Let's open this morning's service
with hymn number 143, 143 from the hardbacked hymnal. And let's
all stand together. That's not it. Try this. Rejoice, the Lord is King, your
Lord and King adore. Rejoice, give thanks and sing,
and try Lift up your heart Lift up your
voice Rejoice again I say rejoice Jesus the Savior reigns, the
God of truth and love. When He had purged our stains,
He took His seat above. Lift up your heart. Lift up your voice, rejoice again. I say, rejoice! His kingdom cannot fail. He rules o'er earth and heaven. The keys of death and hell are
to our Jesus' gift. Lift up your voice. Lift up your voice. Rejoice again, I say rejoice. Rejoice in glorious hope, our
Lord the Judge shall come, and take his servants up to their
eternal home. Lift up your heart, Lift up your
voice, rejoice again, I say rejoice. Please be seated. Good morning. What hope we have that the Lord
would enable us to rejoice, to rejoice. said rejoice in the Lord always
and again I say rejoice. Let your gentleness be known
unto all men. Why? Because the Lord is at hand. He's at hand. He's near and he's
never more near than when his people gather together for worship. Corporate worship. The gospel
is preached. His word is opened. The hearts
of his people are prepared and this is where the Lord's promised
to meet with His people. We're so very thankful for that.
I ask you if you'll turn with me in your Bibles to Mark chapter
6. We've been studying through this
gospel and this morning we find ourselves at the beginning of
the sixth chapter of Mark. I've titled this message, When
God Marvels. When God Marvels. Our text this
morning speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ marveling. And there's
one other place in the scripture where it speaks of the Lord Jesus
Christ who is God. Who is God. He marvels. Let's pray together and ask the
Lord's blessings. Our merciful Heavenly Father. We're so thankful for the blessing
that you've afforded us here this morning to come together
in thy precious name. To call upon you Lord to. To
show us your mercy and your grace. To enable us to believe on you
and to put in our hearts a desire and ability to worship and rejoice. Rejoice in who you are and rejoice
in what you've accomplished. Oh Lord, that we would find ourselves
at the end of these hours this morning, resting our immortal
soul on thy dear son. trusting Him for all our righteousness,
trusting Him for all our justification, for all our sanctification before
Thee. Lord bless us to that end. We
ask it in Christ's name, amen. Let's read these first verses
together in Mark chapter six, verse one. and he went out from
thence and came into his own country and his disciples followed
him. Now his own country is Nazareth.
This is the same event with much less detail given to us in the
Gospel of Mark that we read about in the Gospel of Luke. The scripture
makes it clear in Luke that he went to Nazareth. Everybody knew
him there. He took the scroll and opened the
scripture to Isaiah chapter 61 and read that scripture in their
hearing. You remember that's the scripture that says, the
Lord hath anointed me to preach the gospel. And so, and when
he finishes that passage, he closes up the scroll and he declares
unto them, this day, this scripture has been fulfilled in your ears. And they wondered at the gracious
words that proceeded out of his mouth. Now this is Luke's account,
but it's the same story that's taking place here in Mark chapter
6. And then the Lord interpreted
what it meant for him to be the Christ. That's what that Isaiah
61 passage was, a declaration of the Lord Jesus Christ being
the Son of God, being the sovereign Savior being the Christ, the
anointed one, and he clearly declares himself among these
people that he knew to be that one. And then he interprets it,
you remember? And he said, in the days of Elijah,
there were many widows in Israel, but God showed mercy upon none
of them except for that Gentile widow of Sarepta. And then he said, in the days
of Elisha, there were many lepers in Israel, many Jews that were
leprous, but God showed mercy on none of them except for that
Gentile leper, Naaman. And when the Lord interpreted
what it meant for him to be the Christ, that I will have mercy
upon whom I will have mercy and whom I will out harden, I have
the sovereign right to heal whoever I will. They took up stones,
they cast him, they tried to drag him to the precipice of
a hill and throw him over and he slipped out of their presence.
