Blessing The Faithful God (Part 2)

Well, Memorial Day last Monday, Kim and I, with Bill Glenn, Ben Roberts and his children, went to York Beach, and we were hanging out at the beach, and then we walked into town, and on the way back, we went to a little church, and the church had its doors open on Monday, and I said, let's just go in and take a look.

I said, when you hear preachers, you should say to yourself, what does he say, and what doesn't he say?

And when you walk into a church building, you should ask yourself the question, what do I see, and what don't

I see? Let's see if we can have a little theology class in an open church building. So I asked, what do we see, and maybe there's certain pew chairs, and certain statues, and other things.

I said, what don't you see? And the answer was, we don't see a pulpit that's in the center of the church.

I said, what do you see in the center of the church? Well, you see an altar. And so, in this particular church, the most important thing is the altar for the re -sacrifice of Jesus, is what they would believe.

So why does our church have a pulpit in the center of the church? That's because we realize the exalted position, not of the preacher, but of preaching

God's word. And of course, the world hates preaching. Don't you preach to me.

Don't get so preachy on me. And when you do begin to preach, they think it's old fashioned preaching.

I think of words like dinosaurs, and obscurantists, shelters, sheltered cave dwellers, troglodytes.

What's needed now is fancy, and drama, and slideshows, and PowerPoints. Not just someone up there preaching.

Except, as you know, dear congregation, because I know you love preaching, one of the reasons we preach is,

Jesus was a preacher. We love preaching because Jesus was a preacher. Luke 4, he said to them,

I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to other towns as well, for I was sent for this purpose.

When Jesus preached, people were amazed at his preaching. People were wondering how these wonderful words were falling from his mouth.

And of course, if you think of titles for Jesus, there are many. Savior, Lord, Messiah, King, Judge, Son of God, Son of Man, Alpha, Omega, the

Holy One, Lamb, Advocate, Author, Finisher, Captain, Lion, Mediator, Prophet, Priest, King, Shepherd, Redeemer, Emmanuel, the

Angel of the Lord, the Word, the First, the Last, and many more.

What a Savior. But he's also known as a preacher. The preacher.

The Prince of Preachers. And not only does the Bible teach that Jesus was a great preacher,

God had only one son and he made him a preacher. But also, generally, the Bible speaks much of preaching.

It elevates preaching. Paul said to Timothy, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word.

Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and doctrine or teaching.

Paul writes to the church of Corinth, for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel. For since in wisdom of God the world did not know

God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

Paul said to the church at Rome, how will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?

And how are they to hear without someone preaching? We, with Paul, in Romans 1, are eager to preach the gospel.

Even our theme verse, you want to know the mission of Bethlehem Bible Church, it's on the front page of the Bulletin, Colossians 128,

Him we proclaim. And I know, dear church, you believe that preaching is important.

I commend you and I want to encourage you to keep believing that. Once you get a taste of Bible teaching and Bible preaching, it's hard to go back to the watered down gruel of the world's preaching.

And so before we get into the passage today in Luke chapter 1, I want to kind of go behind the scenes of preaching, to take you behind the veil and help you think about what preaching really is.

Now, in basketball, in many sports, what you don't want to do is telegraph a pass, because it's going to be stolen.

So if I look at Vincent and then try to pass it to him, someone will see me look at Vincent, I'm telegraphing the pass and they can easily see my intentions and it would alert the opponent to steal the ball.

In martial arts and in combat sports and in boxing, there's certain ways you use your shoulders and other things before you're going to throw a punch.

You would telegraph that punch and you don't want to do that. In ice hockey, when people are going to do a slap shot or a body check, there's certain things that they do with their body and the opponents, if they're careful, can see that and they know what's coming.

When baseball pitchers pitch certain ways, he might telegraph his pitch and they call that tipping the pitch.

I heard in cricket, they tip, they telegraph things, but I don't know anything about cricket, so I'm not going to use that illustration.

