Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): With insights on how to hear God speak personally to you, here's Pastor Bill Luebkemann.

Bill Luebkemann: You can ask him to open your mind so that you can understand the scriptures. You'll never understand them if you don't read them. So if you don't pick up your Bible till next Sunday, you won't make a lot of progress with that.

But when you get home, if you pick it up and start reading and asking God, "Show me what this means. Teach it to me," these words will jump off the page at you. Every once in a while, you'll hit something and he'll knock you over with it. You realize, "Wow, God just spoke to me. He is alive. He does speak." But it's that still small voice. You have to be patient and you have to invest the time.

Guest (Male): What an exciting prospect, to hear God speak. This is Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.

When Jesus appeared to his disciples, he opened their understanding of the scripture. Yet the disciples were initially troubled and fearful. It took a little while for their logical minds to catch up to their experience. It's a struggle that persists even in our day. So let's turn to Luke chapter 24, verse 38 and join Pastor Bill.

Bill Luebkemann: He always kept his word, Jesus did. He was always good for all of his promises. He never sinned and he was completely perfect in every way.

Most people believe that. I was with a friend of mine this week and he has another friend who's a pastor in some large denomination. His friend was in this large denomination and they were interviewing candidates to be pastors, people who had graduated from some theology divinity school or something. This woman came in. She was trained and was going to be a pastor in their denomination.

He asked her, "What do you think the three biggest sins are in the world today?" She said, "Sexism, racism," and some other ism. This guy said to her, "Sexism, that's a sin? Oh, yeah, that's a big sin in the world today." He said, "Jesus had 12 apostles and they were all men. Do you think Jesus was a sexist?" "Well, I guess he was," she said.

This guy said to her, "Now, you said sexism was a sin, right?" "Oh, yeah." "So what you're saying is Jesus was a sinner?" "I guess you're right. I never looked at it that way before, but yes, I guess he was a sinner." He led her down this path just following logic. She was following the logic. She just began with the wrong assumptions.

He never sinned. He was completely perfect in every way. So why are they afraid? And perhaps even more troubling, why do they have doubts? It's interesting here that the NIV says "minds". Some other translations say "hearts". Why are you troubled and why do doubts rise in your mind? In some places, why do doubts rise in your heart?

We saw back in verse 25, it's with the heart you believe. So if we're having trouble believing, that's got to be a problem in our heart, right? But I think it's interesting they mention "mind" here in the NIV because I wonder if maybe it's the mind that's working against the heart. The heart wants to believe, the mind doesn't want to.

We believe in our heart, but our mind is saying, "Not so fast on that." Our mind is connected to our five senses by what Mike and I would call an internal wiring harness. All the parts are feeding information in there. The mind is taking in whatever it sees and it's processing it and it's acting accordingly, like a computer almost. It's smarter than any computer any man has ever made.

In this case, I think their minds couldn't process all this information fast enough. They were seeing it. I don't know if there was anything to smell. The air was electric in the room. Their sixth sense was going off, maybe. The program up here runs through all of its examples and all the things it's ever experienced before and it says, "That doesn't compute. I don't have any prior experience like this. No one ever came back from the dead. Never heard about it happening. Don't know anything about that. There's just nothing that resembles this. We see him here. We know he died. So what's going on? What am I missing? What's this all about?"

I think their mind here is working one way, their heart wants to believe, and their mind is saying, "I better turn on the fear subsystem here and the fear and trembling because the input doesn't add up here." When you don't know what's happening, it's time to be concerned. "Why are you troubled?" he said. "And why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see. A ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have."

Some people say they didn't recognize him. He didn't look like himself. But that couldn't have been the case because he said, "It is I myself." He didn't say his name. He didn't say, "Hey, it's me, Jesus. Don't you remember me? I was just with you a couple of days ago. We had dinner the other night." He said, "It is I myself." So they obviously recognize him.

Then he offers to show them the holes in his hands and the holes in his feet. He offers them the ability to touch him. He says a ghost doesn't have flesh and bones. This is very interesting because it doesn't say flesh and blood. You could do another whole study here on this. But First Corinthians 15:50 says flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Way back in Genesis 9, the life is in the blood. The old life, the human life.

