A lesson this morning will be
taken from Luke chapter 21. Luke chapter 21. I want to read
the first 24 verses of chapter 21, and we'll be coming
back to these for several weeks on these verses. But in this chapter, the Lord
begins to teach us some necessary lessons concerning what was then
coming to pass and what was to come to pass and even now yet
is coming to pass. So some of these days were immediately
to follow his death and resurrection into glory and some as the gospel
age would progress. And the subject of the verses
I believe is summed up in this. Lessons settled in the heart. That's what he tells them about
verse 14 or so. He said, settle it therefore
in your heart. So let's read these verses together.
And he looked up and saw the rich men casting their gifts
into the treasury. And he saw also a certain poor
widow casting in thither two mites. And he said, of a truth
I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than
they all. For all these have of their abundance
cast in unto the offering of God, but she of her penury hath
cast in all the living that she hath. And as some spake of the
temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts. He said,
as for these things which ye behold, and he just told us what
he saw, and now he's telling them about what they saw. As
for these things which ye behold, the days will come in the which
there shall not be left one stone upon another that shall not be
thrown down. And they asked him, saying, Master,
but when shall these things be? And what sign will there be when
these things shall come to pass? And he said, take heed that you
be not deceived. For many shall come in my name,
saying, I am Christ. And the time draweth near. Go
ye not therefore after them. But when you shall hear of wars,
and commotions, be not terrified, for these things must first come
to pass, but the end is not by and by. Then said he unto them,
nations shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
And great earthquakes shall be in diverse places, and famines,
and pestilence, and fearful sights, and great signs shall there be
from heaven. But before all these, they shall
lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the
synagogues and into prisons, being brought before kings and
rulers for my namesake. And it, that is, this persecution
that they will suffer, this imprisonment and all these things, shall turn
to you for a testimony. Settle it, therefore, in your
hearts, not to meditate before what you shall answer, for I'll
give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries shall not
be able to gainsay nor resist. You shall be betrayed both by
parents and brethren and kinsfolks and friends. And some of you
shall they cause to be put to death. And you shall be hated
of all men for my name's sake. But there shall not a hair of
your head perish. They're going to put them to
death, but not a hair of their head is going to perish. They're
going to persecute them, whip them, beat them. In your patience possess ye your
souls. And when you shall see Jerusalem
encompassed with armies, Then know that the desolation thereof
is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea
flee to the mountains, and let them which are in the midst of
it depart out. And let not them that are in
the countries enter therein too. For these be the days of vengeance,
that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe unto
them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those
days. For there shall be great distress
in the land and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by
the edge of the sword and shall be led away captive into all
nations. And Jerusalem shall be trodden
down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Now there are in these verses
at least eight lessons for us to learn. Eight lessons in these
verses that deal with the believers, both then and now, and if the
Lord lingers in days yet to come. And these lessons are lessons
He burns into our minds and hearts. When believers learn a lesson,
it becomes a part of their walk. It becomes a part of their reasoning. When religion teaches a lesson,
it's just something memorized. It's something agreed to. They
write out a document of faith and they write it out and they
memorize it and then you'll ask them something and they'll tell
you the answer that they learned in a book somewhere. But when
God teaches a lesson, it becomes part of your reasoning. Most things you use in this life,
you study and memorize. And to some extent you do so
with the Word of God, but the difference is that the lessons
he teaches are effectual. They accomplish what he intends
them to accomplish. They take root and they become
part of us. As nature is the root of how
we think and reason and sets the bounds of our understanding,
so we are endowed with a new nature and it becomes the root
of our new reasoning. If so be, Christ said, that you
heard Christ and be taught of Christ as the truth is revealed
in Christ. Now I don't have to memorize
something to give you a reason for the hope that's in me. Do
you? Do you have to get a little pamphlet
there and it says if you ask this, answer that, you've got
to memorize all that? If somebody comes to you and
says, give me a reason for the hope that's in you. Well, Christ
in you is the hope of glory, isn't He? Isn't that what you
hope in? If somebody asks you what your
hope is, tell them. If you don't have that hope,
then you don't know that hope. But if you have it, you know.
It's in Christ. There's nobody, I don't care
how long you've lived on this earth, that's going to give you
every detail concerning the faith of God's elect. You'll give them
as much as you've learned and give them as much as you know.
