A Visitation From God — Mose Stoltzfus

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Greetings to all of you. Blessed day and opportunity to gather together again this morning to involve ourselves in the worship of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, fellowship of the saints, and all the wonderful things that do happen to us.

Thank you so much to the Dodd family for just the open sharing of what God has done in your life and those stories, those testimonies don't grow old. I thank God for them and I would sure like to see many more, brother, join your ranks out of a life of drugs and alcohol to a life of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ and to see what God has done in your family.

May your number increase. Amen. Well, praise God for the beautiful fall weather God has given us and truly the season has changed and we are ready for it, I trust. Let us turn our Bibles in Luke chapter 19 for our text.

Jesus Weeps Over Jerusalem

Give you a little bit of the background here. It's the triumphant entry of the Lord Jesus Christ coming to Jerusalem to die. Near the end of His life, His earthly life, the end of His three and a half year ministry, He worked hard and long and influenced thousands of people with His message about His time.

He comes to the Mount of Olives. There is a crowd of people around Him. He had some dialogues with people just prior to this, but this time they are in a festive mood as if He would be going into Jerusalem to be king.

Well, He was, but not exactly how they thought, many of them. So they cast their clothes in His path. He rode on the colt of an ox, just a little donkey that nobody had ever ridden on. And He was going along and He came over the crest of the hill.

And there before Him lay the majestic city of Jerusalem. Now Jerusalem was no ordinary city. It had been the center of Israeli worship and social life for many, many years. Going all the way back to King David, when it seems like the city was established there and His son Solomon built the magnificent temple.

And from that day on, Jerusalem seemed to be the center of the nation of Israel and its worship. Of course, you know the acute apostasy, the falling away, bringing idols into the temple and setting them up by Manasseh and a whole bunch of others.

Azariah. And then you'd have men that would clean them out and they'd bring them back again. And that brought about the captivity, the Babylonian captivity. Israel was split into two nations. We have Israel in the north, Judah in the south.

Jerusalem was the head of Judah. Well, they spent 70 years in Babylonian captivity and then came back. And you know the story of Ezra and Nehemiah. The wall was built and finally again the temple was rebuilt.

And we have it being majorly improved and remodeled by Herod. And here we have that. That's the setting that Jesus looked at as He looked out across that city. All of its history, all of its knowledge that the Son of God would have had when He looked at it.

Very, very different from man's perspective because He knew all of the history. He was around all that time. And so as He views it, His heart breaks. The rest of the people were rejoicing. The rest of the people thought they were going to crown Him king maybe.

It seems like they had that in mind. But not our Lord Jesus Christ. His heart breaks. And if we could start reading verse 41. When He was come near, He beheld the city and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belonged under thy peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes.

For the day shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground thy children within thee.

And they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation. The title of my message is, A Visitation from God. And I'm going to use this text as an example of a marvelous visitation that God had made for the life of Christ, God Himself, come down from heaven on earth to visit humanity with a visitation that was unprecedented in all of human history.

If thou would have known in this thy day, the things which belonged under thy peace, but now they are hidden from thy eyes. The day will come when they're going to lay you even with the ground and your children with you.

And they'll cast a trench out around you and hedge you in, keep you in, because thou knewest not the day of thy visitation. And I'll share with you where I'm going with this this morning. We're going to use the example.

In the scripture of this great visitation of God, we always have one to keep in mind as we go through the message. What about us? What about our time? What about Lancaster County? What about African Christian Fellowship?

What about the United States of America? Have we known the day of our visitation that God has so graciously given us? Or are they hidden from our eyes? And will the day come when Jesus will weep over us and he will say, thou knowest not the day of thy visitation.

I was there and I brought you all of this, but you didn't hear me. You didn't see me. It was hidden from your eyes because, as Matthew says, their eyes, they have closed. Lest seeing with their eye and hearing with the ear, they should believe and be converted.

That didn't happen to most of Israel. He wept over the city we have here. Now he knew the conditions in the temple down there. I would tend to believe that he had his all-seeing eye and his heart within himself, even though he was a human being.

But if not, he had already known the departure from the law of God down in the city of Jerusalem in the temple and some of the things were going on. And after he goes through this scene, we have him going down the hill and entering into the city of Jerusalem.

And when he got into the temple, here they were buying and selling and the money changers were there. They had their tables set up and they were exchanging monies and buying and selling animals, you know.

Buying from the shepherds coming in, in droves and putting them in fences and maybe even inside the temple in box stalls and what have you. And then selling them to the people who wanted to make offering and sacrifice for their sins.