I went to India and I bought a cricket bat one time and I never used it, I never hit one cricket ball,

I just thought, maybe I'll keep it by the door for self -defense, I don't know. In football, if a quarterback looks to the receiver and doesn't look someplace else, he's telegraphing.

It's not a good thing. In poker, of course, people betray their attentions with blinking and sweating and they do something called the tell.

By the way, the tell is short for telegraph. In all these, it's bad to do, to try to say, you know what,

I'm going to throw the ball at you, here it's going to come. But in preaching, I want you to know when

I preach, I want you to catch things and I want you to be taught things. Preaching is something to be taught,

I'm teaching and I want you to catch something, so taught and caught. What do I want you behind the scenes to think besides,

I'd like to learn more about Jesus from this passage? What's the author trying to let me learn about this passage?

One of the things that I want you to catch, that I'm trying to telegraph to you, is that verse by verse

Bible teaching is good. It's important. So I want you to catch this, when you teach

Sunday school, when you teach at home with your Bible study and your worship time and other things, it's good to go verse by verse sequentially so you can see the context.

I want you to catch, yes in fact, that Pastor Mike, he's showing us the context and when I'm reading my

Bible at home, I should do the same thing. Pastor Mike doesn't seem to be very concerned about going fast through books of the

Bible and so therefore I'd rather go slow when I personally study or when

I teach because it's good to understand what we're teaching. Why rush? I want you to catch,

I'm trying to telegraph to you, things like, is this passage law? Something that God tells us to do?

Is it an imperative? Is it a command? Is it a demand? Or is it gospel? Is it something that God in Christ has done?

Is it a declaration? Is it provision of God? Something He's done? Is it law or gospel? When I talk about that here,

I'm wanting you to catch the past. I'm trying to telegraph to you, yes, do that exact same thing at home.

I regularly try to tell you that when we receive laws from God, the key to the law of God is who's giving the law and what relationship you have to the lawgiver.

And is it God the judge giving the law to an unbeliever? Do this and live? Or is it

God giving a son or a daughter a command as a father would give to a command to guide that person?

I'm wanting you to catch that so that when you are at home and you're teaching your children the law of God, you're reminding them that it's coming from you, the father or the mother, because you care for them and you love them and you want them to honor you and do what's best for them.

Every week I hope you realize that I'm going to talk about the Lord Jesus in my sermon, even if He might not be in the text,

He's in the sermon, because we want to proclaim Christ. I'm wanting you to catch, many of you do of course,

I'm wanting you to catch the idea that when I'm sitting down talking to my sons, talking to my daughters, teaching

Bible classes, doing Bible studies, that I'm to realize, you know what, Jesus is the key,

He's the theme. And while we teach the passage and we want to be faithful to the passage, I'm going to talk about Jesus every single

Sunday. And when you teach the Bible, you should do the same thing. I'm wanting you to catch that. I want you to catch that it's important to ask, is this a poem?

Is this a narrative? Is this a story? Is this end times literature? Pastors always making sure that we understand the genre, so I want you to catch that, so when you go home, you do the same thing.

And the list could go on and on and on. What does the pastor teach us about God and sin and the

Savior? You do the same thing. What's the tenor and tone of the pastor?

Is it scolding? Is it getting after people all the time? How can you call yourself a Christian? Or should it be?

And is it regularly the tenor and tone of the Lord Jesus when He said, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I'm gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And you learn, oh, the pastor realizes that Jesus when

He talks to unrighteous people that are self -righteous, He blisters them, but when

He talks to people who are unrighteous that know they have no righteousness, He's kind to them.

So what I'm doing, here's my point, as I'm preaching, as weak and as sinful as I may be,

I am trying to model for you not just what biblical preaching should be from the pulpit on the

Lord's Day Sunday morning, but also in many ways how you should study the Bible yourself.

