Good morning. Let's open this
morning's service with hymn number 24 from the Spiral Gospel Hymns
hymnbook, Jehovah Sidkenu, the Lord, Our Righteousness. Let's
all stand together. Number 24. Jehovah Sidkenu, the Lord, our
righteousness. We love to call you by that name,
our Savior Christ Jesus. Jehovah Sidkenu, The God-man
lived for us, bringing eternal righteousness, which God imputes
to us. Jehovah Sidkenu, our substitute
who died. Your blood has put away our sin,
and we are justified. Jehovah Sidkenu, Your love has
won our praise. Trusting your blood and righteousness,
we're saved by your free grace. Jehovah Sidkenu, we stand in
you alone. Our only fitness before God is
in our Lord, His Son. Jehovah Sidkenu, the Lord, our
righteousness. ? Christ Jesus you alone we call
? ? The Lord our righteousness ? Please be seated. Good morning. If you'd like to
open your Bibles with me, we'll be back in the book of Mark this
morning, Mark chapter three, Mark chapter three. Jennifer, our daughter, is having
another procedure this week where they're going to go in and cut
the blood supply off to some of the tumors in her liver. And
it appears that the last procedure was successful. And so please
remember her Thursday morning is when they're going to do it.
And then next weekend, is the annual conference in Lexington. And I'll be preaching up there.
And I know several of y'all are planning to go. Robert and Michael
will be bringing the messages here next Sunday. So pray for
the meeting in Lexington and pray for these brothers as they
prepare to bring you gospel messages next week. All right, let's pray
together. Our heavenly father, We're thankful that once again
you have brought us here to this place to open your word and to
hear from you, Lord. We do pray that you would open
our hearts and we pray that you would speak to us and reveal
the glory of thy dear son to our hearts and enable us to find
our hope our peace, our comfort and all our salvation in the
Lord, our righteousness. Lord, we confess to you that
we have no righteousness before the outside of him. And we pray
that you would give our hearts grace to to rely upon him and
him alone. For all the hope of our salvation,
all of our acceptance before the. We thank you, Lord, for what
the physicians are able to do. We know that it is your hand
that brings healing, and we ask, Lord, that you would be pleased
once again this week to bless the doctors and to give them
skill, and we pray that you would place your hand of healing on
Jennifer and that you would be pleased to give her strength
and recovery once again. We pray for Michael and Robert
and thank you Lord for them and ask that you would give them
messages that would speak to the hearts of your people and
that would exalt Christ. We pray for the meeting in Lexington
and ask Lord that that each of the preachers there would be
given grace to speak with clarity and with conviction and with
compassion. And that you, Lord, would meet
with your people every time they meet together. We ask it in Christ's
name. Amen. You have your Bibles open to
Mark chapter 3. I've titled this study Who does
the Lord withdraw himself from? Or if you want to be more proper,
from whom does the Lord withdraw himself? I want to know the answer
to that question because I don't want him withdrawing himself
from me. In short, the answer is the self-righteous hypocrite. That's who he withdraws himself
from, the self-righteous hypocrite. Now, I know that in the believer's
heart, there's the ugly head of self-righteousness. And I
agree with one of my brothers who recently said, I'm much more
concerned about the Pharisee within than the one out there.
The difference is that the believer, at least in part, recognizes
the problem of his Pharisaical thinking. and is brought by the
Spirit of God to repentance over any thoughts of earning favor
with God based on anything that we do. There's two kinds of people
in this world. There's the wicked and there's
the righteous. So how do I tell the difference? Well, I'm going to tell you something
that's always true every person that's wicked and I'm going to
tell you something that's always true of every person that's righteous. Every person that's wicked believes
themselves to be righteous and every person that's righteous
believes themselves to be wicked. It's just that simple. I used to think that self-righteousness
was just a problem that religious people had. But the longer I live, the more
convinced I become that all unbelievers are self-righteous. And the only
reason that the irreligious hold the religious in such contempt
and disdain is because the religious are so much better at being self-righteous
than the irreligious are. They've perfected the art of
hypocrisy and self-righteousness more than the irreligious. And
the irreligious are jealous. They're jealous of the religious. But it's true of every unbeliever. Every unbeliever is self-righteous. We just sang that hymn. Tom,
thank you. Jehovah, that's I am. That's our God's name. Sidkenu,
the Lord our righteousness. And in Jeremiah chapter 23, the
scripture refers to the Lord Jesus Christ and he shall be
called Jehovah Sidkenu, the Lord our righteousness. 10 chapters
later in Jeremiah chapter 33, the Lord is speaking of his church. And he says, and she shall be
called the Lord our righteousness. Jehovah said, can you? So by
virtue of our union with Christ, we've been married to him as
the bride of Christ and all the blessings of God's faithful acceptance
of us. is as the bride of Christ, the
body of Christ. We have a righteousness with
God that's perfect, absolutely perfect. Now in our text, I was thinking, y'all ever done
any fishing? freshwater fishing for small
fish, generally use crickets or worms. And I was thinking
that those two creatures represent the wicked and the righteous. Crickets are always climbing
on top of each other and trying to get to the top of the can.
