All right, so we're gonna look
at Mark first this morning. Mark chapter eight. We'll be looking at verses 10
through 21. And our text this morning, what we see here in
looking at this is the distinguishing grace of God for his people,
toward his people. Now this world labors very hard
to make the faith of Christ to be no different than any of the
other religions that are available to man in the world. It's Christ, however, that reveals
to us and teaches us that his faith, faith in him, it's not
a work of man. It's not just like every other
religion, because all other religions teach and show that it's man's
work. Man is saving himself by following
their system of theology and what they outline for you to
follow. But Christ teaches us the vanity
of that, and that it's just man's works, and it's sin, and it's
to be avoided. We read in the words of our God,
he said, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. And Esau pictures all those that
are left alone to themselves, that are left to themselves to
seek out God and to know him and to worship him. And there's
no grace shown to the likes of Esau. But Jacob, on the other
hand, is an example of one for whom God saves and for whom God
works his salvation for his people. And as we see that, it's not
that we delight, we don't delight and take delight in the thought
that God is passing by so many people, but What we do see is
we do acknowledge the sovereignty of God in his choosing whom he
will, and in his mercy and grace shown to sinners as it pleases
him. And what God is revealing to
us in his word throughout, when you look at that and when you
understand that, you see the Lord is showing us the heart
of man when he's left to himself. and he's making it very clear
and evident to us that left to ourselves, if God didn't show
us mercy, if God didn't act upon us and show us distinguishing
grace, we would be like every other person that's passed by.
We're no different. It's God that makes the difference.
It's not something that we've done that makes this difference. He shows us this truth and we
see this in the passage that he's showing this to his disciples
so that we see and understand that of a truth we must be born
again. Now our title is He Left Them. He Left Them. And we'll have
three divisions. We'll look at Christ dealing
with the Pharisees, We'll look at their dead doctrine, and then
we'll see this gracious warning to the weak, his disciples there
at the end. Now let's look at verses 10 and
11, Mark 8, 10 and 11. And straightway he entered into
a ship with his disciples and came into the parts of Dalmanutha. And the Pharisees came forth
and began to question with him, seeking of him a sign from heaven
tempting him. Now, before Christ had even preached
the gospel, before he even declared the glories and the kindness
of God towards sinners through this gospel, or before he even
healed anyone these Pharisees came forth and they began to
question him. And in verse 12, we didn't read
it, but verse 12 there, it says, and he sighed deeply in his spirit. And he sighed not out of frustration
and not because he wanted to save these people, but he couldn't,
because we know Christ thanked the Father. In Matthew, we saw
that Christ thanked the Father for his wisdom in hiding this
gospel from the wise and the prudent and revealing it unto
babes but what this deep sigh of Christ does is it gives us
pause and we stop because it's very easy to read right through
these verses and just keep on going and without seeing much
of anything here of what's revealed but it gives us pause because
on one hand what we'll see is that we ought not to think too
highly of ourselves As Paul said, for who maketh thee to differ
from another? And what hast thou that thou
didst not receive? Now if thou didst receive it,
why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it? But notice
further that Christ didn't deal with these Pharisees and then
move past them and go into the land and preach the gospel to
these people or heal their sick. But we see him, he turned around,
got back into the ship, and left them. That's sobering. They come and they confront him
and they're questioning him and he doesn't give them what they
want and he turns around and leaves that land. That's it. The Gospel's not there at all. And the Pharisees here are picturing
for us anyone who's content in their own self-righteousness.
They're content. They don't need the grace of
Christ. They have what it takes to stand before God in their
own mind and in their own imagination. So it's in this air of conceit,
in this air of contentment in themselves, that they come to
Christ. And it says here in you know,
or rather we should see that this is Christ the Son of God
who's standing before them. This is the one whom John wrote
in his gospel saying that the true light which lighteth every
man, that he is the true light which lighteth every man that
cometh into the world. But these Pharisees, they didn't
come to learn of Christ. They questioned him, but they
had no intention of hearing what he said. They wanted to show
what they knew. And they wanted to demonstrate
how much how much they knew and how superior they were to Christ. So it wasn't of any interest
in the truth. And Paul warns us several times,
to Timothy two times, in both letters, and in Titus, to the
likes of this, which says, but foolish and unlearned questions
avoid, knowing they do gender strifes. And an honest inquiry
is one thing. If you don't know and you honestly
just want understand the truth, that's one thing, and a pastor
should be more than willing to speak with you and to try to
answer your concerns or address it in a message. But you can
tell when someone's just there to ask questions because they
just want to trip you up, they want to cause you to stumble,
they just want to catch you in your words. And Christ didn't
give them any place. He didn't give them space for
that. And he's teaching us we shouldn't
waste our time either. If Christ himself, who's the
Son of God, didn't convince them to see the truth, we're not going
to convince them any better than he was able to do that. There's
really nothing more to say when someone comes in that spirit.
