Our Old Testament lesson this morning comes from Isaiah, chapter 6. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings, with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. At one call to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, and the whole earth is full of his glory. In the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke, and I said, woe is me, for I am lost, and I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. And one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongues from the altar, and he touched my mouth and said, behold, this has touched your lips, your guilt is taken away, and your sin is atoned for. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send, and who will go for us? And I said, here am I, send me, and he said, go, and say to this people, keep on hearing, but do not understand, keep on seeing, but do not perceive, make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes, let's say see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn, and be healed. And I said, how long, O Lord? And he said, until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terrible thoranoke who stump remains when it is filled, the holy seed is its stump. The word of the Lord, our New Testament lesson comes from Luke chapter 19. And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the cult, they set Jesus on it. And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. As he was drawing near, already on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven, and glory in the highest. And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, teach him, rebuke your disciples. And he said, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out. And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, would you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes. For the day will come upon you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you, and surround you and hem you in on every side, and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation, the word of the Lord.
If you have your Bibles with you, you want to turn primarily to Luke's Gospel this morning, page 879 in your Pew Bibles. Look at both Luke and Isaiah, but we'll focus primarily on Luke's Gospel this morning. Got a picture from you. It's from the European Space Agency's Hershel Space Observatory. It's an infrared image of the Andromeda galaxy, and chose the ring dust, and such. I put that up there as just kind of a pointer to something you may have seen or heard in the news that the scientists who look at this sort of stuff have determined that the universe is 80 million years older than they had originally thought, the Huffington Post reported this way, new results from the look into the split second after the Big Bang indicates the universe is 80 million years older than previously thought, but the core concepts of the cosmos, how it began, what it's made of, and where it's going, seem to be on the right track. This Defining's released Thursday bolster a key theory called inflation, which does the universe burst from subatomic size to its now observable expand in a fraction of a second. The Big Bang is the most comprehensive theory of the universe's beginning. It says the visible portion of the universe was smaller than an atom when in a split second it exploded, cooled, and expanded rapidly, much faster than the speed of light. Now to hear that read, may not work too much for you, but I read three paragraphs to you and split second was mentioned in two of the paragraphs, the first in the end, and fraction of the second was in the middle paragraph, as it speaks about this theory called the Big Bang theory that a subatomic particle, I did a little bit of study on the internet about the size of a subatomic, well it's just an atom really, smaller than a cell, we have one place that we have something like 40 trillion cells in our body, maybe it was billion, the trillion I saw ahead, I forget, billions of cells in our bodies, whatever it was, billions or trillions, and then you have to add like 12 more zeros to that number, getting smaller of a millimetre to get to the size of an atom, it's real small, and a subatomic, I can't get it down to layman's terms, just give me enough time, real small, it's real small, and it burst forth in a fraction of a second, I don't know how small of a second, but a fraction of a second, but a very small second, and it expanded faster than the speed of light, and that's kind of when you start measuring things according to the speed of light, it sounds a lot like God said, let there be light, and there was, and as I thought about this article, I was kind of amazed at how we can study what is, and try and determine how did it start, where did it come from, where is it going, these kinds of questions, and what's your perspective and what your view is, really matters how you interpret the data, an atheist, or someone from just a secular kind of a agnostic mindset, can look at the raw data and say, yes, matter, matters, but not that much, I mean here it is, and we can see it, but we don't see God, we don't see the hand of God, we don't see creation, and yeah, a Christian can look at the same material, and not just a Christian, one of the sites, actually it was a YouTube that was explaining the size of an atom, and it was a Muslim cleric who was trying to use various comparisons, I forget it, had to do with the size of paper, oh yes, here it is, the thickness of the size of papers, approximately 1 million