Good morning. Let's open this
morning's service with hymn number 42 from your hardback, Tyndall,
number 42. All hail the power. Let's all
stand together. All hail the power of Jesus'
name. Let angels prostrate fall. Bring forth the royal diadem
and crown him Lord of all. of all. Bring forth the royal
diadem and crown him Lord of all. He chosen seed of Israel's
race, He ransomed from the fall. Hail Him who saved you by His
grace, And crown Him Lord of all. Hail Him who saved you by
His grace, and crown Him Lord of all. Let every kindred, every
tribe, On this terrestrial ball. To Him all majesty ascribe, And
crown Him Lord of all. To Him all majesty ascribe, and
crown Him Lord of all. O that with yonder sacred throng
we at His feet may fall, we'll join the everlasting song and
crown Him Lord of all. We'll join the everlasting song
and crown him Lord of all. Please be seated. Good morning. Will you open your
Bibles with me to mark the seventh chapter, Mark chapter seven. And also, if you'll mark that
and then turn with me to Isaiah chapter 35, Isaiah 35. How hopeful we are that our God
will manifest the glory of his sovereign grace in our hearts
this morning. That's what we just sang about,
crowning him Lord of all. He is Lord. He is Lord, and we
rejoice in the fact that he's Lord. It's been a real blessing to
have Cheryl and Lenore with us the last few months, and they
are heading out this week to go back to Pennsylvania. Why,
I don't know, but they are. We'll miss them. Trevor and Sarah are proud first-time
homeowners. All right, let's pray together. Our merciful Heavenly Father, we rejoice in that you have done
all things well. You've chosen us according to
your own purpose and grace. in a covenant, a promise that
you made with your dear son and with your sweet Holy Spirit in
eternity past. And you are faithful to keep
all of your promises. Lord, we come before your throne
of grace confessing to you that our faithfulness waivers. Lord,
we we want to be faithful. but how uncertain we are. Lord, we pray that you would
comfort our hearts in knowing that there is one who is perfect,
one who is faithful, one who has accomplished everything necessary
for the salvation of his people. And Lord, we pray that you would
look to him for all our righteousness and for all our acceptance. And
we pray that you would enable us to look to him and to find
our hope and our rest and all our salvation in the glorious
person and accomplished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. For
it's in his name we pray, amen. I ask you to open your Bibles
to Isaiah 35 because there's a few verses here that really
are my hope for today. And I hope that the Lord will
speak peace to our hearts. Beginning in verse 33, strengthen
ye the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees. Isaiah chapter
35, verse 3. Did I not give you the right
text? Oh, I'm sorry. Isaiah 35. I heard the pages
turning, so I figured I'd messed up. Surely not all of you had
messed up. Isaiah 35 verse 3. Strengthen ye the weak hands. Are your hands weak? Confirm the feeble knees. Do you have a hard time standing
sometimes? Say to them that are of a fearful
heart, be strong. Fear not. The only way to not be afraid
is to bow in worship to God. Fear not. Behold, your God will
come with vengeance. Now Isaiah penned
these words in the 7th century BC and so the reference here
is to the wrath of God that was going to fall on the Lord Jesus
Christ some 650 years later. This is the vengeance, this is
our comfort, this is our hope that there's no wrath left For
those who are found in Christ, all the vengeance of God, all
the wrath of God, all the fiery justice of God has fallen on
the Lord Jesus Christ, the sinner's substitute, and he has quenched
that fire. Now that'll strengthen your heart. That'll make you not be afraid.
That'll cause you to see that yes, I can stand in the presence
of a holy God with clean hands, with clean hands. Even God with a recompense, He
will come and save you and He has come and He has accomplished
the salvation of His people. Then The eyes of the blind shall
be opened. You remember when John sent word
to the Lord after he was in prison and he said, are you the one
to come or should we wait for another? And what the Lord say
to John's disciples said, go tell John what you've seen. and
what you've heard, tell him, tell him that the blind see,
the deaf hear, the lame walk, the dead are raised again and
the gospel is preached to the poor. Tell that to John, he'll
be encouraged to hear that. And so the fulfillment of this
prophecy that Isaiah wrote was accomplished in Christ and is
accomplished every time The Lord Jesus Christ opens the eyes of
our understanding and enables us to set our affections on things
above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. That's
our hope this morning. If we're able to see him seated,
now one piece of furniture that was conspicuously missing in
the Old Testament tabernacle was a chair. Everything was there
but a chair. There were tables. There were
altars, there were labors, there were fires. One thing there wasn't
was a chair. Why? Because the priest in the
Old Testament's labor was never over. It was never finished.