It's the same account. These people who knew the Lord
went from wondering about this claim he was making to be the
Christ to hating him because of what he said the Christ was. So now Luke, Mark gives us a
much more, a much briefer account but Mark tells us something that
Luke doesn't tell us and that's where I want to focus our attention
this morning. And he went out from thence and
came into his own country and his disciples followed him and
when the Sabbath day was come he began to teach in the synagogue
and many hearing him were astonished saying From whence hath this
man these things and what wisdom is this which is given unto him
that even such mighty works were wrought by his hands? Is not
this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and
Joseph and Judah and Simon and are not his sisters here with
us?" And they were offended at him. So, they were very familiar,
overly familiar with the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing's
changed. Men are still familiar with his
humanity. But in essence, in essence, those
who say they believe in Christ, in fact, deny his deity. They deny his sovereign right
to save all by himself. That's the essence of modern
day Christianity, a denial of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the glory of the gospel is
that the gospel is the only message of salvation that lets God be
God. Let's God be God. They were offended at him, but
Jesus said unto them, a prophet is not without honor, but in
his own country and among his own kin and in his own house. people way too familiar with
someone that they grew up with thinking, well, he's just like
us. He's like us. And that's what the Lord said
in the Psalms. He said, you thought that I was
altogether such as one as thyself. You thought I was like you. I'm
not like you, not like you at all. And he could do there no mighty
work save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk and healed
them. And he marveled because of their
unbelief and he went around, he went round about the villages
teaching. He marveled because of their
unbelief. God is holy. The Lord Jesus Christ
is the holy one of Israel. And by holy, we mean that he's
not anything like us in any way. And yet, God condescends to reveal
himself with language that we can identify with. Since this is a Bible study hour,
I normally wouldn't do this. Most of you know this word. If
you don't, don't be intimidated by it. It's the word anthropomorphic. Anthropology is the study of
man. And morphology is the shapes
of things. When something morphs, it changes
its shape. And so they call it anthropomorphic
language. And that just means that God
uses the shapes of man to identify different aspects of his own
character. When the Bible says that his
eyes go to and fro, well the Bible says God is spirit. He
doesn't have eyes like we have eyes. When the God, when the
Bible speaks of the hand of God, he doesn't have a hand like we
have a hand, but you see where the Lord has to condescend to
our level because he's so high and so holy. and so incomprehensible
that he has to use language that we can identify with to describe
aspects of his nature. But it would be a great error
on our part to think that God was like us. And so when the scripture says
that God marveled, I confess to you that I don't know what
that means. I don't know what that means. Because when I marvel
over something, it's because it's incomprehensible. It's because
I can't understand it. We marvel at something that's
just, that's marvelous. It's beyond our ability to comprehend. I know that's not what it means
when it says God marveled. There's nothing outside of his
comprehension. Nevertheless, it says he marveled. at their
unbelief. Now in the other place where
the scripture speaks of God marveling, it also had to do with faith.
Remember it was the story of the centurion who came to the
Lord and said, I have a servant who is sick of the palsy and
in much torment. Lord, would you heal him? And the Lord said, I will come.
And the centurion said, oh no Lord, I'm not worthy that you
should come under my roof. Only speak the word and my servant
shall be healed. For I am a man under authority. I'm told to go and I go and I'm
told to come and I come. And I have men under my authority.
And I speak to them and they do what I tell them to do. and
I know that you possess all authority and all you have to do is speak
the word." And the scripture says that the Lord marveled. He said, I've not seen such faith,
no, not in all of Israel. So the two times that God marvels,
one time is over unbelief and the other time is over belief.
Now here's the message for me and you this morning. Whatever
it means for God to marvel, I don't want him marveling at me because
of my unbelief. I won't be like that centurion. I want God to increase my faith.
And if we're to have faith, God's going to have to give it to us.
