found on the back of your bulletin.
Let's all stand together. The hymn on the back of your
bulletin. Glory to God Let earth and skies reply, Praise
ye His name. His love and grace adore, Who
all our sorrows bore, Singing evermore, Worthy the Lamb. Jesus, our Lord and God, bore
sin's tremendous load. Praise ye His name. In Him we will rejoice and make
a joyful noise, singing with heart and voice, worthy the Lamb. Then let the host above, in realms
of endless love, praise his dear name. To him ascribe it be, honor
and majesty, through all eternity, worthy the Lamb. Please be seated. Good morning. There's a conference at Rocky
Mount, Virginia, where Paul Mahan is pastoring, and they've been
meeting Friday, Saturday, and today, and several of our folks
have gone up there to be with them, so I want us to pray for
the Lord to bless our meeting here and to bless that meeting
there. So, let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we come
before Thy throne of grace, declaring the truth, worthy is
the Lamb. He's worthy of all praise and
all honor and all glory. For he alone was able to loose
the seals and open the book. He alone was successful in satisfying
your divine justice and in establishing for your people a righteousness
that was impossible for us to fulfill. We ask, Father, that you would
send your Holy Spirit in power and that Christ will be lifted
up in our midst. We pray that you would open what
no man can shut. Lord, open your word. Open our
hearts. Give to us faith. Enable us to
see. Open our eyes and our ears. We pray for our brethren in Rocky
Mountain. Lord, we ask that you would bestow
a special blessing on them this morning as well. As we would
remember all the places where thy gospel is preached, that
your people would be encouraged, that Christ would be worshipped. For it's in his name we pray.
Amen. Would you open your Bibles with
me to Mark chapter 7. Mark chapter 7. I want to introduce this message
by asking a question. How is your hearing? Now if you ask my wife that question
about me, she'll tell you some really bad news about my hearing. But I'm not talking about physical
hearing. when our Lord performed miracles
and recorded them by his spirit in the scriptures and certainly
many more things he did as John concludes his gospel by saying
that if all the things that the Lord had said and did were written
the world wouldn't be able to hold the books. So there's many
more things that our Lord did and said that weren't recorded
in his word but in the perfect wisdom of God, those things that
were recorded were that we might, as John goes on to say in that
same passage, that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ. So
the miracles that are recorded in the scriptures are not for
the sake of just helping us to see that he's able to give hearing
to someone who's deaf physically, but that we would understand
the spiritual application of that to the saving of our souls,
to the believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's my hope,
that's my prayer for you and for me, that the Lord would give
us ears to hear. As we've said many times, the
most often passage of scripture quoted from the Old Testament
into the New is found in Isaiah chapter 6, where the Lord said,
they will have ears, but they will not hear. They will have
eyes, but they will not see. It's that passage of condemnation
where the Lord speaks against Israel. And they hear some things,
they have some truths, small t plural, but they've missed
the truth, capital T singular. The Lord Jesus Christ said to
those Pharisees, you search the scriptures. because you think
in them you have eternal life, but these are they which testify
of me." If we miss Christ, then we've missed everything. And
so when we speak of hearing, we're not talking about a physical
miracle. I suspect that that's all that
took place here for this man was that the only seems to be
from the passage that the only benefit he received was physical
hearing. But my hope this morning is that
the Lord would open our ears, enable us to hear his voice.
