Reality hits in the timing of the Lord. God shows up as Jesus did in Jerusalem. He visits in care and also in judgment. May we see Him. He is here to bring His victory. Our time is now to tell of Him.
(Jeremiah 10:15; Luke 19:41-44; Ruth 1:6; Exodus 4:31)

Speaker: Thomas Schaller
Sermon # 12646
Time: Wed 7:00pm

 

P. Schaller – Okay. Good
evening. Let’s have a great, let’s have a great time here tonight and put up Psalm 8:5 for me and
you. This is a word. This is a word I want you to see, Psalm 8:5. Praise the Lord. Hiding place. Yes,
Let’s take a moment and just praise Christ our Lord and pray to him. (Prayer).

I think I’m going to just have you read the verse. Where are we? It’s vs. 4. Psalm 8:4. Is that
working? Okay. Thank you. Vs. 4. King James has – maybe we can change the version there
because I like that word. Visiting. “What is man that thou art mindful of him and the son of man
that thou visit him?” So, we have a word study, but before we get into the message just as an
introduction, I want you to think about this. I’ve memorized this psalm eight years ago and
always thought about this word “visit.” Thou visiteth him. And the son of man that thou visiteth
him. And what is the meaning of that word?

So, we’ll look at it a little later, but I want you to notice something that there is in Luke 19:41-
44, we have – by the way, thank you for your prayers. Our visit to Finland was extraordinary.
Really it was exceptional. There is a revival there going on and in the conference we had an
amazing time of unity and blessing, and this is what I’m thinking of. Visitation. Yeah. Visitation
of God.

Look at Luke 19:41-44, that’s the text but I’m introducing the subject and then I’m going to
have you talk to each other for a minute. Vs. 41-44. So, we really have two meanings with the
word. It generally means to care, visit, visitation, pay attention to. EPISCOPOS is the root of the
word. To oversee, to study, to examine, to look at, to visit means that God is caring. He’s caring
about us and in this text Jesus is at the end of his three-year ministry and he’s up on the hill, on
the hillside in the east side of Jerusalem looking down on the city and he is saying, he’s
weeping, and he knows what Israel could have, what they could have. What belongs unto their
peace and “that thou at least in this thy day…”

So, we have the word “day” there. In this thy day. So, the day of visitation and that idea I think
you can imagine a period of time, a period of time when God visits the people and Jerusalem
was visited by God.

There was actually a revival when he went into the city on the donkey. They cried out,
Hosanna! Hosanna! There was actually the spirit of visitation. God cared for Jerusalem and
they, the Pharisees said stop your disciples from saying that and they said if they didn’t say it,
the rocks would cry out. Okay.

So, this means that this was God’s will. The messiah would be received though it was a handful
of people or small number. No one knows how many but in distinction to the leadership. The
leadership said no to the Messiah even though there were many evidences that Christ was the Messiah. One of them was that the rabbis taught that the Messiah would be so powerful that
he could raise the dead.

There were three things. He could raise the dead. He could heal the blind and he could cleanse
the leper. Those three things were done by Christ not to mention that he fulfilled the Scripture.
The day of their visitation. The day when God was examining them. The day when God was
occupied, looking at them and caring for them. The day of their visitation.

I want you to notice where the word is used in Exodus 4. When they were in Egypt, vs. 31. Exodus
4:31. So, we have and here’s my thought for you. Has God visited you in your life at any time?
Has God manifested himself to you in some way where it was undeniable God is working. God is
doing something. God is caring. God is touching my heart.

Now in the day – let me say something here about this word “day.” You have morning and you
have afternoon and then you have evening. And they are different. Different periods of time.
There are different times in your life. You can use this for the history of Israel. Maybe the
morning time of Israel was the time of Abraham. We could say the time of the prophets coming
and the time of the Christ that came in the day. The day of Israel’s visitation I came to you early.
I came to you mid-day. I came to you with the Messiah. I came to you in the day of your
visitation.