They sacrificed lamb after lamb after lamb. They could never
sit down. What does the scripture say the Lord Jesus is now? Seated. at the right hand of the majesty
on high, his work is finished. It's finished. There's the comfort
for sinners. We have a Savior who has finished
the work of redemption. And so the eyes of the blind
shall be opened and the ears of the deaf, now that's what
our text is going to show us in Mark chapter 7, the ears of
the deaf shall be opened. Then shall a lame man leap as
a heart and the tongue of the dumb sing. Sing. Oh, he turns our morning into
joy when he enables us to hear the truth of who Christ is and
what he's accomplished. When we're able to hear his voice, the dumb sing. For in the wilderness
shall waters break out and streams in the desert. All right, go
with me to Mark chapter seven now, please. Mark chapter seven. You'll notice at the end of this
chapter in verse 36, and he charged them that they should tell no
man, but the more he charged them so much more a great deal,
they published it. Now the miracles that our Lord
performed were not for the sake of the miracle itself. Every blind person that he ever
gave sight to, that blind person's eyes closed again blind in death. Every ear that he ever stopped
was silenced in their ability to hear when they died. Every
lame person that he ever gave strength to their legs, their
legs came to a point where they were not able to support the
weight of their bodies in death. So all these All these physical
miracles were not for the sake of the miracles. The Lord didn't
want them to get so excited about the miracle. They were so excited
that, you know, that the physical miracle was performed. And the
truth is that we don't know how many of these people that the
Lord gave these physical miracles to actually ever even understood
the spiritual significance of it. If we're able to hear, we'll
understand. that there's a there's a spiritual
meaning here being able to hear and being able to to say with
confidence look at verse thirty seven and beyond measure astonished when a sinner hears the gospel
he is beyond measure astonished nothing astonishes a sinner more
than to hear that God has forgiven him. Nothing is more amazing to a
sinner than to know that he's able to stand in the presence
of a holy God accepted, perfect, forgiven. Nothing will astonish
you more. We're not astonished that The
Lord would pass by some. We're astonished that he would
stop and save any, and we're most astonished that he would
save us. And they were beyond measure,
astonished, saying, he hath done all things well. Oh, and he has. He's done all
things well. Scripture says that he's made
the law of God honorable. He fulfilled its every demand. every T was crossed, every I
was dotted, nothing was left unfulfilled. He said, I did not
come to destroy the law. Think not that I came to destroy
the law. I came not to destroy the law, but to what? Fulfill
it. He had done all things well in
satisfying God's demands in his holy law. I was talking to somebody this
week and they It came to our home, actually, with Jehovah's
Witnesses. And you know what that's like. It doesn't go well
for me. I told Trish, I said, from now on, because she said,
well, I'll go get my husband. I said, just tell him this. I
said, tell him that I'll go get my husband if you want me to,
but I can pretty much assure you that you'll regret it, and
I can definitely assure you that he's going to regret it. Now,
do you still want me to go get him? I regret it every meal. The thing
that's so offensive about it is they don't have any questions.
They come with this pious attitude about wanting to discuss the
Bible. They don't want to discuss the
Bible. They just want to indoctrinate you with their lies. But anyway,
I had this conversation with these two young men and they
wanted to introduce their pitch with where sir, where would you go
to find instructions on how to have a happy life? And I looked
at him, I said, I don't know, where? And they said, well, you
would go to the Bible. And I said, okay, so that's what
you understand the message of the Bible to be? How to have
a happy life? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. So, of course,
they didn't want to hear what the message of the Bible was
in the volume of the book it is written of me. Beginning with
Moses and the Psalms and the prophets, he expounded unto them
those things concerning himself. And you think that in the scriptures
you have eternal life, but these are they which testify of me.
They, oh yeah, well, we know that it's about Christ too, but
it's about, so I said, I said, I said, so it's Christ plus works. Oh yeah. Yeah, that's what it
is. And then of course they brought
up the James 2 passage. Faith without works is dead. And I thought, you know, this
goes so well with what I'm planning to preach someday, because you
guys have some familiarity with the Bible, but you've not heard
the voice of God. When a person mixes law and grace,
they're not hearing from God. If it is of grace, it can no
longer be of works. Otherwise, grace is not grace.
But I have found that not just the Jehovah's Witnesses, but
the Free Will Baptists and Presbyterians and the Reformers, all of them,
mix law and grace. The Calvinist will mix law and
grace. He's going to put the law in on the back end. He's
going to make the law. the necessary means of proving
your salvation. I want you to notice that, so
what has the Lord done well? What has he done? That's the
title of this message. He hath done all things well. You and I have never been able
to keep one of God's laws. He kept every one of them all
the time. with all of his heart, all of
his mind, and all of his soul, and that's what God requires.
