Through the Bible

It's been since June, since we've been in the Gospel of Luke. We stopped in Chapter 15. We finished Chapter 15. We're ready for 16 and 17. I slowed down. We did five chapters a week in the Old Testament. Coming into the New Testament, I tried to do three, and that was too many. So we're down to two. So we'll get through 16 and 17 tonight. We will, I promise.

To kind of go back, if you would, you can look at in Chapter 14, Jesus begins some parables to teach his disciples humility and also the urgency and the necessity of the fact that there's not any that are immaterial to the Lord. There's no one who is inconsequential to God. God is wanting the one that's still lost, the one that's still out there. God doesn't do write-offs.

We're in the midst of a major financial crisis in our nation, and what you're seeing is a move to write off a bunch of debt, to just excuse it and go on. And God doesn't like write-offs. He doesn't want to just write people off because they aren't quick to come to faith in him. He is like the one who's like the widow who searches for the lost coin. He's like the shepherd who goes after the one sheep that didn't come in with the rest

of the sheep when they came into the sheepfold at night. Now in that, one of the things that he's teaching, we look at the parable of the prodigal son. That's what we ended with last time in Chapter 15, and it's easy to focus on the prodigal because we are the prodigal. We're the prodigal sons most often. We're the ones who have run away from the Father and gone after our own way even after

coming to the Lord. We all sin. We all do that. We all experience that occasion where we know that we shouldn't be doing things that we're doing, and we do them anyhow, and then God really humbles us, breaks us, and we come back to the Lord. And we are that prodigal. We don't feel worthy to come back to the Lord, but God is the Father of the prodigal who is anxiously awaiting us, just like the widow looking for the lost coin and the shepherd

looking for the lost sheep. He doesn't write us off. And he's trying to instill that in the heart to the disciples so that they don't write people off. The Jews easily wrote off the Gentiles. They were the Goyim. They were the ones who were the unredeemable. And yet the Lord looks at all of us, and we'll see that as we go through these two chapters, and especially as we come into the last part of chapter 17 and his dealing with the lepers.

But he's teaching his disciples these things, and he's wanting them to understand the heart of the Father, and yet the heart of a servant as well. The heart of the servant who loves the Lord and will follow through with the Lord, staying with the Lord regardless of the circumstances. So we come into chapter 16, and it says, now he was also saying to the disciples. So this is not a new thing.

This is not a new thought. It's the same thought that he started with back in chapter 14, is going through these different areas, dealing with the disciples, dealing with these things as far as the importance of the individual and the heart of the Father. And now he's also saying to the disciples, there was a rich man who had a manager, and this manager was reported to him as squandering his possessions. And he called him, and he said to him, what is this I hear about you?

Give an accounting of your management, for you can no longer be manager. And the manager said to himself, what shall I do since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg. I know what I shall do, so that when I'm removed from the management, people will come, or people will welcome me into their homes.

And he summoned each one of his master's debtors, and he began saying to the first, how much do you owe my master? And he said, a hundred measures of oil. And he said to him, take your bill and sit down quickly and write 50. And then he said to another, and how much do you owe? And he said, a hundred measures of wheat. And he said to him, take your bill and write 80.

And his master praised the unrighteous manager because he had acted shrewdly, for the sons of this age are more shrewd in relation to their own kind than the sons of light. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by means of the wealth of the unrighteous, so that when it fails, they will receive you into eternal dwelling. He was faithful in a very little thing, is faithful also in much. He was unrighteous in a very little thing, is unrighteous also in much.

Therefore, if you have not been faithful in the use of unrighteous wealth, who will entrust the true riches to you? And if you have not been faithful in the use of that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and wealth. Now he'll go on with that because the Pharisees comment on that to themselves. They kind of mock him at what he's saying. This has been a tough text for people to understand because he's talking about the shrewdness of the manager of the rich man's assets. And although the manager was deceitful, he doesn't praise him for his deceitfulness,

he praises him for his shrewdness. Now there is a difference. He's not commending deceitfulness. And he goes on to affirm that in the next part of that, talking about faithfulness with little, he'll be faithful with much. He was unrighteous with little, will be also unrighteous with much. So he's not commending deceitfulness, and you need to see that in this text.

What he's commending is the shrewdness of the manager to gain as much opportunity for himself as he can in the time that's coming. He knows he's going to be out of a job soon. And so in the time that he has left before he's out of that job, he's shrewdly doing all that he can to prepare for that time when he's out of the job. And he commends him because he says the children of the light, we, us, don't do that.

We're busy today about the things of today, rather than thinking about what's coming. Rather than planning not for the future here, not with your IRAs and all that stuff, all that stuff looks like it's going to be lost anyhow with, you know, what's going on in the stock market. But realizing that the world to come, the time to come with the Lord, the time that we're going to be with the Lord in heaven and on earth in the millennial kingdom and all, that's what we should be investing in and preparing for that at whatever the cost is. That's what he's talking about.

That's what he's emphasizing. The shrewdness to prepare for that time here, now, investing our lives however we can. Sadly, at least in our culture, we kind of invest in the things of the Lord piecemeal, out of convenience. And by that I don't mean necessarily tithing, although that's included in this. It's part of the investing and he ties that in with the idea of not serving God and mammon

or not, you can't love God and love money at the same time. But we serve the Lord out of convenience too often. I'll do things, God will bring to your awareness opportunities to minister, opportunities to serve others, opportunities to serve those who are like the lost coin. We would write them off. They're write-offs in our own mind, but not with the Lord.

And God gives us opportunity to invest in those lives, which is investing in the time that's coming. And it will cost us. It will cost us. It costs us time here doing other things because it's out of our way to do those things. Other people probably won't notice, but that's okay. And it's okay to look at it as an investment, and really that's good, you know, in what's coming.