And so that's why when I would teach the Bible at home to my children, I didn't have all week to do a new message for my children,

I just would say, hmm, verse -by -verse messages are good. Christ -centered messages are good.

Talking about sin and the Savior is good, so I'd say to the children, grab your Bibles, let's look at Exodus chapter 1,

I'd read through Exodus 1, what did we learn about God, sin, a need for a Savior, and then the next night, since verse -by -verse teaching is good from the pulpit, the next night it would be, what's the review for Exodus 1?

Do we ever have reviews in sermons? Yes. And then what does Exodus 2 teach us about God, sin, and the

Savior? And so what you do is you catch what's going on in the pulpit, because I'm trying to telegraph to you, this is a good way to do it.

Not that you have to spend 30 hours a week to put together a message, but just generally, is this law, is this encouraging, is this a gospel, what is going on?

And so, preaching, I'm not trying to just teach you, I want you to catch the ball, because I'm looking straight at you and I'm saying, it's coming toward you.

Does that make sense? So that's just a little bit of behind -the -scenes preaching, so now you know my strategies.

Let's turn our Bibles to Luke chapter 1. If you're new with us here today, welcome to Bethlehem Bible Church, we're going through books of the

Bible, verse -by -verse, chapter -by -chapter, the gospel of Jesus, good news about Jesus, according to Luke, the physician, very technical writer, he is a physician, and he was a physician, and this is a book that gives us certainty and hope that this

Jesus is the real Jesus. That's Luke chapter 1, verse 4, he's writing in such a way that you're going to have confidence, every prophecy is fulfilled,

Jesus is, in fact, Lord of all. And he wants us to understand that this is driving to a certain point, and that point is, we learned last week,

Luke 19 .10, that Jesus is a Savior, to come and seek and save the lost.

And so that's our hope for all of you, is that if you are a Christian, that you keep believing in the Lord and Savior Jesus in spite of trials, and if you're not a

Christian, that you recognize one day you'll die and stand before God, and you'll have to pay for your sins, but there's another option, a gracious option, a thankful option, that Jesus comes to die for sinners like you, and you need to trust in Him, the risen

Savior, and believe. And so we've come to Luke chapter 1, verses 57 through 66, and I call this passage a remarkable unmarked passage, a remarkable unmarked passage, because most of us have not marked it in our

Bibles. And by the way, last week, remember, I got after you, if you use yellow marker in your Bibles or your books or anything like that, and I showed you what

I had, and then someone said, but you have yellow on your iPad, so let me make myself clear,

I have the exceptions. No, what I meant was, if it's real paper, if it's tangible, if it's like this,

I don't write in anything except pencil, but if it's an iPad, you can use, as my father would say, sky blue pink if you want, it's fine by me.

If you weren't here last week, that's alright. So we had some questions about this remarkable unmarked passage to try to get you to understand it better, and there were eight questions, and let's go over a few in review, eight questions designed to get you to think biblically and theologically about this remarkable unmarked passage that gives us certainty,

Luke 1, 4, about the Savior to come and seek and save us, Luke 19, 10. Question one, remember, is

God faithful? Is God faithful? It's a good question. The world is full of unfaithfulness.

When we look with our eyes, maybe it doesn't seem like God is very faithful. Is God faithful? And we see that right here, verse 57 of Luke 1, now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, she bore a son.

And everybody reading Luke should say, faithful, God is faithful. Luke 1, 13,

Zechariah was told by the angel, your wife Elizabeth, remember that old lady past childbearing, you're old as well, the son is going to be born.

And now the son is born. And when I read the Bible, I read the Bible this way, thinking, God is faithful,

God is immutable, and this immutable God is faithful to me as well. Thank you,

God, for being faithful. I see it in the pages of Scripture. I don't really see it in my life sometimes, but I know you are, and I'll trust

Scripture over my own personal eyes. Did you know not one word has failed of all

His good promise? Not one. 1 Kings 8, verse 56.

