Sunday Sermon: The Miracles of Jesus (Matthew 8-9)

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September 6, 2020

Pastor Gabriel Hughes preaches through Matthew 8-9 on the miracles of Jesus, and also announces his resignation from FSBC of Junction City, KS to join FBC of Lindale, TX. Visit wwutt.com for more about our ministry!

00:18: You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.
00:27: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a
00:32: New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.
00:39: Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe. I decided that I would open this morning with my announcement instead of waiting until the end and that way we can partake in the
00:53: Lord's table. We can sing at the conclusion and then we can be dismissed without having to shift gears and kind of gather everybody back together again for what
01:02: I have to say. Plus what I have to say is going to have to do with the way that I teach this morning so it all kind of flows together anyway.
01:09: I would like to begin by thanking you for letting me go to Texas last week. As we had announced to this membership before leaving,
01:17: I went to preach at First Baptist Church of Lindale, Texas in view of a call. Becky and I express our gratitude to both congregations, to this body and to the body in Lindale, for your encouragement and the prayers that you have offered and for allowing us the time to pray, seek godly counsel and understand the
01:38: Lord's will regarding the invitation that we have been given. I didn't see one word about it online by either church body and I am appreciative of that.
01:50: Without further hesitation, my family and I have come to a decision and we would like to ask that First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas please accept my resignation as pastor of this body, that I may accept the offer to pastor under the ministry of Dr.
02:09: Tom Buck at First Baptist Church, Lindale, Texas with your blessing.
02:16: This was not an easy decision to make. Even as late as Friday, Becky and I were still sitting on the couch in our living room, weighing the pros and cons of going or staying.
02:30: And I can tell you that neither one of us have any desire to prep a house and get it sold and move our belongings to another place and have to purchase another home.
02:40: Those of you who are adept at doing this, who have been in the military, we could use your advice. But most of all,
02:47: I will miss this church. You are all my friends and you have been my family.
02:55: You took a chance on me and you invited me in and you have invested in me.
03:05: Not just those of you who have been here from the beginning, some of you have been here longer than I have been here, but even those of you who have joined us later in the game.
03:15: Every one of you has had the responsibility to examine my ministry and my teaching in order to know that this was a place where the
03:25: Word of God was preached and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 2
03:32: Timothy 3 .16, that you may be sanctified in the Father's truth, John 17 .17.
03:40: For 10 years, I've been a pastor here. And in that time, this church has taken good care of me and of my family, above and beyond anything that I ever could have asked for.
03:55: And I am so grateful to everyone sitting here. And I am thankful for those who have been a part of this body in the past.
04:04: We've had so many friends. You know full well the revolving door that this church has been with soldiers and their families coming and going into and out of Fort Riley.
04:14: We've been full in this room and we've been small in this room. Many faithful Christians have contributed to the ministry that has been going on here for over 65 years.
04:27: If this church remains faithful to its sincere commitment to God's Word, a faith which you had before I came to this pulpit,
04:36: Christ will continue to glorify himself through this body. Speaking of this pulpit,
04:44: I built this pulpit, literally. I constructed it in my garage and finished it here at the church.
04:51: But it's not going anywhere. It's going to stay here. And before I leave,
04:56: I would like to help you find the next man whom God has already chosen to fill it. And we will talk about those things further in the weeks to come.
05:05: I recommend that we have a meeting soon, next week after church if possible. As has already been asked of me, when we understand the text, we'll continue.
05:15: The what videos and the podcast. In fact, the home that we are looking at buying in Lindale has a place where I can set up a studio.
05:24: You will still hear from me and I hope to still hear from each one of you.
05:31: By the way, you're all invited to go to Texas with us. So I'm sure First Baptist Church of Lindale would love to have you.
05:39: A time for goodbyes will come later. It's not like we're leaving tomorrow. My timetable is not set in stone.
05:45: I can tell you that Dr. Buck wanted me in Lindale last week, but he has also had to make this kind of move before.
05:52: And he was the same age that I am now when he moved a family and a ministry to Texas.
05:58: He has encouraged me to finish well and assist this church in setting up a pastor search.
06:05: And if you would like for me to, I can even put on the podcast that this church is looking for a pastor. As it says in Romans 15, 13 through 14,
06:14: May the gospel of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the
06:20: Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.
06:35: It has been requested of me that even though my time with you is short, if it is at all possible, can
06:43: I still finish teaching through the book of Matthew? Well, that would be a daunting task as we just finished the
06:50: Sermon on the Mount a couple of weeks ago, but I'm willing to give it a shot. After all, it was during Holy Week back in April that we had already gone through the crucifixion and resurrection narratives.