And if you bear with me, I kind of like to think of it as the history of a person’s life. It might be
that God came to you when you were young, and it might be that he came to you when you
were older and might have come to you in a trial. God might have come to you in a hospital
room. God might have sent somebody to you in your crisis. God might have visited you.
Do you see what – the visitation of God is a, it happens. It says that in Ps. 84. What is man that
you would be thinking of him and that you would visit him? You would actually come into his
life, into his bedroom. You come to him on the sidewalk. You come to him at night. You come to
him early in life. He would come to you and I in our crisis. He would come to us in our trouble.
He would come to our church. He would come to our youth group. He would come into our
prayer meeting and that we would know what he would care.

Look at Ruth 1:6. It’s a pretty good one on it. Ruth 1. Is it 6? Yes. This is Ruth with her
daughters-in-law. No, Naomi. Naomi. Vs. 6. Yeah. I know that the word is caring, examining,
overshadowing, paying attention to. Really paying attention. He knows about us, and he cares.
Now, another one was in the history. It’s 1 Samuel 2 when Hannah had the baby or was
pregnant. She couldn’t get pregnant. This is chapter 2:21. I love that. That’s beautiful. God did
it. She couldn’t have children. God did it. She had a child. That was God. He visited her. What is
man that you are mindful of him or the son of man that you would visit him? And so, revival.

When some of us, our generation came into the ministry up in New England and we would
attend meetings and leave the meeting feeling that God visited the meeting. And feeling that
we have purpose in life and feeling there’s a mission and feeling that God answers prayer and
feeling like he cares for me. That God cares for my life. That he would go home, and we would
go, we would work and have our lives, but we would have behind it this whole amazing,
beautiful thought that God is caring for us. That he is visiting us. That he’s not stopping. That he
continues to care.

Look at Psalm 17:3. Praise you Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Help us, Lord. Vs. 3. Is it? yeah. Vs. 3. What
a beautiful verse. Thou hast proved my heart. Now, the antonym or the opposite of this word in
the Greek language, the opposite is, the opposite of this word, okay, is – I won’t write it down.
It’s not that important.

The meaning in the English is to forsake not, not care to depreciate actually. To depreciate.
That’s the opposite of the word to visit. To oversee, to care, to visit, to observe, to examine. But
the opposite is I don’t care about you. I’m not, I’m not visiting you. I’m not occupied with you. I
see no interest. I have nothing to do with you. I forsake you. Isn’t it Hebrews 13:5 where it says, “it
is written, I will never leave you never forsake you.” Like I will always be there to like care, to
oversee and care about your life.

Now, it hit me when I was in Finland in this meditation is that we were back in the 70s living
there in Finland and honestly there were times when there was just a godly silence in the
meeting and it just like the room was full of young people. Like a lot of young people and then
there was the, the presence of God was very strong, and this was in um ’76, ’77, ’78, ’79. Those
years.

And by the way, David Wilkerson had a prophecy back in the 70s. He wrote a book about it
called, “The Vision.” And he said, it’s written in there, page 61 or something I remember, you
now, because we used to talk about it. He said that a revival would go to Russia through
Finland, and he had a vision of that.

Well, in those years the Pentecostal churches, the Lutheran churches, we had, the Bible Speaks,
we had a revival. And people were feeling it. There was a visitation, and it was in our youth, and
it was happening now more than 40 years later. We were just there a couple days ago for five
days and people came from different parts of the country and that most of these people we’ve
known for a long time back in those years.

So, like God ordains for this just like in Jerusalem when Jesus is weeping. He is saying you, he
said you don’t know. That means you’re ignorant. Where is it? If you had known the peace that
I have for you which will be like another part of our message tonight maybe. Hope so.

Okay. So, I’m just sharing with you from my heart what I want to say tonight as a way of
encouraging you because I really believe that God is in history, and he does this work. And we
just saw the move, “The Jesus Revolution” about the history of the Jesus Movement out in
California and you know about that and in our history in the United States the Great
Awakenings and in European history the many revivals that have happened in Finland and
Norway and Sweden and Hungary in Germany and Holland, the Netherlands and Switzerland
and so on. It’s like fascinating.

So, here is the point that there is a lot of suffering, a lot of suffering in the world and people
say, where is God? And we’re saying God is here and there are a lot of people they don’t have
peace. Yeah. We don’t mean absence of trouble. It means we have trouble, too. We have
trouble. We have temptations, yes, but we have peace. We have our troubles, but we have
peace. We have temptations but we have a sense of victory. We have struggles and different
ways and all kind but there is no peace saith the Lord to the wicked. But there is peace for
God’s people because Christ is the Prince of Peace.

