Let's take our Bibles this morning and turn once again to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 24. Luke 24 contains for us the account of the resurrection. In the opening verses, we find a group of our Lord's disciples, His women disciples, who go to the tomb bearing spices that they had prepared that they may anoint the body of the Lord for burial. When they come to the tomb, they find the stone rolled away, but they do not find the body of Jesus. And in the midst of their fear and perplexity, they are granted a visitation of angels who tell them that they are seeking the living, among the dead. But He is not there, but He is indeed risen, and they remind them of the words of the Lord Jesus. These women then go hurriedly and tell the apostles and other disciples what they have seen and what they have heard. But verse 11 tells us that the men did not believe what was being said, that it seemed to them like idle tales. Verse 12 records for us that Peter does, however, go to the tomb. We know from John's Gospel that John accompanies him, and we realize that he most likely went because Mark lets us know that the angels told the women to specifically tell Peter that Jesus had risen from the dead. The narrative from verse 13 onward recounts to us two disciples who are traveling from Jerusalem to a city called Emmaus. And as they walk together, they speak of the things that have transpired over the last days. We read then that the Lord Jesus Himself drew near to them, but that their eyes were restrained, verse 16, so that they did not know Him. In verse 17, He asks, what kind of conversation is this that you have with one another as you walk and are sad? And so, they open up to Him the things that had gone on concerning the Lord Jesus leading up to the account and their disbelief of the account of the resurrection. At verse 25, our Lord says to them, O foolish ones and slow of heart, to believe in all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter His glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. Then they drew near to the village where they were going, and he indicated that he would have gone farther. But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to stay with them. Now it came to pass, as he sat at the table with them, he took bread, blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him, and He vanished from their sight. And they said to one another, Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road and while He opened the Scriptures to us?" Let's pray and ask the Lord to bless us as we look into His Word. Our Father, we are mindful that though Lord's Day by Lord's Day a variety of men stand in the pulpit and read the Scriptures and pray and expound the Scriptures, that it is ultimately the Lord Jesus who comes to us by the Spirit in the Word and that He Himself preaches to us. And Father, we do pray that it would be evident that the triune God is with us and expounding the Scriptures to us. And Father, we pray that He may do so in such a way that like with these two men long ago, our own hearts may burn within us. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. The Bible is a very large book. My copy of the Scriptures runs to nearly 1,700 pages. And no matter what size your copy of the Bible is, depending on its print, your Bible, like mine, consists of 66 separate books covering thousands of years, containing 1,189 chapters and well over 31,000 verses. Those chapters and those verses have been loved and studied and preached and memorized and taught by hundreds of millions of people over the course of thousands of years. It's interesting, is it not, to realize that of those 31,000 verses read by hundreds of millions of people in differing context and differing languages over thousands of years, that a handful of those verses should have a place of prominence such that they become a part of the universal Christian language. I believe that the passage before us contains such a text. The phrase, did not our heart burn within us, is a phrase that has either expressed the experience or is used to express the longing of God's people whenever and wherever the gospel of Luke has come. Do we not long to say, Lord's Day by Lord's Day? Not only it is good to have been in the house of the Lord, but to be able to say at the end of the day, one to another, did not our heart burn as the Scriptures were opened to us." Now, this well-known phrase comes to us at this time of great transition in the life of the church. And in so many ways, what we find in Luke 24 is the beginning of the rest of the Bible. It is the beginning of the rest of the life of the people of God. It is a time at which, as we will see today and over the next couple of Lord's Days, it is that time when the people of God now not only have heard, but believe that Jesus Christ is risen from the grave. It is the time of transition from the days of fear and sorrow that had gripped the hearts of believers to the dawning of the triumphant proclamation of the gospel into all the world. Now, over the last several weeks, we have been studying together the interaction that Jesus had with these two disciples on the road