atoms if you put them on stack them up on the top of one, the size of the paper would be far greater than that, but anyway, even Muslims understand that God created the universe, created the world, our perspective on the universe, our perspective on creation really depends on is there a God, or is there not, how we look at that, and as we come to the scriptures this morning, that same attitude of perspective, that view of the world, that view of how things came into being, it really is what our text is all about, so I've kind of split it up into two areas with a follow-up kind of statement, the two rubrics we'll look at the text is the view of those who recognize the time of visitation, that's how Jesus refers to his coming in the flesh, the time of his visitation, those who recognize the time of his visitation, and we'll look at the view of those who do not recognize the time of his visitation and make application in terms of the more you see of him, the more of you you will get to him. Let's start by looking at this text as it relates to the view of those who recognize the time of his visitation, what we see in Luke's Gospel, that even before that section we read, that Jesus kind of sets the stage for his disciples, he tells them, I want you to go into the city and you're going to find a cult tied up, no one's ever sat on it, a small but important detail, it can be used for sacred purposes, it's not used, it's pure so to speak or unused and can be consecrated that way, nevertheless Jesus says, go get this and bring it here, and he explains how if someone says something, what to say and so on, so they bring it, but they know what to do with it, they recognize that Jesus is a king and they treat him as a king, they put their cloaks on the animal and they see Jesus on him, and as he starts to move toward Jerusalem, there's throngs of people who are coming to Jerusalem for the Passover, and he's coming from the north and there's a bunch of people who have seen him in Galilee and Judea, the various areas, and they too start throwing their cloaks on the ground, they recognize that he is the king and they treat him that way, they understand that Zachariah had prophesied, rejoice greatly of daughter of Zion, shout aloud of daughter of Jerusalem, behold, your king is coming to you righteous and having salvation as he humble and mounted on a donkey, on a cult, the full of a donkey, so they start treating him like a king, they put the palm branches down, they put their cloaks down, not only on the animal that Jesus is seated on, but on the road, and it's like a parade, it's like a victory parade as the king comes into his city, and they can't help themselves but to begin to rejoice and celebrate and say, blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord, they know what's going on, we also see that they're moved to praise and worship, it tells us in verse 37 something that's kind of important, it says, as he was drawing near already on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples, note those words, the whole multitude of his disciples, so there's, there's multitudes there, but those of his disciples begin to praise God with a loud voice for the mighty works which they had seen. You see from the perspective of those who recognize the day of visitation, the perspective of those who see who Jesus is, they treat him as king and they're moved to praise and to worship, and it's important to see how this happens, they start to reflect on the mighty things that they had seen, we can read through the gospels and remember all the healings that took place in the synagogues and the communities out in the countryside, how he fed the multitudes in various places, how he cast out demons, all the signs they saw, and they saw him as king riding into Jerusalem and they broke into praise and worship. He might say to me, Ash Mark, you're kind of going a little far with the worship aspect, aren't you? I mean, there it is in the text that they're praising him, but what about the worship? Well, I say worship for two reasons. One is when we worship Jesus, we use the same kind of praise and exaltation, blessed it is he who comes in the name of the Lord, glory to God in the highest, and we give praise to our Lord Jesus. The other reason I think that there's worship going on is some of the Pharisees become a little bit uncomfortable and they say to Jesus' teacher, he'd review your disciples. Now, it could be that they're nervous because it's not the safest thing to do in a Roman occupation to start saying, hey, this Jewish fella, he's our king, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, blessed is the king of Israel. It's like, okay, so it could be that. I admit that, but Jesus is response. Jesus doesn't respond to the danger of the moment. So to speak, he says, listen, if these are silent, the rocks will start to cry out. That's an affirmation that what they're doing is appropriate and proper. He is the king and blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest. There is another mark. They are marked by joy and expectation. Still staying with verse 37, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice. And again, they're rejoicing because they're calling to mind the miracles that they have seen. And there's an important word here for us. We live in a fallen world. Not all of our life is happy. Crisis come into our lives of various sorts and various depths of struggle and tragedy. And for us, there is a fight for joy. So how do we fight for joy? I