Twilight Priorities

you so choose. There’s place
for notes there as well. I remember in junior high or
high school, somewhere in there, in those cloudy years, we received
a writing assignment that essentially asked us to detail our last week
on earth, that if we knew what our last week on earth would
be, how would we live? It’s an interesting question
and really, in a sense, a question that every Christian should put
to their minds on a daily basis. If this were my last day, if
I knew that this were my last week, it’s in that context that
I’ve often told people that have what they know to be a terminable
disease. In a sense, it’s a blessing.
Because not all of us will get that kind of a warning. Some
will die suddenly. Many will die suddenly. Not everybody
gets that advanced warning on their final days. And so the
question is, how would you live your final week? And the beautiful
thing about Scripture is it details extensively. Exactly how Christ,
our Lord Jesus, lived out his final days on earth, his last
week. And we’re in it. We’ve been in
it since the moment that we looked at the recorded verses there
of the triumphal entry. There began Christ’s final week. Final week on earth, final week
of ministry. If you would, I want to take
us to Luke’s gospel and to this final week of ministry. And it
begs the question of priorities, what I called twilight priorities.
The priorities for Christ’s ministry in his last days, what were they?
Luke and the gospel writers, As I said, detail them very carefully.
I want to pick up just four verses this morning in Luke’s gospel.
Luke, chapter 19, beginning in verse forty five. Jesus entered
the temple and began to drive out those who were selling, saying
to them, it is written and my house shall be called a house
of prayer that you have made it a robber’s den. He was teaching
daily in the temple. But the chief priests and the
scribes and leading men among the people were trying to destroy
him. They could not find anything that they might do, for all the
people were hanging on to every word he said.” If you look for priorities for your
own life, what better place to look than our Lord Jesus Christ?
And I’ve isolated what I would say, three priorities here. Perhaps there are some others
that will come out in our study, but three priorities that Christ
set himself to. And I want to begin this morning
by taking, as it were, a brief left turn before we look at the
passage at hand. I want to look at a second cleansing
of the temple that happened really at the beginning of Christ’s
ministry. There were those commentators that said that John was confused
and accidentally put this temple cleansing at the beginning of
his gospel instead of at the end. Most conservative commentators
take one look at this and say this is not It’s not outlandish. It’s not too far fetched to conceive
that there were two temple cleansings. The two incidents described are
different enough that that’s exactly what I believe. If you
would turn to John, chapter two. John, chapter two, Christ really
had just begun to minister. And what a way to start. And
the fascinating thing is that the exact way his ministry begins,
so it ends. He saw that people were very
slow to change. They didn’t want change. They
wanted their own way. In John’s gospel, it’s recorded
the Passover of the Jews was near and Jesus went up to Jerusalem
and he found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep
and doves and the money changers seated at the tables. And he
made a scourge of cords and drove them all out of the temple. Times
passed when I’ve treated this passage and preached through
it. There are those commentators
that say Jesus came very close to sinning here. In making a
scourge of cords. And I will tell you that that’s
blasphemy. It’s blasphemy to even think
of it. This wasn’t the Jews temple, it was Christ’s temple. It’s
God’s house. And Christ was reminding them
that he was the Lord of the temple. No measures that he could have
taken would have been too strong. He could have struck them all
dead, as was often the case with profaning holy things. And so
he made a scourge of cords and drove them all out of the temple
with the sheep and the oxen. He poured the coins of the money
changers out and overturned their tables. These were these were
dramatic acts. Jesus wasn’t just gently asking
them to remove themselves from the temple. This was a scene. This was a memorable occasion.
This was drastic measures. Be hard on behalf of Christ.
And to those who were selling doves, he said, take these things
away and stop making my father’s house a place of business. We’ll
talk more about that in a moment. But his disciples noted it. This
captured their attention, his disciples remembered that it
was written zeal for your house will consume me. His disciples
knew in an instant that this was the lord of the temple and
that his actions were just and right and pure. So at the very
beginning of his public ministry, right here at the outset, No
sooner had John the Baptist, the forerunner, appeared, Jesus
enters the temple and cleanses it in dramatic fashion. The Jewish religious leaders, they didn’t get the message.
They didn’t yield to Christ’s exhortations here because things
almost immediately returned to what they considered normal.