And as Calvin would say, God is always like Himself, and if He's always like Himself, He's always faithful.

God's not a man that He would lie. He's faithful. He's faithful in giving us temporal blessings.

Therefore, Spurgeon would say, oh Christian, you doubt as whether God will fulfill His promise? Shall the storehouses of heaven fail?

Do you think that your Heavenly Father, though He knows that you need food, will forget you?

When a sparrow falls to the ground without your Father's notice, and the very heads of your hair are all numbered, will you mistrust and doubt

Him? If God's faithful, we can trust Him. 1 Corinthians 1,

God is faithful. How about 1 Corinthians 10? No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.

God is faithful. And whether it's temporal blessings, spiritual blessings, suffering, persecution, temptation, or getting us to glory,

God is faithful. Second question we ask is, what's the response to God's faithfulness?

If God is faithful, what does revelation of God's faithfulness require?

A response. Joy. And her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her.

Revelation demands a response. Chapter 1 verse 14, many will rejoice at His birth.

Psalm 126, the Lord has done great things for them. And it's this great response to the faithfulness of God.

Kim's not home today, and so I got up and getting ready, making coffee. I have to go get my cholesterol check soon, so I'm trying to make up for all my eggs in the morning, so I had my oatmeal with all this kind of set up.

I'm like, why am I eating mush for breakfast? But I did. And then I turned all the speakers, we have speakers in the kitchen, and they're loud.

And I turned them up, loudly, to C .C. Winan's song called

The Goodness of God. Do you know it? The goodness of God cranking. And I thought, if my neighbors see me kind of dancing around the kitchen with my oatmeal, singing, for your mercy never fails me.

All my days I've been held in your hands. From the moment that I wake up until I lay my head,

I will sing of the goodness of God. Because all my life you've been faithful.

All my life you've been so, so good. With every breath that I'm able,

I will sing of the goodness of God. And you see God's faithfulness right here to someone else.

It might not be a promise in Romans 8 for you. They're there for you, by the way, too. But right here in the narrative, the faithfulness of God, and everybody says,

I will rejoice. That's our response. That's your response to God's faithfulness.

Question three, is obedience important? Question three in this remarkable, unmarked passage, is obedience important?

There's obedience everywhere you see. Everywhere you look in this passage, verse 59, and on the eighth day, they came to circumcise the child.

There's obedience, obeying Old Testament circumcision. And they would have called him Zechariah after his father.

But his mother answered, no, he shall be called John. More obedience now by Elizabeth.

They said to her, none of your relatives are called by this name. And they made signs to his father, inquiring what he wanted him to be called.

Elizabeth was obedient, and now so, too, is Zechariah. And he asked for a writing tablet and wrote, his name is

John. And they all wondered. And we talked last week quite a bit about the obedience of the

Christian. Not to get into heaven, we can't be obedient enough. Not to stay into heaven, we don't stay in heaven.

We don't stay rather secure of our salvation by obedience. But we do good works because we want to show our gratitude, our thankfulness, to serve other

Christians, to strengthen our assurance. Jesus said, if you love me, you will what? Keep my commandments.

Obedience is important. We know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey

His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And so, let it ever be told from this pulpit, obedience is important.

Not out of slavish fear, not to keep our salvation, but out of gratitude and out of a desire to serve other people.

I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice.

It's important to obey. And we see that in this passage. Number four, what's the

Christian's main motivation for obedience? What's the forgotten motivation for obedience?

Not in our passage, but the answer is gratitude, because the lawgiver now is your father.

Hacker said that if he had to summarize the New Testament in three words, he would choose adoption through propitiation.

Adopted through propitiation, that is, we're adopted in the family of God through Jesus bearing the wrath we deserved.

That's propitiation. And lastly, we look at number five, the fifth question in this remarkable unmarked passage, does

God discipline disobedience? Answer, yes, remember

Zechariah did not believe God through the message of Gabriel, and he made him what?

