Mark 8, verse 10. You've got
to remember this follows from the feeding of the 4,000 on the
eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. Immediately he entered the boat
with his disciples and came to the district of Dalmanutha. The Pharisees came out and began
to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test
him. Sighing deeply in his spirit,
he said, why does this generation seek for a sign? Truly I say
to you, no sign will be given this generation, leaving them
He again embarked and went away to the other side. They had forgotten
to take bread and did not have more than one loaf in the boat
with them. And he was giving orders to them saying, watch
out, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven
of Herod. And they began to discuss with
one another the fact that they had no bread. And Jesus, aware
of this, said to them, why do you discuss the fact that you
have no bread? Do you not yet see or understand? Do you have a hardened heart? Having eyes, do you not see?
Having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember? When
I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets
full of broken pieces did you pick up? They said to him, twelve. When I broke the seven for the
four thousand, how many large baskets full of broken pieces
did you pick up? And they said to him, seven.
And he was saying to them, do you not yet understand? As I said earlier, we have a
vivid picture in this passage before us of the Lord Jesus and
taking his disciples from the feeding of the 4,000, taking
them across the Sea of Galilee to confront these Pharisees. To be confronted by them, but
really to confront them. We must keep remembering that
the Lord Jesus is God Almighty in human flesh. In him dwells
all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, says Colossians 2.9. All his acts are the acts of
God and all his words are the words of God. And before us we
have a serious, serious passage of scripture. The Lord Jesus
in Mark's Gospel is portrayed as a servant. He was among his
people as a servant. And he leads his people. He leads
them to be separated from the world and its religion. The servant feeds and nourishes
his flock. And in this passage today, we
see the servant exposing the wolves, the wolves in sheep's
clothing, and protecting his little ones from them by exposing
them. As I said earlier, there is no
greater warning, more serious warning in scriptures than to
beware of false teachers. Beware of the leaven of false
teachers. It is in the scriptures from
Genesis to Revelation continual warnings from God about false
teachers who wear the clothing of God's sheep but inwardly are
ravening wolves. Verse 11, the Pharisees came
out and began to argue with him. That arguing is an ongoing thing. They came to the Lord Jesus again
and again, and in this particular passage they kept arguing with
him. They came not to honour him as
God, but they came to test him. Extraordinary that man would
rise up to test God. They came asking him for a sign
from heaven. They came to test him. Their scriptures in Proverbs
warns them, there is a way that seems right unto a man, but the
end thereof are the ways of death. And to make it clear to us, it's
repeated again in Proverbs 16. There is a way that seems right
to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. It's extraordinary, isn't it?
No generation in all of history has had as many signs as this
generation. Ever since the days that the
Lord used Moses to take the people out of Egypt, there had never
been the signs and wonders. God came and spoke from heaven
at the baptism of the Lord Jesus. There were remarkable events
prior to the birth of the Lord Jesus, the conception of John
the Baptist. Remarkable, miraculous events. Before the Lord Jesus was born,
he had to be taken to Bethlehem to fulfill prophecy. The scepter. have to be taken
away and the law giver from his feet, as Genesis 49.10 says.
And there was an Elijah to come. says Malachi. So from the beginning
of their scriptures to the end, there were warnings and instructions
about what God was going to do at this very, very special time
that the Messiah came. And as we've seen through Mark's
Gospel, when the Messiah came, he did the things that only Messiah
could do. He healed the blind. That's a messianic miracle. All these signs were done and
done publicly for these people to see. For those who seek signs
from God, there will never be any end of seeking signs. These reprobate men finally had
their wicked way with the Lord Jesus and subjected Him to the
most painful and humiliating death ever conceived by the heart
of evil men. They still were demanding a sign. If He is the King of Israel,
let Him come down from the cross and we will believe in Him. Seeking
signs is not a sign of faith, but a sign of sin. But these
men came to judge the Lord Jesus as they did again and again.