to Emmaus, a journey of about seven miles. And these two men, as they are making that journey, began to make that journey with hearts that would be described not as burning, but as burdened, sorrowful, and we believe as well, in a lingering state of shock. the one that they had hoped would redeem Israel, the one that they had believed along with others, was the long-promised Messiah, the Son of Man, and the Son of David, who would sit upon David's throne forever, was dead and buried in the borrowed grave of Joseph of Arimathea. And it is into that conversation that the risen Lord Jesus walks. And though He was hidden from their eyes, such that they did not recognize Him, and hidden as well, I believe, from their ears, so that they did not recognize that well-familiar voice, they engage Him in a conversation about the events of the past three days that had culminated in the report that not only was the tomb of Jesus empty, a report that they believe, but that the women were asserting by way of angelic visitation that Jesus was alive, a report that they gave with a degree of unbelief and scoffing. Jesus, we noted, rebuked them for their foolishness, their slowness of heart to believe in all that the Scriptures had revealed about the Messiah, that the Messiah would not only rule and reign, but would also suffer as the means of entering His glory. They had missed the very essence of what the prophets had spoken. And so it was that beginning with Moses and making his way through the entire Old Testament Scriptures, Jesus expounded in the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. And though last Lord's Day I sought to give a very feeble overview of the Old Testament Scriptures that Jesus would have opened up as they walked along the way, I had several times this week where I'd be in my study and I'd be thinking about the Old Testament Scriptures, and I was embarrassed at times. I can't believe I didn't say this, and I can't believe that I left that off. How did I not say this? How did I not say that? Well, I tried to cover my tracks last Lord's Day by saying I was being only partial and suggestive. But brethren, we could literally spend many, many hours and days and weeks and months expounding Christ in the Old Testament, and perhaps one day that will be an excellent series of 150 or so messages that we will do. But now, this morning, we return to this section of Scripture and we will see how the Lord Jesus, who is hidden from their eyes, is now revealed to them. And as we work our way through these few verses, let's consider together, first of all, the disciples' desire, secondly, our Lord's unveiling, and then finally, the disciples' passion. Consider, first of all, the disciples' desire. Again, then they drew near to the village, verse 28, where they were going, and He indicated that He would have gone farther. But they constrained Him, saying, Abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And He went in to stay with them. As the narrative unfolds, the three men now enter into the place of their destination, Emmaus. And we read that Jesus indicated that He would have gone Farther, the word indicated is only used one other time in the New Testament, in John chapter 8 and verse 6, where we have the narrative of the woman caught in adultery. You remember that while they are confronting Jesus about what they should do, we read that Jesus stooped in the ground, remember he wrote, with his finger and he was, again, different ways you could interpret it, he was indicating that he did not hear them. He was acting as though he did not hear them. He was tuning them out. He was not paying any attention. Now, it was apparently customary in that situation, that if you were traveling with other people and they came to their home, you would not assume or you would not presume yourself that you were going to be asked to stay for a meal. So you might continue walking along like, well, Glad you're at your house. Well, I guess I need to be going now." And that's something of what our Lord was doing. He would not have assumed it, even though it was common to invite strangers to stay in your home, particularly during this time of the Passover, and this was still the time of the Passover, many people traveling, many people going on their journey, and particularly as night was drawing nigh, and the possibility of thieves overtaking a man, particularly as he travels further and further away from Jerusalem, these men would quite naturally be willing to open their home to this stranger. And we've talked about this in the past. that the real essence of biblical hospitality, if you just take the word hospitality, it has to do with showing kindness to strangers. We often use it to speak about opening our home to people we know well, but again, most literally, hospitality is to open your home to those that you don't know, and we have numerous examples and exhortations in both our Old and New Testaments. So these men, welcome the Lord Jesus, but they do more than that. Luke tells us that they constrained Him. The word is translated in some other translations as urged, in one translation as strongly urged, and in yet another translation