Messiah or Demon Possessed? Matthew 9:27-34

What we've already seen in Matthew is that Jesus has done many extraordinary acts.

He did these to help people and not to make an immediate name for himself where people would think wrongly about him.

People are baffled in the Gospels when Jesus tells people not to tell anyone what he had done.

At the beginning of chapter 8, Jesus healed a leper. After he healed him, he told the man not to tell anyone.

But the parallel story in Mark tells us that the leper did not listen to Jesus. Mark 1 45 says the man who was healed went out and began to talk freely about it and to spread the news so that Jesus could no longer enter openly in the towns.

So the man did not listen and this made things harder for Jesus.

But why did Jesus not want the world to know during his ministry that he was the

Messiah sent from God? Theologians call this the messianic secret.

Now, as we have seen thus far in Matthew, some people put the dots together that indeed

Jesus is the Messiah. And on rare occasions, Jesus told people that he was the

Messiah. The woman at the well in John 4 comes to mind. But why was he not shouting on the rooftops saying,

I came to the earth and I am the

Messiah? The answer is because the Jews at this time had a false understanding of who the

Messiah was going to be. They thought the Messiah was going to come in power and drive out their enemies, the

Romans, so that Israel would be the superpower of the world as the

Messiah conquered and reigned. But it was their sin that led them to think this way, to believe this way.

Their mind was on earthly things, not heavenly. The Old Testament is clear that the

Messiah would come in power and reign, yes. But what many Jews missed was that the

Messiah was going to suffer. The most notable Old Testament passage that describes the suffering

Messiah is Isaiah 53, what I read in the call to worship.

Jesus knew the Jews of his day misunderstood the understanding about the true Messiah. When he miraculously healed, this would emphasize his power and he was concerned that if word got out, it would only feed the false understanding of the

Messiah. So he told people, don't tell anyone that I healed you.

He didn't want the whole nation to follow him, believing that this was the time he was going to have only power.

That day would come, but not at his first coming. At his first coming, in one sense, he did come in power as we have seen.

He did so many miracles. He cast out demons. He calmed the storm. He healed people.

But he came for more than that. He came to suffer. Jesus wanted the nation and later the

Gentiles to know the full picture of who he is.

And this public proclamation of his true identity was only appropriate once he suffered and died for the sins of anyone who would believe in him.

Now, this morning, we are going to once again see Jesus heal and then try to maintain his cover.

We are also going to see blasphemy uttered his way from his greatest earthly enemies.

An accusation that is intended to refute that he is the

Messiah. At this time, I encourage you to turn in a Bible with me to Matthew chapter 9.

We'll be looking at verses 27 through 34. If you're using a red Bible in the pews, it's on page 968.

This sermon is titled Messiah or Demon Possessed. And here's our big idea.

Here's what this sermon is calling you to do and to think. Understand who

Jesus is in his fullness. Understand who Jesus is in his fullness. And we'll see two realities that Jesus wants you to know.

But before I jump in, let me give you a little recap of where we were one week ago. We looked at the previous passage, verses 18 through 26.

We saw Jesus heal two people, a woman with chronic blood discharging from her body, and the even greater miracle of raising

Jairus's daughter from the dead. In that text, we saw the faith of Jairus and the woman with discharged blood.

They believed that Jesus could perform these remarkable acts of healing. And this is what we pull out of that text.

This passage called us to exercise extraordinary faith in Jesus. And we saw two reasons why.

The first is that he has a sterling reputation of delivering. And secondly, he comes through when you put yourself out there.

This is the life that God calls us to. A life of faith. A life where God shows up and we thank him and praise him for his wonderful works.

Now this leads us to our text this morning. Let's begin by reading verse 27. And as Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed him, crying aloud, have mercy on us, son of David.

Okay, we'll stop right there. So as we see in this verse, Jesus goes from Jairus's home where he raised from the dead his daughter and he moves on.

He's always on the move. He moves on somewhere else. He traveled from place to place in the

Galilean region and wherever he went, people followed him. The people who followed him were those who suffered.

No one could help them and a man comes that has miraculous power and he heals these people in an instant.

We have seen Jesus heal the sick, demon -possessed people, the lame, and even raising a young girl from the dead.

And now two blind men approach him. We can see the picture here as verse 27 describes.