This wasn’t the purpose of the temple. This isn’t supposed to
be how things were. I want to take you just briefly,
in your mind’s eye, a reminder of the purpose of the
temple. If you remember last week, as
Christ rounded the hill of the Mount of Olives, He looked down
upon this beautiful city. And one of the things at the
focal point of the city was the temple itself. That temple that
was made of white marble and covered in places with gold.
It was a striking image. And it says that as soon as Jesus
saw the temple, he wept. Could it be that he knew already
what was going on inside? Not only could it be, Jesus knew.
Jesus knew the low place that the temple had sunk to in people’s
minds and in their practice and in their attitudes. Context is everything. I say
it all the time. And you know what? There’s nothing
wrong with selling oxen or selling sheep or selling doves or exchanging
money. There’s nothing inherently wrong
with those things at all. But John’s gospel there gives
us the context. The problem was that they were
doing these things in the temple. They were doing these things
in the place of worship. The temple had always been the
focal point for Israel ever since its inception. There, the ark was brought in.
It was a place of blessing. It was a place of solemn prayer.
In fact, the longest prayer recorded in the Bible is recorded there
at the temple. The whole purpose of the temple
was that all the other nations may know that I am Jehovah, God
declared. Daniel records that the temple
was plundered by Nebuchadnezzar. And from that point on, the Jews
set about to restore the temple. They’re recorded in the book
of Ezra. The work began in earnest. all the while thwarted by Antiochus
Epiphanes, who defiled the temple by bringing in swine. The Jews
knew that this was a precious place. Judas Maccabees restored the
temple. Even Herod, evil Herod, contributed to the effort of
restoring this temple that he knew. He knew to be a place of high regard. So there they
were in the temple, in this historic and holy place where God had
promised to dwell, where people were to gather in solemn worship. Where there were animal sacrifices
required. As a highlight, as a reminder
of the severity, the sinfulness of sin, these animal sacrifices
carried on all the time. What were they doing? They were
selling, ripping people off with these high priced sacrifices.
selling things that they could have easily sold outside the
gate of the temple. There were these greedy people
exploiting the needy, as we’ll see in a moment. It wasn’t just that they were
ripping people off, Jesus calls them robbers, but it was they
were doing so in the temple. That’s what made their sin so
egregious. Isaiah. in the opening chapters
of his great book, started with a rebuke to the nation in these
terms. He said, Alas, sinful nation, people weighed down with
iniquity, offspring of evildoers, sons who act corruptly. They
have abandoned the Lord. They have despised the Holy One
of Israel. They have turned away from Him. What are your multiplied
sacrifices to me? says the Lord. I have had enough
of burnt offerings of rams and the blood of fed cattle. I take
no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats. When you come
to appear before me, who requires this trampling of my courts? Bring your worthless offerings
no longer. Incense is an abomination to
me. New moon sacrifices to me. He concludes with these words.
He says, I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. And
so at some point, the Jews often would transition from this noisy,
crowded gathering to some pretended attempt to worship God in some
kind of fake solemnity. That was the context in the Gospel
of John. In this great place, this beautiful
place, this place that was purposed by God to be a place of worship,
had become a noisy, crowded place of business. Flip over, if you would, to Luke’s
Gospel, to the passage that we consider this morning. Because
here upon Jesus returning, he finds things no different than
they were at the outset of his ministry some three years earlier.
Things are pretty much back to whatever they considered normal. There was the one incident at
the beginning of Christ’s ministry, and now there is this one at
the close of his ministry. So as a matter of course, Jesus
goes in. To the temple just days now before
his crucifixion. To present himself once more
as the lord of the temple. What I want to do this morning,
what I’ve broken it out for us, if you would, is Christ’s ministry
priorities. And I see three in the pages
of the Gospels. We’ll pick up some detail from
a number of the other Gospels. But I want to begin by setting
the context, if I may. If you go to just in your mind’s
eye, the passages there in your bulletin, in Mark’s gospel, it
includes just a brief little detail that gives us a mountain
of information that contributes to the context. In Mark 11, 11,
it says that Jesus entered Jerusalem. We’ve considered it. We looked
at the triumphal entry. We heard what people were saying
about him. We saw all the crowds thronging about him. And it says
that Jesus entered Jerusalem and he came into the temple.