And there was straw and manure all over the place. And this was a house of prayer. This was a house of God. And I can imagine that as he looked over the entire scene, he saw that scene, but he saw the scene much greater than that.

He saw the scene of 400 years of not being a prophet. He saw the departure from God. He saw that the men did not love God and did not serve God and even though the mighty works that he had done in the three and a half years of ministry, they were not regarding it, they were not taking it to heart for the most people.

He had talked about eating his flesh and drinking his blood and everybody just walked away and ugh on the whole thing and just didn't understand, nor did they seek to understand what it was all about.

And that's probably what he had seen that caused his heart to break. He knew he was going to die for the people. He knew they were going to scream and yell at him, crucify him, crucify him. Give us Barabbas.

And they desired rather to have a robber released than to have the Son of God reign among them and continue to do good like he had done. That's the scene I believe that he saw when he spoke these precious words.

Also in Luke chapter 13 verse 34 and we have it also in Mark and Matthew I believe, when he said, Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often I would have taken you under my wings like a hen does her brood, but you would not.

A verse that goes parallel with this one and is quoted by some of the other men as the verse also that he said in Matthew especially. It's quoted in the triumphant entry that he would have said it there too.

Capernaum and Accountability for Spiritual Opportunity

I want to go back and just show you some of the things that happened here in those three and a half years and we can turn back to Matthew chapter 11. We have the story there of Capernaum. And you know the city of Capernaum was no ordinary city.

In fact, there were probably more miracles done in Capernaum than any of the other cities in Judea and in Galilee. In Matthew chapter 11 verse 23 it says, And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to hell.

For if the mighty works which had been done in thee had been done in Sodom, it would have remained unto this day. But I say unto you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee.

Capernaum. Somehow we deduct from this real quickly that judgment will be according to opportunity and knowledge that we have rather than the actual extent of wickedness committed. Because we know that Sodom and Gomorrah are used in the example throughout the word of God on the acute wickedness that was accomplished, that was done there.

We know the story of when the men of God came to visit Lot and they wanted to stay there and how the men came up on the porch and tried to break down the door and God had to smite them with blindness and all that.

We know the terrible sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet the Lord Jesus looks at a little village town here called Capernaum where so many miracles were done that He tells them that it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for thee, Capernaum.

And the reason was, is because it was in that city that so many people had heard Him preach. That city was so majorly affected by the preaching of the word of God that when He went to Simon Peter's mother's house to heal her of her sickness, the whole city came outside on the porch or to the door of the place.

And they were after Him so much. They had so blazed abroad the effects of some of the miracles that were done. Unclean spirits were driven out, a whole host of them. He preached into the synagogues. A leper was cleansed in Capernaum.

The noble woman's son was healed. The centurion came to search Him out. It seems like it was the city where Jesus lived for quite a bit of His time throughout His ministry. And it says when He left there and went to the next village, they came out of every corner to search Him.

So the knowledge of what He had done and the things that happened in Capernaum and the surrounding area there as He walked around there, the tremendous amount of evil spirits that were driven out and all the healings and all the things that were done, the people were so knowledgeable.

They had so clearly got a picture of this man and what he was able to do and the power of God being upon him. And yet in the end of the road, at the end of His ministry, they drove Him out of there. He couldn't even do much in that area anymore because they had become so unbelieving and so agnostic against Him and antagonistic against Him.

And so He says that word concerning Capernaum and then just before that, He also had said, Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! For it had, if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon and that would have been in a Syrian country up by Lebanon now, they would have repented long time ago in sackcloth and ashes.

The Vineyard, the Rejected Servants, and the Son

But I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than at the day of judgment. Another parable that we see that comes right after our text, back in Luke chapter 19, over in chapter 20, we have the parable of the wicked husbands.

I sent my servant and they wouldn't hear him but would thrust him out. And then I sent another servant and did the same thing to him. And maybe the third one. But finally, at the end of it all, he said, I will send my son.

And he sent his only son and thought maybe they'll reverence him. But when he came close there and to check out on how things were going in the vineyard because he owned the vineyard and he had lent it out to them and wanted them to dress and keep it and bear forth fruit, but they wouldn't do it.

They said, come, this is the heir. Let's rise and kill him. And that's exactly what was happening as he stood on the Mount of Olives. He saw all of that and about to happen that it was time for him to give his life.

And no man would stand with him. No man went to the cross and comforted him and stood with him and said, I'm with you. He was all alone after all that he had done. And that is an amazing, amazing thing.

Oh, if thou hadst known in this thy day the things which belonged unto thy peace, but now they are hid from your eyes, visions that God made from eternity past in this vineyard here on earth and to provide eternal salvation and the blessing of God that was given to that community at that time.