07:00: So, though this is going to be like a Star Wars saga with everything kind of out of order,
07:07: I think that in the time left, we can make it through the remainder of this gospel. And so today, we're going to knock out a significantly larger chunk than we have before by looking at Matthew chapters 8 and 9.
07:21: So if you would open with me to your Bible, open with me in your
07:26: Bible to Matthew chapter 8, and let's all stand together for the reading of God's Word.
07:32: I'm going to read through the first 13 verses that we're going to try to cover both chapters this morning.
07:37: This is Matthew chapter 8, verses 1 through 13. When he came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him, and behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying,
07:50: Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying,
07:57: I will be clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.
08:03: And Jesus said to him, See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded for a proof to them.
08:13: When he had entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.
08:24: And he said to him, I will come and heal him. But the centurion replied, Lord, I'm not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word and my servant will be healed.
08:38: For I too am a man under authority with soldiers under me.
08:45: And I say to one, go, and he goes, and to another, come, and he comes, and to my servant, do this, and he does it.
08:55: When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have
09:03: I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness.
09:17: In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And to the centurion,
09:22: Jesus said, Go, let it be done for you as you have believed. And the servant was healed at that very moment.
09:32: Let us pray. Heavenly Father, as we come into your word this morning, I pray that you show us all the more your glory and goodness through the miracles of Christ that were performed and are testified about here according to the
09:45: Apostle Matthew. And as we read these things and come to understand, these stories that we've heard, many of us since we were little kids, what they show to us is the power of Christ, the one who has saved us, the one in whom we have placed our trust and our faith.
10:02: And by believing in Jesus, we know our sins are forgiven and there is laid up for us eternal life forever in your eternal kingdom.
10:12: And nothing on earth can take it from us because the power of Christ is upon us.
10:19: May these things be our assurance today. May we rejoice to hear them and cling all the more to Christ who saves.
10:28: And it's in Jesus' name that we pray and all God's people said, Amen. Thank you.
10:33: You may be seated. So as you kind of go through and browse Matthew chapters 8 and 9, what you will see in these two chapters is just a list of the miracles that Christ has performed.
10:45: And this is where Matthew goes next in his gospel following the conclusion of the
10:51: Sermon on the Mount, which again we finished a couple of weeks ago. So right here at the start of chapter 8, it says, when he came down from the mountain, this was the mountain in Galilee that Jesus was preaching upon.
11:03: That was the sermon that we had in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7.
11:08: And remember the way that we concluded the Sermon on the Mount. If you can remember back a couple of weeks, Jesus closed with this illustration.
11:15: Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock, and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock.
11:34: And what I said to you as we were considering these things a couple of weeks ago is that giving up everything for Christ is hard, but it's worth it.
11:47: And the one in whom you have placed your trust is able to save you from all things.
11:53: From sickness, from disease, from depression, from your enemies, from any sort of animosity or antagonism that would come against you, from uncertainty of the days ahead.
12:08: Christ can save you from death itself. Any of the things that we might put into the category of the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house.
12:21: What might happen in your life that you would fit into this category that we tend to refer to as the storms of life?
12:29: Whatever those things are, those things that you might categorize, and even things that you can't think of. Whatever comes against you will never shake you, will never topple you, will never defeat you.
12:43: It may be hard. It will certainly be difficult. And I would never, and have never, stood up here and told you that life will be easier for you if you follow
12:51: Christ. Jesus said earlier in Matthew 7 that His way is the difficult path.
12:57: Hard is the way that leads to life. So we should not be under any kind of idea that following Jesus makes things simpler, so that's why
13:09: I'm a Christian. You're setting yourself up for disappointment. But rather, we know that the one in whom we have placed our trust is the
13:17: God of heaven and earth. He is the one who has created all things. So all things are under His control and under His power.
13:25: There is nothing for us to be afraid of. It will be difficult for us to go through it, but we know that Christ is our deliverer, so that when even death itself comes against us,
13:36: Jesus is going to deliver us from that storm. The body will die, but the soul will live forever with God in glory.
13:44: And a day is even coming in which Christ will raise our dead bodies from the grave and transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body by the power that enables
13:54: Him to subject all things to Himself. That's what we see in Matthew chapters 8 and 9.
14:00: We see the power of Christ displayed to put all things into subjection under Himself.
14:07: He has the power and authority over all things because He is the creator of all things. And by reading this and understanding this, it should renew our faith and strengthen us all the more and cause us to cling to Christ no matter the difficulties that come to us in this life.
14:24: Because the judgment of God is not upon you, therefore, what can man do to me?