Jesus is walking by and two blind men follow him. And what we read is that they were crying aloud to him.

And what the Greek verb tells us here is that this crying was continuous. They're crying aloud to him, son of David, have mercy on us.

Now the word mercy carries with it a few definitions. It can mean that God does not give us what we deserve.

This is how we understand mercy in the context of salvation. Romans 9 .23 is an example of this.

God does not treat us as our sins deserve. He forgives us of our sins. But mercy also carries a different meaning.

According to theologian Wayne Grudem, God's mercy can be defined as helping those in misery.

This is what we see here in verse 27. Notice how these two blind men address

Jesus. We can be almost certain that these are Jews from the fact that they call him son of David.

Of the four Gospels, the Gospel of Matthew is the most Jewish of them. This Gospel had mostly a

Jewish audience in mind, while the other Gospels had a broader focus to the

Gentiles. One notices this right at the beginning of Matthew's Gospel in chapter 1 verse 1.

In that verse, Matthew wrote, Matthew who also is a Jew, he wrote the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

In this Gospel, Matthew traces the genealogy from Abraham all the way to Christ.

And what he says is that Jesus is the son of David. The title of son of David is a very important title.

From the Old Testament, we know that it is a messianic title.

God made several covenants in the Old Testament with the people of Israel that would benefit all of God's people.

One of the covenants is known as the Davidic covenant. This is what the Lord told

David in 2 Samuel chapter 7 verses 12 through 16. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers,

I will raise up your offspring after you who shall come from your body and I will establish his kingdom.

He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son.

When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men.

But my steadfast love will not depart from him as I took it from Saul who

I put away before you and your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me.

Your throne shall be established forever. This is the promise that the

Lord made to David. A forever throne.

So, as modern people, we are fascinated with kings and queens and princes and princesses.

They're almost like a fairy tale from times long ago. In England, we still have them and we're fascinated by royalty.

But in most places in the world, there are no kings. And even in the case of England, the royalty does not exercise power but leaves that to the prime minister and parliament.

So, as we think about royalty, it is a pastime. Something from ages gone by.

Historically, the nation of Israel had a long line of kings. They had a united monarchy and then a divided monarchy that followed.

The united monarchy existed under the kings Saul, David, and Solomon. But after Solomon, the kingdom became divided into two.

There was the northern kingdom and then there was the southern kingdom. The people of Israel plunged into sin and God judged them for their sin by sending foreign enemies to pillage them and take them captive.

This happened first to the kingdom in the north who were even more sinful than those in the south.

In 722 BC, the Assyrians pillaged and took captive northern

Israel. Then in 605 BC, it came time for the south, the southern kingdom to be taken into captivity when the

Babylonians were sent by God to judge his people. And once this happened, there were no kings in Israel.

The people of Israel longed for the final king to come, the

Messiah. He would bring to fulfillment what the Davidic covenant promised. As 2

Samuel 7 16 says, your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me.

Your throne shall be established forever. This is what

Israel was looking for. In our text, this is what these blind men were looking for.

These were two Jewish blind men who believed that Jesus was the Messiah.

At this point in Jesus' ministry, he had done so many miracles. We have read about them and the response to these miracles.

The crowds followed him wherever he went, amazed at him. It was the weak and downtrodden who were most drawn to him.

And we see this here. They were desperately crying to Jesus, Lord, have mercy on us.

Then we get the predictable response from Jesus in verse 28. When he entered the house, the blind men came to him and Jesus said to them, do you believe that I am able to do this?

They said to him, yes, Lord. So what we see here is that Jesus enters the house.

This is presumably Peter's house. This would have been the main place where Jesus and the disciples spent most of their time.

And as he's in the house, these blind men that have been following him follow him right into the house. And Jesus says to them, do you think that I can heal you?

And they say immediately with relief and excitement, yes, Lord, we believe that you can heal us.

Full of faith. Now, as you've seen in Matthew, most of the cases when

Jesus healed someone, the people had faith and the response to their faith is that he would heal that person.

The same happens here. These men have faith. And this is what Jesus did and said in verse 29.

Then he touched their eyes saying, according to your faith, be it done to you.

And their eyes were opened. So Jesus touches their eyes and says, because you have believed, you are healed.

Once again, we need to understand how remarkable this is. Jesus is able to do what no one else can. He puts his hands on their eyes.

