I like hymns that are worded
as direct a prayer to the Lord. That's a good hymn. I like that.
Some hymns are not that way. Every word of that hymn was just
a prayer. That's my prayer. That's my hope.
I trust it is yours. Good morning. Adam, welcome to
Florida. I'm glad you're here. Digna, I think, is going to be
going home on the 19th. And her niece is going to move
down here from New Jersey to stay with her for a while. So
she won't have to go to Tampa to live with her other sons.
So she's real excited about that. And we need to continue to remember
to pray for her. Let's ask the Lord's blessings
on His Word to our hearts. Our Heavenly Father, we come
before Thy throne of grace in the name of Thy dear Son, thanking
Thee for the acceptance that we have before Thee. thanking Thee that we have an
advocate, Jesus Christ the righteous one, a sin-bearer, a substitute,
one who has satisfied all Thy demands of righteousness, one
who has satisfied justice. Lord, we find the hope of our
salvation and the hope of our life to be all in Him. We ask father that you would
bless your word by your Holy Spirit and that you would cause
us to to look to him. Lord, you said that if I be lifted
up, I will draw all men to myself, and Lord, we pray that you would
do that, that you would cause us to turn and that you would
cause us to rest, even as we just sang, and that you would
bless our time to thy glory. For we pray it in Christ's name,
amen. Would you open your Bibles with
me to Luke chapter 14? Luke chapter 14. And I've titled this message,
Is This Your Experience? Is This Your Experience? The Lord has given us many, many
accounts of healings in the scriptures, and of course they all have a picture of the healing of sin. And we see ourselves in these
experiences, don't we? Paul in one place said that his
experience was a pattern. And we could say that this man's
healing is a pattern of salvation for each of us. And I hope that
the Lord will enable us to see ourselves in this poor man and
in the salvation that the Lord was pleased to give him. You
have your Bibles open to Luke chapter 14, verse 1. And it came to pass, as he went
into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread
on the Sabbath day, that they watched him. And behold, there
was a certain man before him which had the dropsy. Now it's the only place this
word is used in the Bible and literally translated it means
swollen. This man had some sort of tumor
or some sort of renal failure that caused the uric acid to
build up in his body. He was a grotesque, swollen,
sick man who was obviously in much pain. There would have been associated with this disease.
It would have been obvious that there was something wrong with
him. There was no healing for it. It took a miracle of God
to bring about a healing. And it would have been, had the
Lord not healed him, surely fatal. Now, is that you? Is it obvious
to you that you're swollen? That there's something grotesque
about you apart from Christ? Is it painful? Is it something
that you would able to cry with David, my sin is ever before
me, the bones which thou hast broken. Is your sin a painful,
debilitating experience for you? Is, apart from God's grace and
His healing mercies, Your sickness, your plight, fatal. Fatal. Are you dependent upon
the Lord to perform a miracle of grace in your heart, lest
you die and be separated from God for all eternity? Now that's
the dropsy. And that's why I said, I've titled
this Is this your experience? Is this the pattern of your life? Are you in need of the Lord Jesus
Christ to intervene and to do a work of grace for you? And Jesus answered and spake
unto the lawyers and the Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal
on the Sabbath day? And they held their peace And
He took him and healed him and let him go. He took him and healed
him and let him go. Now that's every believer's experience. They've been arrested, they've
been taken, they've been healed, and they've been set free. It's an unusual experience for
the Lord to go into the home of a Pharisee. Generally, the
Pharisees are mentioned in the scriptures as being antagonistic
against the Lord. Here we have the case of a Pharisee
that invited the Lord to come to his home on the Sabbath day,
which would have been a feast day. They would have had the
biggest meal of the week would have been on the Sabbath day.
The whole spread would have been put out and they invited the
Lord to attend that meal. Now some have suggested that
when the scripture says that In verse one, it came to pass
as they went into the house of the chief Pharisee to eat bread
on the Sabbath day, that they watched him, that this man was
in fact a plant. that they went out into the community
and found this man who had the dropsy and invited him to the
meal and brought him in to see what the Lord would do. And if
he would heal them on the Sabbath, and if he did, they would have
a charge against him for having violated their traditions on
the Sabbath. Scripture is not really clear.