He said, I call them by name. They hear my voice and they follow
me. And that's a miracle of grace. That's not something that you're
going to hear with the physical ear. It's not something you're
going to figure out with the intellect. It's a work of grace
that God has to do in the heart. And we're talking about spiritual
hearing. We're talking about faith and may God be pleased
to bless us to that end. In verse 31 of Mark chapter 7,
I just want to say a word of explanation on this verse because
we oftentimes speak of this being a book of Christ and that every
word of it exalts the Lord Jesus Christ and in some means or the
other points to the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet there's many
verses in the Word of God that are like this verse. They just
deal with the details of places and people and events, sort of
setting the stage for the story that's about to be
told. And what I want you to see from
verse 31, and again, departing from the coast of Tyre and Sidon,
he came unto the Sea of Galilee through the midst of the coast
of Decapolis. If you are being interrogated for a crime, or
if you're being questioned as a witness, the veracity of that
experience, the truthfulness of it, will be confirmed by the
details being consistent. You know that, Adam. That's the
reason why in a court of law you may have to answer the same
question 20 times, or if you're being asked about it once something
you experienced, you may have to ask the same. And why? Because
the consistency of the details gives confirmation to the truthfulness
of the story. And the Lord has put verses like
this in his word in order to say to us, this is not a fabricated
story. This is real people in real places
in real time, just like you are a real person living in a real
place in real time. The apostle said, I did not come
with fables. These are not fairy tales. These
are stories of real people taking place in real places and in real
time. And that confirms to our hearts
the truthfulness of the stories of the word of God. and helps
us to see that the Lord hasn't, you know, we're not reading a
book like many other religious books that are just fabricated
fables. These are not cunningly devised
fables. This is the Word of God. 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 him. Now the fact that he had an impediment
in his speech tells me that his deafness was something that hadn't
been all, he wasn't born deaf. If a person's born deaf, then
they can't speak at all. Perhaps somewhere in his childhood,
he lost his hearing and he's tongue-tied. He's trying to speak. It's very difficult for him to
understand what he's saying. He has an impediment in his speech. And the truth of that goes right
along with Isaiah chapter six. They will have ears, but they
will not hear. They will have eyes, but they
will not see. They'll say some things, but they've not really
heard. They think they've heard. There's no one as deaf as the
person who thinks he's heard the truth when he hasn't. There's
no one as blind as the person who thinks he can see when he
can't. And that's the point here. And I see this all the time in
my experience in preaching. I'll have people respond to a
message that I preached with an observation that is so far
off from the point of the message that I'm just wondering, you
know, what did you hear? I preached a message just a few
weeks ago from Colossians chapter 1 on seeing the invisible and
the Lord Jesus Christ being described there as the invisible God and
how he's how God has given him dominion and he's the head of
the body which is the church and remember it says that he's
been that that he's sovereign over principalities and powers. And I made a comment in the process
of that message about how the Lord has ordained governing authorities. And probably even made a reference
to Romans chapter 13 about how believers are responsible for
obeying governing authorities because they've been ordained
of God. And, but the message wasn't about that. It was about
Christ being the invisible God. It was about his sovereign reign
over the affairs of men and over salvation. And I got a text that
very afternoon. And it was from someone who wanted
to know if the government, here was the text, if the government
only gave you one loaf of bread, would you be obligated to obey
them? And I thought, you know, here's
a man that has serious impediment of speech. Here's a man who exposes
by what he says that he can't hear. And that's seen so many
times. I read an excellent booklet about
Charles Finney. this past week. And Charles Finney
was the father of modern evangelism, was a preacher back in the early
1800s, and was a part of what history has called the Second
Great Awakening. And Charles Finney is the one
who started the altar call, and he's the one who said that if
we could just create an environment to entice people to believe that
we could force salvation. So much of today's religion is
based on what Finney... And the article was very good
in exposing the errors of Charles Finney. And then at the end of
