Good evening. Let's open tonight's
service with hymn number 16 in your Spiral Gospel Hymns hymnal,
number 16. Let's all stand together. And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Savior's blood? Died He for me, who caused His
pain? For me, who Him to death pursued? Amazing love, how can it be That
Thou, my God, shouldst die for me? Amazing love, how can it
be That thou, my God, shouldst die for me. Tis mercy all the
immortal dies Who can't explore his strange design. Invade the firstborn, Scaraf
tries To sound the depths of love divine ? Tis mercy all,
let earth adore ? ? Let angel minds inquire no more ? ? Tis
mercy all, let earth adore ? ? Let angel minds inquire no more ? He left his father's throne above
So free, so infinite his grace Emptied himself of all but love
And pled for all his chosen race ? Tis mercy all, immense and
free ? ? For O my God, it found out me ? ? Tis mercy all, immense
and free ? For, O my God, it found out me. Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature's night. I, I diffuse the quickening
ray, I woke the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off,
my heart was free. I rose, went forth, and followed
Thee. My chains fell off, my heart
was free. I rose, went forth, and followed
Thee. O condemnation now I dread, Jesus
and all in Him is mine. Alive in Him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness divine. Bold I approached the
eternal throne, And claimed the crown through Christ my own. Oh, I approach the eternal throne
and claim the crown through Christ my own. Please be seated. Good evening. Let's open our Bibles together
to Psalm 40. Psalm 40. I waited patiently for the Lord,
and he inclined unto me and heard my cry. He brought me up also
out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay and set my feet
upon a rock and established my goings. He hath put a new song
in my mouth, even praise unto our God. Many shall see it and
fear and shall trust in the Lord. Blessed is that man that maketh
the Lord his trust and respecteth not the proud, nor such as turn
aside to lies. Many, O Lord my God, are thy
wonderful works which thou hast done. and thy thoughts which
are to usward. They cannot be reckoned up in
order unto thee. If I would declare and speak
of them, they are more than can be numbered. Sacrifice and offering
thou didst not desire, else my ears hast thou not opened. Burnt offerings and sin offerings
hast thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come, in the
volume of the book it is written of me. I delight to do thy will,
O my God. Yea, thy law is written, is within
my heart. I have preached righteousness
in the great congregation. Lo, I have not refrained my lips,
O Lord, thou knowest. I have not hid Thy righteousness
within my heart. I have declared Thy faithfulness
and Thy salvation. I have not concealed Thy lovingkindness
and Thy truth from the great congregation. Let's pray. Our merciful Heavenly Father,
what hope and comfort we have in reading these words. and know
that they are the prayer of thy dear son, our savior. Lord, so thankful that he did
not hide thy righteousness. Lord, we pray that in this hour,
that in the volume of your book, you would reveal to our hearts
more of Christ. And Lord, cause us to find our
rest, our hope, our joy. Put a new song in our hearts,
Lord, and enable us to worship you in spirit and in truth. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. Number eight from the spiral
hymnal, number eight. Let's stand together again. ? O Lord our hearts and souls aspire
? ? To lift up from this earthly bar ? ? O may we think of heavenly
things ? ? And know the joy thy presence brings ? Lord, let us
see the Savior's face, And let us taste of Thy sweet grace. May open ears Thy glories hear,
And may we smell Thy fragrance dear. ? Be pleased to open heaven's
door ? ? And on our heads thy blessings pour ? ? All wretched,
poor, and needy we ? ? Where can we go if not to thee? ? Oh, may this day be blessed
the most That Jesus Christ becomes the host To feed our souls with
living bread And with our souls in joy to wed Please be seated. Let's open our Bibles to Luke
13, Luke chapter 13. Next Wednesday is Christmas Day.
I know you know this, but we won't have services next Wednesday. The next Wednesday, which would
be New Year's Day, we're going to try to plan something special
that Wednesday night. So I'm looking forward to that.