14:31: What can my circumstances do to me? What can any unforeseen difficulties do to me?
14:37: Paul says in Romans chapter 8, nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our
14:43: Lord. These are the assurances that we come to when we read about the miracles of Christ in Matthew chapters 8 and 9.
14:52: And a correlation is going to be made here. As we go on, you're going to see it. A correlation is going to be made that the one who has the power over all of these things has the power and the authority to forgive your sins.
15:04: And that's really the thing that we need the most. We need repentance. We need forgiveness of sin.
15:12: We need fellowship with God because it is our sin that has separated us from God and it is
15:17: Jesus Christ, the God -man, who joins sinful man back to the Holy Father.
15:24: Our place, our trust, our hope is fully in Christ and in Christ alone.
15:34: So let us continue here in Matthew chapter 8. Jesus came down from the mountain. Great crowds followed
15:40: Him. Remember as we concluded the Sermon on the Mount, the last two verses of Matthew 7,
15:45: Jesus finished these sayings. The crowds were astonished at His teaching for He was teaching them as one who had authority and not as their scribes.
15:55: And as Jesus is coming down, there is a leper who comes to Him and kneels before Him.
16:02: This is the first miracle that Matthew lays out in his gospel.
16:08: A sick man, just one man, comes to Jesus and kneels before Him and says this.
16:15: Now recognize, again, this is the first miracle in Matthew's gospel. With the leper saying to Him, Lord, if You will,
16:27: You can make me clean. And Jesus stretched out
16:33: His hand and touched him saying, I will be clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.
16:40: And Jesus said to him, see that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded for a proof to them.
16:51: Now Jesus is healing this man's physical disease, but all of us who come to Christ are healed of our spiritual disease, the sickness of sin that has infected everything about us, our souls, even our bodies, so that we may be cleansed of this unrighteousness and we may be presented as holy before the
17:13: Father. This is what we come to Christ to receive. And it is not by our will that we receive this.
17:21: It is God's will. That's in John 1. We have been born again, not of the will of man, but of the will of God, all those who have faith in Christ.
17:31: So this leper comes before Jesus and in humility, kneels before Him and says, if You will,
17:39: You can make me clean. All glory and praise being given to Christ before Christ has even made
17:47: Him clean. And Jesus' reply is, I will.
17:53: I will be clean.
17:59: My friends, the salvation that we have is not of our works, so that no man may boast,
18:06: Ephesians 2 .9. It is by the grace of God and it is His doing alone.
18:12: It is by His will that you have been saved. So rejoice, give praise to God, and in full submission and in humility of His authority and His power, come to Christ and say, if You will.
18:31: James, in James 4, says that you're arrogant in your boasting. You should say, if the
18:37: Lord wills, we will do this or that. So let none of us think that we even have our next breath guaranteed to us.
18:45: It is all by the will of God. The Apostle Paul says in Acts 17, it is by God's will that He moves men to and fro to their different places.
18:54: He has set them in the place in which they live and has put the boundaries around them.
19:00: Job 14 says that God has set a man's limits that he cannot pass. It's all by the will of God.
19:06: So give God the praise that He has called you to Himself through faith in Jesus Christ.
19:12: It is by His will that we are forgiven. We go on from here into the story of the centurion in verse 5.
19:21: When he had entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.
19:32: And Jesus said to him, I will come and heal him. That's kind of Jesus to say that to the centurion.
19:38: But the centurion replied, Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word and my servant will be healed.
19:50: For I too am a man under authority with soldiers under me, and I say to one, go, and he goes, and to another, come, and he comes, and to my servant, do this, and he does it.
20:01: Now a centurion was a man who made more money than your average Roman soldier. He is an officer who has a hundred soldiers under him.
20:11: This centurion has more money than Jesus does. Jesus doesn't have any money. He doesn't even have a home.
20:18: As we're going to see as we go on here in Matthew chapter 8, he says the Son of Man doesn't even have a place to lay His head. So this
20:26: Jesus is very clearly poor. And the centurion comes to this
20:31: Jesus and is calling Him Lord. The centurion who has more authority, more social standing than Christ does, and yet refers to Jesus as Lord and acknowledges
20:45: Jesus' authority. He says, if you just say the word, I know this man will be healed.
20:51: And the centurion knows this, and he knows this honestly through general revelation. What do
20:57: I mean by general revelation? Well, it's not by spiritual revelation, or it's not by special revelation. It's not like a vision of God has come to him to go to Jesus and ask of this.
21:07: The centurion knows by general revelation, just by what he's observed. This Jesus has authority.
21:14: He has authority over all things. And I know something about authority because I'm a centurion.