the article, the guy said, we are not saying, however, that
there weren't some true converts that came to Christ as a result
of Charles Finney's preaching. Well, there's a guy right there
who's got, by the impediment of his speech, he's exposing
the fact that he hadn't really heard anything and protecting
his own salvation. You hear it all the time. People
that can't hear can't speak. I think the story was told about
Henry Mahan preaching a message, and he, in the process of the
message, used the word britches. And some lady that was in the
congregation, who was very proper, came to him and said, you know,
Pastor Mahan, the word britches is really kind of a slang word,
and you should really use the word trousers from the pulpit. And he asked her, he said, well,
did you hear anything else in the message? She said, no. He
said, well, it's a good thing I said britches, or you wouldn't
have heard nothing. You know? But people, when they speak,
they expose the fact that they haven't heard. And that's the
point of this miracle. What a person says gives evidence
of what they've heard. Lord, don't allow me to have
an impediment of speech. This is a, we can make illustration
after illustration of people who don't speak the truth because
they haven't heard the truth. But I don't want to have an impediment
of speech, particularly when I'm preaching. And yet, there's
been times I know I haven't been clear. And you mark it down. If I'm not clear, and if you're
not clear, if it's hard to be understood, it's because we haven't
heard. And so we're being brought to
see our own need to come before the Lord and say, Lord, I beseech
you. Look at verse 32. And they bring
unto him one that was deaf. and had an impediment of speech,
and they beseech him to put his hand upon him. Lord, if you don't give me ears
to hear, I won't hear. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing
comes by the Word of God. And it doesn't have anything
to do with physical hearing. It doesn't have anything to do
with physical intellect. It has everything to do with
the Spirit of God opening our ears and enabling us to hear
the voice of God. And the clarity of what we speak
will be determined by how clearly we have heard. Lord, I beseech you that you
would put your hands on me. We're not talking about having
man's hands laid on us. We don't do that. We don't lay
our empty hands on some other man's empty head and expect some
transfer of power or grace to come. It's not gonna happen.
We're in need of the Lord to put his hand on us. Listen to
what David said in Psalm 139. Thou hast beset me behind and
before and laid thy hand upon me. Lord, that's what I need. I need
for you to lay your hand upon me. I need you to unstop my ears. He goes on to say in verse 9
of that same psalm, if I take the wings of the morning and
dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand
shall lead me. Lord, I need you to put your
hand on me. I won't be able to hear. I won't
understand. and I certainly won't be able
to speak plainly. My words will be confusing to
others. Verse Psalm 123 said, as the
eye of the servant is upon the hand of the master, so our eyes
are upon thee, O Lord, our God. We're looking for God to place
his hand The Lord Jesus Christ is the strong right hand of God. And Paul said in Colossians chapter
one, set your affections on things above where Christ is seated,
where? At the right hand of God. Lord,
we need you. We need you to make yourself
known to us. We need you to speak our name.
We need you to unstop our ears. There's so many noises. There's
so many sounds. There's so much distraction.
We've got a serious, serious case of tinnitus. And it will
drown out everything if you don't speak. Look at verse 33. I love this. Our Lord was never flamboyant. He never did anything ostentatiously. He didn't dress in a weird way. He didn't do the sights and sounds
and smells of religion. He just didn't
do it. People do it today, and they
They hope that those experiences are going to somehow confer grace
in their soul, but they don't. Look at verse 33. He took him
aside from the multitude and put his finger in his ears and
he spit and touched his tongue. If the Lord is pleased to lay
his hand on you, If he's pleased to lay his hand on me, if he's
pleased to open up our ears and enable us to hear his voice,
he's not going to do it in a flamboyant way. Don't look for fire from
heaven. Don't look for some sort of whirlwind
emotional experience. That's not the way God works.
He said, be still and know that I am God. God works very quietly
in the heart, aside from the crowd, aside from all the things
that are attractive to the flesh. That's why people in religion
do all those things. They're appealing to men's flesh
because they don't have the spirit of God. But the Lord told the
woman at the well, the father seeketh those who worship him
in spirit and in truth. And here's how the spirit works.
The spirit takes the child of God and he carries him aside
from all of the distractions of friends and family and everything
else and works a work of grace very privately in his heart.