We'll meet two weeks from tonight. In Luke chapter 13, we have a miracle that so simply shows
the work of God's grace in our salvation. And I hope that the
Lord will enable us to identify with this poor woman. We'll begin reading in verse
10. And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath.
And behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity
18 years and was bowed together and could in no wise lift up
herself. I've titled this message could
in no wise lift up herself. And when Jesus saw her, He called
her to him and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine
infirmity. And he laid his hands on her
and immediately she was made straight and glorified God. And the ruler of the synagogue
answered with indignation because that Jesus had healed on the
Sabbath day and said unto the people, there are six days in
which men ought to work in them, therefore come and be healed
and not on the Sabbath day. The Lord then answered him and
said, thou hypocrite. Doth not each one of you on the
Sabbath loose his ox and his ass from the stall and leave
him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being
a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo these eighteen
years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day? And when
he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed,
and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things which
were done by him. I love the fact that truth is
always very simple. Men complicate things. Man-made religion is very confusing. It's complicated. It's convoluted,
you can't make sense out of it. And I'm reminded of what the
Apostle Paul said when he was speaking to the church at Corinth
and he said, I fear, I fear lest by any means as Eve was tempted
or deceived by the serpent in the garden that your hearts should
be corrupted from the simplicity, the simplicity that is in Christ. I mentioned Sunday that I heard
about a man who had his heart pricked by the Holy Spirit by
hearing three words and I wasn't sure what those three words were
I thought maybe it was Christ is all or it is finished. Well,
after making that statement, I found out from someone exactly
what he did here. And the two words that he heard,
it wasn't three, it was two, Christ alone. Those are the two
words he heard. And it set his heart to seek
the Lord. The simplicity of the gospel
is just that. It's the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ and what he has accomplished, Christ alone. Satan has always sought to confuse
the simplicity of the gospel. And he began in the garden. The
command was simple. And it was clear, there was no
confusing about it. You can eat of anything in the
garden, of all the trees of the garden, except for that one tree
right there. Don't eat of that tree. And what'd Satan do? He began to plant seeds of doubt
in Eve's mind, and a little leaven leavens the whole lump, doesn't
it? Did God say, that's all he had to say, did God say? He had
heard a question, the clear command that God had given. Did God say? His tactics haven't changed and
the whisper of lies that he plants into the ears of men will take them away from the simplicity
of Christ and will take us away. from the simplicity of the Lord
Jesus Christ. We know that our God is immutable. He doesn't change. He's the same
yesterday, today, and forever. And how many would amen that
statement? And yet, they would say that The salvation
of God's people is not yet fully determined until we see what
happens in time. If God is God, then he's all
powerful. He's omnipotent. And how many would say amen to
that? And yet they would confuse the
simplicity of that truth. by saying, well, you know, God
gave to man free will and he's limited his power to the free
will of man. That's convoluted. That doesn't
even, you can't make sense out of nonsense. Either he's all
powerful or he's not. You see what I'm saying? The
simplicity of the gospel, the simplicity of truth, This man I was speaking of who
began to seek the Lord after hearing Christ alone came out
of a church that, like these Pharisees, was very strict in
enforcing Sabbatarian rules and regulations. And... And yet they, at the same time,
say, well, salvation is all of grace, it's not of works. But,
you know, we have to use the law, and particularly the laws
pertaining to the Sabbath, to monitor whether or not people
are saved, to measure one's salvation, to motivate obedience, we go
back to the law. Well, we're not saved by grace,
we're saved by, I mean, we're not saved by works, saved by
grace, and yet. No, the gospel's simple. We're dead in our trespasses
and sins. Spiritually, we come into this
world, we have no life, no spiritual life in us whatsoever. We must
be born of the Spirit. Election is all of God. He has
chosen a particular people in Christ before the foundation
of the world. When the Lord Jesus Christ bowed his mighty head
on Calvary's cross and said it is finished, it's finished. It's
finished. Everything required for the salvation
of God's people was accomplished. To say that he died for all men
but not all men are going to be saved, that's That's not true. We know it's not true because
it's not simple. Grace, aren't you thankful that it's
irresistible? Aren't you thankful that when
the Spirit of God makes your heart willing, you can't say
no? If you could, you would, but you can't. And aren't you
thankful that not one of God's sheep will be lost and that what
he started he's going to finish? You see, the gospel is true because it's true in its simplicity.