It's a gift of God. I'm not suggesting you pull yourself
up by your bootstraps and you grit your teeth and you just
decide you're going to have more faith. I'm saying that we have
to find ourselves bowing before the Lord saying, Lord, I'll be
just like these people in Nazareth and you'll be marveling over
my unbelief if you don't give me faith. Lord, I want the kind
of faith that causes God to marvel. I want to believe you. I want
to believe everything you say. With all my heart, I want to
believe you. Now, even as I say that, you
remember another story where a man comes to the Lord and he's
got a sick daughter. And he pleads with the Lord to
save her. And he brings his daughter to the
disciples and the disciples couldn't help him. And the Lord sees the Pharisees
interrogating his disciples. And he said, what are you doing
with my disciples? And the man surfaces out of the
crowd and says, I brought your disciples, my daughter, to heal,
and they weren't able to help. If thou canst do anything. This is the voice of the man
with the sick daughter. If thou canst do anything, help us. And the Lord Jesus Christ said
to him, if thou canst believe, all things are possible. to him
that believeth. And the man cried out, O Lord,
I believe. Help thou mine unbelief. Now that's what we are. Lord,
I do believe. Oh, and I want to believe you
more. Lord, increase my faith. Make it true faith. Don't let
me deceive myself with a spurious faith, a false faith, a faith
that's not real, a faith that's based on my own experiences or
my feelings. That's not faith. Faith is the
substance of things hoped for. It is the evidence of things
not seen. And faith is a gift of God, for by grace are you
saved through faith. And that, not of yourself. Folks
make faith the cause of salvation. Now get this, listen very carefully
to this. In religion where God is denied his glory, where the
deity of Christ is denied, men make faith the instrumental cause
of salvation. That's your contribution to the
table of salvation in order for you to be saved. That's what
they say. God loves everybody. Christ died
for everybody. God wants everybody to be saved.
But you've got a free will and you've got to exercise your faith
in order to make what he did work for you. That's the message
in religion. And they make your faith the
trump card. They make your faith the straw
that breaks the camel's back. They make your faith the cause
of your salvation. And they've got it backwards.
They've got the cart before the horse. Faith is not the cause
of our salvation, it's the result of it. It's the result of it. Salvation is a work of sovereign
grace in the heart. The evidence of salvation is
faith, is faith. Now here in our story, our Lord marveled because of
their unbelief. When the scripture speaks of
The hatred of God, don't think that God hates like you hate.
He hates with a holy hatred. When God, when the scripture
speaks of the love of God, don't, don't, let's don't think that
God loves like we love. He loves with a holy love. And
so this, this is language. When the scripture speaks, the
Bible says it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an
angry God. Our anger is an emotional outburst usually, isn't it? Uncontrolled
by us. But God's not angry like that. He's angry. He's angry with the
wicked, the scripture says in Psalm 7 verse 11, every day. But His anger is not like our
anger. And so when he marvels, he doesn't marvel like we marvel.
Nevertheless, he does. And every child of God wants
the kind of faith that that centurion had. Lord, don't let me cause you to marvel
over my unbelief. They saw the humanity of Christ.
They said, he's the son of Joseph. We know his mother. We know his
brothers and his sisters. They were way too familiar with
him. A prophet is not without honor, save in his own household. And they just became too familiar. Nothing's changed. People will
say with their lips, he's God. He was born of a virgin. He lived
a sinless life. performed the miracles that are
recorded in the scriptures that he performed. He died on a Roman's
cross and he miraculously rose from the grave. And they will
say all those things about the Lord Jesus Christ. And then they'll
turn around and speak out of the other side of their mouth
and say, but he's not able to save you unless you let him. Now that is a denial of the deity
of God, the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, the power of the
Lord Jesus Christ. When the Lord said to that poor
man, if thou canst believe, well Lord, how can I believe unless
you enable me to believe? Another place, the Lord said,
it's harder for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven
than a crammel to go through the eye of a needle. And the
disciples said, Lord, who then can be saved? Who then can be
saved? And what did the Lord say? With
man, it is impossible, but with God, all things are possible. All things are possible. Lord,
perform the impossible in my heart. It's impossible for me
to have faith. It's impossible for me to stand
in thy holy presence with any acceptance unless you do a miracle
of grace for me. Men do not believe that the Lord
Jesus Christ is God. They don't believe it. Not if
they don't believe the gospel. They don't believe He's God.
