The Word of God, to which we would call your attention tonight, you may find in the 23rd chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew. We aren't going to read the whole chapter, we'll read portions of it, and I'll indicate that as we are reading. Matthew 23. We begin at verse 1. Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Everything they do is done for men to see. They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long. They love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogue. They love to be greeted in the marketplace and to have men call them rabbi. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have only one master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth father, for you have one father and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called teacher, for you have one teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you will be your servant, for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to enter. We move now to verse 29. Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees you hypocrites you build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous and you say if we had lived in the days of our forefathers we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets. so you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets fill up then the measure of the sin of your forefathers you snakes you brood of vipers how will you escape being condemned to hell therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers some of them you will kill and crucify others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue them from town to town And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation. And now come the words of our text, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you. How often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. There we stop our reading. Beloved, in this chapter you have a beautiful but a terrible word of God. Jesus suffered many things at the hands of the scribes and the Pharisees. They refused his word and his work, and they did everything they could to prevent that work from going any further because they saw that it would condemn them. And if the people believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, their places of honor and glory, of power and prestige, of wealth according to this world would be done away. But you say the passage is so negative. But I would say to you tonight, beloved, That even though this passage and many other passages of the word of God is negative in form, it never, the word of God is never ultimately negative. True, you have here an announcement of judgment, a very serious condemnation of a way of life that the Lord certainly condemns. But I would like to give you a few examples from Scripture of very serious, negative narratives. And I think, first of all, of the flood. Can you think of anything more serious and more deadly and more destructive than when God brought the wickedness of the people of that day into complete oblivion through sending a flood that covered the whole earth and destroyed everything that had been built. But the Bible isn't negative about it. Peter tells us in his epistle to us that God sent that flood in order to save eight souls who still believed in him. Can you imagine that? To destroy the entire world and renew it for the sake of eight souls who believed in him. I think of Egypt, that greatest nation of that time. the elite of the world, the richest and the strongest nation who refused to let Israel go and God wrecked that nation with the ten plagues until they urged them to go. God was bringing his people from this slavery of Egypt to the beauty and freedom of that new land which he had promised them. And to mention no more, I think of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Can you imagine the despair of the disciples who had been faithful to him for those three years when he was here upon the earth? And suddenly, he whom they knew to be the hope of Israel, the very Son of God himself, had allowed himself to be crucified and he was dead. But he arose again the third day. And you have only to look at the myriads of men and women and children worshipping his name today to see the positive outcome of that. And with that in mind, we look at the words of our text and ask ourselves, but what is the positive message of this horrible passage? And I believe we can grasp it, beloved, under what I've chosen for our theme tonight. Christ's will to gather Jerusalem's children. And now we're going to look at three things tonight. That call of Christ to gather Jerusalem's children. the response of Jerusalem, and finally, judgment and victory. But before we enter into that completely, I would just like to say something. I think in all the texts of scripture that have been misquoted to me, this one stands first. Almost always in discussions, when this text comes before to our attention, it's quoted something like this. Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and crucify those who are sent unto you, how often I would gather you and you would not. And you realize, beloved, that as soon as you quote the text that way, you've changed the meaning entirely. That's why we begin by asking, who is Jerusalem, and who are Jerusalem's children? Because that changes the meaning totally. Christ did not say, I would gather you, even though that may be true in many instances. But he said to Jerusalem, how often I would gather your children through Jerusalem, and you would not let they be gathered. So we have to ask the question tonight. Who is Jerusalem? What is Jerusalem? And who are our children that should be gathered? And I'd like to point out, beloved, that from a very superficial point of view, Jerusalem was that town, that city in Judea of where the temple was, where the service of God was, where Christ worshipped, that city that still is there today. And in that very simple and superficial sense of the word, the inhabitants of Jerusalem would be the Jerusalem. A city is nothing without inhabitants. Jerusalem's children would simply be the children born in that city. In that very narrow sense of the word, that's not the meaning here. It's figurative because in the Bible, God uses that term