Some have suggested that perhaps this man just walked in off the
street and just happened to be there. And the Pharisees and
the lawyers watched the Lord to see what he would do. Now,
if we read further on in this chapter, the Lord doesn't deal
with these Pharisees with the same harshness and the same intolerance
that He deals with the enemies that were in Jerusalem. This
is in Galilee, and He seems to be very gentle with them. And there comes a point where
they rejoice in what he has to say to them. And it just seems
to me in this passage of scripture that this man perhaps was a member
of the family or a friend of this Pharisee and that that they
watched the Lord secretly in hopes that he would heal them,
heal him, but somewhat reluctant because they were so bound to
their traditions that they were afraid to suggest that they break
them. I mean, that's exactly what happens
today, isn't it? You share the gospel with somebody
who is a Sabbatarian, for instance. By the way, if you're going to
be a Sabbatarian, just go ahead and join the seventh day Adventist
because they're celebrating the Sabbath on the Sabbath, the seventh
day. Or you might as well just go
all the way and become an Ascetic Jew and just, you know, just
go to the law completely. Men who attempt to keep the Sabbath
by what they do and by what they don't do are in fact in their
attempts to keep the Sabbath violating the Sabbath. The Lord
Jesus Christ is our Sabbath. He is our rest. Now these Pharisees
brought the Lord in on the Sabbath day. They had this man there
and they watched with some mixed emotions. Will He heal him? If He does, how can we justify
that with our traditions of the Sabbath? I've seen this happen
many times. In Sarasota, for instance, there's
a very large community of Mennonites in Sarasota. Everywhere you go,
you see Mennonites everywhere. Can you imagine if one of these
Mennonites hears the gospel? The point that I'm making is
that our conscience can be made oversensitive by the rules and
regulations that men put on us by how we're raised. And a Mennonite
who hears the gospel, if they are one of God's elect, would
have some conflicts, wouldn't they? I mean, they would be somewhat
conflicted at wanting to be set free, and yet having been put
under this rule and regulation as to what they have to wear,
and how they're to walk, and how they're to eat, and touch
not, taste not, handle not. They want to be free, but, you
know, what do I do with these traditions? You know, you see it in free
will religion, where men are put under the law of things that
they can't do or things that they need to be doing. Do you
see that? Do you see the mixed emotions
that these Pharisees are having? We want Him to heal them. But
if he does, how are we going to justify that with the traditions
that we've set up, the rules and regulations that we have
in place that are under our law? And what a glorious hope we have
in knowing that those rules and regulations are just man's rules
and regulations. They're not God's. They're not
God's. The Lord's, He's the Lord of
the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for Him.
I was telling the men this morning,
I did something yesterday. Trish is out of town, so I watched
some preachers on TV yesterday. I never do that. But I wanted
to see what was actually being said, because I never listened
to them. And it was absolutely amazing to me how empty, how
vain, there was no content. It was all legalism and moralisms. which only seek to feed men's
pride in thinking, well, there are certain things I do and certain
things I don't do. These Pharisees and Sadducees,
they were proud of the fact that they kept the Sabbath. They didn't
work on the Sabbath. They didn't agree to anybody
healing on the Sabbath. And the Lord knew that. He knew
that's what was in their heart. So the Lord brought up the subject.