Their religious pride was horribly evil. Here is a group of men
pretending that they are doing God's service and daring to challenge
the incarnate God himself about his person. They looked so religious. They
seemed so pious. They had their Bibles under their
arms and their righteous deeds before them. But they were full. of envy, jealousy, arrogance
and pride. They couldn't refute what he
had done. It was plain to all to see his
miracles are public miracles. They couldn't refute his doctrine. They couldn't make any charge
of wickedness against the Lord Jesus' stick. They couldn't deny
the power that God displayed in the things he did. Nothing
makes a lost religious man more arrogant, insecure, envious and
malicious than the sight of another man doing the will of God, preaching
the truth of God, a truth that he refuses to preach, a man consecrated
to the glory of God, while these men are consecrated to nothing
but themselves. Spiritual pride. and arrogance
among these religious leaders keeps men from bowing to the
truth of God. And here are these men, plainly
confronted with the truth of God. And as the light of the
Gospel of the Lord Jesus shines upon them, they are exposed and
their hearts are exposed. They had no sense in which they
came to worship God. They came to attack him. They had persistently refused
to believe him. He publicly before them proclaimed
himself to be God. And they knew that he proclaimed
himself to be God. in the story of the paralytic
man. He openly declares himself to
be God. He openly declares himself to
be the one who can forgive sins alone. And his miracles are always
testament to his word about himself. And it's sad these words, they
came to test him. The word can also mean to tempt
him. It's the same word used in Matthew
chapter 4 when the devil went to the Lord Jesus in the wilderness. He was led up by the spirit into
the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. The devil is a
tempter. And in that temptation he wants
the Lord Jesus to turn bread into stones. The Lord Jesus had
miraculously just fed 4000 people out of nothing in this wilderness. And the second temptation that
he has for the Lord Jesus is, show us a sign. If you are the
son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written, he shall give
his angels charge over you, and in their hands they shall bear
you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone. It's the same
Pharisees that the Lord Jesus says in John 8 are children of
the devil. they are about doing their father's
work. And if we think they stopped
their activities at the cross of the Lord Jesus when they finally,
finally had their wicked way with him, the rest of the New
Testament says to us again and again, the Pharisees continued
their activities. If you turn in your Bibles to
Acts chapter 15, the first great attack on the church from people
within the church, from people claiming to be followers of the
Lord Jesus, was the attack that came to the churches in Galatia. where they were going with great
zeal all the way from Jerusalem to Turkey, to say to these believers,
you have to add the works of the law. You must add something
of your works to the work of the Lord Jesus to complete salvation. In Acts chapter 15, God the Holy
Spirit inspires Peter to say. So God knows the heart, acknowledged
them by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us.
The Holy Spirit was poured out on the Gentiles just as it was
to the Jews and made no distinction between us and them, purifying
their hearts by faith. Now therefore Why do you test
God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither
our fathers nor we were able to bear? The false teachers continued
their activities testing God. What blindness their religion
had created in them. what blindness their deeds had
established, what blindness they had because of the traditions
that bound them, what blindness they had because Satan had bound
them. As 2 Corinthians 4 says, the
God of this age has blinded the mind of unbelievers. And then he says, lest the light
of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God,
should shine upon them. Satan has blinded them so that
they will do his will. Satan has blinded them so that
they will not see the Lord Jesus in his glory. It's a shocking blindness, isn't
it? The blindness of religion. The blindness of religion which
is self-righteous. The blindness of religion which
leaves men to be proud of their activities. The blindness of
men who are caused not to see God is holy. God will only accept
holy things. God accepts his son. God will
not accept people who bring something other than the sacrifice of the
Lord Jesus. Verse 12, we have again a display
of the humanity of our Saviour. He sighed deeply in his spirit. The lostness of the lost caused
our Saviour to groan. And God's people in this world
groan and sigh about the lostness of them. When Jerusalem was to
be destroyed, God sent one of the angels through Jerusalem
to put a mark on the forehead of those who grieved and lamented
over what was happening there. We live today, my friends, in
a dark, dark world. God is blasphemed in our nation
and in this world. False religion is abounding according
to the promise of God. God's children sigh deeply over
that. Woe to us if we become hard of
heart and insensitive about what's happening around us. Multitudes
are going to hell. Before our eyes we have every
reason to sigh deeply. And the Lord Jesus rebukes this
generation, doesn't he? Why does this generation seek
for a sign? Truly I say to you, no sign will
be given this generation. All the signs in the Old Testament
had one purpose in mind, and that was to point people to the
Lord Jesus. And now that the Lord Jesus is
here, there are no need of signs from heaven. They had Heaven's
Son in their midst. He was a walking, talking, living
sign. This generation, this generation
that was so unworthy to have the Gospel brought to it, and
now they plead for a sign. This generation which greedily
follows the traditions of the elders for the sake of their
own pride and welfare. That generation which should,
by calculating the times, know that this is when Messiah was
coming. This generation which had seen
great wonders and miracles. Great wonders and miracles. What
an absurd and wicked suggestion to the Lord Jesus. Give us a
sign. One of the things that's so clear,
isn't it, in scriptures and one of the things that is so clear
as we walk with the Lord through this world and plead with lost
sinners, is that evidence does not bring faith. Spiritual light
comes by spiritual revelation and not from human sources. That which is born of flesh is
flesh. That which is born of spirit
is spirit. But these men also were hypocrites. They were hiding who they really
were behind a mask. And in verse 13 we have the Lord's
judgement on them. He arrives, He meets them, He
hears them, He speaks to them, and He just leaves. In fact,
the leaving them is a strong word which means to abandon them. They are left by God Himself. They are left in the darkness.
