Sermon for Lord's Day June 05, 2022 "Healing, Humility and a whole host of excuses"

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Sermon for Lord's Day June 05, 2022 "Healing, Humility and a whole host of excuses"

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Thus far is the reading of God's Holy Word this morning. If you are taking notes and you want to put a title or a header on your notes, you are free to share mine.
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Healing, humility, and a whole host of other excuses is what we're going to see here in this text.
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And remember, in considering the context of where we are this morning,
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Christ here has just shown great compassion and concern and care for Jerusalem with His words, speaking concerning Jerusalem.
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And then the Gospel writer Luke, in his narrative account, gives us the event that takes place one
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Sabbath day, in between the time that Christ has just said what He said previously, in verse 35, to beginning
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His journey toward Jerusalem, as we read in chapter 13 and verse 22.
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But one Sabbath, He went to dine at the house of the ruler of the Pharisees.
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So there's three things that we're going to really examine and focus in on in the message today.
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Number one, we're going to look very briefly at Jesus healing the man with dropsy.
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Number two, we're going to examine Jesus' words concerning humility in the second portion concerning that parable of the wedding feast.
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And thirdly, we're going to look and read and consider what we hear of the great invitation to the banquet that is given to the multitudes who do nothing but make excuse after excuse.
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And so in simple terms, they reject the invitation to the banquet. They are left standing on the outside looking in, which is not where we want to be.
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We do not want to be on the outside looking in.
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Our hope is a realized hope. It is in the finished work of Jesus Christ.
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Christ has made it possible that whosoever shall call upon the name of the
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Lord shall be saved. And so, let's begin here.
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This narrative concerning the man with dropsy. So what we have here is
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Jesus healing a man. And it very well should have sounded familiar to us as we read in Luke's gospel earlier and in the other synoptic gospel accounts of how
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Christ heals men and women in the presence of the Pharisees. And what always happens, the
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Pharisees get upset. They become indignant. They try to catch Christ in His words.
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But Christ always proves to them, as well to us, that He is wise.
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That we are foolish. That He is mighty and strong. And that we are weak and powerless.
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So, Christ heals the man with dropsy. Now, He was invited by a
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Pharisee. We do not have it given to us whether this was a well -intentioned invitation or an ill -intentioned invitation.
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But what we do have is that He was an invitation. And what we do know, reading prior to this and throughout the remainder of the gospels, that the
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Pharisees and scribes were always trying to trip Christ up. They were always trying to get
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Christ to say something that was wrong or contrary to the scriptures themselves.
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And they failed as ever, as always they did, to realize that He is the
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Word. Christ Himself is the Word of God. The Word made flesh.
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And so in verse 2, Behold, there was a man before Him who had dropsy. Again, we can make assumptions.
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Some folks assume that this man just came in. But it is not likely that a man with dropsy would just come in, uninvited, into a
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Pharisee's house, not having already been invited there. There could have been a number of reasons why
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He was there. He could very well have been a relative or a friend of this Pharisee.
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And they maybe just wanted to use Him to see what Christ would do.
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But the scripture says this. The scripture says Jesus responded to the lawyers and the
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Pharisees by saying this, Is it lawful to heal on the
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Sabbath or not? So here we have the man with dropsy set before them.
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Christ's first words to the lawyers and to the Pharisees were concerning the law of God itself.
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Calvin said this concerning this passage. This narrative contains nothing more than a miracle which
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Christ performed. And He did it in order to correct the superstitious observance of the
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Sabbath. For He did not intend, as some imagine, absolutely to abolish the
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Sabbath, but only to point out that neither the works of God nor the duties of charity violate the holy rest which is enjoined by the law.
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For the law of the Sabbath goes no further than that men shall rest from their own works.
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This is what the law states. And if we are at liberty, ultimately, if we are at liberty to relieve brood animals on the
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Sabbath, it would be unreasonable that we should not perform a similar office of kindness to a man who is born after the image of Almighty God.
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So what is dropsy? What is this illness? Well, medically speaking, the term nowadays is edema.