Either the work of salvation is finished or it's not finished.
Either it's free or it costs something. Either it's all of
grace or it's a works gospel. Either Christ gets all the glory
or he gets no glory at all. These verses that we just read are a simple picture of what
the Lord does when he calls out his children and saves them by
his grace. And I just wanna go back now
and look at these verses one by one and see the simplicity
of this miracle and see that this is exactly
what the Lord did for me. Notice in verse, in verse 10,
that the Lord was teaching in one of the synagogues on the
Sabbath. Scripture tells us that the Lord
Jesus came teaching and preaching the kingdom of God and how we
must be taught. We'll be ignorant of the truth
unless the Lord teaches us. We have no way of knowing if
he doesn't instruct us. And when he commanded the church
to go out into all the world, he said, he said, teaching them, teaching them all things whatsoever
I've commanded you, baptizing them in the name of the Father,
the Son, Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I've commanded
you." We have a teaching ministry and
that we're instructing men from the word of God, the truth of
the gospel. We must be taught. And I'm so
thankful that the scripture tells us, they shall all be taught
of God. So whatever teaching we do publicly,
we know that God has to do it in the heart. And that's always
our hope. Father, I thank thee that thou
hast hid these things from the wise and the prudent and revealed
them. You've revealed them unto babes. Salvation always begins with
the teaching and preaching of the gospel. And this word synagogue
means assembly. That's what it means. It's the
Old Testament church where the people of God came together in
order to hear the Word of God. And how vulnerable sheep are. I got an email from someone recently
a man that I knew years ago who used to sit under the gospel
and he left the gospel and every once in a while I'll get something
from him and every time I get something from him it's worse
and worse and worse and he sent me one recently and he said he
said oh you have to read this and it was awful And I just wrote
him back and I said, this is exactly what happens when a man
separates himself from the gospel. The foolishness that you sent
me and that you've now embraced is exactly what happens when
a man absence himself from the truth. We've got to assemble
together. There's safety in numbers, isn't
there? And I've seen it, you've seen
it over the years. The lone sheep are prey to the
lies of the devil. Those out there, well, I can
just do it on my own. We need one another, don't we?
We need to encourage one another. We need to be here to help one
another. The Lord Jesus teaches in the
synagogue on the Sabbath. We gather together in order to
be taught how we might find our rest in Christ. That's what Sabbath
is. Sabbath is rest. Oh, we need
rest from our labors. We need rest from the condemnation
of the law and the judgments of God. We've got to have a place
of rest. So here's how the Lord, he teaches
his people as they gather together on the Sabbath, that's not a
day. It's a... Hebrews chapter four tells us
that Christ is our Sabbath. We're gonna see that in a few
minutes when we get further into this. Look at verse 11. And behold,
there was a woman. How many times we see this word
behold in the scriptures? And the literal interpretation
of behold is God saying to you and me, look and see, look and
see. That's what that word behold
means. Look and see. And Job, after hearing the Lord
teach him, what did he say? Behold, I am Bile. When John the Baptist saw the
Lord Jesus and realized that it was the Christ, what did he
say? Behold, look, the Lamb of God,
which taketh away the sins of the world. When John the apostle speaks
of the Father's love, he says, behold, look, see what manner
of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called
the children of God. Behold. Oh, what a marvelous
thing it is. And then the Lord tells us, behold,
I show you a great mystery. We shall not all be changed.