Jerusalem and Christ uses it here in a very distinct way. And you may be able to grasp that a little more carefully and easily if in your catechetical days you remembered that when we talked, when there was a teaching regarding the church, it was usually said something like this, that you can distinguish the church in two ways. The church as institute and the church as organism. Then the church as organism is the church as it's viewed from the viewpoint of its common faith, its common worship, its common life in Christ, its common hope, its common aim, its common goal, its common purpose, its common love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. The organic living church, which life is in each individual member, but gathered together as a living intimate, or I should say a living intimate unity devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ. But the church is also addressed in scripture and in ordinary language as the instituted church. And by that we mean the way the church comes to manifestation in this world. And that manifestation of its visibility in this world is first of all its form of organization. Then it's the preaching of the word. It's the sacraments. It's the discipline. It's the whole apparatus for service. And, beloved, the relationship of those two is to be found in this, That Christ institutes that church, calls it as an institution, causes it to be visible in this world through the word and the sacraments and the paraphernalia of service in order that it may serve that organism of the church. It's a living, vital life of the church, beginning with the newborn and all the way up to people as old as I am and beyond. Because that institution is called into being in order that it may nurture and serve that living, organic church which is there. And when we look a little more closely at Jerusalem as it comes to us in the Bible, then we see the form in which that came was the people of God, descendants of Abraham. There you had the law which God had given to his people on Mount Sinai. And there you had with the law the revelation of God that the soul that sinneth it must die. And every one of us Israelites of that day, and we with them, are sinners. Sinners in Adam, sinners in actuality. And the blood sacrifice must be made. Atonement must be made. Payment must be made to satisfy God's justice. In order that we may live once again with the Lord our God. And therefore you had the altar of sacrifice. The shedding of blood. You had the altar. You had the priesthood. All this belonged to the instituted church of that day. And the calling of the Levites to instruct God's people in the law. In the way of righteousness through the sacrifice. Encouraging them always to bring the temple tithe and thanksgiving. That whole apparatus of service. And it all served in Jesus' day to say, we are calling you to Christ. And here he is. But they didn't. They said, don't listen to him. They said, he's a madman. They say, he's destroying the institution of the church. He wants to do away with the temple and the sacrifices. Don't listen to him. And finally, it was the instituted church instigating the Roman government that crucified the Christ. Their calling was to call the children, gather the children unto Christ. And it's no different today, beloved. The organization of our church today comes to manifestation in the local congregation, where you have the preaching of the gospel, the sacraments, baptism in the Lord's Supper, the weekly meetings. From there we have the classes meetings and the senate. All of this belongs to the institution of the church, the way the church becomes visible in this world. And it has only one calling ultimately. And that calling is to hear the voice of Christ saying, I will that the little ones, the children, those who are born in the church, shall be gathered unto me, for I want to gather the children. And once again, there's no independent reason for the existence of the instituted church except to serve. That's why the Lord said to his disciples, he who would be the greatest among you must be the servant of all. The only road to greatness in the church of Jesus Christ is the road of service, there is no other. And I believe I do not exceed the meaning of our text when I go a step farther and point out that while in the Old Testament, the church was confined almost exclusively, not entirely, but almost exclusively to that one people whom God had called out of Egypt. And it was given to the instituted church of priest and Levite and altar and sacrifice and temple and worship to lead the little ones unto Christ, to the God of their salvation, to gather the children unto him. And beloved, that's a little bit different for us today. Oh, not that that is not our calling, and our first calling for the first calling of Escondido United Reformed Church is to train up the children in the fear of the Lord, in Sunday school, in catechism, in the preaching of the gospel, In the Boys and Girls Society and any other means that can be used. And we are here as a church in order that that may be accomplished. But we have a wider goal also, which the Old Testament did not have to that degree. For when the Holy Spirit was poured out, it was poured out not only on the Jewish believers, but to the amazement of all it was poured out upon those Jewish believers and they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. And through the miracle of that sheet let down from heaven when Peter was in a trance hungry and the Lord said, Peter slay and eat And he said, no, Lord, that's just for the Jews. I've never eaten anything unclean. I've always kept to the Jewish dietary laws. That's in effect what he meant to say to the Lord. And the Lord said, what I have cleansed, don't you call unclean. Three times. Then came the messengers from Cornelius. Will you come and preach to us? And Peter could not refuse. And soon you see that church sending out the Apostle Paul, going throughout that whole new Roman world, preaching the gospel, not only to Jews, but to Gentiles as well. And thank God, I thank him often, that when Paul was going to go into Asia, The Spirit forbade him, and a man from Greece called him. And so the gospel turned to Europe, to your ancestors, most of