That’s a detail that Luke didn’t tell us. Luke didn’t find cause to tell
us that Jesus came into the temple. We don’t know how far Jesus went
in. We don’t know exactly what his purpose was. Mark doesn’t
record it. We don’t know how long he stayed
there. We don’t know exactly what locale, what gate he used.
But it says that he came into the temple and after looking
around at everything. I mean, don’t you get the impression
right there that Jesus stepped in and was stunned by what he
saw after the cleansing of the temple, just that we just read
the recorded in in the in John’s gospel, he was stunned. After
looking around at everything, he left. I get the sense there that this
scene was detestable in Christ’s eyes. Stomach turning. After looking around at everything,
he left for Bethany with the twelve since it was already late. Jesus took the disciples and
they went home to rest. But Jesus knew what he purposed
to do that next day. And Luke and Matthew and Mark
all record what took place in the chronology of the week that
would make this night Monday evening of Christ’s final week
of ministry, just days now before his arrest and crucifixion. After
he enters into Jerusalem, he enters the temple late that afternoon
and examines the things there and then that were going on and
did nothing further. Just took it in and let it register
with him. And then he departs. Here this place that was supposed
to be a place of ministry, a place of drawing near to God. And you
say, what were Christ’s priorities for ministry? This is where I
want to take up our time this morning. What are called twilight
priorities, Christ’s ministry priorities in his last days.
First of all, reformation of worship. Reformation of worship,
if you can even call what was going on worship. Essentially,
the selling of the cattle, the selling of these sacrifices,
all the noise and the money changers, all this was allegedly due to
promote their liturgical worship, their approach to God. That’s
what it was all for. Where Jesus entered was what
was called the court of the Gentiles. It was the outermost area of
the temple itself. What a dreadful spectacle must
have greeted him. His eyes, his ears, the sounds
of the animals, the stench that greeted his nostrils. In his
opinion, And his opinion is the only one that matters. The court,
the temple itself was being desecrated because it resembled a marketplace.
Business was booming. Some were selling sheep, some
were selling oxen. And at this time of the year
with Passover drawing near, the business had to have been brisk.
And wherever there is a supply and demand issue, you know that
the price was jacked up. You know that there was bartering
taking place. They would pay a high price for
these sacrificial animals. Here’s the situation, if you
may. These people are coming from
afar. They’re coming from neighboring villages and towns. They’re coming,
in many cases, great distances. And they can’t hardly bring their
sacrificial offering with them. They can’t carry a lamb 25 miles. In many cases, they would choose
not even to carry a basket of birds And they would purpose
to get to Jerusalem and to purchase their offering there. Not everybody
went to Jerusalem every year. For some, this was probably their
first visit. It was a special thing to go
to the temple of the Lord. They could have sacrificed in
their own villages. Oh, but here was an opportunity
to go and to go to the house of the Lord. And what a disappointment
it must have been. It was for Christ. As he walked in and noticed this
hustle and bustle and all this bartering, buying and selling,
the noise, the filth, the smell. This was worship. It had become a marketplace.
All of Jerusalem was a market. There were plenty of other places
to buy and sell. This became, just like you would
get in attending any event, If you want to purchase a ticket,
the closer you get, the more likely you are to get in. The
closer you get, the more there are. That was the case and the closer
they got, sooner or later, somebody made the decision, well, I’m
just going to take my table just inside these gates. And the Jewish
hierarchy. Winked at it because they knew
that they got a cut at it. And soon the court of the Gentiles
was filled with these tables. Selling wine and oil and salt
and all the things that were necessary. For the temple sacrifice. And these coins. What was the
purpose of these coins? Every male Jew, 20 years or older,
was required to bring in a half shekel temple tax. It served
the purpose of providing for their ministry needs by the priesthood.