And then the next thing that we see, look at verse 11 and
12. It says, the Pharisees came forth and began to question with
him, seeking of him a sign from heaven, tempting him. And he
sighed deeply in his spirit and saith, why doth this generation
seek after a sign? Verily I say unto you, there
shall no sign be given unto this generation. And Paul noted, he
said, the Jews require a sign, and the
Greeks seek after wisdom. And whether you're religious,
like the Jews, or irreligious like the Greeks, where they pretend
and act like if you could just satisfy their inquiry, if you
can answer their riddle, then they'll believe what you have
to say. They're liars. They have no intention
of hearing what you have to say. They're not going to be convinced
or satisfied with anything that you say. The reality is, for
these men, signs were in abundance. They were being given in abundance
at that time. If they had given any place to
hear what John the Baptist was saying, they might have been
there when Christ came and was baptized. And it says that when
he came up straightway out of the water, it says, the heavens
were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending
like a dove and lighting upon him. And lo, a voice from heaven
sang, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And
by this time, just think about how many likely hundreds of people,
at least, had been healed by Christ. And not just among the
publicans and sinners, but Pharisees, groups of Pharisees saw him healing
people, things that they could not explain or understand. They
saw a man stretch forth his withered hand right before them all, and
it was made whole. They saw the lame, right? Think
about that. When the roof was ripped off,
they saw a lame man who couldn't walk, rise up from his bed and
go home rejoicing. and thanking the Lord and glorifying
Him, they saw the blind receive their sight, the deaf to hear,
the dumb to speak, they saw demons being cast out of many, and by
this time they had even seen a young damsel. of a ruler of
the synagogue, they saw his daughter raised to life and returned back
to the parents. So they saw many, many signs. They were never going to be satisfied. And, you know, at last they would
exclaim, if you be the king of Israel, come down from that cross
and we'll believe you. No, they wouldn't. Nothing's
ever going to satisfy them because they don't want to see the truth.
They don't want to hear or believe. What they want is a justification
for their unbelief. They just want to justify themselves
and prove and say, see, that's why I don't believe. So anything
that you do, the sinner is always going to find an excuse. Even
if they're praying and they're charging God, if you're God,
do this for me or do that. Even if God does it, they're
just going to explain it away as a coincidence and say, well,
that couldn't have been the Lord doing that. But the very fact
that we're here and you're here sitting and hearing this gospel
is a testimony to the resurrection of Christ, that God heard Christ,
that this man was raised from the dead. Otherwise, this faith
would have died back then when Christ died. That would have
been the end of it. The fact that we're here is because God
raised him from the dead and these men saw him and handled
him and ate with him after he rose from the dead. And Paul
said, we are unto God a sweet saver of Christ in them that
are saved and in them that perish. Now, another thing we see here
is that men will receive the testimony of man. They'll listen
to what their friends have to say about what they think, how
God saves a person, and if you put maybe five people in a room,
you're going to get eight to twelve different opinions on
how God saves sinners and how he deals with them. Because everyone's
going to hear and be like, oh yeah, I like that, and they're going
to add that little piece to what they think about God, and they're
going to share their different views, and they accept widely
what men say about God and how God receives sinners. But when
God himself speaks, and gives his testimony across thousands
of years, and to a number of different men who didn't even
know each other, and they all consistently say the same thing,
they won't hear God. They won't listen to him. They'll
listen to one man who says something and writes a book, and they'll
think that he's inspired and that he has the Spirit of God,
but they won't listen to the revelation that God has given
of himself concerning his son Jesus Christ. The Lord himself
said in John 5.43, He said, I am come in my father's
name, and ye receive me not. If another shall come in his
own name, him ye will receive. How can ye believe which receive
honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from
God only? And so we read then next that
he left them. He left them, and entering into
the ship again, departed to the other side." And that's very
solemn. He left them, because what we
know and what we understand is that he left them in darkness.