21:20: And I have people who are in authority over me. When they tell me to do something, I go do it. When I tell my soldiers to do something, they go and do it.
21:28: When I tell my servant to go do something, he will go and do it. So the person who has authority just has to say the word, and it will be done.
21:35: So if I go to this Jesus and I ask him to heal my servant, all he has to do is say it, and my servant will be healed.
21:41: He doesn't even have to come and do it. What faith he demonstrates in that.
21:47: And just through that general revelation, recognizing that about the authority of Christ. Because he is known and he is heard about the authority by which
21:55: Jesus taught and the authority by which he had performed these miracles.
22:02: And so it says, following that, when Jesus heard this, verse 10, he marveled.
22:09: Now, I've heard various teachers regard this. Jesus marveling is like he was stunned. He was shocked.
22:14: I never thought I would find somebody with such faith here in Israel. It's not like Jesus is surprised by this.
22:23: His marveling is in this way. This Roman pagan understands better than you children of Israel who have been given the law and the prophets.
22:37: That's the marveling that Jesus does here. And he turns to them and says,
22:43: Truly I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.
22:49: That is a condemning statement for him to say that. It's not like he's congratulating the centurion.
22:57: Oh, good job for your faith. Okay, I'm going to reward your faith by doing this. He actually uses this as an opportunity to condemn
23:03: Israel. Because you have not believed. I tell you,
23:09: Jesus goes on to say in verse 11, Many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness and in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
23:25: This is an incredibly offensive statement that Jesus has just laid down. Because what he has just said here was contrary to what the
23:33: Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes and the teachers of the law, it was contrary to what any of them were saying.
23:39: They were teaching that, hey, all you got to do is be good Jews and you'll go to heaven. But Jesus is saying that there are people that are going to come from outside Israel, from the east and from the west.
23:53: And they're going to come and they're going to recline at table with who? The forefathers of the
23:59: Jews. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They're going to have fellowship with them before you do.
24:08: Even though you think that you inherently deserve this just because you're of this ethnicity, that you're descendants of Abraham.
24:19: I tell you what's going to happen to you. You who believe that you automatically have access to God simply because you were born in the line of Abraham.
24:29: What's going to happen to you is that you will be bound and thrown into the outer darkness in the place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
24:38: This is the way that Jesus describes hell. He talked about hell in the Sermon on the Mount. We had hell talked about in chapter 7 and here we talk about that judgment again in chapter 8.
24:48: Jesus talked about hell more than any other person in the Bible. And as Jesus describes it here,
24:54: He talks about it as a place that there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. So here's how we understand the condition of a person who is burning in hell forever for all eternity.
25:04: If a person dies with sin in their heart, sin that has not been forgiven by Christ, they have not trusted in Christ and been cleansed of all unrighteousness.
25:12: If they die with sin in their heart, their condition will be one of two ways. Either they will grieve over this sin that they never sought forgiveness for, but it will not be a grief that leads to repentance.
25:27: Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians 4. Rather, it is a worldly grief that leads to death.
25:34: And this person who dies in this grief but never repents will be in that grief for all eternity where there will be weeping on the part of that person forever.
25:48: There's another person who has sin in their heart that is not forgiven by Christ. They love their sin.
25:54: They cling to it. And when they die, when they perish in that sin, what happens is that sin consumes them and they become enraged.
26:01: They get mad at God. And they are consumed in this anger forever as they perish under the judgment and wrath of God in eternity gnashing their teeth.
26:17: That's the way that we understand those who are cast into hell under the judgment of God.
26:23: In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. R .C.
26:28: Sproul was explaining this one time, and he said the following. He said, my friends, if it should be so that God's grace is not upon me and that when
26:39: I die I am not of the saved but I am of the condemned and I will be cast into hell.
26:45: He said, I can tell you that I will be among those who will be weeping for all eternity because I knew the truth and did not believe it.
26:58: The truth of the gospel has been presented to us all. The proclamation of Christ and His sacrifice on the cross,
27:06: His resurrection from the grave, that all who believe in Him will be forgiven their sins and given eternal life.
27:13: And so it is for all of us now to come before Christ and say, if it is Your will,
27:19: You can cleanse me. And the scriptures assure us that by faith we will be cleansed.
27:27: Jesus demonstrates this by saying to the centurion, go, let it be done for you as you have believed.
27:34: And the servant was healed at that very moment by the authority of the word of Christ.
27:43: The one who spoke all things into existence when He said, let there be light is the one who speaks salvation into our hearts when we hear the word of His gospel proclaimed and believe it.