He prays to his father and just like that, instantly they are healed.

We also need to put ourselves in the shoes of these two men. We don't know how long they had been blind, but it may be that they've been blind from birth, never seen the light of day.

What a difficult existence that would be extraordinarily difficult existence.

We take so much for granted in our lives. To be able to see

God's world is such a wonderful gift. And these blind men, having been blind for so long, are finally now able to see.

To say that they were excited and joyful is an understatement. But as I mentioned in the introduction,

Jesus does not want this known to the masses of people.

He doesn't want the message of his power to be known to the

Israelites, to all the Israelites, that is, because they have the wrong understanding of the

Messiah. So this is what Jesus tells them in the second half of verse 30. He says to them,

Jesus sternly warned them, see that no one knows about it.

Matthew uses the adjective stern here to emphasize how clear Jesus was to these men.

You can just see it point blank looking in their eyes. Don't tell anyone that I healed you.

Jesus is telling them, do not tell anyone that I did this. He wanted to heal the men, but he did not want his fame to spread everywhere.

He did not want the people to think that Jesus had come in power with no weakness and suffering planned and that he was here to stay and reign over his enemies like the people thought.

Jesus wanted his message to be at the forefront, the full message. People needed to believe that he came to die for sins.

People needed to understand that if they were going to be in his kingdom, they needed to repent and trust in him. This wasn't a fleshly kingdom, a prideful kingdom where we said, you know what?

We get you back. We've been living under your power this whole time. And finally he came and look who's in power now.

No, that's sinful to think of it that way. Because when people say that need a savior, they need to see their sin.

The only way these people are going to enter this kingdom is if they believe in this Messiah as their savior.

It's interesting that historically some men took advantage of the people's expectations of what they thought the

Messiah was going to be. As one studies history, it's interesting to learn that many try to make a name for themselves, posing as the long awaited king to save Israel, to bring them back to their glory days, to bring them to a place where they'd never been before, even more powerful than the

United Monarchy when David and Solomon were king. These frauds deceived many.

According to some Jewish historians, there have been 64 messianic pretenders.

All of them fit the bill of this false understanding of who the Messiah was going to be. The Jewish historian

Josephus wrote that there was an increase in messiahs about 30 years after Jesus left the earth.

You know, the Jews don't believe that Jesus is the Messiah. And if you believe that Jesus is the

Messiah, you're a Christian. Modern day Jews do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah. So after Jesus was on the earth, there were still many

Jews. In fact, most of the Jews rejected Christ, rejected

Jesus as the Messiah, and they continued to believe that there was a Messiah coming, one that would fit their expectations.

And there was an increase 30 years after Jesus left the earth, leading up to the

Jewish revolt against Rome. There was one man in particular,

Simon Bar Kochba, who many believed to be truly the

Messiah. In fact, the most respected rabbi of this time, Rabbi Akiba, he is documented as saying that he thought this man,

Simon Bar Kochba, was the Messiah. This man led a revolt against the

Romans with destructive results for the Jews. But what happened in 70 AD is that this revolt happened.

And what the Romans did is they not only defeated the revolt, but they destroyed the temple in Jerusalem.

These messianic pretenders were successful. They were able to fool people because they fed the sinful desires of the

Jewish population, that one would come in power and deliver them. Jesus understood this well, so he didn't want to be mistaken for one of these pretenders.

So he told them, don't tell anyone. Jesus came so differently from these false messiahs.

He wasn't looking for this special attention. He knew that he would get attention in time. He knew that people would worship him in time.

But he didn't want to feed the sinful desires of the population. We've already seen

Jesus tell people not to tell his identity in Matthew.

He told the leper, as we already saw in chapter 8, verse 4, he said in that passage, say nothing to anyone.

And then as we saw in Mark 1 .45, the leper goes out and tells everybody. You think the blind men are going to follow what the leper did?

Yes. Let's read verse 31. But they went away and spread his fame through all that district.

So I guess the inability to keep a secret is not a modern thing. Jews in the first century had a hard time keeping secrets and all they did by spreading the word was advancing a false message that Jesus did not want to send.

What the Gospels tell us is that Jesus had many people that followed him for the wrong reasons. In John chapter 2, verses 23 through 25, there's an account that describes this very well.