it says that they begged Him. That is to say it was more than Jesus saying, well, I guess I need to be going on my way. And they say, well, you know, if you don't have anywhere else to go and you want to stay here, I guess we could find some room for you and maybe a loaf of bread if you want to stay. I mean, you don't have to. That's not urging. That's not constraining. That's not begging him. Why did they beg? Why did they constrain? Why did they strongly urge? Was it because they felt a constraint to fulfill the law of God? Leviticus 19.34 says, The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Now that ought to compel us to constrain others. because we're under biblical obligation to show love and mercy and compassion and to ensure that people have a place to stay and food to eat. Now, that ought to be enough to excite us and to constrain us. No, no, you're not going anywhere. You're going to stay with us. But brethren, I would suggest to you that there is more than that. It is not simply that night is getting on and he needs a place to stay. They are begging this man to stay I would suggest because their hearts are drawn out to him. They just spent some period of hours, anywhere from one to three hours, with this man as he opened the Scriptures to them. They were having a conversation, a Bible study, unlike any they had ever had. And this man was going with them from Genesis through to Malachi and showing to them in this passage and in that passage the things concerning the Messiah. Lights were coming on. They were beginning to understand their Bibles in a way they had never understood them before. It was all falling into place. It was all making sense to them. And they were realizing that we ought not to have been troubled by the crucifixion and the death of Jesus, because the Word of God told us that that's exactly what would happen to the Messiah, and that we ought not to have been disbelieving of the report of the women, because the law and the prophets prophesied not only the death, but the resurrection of the Messiah. Now, as we will see more fully in a few moments, What this man had been saying to them was sinking into their hearts. It was exciting them. It was thrilling him. And so it is. They don't want this teacher to leave. They want more. Yes, they want to show hospitality. Yes, they want him to be protected. Yes, they want him to have food. But brethren, I suggest to you that what they truly wanted, and why such strong terminology is used, is that they wanted more of the Scriptures, more of the truth. It was a conversation that they did not want to end. This man knew the Scriptures. This man was putting the pieces together for them in a way they had never yet seen. And they were enjoying the words, and they were enjoying an expanded spiritual appetite that though what they had heard surely made them full, they wanted yet more. Now brethren, I don't know that any of us have ever had an experience quite like that. Some of us have heard preaching in good old Puritan mode that has gone on for an hour and a half to two hours. Some of it's gone on here, some of it we've heard in other places. Some of us can testify that having heard someone expound the Word of God at times, for an hour and a half to two hours, that we had no idea of the time, that it did not seem like that. We looked at our watches and thought, surely that wasn't an hour. Surely that wasn't an hour and a half. There's no way that was two hours. And as full as we were, as blessed as we were, we may have wanted more. But brethren, let's be honest that there are other times when at the end of a full Lord's Day, our brain is full up, our hearts and our souls are full. Things are starting to leak out. It's too full. And OK, we need a break. I go to a Bible conference or a family conference and 12 ministries in four and a half days is about all I can take. and I am tired and I'm worn out. At the end of it, it's not that it's not all good, but brethren, can you imagine what it was like to beg a man? To beg a man, as it were, to go on. But brethren, though that is our occasional experience, there are other times when we are full with so little. It takes so little to satisfy us. We kid around at times in our house about having different kinds of stomachs. And you can eat what's been prepared by mama, and the kids will say, I'm full. I can't have any more. But a few minutes later, they'll say, I want a big bowl of ice cream. Well, you say, but I thought you were full. Well, I'm full of that. Or somebody, I heard one of the children talk about the other day, that was my food stomach. I'm talking about my dessert stomach. And we have the capacity to enjoy many things. But sometimes brethren, our spiritual stomach is pretty small. And it takes just a little to be full. We can be like people who are constrained to eat their vegetables, knowing it's healthy and knowing it's good for them, but wanting the least amount possible. Whereas, brethren, you know what it's like some other times, and this may not be everybody, but for a lot of us, if it's cake or if it's ice cream, we're tempted another bowl, another slice, another piece. Not the stuff that's