He left them in their corruption. He left them in their self-righteousness,
and in their ignorance, and in their willful unbelief, and he
left them that way forever. He left them. That's what it looks like when
God leaves a person to their own devices. Seeing that unbelief
and that unwillingness to hear and believe the truth concerning
the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Proverbs say, 29.1, he
that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed,
and that without remedy. All right, and that leads us
to our next point. Let's look at this in verse 15.
This is when Christ is back in the boat and he says to his disciples
that he charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven
of the Pharisees and of the leaven of Herod. And Matthew goes on
and mentions even the Sadducees here. So you have the Pharisees
and the Sadducees and Herod all listed here. And that pretty
much describes all of religion. You have the doctrinal purist
there, or the Pharisee, who has his religion so worked out, and
he has this system of theology, and he's watching. He's watching
you. And he's looking to you and expecting
you to line up with his traditions and the way he says things should
be done. And he wants to see that you're falling into line
with what he has determined is true righteousness before God. And if you don't line up, well,
then they condemn you. And they say, well, you're not.
I don't have to listen to you. You don't do what we say you
should be doing. And then you have the intellectual
liberal, which would be the Sadducees. They accepted and were willing
to hear everybody and what they had to say, except they couldn't
bear the truth. They couldn't bear the light
of truth being shined upon what they taught and what they believed,
and that they rejected. It's just like a lot of people
in our day, maybe a lot of people that preach and speak of tolerance,
and yet they can't tolerate when you say, you know, there is actually
a truth. There is truth, and it's the Lord Jesus Christ, but
that they can't tolerate because it's too narrow for them, even
though they're the ones talking about tolerance and accepting
everybody, unless you speak the truth. And then there's those
self-promoting infidels like Herod, who was very opportunistic. And as long as it could work
out to his advantage, sure, he'd help give some money to build
a synagogue here, and he'd do this good work over there, and
it all was for his praise and his glory, and so he was very
much like that. But the one thing that all these
religions have in common is that they look to the man, they look
to the sinner to do some work to earn favor with God and to
earn their salvation. They've got to do something now.
It can't all be of God. They've got to have some part
in salvation, whether they're talking about a work that you
need to do, or maybe you need to describe your experiences
that you've had. How do you feel about the salvation
now? And what's going on? Why don't you tell me your testimony? I'd like to hear that. Some require
a certain amount of time. They can't accept the fact that
a person can hear the gospel and be delivered from the dominion
of sin and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. But what did Philip
say to the Ethiopian eunuch? And then when the eunuch said,
well, here's water. What doth hinder me from being baptized?
And Philip said, well, Thou believest with all thine heart, that Jesus
is the Son of God, thou mayest." And what he's saying is, if you
have faith, if you're believing, if what I've just declared to
you, if God has given you faith to believe, whom am I to say
that you're not a believer? And when Peter was there preaching
to Cornelius and all his household, and the Spirit of God came upon
them so that it was visibly witnessed in them speaking in tongues and
speaking by the Spirit of God, Peter was like, who am I to say
that they're not believers? So we're not looking for certain
works and certain experiences and a certain amount of time
to be achieved or reached before we could say to someone, brother,
sister, you believe, welcome to the family of God. This is
the work of God and we rejoice in that. And if they're not,
the Lord will deal with them. But why do we have to be the
gatekeepers like that? We just preach the truth and
declare it's His work. So there isn't anything, there
isn't anything that a sinner can do to save themselves. Salvation
is of the Lord. It's a work that Christ does. And I know people get tripped
up because they think, well, isn't there something that we've
got to do? Don't we have to? Well, there are many, and certain
people, certain groups will use the words like, accept Jesus
Christ as your Lord and Savior, or you need to make Christ your
Lord and Savior, or you need to believe, and if you don't
believe, then you can't be saved. But the Scriptures don't even
get into that. They just, like when Paul was
preaching to the Jews, and the Greeks that were standing there,
when they heard it, They rejoiced in it, in what Paul was saying,
and it said, as many as were ordained to eternal life believed. So we preach the gospel knowing
that the Spirit is going to give life, and the Spirit is going
to give ears, and they're going to believe. I don't have to then
go to you and demand faith from you, and demand a work from you,
because We do persuade men, we want to see men, and we do declare
the truth with an earnest that people would believe, but we
know that I can't make you believe. You either believe by the power,
the divine power of God, or you don't. We preach these things
and declare these things, and we do look for a verdict, but
it's nothing that we can make a person decide upon and say,
you know what, you're right, I am going to make Christ my
Lord and Savior. No! No, you either believe it
or you don't believe it. And so we try to be as clear
as possible and declare the truth of what God has done and accomplished.