Mute. God disciplines disobedience. We're not talking about punishment, we're not talking about condemnation.

We look at Hebrews chapter 12, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him, for the

Lord disciplines the one he loves. Question six, does

God bless obedience? Question six in this remarkable unmarked passage, does God bless obedience?

And what would you say? You'd say, sometimes you give me trick questions so I don't want to say out loud.

That's what you would say. Does God bless obedience? Answer, let's find out. Verse 64, and immediately his,

Zechariah's mouth was opened, and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God. The judgment is gone, he obeys, the judgment is gone.

He now believes that God fulfills his promise. And you know, sometimes

Reformed theologians back in the Reformation, you kind of think they're kind of, yeah, biblical, but they're a little stuffy, and kind of staid, and not too devotional.

By the way, read Calvin on prayer, and that will take away that notion. But there's a Reformed theologian, his name was

William Hendrickson, and many of you have his commentary, and I thought it was insightful what this warm Reformed theologian said about obedience.

And once his mouth was opened, his tongue loosed. It seems, William Hendrickson said, as if God could hardly wait to remove punishment and to reward obedience.

I only question the punishment part, we'll just call it chastisement. It seems as if God could hardly wait to remove chastisement and to reward obedience.

It's like he's just waiting, not some kind of ogre God waiting to crush and to kill. Zachariah for nine months hasn't been able to say anything.

And now what does he say, what's the first thing he's going to say? I don't know, when the baby's born, what do you say?

It's a boy! It's a girl! As I've said before, ain't evolution grand?

I mean, I say a lot of things. He could say to his wife, good job believing,

I didn't. He could say, I repent. What does he do? He begins praising God over and over and over.

The first words out of his mouth is essentially, I praise the Lord. There's a little side note here, the suffering and the chastisement of the

Lord has helped his maturation. It's helped his obedience. Discipline helps.

The rod of correction helps. And he was helped. And before he did anything else, he begins to praise

God. This eruption, this volcanic eruption of praising God. When I was younger, my mother would take me to school in the car.

We didn't live that far away and on the way we would usually listen to Jimmy Swaggart and a bunch of praise the Lord stuff.

On the way home, I didn't have any idea what we listened to because Batman was on at 3 .30

and I had to get home for Batman. That was the main thing. So what she listened to in the radio, I could care less. Well, it was

Chuck Swindoll on the way home, but I tried to block out my ears. Praise the

Lord. I mean, this is kind of for some, I don't know, holy rollers or some kind of club or hands up or something.

But this is what he's doing. And he believes and God rewards obedience and his response to that revelation response.

He's, he's praising again. And by the way, for the Greek students, he began to speak in praise. It's imperfect tense.

It means he kept going and going and going. I'll show you how far he went. Go to chapter one, verse 67, verses 68, 69, 70, all the way down through 79.

He just keeps praising and praising and praising God. What God has done for salvation.

It's a good model for us. We respond with great praise. Does God bless obedience?

Listen to Jesus in Luke 11. But Jesus said, blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and what?

Keep it or obey. We're not doing this to keep our standing, but we're doing it because we're saved.

Heidelberg Catechism 63. Do our good works merit nothing, even though it is God's will to reward them in this life and that which is to come, not just eternal rewards, but on earth answer, the reward comes not of merit, but of grace.

So yes, God does reward obedience out of grace because we recognize what

Jesus also said in Luke 17. So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, we are unworthy servants.

We have only done what was our duty. And since we are in Christ, God accepts our little obedience, our sin -tainted obedience, because he accepts us.

A remarkable unmarked passage, question seven. What is the response to the supernatural work of God?

What is the response to the supernatural work of God? Is God faithful? What's the response to God's faithful?

Is obedience important? What's the motivation for obedience? Does God discipline disobedience and God, does he bless obedience?

And now seven, what's the response to the supernatural work of God? Verses 65 and 66.