Ananias, not Ananias and Sapphira, but the Ananias that God called to go and pray for Paul, who was Saul at the time, who was blind and in Damascus. God wanted him to go and lay hands on Saul that he might receive his sight, and Ananias argued with the Lord at first. Don't you realize this is a guy that hauls the people off to jail, and, you know, he's responsible for the deaths of a lot of Christians. I don't want to do that.

He's one of the write-offs. He's blind. That's great. Leave him there in a room, blind. A lot of our problems are solved. And God says, no, I want you to go and lay hands. I've got things planned for him, and I want to tell him what he has to do and what he's going to have to suffer for my sake. So I want you to go and lay hands on him.

And that's an investment in what's coming, in the life that is to come. And we need to see that, and we need to pour ourselves into that rather than the comfort of this life. That's the shrewdness of this manager, looking to the life to come, looking to the time to come. And he emphasizes that verses 10 through 13, deal with that faithfulness with little, and you will be given much.

It seems like a small thing to invest that way in the lives of other people, the unlovable. But God sees it as an investment that will be a way that he measures the amount to put you in charge of in the kingdom. You will be in charge of something. You will be an overseer, overseeing people, or probably people and the Lord's holdings, the idea of people talking about being governors and all of that, that's part of the responsibilities that will be given to us, ruling and reigning with him in the age to come.

As at least in a thousand year millennial kingdom, we will help be his overseers because there will be at least, oh I would say there's going to be at least a billion people left at the end of the tribulation period, five, six will be destroyed. So at least a billion people left and out of that we could probably say maybe 50% get to come in to the kingdom. So start off with 500 million flesh and blood people who will reproduce during that thousand years. There will be billions of people on the earth, flesh and blood people, after that thousand year period over which we will help oversee, we'll help the Lord oversee that.

The extent to that is determined on your investment here in the things of the Lord and that's what he's wanting us to do is see that what's coming, don't squander it for the stuff that goes on here, but invest it for the time that's coming. Faithful to those small things, God will entrust you with much. No servant, verse 13, can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

Now the Pharisees who were lovers of money were listening to all these things and were scoffing at him. And he said to them, you are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God. I'd box that and circle it and meditate on it a lot and say, okay, Lord, now what are the things that I'm going through in my daily walk that are highly esteemed in the eyes of men but are detestable to you? And Lord, let me not do those things that are highly esteemed of men, but let me do those things that are honorable to you, that bring honor and glory to your name.

And there's a myriad of those. The Pharisees were doing things that were esteeming themselves before the people. The way they wore their clothes, the way they carried themselves, the way they tried to separate themselves from the riffraff and all to stay sinless and pure. They were highly esteemed among men. Men went, ooh, aren't they wise? Aren't they pure?

Aren't they holy? But those things, they were detestable to the Lord. Jesus called them brood of vipers, whitewashed sepulchers. You know, he didn't care for them at all because they were not esteeming the things of God. They were desiring the esteem of men. We need to desire the esteem of God to honor the Lord in all that we say and all that we do. If we're doing anything that is not esteeming the Lord, that does not glorify the Lord,

we need to not do it. Verse 16, the law and the prophets were proclaimed until John and since that time the gospel of the kingdom of God has been preached. And New American Standard says everyone is forcing his way into it. There's many different translations as there are. There are different renderings of that particular verse. If you have study notes, if you read ten commentaries, you'll get ten different opinions on what

that means. It's another tough section to interpret. In the light of what he's talking about, as far as redeeming the lost, the last, the least, pouring yourself into those, instead of seeking to do things to gain the esteem of the people, you're going to be not thought highly of by those who are in the elite of the people, but God's using you mightily to bring into the kingdom those that nobody else wants. Nobody else wants in their particular church because they're building their edifice on demand to gain the esteem of man.

Don't you have a really nice whatever, rather than drawing in those that the Lord is wanting. So although the Pharisees prided themselves on the keeping of the law, and Jesus said that the law of God was proclaimed, the law and the prophets were proclaimed until John and since that time the gospel of the kingdom of God has been preached. Grace. The grace of God.

By grace you are saved. Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Not the keeping of all of the rigid specifications of the Pharisees and the scribes and their ritualistic ordinances that they keep. Not only 10 commandments, but 613 commandments that they had expounded on on the 10 and not that kind of keeping, but by grace.

And there are many now who are coming in. They're coming in by force. They are zealously coming in. The prostitutes, the sinners, the tax collectors, they're coming in in droves. They're coming into the kingdom and the Pharisees don't like it. The Pharisees are against that. And Jesus says, but, verse 17, it's easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for

one stroke of a letter of the law to fail. Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery and he who marries one who is divorced from a husband commits adultery. Now why did he throw that in there? I mean, remember the thought of the context. He's still talking about those that are the least and the last. The ones that are not highly esteemed by the world are the ones that the Lord wants and

is desiring. Well, remember, if you remember from Matthew, and when we went through Matthew 18, we talked about it in the areas of divorce when they asked Jesus about divorce. The issue was this rabbi says this and this rabbi says that. Rabbi Shimei says that a man can divorce his wife for any and every cause. But rabbi Gamaliel says that it has to be for the issues of unfaithfulness.

What do you say? And Jesus went back to Genesis, to creation. In the beginning, you know, it was not so. God said a woman shall be given unto a man and two shall be one flesh. And so God has joined together, let no man put asunder. And he's talking, he was hitting their issue. The Pharisees were doing that. The Pharisees were coming up with all kinds of reasons to divorce their wives.