That account says many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people and he did no one to bear witness about man.

For he himself knew what was in man. What John is saying is that people thought he was a miracle worker.

People had a false understanding of this Messiah.

They followed Jesus, but they didn't follow him for the right reasons. And so they were not true followers.

These were thrill seekers. These are people who wanted power. These were people who wanted to ride on someone's coattails to benefit him or herself.

They were worldly. They were impressed with strength. But the moment these people realized that following Jesus would come at a cost, they would jump ship.

Judas is a great example of this. And what a tragedy it is. Judas followed

Jesus until it became inconvenient. And then we know what he did.

He sold Jesus for 30 pieces of silver to make money off of him to get something out of it.

He considered it a failed experiment. Three years with Jesus. Now he's going to die. Let's get something out of this.

Let's sell him. In our day, it's very common for people to follow

Jesus for the wrong reasons. This happens all the time. Some people think that Jesus was one of the many teachers in world history that we can learn from.

They take what they like and leave out what they don't. But they still call themselves Christians. You hear people say this.

We don't believe everything the Bible says. Let's just take what we like, leave out what we don't. You know, those passages about suffering, those passages about dividing families, dividing friends.

Let's just leave those out. Those passages about dying for him. Let's just leave those out.

But we like his moral commands because it makes life better. That's common.

And they call themselves Christians. But there's nothing distinctly Christian about these people.

They are of the world. Others follow Jesus because he will fix your life. This is where some unbiblical pastors operate as life coaches.

Jesus will fix your life if you follow him. But the cross, the great need for deep spiritual growth and preparation for persecution is not the focus of these ministries.

Adrian Rogers once said, he said the problem with modern day pastors is that nobody wants to kill them.

That should jar us as we hear that. But isn't that true? Look at the prophets of the Old Testament. They died.

Look at the early church. They died. It's true. I mean, if you preach certain things in certain places, you better duck.

People are going to probably throw stuff at you. And many of these people who get sucked into these ministries follow

Jesus as their fixer and they're not real Christians. And churches like these will be in decline in America as it's becoming harder to be a biblical

Christian in this country. These so -called irrelevant churches will ironically be irrelevant as they do not address people's deepest needs.

Then you have those who follow Jesus when it's fashionable. It used to be this way in America.

This is known as cultural Christianity. Not too long ago, three fourths of Americans identified themselves as Christians.

This number is in rapid decline, as I mentioned, because it's becoming harder and harder to be a

Christian in America. It's becoming more unpopular to be a Christian in this country.

Now it's becoming fashionable to say you're not a Christian, but that you just love all people and we can find things from every religion that are good.

That's becoming fashionable. Lots of people believe, okay, with quotation marks, for the wrong reasons.

So these people I mentioned above would say, I am a follower of Jesus, but Jesus says you are not my follower.

If they were, they would do what he tells them no matter how popular it is in the world.

The life of following Jesus is a life of full surrender. Just as we're saying today, a life of full surrender to him.

It comes at a cost. But it's the only path where there's fullness of joy forever.

Jesus wants everyone to know his true messianic identity. He wants people to believe in him for who he is in his fullness.

These are the people he wants to follow him. The ones who understand who he is and what he came to do and what his plan is for them.

These are his followers. These are the ones who are the true Christians in this world. And that number is not real big.

But that number is always growing. Even though cultural Christianity shrinks, this number is growing because God is always working in people's hearts.

And when people see Christianity for what it is, when people see Jesus as precious as the precious

Messiah and God that he is, it doesn't matter if it's popular or not. You're going to follow him.

So understand who Jesus is in his fullness. The first reality that Jesus wants us to know is that he is not the Messiah of man's imagination.

The second reality that Jesus wants us to know and to understand who he is in his fullness is he does not get any of his power from an evil source.

We'll see this in verses 32 through 34. Now that Jesus has healed the two blind men and tried to uphold his true messianic identity, another man approaches him.

Let's read this in verse 32. As they were going away, behold, a demon -oppressed man who was mute was brought to him.

Okay, let's stop right there. Jesus leaves the house where he healed the two blind men and a demon -possessed man is brought to him.

We learn that he is mute. To be mute is it's more than muting your

TV and having silence. Mute means you can't speak, you can't communicate.