would say just the same way that these folks are doing it. Remember what it said? They started to remember all the things they had seen. Certainly, the Lord has answered some of your prayers. Remember how he's answered some of your prayers? Certainly, you've seen the hand of God brings salvation into your life. The forgiveness of sin is not the least of the mercy he's shown you. Haven't you seen the hand of God at work in your life? If you will fight for joy, you'll fight for joy by remembering what you have already seen of the glory of God. But it is, in a sense, built up with not just joy for what he has done in the past, but he is writing into Jerusalem at the moment. And there's great expectation. They expect much from the Lord Jesus Christ and over their life, there will be more tragedy as they see that some of their expectations are built on a faulty hope, a misunderstanding of how the Messiah would bring peace into the world. Yet nonetheless, for the disciples, for those who have recognized that Jesus is the one, is the king of glory, the one who has visited them, the sovereign one, who has visited them, their expectation, while changing to fit reality, never ceases to be expectation. They still wait for the Lord to come, don't they? They still are expecting him to come. We'll talk more about this toward the end, but just note that from the viewpoint of those who received the time of visitation, who recognized the time of visitation, they see Jesus as the king. They are moved to praise and worship, and they have a, they're marked by joy and expectation. It's a joy that will come and go, there's no doubt we face that as well, but it's a real joy and a real expectation. You know, it's kind of interesting to me. Isaiah has, well, he has the same message, doesn't he? Did you notice that in Isaiah chapter 6, how Isaiah talks about his vision of the Lord, he says, in the king, in the year king who's iodide, I saw the Lord. How did he see him? Seed it on his throne with the train of his robe, filling the temple. He's saying, I saw the Lord as the king, the king of the universe. And there's certainly praise and worship going on, isn't there? When he sees the Lord, he also sees the surf that are around, the surf in that are around, and they're involved in praise and worship as they sing antifinally to one another. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord. The whole earth is full of his glory and granted there is a bit of being self-aware of his sin and in a sense fear or dread or trauma. Woe is me, I'm lost because I'm a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, but that trauma, that sense of woe upon himself is turned to joy in the midst of pain as that hot call touches his lips. And the word of God says to him, your sin or a town boy, there's joy, there's expectation, there's so much though that when the Lord says, who shall go for us and whom shall I send? He's like, here I am, you know, he's just ready to go. He doesn't say what you need done. Let me think about it. He's like, here I am, here I am, send me. We may never experience the uniqueness of what Isaiah saw in that vision, but this is true for all of us who are believers, isn't it? We see Jesus as one whom God has sent, as King, and we are to treat Him as King, and to be moved to praise and worship at the thought of who He is, and especially as we galore to bring Him worship. And it is as we reflect on the mighty works that we have seen with our own eyes that our sense of joy is renewed and refreshed, and our sense of expectation our hope is more secure. But that's not the view of everyone. There is the view of those who do not recognize the time of visitation, not all those who saw Jesus and his miracles were able to see who He was. Our text talks about it in a few ways. We've mentioned already how the Pharisees said, teacher, rebuke your disciples, they couldn't see that Jesus was worthy of the glory of the worship of the praise that was being offered to Him. But Jesus speaks of another crowd, if you will, he comes to the city and he says, he weeps over the city. I think this is important for us when we reflect on Holy Week, that there's the multitude of people who have been touched by the ministry of Jesus over the past three years throughout the countryside and in the various cities. In this multitude, they see Jesus writing in on a donkey and they rejoice and they celebrate. But Jerusalem as a place, the place of worship, the place where the chief priest describes the religious sinner, they as a city, as a symbol of the people of God, a different multitude, if you will, they don't see. They don't see Him. And it moves Jesus to weep. He says, with that you, even you had known or recognized on this day the things that make for peace. But now they are hidden from your eyes. You can't see them. But the days will come on you when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and him you went on every side and tear down to the ground you and your children within you. He's trying to Jerusalem. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you because you did not know, you did not recognize the time of your visitation. I want to give the two fill into blanks, the two aspects I see here and then speak about a little bit. They don't see the glory of God. They didn't see the glory of God in the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. And not seeing the glory of God in the ministry of Jesus Christ, they don't see the grace of God coming to them in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so rather than receiving, they will reject and crucify the Lord of glory. Now it's some of the Pharisees who say those first words, it's not all. And he's speaking to a different crowd. And I want to give you an idea of what this looks like. So I'm going to I'm going to mention a couple stories or events from the life of our Lord Jesus that aren't necessarily set in Jerusalem. We could do that. We could talk about the man born blind. That was in Jerusalem. But let me mention a time early in Jesus' ministry, Mark records it in chapter three, where he's in a synagogue. And it tells us that he entered a synagogue and there was a man there with a withered hand. And it tells us this, they watched Jesus to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath. Why? So that they might accuse him. And then we find Jesus reasoning with them as it were saying, is it isn't it okay to do good on the Sabbath? They to heal? And it tells us that that not only was he greed, but he was angered at the hardness of their heart. And he told the man, stretch out your hand and he stretched it out. And this hand was restored. And it says the Pharisees went out immediately, held counsel with the Herodians against him. How to destroy. Blindness. The Lord of glory, coming to the people of God, and touching them. And they couldn't see it. And they couldn't see it because their heart was hard. They had already determined to look for an excuse to accuse him by. And so when he does what is good and right and just, they find fall. And begin to talk about how can we destroy him? There's another example in Luke chapter 11. It's a time when Jesus heals a man whose demon possessed. And this particular demon has caused him to be deaf. And when the demon leaves from him, the man's able to speak. So it's a profound miracle. And people are rejoicing in their glorifying God. But verse 15, Luke 11, 15 tells us some of them said he cast out demon by the Isabel, the prince, of the demon. Why did they say that? Was it their theological training? No. The hardness of their heart. The hardness of their heart. They could not see. They would not see.
This is consistent also with Isaiah's ministry, isn't it? It was almost hard to hear the words that were read to us about the ministry. Isaiah is excited to do what God calls him to do. And when he finds out what it is, it's not a pleasant ministry, is it? Verse 9 and following, go and say to this people, keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. We just saw it, didn't we? In the Gospel. Make the heart of this people dull in their ears. Heavy. Blind their eyes, less they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn and be healed. The very, that just encapsulates the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. When he comes, when he preaches, when he heals, when he restores, all those who come to him find mercy and grace in their time of need, all those who come to him, recognizing who he is, are healed, are forgiven, are restored, are renewed, are given hope, are reconciled to God, and all those who harden their heart, are blinded. And they can't hear the things that God, and they can't see the things that God, and they don't turn, and they're not restored. That happens in our world. We can look at the creation of the world. We can see the cosmos and all its glory. And from a vantage point of faith, we were filled with wonder and awe that God could say, and from, I don't know if there was a subatomic particle. It's one of the things that said, this was funny. The visible portion of the universe was a subatomic particle. I don't know, maybe that's not funny to you. It's just to me, because I think about it from how I see things, right? I don't see those things. But nevertheless, even if we grant that, for the universe as we know it to exist now to happen in a fraction of a second. Wow. And the philosophers do struggle, just so you know, the theologian say, no, no, from nothing, he created from nothing. X, knee, knee, hello, from nothing, not there wasn't the subatomic particle of masses. But even there, there it is, the size it is now, maybe expanding, but still. The eyes of faith did, and the eyes of unbelief don't. I thought about it in another aspect, because we all live in this. It's not just the scientists who either believe or don't believe, but all of us, at a different level, there's, there's those who study the eyes, right? And those who study night vision and how some of the creatures of the earth can see in the dark, and they study light and such, and they come up with things like those goggles that are warriors now, where, so that they can see in the dark, you know, and they kind of stick out. I guess we use them for other things too, but you see the photos of the warrior wearing these night vision goggles, and it's this thing that sticks out. And I think to myself, there it is. Even the unbeliever who works on that, the scientific research to bring that technology about, is so made in the image of God that he can't help himself, but want to create like his creator.