And they were highly esteemed by the people and the people were following their examples. And so Jesus is whamming them. Remember they're the ones that were mocking him in verse 14. And he's saying to them, the law is still the law. Grace has come. And through that grace, those who are not the esteemed are being brought in. And you're mocking that, you're condemning that.

When you are the ones who are condemned because you violated the very initial establishment of the law of God in the marriage relationship. So he wasn't just drawing, you know, out from things. Also, let's talk about marriage. He's zeroing in on what the Pharisees were doing and what the Pharisees were okaying. And he was nailing them on the very law that they prided themselves in keeping.

Now, there was a rich man and he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, joyously living in splendor every day.

Same thought. He's not even taking really a breath. He's still speaking about the same thing. He's just nailed the Pharisees on their attitudes concerning people who are able to come into the kingdom of God now and their own ridiculous understanding of the law. And he's now illustrating that. And he's illustrating that by saying there was a certain rich man and he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, okay?

You've just about nailed every Pharisee that would have been in the crowd. They prided themselves on their dress, the royalty, the regalness of their clothing. The fine linen was the linen of a priest. It was like the linen ephod that the priest wore. When he mentions that purple and fine linen, it's pointed. Now, he says there's a certain man and a certain leper. A certain man and another certain man.

So this is not a parable. This is a story of a certain individual and another certain individual. There was a certain rich man and he was dressed like you Pharisees. Habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, joyously living in splendor every day like you Pharisees. And a certain poor man, an individual, and he even names him. His name was Lazarus. Now, it's interesting to me that the rich man, who would have been highly esteemed among men, he doesn't name.

But the poor man, who would not have been esteemed at all, especially by Pharisees, Jesus names because he's highly esteemed before God, like the lost coin, like the lost sheep, like the prodigal son. The ones that God highly esteems, man does not. And this poor man, named Lazarus, was laid at his gate. Now, the Greek word for gate there means the majestic splendor, artistic, majestic artisanship.

The gate of the city was a place, remember, where this is a particular man's gate. But the gate of the city, when you would come into a city, it was designed in such a way that you could not just come right into the city. It was designed for security purposes that when you came to this gate, you had to come and turn several times to get actually into the city. And that was because there were protective barriers where they could dump oil on invaders.

They could shoot arrows down on them. They couldn't just ride into the city and take it over. They would have to come through a circuitous route to get in. And it was a very defensive position to have a city gate that way. In that city gate as well is where business was conducted. And you would have the elders of the city, and they would sit and they would hold court.

There would be trade that went on in the gates, the city gate. You'd have your merchants there. And then you have, when a majestic gate to a residence is there, a gated residence. Residences usually weren't gated. I mean, they were usually just open and usually built next to each other. But this is a rich man. He has his own gate. And it's a majestic gate as well to come into his house.

Very ornate, very artistic, according to the Greek word. So he was a man who dressed in splendor. And even his house, even the things of his house, declared him to be someone of high esteem. Someone that the people of the earth would esteem. Verse 15, God knows your hearts. That which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of the Lord. So this is an illustration.

This guy would have been highly esteemed by men. And this Lazarus, poor man, was laid at his gate and he was covered with sores. Laid at his gate indicated he was lame. Could not move about on his own. He was carried. He had to be carried and brought there. He was brought before this man's gate. Evidently there was a lot of commerce that went in and out of this man's house.

A lot of people went in and out of this man's house. And he evidently, like the gate at the temple and the gates of the city, he would have been there seeking to gain things for himself. Scraps or whatever, even from this man's table he mentions. He was covered with sores, verse 21, longing to be fed. Now in New American Standard it says, with the crumbs which were falling from the rich man's table.

In the Manners and Customs of the Bible book, it talks about that this man was so rich that he would use breads instead of using dipping water, finger bowls and stuff to wipe his hands. He'd use bread. He'd grab a piece of bread and he'd wipe his hand off with the bread and just toss it. Toss it away. Toss it away. And that's what he was desiring. He was hoping to get not just the crumbs that he would bite

and something fall off the table. He would even take the bread that he'd wipe his hands with, the dirt off of his hands with, and cast the bread aside. He was hoping to get that as they bring it out and dump it. And besides, even the dogs were coming and licking his sores. And the indication from that is, not only was he lame, he wasn't able to shoo the dogs away.

So he's probably a paralytic, totally. With the sores, unable to move about himself, unable to really feed himself, unable to even keep the dogs from coming and licking his sores. Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom. And the rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades, he lifted up his eyes being in torment and he saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom.

Now we are given a glimpse in this particular scenario into the reality of the grave. In the Old Testament, it's called Sheol. In the New Testament, it's called Hades. Sheol in the Hebrew means the abode of the dead. So does Hades in the Greek. We are given a glimpse into this place. There's something else I want you to notice. It says in verse 22, The poor man died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom.

And the rich man also died and was buried. Now unless you had finances and had a tomb, a plot where you could be buried, you were thrown, if you're in Jerusalem, you would have been thrown on the south side of the city wall outside in the valley of Hinnom, which is the valley of burning. That's where they dump the garbage off the south side of the city wall. And it was perpetually on fire in the valley of Hinnom.

It's that valley of Hinnom that is an illustration of Gehenna, the lake of fire, the place of burning, perpetual burning, perpetual darkness and burning, where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched. They had a visual of that in the valley of Hinnom where they dumped their garbage just over the south wall, or they'd go through the south gate actually and dump it outside the city of Jerusalem. That's where they'd throw the bodies of those like Lazarus who didn't have a plot of ground. It was when Jesus was betrayed, even in his betrayal, and Judas goes and throws the money back into the Pharisees and the treasury, and they say, we can't take that, it's blood money, we'll take that, and they bought the field of the potter to bury the poor.