good and healthy for me, but I'll have more of this. Brethren, I think too often on a Lord's Day, we can be like those spoken of in Isaiah 8 and verse 4, when they say, in verse 5 rather, when will the new moon be passed that we may sell grain and the Sabbath over that we may trade wheat? That is to say, when we feel a constraint upon our mind for a whole day, being directed toward spiritual things, our hearts can grow weary and we can find ourselves craving other things. Reading our Bibles, praying, engaging in conversation about the things of God, going to the Lord's house, reading Christian books, listening to other sermons throughout the week can often be seen as a chore and not as an eager desire. Brethren, may God give us hearts like these men. And again, I'm not talking necessarily about a man preaching. People saying, brother, don't stop, don't stop, keep going, keep giving. But brethren, in regard to our spiritual appetite, when the Lord has fed us and when our hearts have burned to say, I want more of that. Secondly, the unveiling of the Lord Jesus. Verses 30-31, Now it came to pass, as he said at the table with them, that he took bread, blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he vanished from their sight. Now it is interesting to note the prominent place that Jesus is given in this exchange. They have come to the home of one of the two disciples, and if I had to flip a corner, I had to guess, I'd say it's most likely Cleopas, because he is the disciple whose name is earlier mentioned. And if it is indeed the home of Cleopas, then Cleopas as the homeowner would have been the host, and it was the job of the host normally to give the blessing and to break the bread. It's his home, and he's the one who would distribute those things. But whether our Lord was asked to do it, or whether our Lord took the initiative, we do not know. But we do see the Lord taking the place of the host at this meal. And it is as he breaks the bread, and as he offers thanks, that the eyes of these men are opened to know who has really been with them. Now, I mentioned some weeks ago that something was taking place with the eyes of these men, that they were not recognizing Jesus. They were not able to recognize, and again, not able to recognize His face or that well-beloved voice. God, for His own purposes, but most likely in association with their foolishness, their unbelief and hardness of heart, was withholding them the blessing of seeing who was right with them. But it is now as the prayer is offered, and as the bread is broken, that their eyes were opened. Whatever veil God had put before their eyes is now lifted. And it has been suggested that the catalyst for the opening of the eyes was that either as our Lord lifted up the bread to break it, and the sleeves of His robe would have fallen down with gravity, or as they took broken bread from His hands, that they recognize the nail prints in our Lord's hands. They recognize this man. You'd recognize that, wouldn't you? Ever shaken hands with a man that's missing a finger or two? You may not have noticed that he shook his hand, but suddenly, you try not to react. You feel that something's wrong, something's missing. Well, a man handing you a piece of bread, or the man holding it up, and you may perhaps even be able to see all the way through this man's wrist or through this man's hands. And in that, they knew him. They know that this is and that this was the Lord. We've just been spending these hours, we've just been walking these miles with the Lord Jesus, and no sooner do they have this sudden and joyful unveiling than we read that our Lord vanished from their sight. Now, I'll have more to say about this at another time. Because I do want us to spend some time in the weeks ahead considering the doctrine of the resurrection and the practical implications of the resurrection. But one of the things that is clearly demonstrable here is that this body of our Lord Jesus was, The same body in which he had been crucified. It bore the marks of the nails we know. It bore still the imprint of the spear that had pierced his side because he offers Thomas later on to be able to put his hand into that gaping wound. It's the same body with which he died, but that this body had undergone changes in the resurrection. The Apostle Paul deals with this in 1 Corinthians 15. And brethren, these are some difficult words and they could be easy to misinterpret, but I want to read them and comment on them briefly. 1 Corinthians 15, verse 35. But someone will say, how are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come? Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. And whatever you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain, perhaps wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body. All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds. There are also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies, but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars, for one star differs from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. Brethren, let us not miss this. Our bodies of weakness, our bodies of death, our bodies of sickness and weariness and fatigue, our bodies which age and stoop and wrinkle and break, our eyes which grow dim and our hearing which grows faint, our backs which ache, our teeth which decay, all of those things shall come to an end. But it is this body sown into the ground in weakness and death, a body which by all appearances is conquered by death, that body shall be liberated, transformed and raised in power and made like the glorious resurrection body of the Lord Jesus. And brethren, that is a part, and in fact a large part, of what John is referring to in 1 John 3 when he says, When we see Him, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. When the Lord Jesus returns in glory, the bodies of dead saints will be resurrected, and the bodies of living saints will be transformed in the twinkling of an eye. Now, we have many aches and pains in this congregation. Let's put it lightly. We have in our prayer meeting every Wednesday night a time in which we pray for our afflicted. And that time is never blank. There's always someone and somebody, something for which to pray. There never has been a time, and I believe there never will be a time, until the resurrection when we will not need to pray for the afflicted. But the day is coming when many of those afflicted who have already died and the bodies of those presently afflicted at the second coming will undergo a transformation. The body of Jesus now had properties it did not have before. Many things were the same. It was a body of flesh and blood. He could be held and touched. He could eat and drink. But brethren, He could also go with ease from one place to another. He could find His way into rooms where the doors were locked. And so it is that our bodies will be known as our bodies, but that they shall be powerfully and gloriously transformed. I was thinking of my friend, Johnny Farese, this morning. Johnny, many of you people know from the internet, Johnny has a ministry among our sister churches. But Johnny has never walked. Johnny's in his forties. At this point in his life, his legs are so atrophied that if you went to see him, you would think he doesn't have any. They're tucked up under his torso in such a way that you can't even see them. Johnny can no longer swallow. John can no, he can't even swallow his own saliva. He has a machine that goes off about every minute like a dentist, the suction in the dentist's office. And now he has it automatically. I was there. At times when you'd have to go, and if you're visiting with him, you had somebody doing it for him every few seconds as you talked to him, because he can no longer swallow. One day, Johnny is going to die. And that very weak body will come into the grave in all of its weakness and decay. But the body of John Phares will rise in power and incorruptibility. John Phares will forever What's it going to be like to see Johnny walk? It's going to be like the first time he walks and runs upon the ground of the new earth. There are those here whose eyes have never seen. There are those in this room whose ears do not work. We have brothers and sisters who walk with canes and walkers. We have again the blind and the deaf. What will it be, dear ones, in the resurrection? To have no more people. Mrs. Jackson, you make it to the resurrection. You love the Lord Jesus. You're not going to have to do that anymore. Neither are you, Will. No more of these pains. No more of these aches that weary us and cause us many times to yearn for glory. And brethren, that's part of the promise of the resurrection. And it's part of what we should consider. There are many aspects of the resurrection. But I trust that those of you who have loved ones, who have died, loved ones now, as some of us do, who are dying, that you'll have hope in the resurrection. and that this curse and those things that destroy and mar and break this body will be done away with and our body will be like the powerful, eternal, lasting resurrection body of the Lord Jesus. That brings us then to consider thirdly and finally the disciples' passion. Well, brethren, what a day it was for these two brothers. You talk about going from darkness to light in zero to three hundred miles in a second. Three hundred miles an hour in a second. They'd gone through the worst weekend of their life, and it had ended with the greatest moment of their life. On Friday, their Lord and Master was dying, and He didn't call for angels to rescue Him. And He didn't come down from the cross. And He was bloodied, and ripped, and torn, and stabbed, and He was dead. And they took that limp body and they lay it in a tomb, and their theology was in ruins. The Bible didn't make any sense to them. Their future King was gone, and their lives were in danger. The report had come early that morning that the tomb was empty, that Jesus was risen, and they greeted that word with disbelief. It seemed to them like an idle tale. But these things were so disturbing to them that though their faces were sorrowful, they yet discussed them passionately as they made their way back home. They meet a stranger who rebukes them. calls them foolish, calls them slow in heart, tells them that they're not believing everything in