27:59: We go on in Matthew 8, verse 14. When Jesus entered Peter's house,
28:05: He saw His mother -in -law lying sick with a fever. His mother -in -law, meaning what?
28:10: Peter was married. He was not the first pope of the Catholic Church. I hate to break it to you.
28:18: He saw His mother -in -law lying sick with a fever and He touched her hand and the fever left her and she rose and began to serve
28:25: Him. That evening they brought to Him many who were oppressed by demons and He cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick.
28:36: This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.
28:43: Once again, it's by the authority and the power of His word that people were healed. And it's by the authority and the power of the word of Christ that we are healed.
28:52: Healed of our sin and the sickness that separates us from God. Now, regarding this verse where it says, this is fulfilling what was spoken by the prophet
29:01: Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore our diseases. Some of you probably remember the story about Gloria Copeland from a couple of years ago.
29:10: Gloria is the wife of Kenneth Copeland. Ken Copeland made the news a few months back when he blew away
29:17: COVID -19. If you saw this, COVID -19, it's still here.
29:24: So, I don't know what he thought he was accomplishing there. But this is not the first time that the Copelands have made the news proclaiming that they have power over sickness and disease.
29:33: A couple of years back, it was Gloria Copeland who was saying that, Jesus is my flu shot.
29:38: If you're walking around saying, I'm going to get the flu, well, then you're going to get the flu because you're speaking that reality into existence.
29:45: So, you need to be saying, I will not get the flu. And you need to put your trust in Jesus because it's by faith in Jesus that you don't get the flu.
29:52: She says, Jesus is my flu shot. She may as well have been saying, scribble, scribble, dot, dot, now
29:58: I got my flu shot. Just saying it is not going to keep her from getting the flu.
30:05: But to justify what it was that she was saying, she borrowed from this verse, Matthew 8, 17.
30:11: This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah. He took our illnesses and bore our diseases, which is a proclamation of Christ in Isaiah 53.
30:20: But when you go to Isaiah 53, you see what's being spoken there by the prophet Isaiah is not about healing our physical sicknesses and diseases.
30:28: It's about healing our spiritual sickness and disease. When our sins were placed upon Christ, who was crushed by the
30:37: Father for our infirmities, so that whoever believes in Him will be forgiven our sins.
30:44: It pleased the Father to crush Him. And then we read, all we like sheep have gone astray.
30:50: We have turned every one of us to His own way, and the Lord has laid upon Him the iniquities of us all.
30:57: We're clearly reading about in Isaiah 53 a sin sickness, not a physical sickness.
31:03: So why is it then that Matthew uses that verse to talk about Jesus healing physical diseases?
31:10: He took our illnesses and bore our diseases. If we're talking about something spiritual in Isaiah 53, why does
31:16: Matthew equate it to something physical? Because the one who has the authority over the physical is the one who has authority over the spiritual.
31:23: If He can heal our physical diseases, He can heal our spiritual diseases. And that's a correlation that's going to be more directly made coming up here in a few verses.
31:34: Let's continue on. Verse 18. Now when Jesus saw a crowd around Him, He gave orders to go over to the other side.
31:41: And a scribe came up to Him and said, Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go. And Jesus said to him,
31:48: Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head. Another of the disciples came to Him and said,
31:56: Lord, let me first go and bury my father. And Jesus said to him, Follow me and let the dead bury the dead.
32:05: As I said to you, following Jesus is difficult. And what Jesus is demonstrating here in these two answers that He gives to these two persons who come to Him and say,
32:13: I will follow you, but first I need to go do this. Jesus is saying you need to leave it all and follow me.
32:22: As I had quoted to you a couple of weeks ago from Luke 9, 23, Jesus saying, If anyone would be my disciple, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily, an instrument of death.
32:35: You must put your desires, yourself to death every day and follow after Jesus.
32:42: Jesus said, Everyone who loves his life will lose it, but everyone who loses his life for my sake will save it.
32:51: And this is the way that we must be. We must have, we must cling to the stuff of this world with such a loose grip that we would be willing to let everything go for the cause of Christ.
33:04: Now, whenever we talk about clinging to the stuff of this world, where does our mind go first?
33:10: We talk about stuff of this world. What fits under the category of stuff? Our things, right?
33:17: Our material possessions, maybe money or financial gain. So we talk about, don't cling too tightly to the stuff of this world.
33:24: Maybe it's easy for you to shrug and go, that's fine. I don't have much stuff anyway. Some of us have way too much stuff and too little space to keep it in.
33:34: That's been our problem. We were attempting to downsize before we knew that we were going to move, and we're having trouble doing that.
33:41: So God help us when we're trying to move. So oftentimes our mind goes towards stuff, but worldly things are not just material.