And but you are ignorant of it. You are blind. You do not know it. You don’t know that God is in
the United States of America. That God is in your village or your town. You don’t know that God
is near you. You don’t know that God is for you. That God is weeping for you. That he is
weeping and cares and is praying and has words for us and for anybody who seeks him, they
will find him. Where anybody that wants him, they can have him. It is a time of our visitation. It
is a time to seek him. It’s a time to know him. It’s the time to walk with him. And the reality in
my heart is that this is not from men. This is from God, and he’s ordained for us to be part of
this whole means of bringing peace to people and people finding him and finding peace. Okay.
Okay.

So, I think I’ll just stop there and then just ask you if you would just ask, talk to your neighbor
about the subject a little bit and just say have you ever had a visitation of God in your life? And
what is that?

I think I missed the guitar part there. Huh? Electric guitar. Was that it? Oh, Sharon is here.
Sharon. Good to see you from Albania. Great. Great. Wow. Great. Okay. Our message from
Jeremiah 10. If you turn there with me, vs. 15. And I think I already gave you the message. So,
we will ask the Lord to speak to our hearts from it. Okay. Jer. 10:15. They are vanity. Speaking
about idols. Idols. Lies and the work of errors, Jeremiah 10:15. So, we have the idea here of visitation
from God. When God visits, he exposes. When he visits, he brings to light. And they are a work
of errors and when the light comes, it collapses. The lies are embarrassing or shameful. Lies let
me down. They collapse in the light of God’s reality. That happens in life. That’s a good thing. I’d
rather be hit with God’s reality in this lifetime instead of living in lies. And get hit with it later
when we face God.

So, we have a story here of, let’s see where we have it. In Connecticut back in some time ago
was it 1740 I believe. Okay. I’ve got a pile of papers here behind this one. Nope. Okay. So, let’s
throw them away. Here it is. 1740 Hartford, Connecticut. This man Nathan Cole was a farmer
“12 miles away from where George Whitefield was going to preach in Middleton. Immediately,
he ran to my pasture for my horse with all my might with his wife hastened to Middleton as if
we were fleeing for our lives. They arrived just in time to see Whitefield mount the platform
that was erected for his sermon. To Nathan Cole, the young British evangelist looked almost
angelical, but it was Whitefield’s message that changed his life. My hearing him preach gave me
a heart wound. By God’s blessing, my old foundation was broken up. I saw that my
righteousness would not save me. After several months, Cole was confident he’d been
reconciled to a gracious God.”

You know, when Billy Graham was preaching in the 20 th century as you know and these large
crowds would come and listen and some would come under this conviction, this persuasion and
it’s almost just like you and God alone. You and God are alone and he’s speaking to you. I
wonder if that’s happened to you. If it hasn’t, it will. It can because God is doing this. He sent
Christ into the world to tell us that he cares.

The Greek word I was going to use here or that we are using, it’s this word for look after. But it
can also be he visits to punish. That’s used often in the book of Jeremiah. The day of your
visitation when reality will hit you and you will sense the judgment and the penalty from God.
When Jesus was looking at Jerusalem, he said the day of your visitation has two parts to it. One,
I care about you. I’m looking for you. The other one is if you don’t turn, then what will happen?
You will be laid low. You’ll be brought low. You will be compassed about. You’ll be trapped.
There’ll be a judgment on the country for you refusing the visitation of God. Not recognizing it
or being ignorant of it.

So, we have here to visit upon. Consider, examine, and provide covering for. He is present to
favor you. So, let’s look at that again. Luke 19. And I love to read about the historical revivals
and the stories of men and women of God who found God or God found them and visited
them. And by the way, we are saved, we are born again. God indwells in us. He dwells in us. He
is never leaving us. He is always caring for us. Always serving us. He’s interceding for us.
But the other side of it is with this pride. I can’t hear him. I don’t care or it’s too much for me
and I understand that feeling, those feelings of alienation. Look at Luke 19:41. You could say
he’s saying what do you have? What do you have Israel? What do you have Jerusalem? What
do you have? You are a den of thieves, a den of robbers, brood of vipers, hypocrisy.