Notice in verse three, he asked them, is it lawful to heal on
the Sabbath? And they held their peace. They
didn't know what to say. They knew according to the rules
and regulations that they'd put under, that they'd been under,
that it wasn't legal to heal on the Sabbath, but at the same
time, they were hoping that he would heal them on the Sabbath. Nothing going on in religion
today relating to God saving men's souls. It's all nothing
more than legalism and moralisms that feed men's pride or intellectualism
that feed men's ego or ceremonialism that feed men's emotions. That's all it is. It's all it
is. The gospel of God's free grace
in the glorious person of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know,
you listen to these guys, they say, well, yeah, you gotta accept
Jesus, and then, then you can move on to the bigger and better
stuff. And there's no salvation. There's no salvation. Why? Because
men are bound to the traditions and the commandments of men. So, are you afflicted with the dropsy? And do you believe that the Lord
Jesus Christ is Lord over the Sabbath, that you're not under the law, that in Christ you're under grace,
and that He has the power to take hold of you, to heal you,
and to set you free. And that's what He does. Look
in verse Verse 4, they held their peace
and he took him. He took him. He laid hold upon
him. He took possession of him. He
actually physically put his hands on him. He was right there in front of
him. Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? And he took him.
Has the Lord Jesus Christ taken possession of you? Has He laid
His hands on you? Or are you looking at Him from
a distance? Are you kind of like those Greeks
that said, we would see Jesus? We're curious. We're interested. We want to look at Him from afar. Or has He done for you what He did
for Peter? When Peter, you remember, got
out of the boat on the Sea of Galilee and he began to sink
And he cried from his heart, Lord, save me. And the scripture says, immediately
the Lord Jesus stretched out his hand and took hold of him. He took hold of him. That's where
it starts, doesn't it? It starts with the Lord taking
hold of us. He took him. If we are to lay
hold on eternal life, as the scripture says we're to do, He
must take hold of us. Paul said, I've not yet apprehended
that which has apprehended me. He he's got a hold of me and
I want to be able to hold on to him as much as he's holding
on to me But I've not yet apprehended that which has apprehended me
But this one thing I do forgetting those things which are behind
I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling
Which is Christ Jesus? He took him. Oh Lord, would you
take hold of me? Would you arrest me? Would you
do for me what you did for Saul of Tarsus when you knocked him
off his high horse and you spoke to him? Lord, I need for you to take
hold of me. Look at me. I'm swollen with
the dropsy. I've got renal failure. The poisons
of uric acid are building up all throughout my body. I'm in
pain. I'm in agony. I can't survive. The things that were designed
to flush the poisons out of my system, the toxins out of my
system aren't working. They're not working. And I can't
save myself. I can't cleanse myself. I can't
make myself whole. You've got to take hold of me. Would you do that, Lord? Would
you take hold of me? In all my depravity, in all my
ugliness, nobody else will touch me. Nobody else will touch me. Nobody else will have anything
to do with me. I'm unclean. I can't go into the temple and
worship God. I need you to take hold of me."
He took him. Hebrews chapter 8 says the Lord
took the children of Israel by the hand and led them out of
Egypt. Lord, that's what I need for
you to do for me. I need you to take me by the hand. I need
you to slay the sacrificial lamb. I need you to pass over me. I
need you to divide the Red Sea. I need you to carry me safely
out of the bondage of the taskmasters of Egypt. And like Lot, Lord,
I'm reluctant. The scripture says that Lot lingered
in Sodom. When the angels came and told
him to get out, he lingered and they had to take him by the hand
and drag him out, drag him out. Lord, would you take hold of
me? There's something about Sodom that's attractive to my flesh.
There's something about this world that keeps me drawn to
it. And if you don't take hold of
me and heal me and set me free, I'll be bound to my sin. I'll
be bound to this world. This is every believer's experience.
Is it yours? Got the dropsy under the law. Lord, take hold of me. And what did he do when he took
hold of him? He healed him. He just healed him. Now that
word is translated made whole in most places where it's used
in the scriptures. He is made whole. Have you ever
noticed that the Lord never heals a person partially? Never. He never says to them, okay,
well now you're in remission, but it might come back. He never says to them, well,
you know, there's some residual effects to your disease that
you're going to have to bear with the rest of your life. When
the Lord Jesus Christ takes hold of a person who's sick and heals
them, He heals them completely, perfectly. That means He puts their sin
away from them. By His stripes we are healed. He doesn't do a partial job.
