When we finished 2 Thessalonians
you might have, as I did, come across the repetitiveness of
Paul making commands. And he was also pleading with
the Lord to direct their hearts into the love of God and impatient
waiting for Christ to come. I suppose
the issue that we deal with all the time is is if we are not
under law, then how are Christians to be guided? in their lives,
how are we to walk before God in faithfulness. And so I wanted
to just look at some verses regarding the law first, and then I wanted
to just very briefly look at a story in Matthew Chapter 8,
because the stories, the pictures of the Lord Jesus Healing miracles
and the pictures of the Lord Jesus revealing things in the
New Testament are pictures of His way, not just of creating
faith, but guiding and directing faith in the lives of His people. So Galatians 6.15 says, For in
Christ Jesus neither circumcision avail anything nor uncircumcision,
but a new creature. And as many as walk according
to this rule, peace be upon them and on the Israel of God. For the law reveals nothing of
mercy and it reveals nothing of grace, and it doesn't communicate
the Spirit. But believers live by faith.
the faith of the Son of God and faith in the Son of God. And
the scriptures are very abundantly clear that the law is not of
faith. And in these pictures in Matthew
and in other places in the Gospel, the Lord Jesus says to the people,
He says, Go thy way. Go thy way. Because where the Spirit of the
Lord is, There is liberty where the Spirit of the Lord is, that
God's children are being changed from glory unto glory, even as
the Spirit of the Lord. So we're not, as believers, we're
not without a law to God, but we're under law to Christ. We are guided by the Gospel. And when we come to the New Testament
commands, we have the Gospel written by the finger of God
upon the hearts of his people. And then we have another branch,
which is the Gospel written by the Spirit of God in the Word
of Truth, and they are perfectly in accord with each other. We
have, as believers, New Covenant promises. I will write my law
in the inward parts and write it upon their hearts. He writes his laws not the laws
that are written on stone, but the law of Christ. He guides
his people. For the law of the spirit of
life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and
death." And so the question that lies before us all the time is,
for those who want to go back to the law, how can a dead law
lead a living soul? One of my favourite verses in
the scriptures, I love the verses that promise that God will be
the teacher of his people. And He says of the Spirit, when
the Spirit of Truth is come, He will guide you into all truth,
for He shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever He shall hear,
that shall He speak, and He will show you the things to come. And He shall glorify Me, for
He shall receive of Mine and show it unto you. All things
that the Father has are Mine. Therefore said I, He shall take
of Mine and show it to you." He'll take the things of the
Lord Jesus and He'll disclose it, He'll announce it, He'll
proclaim it, He'll make it known to you. It's a great comfort.
to we who have this treasure in vessels of clay that God has
promised to teach and to guide His people. So He creates faith
and then through His activities He guides that life of faith. So the heart written desires
and the spirit written word are in accord one with another so
we don't find His commands burdensome. and in the New Testament and
in the work of His Spirit in our lives, we have principles,
blessed principles to guide our lives. The law of love is written
on our hearts. Love is the fulfilling of the
law. And that New Covenant in Hebrews 13, that blood of that
New Covenant and the Spirit's work in the lives of His people,
He'll make you perfect in every good word and work. And so before we turn to Matthew
8, I would just like you to have those thoughts with you that
the Spirit of God leads and guides His people. And why don't I just
pray for us as we turn to this passage of scripture. Our Father
we thank you that we have the remarkable testimony of you who
cannot lie as you lay out before us the wonders and glories of
your dear and precious son and your work in the lives of your
people to bring us to him that we might find our lives hidden
in Christ and hidden in you, our Father. We pray, Heavenly
Father, that You might again, as You have promised, take the
things of the Lord Jesus revealed in these verses and that You
might disclose them to us, You might make them known to us,
You'll show them to us, our Father, that we might find ourselves
just simply delighting in who our great God and Redeemer is. We thank you for bringing John
and Angus back safely, Heavenly Father, and we pray your blessing
on that marriage. And we do pray for our time with
Peter and Jill over this next few weeks, Heavenly Father, that
it might be a time of refreshing and blessing as once again we
see your son high and lifted up. We pray for their safe travel
and their journeys and whatever you have before them in their
journey to America, Heavenly Father, we pray your blessing
upon them. Thank you again for your mercy and love to us. We
thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Matthew chapter 8. I won't be long in this because
I think the things that I've been wanting to say about the
Spirit guiding His people, I just leap from the pages. In Matthew
8, we might just read the first story and look more closely at
the second one. When he came down from the mountain,
this is after preaching a sermon on the mountain, great multitudes
followed him. And behold, there came a leper
and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, You can make me
clean. He didn't say, Lord, if you are
able. He said, Lord, if you will, you
can make me clean. Jesus put forth his hand and
touched him, saying, I will. Be thou clean. And immediately
his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus saith unto him, See
thou tell no man, but go thy way. Show thyself to the priest
and offer the gift that Moses commanded for a testimony unto
them." It's a glorious picture, isn't it, of the Lord Jesus touching
And as he touches leprous sinners, they are made whole. What a great
word. Be thou clean. So here is, in that four verses
we have the story revealed of someone whose faith didn't seem
particularly strong. He said, if thou wilt, you can
make me clean. And in the next verses we have
a story that if you look down to Matthew 8.10, when Jesus heard
of this man's testimony, he marveled. What a remarkable thing for the
Lord Jesus to marvel. This is one of the few times
in the scriptures where he marvelled. In Mark 6, the Lord Jesus marvelled
at unbelief. He came to his own country. He
came to that place where they had witnessed his life for all
those years and they'd heard about his miracles in Mark 6. He could do He could there do
no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick
folk and healed them, and he marveled because of their unbelief."