So even in his betrayal, Jesus took care of the poor so that the poor could now be buried, like the rich, in the potter's field. Otherwise they'd be thrown on the garbage heap in the place of perpetual burning. That's what happened with this Lazarus' body. He was thrown on the garbage heap. So that's why it doesn't say he was buried, but the rich man was, he was placed in a tomb.

Both of them were carried by the angels, it doesn't say the rich man was, but they were both brought to Hades by the angels. If you've seen the movie Ghost, and I'm not saying you should go see the movie Ghost, I'm not recommending the movie Ghost, but if you've seen the movie Ghost, there's an illustration there that I think is pretty right on, except that it shows the demons coming to get the bad guys and carry them off to hell, and I don't think that happens. The angels are the ones who are in authority, the good angels, they're the mediators of the Lord, and they come and they do his bidding. And when we die, we are either carried now into the presence of God, or if you're a non-believer,

you are carried by the angels into the torment side of Hades. Hades, if you notice, was divided into two compartments, Abraham's bosom, the rich man looked, he lifted his eyes up, and being in torment, he was in the torment side, he saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom. Lazarus was there with him, and so were all the righteous dead before the cross, before Jesus, who had believed God in the coming of the Savior. They believed God that Messiah was coming, they trusted the Lord, they had faith in God's provision of Messiah.

Job would have been there, Daniel would have been there, Ezekiel would have been there, Jeremiah would have been there, all the prophets would have been there, David would have been there in Abraham's bosom, waiting for the promise of God. The dead could not enter heaven, the righteous dead could not enter heaven, because their sin had kept them out. They could not come into the presence of God because of their sin. If Jesus had not come and died for us, they would still be there, and when we died, that's where we'd go, is this place of Hades, even as the righteous, we'd be in Abraham's bosom side, which nobody knows for sure where it is.

I have my druthers, I'd rather think it's probably, it probably is a literal physical place that contains a spiritual entity, and it could be in the center of the earth, for various reasons. It could just be in another dimension. It could be in the center of the earth in another dimension. But it's a specific particular place. Their souls were not in limbo,

they weren't in any soul sleep, they were conscious, they were aware, they knew who they were, they knew where they were, they could see around them. One side was a place of torments, one side was a place of rest, where Abraham was the one to whom God promised a heritage. And the rich man, verse 24, cried out and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame. Now, this is not Gehenna.

Although it was a place of torment, and there was evidently some kind of flame, he mentions a flame, he could see, and he could see Lazarus and Abraham, he could see across this way, and we'll see the way described. Gehenna, the lake of fire, is a place of darkness. Every time Jesus mentions the place of darkness, where there's gnashing, weeping and gnashing of teeth, He always talks about outer darkness. It's a darkness you can't see.

You can't see anything. It's a place of burning. You feel the flames, but you can't see them. It's not like you're standing in a roaring fire, and the fire lights up the area that you're in. You feel like you're in a fire, and yet you can't see it. You just feel it. It's darkness. This isn't that. This is a different place than Gehenna. This is a holding place.

Revelation chapter 20, when the dead are brought before the great white throne of Jesus, it's the unrighteous dead. And it talks about death and hell. Gave up their dead. That's hell. This is the Hades side. The torment side of Hades gives up their dead. Their souls of those are brought before the great white throne of God. This is a holding hell until Gehenna,

until the lake of fire. It's a place of burning. The rich man asked that Lazarus dip his finger in water and be able to come over and just soothe his thirst for just an instant. But Abraham said, Child, remember, verse 25, that during your life you received your good things and likewise Lazarus bad things. But now he is being comforted here and you are in agony.

And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed so that those who wish to come over from here to you will not be able and that none may cross over from there to us. So, at this particular point, before the resurrection, the dead were confined to those particular areas. The souls of the dead were confined. They couldn't go wherever they wanted to go.

They couldn't move across to the other side. There is a chasm fixed and it would not allow them to go over there. I believe very possibly that chasm is the bottomless pit. I believe that in that could very well be Tartarus that Peter talks about. The only usage of the word another definition for hell. It's not Hades that Peter uses. It's the word Tartarus. It's the only time

it's used in Scripture. We don't know where that is. It's a place for the angels that kept not their first estate. Genesis chapter 6. But they came and they cohabited with the daughters of men and produced the Nephilim, the giants, the men of renown, seeking to pervert the whole human race so that God could not bring the promised Messiah through the seed of the woman.

Those angels are in chains, Peter says, kept in the place of outer darkness. Jude mentions them again. And they are kept in Tartarus to be released at the last time in the time of judgment. And I believe that that is this chasm where the bottomless pit is. I believe Satan will be bound for a thousand years and cast into that chasm in Hades for a thousand years.

I believe all of that takes place in this particular realm where we're getting this glimpse into. You can't go from one place to the other chasm in between. Verse 27, then he said, I beg you, Father, Father Abraham, that you send Lazarus to my father's house. For I have five brothers in order that he may warn them so that they will not also come to this place of torment.

Now, Lazarus who was a paralytic obviously in this life was there and moving around Abraham summoned him, wanted him to come over so he could move, he could move around and he wanted him to be sent back to his father's house to warn his brothers which would have been a wonderful sign because he'd have been moving around after they'd seen him all those years a paralytic and with sores and the dogs licking him and now he's whole and clean and what a testimony this rich man is thinking. Send him back there, warn them so they don't come to this place of torment. Verse 29, but Abraham said, they have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them. Okay now, remember the context again.