He will settle for nothing less than perfection. I hear people
all the time say, well, you know, just do your best. Do your best.
God's not satisfied with our best. Number one, you've never
done your best. Number two, it'd never be good
enough. Never be good enough. The Lord Jesus Christ did it
all. He is all and he is in all so
hopefully with some understanding we're able to say he have done
all things well he fulfilled the requirements of god's law
and he satisfied god's divine justice god required the death
penalty in the day in which you sin you shall surely all have
sinned and come short of the glory of god and the wages of
sin is death. God requires the death penalty
for the payment of sin. But He requires the death of
one who has no sin of his own. He requires the death of the
lamb which is without spot and without wrinkle. And so our death
is not going to be sufficient to put away our sins. Only the
death of the Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient and he hath done
all things well." He's the only man that ever knew how to die. He's the only man whose death
ever counted for anything. For the salvation of his people.
Eternally I'm talking about. Eternally. People give their
lives and sacrifice for someone else and that may count for something
in this world but it's not going to count for anything before
God. He hath done all things well."
Now notice what he does with this man who is deaf and as a
consequence of his deafness has an impediment of speech. Now
there's our natural condition spiritually. We cannot hear the
things of God. We can't hear the voice of God.
We can't hear the gospel. We're born into this world deaf
and as a consequence You know, your speech is very telling,
isn't it? We all have different accents depending on, you know,
where we why do we have different accents? Why? Because we speak
what we hear. We speak what we hear. Now, Fred
and Mary Jane tell you that I've got a real southern accent. You
just let me go back to Alabama for about a week. I spent 10
years in Alabama. I can go back there for one week.
Boy, I mean that. You talk about an accent. It'll
come out. Why? Because we say what we hear,
don't we? We say what we hear. And so it
is spiritually. We speak the things about God
that he says to us. And this man was deaf and the
evidence of his deafness was that he had an impediment of
speech. You can't understand a deaf person. Why? Because they
can't hear so they don't, their speech is very, And so it is
with those who want to mix law and grace. They have an impediment
of speech. You listen to them, they say
some things that are true and then they contradict what they
say with things that are not true. I read a quote by Albert Einstein
this week. He said, he said, imagination
is better than knowledge. And I thought, well, that may
be true if you're delving into the mysteries of time and space,
but you better not depend upon your imagination when it comes
to the knowledge of God. We've got to know the truth about
who he is. And the Lord said, if you know
the truth, the truth sets you free. See, all men have an imagination
about God, don't they? and the God that men worship
is nothing more than a figment of their imagination. When it
comes to the spiritual, when it comes to the salvation of
our souls, knowledge is much greater than imagination. Notice in verse 33 that the Lord
took this man aside from the multitude. And if the Lord ever unstops
our ears and enables us to speak clearly about the things of God,
he's gonna take us aside to do that work of grace. This work
of salvation is very, very personal. It's very intimate. It doesn't
involve anybody but you and God. It doesn't involve anybody but
me and God. No one else can stand in judgment of it. No one else
can understand exactly what the Lord has done for you. He takes us aside. Now, do we have to be physically
taken aside in order for the Lord to give us ears to hear?
Oh, no. No. No, we find ourselves standing
all alone in the presence of a holy God, dependent upon Him. And we can be in the midst of
a great crowd and have that happen, can't we? So there again, this
is not, you know, in Romans it says, they that walk after the
flesh do mind the things of the flesh. Now most of these miracles
that the Lord performed were miracles that could be seen,
that could be touched, They could be understood physically and
the people marveled over them and most of them never understood
the spiritual significance of it and the same thing is true
today. People are drawn to things that they can physically see,
physically touch, emotionally experience. Why? Because the spiritual man judges
all things by the spirit. You've got to have the spirit
of God to understand the spiritual significance of these miracles.
And it's the spirit of God that takes us aside and deals with
us very personally about our own salvation. You see, how do
I know that he's taken me aside? because I know that my problem
with God is all my fault. All my fault is nobody else's
fault. All my sin is completely all my fault. So he took him aside, he put
his finger in his ears and he spit and touched his tongue.
Now here's another great truth to understand We compare the
spiritual to the spiritual. What that means is that we interpret
the Bible by the Bible. The Bible interprets it itself.