It's interesting and frightening the different ways that demons torment people. We've already seen this in this gospel.

Legions of demons terrorized two men, drove them out into the wilderness. They couldn't even put these people in shackles and keep them down because these demons were so powerful and were just tormenting these men.

But what we saw is that these demons are no match for Jesus. At the end of chapter 8, we saw the legion of demons terrified at Christ.

They asked Jesus not to throw them into the lake of fire before the time. At their request,

Jesus sent them into pigs and 4 ,000 pigs go down the hill and drown in the water.

As we might expect, the people that witness this event are amazed at Jesus' power, just like the people were in that event with the pigs.

Let's see this response in verse 33. And when the demon had been cast out, the mute man spoke and the crowds marveled, saying, never was anything like this seen in Israel.

These were people who were accustomed to seeing people who were demon -possessed.

Demon possession still happens, of course, but it was really rampant at this time in history. They knew how powerful demons could be.

And yet this Galilean man with a word cast out these powerful spirit beings.

The response of these people is that they marveled. Another meaning this

Greek word carries is to be in admiration. They admire Jesus.

They're in awe of him for what he has done. Moments of admiration are fascinating.

We have these in our life where we just stop and we say, I've never seen anything like that before.

A musician who composes a symphony, an artist who paints a masterpiece, an author who writes a spectacular story, an athlete that performs a great athletic feat.

I'm one who likes athletics and sports, and I admire great athletic achievements.

In 1954, Roger Bannister, a British man, became the first human in world history to break four minutes in the mile.

When he crossed the line, the crowd didn't know whether or not he had broken four minutes. They knew he was close. They knew he was on pace.

The announcer came on and said the number three, and the crowd just roared. They didn't even care what the rest of the time was.

His time was 3 .59 .4. People for years had said it was humanly impossible to break four minutes in the mile, but Bannister did, and the whole world was amazed.

Now, this illustration pales in comparison to what Jesus accomplished before this crowd. We can assume that the people who witnessed him cast out this demon knew of his miracles, and maybe some of them had yet to see it themselves.

But in an instant, this demon leaves these men. The people proclaimed in verse 33, never was anything like this seen in Israel.

They witnessed a remarkable event unlike anything else. But while the crowd was amazed, the main nemesis of Jesus during his earthly ministry was present.

We've seen this throughout the Gospel of Matthew. They lurk in the shadows trying to debunk him, trying to call everything out, trying to write him off, trying to slander him, blaspheme him.

So the crowd's amazed. But as we might guess, this main nemesis is not.

The masses believe this man is from God as they see him do this miracle, whether their belief is sound or not at this point.

But the Pharisees say something that is enormously evil in verse 34. This is what they say.

But the Pharisees said he casts out demons by the prince of demons.

And we know who the prince of demons is, Satan. The Pharisees say that his power is not from God, but rather from the devil.

It was impossible for the Pharisees to deny that he did something extraordinary, that he did something miraculous.

But their hard heart would not let them believe. Later on in Matthew chapter 12, verses 22 through 32,

Jesus kills another demon -possessed man. We'll see this down the road. And the Pharisees say the same thing there.

But this is how Jesus responded to them in verse 25 of that section. Jesus said every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste.

And no city or house divided against itself will stand. And if Satan casts out

Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?

Then he says in verse 28, if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

What Jesus is saying is, if I were doing this through satanic power, why would

I be working against myself? Why would Satan cast out Satan? What he tells them is, it must be through the

Spirit of God that I do this. And what this means is that the kingdom of God is upon you because the king is in your midst.

The Pharisees are denying reality. These are very evil people. And remember, they are the ones that think that God is for them because they care about the intricate details of the law.

But nothing can be further from the truth. These are very evil people. What they are doing is attributing the work of God to Satan, the works of Jesus to the devil.

Now, this brings up an interesting topic. Now, the passage I just referenced, Matthew chapter 12, talks about the unforgivable sin.

People often ask, is there an unforgivable sin? Well, there is one.

In Matthew 12 verse 32 mentions it. Jesus says, whoever speaks a word against the

Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

What Jesus means in that context is that if anyone attributes the source of Jesus' power to demons and not to the

Spirit of God, like it really was during his ministry, then that person will not be forgiven.

So these Pharisees committed the unforgivable sin. And what we can conclude is that they are in hell right now because they committed the unforgivable sin.