We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. Be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling
of an eye, at the last trump, The Lord always calls on us to
look and live. We see it all the way back in
the wilderness when the Israelites were being bitten by venomous
snakes. The clear picture of our plight
in this wilderness, bitten by sin, And the Lord told Moses,
you make a brazen serpent and put it on a pole and everyone
that's been bitten, when he looks, shall live. I love that. Everyone that's been bitten,
when he looks, shall live. It didn't say if anyone's been
bitten and if they look, they'll live. Because everyone that's,
we know all men have been bitten by sin, but only those that the
Spirit of God awakens to their need will look, and they will
look. And when they look, they'll live.
And what will they see? They'll see the Lord Jesus as
their substitute, bearing all their sins, in his body upon
the tree and satisfying the justice of God once and for all." That's
what they'll see. And that's where they'll find
their rest. They'll find their rest in the accomplished, finished
work of Christ who put away all the sins of all of his people
by the sacrifice of himself once and for all. That serpent. is God making him
sin who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him. Behold, look, there was a woman,
a woman from the very beginning when God put Adam into a deep
sleep in the garden and took from his rib and made woman."
What is their picture of Christ dying on Calvary's tree that
we might be made in him? And Adam when he awoke said,
this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh you shall be
called woman a man shall leave his father and his mother and
cleave unto his wife and the two shall be made one One, there's
the woman. And all the way to the book of
Revelation. When the bride comes prepared
as a bride for her husband. And when we get to Revelation
chapter 12, the woman who bore the child and the Lord Jesus
Christ came into this world through his church, the bride of Christ. And the woman was cast out into
the wilderness where there was a place prepared for her. What
a picture of how the Lord has always provided for his wife. And we read in the Song of Solomon
when the Lord Jesus is speaking to his bride, to his wife, and
he calls her his beloved. and his sister, and he says of
her, this is the Lord Jesus speaking of his bride, this woman, he
says of her, you've smitten my heart with one of your eyes.
Now brethren, that means that when you and I lift up as shameful
and half-hearted as our prayers often are, and never what they
ought to be. The Lord Jesus is saying, you
pause and turn one eye toward me and you smite my heart. That's how much I love you. That's
the woman. Here we are, gathering together
to be taught of our master, to find our rest in Christ. And the first thing he says to
us is, behold, look and see. I have a bride. This is a great mystery concerning
Christ and his church, but everything is for her. Everything is for
her. All that I'm doing is for the
salvation of my bride. Behold, there was a woman which
had a spirit of infirmity. Here's the simplicity of the
gospel. This woman was bent over. Tricia
and I both were talking about coming here tonight. Both of
us have someone in our family who is crippled and they can't
stand up. They can walk but they can't
lift up. They're just completely bent
over and they spend all their life looking at the ground. They
cannot look up. I have another member of my family
who used to pride himself in how much loose change. He was an old man. He's dead
now but he prided himself amongst the family members of how much
loose change he had found in his life. And I never said anything
to him. He was my uncle. I didn't want
to be disrespectful, but I thought, you walked around your whole
life looking down at the ground. Look at what all you missed.
Yeah, you can say to everybody, well, you know, I found $500
worth of loose change in my whole life. Look at all you missed. This woman's just looking down
at the ground. All she could see is where her feet were. That's
all she could see. All she could see was her current
circumstances. And there we are. Look how much
we miss. We can't look up. And all we
can see is what's at our feet. That's our spiritual condition.
We're spiritually dead. and she could not, in no wise,
lift up herself." Now this infirmity that you and
I have, illustrated by this miracle, is spiritual. And there's no medical solution
to it. And there's no psychological
solution to it. And there's no behavioral solution
to it. It's not like, well, you're going
to You're going to have this surgery and everything's going
to be fine. My mother suffered with scoliosis
her entire life. She was born with it. And finally,
the pain got so bad, that's a curvature of the spine. And finally, the
pain got so bad at 80 years old, she underwent surgery, which
proved to be not only very difficult, but unsuccessful. And she lived
the rest of her nine years till she's 89 years old in worse pain
after the surgery than she had before. Now that's what men will do spiritually
speaking, isn't it? Well, I'll try to fix it with
this or with that. No, this is a spiritual, look
at verse 11. And behold, there was a woman
which had a spirit of infirmity. That which is of the flesh is
flesh, and the flesh profiteth nothing. You can't fix this with
the fleshly means. We can't fix this by saying,
well, I'm gonna do better, and I'm gonna, no, it's a spiritual
infirmity. It's the spirit that giveth life.