Oh, but not just any coin could do, not just any shekel. It had
to be a special shekel called the temple shekel. You had to
purchase one of these. I liken it to going into one
of these fun houses with all the arcade games where you have
to buy their tokens. That’s what this was. It was
a token. Oh, but they got to assign the price of the token
and they were exceedingly expensive. And in addition to that, the
mere act of exchange usually charged 10 to 15 percent. Couldn’t bring a foreign coin,
they said you couldn’t bring a foreign coin because of the
idolatrous images on it, but Christ says what they were doing
is worse. This is what God required. The
Lord spoke to Moses, saying, when you take a census of the
sons of Israel, reading from Exodus 30. Each one of them should
give a ransom for the Lord when you number them, so there will
be no plague among you when you number them. This is what everyone
who is numbered shall give a half shekel according to the shekel
of the sanctuary. Half shekel is a contribution
to the Lord. This is what was required. This
was of God. But the Jews had taken it and
turned it and created this little coin This little trinket is a
means of fleecing the people. So there are these great crowds
in the court. The needs of the pilgrims, they
were being met. But the money changers, those
who were selling, were certainly getting a very fair cut. And all this was being done in
the sanctuary. This place was as holy a place
as any there was. It’s not the inner sanctuary,
not the Holy of Holies, where only a priest could go and then
only once. It’s not the court of the Jews,
the second most inner place where only Jews could gather. But it
was the temple, it was the court of the Gentiles, it was to be
a place of worship. And there, I believe, we begin
to get at the gist of what Christ was attacking. The Jews had gotten
to a point where they didn’t care about the Gentiles. They
hated them. The very purpose for their existence
to be a light to the other nations was totally obscured. Instead of using the temple as
a place to of consecration to God, a place of worship to God
where he could be worship and and really engendering that in
the heathen nations, The Jews were transacting business. They
were clouding God’s glory all the while. Instead of these so-called pilgrims
coming in and being impressed by the majesty of the place and
stirred by the realization of the divine presence who dwelled
there, they found themselves involved in this heated crowd
all of a sudden. Bartering, buying and selling.
For the sellers were bargaining for the highest possible price
and the buyers were protesting at the high cost of worship,
so-called. To a pilgrim, one said, coming
into Jerusalem full of awe and anticipation of the unique sanctity
of the temple. I mean, can you imagine your
only visit? The only thing that I can liken it to is that, you
know, when people go to Disneyland, they always they go to Disneyland
with these high hopes and they always come away. Well, yeah,
but and it was dirty and the people weren’t nice. That was the anticipation of
the the Jews, they were coming to this place of special worship
and the Gentiles just to get a taste of this worship of the
so-called God. To come in to find this had to
be not only distressing, but depressing. This is what I came
so far for. And here is Christ in his last
week of ministry. And you say, is this really a
priority of Christ’s ministry? You bet it is. Christ does care about the purity
of worship. Christ does care how we do things
and what we do. We’ve said before that, you know,
there is more spoken about improper worship in scripture than there
is about proper worship. It’s interesting here that Mark
adds a very important detail when you consider the Gentiles.
Mark’s gospel says he would, that is Christ, he would not
permit anyone to carry merchandise through the temple. You know,
that’s an interesting detail. I tried not to notice. I noticed
people carrying stuff in today. I couldn’t help but notice. I
mean, look what we’ve done to our own worship. We treat this,
we’ve lowered this to be just like everything else, where if
we’ve forgotten to give somebody a book or they borrowed a pan,
we think nothing of bringing it into the worship. We think
nothing of bringing our week and our thoughts and our issues
and our agendas here. Don Whitney years ago, when I
was reading his book on spiritual disciplines, he said, if you
come into the sanctuary and your thoughts aren’t focused on God
exclusively, you are not worshiping. And we come into this place,
everybody’s hiding their stuff now under the. It should I do,
I want it to I want you to think about it. I want you to consider
what is worship and what affects other people’s worship. How do
we affect other people when we bring our stuff in and their
stuff and we exchange all these things and we use this just as
an extension of our week? When this ought to be the high
place, Mark records, he would not permit anyone to carry merchandise
through the temple. I mean, can you imagine him coming
up and taking your backpack and saying out? or heaving it over
the wall. The court of the Gentiles had
become a shortcut through the city. It was a large space and
it was a very convenient shortcut between the city and the Mount
of Olives or several other places because there were a number of
gates. And it turned the temple court into a just an average
courtyard. People used it to transition
from one place to another and thought nothing of it. to become a convenient place,
a convenient sidewalk, as it were, to get from point A to
point B. And that’s so much what the church has become. It’s just
a place of meeting, a place of bartering. That’s why I’ve always
said, you know what, leave your business cards home. I don’t
care what your business is. Not here. I don’t care what side
business you’re starting. I don’t care what you’re peddling.