not knowing that the one who wins the race is going to be
the first one picked off to be put on the hook. Worms, on the
other hand, are just the opposite. They're always trying to get
to the bottom of the can. They're always trying to crawl up underneath
one another. Isn't that a good illustration? I mean, that's just, that's the
world that we live in, a world of crickets climbing on top of
each other. trying to get, you know, men
comparing themselves to themselves, believing that they're getting
better, or men comparing themselves to one another, believing that
they are better, not knowing that in me, that is in my flesh,
dwelleth no good thing. Nothing good before God. And
the child of God has come to some understanding of that. That's
what faith is. Faith is looking to the Lord
Jesus Christ alone for all your righteousness. You can go anywhere
in this world and talk to an unbeliever and you're going to
find that they're holding on to something. They're holding
on to something to earn favor with God. They're holding on
to something. They're going to... I used to go into prisons and
even in prison among the those people that are there, every
one of them are pointing to somebody else in the prison that's worse
than they are. I didn't do what he did. Everybody's got a righteousness. Doesn't matter if you're religious
or irreligious, everybody's looking to something that they've done
or something they haven't done for their acceptance with God. Believers on the other hand,
the ones who are righteous believe themselves to be wicked. They
join in with their brother Job and saying, behold, I am vile. I am vile. If God looks to me
for anything whatsoever, I'm judged guilty. So every wicked person believes
themselves to be righteous and every righteous person believes
themselves to be wicked. What do you believe about yourself?
It exposes what we are. There's only two kinds of people
in this whole world. Everybody fits into one of those two categories.
Now in our text, in verse 7, but Jesus withdrew himself with
his disciples to the sea. But Jesus withdrew himself. Now there's another verse, there's
another statement that's made about our Lord that stands out
in my mind because when I think about the looks that draw me
to my Savior, they are looks of compassion, they are looks
of pity. They are eyes filled with tears
where He remembers that I'm made of dust and it is the love of
Christ that constraineth me. It is the love of the Lord Jesus
Christ that draws me into His presence. That He would love
me in spite of the fact that I have no righteousness. That
breaks my heart, doesn't it? Doesn't it? That's what causes
us to come, doesn't it? Here in our text, look at verse
5, and when he looked round about on them with anger. Now that word is also translated
wrath. It's translated contempt. He
didn't have tears in His eyes. He had fire in His eyes. He looked at them with anger. I don't want God looking at me
like that. And I don't want God withdrawing Himself from me.
I need for Him to draw me into His presence. And I need for
Him to look at me compassionately. But here he looks on them with
anger, being grieved for, you see that word hardness? It's
the word blindness. Being grieved for the blindness
of their hearts. Men's hearts are hard because
they're blind. What are they blind to? They're
blind to the nature of God. They're blind to the perfect
righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. They're blind to what
it is that God demands for acceptance before Him. They're blind of
their own condition. They are self-righteous. They
are hypocritical. They present themselves. They judge God. Look at Because
of the blindness of their heart, he saith unto the man, stretch
forth thy hand, and he stretched it out, and his hand was restored,
all as the other. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I
did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And
then speaking to the Pharisees in Matthew chapter 23, he said,
outwardly you appear righteous unto men, but within you are
full of hypocrisy and iniquity. What you're presenting to God
does not measure up. What man calls righteous, God
calls iniquity. The whole world is competing
with one another. You know, if you watch politics
at all, and I don't recommend it, but you hear one party accusing
the other party of not taking the moral high ground. Isn't
that, you know, everybody's competing to see who's more ethical and
who's more moral than the other. And as soon as someone falls
in one party, what do they do? A public figure falls. Everybody
jumps on them, don't they? Everybody jumps on them. I remember
hearing a man on TV a year or so ago, they were talking about
getting better. And he said, he said, well, I
don't know what I can do to get better. He said, I go to church
twice a week. He said, I work out. He said, I eat right. He said,
you know, I'm, well, he's one of those guys that got exposed
recently in, you know, with, with sexual problems at work
and getting fired. But the child of God would never
look at somebody. I'm not saying, I'm bringing
that example out to say, well, you know, look at him. Because
those who are righteous know that the potential for wickedness
is within their heart. What I'm saying is that the whole
world will focus their attention on somebody who falls as if they're
better, only to find out that they're doing the very same thing.