the Bible. And then they sit there or walk there as this man opens up what I will argue is the greatest single Bible lesson ever taught. And then they make their way into a home, eager to hear more. And the stranger offers a blessing. And he most likely raises his hands. And as they do, they both look and they see the mark of the nails. And the scales fall from their eyes. And they know Him. And in that moment, there is joy indescribable and full of glory. And our Lord vanishes from their sight. But from that moment on, their lives are changed. You see, when a man goes from believing that Jesus was good and great, but dead and buried, to knowing all that the Bible says of Him, and knowing that He is alive, everything changes. His life can never be the same. When we know that the man who died on that cross is alive and the fulfillment of the hope of all the nations, how can we be the same? And so it is that they say one to another. Did they say the same thing at the same time? They say it to each other. Did one say it and the other says, me too? Did not our heart, singular, Interestingly, our heart, one heart, did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road and while He opened the Scriptures to us? Now, brethren, there is a great truth here which is very simple. And that is that the clear exposition of the Scriptures, which opened up their understanding of the truths of the Lord Jesus, affected not only their minds, but their affections. Now, there's a lot of discussion and debate about the place of affections and passions in the church and in personal experience. There are those who, and again, understand I'm being somewhat rhetorical in what I say. But there are those who seem to aim everything at the stirring of the affections. The mood and the music and the teaching are all aimed, all geared toward getting at the heart. And what really matters is not what you learned or what you understood, but how you felt. What did you feel when you were singing? What did you feel when the teaching was going on? And then there are others, and if you want to know what camp we tend to fall into, we tend to fall into this other. There are others who at times shun that kind of thinking and service as mere emotionalism. And so we say, no, we aim at the mind. And as long as people understand and as long as I've communicated truth, people say that's what we need to do. Well, brethren, our goal is not simply to open truth and to say that it doesn't really matter what a person feels. See, again, we don't say that explicitly. I mean, just like the place that may be given over to emotionalism, they don't say, well, all we care about is emotions. Oh, we care about truth, they'll say. And the others will say, well, it's not that we don't care about the emotions. It's just that we need to make sure that we give the truth. But brethren, in Christ, do not these things come together? And what makes the worship experience Emotionalism in some places is the bypassing of the mind and the attempt to manipulate emotions directly. That's what makes something emotionalism. But what makes a thing a kind of cold intellectualism is the idea that the emotions and passions have no part in the worship of God. Now brethren, how anyone can read the Psalms, or for that matter, the great majority of the Bible, and come to that conclusion is frankly beyond me. But brethren, do note that there is a connection between learning and understanding and passion. that the men whose hearts burned within them were men who were taught and men who were instructed so that there was reality and a basis to what they felt. They had fellowship with the Lord Jesus. They had heard the Scriptures opened. and applied, they saw in their Bibles the person and the work of Christ. And as that was opened to them, and as they understood it, it filtered down into their hearts so that their mutual conclusion is that when our Lord opened the Word of God, not knowing that it was the Lord, but just a man, a stranger opening the Word, that our heart burned within us. Matthew Henry, says they did not so much compare notes as they compared hearts. It was not simply the recitation of an outline or the rehearsal of naked truth, but rather it was their mutual experience of truth and the effect of that truth upon their hearts which excited them and moved them. It's not that they said, well, what did you think of point three? Was that the point about Esther? Ah, that one didn't fully carry him. I don't know that I saw the Messiah. It wasn't that. But when they talked about the effect of it, the effect was, brother, did that do in you what that did in me? That's what they want to know. It has often been said that the most difficult thing in dealing with an unbeliever is to win their heart to God. And that the most difficult thing in dealing with a believer is to keep their heart toward God. And don't we struggle with that? How do we keep our affections? How do we stir our devotion, not simply to truth and not simply to duty? Because Christianity is far more than that. Christianity is devotion to a person. It is trust in a person. It is living faith in a person. And it was easier for many of