Go back. Verse 16, the law and the prophets were proclaimed until John. Since that time the gospel of the kingdom of God has been preached and everyone is forcing his way into it but it's easier for heaven and earth to be passed away than for one stroke of the letter of the law to fall. He's teaching the Pharisees that they're missing the very law that they're proclaiming and seeking to proclaim, seeking to adhere to, seeking to exclude people from the kingdom of God out of Jesus in this story.

Not a parable but a true story is saying to the rich man that Abraham said to this rich man who was probably a Pharisee, they have the law and the prophets who warned them about this very place. Let them hear them. So this is a slap in the face to the Pharisees that are hearing this. But the rich man said to him, but he said no, verse 30, no father Abraham but if someone goes to them from the dead they will repent.

In other words, they won't listen. I didn't listen so they won't listen either. But Abraham said to him, verse 31, if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead. Again, these Pharisees from back up in verse 14 are hearing all of this and he just laid out to them what's going to happen. He will come back from the dead

not too many days hence after saying this and they will not believe. They won't believe. You have the law and the prophets and not one word is going to fall before they're all completed, Jesus has said. And yet you're excluding those who are write-offs to you whom God doesn't exclude. God welcomes into His presence the Lazaruses, the paralytics, the dog-licking sword people.

That's who God wants. That's who God wants us to be investing our time and our resources in to bring people into the kingdom of God. Not wanting those who would really seemingly make our place sparkle if we had the pro-athletes or the big-name people in town or whatever. No, let's go get the detestable. Remember my vision of the turkey carcass. We're carcass pickers

at Calvary Chapel. People hated that. I even had people tell me they didn't like the idea and they've left the fellowship because they couldn't envision themselves as carcass pickers. You know, they thought, eww. And I feel sorry for them. I really do. There are a lot of the other churches in town who are wanting the breast and the thigh and the good meat. You know, those people

that are highly esteemed in this city. And everybody always says, oh, imagine if so-and-so were turned on to the Lord. How many people they'd reach. And so they go after the elite. And after a dinner, after Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, after you eat a turkey, you always go back and bone it for the leftovers because there's always lots of good meat left

on a turkey after you've cut the breast off and all that stuff. That's what we go after. We go after the pieces that nobody else wants. They've already gone after all the big elite super pieces. We go after the ones that nobody else wants. The dog-licking lepers, you know, the sore, detestable, not the ones that anybody else wants because those are the ones

that God wants us to invest our lives in. Those are the ones that have special places in the heart of God. He's trying to teach His disciples that. In chapter 17, He says to His disciples, He's going on with the same thought. It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come. Now who's He referring to initially? The Pharisees again. Behold to Him through whom they come.

It would be better for Him if a millstone were hung around His neck and He were thrown into the sea than that He would cause one of these little ones to stumble. Be on your guard. Now He's saying it's not just a problem of the Pharisees, it's a problem have. It's a problem we're going to have. It's there's going to be a tendency for us to do things in a way that would cause

the little ones to stumble, those who are young in the Lord and especially those who are young. And seeing our example. It's very possible for us to do things and say things to cause them to stumble. Be on your guard now, OK? If your brother sins, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day and returns to you seven times saying,

I repent, forgive him. Now, that is not a fun thing to think about. Think about it. Think about somebody probably in your family because we all have them in our families, right, who, you know, they've done this and then they've fallen and you just go, OK, now so-and-so's, do you hear that so-and-so's doing OK? You have a cousin that's doing better or whatever.

And you're thinking, yeah, for how long? And you're just waiting for him to fall. And it's like, OK, so you have somebody like that in your family. And they repent. Now, there's a repentance there. It's not just that they say you're sorry, if he repents, forgive him. He repents. He honestly repents. He says, I'm sorry. And there's going to be a change of heart.

But then he says, if he sins against you seven times a day and returns to you seven times saying, I repent, forgive him. Now, I don't know about you with that. I'm ready to write those off. You know, I'm back to the write-off. So let's write that one off and go live somewhere else. And that's what the disciples, the apostles said to the Lord, increase our faith.

Now, that's not just a nebulous, we want to be spiritual, God, increase our faith. They're looking at it the same way. They're going, who can do that? Increase our faith, Lord. We can't do that. That's an impossibility. In another place, we have Peter asking God, how many times should my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Seven times. And Jesus says, that's when he says, no, he spells it out.

Seventy times seven, literally an impossible number to count. You lose track of counting because you're forgiving one another, even though they've hurt you.

Well, increase our faith, Lord. That's something that's impossible for us to do. And Jesus gives the next illustration, and it's been wrongly used to define, no, it isn't. It's not impossible with my strength. The Lord says, verse six, if you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and be planted in the sea, and it would obey you.

And we have faith teachers today teaching about that. And they take that verse, and they take a couple of others, and they say, if you only had faith, if you only had the faith, as Jesus said, the faith of a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain in one place, be removed into the sea. Here, at least, it's just a mulberry tree. Smaller. And it would be done.

If you had faith like a mustard seed, as of a mustard seed. How much faith, what kind of faith does a mustard seed need to have?

Not talking about size. In a sense, when he talks about, in Matthew, I think it is, he talks about faith the size of a grain of mustard seed. He's talking about size there, but the emphasis is on its ability. A mustard bush can grow wherever it falls, because that's what it's supposed to do. That's what God designed it to do. If it falls in a crack between a rock, it'll grow, because that's what God designed it to do.

It obeys what God designed and determined for it to do. It's obedient to the Lord, and that's what Jesus is emphasizing here. I've told you, if your brother sins against you seven times a day and repents seven times, and comes to you and repents, forgive him those seven times. That's hard to do. I've designed you that way with my help to do that. I'm not telling you anything that's impossible for you to do.