But you know, nobody here has that kind of understanding. Christ
did, but you don't. But we tell them as best we can.
Christ in you, that's the hope of glory. I don't have any hope
apart from Him, period. All my hope is vested in Him,
and apart from Him I have no hope. And he tells us in verse
14, Settle it therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before
what you're going to answer. Don't do that. Men do that. They
promote that. He said, For I give you a mouth.
You remember when Moses was going to go down there and he was going
to walk right into the throne room of Pharaoh of Egypt. At that time, the most powerful
man in the world. And he said, you go down there
and tell him. Tell him? Me? I'm a man of uncircumcised
lips, he said. I don't know what to say. Well, Moses, I wasn't going to
send you along. Surely I go with you. What could
you say apart from him? And that's what he's telling
us. Here, I'll give you a mouth and wisdom. And when he gives you a hope,
a fixed hope in the word of God, when he gives his people a fixed
hope, there's no gainsaying. Your adversaries can't gainsay.
They can't win your approval. They can't move you from that
hope. I'll give you a mouth and wisdom
with all your adversaries which they shall not be able to gainsay
or resist." So let's look together at these lessons and see if the
Lord will help us to settle these things in our heart. The first
lesson is how our Lord sees and how we see. Now the Lord's been
in here and He's been approached by the Pharisees, He's been approached
by the Sadducees, he'd been approached by the scribes. And all three
he put to silence. He cleansed his temple of the
men that come in there selling sacrifices and money makers in
the temple. He cleansed the temple of that. And now he sits in the temple.
He's made his last remark, his last ministry to unconverted
Jews. And he's just sitting there and
he's watching what's going on. Now, the last people that he
confronted was the Sadducees. The Sadducees were known as always
chasing after money. They were rich men, but they
were religious rich men. And whoever it is that he's watching
put into this plate, this offering, whatever it was, I don't know
exactly what it was, but it was public, he could sit there and
watch. And he was watching, and these
rich men, he said, out of their abundance, would come over, Winston,
and put some money in. And men were probably impressed
with it. It might have been a lot of money.
I don't know. But it was out of their abundance. It didn't
put a wrinkle in their finances. And then he watched this old
woman. And she's so poor, she had nothing. She had nothing. And yet she come up and took
a big percentage of that nothing and put it in that offering place. Might have been the Sadducees
that the Lord just exposed. I don't know, it don't say. But
all of these, verse 4, their abundance cast into the offerings
of God. Now, somebody gives. I'm thankful. But all I see is
the gift. That's how men see. That's how I see. I can't see
what's behind the gift. I can guess about it. I can see
evidence a little bit behind it, but I can't see hard. I don't know why you gave it.
I don't know what you think you're going to accomplish in giving
it. You see what I'm saying? The Lord sees. He sees. I can see you when you drive
up here to the parking lot of the church, and I'm thankful
that you're here, but I can't see why you can't. I can't see
those things. I don't know if you're here because
you're hungry to hear, or here out of a feeling of obligation
of some kind. And I see your faces as I preach
and teach the Holy Scriptures, and I see you turn to the passages
that I'm quoting. But I can't see past the seeing.
That's all the further I can see. I can't see what's going on on
the inside. But the Lord does. He sees all. And He's a discerner, the Scripture
said, of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there
any creature that's not manifest in His sight, but all things
are naked and open under the eyes of Him with whom we have
to do. Now let me tell you something. This
is not written completely as a warning to generate fear in
the hearts of those who profess faith in Christ, this poor widow
had nothing to give. Her substance was but penury,
it says here. And if she gave nothing at all,
I doubt the treasury would even know the difference. He wouldn't count up the treasury,
Walter, and then say, well, boy, there's a big chunk of change
missing out here. No, he wouldn't even notice the
difference. But the Lord took note of it,
and she gave all her living. Now here's the thing, God doesn't
want or need anything. Is that right? He don't need
anything. The fact is, He said, if I was
hungry. He's not, but if He was, He said,
I wouldn't tell you. I wouldn't come to you. Everything
you see out here is mine. And the cattle on a thousand
acres, it's all mine. It didn't come from you, it came
from me. So why does he require offerings? Offerings are as old
as the scriptures. Why does he require it? Why does
he have it? Why does he promote it? Because it tells what's on the
inside. That's why. God doesn't want or need offerings.