They'll say it. You know, you've heard people
say, well, they've got knowledge in their head but it's not in
their heart. No. No. The Bible uses the head and
the heart interchangeably. Your heart is not that muscle
beating in your chest. You know, I've heard people say,
well, they missed heaven by 18 inches. You know, they had all
the knowledge about God in their head, but they didn't have him
in their heart. They knew who he was, but they didn't know
him. The disparity that sinners have
is not between their head and their heart. It's between their
heart and their lips. Men will say things they don't
understand and they don't believe because they're liars. There's
the disconnect. The disconnect is not between
the head and the heart. What you have in your heart,
you've got in your head. And what you've got in your head, you've
got in your heart. It's the same thing. Now that doesn't mean
that you can't parrot words that you don't have either in your
head or in your heart. You're just saying things that
you've heard, but you don't believe them. Men say Jesus Christ is
God. And then they turn right around
and deny the very essence of what it means to be God. They
don't believe he's God. They're just saying what they're
lying. There's the problem. Men are
liars. That's where the disconnect is.
It's between the heart and the lips, not between the heart and
the head. People do not believe that Jesus
Christ is the Son of God. Except believers. Believers believe
that Jesus, Jehovah saves, you shall call His name Jesus for
He shall save His people from their sins. His name Jesus means
that He's an accomplished, successful Savior. He's not making an offer
of salvation to man. He made a sacrifice to the Father
and He was successful in what He purposed to do, the salvation
of His elect, the Christ. the Son of the Living God, the
Anointed One, the Messiah, the One who came in the full power
of the Spirit of God in order to accomplish the purpose for
which the Father sent Him, the salvation of His people. The
Son of God, the Sovereign One, the Omnipotent One. You see,
when we speak those words, faith enables us to believe what those
words mean. But the religious man, he'll
say them and not even believe what they mean. And that's exactly
what happened here. And the Lord marveled at them.
They knew who he was. They knew who his parents were.
They knew who his mother was. They knew his brothers and sisters.
And I'm sure that the majority of those folks had, I mean, 30
years the Lord lived in this little town and conducted business
and was a carpenter and, you know, he'd done business with
every single one of them. knew him on a first name basis, but he marveled that they could
not see that he was God. They couldn't believe it. They
wouldn't believe it. God marvels when men deny His deity, when men refuse to bow to Him,
when men refuse to plead with Him for mercy, God marvels. You see it in the religious.
I've been just finding that. That's the religious folks. Oh,
they talk about God. They're meeting all over this
city and all over the country today, Sunday morning. pretending
to be worshiping God, denying His deity in everything they
say and do. The irreligious deny the deity
of God. The Scripture says in Psalm 19
that the heavens declare His glory and the firmaments declare
His handiwork. And Romans chapter one says that
God has put into the knowledge of every man an existence of
himself. All man's gotta do is look at
creation and he must conclude that there is a creator. And
yet, what does he do? He denies the creator and worships
the creature rather than creator and makes his God out a four-footed
beast and creeping things. And God says, you're without
excuse. I'm describing now the irreligious
who look at the created order of God, and what do they say?