Gives him ears to hear. enables him to hear about the
covenant of grace that was established by God's sovereign will before
time ever began. How God chose a people in Christ,
wrote their names indelibly in the Lamb's Book of Life. They
hear that, and they rejoice in knowing that this eternal life
can't be changed because God's immutable. He's established it
in eternity, from eternity to eternity, and that's my hope. In Malachi chapter 3, the scripture
says, I change not. Therefore, you sons of Jacob
are not consumed. That's my hope. That's my hope. Oh, Lord, I've heard that. David
said, although my house be not so with God, yet he has made
with me an everlasting covenant. That's what I've heard from the
Word of God, that God established the salvation of his people before
Adam was ever made, placed us in Christ, in the covenant of
grace, and that the Lord Jesus Christ is the lamb that was slain
before the foundation of the world. Yes, he was slain on Calvary's
cross 2,000 years ago, but in God's estimation of time, He
was already slain in the covenant of grace. The Lord's never seen
his people out from under the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Never seen them any other way. That's the only hope we have.
That's what I've heard. I've heard that the Lord Jesus
Christ came into the world 2,000 years ago to do what? To fulfill all righteousness
and to save his people. and to offer himself as the sinner's
substitute on a cross to satisfy the demands of God's justice.
And he accomplished what he came to do. He said, it is finished. Have you heard that? Have you
heard that? To say that Charles Finney had
converts when he preached and taught, contrary. Don't tell
me you've heard the voice of God, but that you still think
that, well, there's something I've got to do to make what Christ
did work for me. I've got to pray a prayer. I've
got to make a decision. You haven't heard. He's still deaf and still speaking
with an impediment of speech. Here the Lord takes this man
aside from all the elaborate ceremonies, all the sights, all
the sounds and all the smells of religion and does a work of
grace in his heart. What's he do? Look what he says.
First thing he did was he put his finger in his ear. He put his finger on the source
of the problem, didn't he? And if the Lord saves you and
saves me and gives us ears to hear, he's going to put his finger
on the source of the problem. That's what he's going to do. The heart is desperately wicked. Who can know it? It's deceitful.
We're able to deceive ourselves so easily. And we think, well,
our problem is our circumstances. Our problem is this or our problem
is that. If we could just fix that problem
or that person, then everything will be well. When God gives
a man ears to hear, what he does is he exposes the problem of
unbelief. It's expedient for you that I
go away, for if I go not away, the Spirit will not come. When
he comes, he will convict the world of sin because they believed
not on me. Has God put his finger on the
source of your problem? Made you to be an unbeliever? There's no hearing apart from
that. There's no hearing until the Lord shows you that you've
not believed God. You've not been given faith.
You've not been able to believe. You've not been able to believe. He put His finger in his ears. That's what I need. I need the
Lord to put His finger on the source of my problem and I need
Him to give me ears to hear. Lord, I can't hear if you don't
cause me to hear. John put it like this, here is
our confidence. If we ask anything according
to his will, he heareth us. Oh, if any of you lack wisdom,
ask it of God. He'll give it to you liberally.
Lord, I beseech you, put your finger on the source of my problem. Enable me to not be deceived
by my own heart. I'll so easily point to all the
peripheral issues and not get to the heart of the matter. Lord,
you're going to have to do that. Not many folks can come before
the Lord and ask that. That's the reason the Lord asked
the man at the Pool of Bethesda who had been there 38 years.
Remember what the Lord said to him? Would thou be made whole? Do you want to be saved? Do you
want me to put my finger on the source of your problem? Do you
want to hear my voice? Our Lord in performing miracles
used many different means in accomplishing the point was to be made spiritually in
that miracle. Here he uses the means of spittle. You see that in verse 33? He took him aside from the multitude,
he put his fingers in his ears, and he spit. Now we won't turn there right
now, but if you go to Leviticus chapter 15, there's a long passage
of scripture in the Levitical law about a man who has an issue
of blood. That's an oozing sore. And he's
declared by this bleeding sore that won't heal, he's declared
by God to be unclean, unable to approach into the presence
of God, unable to be able to worship God in the ceremonies
of the Old Testament, and he's unclean. And the scripture says
that if this unclean man spits on a man who's clean, then that
man who gets spit on is unclean. Now here we have just the opposite. Here we have the Lord, I don't
know where the Lord spit. I don't know if he spit on his
finger, if he spit on the ground, if he touched his tongue after
he spit. But here we have a picture of
a man who is clean. This is a picture of imputation.