through Christ, for his people, and those who hear it, say that
the Spirit testifies with the Spirit that this is the truth,
that he is the Son of God. And you believe it. You can't
help but believe it. And then begin to grow in him
as he grows you in this truth. And so man-made religion always
puts some part of the work in man's hands, always trying to
give you something to do, something to glory in. But Paul said, a
little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. And so they may begin with
Christ, but it's before long they take you away from Christ
and they put your focus and attention on something that you need to
do. And it seems good, but before
long, that leaven permeates the whole, and that begins your focus
and your attention. Turn over to Galatians 5, verses
1 through 5. Galatians 5. Paul says, Galatians 5.1, Stand
fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us
free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. And
you know, any man-made condition that he teaches you that you
need to meet, this is a yoke of bondage. But verse 2, Paul, Behold, I,
Paul, say unto you that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall
profit you nothing. And that circumcision is any
work, any condition that man places upon you that you must
do, whether you have to walk the aisle, whether you have to
provide some certain testimony or be there for some length of
time or go through the classes that they advertise or to be
baptized. I'm not saying that we have a
desire to follow Christ and to serve him and to be found faithful,
but we know these things. We're obedient to Christ under the teaching and the influence
of the Spirit, not as a condition for our salvation, but we wait
upon the Spirit to work that righteousness in us. So you see
it where man takes faith and somehow takes that which is a
divine gift of God and makes it a work that the sinner can
and must do. And we will believe, you must
believe on Christ. He's going to give that. He's
going to work that in your heart. He's going to show you the sufficiency
of Christ and that you must have Christ to stand before the Lord.
And He's going to work that in you. And so it says, verses 3
and 4, For I testify again to every man that is circumcised
that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is become of
no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law.
Whatever that man-made law is, you who are looking to it for
your justification or for some part of your salvation, like
sanctification, you're falling from grace, he said. And you
see that so often with the law and with sanctification. People think that you move beyond
Christ and now you've got to study in the Word to ensure that
you're growing in a holy manner. And all it's doing is taking
your focus off of Christ and putting it on something you do,
and that's where the leaven comes in and it just takes over until
your whole focus now is on studying out that system of theology or
getting into some kind of works to build and go up the ladder
little by little. But what Paul says in verse,
look at verse 5, 5, 5, for we through the Spirit wait for the
hope of righteousness by faith. So we trust that Christ is teaching
us. We trust that he's given us his
Spirit, that he's growing us, that he's convicting us and teaching
us and increasing the knowledge and the hope that we have in
Christ, and he's making it more evident to us of what he's done
and accomplished for us, so that it's the Spirit that convicts
that we ourselves are sinners, it's the Spirit that convicts
us that Christ is the Christ sent of God to put away the sins
of his people, and that Christ is sufficient to save, that he
has saved, that he's done all that work. He gives us life,
he gives us hope, and he works all that fruit in us. And it
all is evidenced by our looking to and hoping and resting in
and continuing in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm
not promoting sin at all. I'm declaring that the only deliverance
from sin, the only deliverance from wickedness, is to look to
Christ and to stay upon the Lord Jesus Christ begging him, Lord
keep me, because we see what the heart does when left to itself,
when there is no spirit, when there is no influence, it's just
hard, it's cold, it's dead letter religion. And it's empty and
it gets choked out and it falls away, whether literally falls
away or just becomes indifferent and careless about what they're
hearing. And we're always being saved
from that. The Lord always is bringing us back, as we'll see
in that next point. But if we start emphasizing what
you need to do better, your attention goes towards that. Because the
carnal flesh is always like, oh yeah? What do I got to do
now? Oh, I got to read three chapters
a day. and I should pray in the morning
and at night? Alright, I can do that. And I've got to put
in 20 years here before you'll say I'm a Christian? Okay, that's
a big commitment, but alright, I can do that. Oh, I've got to
stop wearing blue suits and I've got to wear black suits now?