Not here. We don’t want it. We don’t need
it. Christ doesn’t want it. It’s not honoring to Him. We
come here to turn our focus to God and to God exclusively. Not
to all our other little agendas and business items. Note Christ’s response. This
is a priority for Him. For Christ not to do this is
unthinkable. It says that He began to drive
them out. And here again, He begins to
reveal Himself as the Lord of the temple. And He calls out
to them, it is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer. This was the purpose of the temple. It was to be a sanctuary of quiet,
spiritual devotion. There’s nothing wrong. I believe
our time of greeting one another is a blessing. But whatever happened
to coming in reverently to? A greeting time should be lively.
A time of interacting and securing prayer requests and greeting
one another in the Lord. But that time of coming into
the worship service, whatever happened to our own heart preparation? Mark adds an interesting comment
here, too. He says, my house, and this is the full quote, that
my house should be called a house of prayer for all the nations. What Jesus is responding to here
is what the Jews had done to the court of the Gentiles and
what their ministry to the so-called nations had become. Nothing. Nothing at all. Purely for the convenience of
the Jewish worshipers, the Gentile court had been obliterated. They
didn’t have a ministry to outsiders. They didn’t care about other
people. All they cared about was conducting ministry the way
they designed it to be for their own convenience and for their
own gain. Not only does he call out to
them and say that the purpose of the house was to be a house
of prayer for all the nations, but he says that you have made
it a robber’s den. Interesting wording here. He
doesn’t say that this is necessarily where the robbery was taking
place, although it was. What he says is it’s a place
of harbor, the place of sanctuary for robbers. What he was pointing
to here was the Jewish elite was essentially rubber stamping
this practice. They were allowing it and encouraging
it and profiting from it. And Jesus says it’s wrong. Jesus
had no doubt in his passing through the mountainous desert, he had
seen these places where the robbers stayed. He’d seen their campfires. He’d seen, you know, these places
in the hills and the steep rocky cliffs where the robbers would
go and count their loot. Jesus says that’s what the temple’s
been turned into, a place, a harbor for robbers and thieves. You know what Christ’s first
priority here is a reformation of worship. And the thing that
I think so many of us get caught up in is to think that, well,
we’re on the other side, we call ourselves Protestants, we call
ourselves those who have gone through the reformation, when
in reality, the reformation of the church is an ongoing practice,
isn’t it? Shouldn’t it be? Shouldn’t it
be you and I looking back again into Scripture to say, are we
doing everything right? Are we doing everything according
to God? Are we doing everything for his glory and his glory alone? I kid people from time to time
about, you know, just the dress, the attire. You know, I’m not
advocating a suit and tie, I’m not stipulating that that’s the
way that you dress for church. But it’s amazing to me what people
do in these days still dress up for. You know what? On ESPN,
they still dress up in suit and ties to broadcast the sports. We’ll dress up in a suit and
tie to go to a Hollywood premiere. We dress up in a suit and tie
and I’m not talking about you ladies. You dress even nicer
than we do. You dress up to go to a Hollywood
premiere. You dress up to see the president.
But it’s come as you are when it comes to the church. And it’s
not the dress. It’s the attitude that precedes
that. If this is what we have to wear,
this is what we have, but it’s the attitude that precedes that
to say that God is not worthy of anything more. And as I said,
we lower the church, we lower our time of worship to the level
standard of the entire rest of the week. It’s just an extension
of our week and no greater. No more glorious, no more pure. Christ’s first priority in his
last days was a reformation of worship. But not only that, Matthew
adds another little detail that I’ll pick up just in brief because
we’ve spent so much time in times past. This would be the shortest
point I’ve ever made. Not only a reformation of worship,
but a reformation of lives. Look at the insert that a little
box inserted into the text. In Matthew’s gospel, he records
that the blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed
them. The point I would make here is
that here is Christ, and you talk about a man who could have
had other things on his mind. To pause and give compassion
to the blind and to the lame and to reach out his hand and
to heal them. When he’s going to the cross
for the sin of the world, he had other priorities. And so often we lose sight of
these same priorities, don’t we? We lose sight of compassion.
We lose sight of a practical care and ministry to others.