in their own darkness which they thought was light. They were
left in their self-righteousness that caused them to come and
judge the Son of God. They were left to themselves. Jesus' declaration of the Pharisees
was that you are of your father the devil and the desires of
your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning
and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in
him. Jesus just left them. Not only is it a serious, serious
warning about God's purposes in this world and God's character
in this world. It's a serious, serious warning
to us. Those who are the enemies of
the Lord Jesus and enemies of His cross are the enemies of
God's souls. And those who are the enemies
of God are to be counted by us as our enemies. God commands us to love our enemies
and pray for those who despitefully use us. But we are not to love
and pray for His enemies. Psalm 139. makes it very, very
clear. God's servants are called upon
to expose, to denounce, to condemn both them and their doctrine. And God's people must forsake
them. We are not told by God to go
into ongoing endless debates and quarrels with them. 2 Timothy
2.23 says the man of God does not quarrel, but he waits for
God to do his work. God's people are told to leave
them alone. From the beginning of the scriptures
to the end, we are told to leave them alone, to separate ourselves. Abraham was separated from Ur
of the Chaldees. He was forced to leave the religion
of his family and leave the world around him. The people of Israel
had to leave Egypt and from the religions of the nation around
them. They are told to separate themselves from Korah and Dathan
and Abiram, continually through the scriptures. God's warning
is, cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causes to err
from the words of knowledge. Leave them alone. Depart, Isaiah
52.11. Depart, depart, go out from there
and touch no unclean thing. Go out from the midst of her.
Babylonian free will works religion. Purify yourselves that you, you
who bear the vessels of the Lord. Be separate, says God. We are not to be separate from
the world and the things of the world. We are to be separate
from the religion of this world. Take no part, Ephesians 5.11,
in the unfruitful deeds of darkness. Instead, expose them. And in
2 Timothy chapter 3 we are told that a list of the characteristics
of those who would seem to be so religious and so righteous. And we are told to avoid such
people. 2 John 10 says, if anyone comes
to you and does not bring this teaching, the teaching of the
apostles, do not receive him into your house or give him any
greeting. Whoever greets him takes part
in his wicked works. Revelation 18. There's a call
from a voice from Heaven, from our God, saying, come out of
her, my people, come out of Babylon, that ye be not partakers of her
sins, and that you receive not of her plagues. God's people
are told to be separate. It's one of the sad things. The
sad thing for me in this world is that we have inverted God's
instructions about false teaching. We look at how much good is in
everything and say these people are so zealous, they are so good,
they are so missionary minded. The Pharisees were five-point
Calvinists. If you don't know what that means,
it doesn't matter. They were just seriously conservative theologians,
passionate theologians. If you'd asked them about the
sovereignty of God, they would say, Amen. If you'd asked them
about particular redemption, that Messiah was coming just
for them, they would have said, of course he is. If you'd asked
them about issues of doctrine, you would have found them so
right. and yet their knowledge puffed them up rather than humbled
them. The sacrifices day in and day
out in that temple were a reminder that they are nothing but sin,
they deserve death. And they cut the lamb's throat
and blood spurted out as it kicked around as it died to remind them
that that's what they deserve before God. And yet those very
things which were designed by God to humble them became sources
of pride for them. So we've inverted God's warning. God says beware. of the little
bit of poison. And we turn around and say, but
these people are doing so much good. The question that God puts
before us all the time is, what's the leaven there? What is the
leaven? according to Luke 12, is a leaven
of hypocrisy. They wear a mask. They wear a
mask of being conservative. They wear a mask of being religious. They wear a mask of being moral. But God says that really in our
hearts all of us are as an unclean thing. Our righteousnesses are
just filthy rags. There is none righteous, no not
one. There is none who understands.