So if you have a question about anything in the scriptures, just
look for that same thing in other places of the scriptures and
the Lord will shed light on the meaning of this. We don't have to study extra
biblical history. We don't have to understand the
theological nuances of somebody else's doctrine in order to be
able to interpret the Bible. The Bible is interpreted by the
Bible. Now, that makes it available for every child of God to understand
what God is saying. Now, the first time spitting
is mentioned is found in Leviticus chapter 15. And in Leviticus
chapter 15, verse 8, it says that if a man who has an issue
or an issue of blood, who has sores, who is unclean or is a
leper spits on you, then you are unclean. If an unclean man spits on a
clean man, then the clean man becomes unclean. What do we have
here? We have that just the opposite. The clean man is spitting on
the unclean man, making him clean. What a reversal. My ways are
not your ways. You see, what this does is it
accentuates the sinless glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. We
need for him to spit on us. We need him to touch our tongue
with his saliva. That's the only way we're going
to be able to speak. Only way we're going to be able to hear.
He's got to put his fingers in our ears. He's got to look up
to heaven for us and pray to the father and say, Ephratah,
be opened, be opened. And the Lord Jesus Christ's prayers
are always heard when he intercedes on behalf of his people. Father,
I pray not for them only, but for them which will believe on
me through their testimony. Isn't that what the Lord said
in John chapter 17? And he went on to say, I pray
not for the world, but I pray for them which thou hast given
me out of the world. Thine they were, and thou hast given them
unto me. The Lord Jesus Christ. We have
an advocate with the Father who ever lives to make intercession
for us. He's praying for us. It's what he does in this text.
Let's go back and read the whole story beginning in verse 31,
and again departing from the coast of Tyre and Sidon. You
remember the Syrophoenician woman in Sidon that had the child that
was possessed with the devil and the Lord called her a dog
and that's where he's coming from. And again departing from
the coast of Tyre and Sidon, verse 31, he came unto the Sea
of Galilee through the midst of the coast of Decapolis. And
they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment
in his speech. And they beseech him to put his
hand upon them. And he took him aside from the
multitude, and put his finger in his ears, and he spit and
touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, he
sighed." And the Lord does sigh, because our
deafness is our fault. It's our fault. God didn't make
us that way. We made ourselves that way. People
say, well, you know, everybody's born in the image of God. No,
Adam was made in the image of God. We were made in the image
of Adam. And we bear the responsibility
of Adam's sin. And we bear the full responsibility
for our own deafness. And God looks at these deaf sinners
and He just sighs. Oh, look what you've done to
yourself. That's what he's doing. Look
what you've done to yourself. He looked up to heaven, he sighed,
and he said unto him, Ephratah, that is, be opened and straightway. Straightway. His ears were opened
and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. Now that was a physical miracle,
but you understand? You understand the spiritual
significance of this miracle? The first time we find deafness
mentioned in the scripture is in Exodus chapter four at the
burning bush when God said to Moses, you're going to go to
Egypt and you're going to bring my people out. And Moses said,
Oh Lord, I cannot speak. And God said to Moses, Moses,
Moses, who makes a man deaf? Who makes him dumb? And who makes
him able to speak? And then the Lord said, I'll
loose your tongue. And then the scripture says,
the seeing eye and the hearing ear are both from the Lord. They're from the Lord. So we
say with Moses, Lord, I can't speak. I can't hear, Lord, you're gonna
have to unstop my ears. You're gonna have to enable me
to hear your voice and to speak the truth about who you are. And the way that this is seen
in our experience is that we speak the truth about the Lord
Jesus Christ. What do we say? He hath done
all things, all things well. He didn't leave anything left
for me to do. We don't speak with a confusing
speech. We speak clearly. In Judges chapter
12, there's a beautiful story about a king by the name of Jephthah. He was the king of the Gilead
tribe. And the Ephratites turned against
the Gilead tribe. This was before the time of the
kings. This was during the time of the judges, early days of
Israel in the promised land. And the
Gileads, the Gileadites entrapped the Ephratites. And the Ephratites tried to escape
by professing themselves to be Gileads. And so Jephthah knew
that the Ephratites could not pronounce the word Shibboleth. They just couldn't do it. They
could not pronounce the S-H in Shibboleth, which means river,
river. And so Jephthah said to his men,
he said, you ask them to say the word Shibboleth. And every
one of them said the word Sibboleth. And he knew from the way they
pronounced that word that they weren't Gileadites. They were of the Ephraim tribe. And they slaughtered them, 26,000
of them I think, because they could not say the word Shibboleth. They had an impediment of speech. They weren't able to say, The
river that flows from the throne of God, that's what the word
Shibboleth means, it means river. The river that flows from the
throne of God is clear as crystal. Clear as crystal. No, they muddied
that river. How do we know if we have our ears unstopped? How do we