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It means a swelling in your body as a result of fluid retention.
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This usually occurs in feet, legs, or ankles, but it can also occur in your hands, your face, or any other part of your body.
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Obviously, there was a physical show of this illness, this dropsy as it is called.
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There are many kinds of edemas. It's often a symptom of other conditions.
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Serious illnesses that can cause edema are heart failure, kidney disease, liver tissues like cirrhosis, thyroid disorders, blood clots, infections, so on and so forth.
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What is important for us to understand here is that this is not just a headache that this man has.
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This man had a life -threatening illness in his body that only
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Christ himself can heal. Christ is the great healer.
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Christ is the great healer. We quoted it in our communion psalm, right?
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He healeth you of all your diseases. The great disease of our souls, of our lives, is sin.
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But the blood of Christ has cleansed us from sin that we might, before God, stand justified and stand assured of whose we are in Christ Jesus.
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But the scripture says this, when Christ asked them this question, they remained silent.
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Now, generally, when we ask a question, it's not for rhetorical purposes.
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You remember when you were a kid and you got in trouble, and your parents would say, you want me to get the belt, right?
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You want me to get a switch, you want me to get the wood spoon, whatever the case may be. It seemed like a silly question to us, right?
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I don't know why we ask those questions as parents, but Christ's question was well -intentioned, and he expected an answer.
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But they could not answer Christ. The scripture says, then, when they remained silent, he took the man with dropsy, healed him, and he sent him away.
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That is all that we have in Luke's account here concerning this. And the scripture says, and he said to them.
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Them are the Pharisees, the Pharisee that invited him. Them are the Pharisee's guests who were at the table with them, the lawyers, the scribes, so on and so forth.
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And he said to them, which of you, having the ESV, translates the donkey or the ass, even as a son, having a son, an ass or an ox that has fallen into a well on the
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Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull him out? He went right to the heart of the matter.
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Now, what's so important about this is this, that they wanted to make a big deal about the
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Sabbath day continually and repeatedly. But they only wanted to do it as a superstitious pretense so that everybody that looked on them would assume that they were holy individuals.
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But they themselves would transgress what they told others they should not do if it was their own ox or their own ass that had fallen into the ditch.
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It was a matter of self -preservation for them. The law, Ray Comfort has said this numerous times, you've heard me say it, the law, the law of God, does not help us at all.
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It just leaves us helpless. But Jesus Christ and the sacrifice that He made for our sins truly helps us.
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For we are unable to fulfill the law of God. Only Christ fulfilled the law of God.
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We need not assume that we can fulfill the law of God. We learned that in catechism questions this morning.
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So Christ said, which of you having an ox or an ass that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day will not immediately pull him out?
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And again, they could not reply to these things. Had nothing that they could say.
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And you would think that it would have been good enough for Christ to have just got up and walked out of there.
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But Christ had lessons to teach to them. And having this preserved in the
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Word of God, Christ has lessons to teach us. We have much to learn for the next section here, verse 7 through verse 11, the parable of the wedding feast.
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Again, number two, what we're going to look at in the second point is humility and its antithesis, or its opposite.
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Humility and its opposite is pride. God gives grace to the humble, but He lowers the proud, right?
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God gives grace to the humble. Spurgeon said this concerning the sin of pride.
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Pride is so natural to fallen man that it springs up in his heart like weeds in a well -watered garden.
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Every touch is evil. You may hunt down this fox and think that you have destroyed it, and lo, your very exalting in this fact is pride itself.
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None have more pride than those who dream that they have none. Pride is a sin with a thousand lives,
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Spurgeon says. It seems impossible to kill it. This is why the
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Puritans, John Owen, made this statement, Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you.
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We are called as God's people to mortify the flesh. With its members thereof.
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But this sin of pride, just to go on a little bit further, this sin of pride is a heart attitude.
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It's an attitude of our hearts that is expressed in an unhealthy, exaggerated attention to self and an elevated view of one's own abilities, one's own accomplishments, one's own position or possessions.