He marvels at unbelief. Unbelief is the great sin, isn't
it? See, faith is just believing
God, believing God, believing God's Word. Unbelief, unbelief
is just disliking what God says about himself and what God says
about man and what God says about how man is to be saved. That's the reason, isn't it,
if you think about it. That's the reason, is a dislike. That's why the believers in Thessalonica
and other believers are just encouraged to simply believe. Unbelief. Men loved the darkness
rather than light. Believers, it's a great description
of Christians, isn't it? They are just believers. They
simply believe what God says. And they're not, as unbelief
does. Unbelief is offended at what
God says. Unbelief is offended at what
God says about who He is. Unbelief is offended about what
God says about what man is. Unbelief, unbelief. It's remarkable. We turn to John
16 just quickly. John 16, those verses that we
do look at regularly, but in John 16, 8, we have the Spirit of Truth coming. And when He has come, He will
reprove, He will convince the world of sin and righteousness
and judgment. And of sin, not because they
commit adultery, not because they commit murder, the great
sin of the scriptures is unbelief. Of sin because they believe not
on Me. The unbelief is the damning sin,
isn't it? At the end of that chapter, John
3, he says, He that believeth on the Son has everlasting life,
and he that believeth not on the Son shall not see life, but
the wrath of God abideth on him. A shocking statement, isn't it? he that believeth." See unbelief
is not just ignorance and it's not just lack of knowledge. It's
a willful ongoing rejection of God's revelation of himself on
the conscience and revelation of himself in creation. It's
a willful rejection of what God says, as I said earlier, about
himself, about man, and about God's way of saving man. As Hebrews 3 says, isn't it,
the unbelieving Jews, they entered not in because of unbelief. The Lord calls it an evil heart
of unbelief in departing from the living God. Hebrews 3.19
says, so that we see that they could not enter in because of
unbelief. The believer truly knows what
unbelief is. The person with two natures cries
out and says, Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief. The believer knows, the believer
who has two natures knows that the new nature believes, the
new nature simply trusts, and the old nature never believes. So like the apostles, the Lord's
people cry out, Lord, increase our faith. The Lord marvelled
at unbelief. He marvelled at unbelief because
unbelief is a reflection of the desperate wickedness of the human
heart. But to go back to our text in
Matthew 8, the Lord Jesus meets with this
extraordinary situation that caused him to just be amazed
Matthew 8.5 And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there
came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, and saying, Lord, My servant lieth at home sick
of the palsy, sick with paralysis of some sort, and grievously
tormented. And Jesus saith unto him, I will
come and heal him. I will come, and that word heal
means to serve and then to cure. It's a glorious picture, isn't
it, of the Lord's saving hand of love and mercy. And verse
8, the centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that
thou should come under my roof, but speak the word only and my
servant shall be healed. What a remarkable statement.