It is impossible right now on this side, because he hasn't gone to the cross yet. And he hasn't sent the Spirit yet. But that's all gonna happen, and he will empower them to do that. Because they're investing in the future. They're not investing in the here and now. They're investing in what's coming. And they will trust him. And if you had the faith to do what you were designed to do, you can do it.

And he goes right into, because they're thinking, Oh, woe is me to do that. Can you imagine what I'll have to go through? So he goes right into the unprofitable servant. Which of you having a slave, plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, Come in immediately and sit down to eat. But will he not say to him, Prepare something for me to eat,

and properly clothe yourself and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward then you can eat or drink? He does not thank the slave because he did the things which were commanded, does he? So you too, when you do all the things which are commanded, you say, We are unworthy slaves, we have done only that which we ought to have done. Goes clear back to when he started teaching them.

About the detestable, about the unloved, about the unworthy, about the lost coin, about the lost sheep, about those who are castoffs, about those who are not esteemed by men, about the prodigals, about the leperous and the sore infested, and those who are not loved by society, and those who are sinning against you, and sinning against you, and sinning against you, and you forgive them. Don't expect an attaboy, that's what we're designed by God to do, as his servants, as his children, empowered by his Holy Spirit. We're to love them like God loves them, and God is the father of the prodigal. Even though he was sinned against to the max, he pours out his love, and he does that through us to the unlovable.

And that's what the Lord wants from his church, and that's what he's not getting. That's what he's not seeing a lot of today. Because like the Pharisees, a lot of the church pulls away from that particular sector, pulls away from that particular individual, pulls away from doing those particular things, and yet we should all see ourselves as unprofitable servants. We serve the Lord, we're not serving each other.

When we do the things that we do, whether it's work here in the ministry, or whether it's helping somebody out, you're not doing it so anybody goes attaboy. Now, we'll go attaboy, because, you know, it's really cool to see the stuff being done. It's really cool to see people take care of other people, and we say attaboy because it's like we want to point those things out to people so they can see the examples of what people are to be doing, but we don't do it for the attaboys, we do it for the Lord. Whatever you do, do it heartily, do it heartily.

It's unto the Lord, not unto men, knowing that it's of the Lord you're going to reap your reward. You're investing in the future. But you're an unprofitable servant. Don't get upset because people don't recognize you. Don't get upset because people don't realize how much you're doing, and they don't see it, and it's all new, and you get all upset because I'm doing all this stuff and nobody cares, nobody thinks I'm doing anything,

nobody sees this stuff, only God. Yay! You're an unprofitable servant, and He does see, and He does take note, and He does reward. Now this has all been a lesson to His disciples and to us. Now while He was on His way, He leaves there and He's on His way to Jerusalem, verse 11, He's passing through between Samaria and Galilee. So He is not in the region of Galilee yet,

He's passing between, from Samaria to Galilee. As He entered a village, ten leprous men who stood at a distance met Him. Now they were to stand at a distance, they could not come within a hundred feet by law, or they could be stoned, they could be killed. They had to hold their hand up over their face or hold a cloth up over their face and yell, unclean, unclean, so that people would see that they were leprous and would stay away from them, would move away from them.

Now these guys don't do that, they stay a distance, so it indicates they stayed where they should be, and they raised their voices saying, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And when He saw them, He said to them, Go and show yourselves to the priests. Now Luke, Luke tells us that this particular occurrence, He didn't touch them, He didn't say, behold, you're clean, He just said, go and show yourselves to the priests. Okay, that takes the step of faith that He was just talking about up here, the faith to obey.

If you are, Master, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And whatever the Master says you do in obedience, believing. Well, go show yourselves to the priests. Well, they were lepers, and obviously some of them were Jews, one of them is a Samaritan who comes back, but obviously some of them were Jews. They understood the initial culture. I mean, even if they were Samaritans,

Leviticus applied to them as well, because the Samaritan culture grew out of the first, or the dispersion when Israel was carried off into captivity, and there were some Jews left, and they were the poor and the downtrodden. They were left in the land to train those who'd been deposited there by the Assyrians and the Babylonians about the culture of the land and how to till this and all that. And so they would have intermarried, and they would have had this race of half Jew, half other culture. Those became the Samaritans.

They weren't pure Jew. But they had the heritage of the Jew. Because they weren't purely Jewish, they weren't welcomed by the Jews to come worship in Jerusalem, so they worshiped on Gerizim, on the mountain up there in Samaria. That's where they had their temple. And that's why the woman at the well in John 4 talks about, well, you know, you guys say Jerusalem's where you worship,

we say on the mountains where we worship. Where's the place to worship when Jesus gets in and all things like that? They had the same heritage from Leviticus, where leprosy was concerned. If you were a leper and you were cleansed, you had to go show yourself to the priest. And the priest would check you out and make sure there weren't any white leprous sores on you.

And then you had to separate yourself seven days, and after seven days you'd come back, and he'd check you again. And if you're okay, then he'd wait for another seven days, and you'd come back seven days later and you were okay. Then he would do the sacrifice for the cleansing of a leper. The wringing of the dove's neck and the blood into a basin, take some hyssop and sprinkle it on the leper, and sprinkle it on the other dove and let the other dove go, and then proclaim that the leper is cleansed.

Now that hadn't happened, even though it was in Leviticus. It was part of the ritual for the priests for the cleansing of the lepers. It had never been used until Jesus comes on the scene. And that was a fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, that that's something that would attest to who Messiah was. The deaf would hear, the lame would walk, the lepers would be cleansed,

the dead would be raised back to life, and the Gospel would be preached, the Good News would be preached among those who were in prison. And so here's the lepers. And so they would have had to have known that, and in their obedience, they were healed. As they were going, the end of verse 14, they were cleansed. It was as they were going, the cleansing happened.