And fear came on all their neighbors. And all these things were talked about through all the hill country of Judea.

And all who heard them laid them up in their hearts saying, what then will this child be?

For the hand of the Lord was upon him. What's the response to the supernatural work of God?

And the answer is fear. The answer is fear. God is here.

Divine power has been shown. Supernatural things have happened. It's an emotional thing as well.

Something strange. Something unusual. Something not of this world. Something not of this nature.

Something not natural but supernatural has happened. Acts 2 .43.

Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. Acts chapter 2.

I mean when a baby is born it's enough to just say that is unbelievable. This is incredible.

I can't believe people just think somehow that just evolution which isn't a thing caused all this.

This is God's work. I won't call it a miracle because it's natural but it's as if it's a miracle.

I want it to be a miracle. That baby was born. There's an eternal soul in that child. But this is above and beyond that.

And the birth of Jesus to a virgin is going to be above and beyond that. But you see the parallels. John the Baptist. Jesus.

Supernatural. Supernatural. The response to God's work is fear.

Now we've said many times from this pulpit that there's different kinds of fear. It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living

God if you're here and you're an unbeliever. You should be very very afraid. But God doesn't change in his greatness.

But we too like with the law giver we have a different relationship to God. And instead of this cringing fear, this servile fear, this fear that if I don't perfectly obey the

God who made me I'm going to hell. Which that's a good fear to have by the way. It's true. But for the

Christian it's not that kind of fear. We don't have to fear judgment anymore. There's no condemnation because perfect love casts out fear.

How can both be true? You must fear the Lord and love casts out fear because my relationship to God is different and my relationship now is son or daughter.

But what happens in scripture, you can tell, supernatural things happen. People are afraid. They're in awe.

They can't believe what's going on. God is here. God is close. God is just not far away.

You'll see fear because it just destroys the whole notion of God's just a deist

God. He winds things up. He lets it go. He watches the whole thing. No, he's involved.

We know he's involved because of incarnation. But God shows up other times and people respond with fear.

You can't even meet an angel without dropping down on your face.

And maybe the best way I can show this is in the book just before Luke. Let me just take you through Mark quickly with six examples of the response to the supernatural and that is fear.

Turn back to chapter four of Mark. I could show you in Luke, but we're going to save those for the future.

If you've been reading through the books of the Bible and you read Mark, then Luke's coming up. And so this will just be kind of a nice little segue.

The response, the repeated response to the fear of God is, to the supernatural work of God is fear.

Afraid. This is not normal. This is not natural. This is supernatural. God is here.

God is working. And by the way, that's what Luke wants you to know. God is in fact working and the Messiah is going to come.

Let me just show you some examples quickly in Mark, the gospel of Jesus according to Mark. Chapter four, verse 41.

Example one. The sea is calm. The water is calm. And what's their response? And they became very much afraid and said to him, who then is this that even the wind and sea obey him?

What do you do if you're in the boat and the waves and the wind cease and it's calm?

It's like placid. What do you say? That's a nice parlor trick. Or do you say

God is in my boat and if God's in my boat, I used to be afraid of the waves and the wind and the sea.

And now I have a reverential fear and I'm afraid God's in my boat.

Chapter five. Remember Jesus cast out the demons? I mean, there were a lot of demons in the sky.

I don't know what one demon could do, but how about many, many, many. And Mark 5, 15.

And they came to Jesus and observed the man who had been demon possessed, sitting down, not running around crazy, clothed, not naked, and in his right mind, not weird in his mind, the very man who had the legion and they became what?

Happy. They became calm. They became peaceful. I mean, that would probably be a good response.

Here's a guy running around. He's got a bunch of demons in him and he's doing weird things and nobody can bind him and he's naked and he's running and you're like, huh.

I told you the story one time when I was in North Hollywood, lived on Carpenter and I would borrow my neighbor's mower because I didn't have one.