There is no forgiveness waiting for them. When we think of people that have passed, even if they weren't believers here on earth, we have this hope that maybe they repented at the end of their life.

But there are times, very, I think, rare times where we can say that someone is in hell.

And this is one of those times because we read it right here. They committed the unforgivable sin.

And people even ask, can we still commit the unforgivable sin? I have one professor in seminary who said that the unforgivable sin was only something that could happen in the first century.

They were around the God -man. He's doing all these miracles in their midst. He's doing it through the power of the

Holy Spirit. And they say that's from Satan. That's the unforgivable sin. It's interesting.

Some believe in the present day that it's generally just rejection of Christ.

You don't think Jesus is who the Bible says he is. So that is the unforgivable sin.

But I tend to think it's more of that narrow focus that one of my professors believed.

But it's a very interesting topic. We need to understand, though, the source of Jesus' power.

His power is from God. And as we have seen in Matthew, He is

God. And let's not be afraid to say that on the public square.

Jesus is God. And everyone will bow their knee to Him. And His power is from God.

And as we have seen in Matthew, He is fully God. He is fully man.

And during His ministry, He did His works through the power of the Holy Spirit, who also is

God. And He had the greatest power of all because of this. The source of His power is the only

God. Satan and demons have extraordinary power.

They do. Without God, they are more powerful than humans. But it's nothing compared to the power of Jesus.

They are subject to Him. And one day, He will throw Satan and his demons into the lake of fire with a word, just like He so easily showed power over them during His ministry.

So we are to understand who Jesus is in His fullness. We have seen two realities that Jesus wants us to see in this text.

And I've stated both of these in the negative. He is not the man of man's imagination, and He does not get any of His power from an evil source.

It's so important that we understand who Jesus is in His fullness. He is the suffering

Messiah, and He is the reigning Messiah. He has the power of God, and His power is so much greater than the power of Satan.

And why is it so important for us to understand this? We need to understand because by knowing who

Jesus truly is, we know what He expects from us. We can only be true followers by believing in the true

Jesus. The Jesus that is explained in full through the prophecies of the

Old Testament and through everything the New Testament says about Him.

You know, you talk to Mormons. You talk to Jehovah Witnesses. You talk to Muslims.

You talk to secular people. They all got it wrong. They all have a false understanding of who

Jesus is. Only the Bible tells us the true understanding of who

He is. And if we understand who Jesus is, if we worship

Him for who He is, then we are truly His. And you do not belong to the devil, like so many in the world do.

But you belong to the light. You belong to Him. And Satan, the world, and your own sinful nature have no firm, lasting hold on you.

As Jesus says, My sheep hear My voice. I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of My hand.

You are clenched in His hand, and you are forever His. It's wonderful to understand that.

And we know that we belong to Him if we believe who He really is, and if we live out our faith, if we do what

He tells us to do, as is written so clearly in the pages of Scripture.

Now next Sunday, we are going to wrap up chapter nine.

Many are lost in this world. The world needs the Good Shepherd. And maybe we've seen that more in 2020 and in 2021 so far than ever before.

The world needs the Good Shepherd. And the world needs Christians. And we will see this great need that Jesus stresses next

Sunday. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in heaven, it's such a blessing to come here every week and to hear the truth.

Lord, we live, as it has been said, in a post -truth world. People do not care about the truth.

They care about power, their agenda, their advancements.

But judgment day is coming. And we must be in a right relationship with You.

Because if someone doesn't care about the truth, it doesn't change the fact that the truth is still there.

That the truth of the Bible is so clearly spoken. And Lord, the word is heralded everywhere around the world today.

And as you think about pulpits all over the world today, the truth is being spoken. And I pray that the Spirit, Lord, would do a great work everywhere all over the world, including in our midst.

I know there's a lot of people who made it today because of the weather. But everyone who can hear us, maybe people watching or listening,

I ask, Lord, that you would meet everyone right where they are at with this message, with what this text is telling us.

Indeed, Jesus is the Messiah. And those who belong to Him are safe from the hand of the devil, as we are in the clench of His hands forever, safely and joyfully forever.

So, Lord, use this message. Use the power of Your Word, through the power of the

Holy Spirit, to impact people. For Your glory, in Jesus' name,