Do you know why he talked like
that? You do, don't you? Because he can do whatever he
pleases. But how do you talk that way?
How does a man talk like he can do what he wants? Well, you say
things like this, all authority is given unto me in heaven and
in earth. all authority. You say things
like this, as the father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them,
even so the son gives life to whom he will. For the father
judgeth no man but hath committed all judgment unto the son. All decision making, all verdict
rendering, all deciding of every case, is mine." That's how you
talk like you can do what you want. You say things like this, as
the father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the son to
have life in himself, and hath given him authority to execute
judgment also. In other words, given to a man,
the man, the God-man has the authority from God power, the
ability to give life to whoever he wills. And that's the judgment,
to execute judgment in that. In other words, to discern in
that, to make a decision. Authority to decide who gets
it. That's what he's saying. You make statements like this,
this is how somebody talks when they do what they please. They
walk up perhaps maybe to a lame man, a man that can't walk. And
everybody's expecting you to say, arise and take up your bed
and walk. They'd heard about him, they
knew he had that kind of power. But instead of saying that, he
says this instead, your sins are forgiven. your sins are forgiven you." They were astonished at that.
They said, who can forgive sins but God only? That's a good question,
isn't it? Who can go around talking like
that? Who can go around just talking
like they can do whatever they want? The one who does what he
wants. And he said, what would be easier
for me to say, thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, arise and walk,
but that you may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth
to forgive sins." You see, you answer the question, what is
the gospel, not by defining it, but by preaching
it. You can define the gospel without
preaching it. Our Lord Jesus Christ preached
it. He preached himself, and that's what I want to do. I want
to preach him. And then he said to the sick
of the palsy, arise, take up thy bed, and walk, and go into
thine house. And he arose and departed to his house. It's easier
just to say, thy sins be forgiven thee, isn't it? Because nobody
can really verify that. You can say that and there's
no outward way to prove whether they are or not. But if you say,
rise, take up your bed and walk, somebody better get up or you're
a fraud. But our Lord said the easier
thing and the harder thing to say, but which is harder to do? Think about it this way, if our
Lord said to this man, This lame man carried on a couch by his
loved ones, unable to get up, unable to do anything for himself. If he said to him, rise, take
up your bed and walk, and he did, what do you think happened
when he said, your sins are forgiven? His sins were forgiven, weren't
they? His sins were gone. Do you think he had a sense of
that, that the Lord gave him a... Was there any feeling involved
in that? I don't know. But let me ask
you tonight, has the Lord given you some realization of that? Do you know in your heart that
by his grace, because of his sin-cleansing precious blood,
that your sins are gone? Do you know that? It doesn't
get any better than that, does it? So our Lord spoke like somebody
would speak if they could do anything that they want, and
we have to speak that way too. Not like we could do anything
we want, obviously, but we need to speak of the one who does
what he wants. We need to speak as though our
Savior can do what he wants, because he can. He does. He does
as he pleases in the armies of heaven. And among the inhabitants
of this earth, and none can stay his hand or say unto him, or
even question him, even say unto him, what are you doing? You remember the two things that
Job learned on the ash heap. In Job chapter 42, would God
put a man through what he put Job through, the loss of everything
else but himself. To teach him these two things,
I know that thou canst do everything. and that no thought can be withholding
from thee." And if you look in your margin, what that means,
no thought can be withholding from thee? That means no thought
of thine can be hindered. All you have to do is think it.
