. Not just a little bit, but supremely
blessed, fortunate, well off, happy. It's a word that's linked
to rejoicing. And again, we differentiate between
a physical understanding and an application to a spiritual
one. Hunger is an excellent metaphor
here used by the Lord because at some time we all experience
this sensation of hunger, not just in the sense of, well, it's,
time to eat, it's noon or whatever, but a hunger when this word means
to be famished, to pine, or to crave food. And we've all experienced
that at some point in our life. And it represents an intense
and a prolonged desire which becomes one's priority. And it
supersedes all other needs to the point of even sustaining
life. In the spiritual context, this
is especially true. And when we're looking at this
in the spiritual context, blessed are ye that hunger. Hunger for
what? Hunger for more about the Lord. Now, in the context of Luke 6
here, it's addressed to those that have been identified as
persons made poor in spirit, but rich in Christ. And now to
that is added those upon whom this divine miracle of rebirth,
of salvation by grace without works or merit, This free grace
has been supremely blessed and they will be eternally interested
in and they will develop an intense and prolonged desire to know
more about the one who saved them from their former condition.
Blessed are you that hunger, hunger to know more about about
the Lord that saved them. And as we look to understand
exactly what's taking place here, we look to the Gospel. We're
made to know that in our old nature we were dead in sin, guilty
without merit that the natural man receiveth not the things
of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them for they're
spiritually discerned. And we move from that realm because
of His grace into a realm where we where we were made to understand
the old heart. And that only comes with the
new birth. We've come to a place because of the work of the Spirit
that we know that the old heart, as I think was mentioned here
from this very pulpit not very long ago, is desperately wicked. Who can know it? And at the same
time, we learn that we've been given a new heart. And again,
that's metaphorically speaking. God doesn't reach down and rip
out our physical little heart and tear it out and re-plumb
a new one in there. It's a metaphor for spiritual
things. So, often times when the Lord
works on us in that way, we know something happened. But often
as new in Christ, we have little understanding of the magnitude
of what's transpired. We don't really understand the
fullness of it. We just know something happened. We know that we have something
that we didn't have before. And we know that we had something
before that now we don't. There's no condemnation now to
them that are in Christ Jesus from Romans 8. We're given to understand that
God by the Spirit has removed that old heart and given us a
new heart. Made us to know that He's taken care of all of our
sin. And I think our pastor mentioned
Ezekiel chapter 36. And we'll read a little bit from
that and from Jeremiah here. Because in Ezekiel 36.25, and
we always refer to this as the I wills of God. And boy, when
you go through the Bible, if you just highlight all the things
that the Lord says, I will do this, or I shall do this, all
those things that emphasize His activity in our lives, It's just
overwhelming. The magnitude of it just overcomes
us. In Ezekiel 36, 25, and I'm only
just going to read three verses from there because it's a little
bit longer reading that in the Old Testament. He says, Then
will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be cleaned
from all your filthiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse
you. 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 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 do them." In our spirit, He's done that
for us. And sometimes we just look at
our failures and say, I'm sure glad he took care of that for
me. Because every day I fail anew. But you know, he says,
every morning his mercies are new. So every morning when we
get up and say, well, I've messed that up yesterday. Every day
Christ says, my mercies are new every morning, and they fail
not. Jeremiah chapter 24, verse 7 says, and I will give them
a heart to know me. Now remember, we learned that
the old heart can't know him. The old heart is dead in sin
and trespasses. opposed to him, I'll give them
a heart to know me, that I am the Lord, and they shall be my
people, and I will be their God, and they shall return to me with
their whole heart. Again, metaphorically speaking
of spiritual matters, within this new heart, is contained
in the intense craving, the overwhelming desire, the hunger to know all
we can about the one who saved us, who loved us and gave himself
for us. That just comes. That's just
the fruit of the Spirit that we have this longing, this desire
to know more about it, and there's just so many examples in the
scriptures about when that occurs, how wonderful it is, and when
we get a glimpse, when we have that aha moment, or when we,
you remember those, I think Norm was mentioning those two on the
road to Emmaus this morning, When the Lord opened all the
scriptures to them about them, they said, didn't our heart just
burn within us when it was just so much? Our hearts were just
bursting with that and it just burned. They said, wow, we just
expected nothing and we just got a lot. And so God has graciously blessed
us with pastors to feed us and to feed this hunger, this overwhelming
desire that we have to know more about the Lord. And as he goes
through the Old Testament, he just takes the same approach. And he just goes to the Old Testament
and in all the scriptures points out Christ wherever we can, which
is everywhere. In all the scriptures, the things
concerning himself is what he said. And so our pastors, they
point us to the gospel. in Scripture that tells us of
something that's so grand in scale and scope that we could
never even comprehend it outside of the Spirit of God. Jeremiah in chapter 3 verse 15
says, I'll give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed
you with knowledge and understanding. And all they're doing is pointing
out the gospel and saying, well, this is talking about Christ.