you, and to mine, instead of having the church predominantly in China and Japan and India, according to God's will. But the work does never change, except I believe I do no injustice to our text when I say the primary calling of every member in his organic capacity as member of this church is his own family. God says, I want a godly seed. And when the children of Israel in the Old Testament forsook the wives of their youth for a younger flapper, God said, no, you may not do that through the prophet. For I want a seed of God, so don't you dare leave the wife of your youth, but raise up children through her. And to us too, as individuals, we have to learn to see that with all the joy and gladness of marriage, with the anticipation, we too are servants of our children. Not to spoil them, no, but servants to bring them to Christ. And one of the saddest things that you can find in the church, so-called church today, reaching almost through the entire fabric is marriage in which people want the pleasures and the enjoyments of marriage but are not willing to take the responsibility with all the horror of abortion of birth control and you know it reaches right into our seminaries and our Christian schools and all the rest. I knew it myself because the temptation was there to marry and not to have children until I graduated from school. But I learned to see, beloved, that God will never really bless a marriage that's only looking for the joy and pleasure of marriage. It's there. But refuses to take the responsibility. If we have any students here in the seminary, I would say to you and to everyone else, if you are not ready to take the responsibility of marriage because God says, I want a godly scene, then you're not ready, really, for marriage. Jerusalem is there in order to call Jerusalem's children. And what was Jerusalem's response? We will not that they be gathered. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! That was the church of that day. And Christ came there as he had come through the scriptures to them before and said, I will that the children shall be gathered unto me. And horrible was that answer. Not only in the past, but also now, when Christ himself stood there and called them to account. And they said, we will not that they be gathered. We'll lose our prerogatives. The temple will no longer be a money-making thing for us. With its cattle and money-changers benches which Christ had to clean out. And we lose our positions, we lose our influence in this world. We will not that the children should be gathered to you. We want them for ourselves. Jerusalem. With those sitting in Moses' seat, the scribes and the Pharisees, using the church for their own ends and their own aggrandizement. And, beloved, it's no different today. lazy ministers unfaithful elders deacons that take a little money out of the pot parents that are more concerned with their luxury items than the training of the children in the fear of the Lord letting family prayers fly. The public school is cheaper and the kids will be all right. Are all in the same class of those whom Christ said, Woe unto you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites. Those who refuse to discipline their children, of being an example to them. How personally, how concerned are you about the soul of your brother, your sister, and especially your children? Christ says, gather the children to me. And many say, we will not that they be gathered to you. Is it defeat for Christ, beloved? You know better than that. Because in the words of our text, we have both judgment and victory. You have to look for it a little bit, but it's there. Judgment, for Christ said, Behold, your house is left to you desolate. He abandons that unfaithful church, takes the light from the candlestick. It's no longer, even though it continues to proclaim, a church that Christ uses to gather his own. But the same is true of the home. You remember that the law says that the Lord blesses those who love him and serve him. But he pursues the unfaithful generation, the unfaithful ones to the third and fourth generation of those who hate him, who depart from him. And that doesn't mean, beloved, that if you depart, or anyone departs from the way of the Lord, that their generations are going to die within four times. No, but it means that if Grandpa was a child of the Lord faithfully, and his kids depart, then in four generations there's not a sign of the covenant left. And they are no longer held before the calling to come to the Lord Jesus Christ. And the same is true in other ways. Behold, your house is left to you desolate. Churches that depart from the truth of God, and that's been the history of the church, It can no longer be used by God to gather the children. That's what the Jerusalem was all about. That's what the Reformation came about. For that church of that day had ceased to be a church that was gathering the children. That's why we also are no longer Christian reform. because also there, there were things that showed us the movement was in the wrong direction. God wills that the children should be gathered unto him. But beloved, there's no more than just your house is left to you desolate. Because you cannot prevent Christ from gathering his children by refusing to take your place and doing that which he commands. Whether it be in the church, whether it be in the home, whether it be in any area of life. What really is a desolate home? Did you ever stop and think of it? I can give you a picture, an extreme picture. Here is a beautiful mansion with everything that the heart can desire. A husband and a wife. But you go into that house and there's nothing but sadness. Because the only child has been taken out of that house and died. What a desolate house. Nothing but tears. Then I show you another picture. Here's a poor working family. Mother, father and children around the table, ready to eat. And father bows his head in prayer. And at the end of that meal, they listen to the word of God. And father and mother prays again. And they're instructed in the way of the Lord. Every Sunday they're in church and Sunday school and catechism. And they're attending the Christian school even though they have to make many sacrifices and things that they would