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Pride has been called the cancer of the soul. As a matter of fact, the beginning of all sin is pride itself.
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For when the serpent tempted Eve in the garden, God does not want you to eat this, because He knows that you will be like Him.
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And the woman saw that it was good, and she partook, and she gave it to her husband, and here we are.
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But we see this sin of pride addressed, for He said He told a parable to those who were invited when
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He noticed how they chose the places of honor. So Christ, as the dinner is being prepared, as folks are making their way into the house,
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Christ gives this as a parable, no doubt it's a literal, literal understanding of what has taken place for as these highfalutin, these good men of good reputation come into this dinner, the first place they go is up to the head of the table to sit with the
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Pharisee of the house so that they might be recognized, so that they might be known.
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But what Christ says is this. He gives the example of a wedding. When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come and say to you, give your place to this person, and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place.
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Imagine this. Maybe you've been to a wedding recently. You know that generally after the wedding ceremony they have a dinner out in a fellowship hall or wherever.
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They have a special table set, maybe for the bride and the groom. Imagine you going to this wedding, after the ceremony is over, you go into the fellowship hall, and the first thing you do is go to the bride and the groom table and you pull out a chair because it's made up nicer than everybody else's.
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Everything's ready for you to go. You sit down, you grab your fork, you grab your plate, you do what you think you're going to do, and then all of a sudden after the pictures are all taken, ain't that one of the worst parts of going to the wedding?
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Waiting an hour and a half for the wedding party to get their pictures made. You can't eat until then. But imagine you're sitting there at the bride and groom table, and the bride and groom comes in, everybody's clapping, they look at you as if to say, what do you think you're doing?
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That place is not for you. And then the father of the groom comes over to you and he says, excuse me, you need to get up.
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That is my daughter and her new husband's place. And imagine everybody's onlooking, imagine how you might feel.
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Imagine how small you might feel because you assumed a place of honor when you should have just sat in the very back of the building.
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But this is the picture that Christ gives. And so Christ goes on, he says in verse 10, but when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place that when your host comes, he may say to you, friend, move up higher.
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Because it is a great honor when the chief of the house comes to you and says, you know what, you don't have to sit all the way back there.
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Come on up here. Sit right here by me. What a blessing that is. But what
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Christ is addressing is the pride of these men and women's hearts who assume the best places in everything that they do when they do not realize that as men stand side by side, there are none of us better than the other.
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We are all sinful. We are all wretches. Sir has us hanging up on his back porch.
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He is the wretch that the song is talking about. Todd Frill says the same thing on his show, sir.
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We are wretches. The sin of pride is an excessive preoccupation with self and one's own importance.
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It's a preoccupation with our own achievements or status or possessions. This sin is considered rebellion against God because it attributes to oneself the honor and the glory that only
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God is due. Pride is the opposite of humility.
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It is a character quality that greatly pleases God. Now, even in the
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Old Testament, even in great men and women of God, we see the sin of pride creeping up.
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Turn back to 2 Chronicles in the Old Testament, chapter 26. And we're going to read here concerning one of the great kings of Judah, one of the great kings of Israel, a man who we've heard much about, concerning Isaiah chapter 6.
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If you know Isaiah chapter 6, you know verse 1 says, In the year that King Uzziah died,
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I saw the Lord high and lifted up in the temple. What we fail to realize is that Uzziah was a good and a godly king, but he felt prey to this sin of pride.
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2 Chronicles chapter 26, verse 1. And all the people of Judah took
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Uzziah, who was 16 years old, and made him king instead of his father Amaziah.
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He built Eloth and restored it to Judah. After the king slept with his fathers,
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Uzziah was 16 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 52 years in Jerusalem.