This is talking about the Lord. This is not just about some dumb
sacrifice that they did to fulfill some ceremony. This is a picture
of what he was going to do for his people. This is a picture.
And these are all metaphors and spiritual pictures of his work. He says, although the works were
finished from before the foundation of the world, we hunger to know
more of the one who we find loved us with an everlasting love. And with loving kindness has
drawn us. That's from the Old Testament there. I've loved you
with an everlasting love, and therefore with loving kindness
have I drawn thee. When we learn about that kind
of thing, I remember back when the Lord revealed His Son in
me, as Paul said, and I just wanted to know more. And sometimes
I was a little rebuffed in that request. Sometimes they said,
well, that's not for you. That's not, that's something,
that's too, we just want to focus on your self stuff, your doo-doo
stuff. We don't want to focus on any
of that other stuff. And I said, well, it says right here, tell
me about Ephesians. No, we're not even going to read
that out loud. because it tells about what Christ
did for us. And so the scope of this really
is unimaginable in our present state. In this flesh, we're somewhat
limited in how we're able to take it in. He said in Habakkuk, when Norm
went through that, Habakkuk 1.5, he says, Behold ye among the
heathen and regard and wonder marvelously For I will work a
work in your days, which you will not believe, though it be
told you." And that's not talking about just one thing. That's
talking about the whole scope of grace from the foundation
of the world, from before that, from the covenant of grace. I think Paul tried to get some
of that across when he wrote in Corinthians. He said, you
know, for now we see through a glass darkly. You know, you just bang on your
head sometimes. I wish I knew more. I wish I understood more. And your brain has kind of got
this earth fog in it from the fall, you know. And he said,
I wish I could understand more. And he says, we see through a
glass darkly right now, but then face to face. And he says, now
I know in part. And he knew a lot more than most
of us ever could possibly. He said, but then shall I know
even as I am now? He said, it'll come this time
down the road. But even in our present state,
there's more revealed than we can take in, even though we apply
all our being to it. And I was telling Norman, we
were talking a little bit about Solomon this morning and how
he got engaged with things of the world. But he was the wisest
man. God gave him wisdom beyond... I think I was reading in Ecclesiastes
chapter 8 and he was trying to get a handle
on some of this that Paul wrote about in Romans chapter 8 where
he said He's working all things for good to them that love God,
who are the called according to His purpose. And we kind of
try to apply that in a local now sense, like, well, everything
went good today, and somehow everything is working for good.