In obedience to the Word, before they were cleansed, as they obeyed, then the cleansing happened. Now, a lot of times that's when we see God work in our own lives, as we're obedient, unprofitable servants, I'm just going to do this, Lord, out of obedience to You, that then the cleansing comes, or the blessing comes. We begin to see the blessing for what we're involved in, that we didn't see before. A lot of times we're waiting for God to answer before we're going to do anything, and God says, no, this is what you're to do, and I'll answer as you're doing.

And so the lepers obviously believed that He was Master, and as they were going to show themselves to the priests, they were cleansed. Now, one of them, verse 15, when he saw that he had been healed, turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving thanks to Him, and he was a Samaritan. And then Jesus answered and said, Were there not ten cleansed? But the nine, where are they?

Was no one found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner? Now, that's another slap in the face to the Pharisees. The Jews, who should have known, didn't come back, weren't thankful. They weren't grateful. They were self-seeking, thrilled with what had happened to them, but not thankful to the Lord. And He said to him, Stand up and go. Your faith has made you well.

And now, having been questioned by the Pharisees as to when the kingdom of God was coming, he answered them and said, and I think he would have said, The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, Look, here it is, or there it is. For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst. And I think he would have kind of put his hands out, maybe the lepers as they're going, they're cleansed now, and the disciples that are with him and all of those that are following him. He couldn't go anywhere with all the followers there, all the different kinds of people.

The kingdom of God is in your midst. Now, he's referring to the fact that he was there and the lives were changed as a result of his being there, in their presence. And as a result of that, he turns to his disciples and he says, The days will come when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man. In other words, you'll long to see one of these days that you've been seeing, the lepers cleansed and the stuff before that, and the stuff before that, and the stuff before that.

You're going to long to see one of these days and you're not going to see it. I'm not going to be here. They will say to you, Look, look there, or look here. Do not go away and do not run after them. For just like the lightning, when it flashes out of one part of the sky and shines to the other part of the sky, so will the Son of Man be in his day. But first, he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.

The kingdom of God was among them. Jesus was there. There was a time coming when he wouldn't be there. But he was going to come again and establish the kingdom that they are longing for. No more Roman rule and all. The kingdom where God reigns, where righteousness, peace, and joy is the attitude of the day and not this oppression and not this ridiculous hypocrisy of the Pharisees and the scribes,

but the true kingdom of God. And Jesus is saying, I'm going away. There's a day coming when you're not going to see me anymore. You're going to hear people say, Oh, the Messiah is over here. The Messiah is over there. Don't go running there because it's going to be obvious when I come back. Like the lightning flashes from the east to the west, Matthew says.

Lightning flashes from one part of the sky to the other here in Luke. It's going to be evident. You'll know when I'm coming back. When he ascends into heaven in Acts chapter 1, the angels tell him, Hey, why are you guys still standing there looking up at the sky? The same Jesus who you saw ascend into heaven, he's going to come back to you the same way. You'll see him.

You'll realize when he's coming back because you'll see him coming. Not going to be some secret coming. There is deception on the way. And we are really, really set up for it with everything that's going on in our economy right now.

We're going to see more and more UFO sightings, more and more phenomena that is unexplainable. More and more contact of UFO sightings. I believe these are demonic. I don't believe they're aliens from another planet. They're demonic. The message that they're imparting is that in order to step up into the next part of the evolutionary scale, we have to remove that oppression.

We have to remove that that's holding us back. Well, that that's holding us back is us, is the believers. So there's this big, I mean, you, you, it's, it's, and we've talked about this before. It's becoming more and more threatening to be a true outspoken evangelical believer in Jesus Christ. To tell people about the gospel. Anne and Karen have a cousin. And Karen's been corresponding with her this week.

She sent me the e-mails that she sent to her. And she just has a burden for this cousin that she comes to the Lord, comes to faith in Christ. And her responses have been this real universalist. You know, we're all on a different path, but they all end up in the same place. And although I'm going at a different pace than you, we'll all end up there together kind of response.

And that's the Oprah complex. You know, that's the Oprah kind of thing that, you know, we're all on a journey. And even though it says in the Bible, there's only one way to God. And that's through Jesus Christ. He's the way and the truth and life. No man comes to the Father, but by Him. The people who are on this universalist kind of move will say, well, that's good for you, but I'm on a different path.

But we're going to end up in the same place. And that is predominant right now. This Oprah-esque kind of philosophy. This Obama-esque kind of philosophy. I think that's why Obama's really big. It's a spiritual thing. And it's going to get more and more intense. And this idea of a world leader coming on the scene is really the stage is being set for that. Verse 26.

And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating. They were drinking. They were marrying. They were being given in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all. It was the same as happened in the days of Lot. They were eating. They were drinking. They were buying.

They were selling. They were planting. They were building. But on the day that Lot went out from Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and it destroyed them all. It will be just the same on the day that the Son of Man is revealed. Now he uses Noah and Lot. And he uses business as usual. Well, business as usual in Genesis 6 and business as usual in Genesis 19 was a marked perversion in the world.