It's done. That Christ, the sovereign Christ, He's the gospel. He is the good
news. What did the angels say? We have
good tidings of great joy. We've got a gospel for you. What
is it? The angels came down from heaven
to say, we have a gospel for you. What is it? Unto you this
day in the city of David is born a savior. The gospel is a person. He's the sovereign son of God
who does as he pleases. and bless His holy name, the
One who does what He wants to do. Do you know what He wants
to do? He wants to have mercy on sinners like me and you. That's
what He wants to do. That's what He did here in our
text. Do you want to astonish somebody? Go into one of these
freewill Baptist churches like the one I grew up with and preach
and show from the Word of God as our Lord did in the context
We don't have his actual words that he spoke here except all
through the scriptures we do. But go to one of these free will
Baptist churches and preach and show from the word of God how
that salvation has nothing to do with anything that they do, will do, have ever done. Tell
them that salvation is completely given or withheld at the sovereign
discretion of the Son of God. That He'll give it to you if
He wants to. If He don't want to, He won't. And that's how
sinners are saved. Speak to them, in other words,
as though Christ does what He wants. Without consideration
of their decisions, their will, their works, of any kind. He
just saves who He wants to save. That'll do it. That'll astonish
them, won't it? And it still astonishes me, doesn't
it, you? I pray that it always will. I pray that it always will. Teach the doctrine that our Lord
taught. You see, our Lord taught these religious Pharisees and
scribes and said that the religious Jews, that their problem before
God, your sinnerhood is not the bad things that you do. He taught
them that it is out of your heart that evil comes. He said to them,
quit cleaning the outside of the cup and understand that what
has defiled the outside is the inside. Your problem is your
heart, your will. Your will is not the solution
to your problem. Your will is your problem. If you want to
see what your will is, we were talking, Last night, I believe it was,
and somebody said, the only way to know what sin is is to look
to Calvary. And boy, that's the truth, isn't
it? Ye who think of sin but lightly,
nor suppose the evil great here may view its nature rightly.
Here its guilt may estimate. Mark the sacrifice appointed.
See who it is that bears the load. But you know what, the
truth is that if you want to know what anything is worth knowing,
you're going to have to look to the cross, aren't you? You want to know what sin is?
Look to Calvary. You want to know what love is? Herein is
love. Not that we loved God, but that
he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our
sin. You want to know what holiness is? Look to Calvary. Quit cleaning the outside of
the cup. The defilement is on the inside. Our problem, our
heart, our will. You wanna know what man's free
will is? Look to Calvary. They released
him unto the people's will. And that's what we did. We spit
on him and beat him with our fists. Pounded his face with
our fists. And lashed him. and mocked him, nailed him to
a cross, and laughed at him while he bled out. There's the will
of man right there. That would astonish most people
now, but that's basic gospel truth, isn't it? That's just
basic. What we are, who we are, we all ought to go to hell. We
all richly deserve God's eternal wrath. Sin is not a disease that
you catch in the sense that you're a victim of some kind, of something
that's beyond your control. Sin is you. The truth of our
sin is that you and I are evil. You're a bad person. Would that
astonish most people? If you went down to the Methodist
church and said that, you're a bunch of bad people. We deserve God's unmitigated
punishment forever. Nothing we can do can change
that. We are hanging upon his mercy. We stand before him guilty. He taught them that their religious
heritage as Jews, that which they prized the most, that was
their trust, their hope. He said, it's worthless. It's
worthless. He taught them that the only
hope for any sinner, Jew or Gentile, was himself alone. Come to me
and I'll give you what you need. I am what you need. You will
not come to me that you might have life. If I make you free,
you'll be free indeed. As I believe Brother Todd expounded
on, you know who that's good news to? That's gospel to somebody
that's in prison. Spiritual bondage. But it wasn't
good news to those Jews, was it? They said, what do you mean
by that? They had a problem with that.
There's the son of God saying, I'll make you free. I'll make
you palm free. And they had a problem with that. Self-righteous, free will. Pride. That's how. A sinner can hear
the glad tidings of great joy and walk away mad because of
what we are. Our Lord walked around not only
talking like somebody that does what they want, he walked around
doing things that only somebody who does as they please can do.
He walked through crowds of people. I thought of the pool of Bethesda,
people with dire needs, wretched people. diseased and deformed and wretched and he would single
out individuals and heal them fully for no good reason. You know what I mean by that,
don't you? No good. Why that one? Why me? Why didn't
the Lord Jesus Christ give everybody at the pool of Bethesda a chance?