What a remarkable statement from a Gentile. When Jesus heard it,
He marvelled and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto
you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And I say unto you that many
shall come from the east and the west and shall sit down with
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the
children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness,
and there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." What a remarkable
thing. He marvelled. He marvelled, didn't
he? What caused the Lord Jesus to
marvel? What caused him to be astonished? I want to know. It would be nice
for the Lord to be marveled at us. What were these causes? Well, the very first thing we
meet in this centurion is a true understanding of who he really
is. Man, as he fell in Adam and swallowed
the poison and had it coursing through his veins for the rest
of humanity's existence, lived with the lie of Satan. The lie
of Satan is you will be like God. You will determine, good
and evil, you will determine your destiny. You will make the
rules. You will determine, in some way,
your own salvation. There is, in the heart of humanity,
isn't there, there is a sense of entitlement, which is why
when people encounter passages like Romans 9, they find it offensive,
don't they? I find it offensive that the
Lord will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom
he will he hardeneth. And you will say unto me, Why
does he yet find fault? For who has resisted his will?
Nay, but O man, who art thou that replyest against God? And Romans 9 goes on to say,
doesn't it, the Holy Spirit says, shall the thing formed say to
him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus? This is God
speaking, isn't it? Has not the potter power over
the clay of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour and
another unto dishonour? What if God, willing to show
His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering
the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction? that he might make
known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which
he had aforeprepared unto glory. Even as soon he has called, not
only of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles." Israel stumbled. The Lord Jesus speaks of their
stumbling here, their stumbling in unbelief. But Israel, verse
31 of chapter 9 of Romans, Israel which followed after the law
of righteousness has not attained to the law of righteousness.
Wherefore, because they sought it not by faith, but as it were
by works of the law, for they stumbled at that stumbling stone. As it is written, Behold, I lay
and sigh on a stumbling stone and a rock of a fence, and whosoever
believeth on him shall not be ashamed. Brethren, my heart's
desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be
saved, for I bear them record that they have a zeal of God,
but not according to knowledge, for they, being ignorant of God's
righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness,
have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God."
Man believes. that he has an entitlement that
he's earned. I love what Matthew Henry said
about this, in terms of this man. He humbled himself, didn't
he? In verse 8 he says, I am not
worthy. Matthew Henry said, the greatest
of men must turn beggars when they have to do with Christ. So he takes a low view of himself. It's the sense of man's worthiness
and his own righteousness and his sense of his own being like
God that causes him to reject the message of sovereign grace. It's their high view of themselves. And they read Romans 9 and they
think about election and they say, that's not fair. And really
what they're saying is that God owes me. I've earned something. Verse 8, it's lovely, isn't it?
He says, I'm not worthy that thou should come under my roof,
but speak the word only and my servant shall be healed. What
extraordinary faith. And he says in verse 8, he says,
For I am a man under authority. He was under the authority of
Caesar, having soldiers under me. And I say to this man, Go,
and he goeth. And to another, Come, and he
cometh. And to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. And Jesus
heard this. He marveled. He marveled. Isn't it remarkable? This Gentile
man had heard, if you read in Luke's Gospel, it's the Jews
that come to the Lord Jesus on behalf of this man with his message
to the Lord. And they say that he loves the
people of Israel and he built them a synagogue. He'd learnt
who Jesus was. and he's just simply believed. He'd learnt, he'd learnt from
experience and learnt from the word, learnt possibly from the
scriptures, he'd learnt of this God and his love and his grace. He had view of the Lord Jesus Christ. He had a very low view of himself
and a very high view of the Lord Jesus. You just speak a word.
You don't even have to come. I'm not worthy to have you come
under my roof. You just say a word from a distance. and it will be done." You speak
and you create. He's acknowledging that He is
God, that the Lord Jesus has absolute authority. absolute sovereign power over
all things. He can heal a disease from a
distance. He can raise the dead. He is
God, absolutely sovereign. As we've been saying as we go
through Galatians, what you believe, what you believe is completely
dependent upon who you believe. You see, if you believe He is
God and He's absolutely sovereign, then these words of faith from
this centurion are words that thrill our hearts, isn't it?
You believe He's absolutely sovereign, that He's absolutely powerful,
He's omnipotent. He holds the universe together. It continues as it does at this
moment because of the word of His power. What He wills to happen
is what happens. If you want to know what God's
plan to happen today and yesterday, get the newspaper tomorrow morning
and you can write, God's plan fulfilled. God's will will be
done. We believe that if he died for
the sins of his people, then his people must be saved. You see this marvellous faith,
this faith that caused God Almighty to marvel. is remarkable, isn't
it? It has these two elements. It
has a low view of self and a very, very high view of heaven. And they meet together when He
meets people, doesn't it? It only happens when He reveals
Himself through His work. And here we have what marvelled
Him, isn't it? Here we have by the lips of this
man a declaration of his unworthiness and at the same time a marvellous
declaration of the worthiness of him. Here is his declaration
of his weakness. There's nothing he could do.