Offerings have a place in worship to express our gratitude for
what the Lord has given to us. And offerings have a place in
the worship of God as evidence of an inward work of grace, a
real interest in the ministry. In 2 Corinthians 9, 7, he said,
every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give. Now listen, not grudgingly and
not of necessity. For God loveth the cheerful giver.
And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you always,
having all sufficiency and all things, may abound unto every
good work. Do you have a real desire to
be here? Do you have a real interest in
the gospel of God's sovereign grace? Do you have a real sense
of purpose concerning the ministry of God? Then give as you purpose
in your heart. That's what he tells us. Not
grudgingly. Well, I promised I'd give, so
I'm going to give. But I don't have to like it. I guarantee you God won't. Not
if you give that way. Solomon said, the eyes of the
Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. And he said, you know this, the
sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord. It's an abomination. He might be lauded by those around
him. He may be looked upon with honor
and highly esteemed among men. But both he and his gifts are
an abomination before God. So here's the first lesson. The
Lord sees all. He sees far past what we see. I try not to let what I see,
reactions and... I mean, sometimes I sit up here
and you're doing this. You're tired. I try not to let
any of those things affect me as to what I'm teaching and so
on. Paul said this, when he was done
preaching to the Romans, he said, I commit your souls, I commit
your hearing, I commit what I've had to say to the Lord. And I let it go there. So know
this, the Lord sees all. And he sees far past what we
see, the Lord looks on the heart. Alright, the second lesson given
in these verses is that everything in this earth is marked for destruction. I'm going to destroy it. Now see here how men see. Our
Lord's pointing out something to them. He's pointing out a
heart work in this widow. She's struggling. All she has
is just penries to live on. She's struggling. And the Lord
points out what she's doing, points out that work done in
her heart. But here's what men see. They're
looking all around that temple. Boy, look at these stones. I
don't know how they carried such stone over here, do you? These
stones were mined way away from Jerusalem. They didn't have a
stone quarry in Jerusalem. mind way away and shaped exactly
according as the Lord designed them. And they were brought there
and they all fit in this temple. And they're looking at them and
they're impressed with them. Think of the magnitude of the
words of Christ and what He was saying to them. And here's the
Son of God sitting in the temple teaching and abounding toward
them in all wisdom and prudence, abounding toward them of the
great and eternal matters. And they said, look at these
goodly stones. You'd think the Lord was impressed.
Look at these stones. Look at these gifts. How much
gifts were given to build this temple. Untold millions of men
and women who, in our day, choose a place of
worship by the outward appearance and grandeur of a building. Do
they not? Sure they do. Where you go church? You know that great big church
down there that covers two blocks? That's where I go. The only significance, now I
ain't talking about Little things that we do that are going to
be destroyed, but he picked the highest object, a religious building,
the Temple of God. God designed it. God ordained that it be rebuilt
after it was destroyed. But the only significance the
temple had was as it figured the Lord Jesus Christ. Once that
was accomplished. They were telling him how beautiful
his temple was. He said, tear this temple down.
I'll build it back in three days. They thought he was talking about
that building. He was talking about his fulfillment of the
building. And the tabernacle. We studied
that for months and months. You remember the study back in
Genesis of the tabernacle and how unique it was. But the tabernacle
was just a tent apart from its purpose to figure the Lord Jesus
Christ. Hebrews 9.9 said it was a figure
for the time then present, which were offered both gifts and sacrifices
that could not make him that did the service perfect as pertaining
to the conscience. Now listen to me. We want a nice
building. I want a building that people
can feel comfortable when they come in here and sit down. I don't want it to look like
an outlaw's hideout, do you? I want a nice building. I want a place where men and
women can come, feel comfortable to hear and worship God. But know this. It's just some
lumber, some carpet, some metal, and some concrete. That's all
it is. Take his gospel out here, what do you got? Another building.
Another building. There's no spiritual value in
it at all, except as it's sanctified of God for his gospel to be preached
in, for his presence to come in and dwell, and for his people
to gather. He sanctifies it. Everything
in this world has a purpose in the work of salvation. Turn with
me to Romans chapter 8. I quote this verse to you all
the time, but I want you to read it over here in Romans 8. Everything in this world was
created for our Redeemer. It was created to bring to pass
the purpose of God and the salvation people through his son. That's
why he made the world. I don't know what all these little
tiny things have to do with it. I don't know. But we got an eternity
with him to find out. What do people do in eternity?