And yet, I have to say, I'm not sure we don't have a greater opportunity with the Holy Ghost than what they did with the Lord Jesus in person. I would say it's very possible that if we would have listened in this our day, the things which belong to our peace may be a greater responsibility and a greater accountability than what they had there seeing the miracles that he did.

But nevertheless, with all that they saw and all that was given him, and here he humbled himself from the glories of heaven and came down on this sin-cursed earth in the form of a man and suffered like a man and died like a man and was thirsty and hungry like a man and was tired and weary like a man and he did the whole thing for 33 years in order to bring them God down into their hearts and let them see the power of God and the miracles of God and the blessings of God and all that would be theirs.

But they shut their eyes and mocked him and crucified him and hung him on a cross to die just as if nothing that he had done was right or good. And he never made a mistake and he never did ill to any man.

How can those things be? That is the hardness of the human heart, we realize. In 1 Corinthians 2, we have an interesting verse there often misquoted in my past as I remember it. 1 Corinthians 2 verse 4.

And my speech and preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power Paul now preaching in the power of the New Testament Spirit of God being upon him in the church age.

Verse 5, he says That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world that come do not.

But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory, which none of the princes of this world knew. For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

The mystery was hid from their eyes and we believe some of that was by design in the sovereign ways of God. But then in verse 9 he says. But as it is written, I have not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for them that love Him.

He's saying here that mankind in general they have no idea. The eye has not seen nor ear heard what the Lord has prepared for those that love Him. They don't have a clue. And I think many of you would have to say when you were in the world and you were following the lust of your flesh and you had those bad habits and you were following after sin and ungodliness, many times we have to say we had no clue, did we?

What God would have prepared for us that love Him. I was so amazed in Bolivia we went around and visited a number of folks trying to get counsel there for their heart concerning the church. We went into a home where the father is not with the church.

He attends, but he's not with the church. I think the mother is more so and some of the girls. But here was a young man in the middle of that and he sat there on a chair outside under the tree in the middle of the day and we started to talk about church life and that young man began to share some of the things that God has done since he has heard the gospel in a powerful way and the effect that it has in his life, giving him victory and power over sin.

He said, I never would have dreamed anything like this were possible. And he just overflowed from his heart on the things he has seen, the things he has laid hold of, the things he has come to grips with.

And when we finished our conversation there and the brother who was with me from Manitoba, I think it was, as we drove out the lane, I looked over at him and I said, where do you get men like that? Where does those kind come from?

But that's what the Scripture is teaching. I have not seen nor heard what the Lord has promised to them that love Him, but the Spirit has revealed it unto them, even to the deep things of God. They are there.

They are available. They are for you and I and the provisions of having power and victory over sin and over evil habits and over drugs and alcohol and over immorality. All these things God has provided and that men should live a holy life and a godly life and freedom from sin.

It's all provided. It's all made available through Calvary. And yet for the most part of humanity, they have shut their eyes and shut their ears and will not hear the message of the truth of the Gospel, nor press into it, like the Bible says, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force.

It's those that press into it, like the young man that we visited. It's those that say, this is real. This is what I want and I believe it and He embraced it and it's available for anyone else.

Just like that. God has revealed.

Them unto even the deep things of God by His Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God. Sometimes I wonder what Jesus would say as I mentioned before where I'm going. I just wonder what God would say to Lancaster County knowing the amount of tent meetings, the amount of revival preachers in my lifetime that have crisscrossed this county, who up and down and preach the things that we preached over the last decades.

And I know it is fizzling out and I know it's not what it once was and I know there's a decline in all of it. I know that. I feel that. I've lived here except for four years of my life. I've lived here my entire life right in the center of out of the county for most of my life and yet I understand there is this decline but what would the Lord Jesus say if He would come over the crest of the Ephrata Mountain and He would look out over the county?

What would His word be? If thou would have known in this day the things which belong in thy peace if you'd have any idea Lancaster County what I would have had for you, young people middle-aged people, older people alike, if you'd had any idea the provisions in the storehouse of grace and power would have been available to you if only you would have come to me and asked for it.

If only you would have sought it with all your heart but you wouldn't do it. And that's what I see so much with the burden of the church with the burden of the youth with the burden of those that are in materialism and looking and running after money and after things and fancy cars and certain clothes and wanting to be on the in crowd with the rest of the youth of the county and run with the spirit of the world and the spirit of the age if thou would have known in this day that which belongs unto thy peace.

But now they are hidden from your eyes because you diverted your attention and your focus on lesser things of life. May God help us. And the same could be said for the entire United States. I tremble at the decisions that are being made against God, against the Word of God and all of those things.