A perversion that was seeking to overcome the righteousness of the world. Noah and his family, his wife and his kids and their wives, were the only ones left in the entire world, which some estimate at that time could have been upwards of a billion people, who were righteous, who were left. Everybody else had been perverted by this angelic commingling, this demonic fallen angel thing. Sodom and Lot, you remember the account there, they were...

and his wife and daughters were the only ones who were found who were willing to trust God and leave the city. The city of Sodom and Gomorrah had fallen into perversion. So it wasn't just business as usual, buying and selling and all. There was a business as usual with a high emphasis on perversion. There's this open, open perversion that was going on in both the days of Noah

and in the days of Lot. I mentioned that last Friday Ray Bolts came out of the closet and he's a homosexual, one of the great singers. Clay Aiken came out today, he's a homosexual. And I mean this and and people are you know really pushing to be accepting and there's these kids in school in Wichita I think that are before the school district and they're wanting more written into the laws giving the gays more protection from hate crimes and you know hate speech and basically it's against the Christians. So the Christians, anybody

who says you know the Bible says that homosexuality is perversion, ah well you're coming against me and all that stuff and you can be prosecuted for that. That's the days of Noah, that's the days of Lot. Perversion is is being exalted. You know good is evil spoken of and evil is heralded as being good. That's just the days of Noah, the days of Lot and we're there. Jesus said those will be the

days. Well we're there, we're there at that particular time. On that day, verse 31, one who is on the housetop and whose goods are in the house must not go down to take them out and likewise the one who is in the field must not turn back. Remember Lot's wife, whoever seeks to keep his life will lose it and whoever loses his life will preserve it. Now that's specifically speaking to the Jews.

Nobody here lives on their housetop but they do in Israel. Still to this day their houses are terraced and they literally live outside on their housetops. The housetops around Jerusalem are built into the hillsides and they have big areas, living area, patio areas where they're out there all the time grilling and you can look down from one on to the other and you can see where David would have been up on in his palace and looking down onto the rooftops and all where Bathsheba would have been bathing because that's what they do. I mean I don't know that they bathe out there today but that they live out on their rooftops and so the warnings there are specifically to the Jews because it's

during this particular time that the Antichrist will have a vendetta against the Jews. Halfway through the tribulation period, seats himself in the temple, proclaims himself to be God, the Jews realize who he is, he's the false prophet, the Antichrist that Daniel spoke of and they are to flee, they're to run, get out of there, don't look back, just run to the place prepared where you can get out of this guy's way because otherwise he's going to try and exterminate you. Don't look back, remember Lot's wife, she lost her life, she was turned into a pillar of salt, so just be obedient, be obedient like the mustard seed back up here. Do what I told you to do, whoever seeks to keep his life will lose it,

whoever loses his life will preserve it. I tell you that on that night there will be two in one bed, one will be taken and the other will be left, there will be two women grinding at the same place, one will be taken and the other will be left, two men will be in the field, one will be taken and the other will be left. And answering they said to him, where Lord? And he said to them, where the body is there also the vultures will be gathered. That's another one of those sections

that people are going, you'll get several different ideas on it, I believe that when he's talking about the fleeing and the coming of the Lord, that as Jesus comes and you go to again Revelation 19 and 20 and the coming of the Lord, when Jesus comes again, 2nd Thessalonians chapter 2 says that he'll defeat Satan and the Antichrist with the breath of his mouth, those who have taken the mark of the beast are going to be cast alive into the lake of fire, so there's going to be that immediate separation, I mean he doesn't come back and separate people with the mark of the beast at the valley of Jehoshaphat, he just says he's coming back in the lightning flash and he's coming, he goes, whether he speaks or just

goes or whatever and then boom, the one standing there, there may be two there working together, but one's going to be gone, carried off to judgment, carried off into the lake of fire, the other one's left, this is going to be this immediate separation of those who have taken the mark of the beast and those who haven't, so it's coming, the separation, the judgment is coming and they say, where are they going to be taken? And Jesus says, where the body is there the vultures gather, and you'll get 50 different ideas on that. I think it has to do with judgment, I think it has to do with the obvious, that when that judgment happens it's going to be noticeable, you will know when I'm coming back because

judgment is going to be evident around you. In one of the the translations in Matthew I think it says that the eagles will be gathered and that the word could be either eagle or a vulture, a bird of prey, and I think in Matthew I think it says where the carcass is, it's even more direct, there the eagles gather and the vultures will be gathered, it's going to be the time of judgment, it'll be the Battle of Armageddon that's ensuing when Jesus comes back, so invest in the future, don't write off anybody, everybody is redeemable, keep praying for those that are seemingly unredeemable, that are the ones you just have such a hard time with who have hurt you, who have offended you, and they're they're coming and asking for

forgiveness, now you keep praying until they come and ask you for forgiveness, now does that mean you just blanket, you know, throw yourself openly to them? No, there's always a caution, but you forgive them and you love them, you do good unto them, and you expect to be hurt again, and when you're hurt again then you love them and you do good unto them, now I'm not talking about like physical abuse, if you're physically abused, get out of that area, I'm talking about those are those who are going to do things and that you're going to be offended, you're going to be hurt, and they ask for forgiveness, you forgive them, and you love them, and you don't write them off, and you keep trusting, God's coming, invest in the future, invest

in that that's coming, it's a sure thing, and we're seeing the end, the signs of the end before us, Jesus is coming so soon, that emphasis in every in every section of scripture, brothers and sisters, I can't encourage you enough, keep walking, keep trusting, keep praying, keep your eyes on the sky, Father we thank you for your word, we thank you for the examples that we have here, it's definitely difficult, so Lord increase our faith, help us to be obedient to you with what we know to do, and to be the unprofitable servants, not expecting the attaboys, but serving as unto you, seeking to invest in the lost, in the least, in the last, that they might come to know Jesus, save our family members Lord, that don't know you, that

have, we just as soon write off, but you want us to love and pray for anyhow, and to extend our our hand to Lord, help us for that's concerned, we love you, and we give you thanks in Jesus name, amen.