Know what the Lord said in Matthew, in Romans chapter one, he said,
you who judge another are guilty of the very same thing. The righteous know that they're
wicked. The righteous look to the Lord
Jesus Christ for all of their righteousness before God. The
wicked, oh, they look good on the outward side, don't they?
The Lord called them whitewashed tombs full of dead men's bones,
a cup clean on the outside and full of corruption on the inside. In Isaiah chapter 9 verse 18,
here's what God says. Every one of you is a hypocrite
and an evildoer and every mouth speaketh folly. For all this,
his anger is not turned away. His anger is not turned away
from hypocrisy. Job said in Job chapter 13, he
also shall be my salvation for a hypocrite shall not come before
him. Now this word hypocrite. Is a
word that was used to describe the Greek actors when they would
take off one mask and put on another mask in order to assume
a different role. And and that's exactly what men
do. They just put on a mask, assuming
a different role. Pretending acting to be something
that they're not. The righteous. Know what they
are. They know that they have no righteousness
before God. They know that they're completely
dependent upon the Lord Jesus Christ to stand in their stead
and present himself on their behalf. Not so with those whom the Lord
looks on with anger and withdraws himself. Not so with those who
have a blind heart about what they are before God. And this
isn't a problem that just the religious have. This is a problem
that all those outside of Christ have. Every single one of them. The longer you live, the more
you come to realize that that's true. That's true. That's why I love being with
believers and I hate being with unbelievers. Nothing makes me
more uncomfortable than being with an actor, a pretender, someone
who's trying to present themselves as something that they're not.
And believers can put down all that and just, we know what we
are, don't we? We know what we are. and every
child of God believes themselves to be the chief of all sinners.
This is not a feigned humility. We don't walk around dragging
our feet and, you know, ho-humming our condition. No, we rejoice
in who we are before God in the Lord Jesus Christ. We're not
competing to see who's more sinful than the other. We just know
it to be true. It's just a fact. We don't have
to act. We don't have to be pretentious.
That's what the Lord meant when He said, if you know the truth,
the truth will set you free. You don't have to pretend with
the world anymore. It's what we are. It's who we
are. And the Lord withdraws Himself. and looks with eyes of anger
towards the self-righteous hypocrite. Oh God, deliver me from hypocrisy. Deliver me from self-righteousness.
Give my heart hope in Christ and in Christ alone. Jehovah
Sidkenu, the Lord our righteousness. Well, how does this story begin?
Look at verse 1, he entered again into the synagogue and there
was a man there which had a withered hand and they watched him, they watched him whether he would
heal him on the Sabbath day that they
might accuse him. Now these Pharisees had written
over 600 laws interpreting what it meant not to work on the Sabbath
day. Laws like, I mean this is actually
in their law book, the scripture forbid winnowing
on the Sabbath, that's going up to the, to the hilltop and
casting the wheat up into the air and separating the chaff
from the wheat and smashing it out. That was winnowing. And
so they interpreted that to mean that you can't separate anything
on the Sabbath day, which simply means that if you're going to
eat fish on the Sabbath day, you better separate the meat
from the bones on the day before because you'll be working if
you separate the meat from the bones on the Sabbath day. That's
winnowing. I mean, it's just that ridiculous.
Spitting on the ground was forbidden on the Sabbath day according
to these Pharisees. Because when your spittle hits the ground,
it causes the dust to fly up and that's plowing. They had 600 laws on what it
meant not to work on the Sabbath day. And all their attempts to try
to keep the Sabbath were actually causing them to violate the Sabbath.