The flesh profiteth nothing. We've gotta have a work of grace
done in our hearts, don't we? We'll never be able to look up.
We'll spend our whole lives looking down at our feet. Our condition is spiritual. We need to be reminded of that,
don't we? Because every time our spiritual problem manifests
itself in emotional and psychological and physical problems we think
well I'm gonna fix that with you know with something no no
the root cause of it is spiritual and there's something significant
about 18 years here in this in this scripture notice in verse
4 of chapter 13 verse 3 I tell you nay but except
you repent you shall all likewise perish or those 18 upon whom
the tower of Siloam fell and slew them, think ye that they
were sinners above all the men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell
you nay, but except you repent, you shall all likewise perish. Number 18, I looked it up, number
18 is not used very much in the Bible, but twice right here in
this one chapter, there was a tower that fell and 18 men were killed. I don't know if they were workers
on the tower or what it was, but the conclusion was, well,
they got their just due. And the Lord Jesus is saying,
do you think that they were worse sinners than you? That those
18 that died, you're gonna perish just like they did, except you'd
be born again. Here's that, this is what the
Lord's, Two other times the number 18 is used in the Bible, is in
the book of Judges. And in Judges chapter three,
the children of Israel, the Bible says, served Eglon, the king
of Moab for 18 years. Until the oppression of Moab
became so great that they cried out to the Lord, and the Lord
sent a deliverer. And that's in Judges chapter
three. And then in Judges chapter 10, the scripture says that the
children of Israel were vexed by the Amorites for 18 years. And after 18 years, they cried
out and God sent a deliverer. This number here, Here's our
condition. We're under the domain of our
sin. Moabite, Amorite, Tower of Siloam. Lord, this is our spiritual condition. You
see that? Look at verse 11. behold there
was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity 18 years and she was bowed together, bent
over. Hosea chapter 11 verse 7 says,
my people are bent, they are bent to backsliding from me. And this is our condition. Lord, our sins are continual. Seemed like every time I come,
I keep coming. We're just bent to where our
old man is always there, isn't he? He's always drawing us into
these things of this world and we're just bent to backsliding. We're bent to looking down, we're
crippled and it's spiritual, it's a spirit of infirmity. And verse 16, look at verse 16,
ought not this woman being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo these
18 years. The Lord taught us to pray, what
did he say? Lord deliver me from evil and the literal interpretation
of that is deliver me from the evil one or deliver me from the
evil one Lord I'll be I'll be just like Peter I'll be a mouthpiece
for the devil when the Lord Jesus said to get thee behind me Satan
well can you imagine how Peter felt and yet we we are vulnerable
aren't we We're bent toward it. Look back
just a few pages to Luke chapter three. Luke chapter three, verse five. Every valley shall
be filled and every mountain and hill shall be brought low
and the crooked shall be made straight. I'm going to give you a Greek
word that I've already used tonight. When we speak of a curvature
of the spine, we call it scoliosis. And that's not a transliteration,
that is the Greek word. Scoliosis. See, that's our problem, isn't
it? My mother suffered physically with it, but we all suffer spiritually
with it. And no surgery, nothing's gonna
help. Every valley shall be filled
and every mountain and hill shall be brought low and the crooked
shall be made straight and the rough way shall be made smooth. Lord, I need you to make me. And as soon as he makes us stand
up straight, oh, we go a little while and we find ourselves looking
down at our feet again, don't we? Peter used the same word when
he was preaching on the day of Pentecost and in Acts chapter
two, at the end of his message, he commanded the people, he said,
save yourselves from this untoward generation, scoliosis. And then in the book of Peter
he called the world a crooked and perverse generation. Oh we're so crooked, we're so
perverse, we're so bent over and there's nothing she could
do about it and nothing we can do about it, we've got to be
made straight. Now look at verse 12. And when
Jesus saw her, aren't you thankful that he sees us before we see
him? He always initiates the relationship. When Nathanael
came to the Lord and the Lord said, an Israelite indeed in
whom there is no guile. And Nathanael said, how do you
know me? I saw you when you were on to the victory. Oh, I'm so thankful that he sees
us before we see him. John chapter 5, we've looked
at it in the last couple of Sundays, the man at the Pool of Bethesda
who was crippled 38 years and the Lord saw him and he singled
him out. Yes, we are called to look. him
but will not look on him until he looks on us. We are called to set our affections
on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of
God but will not set our affections on him until he sets his affections
on us. We're called to love him with
all of our hearts, on all of our minds and all of our souls,
but we'll not love him until he first loved us. He has to
do it first. You hear men say, well, take
the first step. No, he's got to take the first step. And if he does, oh, to be made straight. He called
her, notice in verse, In verse 12, and when he saw her, he called
her. And the Bible speaks of two callings.