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His mother's name was Jecheliah of Jerusalem, and he did what was right in the eyes of the
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Lord according to all that his father Amaziah had done. He set himself to seek
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God in the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of God, and as long as he sought the
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Lord, God made him prosper. He went out and he made war against the
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Philistines, and he broke through the Wall of Jadna and the
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Wall of Ashton. He built cities in the territory of Ashton and elsewhere among the
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Philistines. God helped him against the Philistines and against the Arabians who lived in Gerbal and against the
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Munites. The Ammonites paid tribute to Uzziah, and his fame spread even to the border of Egypt, for he became very strong.
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Moreover, Uzziah built towers in Jerusalem at the corner gate and at the valley gate and at the angle, and he fortified them.
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And he built towers in the wilderness, and he cut out many cisterns, for he had large herds, both in the
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Shephela and in the plain, and he had farmers and bindressers in the hills and in the fertile lands, for he loved the soil.
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Moreover, or on top of all this, Uzziah had an army of soldiers, to the numbers in the muster made by Je 'ah, by the secretary and Mas 'ai, the officer, under the direction of Hananiah, one of the king's commanders.
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The whole number of the heads of father's houses of Mahdi -Menah -Balor was 2 ,600.
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Under their command was an army of 307 ,500 who could make war with Mahdi power to help the king against his enemy.
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And Uzziah prepared for all the army shields, spears, helmets, coats of mail, bows and stones for slinging.
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In Jerusalem, he made machines invented by skillful men to be on the towers and on the corners to shoot arrows and great stones.
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And his fame spread far, for he was marvelously helped till he was strong.
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But when he was strong, the Scripture says, he grew proud.
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We are taught in the New Testament, take heed when you stand, lest you fall.
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The Scriptures teach us in the New Testament, if you which are spiritual see a brother which is overtaken in a sin, go to such a one in the spirit of meekness, but consider yourself, lest you also be tempted.
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But here again, Uzziah, when he was strong, he grew proud to his destruction, the
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Scripture says, for he was unfaithful to the Lord his God and he entered the temple of the
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Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense. But Azariah the priest went in after him with 80 priests of the
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Lord who were men of valor. We typically, I think, I myself had previously in years past, when we read about priests, we think of these little fellas like myself who maybe didn't have a lot of power or didn't have a lot of authority, but the
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Levitical priesthood were men of valor. They were men who were strong. They were men who were trained in even war to fight and to battle.
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And so Azariah follows Uzziah into the temple with 80 priests of the
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Lord and they withstood King Uzziah and they said to him, it is not for you,
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Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord, but for the priests, the sons of Aaron, who were consecrated to burn incense.
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Go out of the sanctuary, for you have done wrong and it will bring you no honor from the
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Lord God. Big statement there. Then Uzziah was angry. Now he had a censer in his hand to burn incense and when he became angry with the priests, leprosy broke out on his forehead in the presence of the priests in the house of the
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Lord by the altar of incense. And Azariah, the chief priest, and all the priests looked at him and behold, he was leprous in his forehead.
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And they rushed him out quickly and he himself hurried to go out because the Lord had struck him.
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And King Uzziah was a leper to the day of his death.
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And being a leper, he lived in a separate house for he was excluded from the house of the
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Lord. And Jotham, his son, was over the king's household governing the people of the land.
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Now the rest of the acts of Uzziah from first to last, Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amos wrote, and Uzziah slept with his fathers and they buried him with his fathers in the burial field that belonged to the kings for they said, he is a leper.
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And Jotham, his son, reigned in his stead, in his place.
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There are none of us above the sin of pride. We must always keep a check on ourselves.
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Now, there are extremes on either side of the ditch here. We must stay in the middle of the road.
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Humility is not just walking around with your head hung low quoting Job, I'm a worm, not a man.
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Humility certainly isn't saying, look at me, look at me. Humility is recognizing who we are.
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We are creatures made in the image of almighty God. We are created beings and we have a faithful God who loves and cares for us.
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We must always keep the priority correct. God and man.
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God and man. And so, as we move to the latter parable here, the parable of the great banquet, so we've looked at the healing of the man with dropsy, we've looked at the sin of pride, and now we're going to very briefly examine this great invitation that is given as Christ gives us this parable to many who meet the invitation with a host of excuses.