It would seem like the new body doesn't have blood, which is just fine for those of us that don't like to see the sight of blood. It seems to be a different kind of life form. Blood's not needed anymore in that whole arrangement here. There's just a bit of a clue here about this heavenly body, able to pass through walls and doors and maybe materialize in a certain place. I think maybe going through a different dimension even.

It's fun to think about that stuff. Physicists today say in addition to the four dimensions we're aware of—length, width, height, and time—physicists today say there's a whole bunch of other dimensions. They can mathematically postulate their existence, but nobody knows about them. In this dimension, to get to my house, you make a left here and a right and then another left and another left in this dimensions that we're familiar with. But maybe in some other dimension, there's a shortcut around the corner that we're unaware of.

It's fun to think about that kind of stuff. I know when we get these heavenly bodies, it's going to be the 2.0 model. We're going to be able to do all kinds of neat things. There's going to be no more scraped knees or bloody noses or anything like that because there's not going to be any blood. Blood is the old way, and the blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. His blood was shed almost as if he didn't take it with him. He has this new body now.

When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. He offered out, "Check it out for yourself, guys. Here I am. I look the same. I'm not Jesus's twin brother that you never met before. Look, here are the holes. You can see through them." I saw a little video we showed on Easter that had a quick shot of the hand and you could see through to stuff on the other side. It kind of grossed me out a little bit. I wouldn't want to be the one looking at all these holes, the hole in his side and whatever. But he says, "Check it out for yourself. It's me myself."

And yet they still had a problem while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement. He asked them, "Do you have anything to eat?" After all this, they're still confused. We can make fun of these guys and say how silly they were and don't they get it and what's taking them so long and they should have read the book first. Didn't they ever see a movie about Easter? If they had known, they would have known about it. But they didn't know anything.

Actually, they knew a lot. It just didn't come to their mind at this point. He asks for some food and whatever the food is, whether it was fish or a honeycomb, he took it and ate in their presence. So this new body does have the ability to eat food. I don't think he ate because he had to eat, because he was hungry. I don't think so. He was here. He was with them and he wanted to show them he was real. In addition to allowing them to touch them, show them the hands and whatever, in addition to all that stuff, he said, "Let's have some food." Ghosts don't eat food. If you ever saw a cartoon, they can't pick anything up. It just falls right through them. They can walk through walls. I don't know why they don't fall through the floor into the basement even. Of course, in cartoons, they always make it just the way they want it to be.

He said to them, "This is what I told you while I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms." We won't spend a lot of time here because he said essentially the same thing to the guys as they walked along the road to Emmaus. What's happening is what I told you would happen. It's being fulfilled according to the way I told you.

It's being fulfilled according to what's written in the Bible when he says the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms. He's referring to the Jewish Old Testament, which is the same as our Old Testament. What we call the Old Testament. You wouldn't want to tell them it's the Old Testament because "old" implies "new". They haven't caught on to the new idea yet. But he's referring to the Jewish scriptures here. Everything had to be fulfilled that was written about me and all these things that I've been telling you for the last three years all had to happen.

They all had to happen this way. It wasn't that I just felt like doing them that way. It was because this was God's plan from the beginning of time, that it would happen this way. God planned it that way and it had to be done that way. The whole Old Testament was written about the coming of these events and they had to unfold the way it said they were going to unfold.

Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures. You could do another whole study just on this one verse. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned by the power of God through the Holy Spirit living in your life. That's how you can understand what's in this book, by the power of the Holy Spirit. You can get around and read it with a bunch of people who don't have the Holy Spirit and they'll just be confused. "What does this mean? We can't figure it out. Why is it so long? Why did God kill so many people in the Old Testament? We can't figure that out. Why did God allow this to happen?"

I was reading Ezekiel just this week and the passage where God said, "I'm going to deliver this blow to you. Your wife's going to die tomorrow." It just made me start crying. It was like, "Why did you do that to the guy?" I kind of felt like God was saying, "Well, there was a lesson in that. There was some message." I just kept thinking, "Isn't there another way to give that message? Send them down to a college lecture hall, write it on a chalkboard or something."