There's the outward call. The spirit and the bride say,
come. We issue an outward call. And it's a general call to all
men, all men everywhere commanded to believe and to repent. But that outward call will not
save anyone until the spirit of God makes it inward effectual
call and makes us willing in the day of his power causes us
to hear what do you say to her notice woman Thou art loosed from thine infirmity. Thou art loosed. God speaks,
He speaks by His Word. You know, a person can read the
Bible and believe the Bible to be the Word of God, but until
the Spirit of God enables you to rest, all the hope of your salvation
in the one who is revealed in the volume of the book. We just
read that in Psalm 40. Enables us to look to Christ,
we'll not be made straight. When we're brought by the Holy
Spirit to have no place else to go, we can't look to our experiences,
we can't look to our feelings, can't look to our works, we can't
rely upon You know, one thing that we used to do in religion
is shore each other up with, you know, someone would doubt
their salvation and you'd come along and convince them that
they were saved. And you doubt your salvation,
somebody come along, someone comes to me and say, I don't
know if I'm saved. Well, I don't know either. I'm not going to be the one to
convince you that you're saved and give you a false hope. You
got to get that from the Lord. And I've got to get mine from
the Lord. The Lord spoke directly to her.
Lord, I need you to speak to me. I need your word to be alive. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter
four. I have to look at this. Verse 12, for the word of God
is quick, that means it's alive, and it's powerful, and it's sharper
than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder
of soul and spirit and joints and marrow and is discerner of
the thoughts and intents of the heart. The spirit of God has
to kill us. How does the spirit of God, how
does the word of God kill us? When God's word becomes alive
to our hearts, He slays us of any hope of salvation outside
of Christ. He puts to death our self-righteousness,
our works, our free will, whatever we might look to other than Christ. And Paul said, I die daily. Because
we're prone, we'll get bent back over real quick, won't we? We'll
start looking at our feet real quick. We'll try to go to this
doctor and that doctor and get some surgery to fix the problem.