33:50: They could be immaterial things as well. Like what? Like, yeah, relationships.
33:56: Like popularity. Personal advancement. Opportunity. It may be,
34:04: I just don't want anybody to dislike me. That tendency to want to please everyone. I don't want anyone to hate me.
34:11: So when that's your desire, you would be willing to morph this Christianity that you say that you have into something that doesn't look any longer like biblical
34:20: Christianity, but really just looks like worldliness with the Christian label stuck on it. That way nobody will be too mad at me when
34:27: I say that I'm a Christian. All kinds of people will say that they're Christians and are not really Christians when you go to the scriptures and you evaluate what
34:34: Jesus has said Christianity is. What he has said it means to follow him.
34:40: Coming up here this Tuesday, my birthday, but there's something else. Cold weather, yes.
34:46: Something else that's going to happen on Tuesday. Ligonier and Lifeway, in partnership with one another, are going to release on Tuesday the
34:55: State of Theology survey. They release this survey every other year. What the
35:00: State of Theology survey shows is the general attitude of most
35:06: Americans toward Christianity. Where is it that most Americans sit when it comes to their faith and their beliefs?
35:15: But it shows us more than this, more than what all Americans believe about God or some of these other things.
35:22: It also shows us what evangelicals believe about Christ. My friends,
35:27: I promise you, when this survey comes out on Tuesday, what it's going to reveal to us is a lot of people who fit in this category that we call evangelicalism believe heresy, which means that they really don't believe in Christ at all.
35:44: They believe in a God that they like, but not the God of the Bible. There is a spiritual famine that exists in America right now.
35:55: And we should never just automatically take it for granted that when we ask somebody, hey, are you a believer, and they say, yeah,
36:01: I believe in Jesus, that we go, aha, good. You need to follow that up with a few more questions.
36:07: Because all kinds of people profess to be Christian, and they believe some kind of folk religion. They don't really believe the
36:13: Bible. There are deep truths that have been given to us by Christ that you must believe in order to be saved.
36:20: It takes more than just professing the name of Christ. Remember what we read back in Matthew 7.
36:25: Jesus said, many are going to come to me on that day and say, Lord, Lord, did we not do all this stuff in your name?
36:32: And I'm going to say to them, depart from me, you worker of lawlessness. I never knew you. It takes more than knowing the name of Christ.
36:40: For as James says, even the demons believe and shudder to have fellowship with God.
36:48: We must know Christ for who he is, who the Bible says that he is.
36:54: So we must be willing to follow Christ wherever he tells us to go.
37:00: Willing to give up everything for Christ, no matter what it is. That may be really, really difficult, but as I said to you two weeks ago,
37:08: I promise you, the reward is worth it. You give up everything, but what you gain is
37:17: Christ. And that's the greatest thing that any of us could ever be given.
37:23: Going on into verse 23, we see the power of Christ continue to be displayed, even over creation itself.
37:29: When he got into the boat, his disciples followed him, and behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves, but Jesus was asleep.
37:41: And they went and woke him, saying, Save us, Lord, we are perishing. And Jesus said to them,
37:48: Why are you afraid, O you of little faith? Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.
37:56: And the men marveled, saying, What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?
38:04: There's something that we can learn from this story. And what we learn from this story is this, that a man's ability to sleep through anything is a
38:16: Christ -like quality. I'm just kidding.
38:21: That's not the lesson here. But Jesus is asleep in the boat.
38:27: And I look at that and go, Of course he's asleep during a storm. He's God. He can do anything. The disciples wake him up and said,
38:34: We're going to sink if we don't do something. Jesus rebukes the wind and the waves, and the storm is calm.
38:40: Remember what we read at the end of Matthew 7. The storms come and beat against that house, but it does not fall because it's been built upon the rock.
38:50: Christ has the power and the authority even over these storms. We are built upon the rock who has authority over the wind and the waves that would beat upon this house that has been built in Jesus' name.
39:04: So what have we to fear of anything that may come against us? Christ reigns.
39:12: Now just because we read about here that He took our illnesses and bore our diseases, and that He rebukes the wind and the waves so that the storm is calm, that does not mean, once again, that you will not go through anything difficult in your life.
39:27: You will go through hard things. But these things are to make you rely more upon God who raises the dead.
39:36: The Apostle Paul said that in 2 Corinthians 1, and by chapter 12, he's begging God to take away the thorn from his side, the tormentor of Satan that came to provoke him.
39:49: And as Paul pleads three times for this to be taken away, God's reply, Jesus' reply to Paul is,
39:56: My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.