Reverence for the Word of God

I have to think of the Word of God and how the Word of God you know I have a bit of Bolivia on my mind and I was just kind of moved again and those poor Mennonite people, the old colony Mennonite people that we got down there in the midst of the situation there and once again I heard a voice that I had heard a bit in my childhood although it's much worse in saying that they don't want the people to read the Word of God because they fear that they'll learn more than the preachers and there they are illiterate and while we were having the men's retreat about 34 men up in a mountain retreat place where we had gathered there there was a man there from Paraguay he had never been in any of the meetings before and he came from from some kind of a colony down in Paraguay a very similar one of Russian Mennonite background likewise and his wife was so jealous she was along also but she had to stay back at Campo Chihuahua there in the colony while he went along to the men's retreat and she just wished somehow she would get to hear the things that he was hearing, that's the kind of hunger they had for the things of God and when it came to the weekend we preached Sunday morning and preached Sunday evening, there was a bunch of us preachers there from Canada and myself from the United States and we all had a message about two of us on Sunday morning and two on Sunday evening and she got to drink all that in and she said, I just couldn't believe it probably the first time in her life she heard the message of the Gospel preached in the low German language out of the Scriptures you know, Brother David they had the Bibles that Dara and I have, a low German Bible that was printed in 2003 just 2003 or 2004 somebody translated the Bible into the low German language but the colonies are refusing them because oh it has to be the high German and the people don't understand it because traditionally it's always been so but now it's available in a low German language and it's even kind of a poor translation but all of the men on Sunday used that book to translate and the message was preached right straight out of that Bible out of the low German language and this lady sat there and heard the word of God being preached in a language for perhaps the first time in her life that she could understand and it was so absolutely precious to her.

And I perhaps haven't made a habit of it often but you know I think it's right sometimes to hold the Bible close to us and to kiss it to be able to have the word of God translated in our own language.

I don't want to take too much attention away from the person of Christ but you know in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. And when we have the Bible accurately translated from the Greek and from the Hebrew we have a portion of God in our very midst and I think it's right for us to reverence it and handle it carefully.

I just don't understand all the Bibles that accumulate here many times in meetings or what have you back in the lost and found and there may be 8 Bibles scattered on the table that people left behind.

You know the word of God is so common we have so much of it we have so many copies of it that we can let them lay here and there and we never even notice the difference. Not so in Russia in years gone by when there was only one or two Bibles for an entire congregation during the dark years of Stalin's regime and Khrushchev's and so on when they just didn't have enough of Bibles to each home to have one.

I can't imagine what that would be like compared to how we have it. But we never forget again the message of the Lord Jesus and how he weeps over the condition of how men take it so nonchalantly and say to if thou would have known in this day the things that would have belonged to your power and your peace and your satisfaction if you only would have embraced that but now they are hidden from your eyes because you take it so nonchalantly you take it so lightly you don't even care about it.

The Gospel’s Absence and the Need for Visitation

We had to see down in Bolivia some of you may have heard I just mentioned I think in closing in one of our prayer meetings some of the terrible atrocities that have been happening there. But they had a man there in one of the colonies that they accused of a heinous crime that was being committed in the Belize colony and there were a lot of things going on just prior to my coming down there.

And they took a man and they hung him they tied his hands behind his back wanting him to confess to the crime that supposedly he had done and then they hung him up by the hands and his feet in the back he only lasted a couple of days hanging there like that and then his shoulders broke and finally somebody took him down and took him to the hospital but a day later he passed.

Away feeling they had.

The right to punish him and what I understand is the man had not done it at all and couldn't confess that he had done the crime that he was being accused of but they thought he was guilty and therefore were trying to force a confession out of him.

Seven other men were put into a prison cell again for incredible atrocities and unbelievable crimes that they had committed against some of the young ladies and children there in the colony and there they are somebody already has it on the internet and has them trying to justify themselves saying they didn't do it and all those kind of things.

Oh I think in light of brother Dave's message here on Wednesday night on the beautiful beginning of the Anabaptist movement in 1525 there in Zurich, Switzerland and they are direct descendants of it direct descendants of that movement down through Russia and then into Paraguay and into Bolivia or Mexico and Bolivia or Canada, Mexico and Bolivia.

However their ancestry has come and yet these people are so devoid of the gospel, so devoid of the truth of God's word and I'm sure that the Lord Jesus looking at this situation would weep over them today and say likewise if thou would have known in this thy day the things which belong unto thy peace but now they are hid from their eyes.