But from before the foundation of the world, in the covenant
of grace, We were talking about this morning in the study there,
we were talking about Rahab and stuff. And quickly glancing back in Matthew
in the genealogy chapter there, that Obed beget Boaz of Rahab,
the kinsman redeemer, the type of Christ. from Rahab that harlot
woman in Jericho. Salmon begat Obed of Rahab, and
Obed begat Boaz. Now that seems unlikely, but
that was all in the Lord's scope from the covenant of grace in
bringing the Christ into this world. And so I was thinking back about
Solomon and him trying to kind of get a handle on that, you
know, because you just think about, well, my dad, where he
came from, and all the way back through, as we just read about,
Obed and Boaz and things. In chapter 8, he says, when I
applied my heart to know wisdom, And I just think that he was
talking about the wisdom of God in all these things. I think he couldn't grasp the
magnitude of the wisdom of the works of God. It was just like
too much for even him. And so when I applied my heart
to know wisdom and to see the business that's done upon the
earth, all the works of grace And he said, because though a
man's labor to seek it out, yet he'll not find it. Yea, further
though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able
to find it. It's just too big. It's just
too much. Not that he's dumb or incapable,
but it's just too much. I think in
one of the Gospels it says, well, if we tried to write down all
the good stuff that Jesus did, there isn't enough ink and paper
in the world to record all of the works. So I think he came
to this spiritual conclusion that Paul wrote of in Romans
8.28. We know, we can't see them all. We can't know them all, but we
trust that it's true that all things working together for...
good to them that love God, to them who are of the called according
to His purpose." And then, of course, you're all familiar with
the rest of that golden chain of redemption that he writes
about in Romans 8, 29 and so forth. He says, "...for because
for whom He did foreknow, them He did predestinate." And more
than that, and he goes on and lists all these wonderful things
that God did. Remember last week, your names
are engraved on the palms of his hands. I can't forget you,
I'll never forget you. God feeds us with spiritual food
like that, and we're filled, and that word means gorged. Just too much, just stuffed,
satisfied in abundance. Blessed are you that hunger,
for if you search out God, you're going to be stuffed to the gills
and you're not going to be able to hold it all. There's still
more at my table, more grace. He gives us an example of this
hunger in John chapter 6. We're all familiar with that
chapter where he feeds the 5,000 with the two fishes and the five
loaves of bread. There was a great multitude there.
We just mentioned 5,000. And we find that some there desired
physical food. They said, oh, free food. I mean,
if you put up a big sign downtown that says free food here, there'll
be a line. But if you went down there and
said, I am the bread of life, Probably a lot of them would
be like these people and say, well, that's a hard saying and
walk no more with it. Verily, verily, I say unto you,
you seek me not because you saw the miracle, but because you
just ate of the free food. and were filled. Labor not for
that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son
of Man shall give unto you. For him hath God the Father sealed."
Those people, most of them didn't see the miracle of grace, the
spiritual picture there. On the spiritual side, when he
stated he was the bread of life, They didn't feed on that. And
he goes on to say, all the Father giveth me shall come to me. I just can't tell you how much
comfort that gives the Lord's people. They know that He's not
going to lose a single one. All that the Father given Him
in the covenant of grace shall come to Him, and to Him that
cometh. He's not going to cast out a single one of them. Every
one of them that comes to Him that He's not going to cast any
of them out. And what a comfort to know that
no man, and He says, no man can come, no man is able to come
unto Me, except the Father which sent Me, draw him. And isn't that what we just read
from the Old Testament? I've loved you with an everlasting
love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee. And it's such
a powerful word. It's that word where when they
were going to arrest the Lord, Peter drew out his sword and
smote off the ear of Malchus. I always think, oh, sword, come
out. Come out. I want you to come
out. Please come. He yanked that sword
out. He yanked that sword out so hard
and so fast, and then he swacked that guy and smote off his ear. I'm sure he intended to cleave
him right down the middle, but the Lord had other plans there.
That's that word, drew. And you know, the Lord has his
own way of dealing with individuals. Sometimes he's got to yank them
pretty hard like Paul on that road to Damascus, and he struck
him down there. It's individual with each person,
but it's the drawing. It's the drawing
is the reason that they come. Now some, they hungered to hear
more, and some desired not that spiritual food. He said, it's
the spirit that quickeneth the flesh, profiteth nothing. The physical eating of physical
food, it was a miracle, but it didn't have It didn't have the
desired effect on those people that we might think in physical
terms. He said, the words I speak to
you, they are spirit and they are life. Boy, what a dinner. What food he was feeding them
with. There are some of you that believe not. He knew who they
were. Therefore, I said unto you that no man can come unto
me except it were given unto him of my Father." It's emphasizing
that the necessity of the rebirth and this drawing of the Father.