40:01: Maybe God will heal you. Maybe He won't. But no matter what is going on, do not lose your grip, your grasp on Christ.
40:13: Because His grace is what has saved you. And His grace will bring you home.
40:21: Trust in Christ. Verse 28, When He came to the other side, to the country of the
40:28: Gerardines, two demon -possessed men met Him, coming out of the tombs so fierce that no one could pass that way.
40:36: And, behold, they cried out, What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?
40:44: Now, already these demons have identified Christ with a title more sovereign than anybody else has addressed
40:52: Jesus with in the Gospel of Matthew up to this point. The demons know exactly who this is.
40:58: And by them saying this before Jesus, they make a confession as to who He is.
41:05: In verse 30, Now a herd of many pigs was feeding at some distance from them, and the demons begged
41:10: Him, saying, If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs. And Jesus said to them,
41:15: Go. Again, the authority of the word of Christ, even over the spiritual forces of darkness.
41:21: So the demons came out, and they went into the pigs, and, behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters.
41:29: The herdsmen fled, and going into the city they told everything, especially what had happened to the demon -possessed men.
41:36: And, behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw Him they begged Him to leave their region.
41:43: This story is a foreshadowing of the final judgment that is to come, in which
41:48: Christ will cast into the lake of fire the devil and his angels. Now everyone who followed the devil and his angels will also be cast into that place where once again there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
42:01: But this shows that the authority, the final judgment authority, is given to Christ and to Him alone.
42:09: Now we do not have anything to fear of that final judgment if we are believers in Christ, for we will be standing on the side of victory.
42:19: And Jesus says that we will judge with Him on His throne. Paul says in 1
42:25: Corinthians 6, don't you know that we will even judge the angels, referring to those demons that will be cast with Satan into the lake of fire.
42:35: So we have nothing to fear of that judgment if you are a follower of Christ. But if you are not a follower of Christ, stand in fear, that you may repent and come to know victory that is
42:46: Christ's alone. Matthew 9, Why do you think evil in your hearts?
43:16: For which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven, or to say, rise and walk, but that you may know that the
43:24: Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins? He then said to the paralytic,
43:31: Rise up, pick up your bed, and go home. And he rose and went home.
43:39: And when the crowd saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God who had given such authority to men.
43:48: Christ again speaks a word, and the man is healed. And notice that He says, So that you may know that the
43:56: Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He heals the paralyzed man, a man who has no ability on his own power to do anything.
44:07: And Christ wills that he be healed, that he get up and walk. So once again, this is our illustration.
44:14: Here is the correlation here, that as Christ has the power and authority to forgive illness,
44:19: He has the power and authority to forgive sins. Turn to Christ and live.
44:26: Verse 9, As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him,
44:33: Follow me. And he rose and followed him. This is our author here, autobiographically inserting this little thing here.
44:42: Here's how I came into the service of Jesus. And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners, just like Matthew, came and were reclining with Jesus and His disciples.
44:56: And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?
45:03: But when Jesus heard it, He said, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, go and learn what this means.
45:11: I desire mercy and not sacrifice. For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.
45:18: And my friends, we need to know that of ourselves, that Christ has called us who are sinners to follow
45:25: Him, and He is the one who makes us righteous. Any goodness that we can claim of our own does not come from ourselves.
45:34: It comes from Christ. It has been given to us by Christ. He gives us
45:40: His righteousness that we may live righteously. Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners, nowhere here does it ever say that Jesus tells tax collectors and sinners,
45:51: Go on and continue sinning. He never says such a thing. In fact, He says, Go and sin no more. The righteousness that we have must be demonstrated in that we do the works that Christ did, as it says in 1
46:03: John 2, 5. We not walk any longer in our sins, but we walk in the righteousness that has been given to us by Christ.
46:11: My friends, none of us should ever think that we are saved automatically because we grew up in a
46:17: Christian home. As Jesus had talked about, those who will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
46:25: The Jews thought they were inherently saved because they were descended of Abraham. Well, I don't think there's any ethnic
46:31: Jews in here, but there are probably some of us in here who think that we're automatically saved because my mom and dad were
46:38: Christians, because I went to Sunday school when I was a kid, because I got baptized when I was 11, or something like that.
46:44: We might attribute our faith to something of that nature, but these are not the things that save us.
46:50: Christ is the one who saves us. And we should not depend on anybody else's faith to save us.