I said, if you let me borrow your mower, your 80, I'll mow your lawn and my lawn. And I'm mowing back and forth and mowing back and forth.

The guy runs out in the middle of the street and I'm like, well, that's normal California, so no big deal. He stays in the middle of the street and I can only see him not this direction of the mowing, but this direction.

Now his shirt's off. Now his pants are off. Now his shoes are off. And I'm like, what is this guy doing?

Now he's completely naked in the middle of the street, freaking out.

And I thought to myself, I might not have a gun, but I have a mower. I'm safe. I'm like, what do

I do? So I go in and I say to Kim, call the police, but don't look outside.

I was like, don't touch wet paint. I mean, come on. I said, there's a naked guy running around the neighborhood now.

Finally, when the police came and got the person, by the way, he picked up a hose at a neighbor's house and turned it on and laid down like he was a

Marine or some sniper trying to shoot the police with water. They caught him. I mean, my response to that was peaceful, calm, back to normal.

When God does something to a demon infested man, the response is that's

God. God just did something right here. The God of the universe. Yeah. I read about him in the old

Testament and I know he showed up in Isaiah six and Genesis three and walking in the garden and all that. But now

God shows up and when God shows up, he's not just some mental construct. He's not a crutch to get us through life.

And we say, well, everybody needs a crutch and you know, that's what they do. And my crutch is alcohol and your crutch is somebody called

Jesus. And you can't really see him. God shows up. There's fear. Chapter five goes on.

Number three, supernatural over disease. Remember that lady? She said in verse 28, even if I touch his garments,

I'll be made well. And immediately the flow of blood dried up and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

And Jesus perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, who touched my garments?

And his disciples said to him, you see the crowd pressing around you and yet you say, who touched me? I mean, look at all these people. Everybody's touching you.

And he wanted her to say something. So he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman knowing what had happened to her came in what fear and trembling fell down before him and told him the whole truth.

I mean, what would it take for you to just get down on your face in front of a man and say, I praise you as God.

Chapter six, same thing happens. What's my point? My point is when God does something, he shows up.

The response is fear. Supernatural things happen. The repeated response in scripture is fear.

Jesus walks on water. What happens? Verse 49 of Mark six. But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out for they all saw him or terrified.

But immediately he spoke to them and said, take heart. It is I do not be afraid. Wind ceases.

A repeated response in scripture is supernatural work of God. Fear. Two more. Chapter nine.

Transfiguration. Remember, we get to see what Jesus is really like on the inside, but it comes out as it were.

Six days go by. Verse two. Jesus took with him Peter, James and John and led them up a high mountain by themselves.

He's transfigured before them. His clothes become radiant, intensely white, maybe against the backdrop of the snow of Mount Hermon even as no one on earth could bleach them.

And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses and they were talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, Rabbi, it's good that we're here.

Let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah. For he did not know what to say for they were what?

Terrified. God is here. This is God on earth. And then lastly,

Mark 16. Everybody wants to argue about Mark 16. Does Mark 16 end in verse eight?

Like your notes say in your Bible? Does it end in verse 20? What about the snake stuff?

What about the miracle stuff? What about baptized to be saved stuff? The gospel of Mark ends in chapter 16, verse eight.

Definitively. Exactly. Precisely. It ends right here. Don't let anyone tell you anything else.

People don't want it to end here because how can you end with everybody's afraid? It's the gospel of all things.

It's good news of all things. I thought it was supposed to end like Luke 24 and talking on the road and Emmaus and I thought it was supposed to end like Matthew 18,

Matthew 28 rather, where Jesus gives the great commission, go make disciples, teach, baptize.

How can it end with fear? You know the answer already before I read the verse. Because the repeated response to the supernatural work of God is what?

Fear. Something happens, fear. God shows up, fear.

And if you're an unbeliever, you should be really frightened. If you're a believer, you should be totally in awe. And Jesus is raised.