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And everything, everything that we have read, everything that we are reading, Christ is directing at these men who should have recognized
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Him for who He is. The Christ, the Son of the living
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God, the Messiah, the one that the Jews have been looking for and waiting for, for so very long.
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The Scripture says He said also to the man who had invited Him, so Christ turns
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His gaze, turns His eyes, to this Pharisee at the head of the table. And He says,
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Sir, when you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends, do not invite your brothers, or your relatives, or your rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid.
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But when you invite, or when you give a feast, invite the poor, invite the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, for because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.
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Now, human nature teaches us something concerning this, that it is human nature to always want to get ahead.
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It is human nature to always want to be better. We ought always to strive to better ourselves, to increase our knowledge of the
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Lord, to increase our relationships, husbands with wives, wives with husbands, parents with children, families amidst their families, friends with friends.
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But what we are talking about here, and what we see here, is that Christ is reminding and challenging this
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Pharisee to remember, you should not strive to just reach out to those who can always reach back to you, but you should reach out to those who are unable in and of themselves to reach back, so that you might demonstrate and show the love of God.
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For that is part of what God had given him concerning the Sabbath, to be a day of rest from our works, that we might love the
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Lord our God with all our hearts, with all our souls, with all our minds, and with all of our strengths, and that we might love our neighbor as ourselves.
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Who is my neighbor? All my fellow men. We have this given to us.
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J .C. Ryle said, concerning this passage, our Lord takes this opportunity to remind him, and those eating at the table, through the parable of the great banquet, that people may have the kingdom of God offered to them, but if they intentionally neglect the offer, that they will be lost forever.
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What the Pharisees failed to see because of the blindness and hardness of their very hearts, was the fact that they soon would find themselves standing outside looking in.
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They thought their entire lives that they were on the inside, but when it came down to it, they realized they were on the outside, and this is what
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Christ proclaims to them. Ryle goes on to say, the gospel contains everything that sinners need in order to be saved.
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We are all naturally starving, we're empty, we're helpless, and we're ready to perish. The forgiveness of all sin and peace with God, justification of the person, justification of the person and sanctification of the heart, grace by the way, and glory in the end are the gracious provision which
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God has prepared for the needs of souls. There is nothing that sin -laden hearts can desire or that weary consciences require which is not spread before us in abundance in Christ our
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Savior. Christ, as a matter of fact, if you want to come down and boil it all down to this,
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Christ is the banquet. Christ is the feast to which they were invited.
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Christ is the feast to which you today are being invited to come and feast on Jesus Christ.
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Christ is the Son and Christ is the substance of the great banquet.
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So in closing, let me be plain here. Today, you as a hearer are being called to the banquet.
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You're not being called to a buffet where you pick what you want and you leave the rest, but you're being called today to a meal, to a meal that has been prepared from before the foundation of the world.
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The table has been made ready. The dishes have been set out. The food, which is by the way
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Christ Himself is placed before you. Come and dine.
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Receive what is set before you today with gratitude and with joy for Christ has died for our sin.
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He was buried and He is risen from the grave and today He is alive forevermore.
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Now it was then scandalous when Christ said it and it will be scandalous as I repeat it to you today, but nevertheless, it is the only way of salvation and how fitting that providentially we fall upon this text on the very day in which we observe, celebrate communion.
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Our Christ, our Lord, our Savior who gave His life upon the cross, broken for sinners, blood shed for sinful man so that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
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In John chapter 6 and verse 25 when they found Him on the other side of the sea they said to Him, Rabbi, when did you come here?
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And the context here is after Christ has fed the multitude, right, with five loaves and two fish.
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And Jesus answered and He said, Truly, truly I say to you, you are seeking Me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves.
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And Jesus says, Do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures to eternal life which the
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Son of Man will give to you for on Him God the Father has set
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His seal. Then they said to Him, What must we do to do the works of God?
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And Jesus answered, Then this is the work of God that you believe on Him whom
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He has sent. So they said to Him, Then what sign do you do that we may see and believe you?