46:56: It is our faith in Christ that is this saving grace. I was that wretched sinner that for a while thought
47:08: I'm a Christian because my parents are Christians. But I had to come and realize my own sin, that I had rebelled against God, that what
47:17: I deserved for my sin was the judgment and wrath of God upon me. And in tears
47:24: I turned from my sin and I begged for Christ's forgiveness and desire with my whole heart, soul, mind, and strength to worship
47:34: God and serve Him with everything that I am. Anything that you can say of me by looking at Gabe Hughes and declare righteous,
47:42: I tell you did not come from me. It is the righteousness of Christ that I desire to live by, that He gave to me, and He will give to all who follow
47:53: Him. We go on into verse 14. The disciples of John came to Him saying,
47:59: Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast? And Jesus said to them,
48:05: Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.
48:14: No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment for the patch tears away from the garment and a worse tear is made.
48:22: Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed.
48:29: But new wine is put into fresh wineskins and so both are preserved.
48:34: How we understand this is that we are walking in the Spirit and no longer part of the written code.
48:41: I'll just leave it at that and move on since we've got to finish up here and partake of the Lord's table. Verse 18,
48:46: While He was saying these things to them, behold, a ruler came in and knelt before Him, saying,
48:52: My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her and she will live. And Jesus rose and followed
48:59: Him with His disciples. And behold, a woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for twelve years came up behind Him and touched the fringe of His garment.
49:08: For she said to herself, If I only touch His garment, I will be made well. Jesus turned in seeing her.
49:15: He said, Take heart, daughter. Your faith has made you well. Once again, it is by faith in Christ that we are saved.
49:23: Instantly the woman was made well. And when Jesus came to the ruler's house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion,
49:30: He said, Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping. And they laughed at Him. But when the crowd had been put outside,
49:38: He went in and took her by the hand. And the girl arose. And the report of this went through all of that district, that we may know that Christ has the power over death itself.
49:52: It is by faith we are saved, not of works, so that no man may boast.
49:59: Verse 27, As Jesus passed on from there, two men followed Him, crying aloud,
50:06: Have mercy on us, Son of David. When He entered the house, the blind men came to Him, and Jesus said to them,
50:11: Do you believe that I am able to do this? They said to Him, Yes, Lord. And then He touched their eyes, saying,
50:18: According to your faith, it will be done to you. And their eyes were opened. And Jesus sternly warned them,
50:25: See that no one knows about it. But they went away and spread His fame through all of that district.
50:32: Just as Christ opened the eyes of the blind, so we once were blind, and now we see.
50:39: We're going to sing about that when we conclude our service with Amazing Grace.
50:44: I once was blind, but now I see. In fact, we even read about Jesus giving the mute words to speak.
50:52: Verse 32, As they were going away, behold, a demon -oppressed man who was mute was brought to Him. And when the demon had been cast out, the mute man spoke.
51:01: And the crowds marveled, saying, Never has anything like this been seen in Israel. But the Pharisees said,
51:08: He casts out demons by the prince of demons. Verse 35, Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and affliction.
51:21: When He saw the crowds, He had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
51:29: Then He said to His disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the
51:36: Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest. And here's how we conclude, my friends.
51:44: If you have put your faith and trust in Christ, and you know that He has rescued you from all things, though you may go through difficult things in this life, you know that a day is coming in which all of those things will be taken away forever in glory.
51:59: As it says in Revelation chapter 21, we will be with Him in a place where there is no more sickness, no more death, no more dying, no more evil, no more temptation.
52:08: All of those things will be done. Jesus will wipe away every tear from their eyes. And we will be with Him forever in His perfect kingdom.
52:18: If you have faith in Jesus, you are citizens of that kingdom even now.
52:24: And a day is coming in which your faith shall be made sight. But now as citizens of that kingdom, you have been called to the labor.
52:36: You have heard the gospel and have been saved. Your faith and trust is in Christ who saves.
52:42: And now you must tell others about the Christ who saves. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
52:52: Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.
53:00: There was a time ten years ago when this church prayed for a pastor to fill this pulpit and preach the gospel.
53:12: And by the conviction of Christ upon my heart, I can say without any guilt that that has been done in this church in the eight years that I have been filling this pulpit.
53:26: Pray now that God will raise up another man to be put here to continue to proclaim the word of Christ to His people.
53:37: That those who believe would be saved and those who are saved may be sanctified.
54:57: Sing with joy uplifted, one persecution rage and plague.
55:34: Still trust in your Redeemer's name, now seek.
55:54: So sing with joy of supply, all that you need.
56:26: To bear your weighty cross, or sore affliction, pain, or loss, or deep distress, or poverty, still as your days, your strength shall be.
56:53: So sing with joy afflicted, one the battle's fierce, but the victory's won.
57:08: God shall supply all that you need.
57:17: Yes, as your days, your strength shall be.
57:27: Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.
57:32: For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.
57:38: On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.