They weren't going to get the message anyway. You can read Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel. They never got the message. He kept saying, "Tell it to them again. Maybe this time they'll repent. Maybe this time they'll change their mind." Some people say we don't have free will. Well, I can't figure out how they could read Jeremiah and come up with that. Why did God have to do it that way? Why'd he do that to the poor guy? Just as another object lesson to the people of the land there who weren't going to listen to it anyway.

But God is God and he does things for his purposes. One thing we can be sure of, we just don't understand him. And if we try to understand him, well, we're not going to get very far. But the little we do understand, it's because he showed it to us by the Holy Spirit living inside of us. You need to pray when you read the Bible and ask God to show you. "What does it mean? Lord, what do you want to show me here today? What can I learn from this?" And he will. But if you don't ask him, he might not.

These people here, he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures. I think that's really an important verse. You need to have God open your mind so that you can understand what's written in here. I think by the way that's how some people come to me. "We're not sure we're really saved. We can't quite know that we really repented," or what have you. One way I think you can know that you're really walking with the Lord is that you understand the scriptures because it's the Holy Spirit that opens your mind to it.

This shows the control that he had over them previously. It also shows, by the way, since he opened their minds now that he hadn't done it before. So you really can't blame them for not knowing. He had been teaching them all this stuff. It was all going in there and it was piling up and filling up their hard drive and they had all this information, but he hadn't opened their mind yet. So it was kind of like the storehouse was filled but he had to do something to bring it all together for them. He did something, he said the word or whatever. It's within his power to give us understanding.

We can read all the best books, be with the smartest people, go to the best schools, and unless he opens our minds, we won't know anything. We need to get it from him. He told them, "This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."

We could spend another day in here and we can't because I'm going to finish this chapter today if it's the last thing I do. This is what is written. The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and that already happened when he was talking to them. Repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning here in Jerusalem. That was what was about to happen. They were going to go out themselves and preach this repentance.

When he gave them the understanding, they could take all the knowledge they had of the scriptures. Some of them had a lot of knowledge of the scriptures before they met the Lord. Put that together with what they learned from him and now what he's teaching them now. He opened their mind and they're just full of it now. They can get out there and tell the whole world that forgiveness of sins is available. Jesus came not to condemn the world but to save the world. To bring forgiveness and to bring healing and to bring the peace of God if we just put our faith in him.

So many people today, they want to put their faith in anything but Jesus. We don't want to hear anything about God. We'll take any other silly crazy theory. Life was planted on the earth by aliens that landed here and planted spores or something billions of years ago. Excuse me, sir, but where did the aliens come from? "We don't know and we don't go there because then we might have to talk about God."

"You are witnesses of these things," he tells them. Look, you've seen all this. You saw it happen. They saw him die. They saw him rise again. First person witnesses. These guys were right about to go out and change the whole world. But he promises them the Holy Spirit will come. "I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."

You're not going to go out and do this under your own power. You're not going to get a degree and learn how to do it man's way. You're going to do it with power from on high, the power that God's going to give you. If you don't have the Holy Spirit's power working in your life, you need to ask him to give it to you and to fill you with it.

When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. You can read in Acts more details on how that happened at the beginning of Acts. He was taken up into heaven. There were some angels there and they were gazing up into heaven watching him go. These angels appeared and said, "Hey, he's going to come back the same way."

That's why we preach here at Calvary Chapel that Christ is going to return and he's going to return in the clouds. He was in bodily form. They could touch him. They could see the holes in his body, the hole in his side. He was not a ghost. He was in a bodily form and he went up to heaven and the angel said he's coming back the same way in the clouds. It didn't happen yet, but you're not going to miss it when it does.

The whole world's going to know about it. The whole world can say we're silly for believing this stuff here, but they're sure going to feel silly and locked out when it happens. Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. They stayed continually at the temple praising God. Their response to all this was to worship him and have great joy and to do what he said.