us. When we began the journey, we were excited and overwhelmed about what the Lord has done for us. And it's really, it's enjoyable, isn't it, to be around a new Christian? Did you know that it's said in the Bible that the Lord's our shepherd and that we shall not want? Isn't that cool? And that we're going to dwell, yeah, yeah, I know, we're going to dwell in the house of the Lord forever and goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives. Yeah, I know it. Memorized it. Yeah, we memorized it. But do we feel it? Do we know it? Does it cause our heart to burn within us? There are truths. Some of us can remember the first time we heard certain things. One of the passages I didn't open up last Lord's Day, but I'll say a little something about it now. Isaiah chapter 6. We love Isaiah 6. In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up. And His train filled the temple. And there's the angels surrounding the Lord. And with two wings they fly, and two they cover their face, and with two they cover their feet. And they do not cease to cry out, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of His glory. And we who have a high view of God, there are few passages we love to open more than Isaiah 6. But you know what we read of in John 12? In John 12, it quotes Isaiah 6, and it says this, Isaiah said, when he saw the glory of Jesus. First time you saw that? You got to chill up now. I don't know if I ever saw that. That's about Jesus? Isaiah 6 is about my Lord? That's about the Lord of glory? But you know what? When we hear it now? Oh, yeah, I know where he's going. Ah, he's starting Isaiah 60. Yeah, but he's going to go to John 12. I know. You see the way we can be? The war is young. We were excited, overwhelmed by what the Lord has done for us. The Bible was new to us. Every Lord's Day unfolded a new element of truth. Virtually every devotional time brought new insights and fresh appreciation. For some of you, it's still that way, and it's great. You're young in the faith. But what of those of us who have been in the way, maybe not converted, but in a sense in the way for all or most of our lives? For some of us we have heard and read and studied and listened to preaching for 30 and 40 and in some cases 50, 60, 70 years and more. Some of us have been to seminary and to Bible college. We have read massive amounts of theology, studied original languages, and we know much truth. But here's the question. When was the last time that your heart burned within you as a man of God opened up the Scriptures? Or do we come to the Word thinking, well, I wonder what He'll have to say? Doubt there'll be anything new. Not sure about this. Not sure about that. Brethren, do we come with hearts that are hungry? And do we do what we can do beforehand to bring combustible hearts to the fire of the Word of God? Bare knowledge alone will not carry the day. One old Puritan said, a ship can be sunk from having too much gold as well as too much dung. That is, we can fill our minds with good things and they can still sink us. We can have them full of many good things and recite many wholesome truths, but are we by them knowing Christ in and by and through the Scriptures? There are a fair number here, certainly dozens, who have a very good awareness of Christian theology. You know truth from error. You know the gospel intellectually, but you're not yet a Christian. Your affections have not yet been stirred. Your heart has never burned, or in the words of Wesley, been strangely warmed in the ministry. And you need to pray. You need to pray, not just, well, help me to understand this truth or that truth. But you ask the Lord of Glory to go after your heart, because until He lays hold of your heart, He'll never fully lay hold of you. You see, the Lord Jesus can be like a well-respected artifact roped off in a museum that you look at and admire and talk about His various attributes. Is He that to you? Or is he a friend nearby to save? You ask God, yes, through your mind, but through your mind to engage your affections till you see yourself for what you are. The man who beat his breast and cried out, God, be merciful to me, the sinner, was a man who knew more than in his intellect he had sinned. He knew it in his affections. And his heart was burdened till he was made right with God. And the reason why some of you make half-hearted attempts at coming in to the fold, at laying hold of Christ, is because you're only half-convinced in your mind, you've never felt it in your soul, that you need a Savior. May God, by the Word, cause His Word to burn in your hearts like fire. Let's pray. Our Father, there are those things that you alone can do, that no amount of preaching or exegesis can do. So, living God, we ask that by the Spirit you would do that work and burn within the hearts of your people a growing and deepening love for the Lord Jesus. And may it be, Father, that those who don't know you, those who have only an intellectual museum-type knowledge of the Lord Jesus, may it be that this day their hearts will begin to burn and to be burdened and that they will find relief in the arms of the only Savior of sinners. We pray in His name. Amen.