He loved this servant according to the other accounts. He was
particularly fond of him and with all of that and with all
of the power of Rome and all of the power that was His, to
exercise in Israel, he had no power. He had no power over this. But he acknowledges that Lord
Jesus has complete and omnipotent power and that he can speak a
word and it's done. We meet him, don't we, and we
come in our helplessness like the leper and we are touched
by him and he speaks a word and we are clean. Perfectly, perfectly,
completely clean. to go back to what I began with
earlier on about the spirits directing God's people. When
there is this meeting, this meeting of sinners in desperate need
and a Saviour with extraordinary power and grace and mercy, He
says in verse 13, He said to the centurion, just read it there,
these lovely words, Go thy way. Go thy way, as thou hast believed. So be it, as thou hast believed. Not according to all the good
things that the Jews had done, as thou hast believed. So be
it done unto thee." He speaks a word and he encourages faith,
but then he says these remarkable words, to go thy way. Go thy way. This is the work of God. This is the work of the Spirit
of God, that you believe on Him who He has sent. Go thy way. The way was the description of
the early church, wasn't it? It was the way. They were followers
of the way. Second Peter described it as
the way of truth and the way of righteousness. Go thy way. The Lord Jesus says it again
and again to people. Isn't it remarkable? Having met
Him, having been humbled by Him, having been humbled by His glory
and His grace and His very being, God's children have a remarkable
liberty. Go thy way. As Ecclesiastes 9 says, go thy
way, eat thy bread with joy and drink thy wine with a merry heart. For God now accepteth thy works. Go thy way. It's interesting
that it's bread and wine, isn't it? Eat thy bread with joy, drink
thy wine with a merry heart, for God accepts thy works. accepts them, because the works
of God's people are the works of the Lord Jesus Christ. In
Mark chapter 7 he says to the woman who was taken to a similar
place as the centurion, it's very interesting isn't it, that
he takes his people to a place of utter dependence upon him. And you might recall the story
of the Syrophoenician, this woman who took her place. She was a
Greek. And she foresawed him that he
would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. But Jesus said
unto her, Let the children first be filled. It is not right to
take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs. He was saying
that she was a Gentile dog. And she answered and said unto
him, Yes, Lord, truth, Lord. Yet the dogs eat under the table,
eat of the children's crumbs. And he said unto her, for this
saying, this saying, she, like this man, took the lowest place,
the place of unworthiness, the place of a dog, a Gentile dog,
for this saying, go thy way, the devil is gone out of thy
daughter. Go thy way. What shall I render
unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me? I will take the cup
of salvation. Oh, go my way. Go thy way. Take
the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. I
will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all His
people. The Shulamite in Song of Solomon
asks where to go. Where does the Lord feed his
flocks? Where does He make them to rest
at the noonday? And He says, go thy way forth
by the footsteps of the flock. See God's children will all follow
in the footsteps of the flock. We have a picture before us in
Matthew 8 and in Mark 7 and in many, many other places where
the Lord Jesus meets people in saving grace and faith. It's
the footsteps of His flock always. Go thy way. This is the most
marvelous thing, isn't it? The Lord marveled. He marveled at faith. He just marvels at simple faith
that takes Him at His word and trusts Him for who He is as He's
revealed. And I'll just finish with one
more. Brian Barth and Marius. There he was, beside the road,
wasn't he, with his beggars' mat in front of him in Mark chapter
10. And He caused the Lord Jesus,
He caused God Almighty to stand still. He cried out, Jesus, thou
Son of David, have mercy on me. And many charged Him that He
should hold this peace, but He cried, the more a great deal,
thou Son of David, have mercy upon me. And Jesus stood still. See, we can, by our pleading,
cause Almighty God to stand still, we can by our belief cause him
to be marvelled. Jesus stood still and commanded
him to be called, and they called the blind man, saying unto him,
Be of good comfort, rise, he calleth thee. And he, casting
away his garment, rose and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered
and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him,
Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him,
go thy way. Thy faith has made thee whole. So this is the way that God's
people go. Immediately he received his sight. What did he do? And he followed
Jesus in faith. That's the way of faith. That's
the way of marvelous faith, to be humbled by Him, to be led
by Him, to see who He is, to see Him in His glorious provision,
to see Him in His glorious being, and to simply follow Him in the
way. Let's pray.