He said, "Stay in the city," and that's what they did. They stayed in the city and they stayed continually at the temple praising God. I don't think that means they necessarily stayed there all day and all night, seven days a week, never went anywhere else. They had times of prayer at the temple. There were set times for prayer and they were probably always there when it was time to pray. They were joyful and they were praising God and they were always there hanging out. They knew that the Lord was going to come again.

They probably thought he was going to come the next day or the next week or the next month or the next year. I don't think they had a clue that all that time would go past and he wouldn't have returned. But just because he didn't do it in our time doesn't mean he's not going to do it when it's his time. He said no man can know the day or the hour. Only God in heaven knows when that's going to happen.

What can you do about it? I said it earlier in this message. If you don't know this Jesus who died for your sins, who did it because it was the plan of God, who said that everything must be fulfilled this way, if you don't know him, you can ask him into your heart and into your life right now. You can ask him to open your mind so that you can understand the scriptures.

You'll never understand them if you don't read them. So if you don't pick up your Bible till next Sunday, you won't make a lot of progress with that. But when you get home, if you pick it up and start reading and asking God, "Show me what this means. Teach it to me," these words will jump off the page at you. Every once in a while, you'll hit something and he'll knock you over with it. You realize, "Wow, God just spoke to me. He is alive. He does speak."

But it's that still small voice. You have to be patient and you have to invest the time. And you have to more than anything believe and allow him to do it and allow him to open your mind. Maybe you're born again. Maybe you just haven't been reading the book the way you should. Maybe God hasn't been speaking to you. Maybe you're wondering why he hasn't been speaking much lately. Maybe it's because you need to spend more time in his word, giving him the opportunity to. When you do, make sure you ask him to speak to you.

If you don't know him, you've never asked Jesus into your life, you're wondering how to go about that, we saw earlier: belief comes from your heart. It's with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. There's only two things you need to know to get into heaven. You need to believe in your heart and you need to say so with your mouth.

That's it. You don't need to join a church, take a class, go through any kind of procedure or process. Nobody can deny this to you and nobody can tell you any other way to get there. You don't need to go through any intermediary. You don't need my permission. You don't need the permission of any pastor, reverend, rabbi, priest, or anybody else. You need to go to the Lord and say, "Lord, forgive my sins. Come into my life. I believe in you and I want you to be my Lord and my Savior."

He will do that. If you haven't done that, I encourage you to do it now. If you have done that, I encourage everybody, this is where the answers are. Let's spend time mining this. Guys risk their lives to go down underground and bring up coal so we can heat our homes and run our power plants here. We can mine the word of God for the truths. It's a different kind of mining. You don't get dirty when you do it. You can sit on the sofa in your air-conditioned house sipping a cup of tea and doing this. It's not risky like the other kind of mining is, but it's way more valuable because God will speak to you if you go here and ask him to.

Guest (Male): Amen. May you hear the Lord speak to you personally as you invest time in the word. Pastor Bill Luebkemann will return momentarily, so please stay with us for more Hope from the Word. You can join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton either in person or online. Our Sunday service begins at 10:00 a.m. and there's a Wednesday evening service at 7:00. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton or just go to our website for the link at ccmarlton.org.

If you'd take a moment to write to Pastor Bill, it would be such a blessing to us. We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives and we want to pray for you, too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org or call 856-983-1662. To conclude our time together in prayer, here's Pastor Bill Luebkemann.

Bill Luebkemann: Lord, thank you for opening the minds of those apostles that were there that day. I pray that you'd open our minds as well, Lord, even more each day. It hardly seems to be a one-time deal where you open the minds and poof, now we're a genius and we know everything. You open our minds but then you somehow, through some kind of process, teach us your ways and show us your truth. We thank you for that. If anyone doesn't know you, I pray that they'd ask you into their heart and into their life right now. As we close the service, may we know you more each day, Lord. May we worship you. Lord, we thank you for all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Male): Amen. And thank you for being with us for Hope From the Word. We invite you to join us again on Monday as Pastor Bill Luebkemann returns to a study in the book of First Kings.