Why didn't he stand there and say, I want to give everybody
a chance to be saved? He went right to that one wretched
man and said, what about you? Will you be made whole? And the
man didn't even say yes, and he made him whole anyway. All he did was complain about
how he couldn't, but I don't know, I just, nobody will help
me. Rise. And he still does things the
same way this morning. He may heal you this morning,
this evening. He may heal you. He can heal
everybody here if he wants to, can't he? There were times when
they brought everybody, the sick, the lame, the blind, the deaf,
and he says he healed every one of them. At the Pool of Bethesda,
he singled out one person. He may heal one, he may heal
everybody. He may not heal anybody tonight
here in this place. Look at the response to his doctrine
and his authority in verses 33 and 34. In the synagogue, there was a
man which had a spirit of an unclean devil. And cried out
with a loud voice saying, leave us alone. What have we to do
with thee, thou Jesus? Of Nazareth, I think about that,
here's a here's a church full of people. And there was a man
there that it was made known that day that he had a demon
inside of him. Can you imagine very many things
more horrible than that? To be controlled by a demon? And I imagine we're not told
that he was the only one there that had a demon. We know that
he did. You reckon he was the only one there? And how long
had that demon been going to church before it became clear
to everybody what he was? How long had he been going there
and worshiping God before the Lord revealed what
he was? And how many are there like that?
You remember when the disciples said, Lord, is it I? He said,
one of you is going to be going to betray me. And they said,
Lord, is it me? Am I the wretch that's going
to betray you? Am I the devil? Am I the one? But on this day,
this one was revealed to be what he was. And look what he said.
He speaks for all freewill anti-Christ religion when he says that. Leave
us alone. Leave us alone. We're having
church and you're messing it up. Think about that. We've been
worshiping here for years without any disruption, without any controversy. And now here you come and mess
all that up. Just leave us to our religious rituals and routine.
Leave us to our free wills and our decisions for God. We're
busy deciding things for God. Leave us alone. We're busy recognizing
people. We're busy giving our braggamonies.
We've got a play to put on this morning. We're trying to get
people to let God save them. Leave us alone. The presence
of our Lord Jesus Christ would absolutely ruin just about all
of what passes for worship in our generation, and you know
that's right, don't you? The actual word of God would
not be welcome in most so-called churches. A
Christ with authority now. A Lord Jesus who does as he pleases,
when he pleases, with whom he pleases, has no place in what
passes for a church these days, nor then. Everybody loves Jesus,
but the Lord Jesus Christ is not welcome. Leave us alone. The Lord Jesus Christ. That's
the character in which we crucified him. Who did we spit on? Who did we beat with our fists? Who did we nail to a cross and
mock as he hung there? Jesus the King. We wrote it right
up over his head. This is who we hate, the King.
What do we have to do with you, he said. What do we have to do
with you? What a question. And how sad. How sad. They were having church, they
were worshiping, they were having their religion, and it had nothing
to do with him. Hmm. Have you come to destroy
us, he said? Have you ever wondered when these
demon possessions that are recorded in the Word of God in Scripture,
have you ever wondered There's a man, a sinner, with a demon
inside of him. And they say things like this,
leave us alone. We don't want anything to do
with you. Is that the man talking or the
demon talking? Have you ever wondered that?
You know what? There's not a lick of difference.
There's not a lick of difference. There is no one or the other.
It's the same thing. And I've had to wonder this in
my life some. You know, when I hear people
say, I've heard more than one person say, you know, there's
a whole lot more in the Bible besides Jesus Christ. And when I hear that, you have
to wonder, don't you? Is that a demon talking? Or a man? Same thing. It's the same thing. Our Lord
said to the Apostle Peter, get thee behind me, Satan, because
he savored the things that be of man and not the things that
be of God. It's indistinguishable, isn't
it? We read in John 13, 27 that Satan entered into Judas Iscariot
and he betrayed the Son of God for 30 pieces of silver. Does Satan still do that? Is
he still allowed to do that? He doesn't have the ability to
do that unless he's allowed. Maybe we ought to just avoid
that question so we don't scare our children. What do you think?