And the Lord has to remind us again and again and again and
again, look and live. And he has to put us to death. He has to kill us every day. And so Peter said, to whom coming? Keep coming to Christ. He's a discerner of the thoughts
and the intents of the heart. Don't you love that? Look at
the end of verse 12 in Hebrews chapter four. Lord, my thoughts are so filled
with self and sin. Your word tells me that. And
the intent of our heart. How many times we try to save
ourselves by making intents? Well, I'm gonna fix this. I'm gonna do better. Yeah, there's
not anything really good going on right now, but I'm intended
to do it. I'm gonna make it better. Notice what the Lord says to
this woman. Thou art loosed from thine infirmities. The Lord declared her to be loosed
before she felt any experience of being made loose. When did the Lord declare us
from being loosed from our infirmities? Because when he declared it to
be done, it was done. And in the covenant of grace
before time ever was, the Lord loosed his people from their
infirmities in Christ. He put them in Christ. When the
Lord Jesus bore our sins on Calvary's cross, he loosed it. We haven't
experienced yet. We haven't felt, she was loosed,
thou art loosed. You've been set free before you
experienced your freedom. Oh well, Lord give, immediately. He laid his hands on her. He's the only one that can lay
hands and heal. You know, I love what someone
asked Charles Spurgeon one time, don't you Don't you have ordination
services for your elders where you lay your hands on their head
and pray over them? And Charles Spurgeon said, what
good would it do them to put my dirty hand on their dirty
head? Now the apostles did have some
apostolic authority when the scripture does speak of them
laying hands, but that was a special power that God gave to them to
convey spiritual powers to men. But apostles, no. Who can stand in the presence
of God? They that have clean hands and a pure heart and have
never lifted up their hearts to vanity. Who's that? That's Christ. He's the one that
has to lay his, he was wounded for our transgressions. Why was
his hands pierced? because everything we put our
hands to, we defile. That's why the Lord said, when
you build an altar, don't heal the stones, don't put your hands
to it. And when Uzzah touched the ark,
he was killed on the spot. Why? Because he put his hands
to it. We can't put our hands to anything, but he puts his
hand. Oh, what? Here's our hope. Lord, speak
to me. Tell me that I've been loosed,
even though I don't feel loosed, even though I keep looking back
down to my feet, even though I keep trying to fix my problem,
my spiritual problem with something other than spiritual means. Lord,
bring me back again and again. Loose me, touch me, touch me. And notice in verse, you have
to finish this. Notice in verse 13, he laid his
hands on her and immediately she was made straight. Don't
you love that word? Straightway, forthwith, immediately. When the Lord performed a miracle,
it wasn't done in stages. It wasn't a matter of, you know,
evolution or process. When the Lord heals, When the Lord saves, we're translated
from death to life. You say, well, I don't know if
I remember that, when that was. Let me ask you this, do you remember
your physical birth? But you know you're born, you
know you're born, why? Because you're alive, you're
breathing, you're walking, You have physical life, you eat. It's not a matter of identifying
when immediately we were saved. It's a matter of knowing right
now, I breathe, I breathe in faith, I exhale repentance, that
toxic gas that builds up in my body. I eat the bread of life. I feast on the manna that comes
down from heaven. Here's the evidence of my spiritual
life. Exactly when that happened, I don't know. But I know I've
got to have him right now. Because left to myself, I'll
be bent over. And I can't, by no wise, lift
myself up. And she glorified God. She glorified
God. She gave to him all the glory. She said, he did it all, he did
it all by himself and I didn't have anything to do with it.
He sought me out, he saw me, he taught me, he touched me,
he spoke to me, he straightened me up and he gets all the glory,
all the glory. And that is in contrast, and
we have to look at this very quickly. Verse 14, the ruler
of the synagogue answered with indignation because that Jesus
had healed on the Sabbath day. You suppose this man had ever
seen a miracle like that before? You suppose he'd ever seen a
miracle? You ever seen one like this?
And with indignation, as soon as the Lord Jesus performs this
miracle, with indignation, he chastises the Son of God. Why? Because what he did on the
Sabbath robbed from that ruler of the synagogue the hope of
his salvation. He was trusting in what he was
doing and not doing on the Sabbath to make him right with God. And here the Sabbath was standing
right before him and performing a miracle. And if it wasn't so
sad, it'd be laughable that this man sees the Lord perform this
miracle and rebukes him for it. In verse 17, when he said these
things, his adversaries were ashamed and all the people rejoiced
for all the glorious things which were done by him. They rejoiced for the glorious
things that were done by him. What a simple, simple miracle. And yet every aspect, every aspect
of this miracle is the work of grace enabling us to look up
and live. Our heavenly father, thank you
for your word. We pray that you would bless it to our eternal
hearts and souls. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. 11 in the Sproul hymnal, let's stand
together.