But then you could say to Jesus in the day of the visitation here’s like the negative and then you
have the positive. You have 12 disciples, Lord. You have people saying Hosanna to God. You
have a leper who has been healed. A dead man raised. Lazarus. You have a cross and then a resurrection and the outpouring of the Spirit. Pentecost. You have, you have a revival coming in
Jerusalem and the Lord would say, yes. That day that is going to happen but look at this. Look at
what is happening. It’s like in the United States of America perhaps we could say that what do
we have?

Well, look at what we have. We have believers. We have an open Bible. We have a Bible school.
We have missionaries that are sent. We have people that are believing. We have people that
are Spirit filled. We have the church. We are being fed from the Head with the Head and the
Body. We have many members. We are touching each other and connected. Yes, we have. But
here he is looking at the world this way and he’s saying this in vs. 42.

So, ignorance and that’s what I feel a lot here in USA. Ignorance. Do you know? Do you know
anything about Jesus? Do you know anything about the Gospel? Do you know anything about
truth? Do you know anything about humility? Do you have any hunger in your heart? Are you
looking for the eternal? Do you know anything about an eternal purpose? Do you know
anything about healthy living, healthy relationships, healthy life?

Do you know anything about prayer? Do you know anything about Christ? Do you know anything about the resurrection? Do you know anything about edification? Do you know anything about wisdom? Do you know any
proverb? Do you know any psalm? Do you know any Bible verse? Do you have any faith in we
could say our country? That there’s a huge popular movement of ignorance when Jesus is
weeping, and he could say what do you got? Come on. Show me what you got.

I like that idea. Like what you got? Come on. Put it up on the table. What do you got? What do
you got to show me? Jesus could say to people, come on. Show me. What do you got? What do
you got going on? What’s in your life? Show me what you got? Well, I got, I got a credit card.
And I got a car key, and I got a house key, and I got a job and I got. Show me.

What do you got when your life comes crashing down? What do you got when you have a
broken heart? What do you got when you’ve got cancer? What do you got when you’ve got a
broken life? What do you have when you have an addiction? What do you got when you got a
bad habit? What do you have in your life? And the answer is we don’t have. We are ignorant
and we don’t even know what it is that we don’t have. We don’t even know how blind we are,
how ignorant we are, how naked we are. We don’t even know it. And Jesus said, yeah. You live
in the, what is it, the work of errors.

Throw that up there one more time, Jeremiah 10:15. Where is that? It’s in the hills! The work of
errors. In the time of their visitation they will perish. It will not make it. It will not handle the
world. You see the world is made so that without God you’re going to have trouble in the
world. The world is made so that we can have trouble so that we find God.

The world is made like a glove in a hand. The way your hand goes in a glove is the way when
your life is right with God. How it fits in the world. It fits in the world. It doesn’t contradict. It
goes in the world because Christ in you says, Oh death, where is your sting? Christ in your heart
says okay. I got trouble but I can navigate in the trouble because I got a Good Shepherd and the
Good Shepherd cares about me. And it fits in the world.

I live in a world that works. It works for me. It doesn’t mean I don’t have trouble. It just means
that I got peace in the world cuz in the text it’s the primary thing. He said you don’t have, you
don’t have the things that belong to your peace. You don’t have them.

Put that up, please. Luke 19:42, You know, one of the ladies in Finland…a friend of mine. I
haven’t seen her for 20 years. She retired now, but she was a surgeon for babies. And she
operated on baby’s hearts which were like, you know, the size of your, the end of your thumb.
And I had a talk with her, and she said you know I remember your messages from like 40 years
ago. I go, really? I go, that’s amazing. Like I go, I do, too. I do, too. I remember certain ones from
a long time ago cuz they were just the Lord was speaking to us.

The Lord was ministering to us. That’s like the work of God. You and I are part of the work of God that is eternal, everlasting. We are part of something bigger than all of us and Jesus is saying with tears it’s a tragedy to
lose, to gain the world but lose your soul. It’s a tragedy not to have a compass in this world. It’s
a tragedy not to know my Father. My Father sent me because he cares. He loves you. He will
hear you. He will answer you. He will comfort you. He will take you all the way through your
life.

Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me that we would be ignorant of that? That we would be
blind to that? I remember reading about D.L. Moody. He was a pastor in Chicago, but he was
looking for more power and I don’t know why but he was in New York City, and he was on the
street, and he was praying to God. God, give me more power cuz of the ministry. I have so
much to do and so many people and everything and then it says that the Spirit came on him so
strong that he contacted.

He needed a room for privacy because the Spirit was so strong upon him. And he just – a friend
of his had a room, so he went to that room, and he was in the room for hours and just being
bathed in the Spirit of God. The Spirit telling him and ministering to him and how beautiful it is
to think that God is saying to everyone of us that I have peace for you. And this is my will that
you would be a good family man. You’d have peace in your heart.

You’d have a family if that’s God’s will for you or you would be a single man, but you’d have
peace in your heart. That you would be a businessman. You’d have peace in your heart, and
you would enjoy giving your money away and sharing your blessing and um that the Lord – we would be praying people just quietly praying people, but God would be visiting us and caring for
us and building us up and we would have peace.

But there is no peace saith the Lord to the wicked. When you see a wicked person prospering,
Psalm 73, gaining a lot, prospering, benefiting, succeeding, popular, rich, powerful. Whatever it is. I
do not envy him. I don’t envy him at all. He has to lie down in bed with himself. Does he have
peace? If he doesn’t have peace, it’s a terrible life. No peace. No peace in your heart. That can’t
be.

And when Jesus saw the city, he goes the Romans – I’m saying it. These are my words. That in
history it happened. The Romans are coming, Jerusalem. They’re going to crush you. The
Romans are coming. They’re going to crucify you.

By the way, Joseph of Arimathea was a Jewish historian who wrote for the Romans, and he said
there were 5,000 crucifixes around Jerusalem in 69 A.D. from people that escaped the siege.
They were caught by the Romans and crucified and put up in the air and sometimes
disemboweled for the Roman soldiers looking for if they swallowed a diamond or a gold or
something they swallowed it. So, when they ran away and they were caught, that would not be
confiscated.

So, they would kill them and open them up and examine their bowels to see if there is anything
valuable in there. Jesus said you’re going to be laid low. You’re going to be compassed about.
You’re going to be destroyed. Yeah. This is, this is your day. Your day. But you don’t get it. This
is our day folks in the United States of America. This is our day. Morning, afternoon, evening.
What time of the day is it? This is our day to preach the gospel. It is our day to care about it. It is
our day to see God visit people in their homes and in their churches and in their prayer
meetings and in their Bible studies. This is the day because the day is going to end and there
will be the full light of God.

Let’s read it and finish. It says here in vs. 43. That means they besieged the city. They
surrounded it. No water goes in. No food goes into the city. They’re starving. No good goes in.
No water goes in. They eat their children because in a famine, the child dies first. You’re
starving of hunger. Instead of burying the child, they ate the child. That happened. Read it in
Lamentations. Deuteronomy prophesied that if you disobey me, this is what will happen and
the woman that is delicate – look it up – the delicate woman. I find that amazing. The delicate
woman with an evil eye. She will change because of the hunger that drives you crazy.

So, Jesus is saying this. Sorry this is so sad. Vs. 44. Some people are waiting for God to appear in
the sky. Not going to happen. Jesus is coming in the sky. Yes. That day is happening. Absolutely, but in this lifetime, he ordained for the preaching of the Gospel. In this lifetime, he’s ordained
for youth groups, prayer meetings, church meetings.

In this lifetime, he’s ordained for people to find Christ in the pew. Find Christ on the sidewalk.
Find Christ in front of the television. Find Christ by all means and turn to him with a humble
heart and say yes to Jesus. This is the time of our visitation. And this is our joy, and we also
could look like with Jesus at the whole thing and weep also and say these things. Okay. Amen.
Would you pray with me. (Prayer).

 

Please enjoy these sermon notes from the messages preached at Greater Grace Church in Baltimore. These notes are provided to aid in your study and understanding of the Word. Note that these notes do not represent complete, word-for-word transcriptions. Also, they may contain omissions as well as some errors in spelling and structure, etc., as we attempt to provide them as soon as possible. Our hope is that these notes serve as a way to help you search and connect with messages on related subjects and passages. Thank you for your interest in the ministry of Greater Grace.