There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They together have become unprofitable.
There is none who does good, no not one. Their throat is an
open tomb, with their tongues they have practiced deceit. The
poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of
cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed
blood. Destruction and misery are in
their ways, and the way of peace they have not known." And then
a description of these men the Lord Jesus confronted. There
is no fear of God before their eyes. That is what they really are.
What they were pretending to be was something else. To be
a hypocrite is to wear a mask, a mask that covers up what we
really are. Are we really prepared to meet
God wearing our mask of religious self-righteousness? Are we prepared
to meet God parading before him our filthy rags of our works? We have so many ways of adding
a little bit of yeast, a little bit of the leaven that
works according to the promise of God through the whole batch
of dough. We are prone to use that phrase, by the Spirit. I
have done all these things and look at all the good things that
I have done. Then we protect ourselves from utter blasphemy
by saying, but it's only by the Spirit that we've done these
things. Man is prone to boasting. Philippians 3 says that we are
people who worship God in spirit and put no confidence in the
flesh. We have no righteousness to establish
and we have no righteousness to defend. To take anything other
than the Lord Jesus to God as a sacrifice for Him is to say
to the Lord Jesus, thank you very much but you haven't done
enough. The warnings are all through
Scripture. Stand fast, says Galatians 5, therefore in the liberty by
which Christ has made us free. And do not be entangled again
with a yoke of bondage. Indeed I, Paul, say that if you
become circumcised, if you do anything, Christ will profit
you nothing. I testify again to every man
who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole
law. You have become estranged from
Christ. You who attempt to be justified
by law, you have fallen from grace. So how do we protect ourselves? How do we protect ourselves from
this leaving? I've just got a few things to
say. I think we need to live in as much light as the grace
of God allows. We need to go to God hiding nothing. We need to go to God personally
saying this is what I am. He sees perfectly. In him there
is no light and no shadow. There is nothing that's ever
happened in your life, nothing that will ever happen in your
life, nothing about your thoughts that he doesn't have perfect
knowledge of. Anything other than total honesty
with God. Total honesty privately with
God is just self-deception. Secondly, God calls on us to
search the scriptures. We've handed out Simon's notes
from his sermon on the Gospel that we proclaim here. Search
the scriptures. It's a message full of the scriptures. Search the scriptures to see
if that's the gospel that you are resting your eternal soul
on. Test everything and hold on to
what's good. Test the spirits to see if they
are from God. A spirit is talking to you now. Test the spirit, says God. I
think the other thing we can do is that we can trust the promises
of God. These disciples, in a sense,
were going through a period of testing by God. He sends trials
to test us, to take away our refuge of lies, to expose our
self-righteousness, to expose the fact that we believe in the
merit of our own good works. And he has promised to work all
things for our good. So whenever something difficult,
traumatic or challenging comes along, the first thing that we
should ask is, what is God saying to me now? What is God's role
in this? God is sovereign. What's His
role? God is active. What's He doing? These Pharisees that Jesus left
have spent the last 2,000 years in hell because they rejected
the light given to them. They rejected the warnings given
to them. They lived in that last generation
which had witnessed so much and seen so much and they turned
from the light to the dark because their deeds were evil. People go to hell because of
their sins and their rejection of the light. God, the God of
this universe is just. Justice will be done. They go
to hell ignoring the warnings of God, repeated warnings from
God. All of their scriptures warn
them not to reject God when he comes and speaks to us. To his children, even his tough
words are kindness from him for us. His words of warning are
words of love to his children. For these Pharisees, they had
the most extraordinary privileges and hell is now more painful
for them because they received so much light. The Lord Jesus calls upon his
disciples to look and to know what's going on around them.
Verse 16, they began to discuss with one another the fact that
they had no bread. Jesus, aware of this, said to
them, why do you discuss the fact that you have no bread?