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Every time I read that I can hardly keep myself from thinking how hard is it for them to understand?
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I mean they just ate from this tiny, tiny bit of food to the full and twelve baskets of fragments had been taken up.
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What must we do? And then they said this, Our Father's a man in the wilderness as it is written,
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He gave them bread from heaven to eat. Jesus said to them, Truly, truly I say to you,
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It was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
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For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and He gives life to the world.
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They said to Him, Sir, give us this bread always. Jesus said to them,
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I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst.
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But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet you do not believe.
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But all that the Father gives Me, Christ said, will come to Me and whoever comes to Me I will never cast out.
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For I have come down from heaven not to do My own will but the will of Him who sent
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Me. And this is the will of Him who sent Me that I should lose nothing of all that He has given
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Me but raise it up on the last day. And then on down a little further in verse 51 of John 6
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He said, Jesus said again, I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread he will live forever.
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And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.
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The Jews then disputed among themselves saying, How can this man give us
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His flesh to eat? So Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the
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Son of Man and drink His blood you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks
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My blood has eternal life. And I will raise him up on the last day.
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For My flesh is true food and My blood is true drink.
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Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me and I in him.
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As the Living Father has sent Me and I live because of the Father so whoever feeds on Me he also will live because of Me.
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This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not like the bread that the fathers ate.
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But whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.
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Christ is the substance of the baby. We need not try to imagine that it is our favorite food or our favorite drink.
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But it is Christ and Christ alone. It is Christ that we offer freely to you today.
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That you might believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and that you might be saved.
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Now there were many who struggled with Christ's statement. And one by one His disciples began to turn away and Christ looks to His twelve and as He looks to His twelve
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He asks them this question Will you also go away? To which the response is marvelous and beautiful.
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Lord to whom shall we go? For you and you alone have the words of eternal life.
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Why would we turn to the things of this world when God has given us
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His very best. His only begotten Son. Look unto
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Christ and live today. Those who were invited to the great banquet began one by one to make excuse.
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I bought some oxen and I got to try them out. One guy even said
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I just got married. I can't come. The excuses no matter how elaborate they may be no matter how clever you think you are but there will be no excuse that will stand on the day of judgment.
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When you stand before the throne of God and give account for this day when
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Christ was offered to you in hope that you might be saved you will have no excuse that will stand.
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For Christ is the banquet to which you are being invited to come today.
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And this is what they were invited to. And Christ reminds them you will not be able to be a part of this banquet.
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You will not be able to come to the Pharisees is what He told them. But to those who are not a people
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Christ said He will make them a people. As Israel rejected salvation the door was opened to Gentiles and my friend whether Jew or Gentile all may come to Christ through Christ and by Christ for there is no other way.
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Stand with us if you would this morning. There's a song in the hymnal. Standing outside the words say this judgment is surely coming.
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Coming to you and coming to me. We will be judged that morning for all eternity.
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Some will go into heaven others will be denied. Will you be in that number standing outside?
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Standing outside while loved ones enter the pearly gate knowing that there forever you will then separate to be away from loved ones and by your
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God denied. Oh what an awful picture standing outside.
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Can you not see the picture of those who were lost in sin standing outside the portals without a hope to win souls crushed with deepest sorrow without a friend to guide.
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Oh what an awful picture standing outside.
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Now our mind church by way of application simply this. Our mind toward the things that we have heard today ought to be with a singular focus looking unto
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Jesus. Our gaze today is to be upon Christ the great healer of soul and body.
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Our mind today should be fixed upon the blessed humility of our
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Savior. For as the apostle Paul told the church at Philippi, we affirm those same words to you today as Christian men and women.
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That we are to consider the humility that Jesus demonstrated concerning our love and our affection for one another.
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For Paul told the church at Philippi, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.
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And lastly, our mind toward this great invitation our mind toward this great invitation given should be with careful thought and with careful careful careful consideration to your own souls for it is to Christ we rise and it is to Christ that we fall it is to Christ to which we give account.