And he says, from that time, many of his disciples went back
and walked no more with him. And even his close disciples,
he says, will you go away also? And they said, where will we
go? You have the words of life. And
we believe and are sure that thou art the Christ. And so now
when the Lord saves us, we just naturally want and desire intensely
to know more of Him and more of grace. And the scope of which
is beyond understanding, but we all want all we can have. And Jesus said, you shall be
filled. And I was thinking some time
ago in another class, we were taking a look at the rainbow
as it was said of God to be a token there in Genesis. And we learned spiritually that
it was much more than meets the eye. And in Wikipedia it says
a rainbow is a reflection. It is a reflection of grace.
And it's a reflection of God's infinite wisdom and His infinite
grace. And we have some examples of
that in the New Testament and Ephesians. There's two examples
that are kind of linked to this rainbow, where it uses the word
manifold. And this word manifold means
variegated, of multi-colors, variegated. And in Ephesians
chapter 3, beginning in verse 8, reading through verse 11,
it says, Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints,
is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the
unsearchable riches of Christ. There's no end to them. The riches
of Christ are just, he says, they're just so many, the magnitude
of them, it's unsearchable. And to make all men see what
is the fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of the
world hath been hidden, God who created all things by Jesus Christ
to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers and
heavenly places might be known by the church, the manifold wisdom
of God, the variegated wisdom of God. It's a word that just
means an infinite spectrum. of the wisdom of God according
to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our
Lord. And then again in 1 Peter chapter
4, this word manifold is brought to our attention again in verse
10. As every man has received the gifts, even so minister the
same one to another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. We're to build each other up.
tell each other, remind each other of the unsearchable riches
in Christ, of the manifold, the multiple magnitude of the grace
of God. And so we think of that rainbow,
this variegated, this multicolored reflection of God that we learn
by science and by revelation In this rainbow that we see,
I'd just seen one the other day, there are seven primary colors
we learn in a visible rainbow. At first they thought there were
just five, but then back in 1700 some scientists decided, two more hues in there that are
primary colors. So they decided on seven primary
colors in a visible rainbow. And green, it's interesting to
me that green is the center color. In the spectrum, in the wavelengths,
green is the most visible one. And the human eye can distinguish,
it says, about 100 different colors. But we learn through science
now that the spectrum of a rainbow is actually a continuously infinite
in scope. And it contains an infinite number
of wavelengths of light, of colors, in all directions. And we can only see about a hundred,
and there's seven primary colors in the rainbow of this reflection
of God. But spiritually it's infinite
in its scope, infinite in its representation of the grace of
God. So now we see in part We can
only see the seven primary colors and we can make out about a hundred
combinations of those different ones. My mom, she was a painting
instructor at a college over on the coast and she had this
gizmo called, it was a color wheel. And she would spin that
around and say, well, you add this color and that color, and
you spin that around, and it comes out. It equals that. So
when she was mixing up her paints to paint something, she could
kind of determine what she needed to use to get to a desired effect. We know that beyond all we can
see and have a record of, God is and has worked all things
for good. to them that love God, who are the called according
to His purpose. And when we think of that rainbow and that spectrum,
we can only see a little bit of it. But we know that there's
a way more out there. And when we hunger and thirst
after God, it's out there. And we can have as much as we
can take. Paul said to that one group,
he said, man, I'd like to give you guys a lot more, but you
just aren't able to take it yet. You are not there yet. I'm only
able to give you a little bit of milk here. I'd like to give
you more, but you're not ready. So we hunger for and we're filled
with the gospel. The Lord said, feed my sheep. They hunger and they shall be
fed. There's no therefore now, no
condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus who walk not
after the flesh but after the Spirit. That's pretty good chow. And we know all things are working
for good. for them that love God, to them who are the called
according to His purpose, for whom He did for no..." Boy, he
says, here is the king's table. I think they have those restaurants
at the smorgasbord where you can just go up and pay your money
and you just can load your plate with as much as you want. All
you can eat. Whom He did foreknow, He also
did predestinate, to be conformed to the image of His Son, that
He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, more
than that, whom He did predestinate, then He also called, and whom
He called, He justified, and whom He justified, He glorified."