Let me tell you this. Let me say this about that. If
you hate Christ tonight, if you refuse and reject the Lord Jesus
Christ, if you just want the Son of God to leave you alone
and let you get on with your life, then demons are not your
biggest problem. Your problem is God. The thing of demon possession,
this story, this demon possessed man in the scripture, just a
picture of our sin problem by nature. Just like lepers and
lame people and blind, we're blind. All those are pictures
of our condition by nature. In this here, demon possessed,
we're evil on the inside. There's no difference between
the demon talking and us talking. And this is not a matter of the
devil made me do it. This is a question of us being
so evil that Satan feels at home in us. We're evil. We are satanic by nature. We
are helplessly dominated by sin. Dominated, controlled by our
sin nature. And again, that's not a foreign
entity, and that's what we are. That's what we are. Satan just
feels at home there, because we're wretched, we're evil, we're
vile in and of ourselves. I love what Brother Frank said
about that, how that we're not, we're not dominated, we're not,
sin doesn't reign in us anymore. And that was such a blessing,
the way that he, when he, he said that, and then he asked
this question, what is it that kept you from believing on Christ?
And I said, oh, that's what that means. Not anymore. We believe. Lord, help our unbelief, but
we believe. We believe sin can't do that
anymore. Sin shall not have dominion over
you. That's the way Paul put it. Sin shall not have dominion
over you. But it did. It did at one time. Our evil nature. We need to be
saved. What a wretched condition. We
need to be saved. We're a walk in hell. We're spewing
defilement everywhere we go and corruption, and we can't help
ourselves. How long would that Gadarene demoniac, how long would
he have lived among the tombs, cutting himself and raging and
defying all containment or any attempted constraint of his wretchedness? How long would he have gone on
like that if the Lord hadn't come where he was? We need the Lord Jesus Christ,
the one who does what he wants, to come where we are. We need
for him to want to save us. That's what that leper came to
find out, wasn't it? Matthew chapter eight. He came
to find out, Lord, will you? I know you can. I need to know. Will you make me clean? We need a ray of heavenly light
to shine in our hearts, which only God, who said, let there
be light, can shine there. And if he does, when and if he
does, we will see the horror of our case. That's not all we'll see. We'll
see his glory in the face of his son. We'll see the Lord Jesus
Christ, our only hope, and we'll cry, Jesus, thou son of David,
have mercy on this wretch. Now notice that this demon knows
who Christ is. I know you're the holy one of
God. The problem with religious sinners is not that they don't
know who Christ is. That's not their problem. They
don't know him in the saving of sin. They don't know him spiritually
in a saving knowledge of him in the sense that that our Lord
said, this is life eternal, that they may know thee the only true
God and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. They don't know him
in that sense, but they know who he is in their head. You can't
hate somebody you don't know. The problem is not that people
don't know him. The problem is people don't like
him. They don't like him. This is why this demon knew he
didn't want to have anything to do with him because he knew
who he was. He wanted Christ to leave him alone. People like
a Jesus who died for everybody and wants to save everybody,
but they hate the Christ who actually redeemed every sinner
that he died to redeem. That's the holy one of God. That's
the one who does what he wants to do. Do you realize that if
we know the one who does as he pleases, That in itself is a
rejection, an out-and-out refutal of every religious error that
there is. They say, well, you know, the
Lord wants to save everybody. No, he does as he pleases. He
does what he wants to do. If he wants to save everybody,
he'll save everybody. And we know that he don't save everybody,
so he must not want to. He does what he wants to do.