I'm gonna show you a few more passages in just a moment. But
here we have a man who is clean, the Lord Jesus Christ, spitting
on a man who is unclean. And making him clean. That's the picture. Look at Mark
chapter 10. I'll show you some. more verses
here. Look at Mark chapter 10 at verse
34. Verse 33 says, Behold, we shall go up to Jerusalem,
and the Son of Man shall be delivered unto the chief priests and unto
the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and he shall deliver
him to the Gentiles, and they shall mock him, and shall scourge
him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill him, and the third
day he shall rise again. Look at chapter 14 in Mark, verse 65. And some began to spit on him
and to cover his face and to buffet him and to say unto him,
prophesy. And the servants did strike him
with the palm of their hands. Look at chapter 15 verse 19. Verse 18 says, And they began
to salute him, Hail, King of the Jews, mocking him. And they
smote him on the head with a reed, and did spit upon him, and bowed
their knees. They worshipped him. So now Leviticus,
if an unclean man spits on a clean man, that clean man's made unclean. In our Lord performing this miracle,
He, as the clean man, spits on the unclean man and makes him
able to hear. And now, at the cross, we have
all of these unclean men spitting on the clean man, symbolically
making Him unclean. What a picture. What a picture
of the Lord Jesus Christ taking those of us who have, as Leviticus
15 says, an issue of blood. That's our problem. Our problem
is in our blood. Life is in the blood and we're
born into this world with an issue of blood. And the Lord
Jesus Christ, when he went to the cross, God made him who knew
no sin to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him. This picture of spitting is a
symbolic sign of imputation. You see it? Verse 34. Back to our text, and looking
up to heaven, he sighed and said unto him, Ephrathah, that is,
be opened. Looking up to heaven, acknowledging
the fact that every good gift and every perfect gift comes,
as James said, from our Father above, with whom there is no
variableness nor shadow of turning. of his own will begat he us with
the word of truth." And so the Lord Jesus Christ is looking
up into heaven, much like he did, not for his benefit, but
for this man who's receiving his hearing's benefit. He's looking
up to heaven in much the same way he did in John chapter 11
when he was at Lazarus' tomb. And the Lord looked up into heaven
and prayed and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast hid
these things from the wise and the prudent and revealed them
unto babes. And he prayed there to the Father
audibly for the benefit of those disciples that would observe
the miracle of resurrection. It is God who gives hearing ears
and it is God who gives seeing eyes. If we're to have ears to
hear and eyes to see, to really hear, without an impediment of
speech, then the Lord's going to have to open our ears and
he's going to have to open our eyes. Lord, would you put your
hand on me? Would you put your finger on
the source of my problem? Would you impute to me your righteousness. And would you comfort my heart
in knowing that when you were spit upon there at Calvary's
cross, that that was my spit. That was my uncleanness making
you unclean, making you the sin bearer. He sighed, you see that in verse
34? He looked up to heaven and he
sighed. This word means a groan of grief. It is not a sigh of disgust like
we might think of a sigh. It is a groan. And it's much
the same groan that the Lord again had at Lazarus' tomb when
the scripture says that Jesus wept. It's much the same groan
that he had when he looked over the city of Jerusalem and he
cried and said, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that persecuted
the prophets, how many times I would but you wouldn't. It's the Lord Jesus Christ's
heart being moved with the plight of our sinfulness. He has pity
on the pitiful. He looks at us with eyes of compassion. That's how he sees us. And it
ought to draw us to him. He looked up and he sighed. He sees the consequences of our
sin. The scripture says he is touched
with the feelings of our infirmities. Sinners, sinners were never and
have never been repelled by the Lord Jesus Christ. They've always
run to him. They've always seen Him as a
Savior who is compassionate towards them. It's the Pharisees and
the Sadducees that fled from the Lord Jesus Christ. The publicans,
oh, they loved His presence. They came right into His arms. Look at verse 34. He looked up
into heaven, he sighed, and he said unto him, Ephrathah, that
is, be open. Now that's what I need. I need
the Lord to say, be open. He's got the keys of the kingdom,
and what he opens, no man can shut, and what he shuts, no man
can open. He's got to open the heart. That's what he did for
Lydia. When Paul preached the gospel,
the scripture says, and Lydia's heart was open. He's got to open
the mystery of the gospel. He's got to open the scriptures.