And yet it can be hid from his eyes, even with night vision goggles. He can't see in the dark. So how do we live it? Well, the more you see of him, the more of you you'll give to him, have you seen him? The more you see of him, the more you will give to him. Think about this, just kind of coming out of the text a little bit. I think of the Apostle Peter. He's one of my favorite examples. Earlier on in Jesus' ministry, when Jesus asked the question, who do people say that I am? They tell them who they think the people say is. Jesus says, okay, you disciples, you 12. Who do you say that I am? And Peter, the spokesman for the 12 says, you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Do you remember Jesus' words? I said, are you Simon, or Jonah? Fush and blood did not reveal this to you, but my father in heaven. You have spiritual eyes because of your father in heaven. He makes us to where we can see it. And when we look at Peter, we see, he gets it at some point, but he doesn't get it all together. He's going to deny the Lord within the week, three times. He's going to run and hide as are all the 12. Well, the 11. And yeah, they don't lose hope. They see the Lord of glory. They see the the risen Lord of glory, don't they? And when the spirit comes and fills old Peter, man, does he become a spokesman for the church? He preaches fearlessly to those he ran and hid from and denied the Lord. He now says, you crucified the Christ by the hands of ungodly men. And it's not just once he says that. And it is to the Sanhedrin. It's to the leaders in Jerusalem on more than one occasion. He can speak boldly. The truth of the gospel and even give his life because the more he sees of Jesus, the more of himself he gives to Jesus. That's true of Isaiah. Isaiah is a man of God. He's a prophet. But when he has this vision, it's life changing. When he sees God, his life is changed. And when he's given the ministry go to a hard-hearted people and just say the truth, keep saying it, whether they listen or not, he writes the book of Isaiah. They didn't change a hundred years later. The things he said about the fall of Jerusalem happened in detail. But for him, for the disciples who saw the glory of God, they could give his life. He could give his life and ministry for the glory of God. And I think of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now here's one who, when he prayed in John 17, says, Father, glorify me with the glory which I had with you before the big bang, before the world was. Now you talk about a vision of the glory of God. There is God the Son, the second person of the Trinity looking full at the glory of God the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit. So radiant is the glory of God that when the Father says, Son, I want you to go redeem a people. I want you to be born of a virgin. I want you to live under the law. I want you to let them crucify you. In fact, bring it upon by the way you conduct yourself in all holiness and righteousness. But die for these people. The second person of the Trinity says, Father, I love you the more I see of you, the more I'll give them myself. And there he goes. He shows it. He gives us a meal to remember just how glorious God is. Just how much he's willing to give of himself with the glory of God. What about you? You see the glory of Jesus? Let me suggest to you that the more you see his glory, the more of you you will get to. And if you examine your life and find that you're not giving much to cry, if you examine your religious practices of why you come to church, why you give in the offering, why you participate in Sunday school or whatever it is you do. Why? Is it because you see his glory or because you care about your reputation? The amazing thing is when you see his glory in this life right now, it hurts when we have to deal with our sin and confess it. But he always shows us the glory of the great, the forgiveness of our sin. Jesus would come to earth in utter humility, taking on the form of a man and being made like a bond servant for us. Because God the Father loved you and wants you and sends Jesus to rest you not only from his wrath but from your self. See his glory in that? You have more of yourself to come to the table. Remind you of the words of our Lord as they're found in Matthew's gospel, 26th chapter, starting at verse 26. Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread and after a blessing he broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, hey, eat, this is my body. And he took a cup and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, drink of it all of you. This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out from many for forgiveness of sin. I tell you I will not drink of this root of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you and my Father's kingdom. That's great. I would to see with the ever increasing clarity your glory and majesty. It is with the eye of faith that we believe that all that we see was brought about by your infinite wisdom and power in mine. Because we believe that you have revealed yourself to us and have recorded it for us in what we call the Bible, we believe that you have sent your Son, our Lord Jesus, and we seek glory. We ask, oh Lord, as we come to this table that you would do your holy work in us, showing us your glory, knowing that the more we see of your glory, the more ourselves we will give to you, increase our joy, increase our expectation, increase our praise and worship, increase our service to the great king. And now, oh Lord Jesus, as we take this bread and this cup, may they represent for us the signs and symbols which you have ordained, your body and blood. And as we eat this bread and drink this cup, knowing that they represent your body and blood, may we indeed profess our faith in you that we receive you, oh Lord, the spiritual reality behind the lust of this meal to us. We ask in Jesus' name, oh man.