What were they doing? They were trusting in their law
keeping for the hope of their righteousness before God. And
that's what the unbeliever does. He trusts in his law keeping
for his righteousness before God. Not knowing that Christ
Jesus the Lord is the end of the law for righteousness to
everyone that believeth. You see, it's not just the religious
that are ignorant of God's righteousness. It's all unbelievers that are
ignorant of God's righteousness. Why? Because they're blind. Their
hearts are hard. You've got to be born again in
order to have eyes to see who Christ is. But the blind man
goes about trying to establish his own righteousness because
he's ignorant of the righteousness of God. So they watched him. They watched
him. And now they're going to accuse
God. Look what, look, that they might
accuse him of doing what? Of violating the Sabbath. In
Luke chapter 13, the Lord on the Sabbath healed a woman that
was bent over, crippled. And the rulers of the synagogue,
the scripture says, were indignant that he had done that. And they
said, six days you have to work, but on the seventh you're not
to work. You can't heal on the Sabbath. And the Lord called
them hypocrites. How many of you, having an ox
or an ass, would not loose them from their rope in their barn
and take them to watering on the Sabbath day? Every one of
you do it. And if this, if an ox or an ass
can be loosed, then surely this woman can be loosed, and that's
what you need to be is loosed. Loosed from the law. Loosed from
the demands of, that, you see, That avenger of blood that pursued
the manslayer in the Old Testament, if you committed manslaughter,
the law was very clear, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
tooth. So you kill somebody even if
it's by accident, their next of kin had the right according
to the law to take your life in retribution for the life that
you took. and the Lord provided cities
of refuge. That the avenger of blood, that
next of kin, would not be able to take your life as long as
you were in that city of refuge. And at the death of the high
priest, this was the law, at the death of the high priest,
everybody that was holed up in those cities of refuge, protecting
themselves from the avenger of blood, was free to go back home. and the avenger of blood could
no longer pursue them. Now our high priest has laid
down his life for his sheep. We have a priest who is able,
he's able to sympathize with our infirmities. He understands
our sinful condition. He was made sin. He bore the
full burden of our sin. experiencing what it is to be
rejected, forsaken of God because of sin. And in his death, we're free. Oh, we're hid out in that city
of refuge. You see, the avenger of blood
is the law. That's the law. The law is the
one that's pursuing us. And the unbeliever looks back
at the law and he says, I can satisfy you. I'll do something to make you
happy. No, you won't. The law is perfect. And God will
not be satisfied with anything other than perfect obedience
to his law. And the Lord Jesus Christ, the
only one that ever did that. And so all the wicked believe
themselves to be righteous and all the righteous believe themselves
to be wicked. They were going to accuse God,
how foolish it is for a man to accuse God. And yet people still do it. When we talk to people about
the electing grace of our sovereign God, what do they say? God doesn't
have the right to determine man's eternal destiny. And they accuse
God of being unjust. And that's exactly what Paul
was talking about in Romans chapter nine, when he said, he will have
mercy upon whom he will have mercy and whom he will, he will
harden. And some of you will say, is
God unjust? God forbid. He's the potter and
we're the clay. He has the sovereign right to
make out of the same lump of clay some vessels of honor and
some of dishonor. No man can say unto him, what
doest thou? But what does the self-righteous
hypocrite say? That's not fair. And they accuse
God of being unjust. When they say that Christ died
for everybody, they are accusing our God of being a failure. You see, these self-righteous
Pharisees looked on Jesus and they were looking for something
to accuse him of. And men still do that. They accuse,
well they don't accuse their God, but they accuse our God.
They accuse our God. I've not met anybody that believes
that Jesus died for everybody and therefore everybody's going
to heaven. Everybody's going to heaven. The people who say
Jesus died for everybody also say that most of the people that
he died for are going to hell. Which makes our God a miserable
failure. And we know that can't be true.
He actually succeeded in redeeming those that he died for. He satisfied
God's justice. He finished the work of redemption
and everyone that he came to live and die for are made righteous
in the presence of a holy God by his sacrificial death. When the self-righteous hypocrite
says that God wants everybody to be saved, those same people will say, but
he's not able to get it done. And what are they doing? They're
accusing our omnipotent God of being impotent, not having the
power to overcome man's free will. You see, people are still
accusing our God. Now here's, bring it a little
closer to home, to not believe the gospel, to not believe the
gospel from the heart is to accuse God of being limited at best
in his knowledge. Well, God doesn't understand
my circumstance, I've got to. At worst, it's guilty of accusing
God of being a liar, to not believe the gospel, to not believe God
about anything. What about when we question God's
wise providence in our lives? Our circumstances are not as
we think they ought to be and we speak foolishly like Job. in accusing God of wrongdoing. It's a foolish thing to accuse
God. The self-righteous hypocrite
do it all the time. The believer, the one who's righteous,
who knows that he's nothing but wickedness, he's able to, at
least in part, identify some of those thoughts, isn't he?