He doesn't say, well, you know, I'm going to leave this one sin
hanging over you. Now, in the flesh, we never can
be rid of our sin, but we're talking about being in Christ,
being found in Him. Not having our own righteousness
which is of the law, but that righteousness which is by the
faith of Jesus Christ. We're talking about being made
perfect in Christ. We're talking about as He is,
so are we. We're talking about the one who
does the sanctifying. That word means to be set apart.
And they which are sanctified are all as one. for which cause
he's not ashamed to call them his brethren." Perfect. Perfect in Christ. When he heals,
that's what he does. And that's what we are. In Christ,
perfect before God. In my flesh, completely imperfect. In me, Paul said, that is in
my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." Aren't you glad he said that
is in my flesh? Because in fact Christ in you is your hope of
glory. So the new nature is absolutely
sinless, perfect, healed, without any offense, perfect before God. And the old man one day, well,
we'll be rid of him, won't we? We'll be rid of him one day.
What a glorious day that'll be. We'll be rid of this flesh, see
him as he is, and the mortal will be made immortal, and the
corruptible will be made incorruptible, and we'll have a body just like
the Lord Jesus Christ, without any remembrance of sin whatsoever. He took him and He healed him. Has He taken hold of you? And
has He healed you? Don't you know that old poor
blind Bartimaeus had 20-20 vision when the Lord healed him? Maybe
it was better than that. I wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't
be surprised if it was better than that. He just had perfect
vision, didn't he? The Lord healed a man that was
lame. Remember the man at the gate
called Beautiful? There in early chapters of Acts
when Peter and John were there and the man was begging for alms
and the scripture says that Peter looked at him and said, silver
and gold have we none but such as we have in the name of Jesus
stand up and walk. And the scripture says, and he
leaped! He leaped! I mean, here was a
man, I mean, he didn't have to work out the, I wake up in the
morning, it takes me a few minutes, I gotta get the kinks out, you
know? I mean, if I've been sitting in one position very long, you
know, you get stoved up, don't you? You get stiff and you gotta
kinda work it out. This man had been in that shape
all his life. And as soon as the Lord healed
him, the scripture says, he started dancing. That's just what he does. When
he heals, he heals perfectly. He heals completely. I love the
story of the young girl the Lord brought back to life. And, you
know, when you're in the hospital and you're sick, you're always
encouraged when you begin to get an appetite. And it takes
a little while, you know, you have to start out slowly eating
and you just eat a little bit. And this girl was raised from
the dead and the Lord said, feed her. Feed her, she's ready to
eat. When the Lord heals, He heals
completely. He heals perfectly. He heals
fully. There's no residual effects.
There's no remission. Remember in John chapter 5 what
the Lord said to the man at the Pool of Bethesda? Wilt thou be
made whole? Wilt thou be made whole? Do you want to be made perfect?
I mean perfect. There's something about that
that's glorious and then there's something about that that's contrary
to the flesh. Perfect? No, I can't be perfect. Oh yes you can. Oh yes you can. You can be made perfect. There's something in us that
resists success, isn't there? There's something in us that
just holds back a little bit when it comes to having it all. Wilt thou be made whole? Wilt thou be made whole? You're
not going to achieve it. If you're going to be perfect,
you're going to have to be made perfect. The Lord took hold of him and
He healed him. He made him whole. And what else
did he do? Look at that, look at verse 5.