You didn't hear the day of your visitation. I have to look at let's just look briefly at Luke chapter 1 we have the the song here of Zacharias. Zacharias was a father and Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist and Zacharias after his mouth opened up and he declared his name is John, you know he was dumb there for a time and could not speak and when he declared that his name is John which the angel had revealed to him who he was supposed to be a voice crying in the wilderness preparing the way of the Lord, then in Luke chapter 1 verse 30, 67 through 75 we have the first stanza as I would give it of the song and then the second one in 76.

To 79 and here's what it says 67.

And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost prophesied saying blessed be the Lord God of Israel for he hath visited and redeemed his people. And this is of course the view somewhat prophetic of what would happen Mary is now already pregnant with the Lord, yes John the Baptist is born and Mary is already pregnant with the Lord Jesus Christ and they're looking at this whole thing of what should happen in the next 33 years with the Lord Jesus Christ being born and growing up as he did and then becoming the sin sacrifice and sin offering for the people.

It takes the whole thing in view there and the song of Zacharias is blessed be the Lord God of Israel for he hath visited and redeemed his people, John the Baptist grew up there and became a voice in the wilderness and preaching repentance to the people that people should turn from their sin, like I said there was no prophet for 400 years.

And here comes John the Baptist and he stands up and he was full of the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb and he begins to preach the truth to these people who had so drifted so far away from God and the loving heart of God was now just allowing John to be a forerunner and then he was going to bring his only son like the parable the wicked husbandman says in Luke chapter 20 he was now going to bring his only son down there and plead with them one more time if perhaps that they might listen and that's the setting here that he gives it so it's part prophecy of what should happen in the next 30 years and part of it is just already beginning to happen that God is already moving upon the people, verse 69 and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of a servant David.

I appreciate that, the horn of salvation there it's not horns but horn and you look at it singular and you think of a great big horn of salvation that was a tremendous protection to like a rhinoceros or various other animals who had on their nose or on their head a huge horn that even lions I think would have had to fear because they were able to disembowel practically any wild animal that would come against them if they would be able to hook them on that horn but anyway it was a big and strong and mighty horn when we think of some of those animals who had that and here he calls it a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David showing the promises that had come down from the Old Testament through David and he calls it the horn of salvation.

The other thing we have, we have four horns at the four corners of the altar outside in the courtyard there of the temple and these were a place of mercy where men could go and lay hold of the horns of the altar and have mercy from God as they pled concerning a mistake they had made or a sin that they may have committed.

There was mercy there so we have that depicted here in this verse verse 70 and he spake by the mouth of his holy prophet as he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets which have been since the world began.

All prophets had prophesied in one way or another of the coming Messiah. You can go back through them and check them out and study them you will find that the prophets all prophesied of the coming of the Lord in one way or another the coming Messiah verse 71 that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all that hate us.

Now ultimately I realize that will deliver them from the gentile nations all around them that will come against them to try to annihilate them in the end times. But some think that this is spoken more of the enemy to the soul, the enemy in spiritual battles and warfare, the enemy of the flesh and the power of God as I preached before hand some minutes ago here on what is available for the Christian and it says here that is that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all that hate us everything that is against us in a spiritual manner there is salvation available, the horn of salvation is strong and mighty and able to deliver us from that.

Then he says in 72 to perform the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant. And I think that has to do with the covenant promised to Abraham way back in Isaac shall thy seed be called.

It became a covenant of faith rather than a covenant of lineage earthly lineage. And we have that reaching us all down to our very time our very day that we can be children of Abraham today this is the promise of God this is what God has made available for us the oath which he swore to our father Abraham that he would grant unto us that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear goes along with the children's class so beautifully concerning fear.

But the promises of God in this song given to Zechariah is that we should be delivered from our enemies and again I want you to think of it especially of spiritual although we have even though as we had on Wednesday night and saw how many of our forefathers died for their faith hundreds of years ago there and we have not had to face that in the same way yet even there we see it in a literal imprisonment and death of the Anabaptist forefathers they served him without fear.

One of the things that you see in the martyr's mirror so beautiful is the boldness that they had to suffer and gladly were able to give their lives and take the stake voluntarily without crying and screaming and all those things because God had given them the power to do it without fear as it promises us here in the word of God we can serve him without fear.

And when we face some of the things as we look into the future and we talk about the Antichrist system and some of their plans with us and what to do with us those kind of things I know it strikes fear sometimes a bit in a father or mother especially those of you who are bringing children into the world or just getting married and all that.

And you wonder what shall come in my day with this whole situation that is facing us. But I'm here to tell you that the Lord Jesus still has promised that we are able to serve him without fear sufficient under the days the evil thereof we don't have to worry about those things and we believe when the time comes grace will be given to us to walk through those days according.