They learn. They learn. They just going to
keep on learning. Everything in this world was
created for Him. That's its purpose of being.
And when that purpose is fulfilled, it will be destroyed. Look at
this, Romans 8, verse 19. For the earnest expectation of
the creature. That word stands for creation. The earnest expectation of creation. What's it do? The whole of creation, it waiteth
for the manifestation of the sons of God. That's why God preserves
it. That's why it still functions.
That's why the sun and the moon and the stars and the earth and
the climate and everything else, that's why this order is maintained
until the manifestation of the sons of God. Their design, their
purpose, and their end. is the manifestation of God's
sons. Of old, David wrote, hast thou
laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work
of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt
endure. Yea, all of them shall wax old
like a garment, and as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they
shall be changed. But thou art the same, and thy
years have no end. And the children of thy servants
shall continue, and their seed be established before thee. Psalm 102. The temple at Jerusalem was a
fabulous building. It had God for its architect
and designer. And the Lord said to them, as
for these things which you behold, the days will come. And boy,
they were coming soon. They came in 70 AD. Days will come in which there
shall not be left one stone upon another that shall not be thrown
down. So what's the lesson? Oh, here
it is. Be careful how you look at things
in this world. Things concerning God. Be careful
how you look at that. Be careful not to set your affection
on things of this world, but things above. We took a class tour one year
at an old, I think it was a Lutheran church, best I can remember.
It was right across the street. Our high school took up a block
in the town and it was surrounded by churches and houses and different
things. We went on tour and we just walked
across the street and there was an old church there, real old,
built out of stone. I don't know how old it was. But the reason for going to this
church was to see this mammoth pipe organ. Have you ever seen
one? They're mammoths. That church
was huge. I don't know how wide it was,
but that pipe organ took the whole front of that church and
went up 20 or 30 feet in the air. It was mammoth. And men and women see these elaborate,
long-standing buildings and spiritual aids, and they're convinced that
this is the place where God meets with His people. So be careful
how you draw conclusions about things of God. There may have
been a day. I'm not saying there wasn't. There may have been a
day when his gospel was preaching in that building. I don't know.
But be careful you don't walk in and look at these big impressive
things and the building and the glass work and all these things
and, boy, God's in this. Might not be. God preserved that temple. ordained
its reconstruction, tolerated all their nonsense so his son
could come in that place and fulfill his purpose. And his
son was manifested in it and spoke in it and cleansed it with
his word. And having fulfilled its purpose
and design, he would now have it marked for destruction. Brother
Don said one time, value nothing in this world more than you'll
value it when you die. Does that make sense? You got that big bank account.
What's that going to mean to you when you die? I'm telling you to have one or
don't have one. I'm just saying don't put that kind of value
on it. Don't put any more value on it
than you will in the day you die. And this temple, as it is with
every type and symbol given of God, was corrupted of men and
therefore cursed of God. Though once a place where God
manifested His glory, it was now just a hollow shell. In His
own words, a den of thieves. That's what He called it. One
writer said, what was once the house of God had become the brothel
of Babylon. And when Babylon falls, everything
sleeping in her bed is going to fall with her. Everything.
Everything. God in this world cannot be...
It can't be seen and it can't be corrupted by men. They would
if they could see it. We look not on things which are
seen. Isn't that what Paul says? No.
Don't do that. But look on things that are not
seen. Things which are sane are just temporary. They're just
temporary. But things which are not sane,
those are eternal. Those are of God. And the real
glory of creation is the God who created it, and the purpose
behind it, and His Son in whom it's fulfilled. It's the person
and work of Christ for which this world is maintained. May
the Lord teach us these things. cause us to see things as they
really are, as they really are, that he can teach me that. I
want to know that, don't you? I want to walk a spiritual walk. I do. I'm not talking about a
self-righteous walk. I'm not talking about a self-magnifying
walk. I'm talking about a spiritual
walk with God. I want to walk by faith. just
like Enoch did, and one day walk right in the glory. Wouldn't
that be something? My soul. May the Lord add his
blessing to his work. Thank you.