Christ died to save everybody. No, he does what he wants to
do. He does what he wants to do. And by nature, we hate that
Christ. Now, our Lord speaks in verse
35. And you know what? First things
first, shut up. That's the first thing he said
to shut up. The Lord's got to shut us up,
doesn't he? Boy, that seems kind of rude. Aren't we supposed to
be nice to people, Chris? That is being nice to people.
That is being nice, isn't it? You got to shut up. All that we know, all that we
say, all that we do, all that we think by nature is satanic
and antichrist. You think that antichrist is
some raging beast with glowing eyes who commands the armies
of hell? Maybe look a little closer to home than that. You
got a mirror at home? We know that what thing soever
the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law. That's
every one of us. God's law says something to us.
And you know what it said? You know why most religion says
that God gave his law to show us how to live so that we'd know
how to act. That's our rule of life, you
know. Paul said God gave us his law
to shut us up, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world
may become guilty before God. Not to show us how to live, to
show us how wretched, not to make us better, but to show us
how wretched we are, how bad we are, to shut us up about what
we've done. Paul talking about his religious
heritage and how, according to the law, he was circumcised the
eighth day of the stock of Israel, a Hebrew of the Hebrew. And then
he said, God shut me up. And I realized that all of that
wasn't in my favor. That was to my detriment. I counted
all that loss for Christ. God gave his law to shut us up,
not so we'd know how to act. to force us to acknowledge our
guilt before Him. But what about my free will?
Shut up. Isn't that what Paul said about,
you know, when they question, you know, well, if the election
is true, if God just chooses who He wants to, then how can
He find any fault with me? You know what Paul said? Shut
up. Who are you to say anything like that to God? Well, that's
not fair. Shut up. May God shut us up about
that. And then notice that our Lord
commanded the demon to come out of the man. He didn't tell him
what he needed to do to be saved. He commanded the demon to come
out. If you're what this man was spiritually, then this is who you need. You
need the one who does as he pleases. He didn't offer him anything.
He didn't teach him how to act. How you act is a symptom of the
problem. Our Lord solved the problem. He solved the problem. And we know the spiritual teaching
here. How did he solve? By what virtue, by what authority
does the Lord rid me of my satanic bent? How does he shut me up? How does he solve my sin problem? How does He reveal Himself? How
does He save me? Well, the Lord reminds us of that often,
doesn't He? In every story, as I've said,
in every passage of the Scripture, Brother Todd read a while ago,
God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in time,
passed unto the fathers by His prophets, and He hath in these
last days spoken unto us by His Son. He's always spoken in us
of his son. In all the different ways that
he's spoken, what do they speak about? The Lord said, Moses wrote
of me. Abraham saw my day and was glad
and rejoiced. And our Lord reminds us often
by the ordinances that he gave his church, didn't he? Every
time somebody's baptized, what is that saying? The Lord brings
us back to this, the simplicity in it, that our hope before God
is Christ has died for me and risen for my justification.
When we come to the table, there's bread and there's wine, Christ
and him crucified. We preach, we expound the scriptures,
and he's taught us to do that, and we look into the word of
God, and we study, but the Lord keeps bringing us back to that
simple picture. It's Christ and what he did.
I pray we could preach. That's
about as simple and pure of a gospel message as you can have, and
I hope my preaching is like that. Christ and Him crucified. The
Lord commanded him. He didn't suggest, it's not an
offer, it's a command, and he does it by virtue. Remember what
he said in John 17, I believe verse 3, as thou hast given me
power, authority over all flesh, for what reason? that I should
give eternal life to as many as thou hast given me." He says
that going to the cross, going to Calvary, the hour, what did
he say right before? The hour has come. This is the
hour of all hours. When the Son of God is going
to, his very soul is going to be made an offering for sin.
When God is going to lay on him the iniquity of us all, and he
said, you gave me power over all flesh to this end, that I
should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given me. Sinners don't cast demons out
of themselves. And this man didn't even want
this. He didn't ask for this, he just wanted to be left alone.