Do you not yet see or understand? Do you have a hardened heart?
Having eyes, do you not see? Having ears, do you not hear?
And do you not remember? Our Lord rebukes the apostles. He rebukes them for their ignorance. He rebukes them for their unbelief. and he rebukes them for their
forgetfulness. The Lord Jesus used again and
again the things of this world to raise issues of spiritual
importance. And here they are talking about
bread when the Lord Jesus had just fed 4,000 people. Food was
not a problem for these people. Why are they talking about bread?
They had forgotten. They had forgotten what he'd
just done. And he reminds them again of
his grace to these people who followed him. When I broke the
5 loaves for the 5,000, how many basketfuls of broken pieces did
you pick up? And they knew, 12. When I broke
the 7 for the 4,000, how many did you pick up? 7. And he was
saying to them, do you not yet understand? What was it that
they were to understand? They had God in their midst. They had the almighty creator
of this universe in the boat with them. Again and again it's shown them
who he is and what he's done. Our Adam flesh is in constant
need of grace. Left for a millisecond we will
depart from the truth and seek human and worldly understanding. Ongoing faith is an ongoing perpetual
miracle. Do you trust the Son of God now?
That's a miracle that's only wrought by the Almighty God.
Will you trust Him tomorrow? That'll be the work of Almighty
God. We are saved by grace through
faith and this is not of ourselves, it's the gift of God. And so again Mark exposes for
us the weakness of the apostles. He exposes their human frailty. And it's for our good that he's
done so, for many reasons. We've got to be reminded again
and again that salvation is God's work alone. We must constantly
be reminded not to think too highly of ourselves. We must
learn, we need to keep learning to be tender, patient and forgiving
of one another. We constantly need to be reminded
that Christ alone gives us acceptance with God. And we must be reminded
again and again that it's He who keeps us in life and grace
and faith. And we must never imagine, not
as long as we live in this world, that we have arrived at anything
close to perfection. And we must be constantly reminded
that we are sin, and we do sin, but we who believe have an advocate
with the Father. He lives always to intercede
for us. He knows our frame. He knows
how weak we are. No wonder the Apostle John calls
us little children. My little children, these things
are right to you, but you sin not. And if any man sin, we have
an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. So there are some serious warnings
in this passage. Warnings about religious hypocrisy. Warnings about the leaving of
false doctrine. If it gets in, it will take over
the whole lump. We can think of churches and
denominations around here that started with some really sound
doctrine and now they do nothing but blaspheme our saviour. The little bit of yeast is promised
by God to work through the whole batch of dough. A little bit
of yeast of false doctrine which is why we plead with each other
here to test us, to take us to the scriptures. And we want to
be open before people about what we believe. We want to publish
publicly what we believe. The scriptures are saying about
our Saviour, who He is and what He did on the cross and the way
He saved sinners. And we do it because we want
to proclaim the glories of our Saviour. And we do it that if
we are wrong, God might mercifully send someone along to show us
that we're right. But before we finish, I'd just
like to turn to one beautiful picture. If you turn in your
Bibles to Mark 8. And he leaves these self-righteous
religious people and he does something beautiful. A beautiful
picture of amazing grace. He goes to the other side of
the lake. He left a group of blind men. In Mark 8.23, he took the blind
man by the hand and led him out of town. It's a beautiful picture of amazing
grace. It's a beautiful picture of effective,
distinguishing grace. He left the multitude behind
and left the town and took this one man. It's an amazing picture
of effectual grace. Jesus comes and he touches him
and takes him by the hand and leaves him out. And as we'll
see next week, it's a beautiful picture of enlightening grace
as the Lord Jesus opens this man's eyes to see. And what a privilege it is to
have eyes opened by God himself. What an amazing picture of grace
it is to have God come and take you by the hand and lead you
out, to lead you out of the religion of this world, to lead you out
of the town, to lead you out of the world itself and take
you to a place where this man, when he opened his eyes, got
to see Jesus. That's what salvation is a picture
of, isn't it? In the midst of the darkness,
the Lord is still rescuing every one of his children. He cannot
lose them. He cannot lose them. Beware of
the yeas of the Pharisees, but look to the Lord Jesus and look
expectantly for him to do glorious things. Let's pray.