know if we're able to speak with clarity? The simplicity of the
gospel is to give to the Lord Jesus Christ all the glory for
our salvation, to not mix, not mix, works with grace. We don't put anything in that
crystal river to confuse it. We say with clarity, shibboleth. Oh no, we're not gonna say shibboleth,
because we'll die if we say shibboleth. And those who mix law and grace
have never heard the truth of the gospel. Now, to go back to
the illustration I gave earlier about these young men I talked
to yesterday, or I guess it was Friday, they brought up James Chapter
2. And I have people do that all
the time. When you try to give Christ all the glory for salvation,
I brought up Hebrews Chapter 11. faith is the substance of
things hoped for faith is the evidence of things not seen in
Ephesians chapter uh... chapter two for by grace are
you saved through faith and that not of yourselves is the gift
of God and so their question was yeah but how do you know
if you have faith how do you know if you have faith
and then they threw up the James chapter two verse faith without
works is dead. So yes, faith is the only thing
necessary for salvation, but you don't know if you have faith
unless you're able to see works in your life to give confirmation
of your faith. Now let me ask you a question. Who are you interested in knowing
that you have faith? Are you more interested in whether
or not other people believe you have faith. I have people say
to me, oh, they want you to call them brother, they want you to
embrace them into the fellowship, they want you to consider them
a child of God, and when you tell them, you know, that God
they're worshiping is not your God, what do they do, they get
offended? Because their concern is that
you believe they have faith. You know what? It doesn't really
matter to me who thinks or doesn't think I have faith. What matters to me is that I
know. You see, my assurance of salvation
doesn't come from you thinking that I have faith. My assurance of salvation comes
only Romans chapter 8 when the Spirit of God confirms to my
spirit that I am a child of God. You see, now we're back to the
spiritual, not the carnal. What James was talking about
when he said faith without works is dead, he was talking about
those true antinomians who said, you know what, it doesn't matter
how we live, Christ has already done it all, we'll just live
by the devil. It doesn't matter. And they separated the the flesh
from the spirit in such a way as they could just indulge their
flesh in whatever they wanted and their spirit was saved because
it had been. You've never heard me talk like
that. And so James said, you show me a man that says he
has faith without works and I'll show him my faith by my works. Now, here's the truth of the
James 2 passage and of this thing of mixing faith and works. Do
I see in the lives of my brethren the evidence of their faith by
the things they say and by the way they love Christ and love
the gospel and love God's people? Yes, I do. I do. And I'm so encouraged by that. Now at the same time, do I look
to the evidence of my faith in my life in order to get assurance
of my salvation? No. No. You remember when the
Lord separates the goats from the sheep on the Day of Judgment
and he says to the He says to the goats, I was hungry and you
didn't feed me. I was naked, you didn't clothe me. I was a
stranger, you didn't take me in. And what'd they say? Lord,
when did we not do that? We've been doing that all our
lives. We've been down to the soup kitchen. We've been in the
clothing thing. We've been in this ministry and
that ministry. We've traveled, we've traversed land and sea
to make one disciple. Yeah, you have. And you've turned
him into twice the devil of what you are yourself. Depart from
me, you workers of iniquity, for I never knew you. And then
he looks to the sheep and he says, I was hungry and you fed
me and I was naked and you clothed me and I was a stranger and you
took me. And what did the sheep say? Same thing the goat said. Only they're saying, Lord, when
did we do those things? The goat said, when did we not
do those things? The sheep said, Lord, when did we do those things?
We take notice of those. You see, the child of God does
not take notice of what he does to get assurance of his salvation.
He doesn't look to his works to confirm the fact that he's
got faith. No. They which walk after the
flesh do mind the things of the flesh, but they which walk after
the Spirit. Romans chapter 8, the Spirit
of God confirms to my spirit that I am a child of God. Why? Because the Lord has convinced
me beyond any shadow of a doubt that salvation is all of grace. All of grace. No works in it
at all. And I don't care what religious
flavor people are from, they will not believe a gospel that
gives them nothing to do in their salvation. They're not going
to believe it. They want to have some contribution.
Why? Because they've got to see something.
They've got to see something. Why? Because they don't have
any eyes of the Spirit. All they have is their physical
eyes. So they have to see physical things to get assurance of salvation. When we look at our lives with
our physical eyes, the child of God's got reason to be afraid,
doesn't he? The child of God's got reason to doubt his salvation,
not to be confirmed by it. We don't find any comfort at
all in the things that we do as the evidence of our salvation.
The only comfort we have is when the Spirit of God points us to
the Lord Jesus Christ and convinces us beyond any shadow of a doubt
that all the hope of our salvation is in Him. It's in Him. He hath done all things well. I've not done anything well. All right, let's take a break.