He let him go. He let him go. He set him free. No longer are you under the curse
of the law. For cursed is everyone that is
hanging upon a tree. The Lord Jesus Christ took the
curse of the law for us. He took hold of us, He opened
up our eyes, He healed us, and He set us free. He set us free. He said to these Pharisees, these
rules and regulations that you have of the Sabbath, those are
man-made. They're not of God. He set them
free. set him free from the rigors
of the law. Turn with me to Romans chapter
8. I want to be free, don't you? I
mean free. I want to be free from condemnation,
I want to be free from the terror of darkness. You know, children
are afraid of the dark, aren't they? It's the unknown of the
darkness that I want to be free from that. I want to be free
from the wrath that is to come. I don't want the law hanging
over me. I want to be free from my sin. Look at Romans chapter 8 verse
1. There is therefore now no condemnation. No condemnation. Why? Because Paul, in lamenting his
own flesh, says, Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks
be to God through Christ Jesus. The last verse of chapter 7. I'm free. I'm free. There's no condemnation. There's
no wrath. There's no judgment. The Lord
Jesus Christ suffered the full wrath of God's judgment, and
he presented himself on our behalf as our righteousness, so that
we're free. There's no condemnation to them
which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but
after the Spirit. And what is it to walk after
the Spirit? It's to have the Spirit of God cause us to trust
Christ. It's expedient for you that I
go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come.
But when He comes, He'll convict the world of sin, of righteousness,
and of judgment. Sin, because they believe not
on Me. Of righteousness, because I go to My Father. And of judgment,
because the Prince of this world is judged. And He'll lead you
into all truth. The Spirit of God points us to
Christ. Walking in the Spirit is looking to Christ. It's resting
in Christ. It's relying upon Christ. It's
being set free from the penalty of sin. For the law of the Spirit
of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of
sin and death. For what the law could not do,
in that it was weak through the flesh, there wasn't anything
wrong with the law. The problem was with me. The problem was
with my dropsy. That's where the problem was.
It wasn't with the law. And that it was weak through
the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. He looked just like us, didn't
He? born of a woman, born under the law, a body thou hast prepared
for me." He came in the likeness of sinful flesh to be God's perfect
man and died for sin. Why? To set us free. To set us free. Free from wrath,
free from judgment, free from the terrors of darkness, free
from ignorance. Ignorance is a horrible thing.
To not know God? This is life eternal that they
might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou
hast sent. To not know God is a horrible place to be. We're
free. Free. Free from unbelief. That's the
real besetting sin, isn't it? There was a time when you could
not believe. Why? Because you were under the
law and you were in bondage to sin. Sin had hold of you. And when the Lord Jesus Christ
takes hold of you and heals you, he sets you free from that unbelief
and he gives to you faith to trust Christ. Free to believe. Free to enter
into the presence of God. Free to love God. Free. If you have an advocate with
the Father, you've got no reason why you can't come into the very
presence of God. You accept it in the beloved?
You're free. Don't you love when Ruth was
told to go into the presence of the king and she said, well,
you know, if he doesn't invite me and I go into his presence,
he could kill me. And she went in fearful, didn't
she? Well, we don't have to fear that. Why? Because the king stretched
out his scepter to her. And the king has stretched out
his scepter to us. We're free. to enter into the
very presence of God. Come unto me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden, I'll give you rest. Come, the Spirit and
the Bride say what? Come, believe, you're free. Why? Because the Lord Jesus Christ
has done two things. He's taken hold of you and He's
healed you and He let you go. Barabbas. was released. He was set free,
wasn't he? It was his day to die. It was
his day to die. They had told him the night before,
this is your last meal. The crosses are being built,
the place is being set, and tomorrow is your day of death. And he
heard the rattling of the chains coming down through the dungeon
that morning, thinking this is it. and the jailkeeper took the
key and unlocked the door and Barabbas knew that only moments
he'd be nailed to a cross. What'd they do? You're free. You're free. Why? Because Bar is son of and Abba
is father and Barabbas is a picture of every child of God that's
been set free. The Son of the Father has come in the person
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's released you and he's let
you free. Stand fast in the liberty where
the Christ has made you free and be not entangled again with
the yoke of bondage. Don't go back to the law. Don't
go back to Egypt. Every believer's experience that
has dropsy, and every believer has dropsy, is that they're not under the
law. Why? because the Lord Jesus Christ
took hold of them, healed them and let them go. Pray to do that for you. I pray
to do that for me. Let's take a break.