Well, look what Mother Nature did. Nature doesn't have a mother. Nature's got a God. And God created it. From the
microscopic to the telescopic, every bit of it is according
to the order of God. And for man to say, well, look
at evolution. Look how the Big Bang has brought
out all this. God looks at the foolishness
of man and he marvels. He marvels. How could you deny
the omnipotence of a glorious God like me? But you will. You will. So it doesn't matter
if a man's religious or irreligious, he's still denying, he's still
denying the glory and the deity of Christ and that's when God
marvels. In Matthew chapter 23, the Lord
Jesus Christ stood on a hill near the city of Jerusalem with
his disciples and he said, oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. Thou that killest the prophets
and stonest them which I have sent. How often, how often I
would have gathered thy children together as a hen gathers her
chickens under her wings. And you would not, you would
not. We saw just a week or so ago
where the disciples were on the boat in the Sea of Galilee and
remember a storm came up and they thought they were going
to die. And the Lord's asleep in the hinder part of the boat.
And they woke him up and said, Lord, Master, care it's not that
we perish? And the Lord looked at them and
he marveled. He said, do you have no faith? Don't you know if you're with
me you can't perish? And he spoke to the wind and
the seas and then they marveled, didn't they? Who is this man
that even the wind and the sea obey his voice? I know I marvel when someone
is able to sit under the gospel for years and then walk away
from it. I marvel when someone comes one
time and hears a message different from anything they've ever heard
in their life and able to walk out those doors and not believe
it. God marvels at unbelief. He marvels at the denial of His
Son. And then He marvels at those of us
who have been the benefactors of so much grace and mercy. And
yet we get ourselves a little jam just like those disciples
on the boat, aren't we? Lord, cares not that we perish? Oh, Lord, help thou mine unbelief.
You see, unbelief always is to be marveled at. It is by God. What's the evidence that I don't
believe? Well, go back with me to our
text. Verse 5, and he could there do no mighty
work. There it is. God's not going to work a work
of grace. He's not going to work salvation
without faith. He's not going to do it. It's an essential element
of the work of God, faith. If thou canst believe, if you
can believe, all things are possible to them that believe. There's no salvation apart from
faith. There's no healing. There's no ability to know God
or trust God apart from faith. Without faith, it is impossible
to please God. For they that cometh to him must
believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of them that
diligently seek him. Now how do I know I have faith? How do I know I have faith? Because
I've got no place else to go I'm like that woman with the
issue of blood that we looked at last Sunday who had spent
all that she had on physicians and she was worse off now than
she was to begin with. She had wasted all her time and
energy and effort in man-made, Christ-denying religion. And she was worse off. And then Jay Iris, you remember
Jay Iris, he was the temple, the leader of the synagogue there
in that town. And his religion couldn't help
him. His little 12-year-old girl was
on her deathbed. And they had no place else to
go. Here's how I know I have faith.
You see, if you think, well, you know, I'm just going to try
harder. I'm going to do better. I'm gonna
quit this and quit that and start doing this and start doing that
and and then and then God will have mercy upon me. Why do you
spend money for that which satisfieth not? Come and drink from the
fountain freely, freely. If you've got anything else that
you think you can do to fix your sin problem, and you're going
to do it. I'll do it. If God calls you
to see I've got a problem, no amount of money can pay it off,
no amount of effort can fix it, no amount of time is going to
resolve this problem, I need a Savior. I need a sovereign
Savior. I know I have faith because I've
got no place else to go. That's why coming to Christ,
it is a denial, now listen carefully, it is a denial of the deity of
Christ to say that coming to Christ is a decision. It's a choice. You know, you
pray this prayer, you accept Jesus into your heart. Those
are all, all those statements just fit, they fit man-made religion,
don't they? They fit a religion that denies
Christ His glory and salvation. Make Jesus the Lord and Savior
of your life. That's blasphemous. You don't make Him anything.
He is Lord. God made Him Lord over the living
and over the dead. We just bow. Lord, have mercy
upon me, the sinner. I've got no place else to go.
I've got nothing I can do. When God marvels. He marveled at that centurion.
And he marveled at these folks in Nazareth. One because he believed
and the other because they didn't. May God give us the grace to
marvel over us. Amen. Let's take a break. Thank you.