We get so caught up in so-called ministry that we forget the simple
things, the mercy of toward others, practical righteousness, care
of others. We forget it. Christ had his priorities. One
of them was the reformation of worship. The other one was the
reformation of lives. And the third one is the reformation
of souls. I wanted to save a few moments
for this this morning. Look at verse 47, the reformation
of souls. He was teaching daily in the
temple. You know what? I love listening to John MacArthur. And I wish there were a way for
me to go back and actually hear Spurgeon preach or Edwards, hear
Jonathan Edwards preach. I would have loved to listen
to John Bunyan. They say he was a fiery and just
an articulate preacher. But I would give everything.
If I could have heard the teaching of Christ daily in the temple,
can you imagine? There’s never been any preaching
like that before or since to hear the Lord of Glory proclaiming
the gospel of grace to all those people. What he was interested
in is the reformation of souls. He wanted to change them. And
he knew that he only had days, can you imagine? Some of these asked me before,
what would I preach if I only have one sermon left to preach?
What would I preach? Great question. I’m still preaching through the
Bible to figure out which passage that would be. I’ll let you know.
But can you imagine Christ? Can you imagine the motivation
of Christ, the loving Savior? God incarnate, the very purpose
of God. Can you imagine how he poured
out his heart to the people in preaching the gospel? I don’t
know why the gospel writers didn’t record all of it. God has his
purposes, but that is one series of messages that I sure wish
I could have sat under. He was teaching daily in the
temple. The chief priests and scribes,
they didn’t receive it. The leading men of the people,
chief priests, the scribes, they were trying to destroy him because
of the hosannas that the people were crying out, because of all
the miracles, because of all the hubbub, because of this rebuke
now in the midst of the temple, this rebuke of them and their
practice. All they wanted to do was destroy
him, but they couldn’t. Look at verse 48, they could
not find anything that they might do. They were trying to find
something by which to accuse him. They couldn’t find anything.
They were trying to find an angle. They were trying to find a chink
in the crowd. A movement, if you would, that
would somehow undermine his ministry, and they couldn’t find it. It says, because all the people
were hanging on to every word that he said. You know what? Christ was reforming souls. The way I get that is, you know,
in first Peter, it says like newborn babies long for the pure
milk of the word. That’s an exhortation there.
You know what? I can really begin to tell that
someone is truly saved or either a young person or somebody who
has just come to Christ when they long for the word, when
they can’t get enough. When they read it and they listen
to it and they can’t get enough of God’s Word. When they can’t
wait to go to church to hear it preached. When they can’t
wait to go to Bible study to hear it discussed. When they
can’t wait to go quietly and just read it for themselves.
And it says that these people were hanging on to every word
He said. It’s a graphic word. It’s only
used one other time in all of the New Testament. It’s the Septuagint
of the Hebrew Scriptures. Genesis 44 30, which reads now,
therefore, when I come to your servant, my father and the lad
is not with us since his life is bound up in the lad’s life. You know what? They were bound
up in the Lord’s words. It isn’t just it’s not the master
seminary that said preaching is the best means of ministry. It’s God’s Word. God’s Word is
what advocates this means of ministry. It’s Christ himself
that modeled it in those last moments. It wasn’t just his reformation
of worship and the reformation of lives. That wasn’t enough
for Christ without the reformation of souls and the means of that
was teaching and preaching in the temple. We can’t make light
of that. Her modern day says that a new
doctrine, new day requires new methods, new generation of pastors. It wasn’t Paul’s advice to Timothy. Paul writing to a new pastor,
a new generation of pastor gave him a priority, said preach the
word. It’s exactly what Christ was doing. He was laying out
the Old Testament Scriptures to them and extolling the virtues
of God and pleading with them to come to repentance for their
sin. We’ve fallen off of that, haven’t
we, in the church? When in reality, only Scripture
is the only thing that really corrects our doctrine. Scripture
is the only thing that promotes sound teaching, as the Scripture
call it. Passage we read a couple of weeks
ago, First Thessalonians, Scripture is the only thing that performs
its work in you who believe. I believe Christ set the pattern
because he knew he’s the one that created the whole process.