The angel says he's not here for he's risen just as he said. And how does Mark 16, eight end?

How does Mark end exactly the way he wants it to end for you to say something to yourself? What must you say to yourself?

Let's read the verse. And they went out and fled from the tomb for trembling and astonishment had gripped them.

And they said nothing to anyone for they were. That's the end.

That's the purposeful end. I won't do it because I don't need props. But if I were to take that microphone and just microphone drop, that's it.

Because you're supposed to say when you read the gospel of Jesus according to Mark. Resurrections don't happen.

It's not natural. It's not normal. Nobody that's dead becomes alive unless God is working.

And Jesus said in Mark 8, I'm going to die and be raised. Mark 9, I'm going to die and be raised. Mark 10, any guesses?

I'm going to die and be raised. And Jesus dies, supernaturally raises himself and the mic drops.

Something happened. Jesus is alive. That's the way Mark is supposed to end.

What's the response to the supernatural work of God? Fear. Last question back to Luke.

Last question back to Luke. Question 8 in this remarkable unmarked passage.

What does Luke want you to ask in this section? Oh, lots of things. But in particular, what about this verse?

What does he want you to ask? Remember, we're not just reading the Bible and saying it means this. It says this. We're reading the

Bible because the Bible is written for us. Some things is not to us, but it's for us and we're learning.

All who heard them laid up in their hearts, verse 66, saying, what then will this child be for the hand of the

Lord was with him? Luke wants you to ask the same question. Luke doesn't want you to say, well, they asked the question.

I know he wants you to ask that question. I mean, the old have given birth. An old womb has been alive.

A child doesn't get his dad's name or another name. He gets a strange name.

Zechariah couldn't talk for nine months. Now he can talk. Then what is going on?

Something's going on. What in the world is going on? What's going on with this child? The hand of the

Lord is on him. When you see the hand of the Lord, you think power. You think of deliverance. You think he's going to do something.

Hand of the Lord could be in judgment, but that's certainly not judgment here because this is good news. God's hand is on the boy.

And you should be thinking if you read the Old Testament, deliverance is around the corner. God puts his hand on someone.

Deliverance is going to happen. It's like if I said, son, we're going to get through this together. And then I plow forward.

The saving mighty power of God is on this man. And so we look back and we go, all these things happening.

What in the world is going on? Who is John the Baptist going to be? And we already know the answer, don't we?

Because we know the end of the book. And that is he's the forerunner and he's the frontrunner for Jesus, the

Messiah. And when John shows up, you know who's going to be right behind him is the Lord Jesus.

I mean, come on, we've been waiting 400 years for God to talk. We've been waiting 400 years for God to do something.

We've been waiting for more than 400 years for some king to come. Who is this child going to be?

There's messianic expectation. Supernatural things happening with this birth.

God's doing something. And Luke is writing and Luke says, I'm going to take you to the very beginning and walk through all this so you can just be full of happiness and joy and you can stand in your kitchen running around eating oatmeal to the praise of God's glory because I see it all.

I see it all in scripture. One, two, three, four. And I look in the future and I go, I don't see it. I look at politicians.

I don't see it. I look at sportscasters. I don't see it. I look in my heart. I don't see it. I look at other people. I don't see it.

I don't see anything. But what I do see is in scripture and it says the just shall live by what? Faith.

Hear the promises of God. This is a remarkable unmarked passage, don't you think?

Well, Zechariah can't keep his mouth shut because he's praising God. I wonder what he says. If the

Lord doesn't return, we'll do that next week. Bow with me, please. Father in heaven, we are very, very thankful people that you are faithful.

I'm even motivated as a person. I know these dear ones are as well. When we hear about other people singing about your faithfulness, it stirs our hearts as well.

And we see your faithfulness in scripture. Our hearts are also stirred. Would you forgive us for being faithless so many times?

And we praise you that Jesus Christ, his name is called faithful and true.