like to have, they cannot buy. There is a family and there is a church that is listening to the Lord Jesus Christ. And beloved, if we as United Reformed Churches and we in America with this history of Reformed faith no longer hear that voice of Christ, as is the case to a very great extent, we will become like Netherlands, that bastion of the Reformed faith which is now one of the most ungodly nations in the world. And God will raise up another people. Look at China, with its struggling masses of Christians who are being persecuted. South America, for God, will still give unto Christ a people, a church that says, yes, we will gather your children to you. God took away Jerusalem. Of the day in which this was written, they no longer gathered their children. The same will happen throughout the history of the world. And the question is, what is our response? What is your and my response? To that constant call of the Savior, to the church as institute, to each one of us, as we are called to train our children in the fear of the Lord. To us collectively as church and as individuals, as we are called to bring the gospel to all with whom we come in contact. Covenant family, church. We must check constantly on our lives and our relationships. On the preaching of the gospel and the mission interest. The children's training and the result. And beloved, here I want to say something personal. But first of all, let me say something about this church, which many of you know, but some of you do not know. This church had a very good beginning. On August 26, 1953, 12 families and 10 individuals under the auspices of the San Diego Christian Reformed Church was organized as the Escondido Christian Reformed Church. They were almost entirely immigrants from Netherlands. There was very, very little knowledge of the English language. In fact, Mr. Gerhard Dracht, who was giving leadership in that day, in those days, who was elected as the first elder, made a motion at that meeting that from the very start, the services on Sunday would be in the English language. And he had to make the motion in Dutch because he couldn't speak English. And the congregation, that little group, 12 families and 10 individuals, agreed with him. And they decided to have a Dutch service for themselves on a Tuesday evening. Because they heard that call, that in a new land, that call to gather the children had to be in a language that they could understand. It was still a Tuesday evening Dutch service. When I came, unfortunately I could not speak the Dutch. Neither could I preach it. I never did learn well enough to preach it. But because much of our dealing was with immigrants, I did learn to speak the Dutch with some fluency. Beloved, at that same meeting, Mrs. Dracht came around with a tin can, I believe it was a lard can, in which she had cut a hole, a slot in the top. In that first meeting, 12 families, 10 individuals, and said, this is for the Christian school. That's why I say this congregation had a wonderful beginning. And I believe throughout the ages, throughout the years, I should say, that if passed, that has not been forgotten. But I have one confession to make. I believe the Lord gave an opening here, that when I came to this congregation, I could not see. I did not see. I saw the need for a Christian school, and I thanked the Lord that by the time our 20 years of service was over, and I cannot take responsibility for it except that I encouraged it always, We had the whole educational system for our children, not only in church, but also in those things which belong to our daily life. And the church had grown from 12 families to 192 when I retired. They heard that word, gather the children unto me. But I said a moment ago, there was one thing I did not see, one calling, to gather the children that was not claimed to me, even though it was there. When I came to this congregation in 1964, we had one Spanish-speaking Mexican family. The husband knew English, but the wife and the children did not. They attended here. They were attending here at the time. Not too long after that, they left to affiliate with another church in this city, which preaches the gospel, I believe, also, but which had a Spanish service. And I never saw it. That God had brought a mission field right here to us in Escondido. I thank the Lord that as gradually I saw this after I retired, that Reverend Kaminga and the consistory had their eyes opened to this mission field, almost a foreign mission field, right here at our doorstep. And through the radio ministry and through other means, we gathered those people, many of them, into this congregation. We heard that word of the Lord saying, gather the children unto me in a little different area. And today, there's a congregation in Oceanside, composed mostly of second and third generation Mexicans who are Spanish-speaking, now speaking English, a flourishing little congregation. And my hope and prayer is that even as Reverend Kaminga and the consistory saw this opportunity, another opportunity to say, we will that the children shall be gathered unto you, Christ. And Reverend Voss and the consistory will still see that in the emigrants legal and illegal that are brought to our very doorstep is a mission field that we cannot and may not neglect. My wish and my prayer in the closing of this sermon is that we as a congregation, led by our new pastor and by our consistory, may be able to have our eyes open to all those opportunities which God always gives. To say, yes, Lord, we will that your children shall be gathered in the congregation itself, by birthright, in the home, but also in the mission field, which is round about us. and those fields are white unto harvest, may God give us the grace to see them and to seize the opportunities and to answer when Christ says, I will that my children shall be gathered. And we all say, Yes, Lord, use me, use us, yes, use even me unto that end. Amen. Lord our God, we thank you for this word. And for the power of the gospel. And for the commission which you give to your church. And we pray fervently, Lord, for faithful hearts that will say with your children of all ages, Yes, Lord, we will. that the children shall be gathered unto you. For Jesus' sake, grant it unto us. Amen.