Aren't you glad he didn't leave you alone? Even though you wanted
him to. Now we preach now, cry for mercy,
call upon the Lord for mercy. Cry unto him, blind Bartimaeus,
that seemed to work out well in that case, didn't it? Blind
Bartimaeus cried, Jesus thou son of David, have mercy on me.
I recommend that. Cry. Cry to Him. But you know what this teaches
us here? The truth of the matter is, is if you cry unto the Lord
for salvation, He done saved you. Somebody said it this way, nobody
ever cried for mercy till they had it. That's just the truth,
isn't it? This man didn't even want anything
from the Lord except to get away. The Lord saved him anyway. until Christ does something for
you. We love him because he first
loved us. We came to him because he came
where we were. No man can come unto me except
the father which has sent me. Draw him and I'll raise him up
at the last day. The way that the father draws
sinners to his son is by the power of the word of his son.
What a word they said. What a word. What a gospel. And
that's to this day, that's how. That's how he'll do it. In Christ,
saving power is irresistible. He didn't give the demon a choice
or any options. He saved sinners this way, and
there's a result. There's a definite, powerfully
accomplished result. And they said, what a word. They
marveled at two things, his authority and his power. The first word there, authority,
is power of choice, as I said, the liberty of doing as one pleases.
The second one, power, it means inherent ability and strength,
power residing in someone by virtue of their nature. When
Christ is preached in his authority and power, sinners are amazed
or astonished at it, that Christ does as he pleases and that there's
nothing that he can't do. And with regard to the saving
of sinners, we need to know this, you need to know this. What they
found out that day, that Christ is able to save to the uttermost
those that come unto God by Him, He can if He will. There's no
case too hard for Him. Our Lord said to the blind men
in Matthew 9, 27, they were crying, have mercy on us. And when He
was coming to the house, the blind men came in and He said
to them, do you believe that I'm able to do this? They said,
yea, Lord, yea, Lord. And we see in the scripture,
in his doctrine, that man's will, far from being the solution,
man's will is the problem. He said, you will not come to
me that you might have life. You will not. But he's able. Do you believe that Christ's
precious sin atoning blood is precious enough to wash your
sins away? when he shed his blood on Calvary
and made his very soul an offering for the sins of his people."
Do you believe his blood can wash your sins away? Do you believe
that Christ's perfect righteousness is sufficient by imputation for
a sinner to stand before God spotless and unblameable and
unreprovable in the sight of God? Do you believe that Christ
finished salvation on Calvary? Paul said, I know whom I have
believed, and I'm persuaded. May God persuade all of us. The
only other question, once you know who he is and that he's
able, there's just one more question. You need to know this. You need
to know that it's not up to you. It's not up to you. You need
to come to the one, though, who it is up to. Again, that leper
in Matthew chapter eight, he said, Lord, if you will, you
can do whatever you want. And if cleansing me is something
you want to do, I'll be clean." If he will, he can. Think about
this in closing. And he said, if you will, you can. Those are
the two words in our text, authority and ability. If you will, you
can. You can, that's his ability. If you will, that's his authority. And let me just leave you with
this thought. I don't even know how long. Have I been preaching for
two hours? I can't even tell. I don't even know. I honestly
don't know. I hope not. The one who does whatever he
wants says to you tonight, come to me and I'll give you rest. The one who does as he pleases
says, come now. Come right now. Now is the accepted time. Now
is the day of salvation. I love the way that's worded.
It's not today is the day of salvation, it's now. Now is the
day of salvation. Come right now and let us reason
together, saith the Lord. How gracious. What about, Lord,
your sins? but not just your sins, how though
they be scarlet, and though they be red like crimson, how they
shall be as wool, and they shall be as white as snow. Come now. Well, thank you, brother. I hope we heard what was said. I can remember Henry Mahan used
to make this statement and I don't think I understood it completely
at the time. He would say, you don't come
to Christ through doctrine. You come to your doctrine through
Christ. Amen.