and is broken over them. When God asks a question, it's
not in order to get an answer, but it is to expose men's hypocrisy. The very first question that
God asks, man, Adam, where art thou? God knew where Adam was. He wasn't looking for Adam. He
wasn't off on a search trying to find Adam. No, he was exposing
Adam. I heard you in the garden and
I was naked and afraid. And then God said, who told you
you were naked? Did you eat the fruit I told
you not to eat of? God knew he ate that fruit. And then the hypocrisy comes
out, doesn't it? The self-righteous hypocrisy. It's the woman that you gave
me. She gave it to me and I did eat. What was Adam doing? He's accusing God. Then the next time God interrogates
a man is Adam's own son, isn't it? Cain, where is your brother
Abel? What am I, my brother's keeper? Oh, Cain, what have you done? your brother's blood cries out
from the ground against you." And Cain's cursed for the rest
of his life, isn't he? You see, when God asks a question,
he's doing it in order to expose men's hypocrisy. When God interrogated
Job, was the very first thing God said to Job. Job, brace yourself
like a man, I'm going to ask you some questions. Where were
you? Where were you when I separated
the land from the sea? Where were you when I cast the
stars into the sky? Tell me if you know, Job. Job
couldn't answer any of those questions, could he? The Lord asked the Pharisees
about John the Baptist. They said, where did you get
the authority to do and say what you're doing? And the Lord said,
I'll ask you a question. You answer my question, I'll
answer yours. The baptism of John, was it from heaven or was
it of men? They wouldn't answer it. They
knew that if it was of heaven that they were going to have
to believe what John said. What was John's whole purpose of ministry? What was his whole purpose of
ministry? Behold the Lamb of God. He was the forerunner. He
was the one that God sent in order to point to Christ, which
taketh away the sins of the world. And as soon as he did that, John's
taken off the scene. John's out of the picture as
soon as he accomplished the purpose that God had for him. But they
couldn't say that he came from heaven, otherwise they would
have to believe that Jesus is the Lamb of God. And they wouldn't
say that he was of man because they feared the people. So in
their self-righteous hypocrisy they refused to answer and the
Lord said, I'm not going to answer you either. I've told you where my authority
comes from, you don't believe me. Because you're a bunch of
self-righteous hypocrites. So he said to the man in verse
3, which had a withered hand, stand forth. And he said unto
them, is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath day or to do evil,
to save life or to kill? But they held their peace. They
couldn't answer his question. And when he had looked around
about on them with anger, grieved for the hardness and blindness
of their hearts, He saith unto the man, stretch forth thy hand. And he stretched it out and his
hand was restored as the other. And the Pharisees went forth
and straightway took counsel with the Herodians." Now you
remember Herod that had the babies under two years old killed after
he heard of the birth of Christ? Why'd he do that? Because Herod
being part Jew believed himself to be the Messiah. He believed
himself to be the Messiah. And God took him out of the picture
and then his grandson is the one who had John the Baptist
beheaded. Now this Herodian dynasty, these
Herods, and there's several of them in the scriptures, I think
there's about five of them, They were in cahoots with the
Romans. The Romans used the Herods to control the Jews. And the
Herods used the Jews for their own personal power and gain.
And the Pharisees hated the Herodians. They hated them. You see, the
Pharisees didn't want anything other than separation from Rome.
They were the ones that were supporting all the attempts of
the Zealots to try to try to deliver themselves from Rome.
And now what do the Pharisees do? These self-righteous hypocrites
go and join hands with the Herodians. How they might destroy Him. You're
going to destroy God? You see, the religious and the
irreligious alike. The Pharisees and the Herodians
will join forces against Christ because the Lord Jesus Christ
exposes both those groups for what they are, wicked in the
sight of God. And because they are holding
on to their own righteousness, Let us destroy him. And the Lord
withdraws himself. He withdraws himself. Who does God withdraw himself
from? The self-righteous actor. Oh Lord, give me grace to know
the truth about myself. About you. Amen. Alright, let's take a break.