It’s the word and the spirit. And without Christ going into
the temple and preaching the word, there would have been no
reformation of souls. Paul, writing to Timothy in his
second letter, said that the word alone was able to give you
the wisdom that leads to salvation. Only the Word is inspired by
God. Only the Word is profitable for
teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.
Only the Word is able to make you adequate, equipped for every
good work. Hebrews 4 calls it living and
active, sharper than any two edged sword. Isaiah 40, verse
6 through 8, I believe Christ was operating on this principle
that only the Word abides forever. Only the word. Jesus, days later,
would pray with his apostles and declare to them in the midst
of his prayer there, the high priestly prayer, thy word is
truth. What Christ was giving them that
day was not just good oratory. It wasn’t good homiletics. It
wasn’t just good advice. He was giving them the truth.
Because only the truth would save their souls. I’ve told you about perhaps one
of my favorite books now, Ian Murray’s book, Revival and Revivalism.
And in that book, Ian Murray points us back, points us back
to Scripture. He says, God has appointed the
means of prayer and preaching for the spread of the gospel.
Christ hadn’t forgotten that. Christ reminds us of that. And
he and Murray just recaptures that thought Christ. God has
given the means of prayer and preaching for the spread of the
gospel and that these are the great means in the use of which
he requires the churches to be faithful. There are no greater
means which may be employed at special times to secure supposedly
greater results. Do we want to reach the world?
Then our priorities must be Christ’s priorities, a reformation of
worship, A reformation of lives. We should minister to people’s
physical needs. But first and foremost, a reformation
of souls. The means of that is the proclamation
of God’s word, whether you do it privately, whether you do
it in Bible study in a group setting or whether you do it
publicly in a preaching setting like this, it doesn’t matter.
It’s the proclamation of God’s word. That’s what saves souls. That’s what’s going to reform
the world. You know, I love the Puritans
and I love the Puritans because they love the word. They love
the preaching of the word. Charles Bridges said it like
this. Because, therefore, the lack of knowledge is the cause
of all sin among men. Did you get that? Tony Evans said one time sinners
sin, that is their job description, that’s true. But you know what
the bottom line is? The reason people sin is they
have a lack of knowledge. They don’t know how detestable
their sin is in God’s eyes. They don’t know that what they’re
doing is so wrong before God. That’s what Bridget says. The lack of knowledge of God
is the cause of all sin among men and all the ground of our
unhappiness. The seed of whatsoever perfect
virtue grows from us is a right opinion of the things touching
the divine. You know what he says there?
It says your only hope of reformation is a right knowledge of God.
That’s why so many times when I in God’s providence, when we
had the college group in California, one of the first things we did
was a study of the attributes of God. No God. The seed of whatsoever perfect
virtue grows from us is a right opinion of the things touching
the divine. This knowledge we may justly
set down for the first and chiefest thing. It’s the most important
thing, he says, which God imparts to his people and our duty of
reviving or receiving it at his merciful hands. For the instruction,
therefore, of all sorts of men to eternal life, it is necessary
that the sacred and saving truth of God be openly published to
them. And here’s where the Puritans
gained so great ground. Is they opened the word and they
preached to the people. And Bridges concludes by saying,
which open publication of heavenly mysteries by an excellency is
termed preaching. You know what Bridges says there? It isn’t magic. He said it in
all kinds of flowery words and he did it for the purpose of
saying, you know what? Sin is our problem and sin is
caused by a lack of the knowledge of God. And the only way that
people are going to gain the knowledge of God is to preach
the word. It’s the only way. That’s what
Christ was modeling. Not just a reformation of worship.
Not just a social gospel that ministers to people’s needs,
although that was part of His priority. But a reformation of
souls in the preached word. That’s what will change people.
That’s what Christ’s priorities were. What are yours? Let’s pray. Father God, we humble ourselves
before you and we thank you so deeply for recording these final
days of Christ’s life, a model to us in the pages of your word. Oh, Lord, while we long to hear
what you spoke in the temple those days, Lord, we have your
word in full. Everything that you deemed necessary
for us to have is here. And we rejoice in it. And we
long to proclaim it by whatever means You’ve given to us. Lord,
we do long to see our own worship of You purified. We do long for
those opportunities to minister to others. And we long to see
Your Word proclaimed for Your glory, for the salvation of souls,
for the advance of Your Kingdom. We pray these things in Christ’s
name, Amen. you