He's got to open the windows of heaven. He's got to open my
eyes, enable me to see. The Lord said to Nicodemus, Nicodemus,
you can't see the kingdom of God unless you're born again.
He's got to open our ears. He's got to be the one to say,
Ephrathah. Be opened. We can't open it. He's got to open it. Lord, would
you open my ears? I'm so prone to have an impediment
of speech. And there's so much that I haven't
heard. I need to hear more about who you are and about what you've
done. Faith comes by hearing. When the disciples on the road
to Emmaus in Luke chapter 24 got to their house and the breaking
of bread, the scripture says, and their eyes were opened. And in that same chapter, the
Lord appears to the disciples back in Jerusalem. And he expounds
unto them the scriptures and the scripture says, and he opened
their understanding that they might understand the scriptures.
Lord, that's what I need. That's what you need. And he's the only one that can
do it. He's got to put his finger on the source of the problem.
He's got to show us what this spit's all about. He's got to
touch our tongue and loosen it. He's got to open our ears and
our eyes and our hearts. He's got to open his word. He's
the only one that can do it. No one else can open it for you
and you can't open it for yourself. When those starving Egyptians
came to Pharaoh and said to Pharaoh, we're starving, we need bread.
Pharaoh said, go see Joseph. He's got the keys to the storehouse.
He's the only one that can, he's the one who decides who gets
bread and when they get bread and how much bread they get.
Go see Joseph. Oh, Lord, I beseech you. I beseech you. Put your hand
upon me. Look at verse 35, and straightway
his ears were opened. There's no delay. It happened
immediately. When the Lord speaks, you hear
immediately. When the Lord came to Peter,
James, and John, they were mending their nets. And he said to them,
follow me. And the scripture says, and immediately
they dropped their nets and they followed after Christ. When he
came to Matthew there at the money changers table, immediately
he got up from the table and he followed after Christ. That's
just when the Lord speaks, you don't say, well, let me think
about that. You see, here's why asking the Lord to speak is something
that most people don't wanna do. Because that means when he
speaks, There's no decision for you to make. There's no option. When Samuel said, speak, Lord,
for thy servant listeneth, what that word listeneth means is
I'm ready to do whatever, whatever you tell me to do. Well, I'm
not sure I want that man to reign over me. Well, he'll never speak. He'll never speak. Lord speak. Straightway, immediately. When that leper in Matthew chapter
8 came before the Lord, he said, Lord, I know that you can heal
me if you will. And the Lord said, I will. And immediately his leprosy left
him. When the Lord speaks to a dead
heart, they come alive. Straightway his ears were opened
and the string of his tongue was loosed and he spake plainly,
easy to be understood. Now the truth is simple. It's
all about Christ. It's all about who he is and
what he's accomplished. All our salvation is bound up
in him. He is all, and He is in all. He is the end of the law for
righteousness. We don't speak a confusing, convoluted
message like religion does. We don't say, well, you know,
it is of grace, but you've got to measure your salvation, you've
got to monitor your, you know, you've got to somehow We don't
say grace and then say, yeah, but you've got a free will and
you need to make it. No, he spake plainly, plainly. I was talking to somebody recently,
they were trying to reconcile in their mind the gospel of God's
grace with christening babies and calling it baptism. And their
position was so convoluted. It was talking out of both sides
of their mouth. And I said, you know, the gospel's
not, it's when you speak the truth, you speak plainly. You're
just plainly. It's clear, it's simple. It's not yay, nay. It's not, well, it could be this
way or it could be that way. It's one way. Christ is that
way. All right. Let's take a break. Okay.