He said, what do we say to these things then? If God be for us,
if all these things are for us, who can be against us? He that
spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall
he not with him also freely give us all things? A smorgasbord
of things concerning the Lord for those that hunger for it.
Who is he that condemneth? It's Christ that died, yea, rather
has risen again, who's even at the right hand of God, who also
makes intercession for us. What a meal! And there's places where they
won't even let you read that out loud. They don't want to
feed the sheep. They don't really want you hungering
after things about Christ. They want you to be a good little
sheep that just does what they say and doesn't get out of line. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ. And that word, all,
just means what it says it means. It means all. We've been blessed
with every spiritual blessing. So when it says, blessed are
you and your hunger, because you're going to be fed, you shall
be fed, that's what that means. According as he has chosenness
in him before the foundation of the world. When someone is
saved, they don't often contemplate that. They say, well, I wonder
now if I've been chosen. I wonder if I've been predestined. That seldom seems to be the case
for you. When the Lord works with somebody
and reveals himself in him and he says, I take them and give
them a new heart. and I cleanse them from all their,
and then they look back and they say, oh, look what I've been
saved from. Then they have that experience
of having predestinated us under the adoption of children by Jesus
Christ Himself according to the good pleasure of His will, to
the praise of the glory of His grace wherein He hath made us
accepted in the beloved. I was thinking, Paul says, I'm
feeding the sheep and I can hardly take time to take a breath. There's
no punctuation in this stopping place in this Ephesians. He just says, get ready. I have this little dove that we
rescued at home. It's a couple weeks old now and
we found out that doves They don't gape like a lot of little
baby birds do where they open their mouth and the mother comes
and stuffs a cricket in it or grasshopper or whatever. They
actually stick their head down the gullet of the parent and
drink this stuff called craw milk out of their craw. So they suck. That's how they eat. Once we
learned that from YouTube, Yvonne and I mixed
up this stuff out of walnut paste and some crushed egg and blended
it all together and all these ingredients that we came up with
and made kind of a soup out of it. We put that in a little,
first we used a baby nipple because that's what it showed on YouTube.
Man, when I put that down there, that bird just went, stuffed
its head in there and just started drinking like crazy. And now
we've graduated to a little cup like salsa comes in with your
taco or something. It just sticks its head right
in there and just goes to eat. And we provide the food and stick
it under its beak and it just dives in there and eats till
it's full. To the praise of His glory. of
His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved, in
whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of
sins, according to the riches of His grace, wherein He hath
abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known
unto us a mystery of His will, according to the good pleasure
which He hath purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the
fullness of times He might gathered together in one all things in
Christ both which are in heaven which are in earth even him in
whom we have obtained an inheritance being predestined here according
to the purpose of him who worketh he can hardly take a breath there
and he's feeding them with all this Grace, all these things
the Lord has done, that the scope is so unsearchable, so beyond,
we can't see it all. It's like that invisible spectrum
of colors that goes out in all directions. We can just see in
part a little bit. He says, but here's some. I'm
telling you about some. And here in a few minutes, our
pastor's gonna get up and he's gonna go to the Old Testament
and say, Here's the Lord, here's Christ. So blessed are ye that hunger
now, for you shall be filled. So we're going to stop there,
and I'll be gone next week, but after that we'll take up the
next thing here in Luke. So in the meantime, my friends,
be filled and be free.