And so the flesh is like, okay, alright, I can check that off,
and alright, I can commit to that, I guess. Because the flesh
is looking for something whereby it can say, alright, I've satisfied
the requirements, I can rest easy now, I'm a Christian, rather
than looking to Christ and trusting Him and staying upon the Lord
Jesus Christ. All right, so the final point
here, let's look at verse 14. Here's where we see that distinguishing
grace that Christ shows the disciples, because Christ speaks to these
disciples. He doesn't turn away. Now the
disciples had forgotten to take bread, neither had they in the
ship with them more than one loaf. And he charged them, saying,
Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the
leaven of Herod. So he's teaching them what they
have need of knowing, that man doesn't save himself. There's
no works that man does to save himself. And they reason among
themselves saying, well, it's because we have no bread with
us. And we see right there, us. We see that picture of us. That's
the dullness of the flesh. That's the sinfulness of the
flesh. That's the weakness of the flesh. And that's where we
are. And they knew the truth. They knew Christ. And yet, they
forgot this. They didn't know this. They didn't
understand. And we see that with ourselves
all the time. And we see how the Lord's showing
us that we are continually coming to Christ. We never grow up past
him. We never outdo the need for Christ
to minister grace to us and to draw us again and to and to remind
us that He is our sufficiency, that He is our righteousness,
and that He delivers us from the lusts and the love of this
world, and He delivers us from just a dead, careless religion
that's content in the works of the flesh. He's always delivering
us from that, and He's always reminding us and drawing us to
Himself. Verse 17, when Jesus knew it,
he said unto them, Why reason ye, because ye have no bread?
Perceive ye not yet, neither understand? Have ye your heart
yet hardened? Having eyes, see ye not? And
having ears, hear ye not? And do ye not remember? And what
he's saying there is, you have an understanding. You have a
heart. I gave you a new heart. You have eyes. You have years,
but you've forgotten. He's saying to them, you are
my children, you are mine, but you've forgotten. You don't understand. You're speaking like one who's
just in the flesh and one who's carnal. And so then he reminds
them, he speaks to them in verse 19, when I break the five loaves
among 5,000, how many baskets did you have? 12. When I break
seven loaves among the 4,000, how many baskets? Seven. The Lord provided and he said
unto them, how is it that ye do not understand? And when he
spoke to them, they then understood when Christ revealed to them
again that it's not your works, it's not what you do. Don't you
just see the interaction I had with the Pharisees? Those are
people that are looking to their own works and what they've done
and how well they've done it, and they're trusting those works.
Trust me. Look to me, the Lord Jesus Christ.
and saying, and so he gave them that understanding. He opened
their eyes so they could see him again. He opened their ears
so they heard him, and they understood that. That was it. They heard
now, and that's how the Lord is continually dealing with us
under the gospel. He's constantly reminding us.
We go out there in that world and there's that hardness and
the weeds rise up and they start choking out the hope that we
have and the confidence and the trust we have in Him and we become
forgetful hearers and dull and just seem dead. But the Lord then brings us under
the gospel, and he warms our hearts, and he restores us to
himself again, and he feeds us and nourishes us in the Lord
Jesus Christ. And we're reminded, ah, now I
understand, Lord. Thank you, Lord. And we're so
happy and thankful for his work. And so we see that. We're no
different. But the Lord deals with us very
graciously. He deals with us in a distinguishing,
gracious manner, unlike those Pharisees who knew it all and
were content in themselves, and the Lord left them to themselves.
The Lord deals with us by bringing us that gospel and drawing us
to himself. And it says, I'll just read,
but later on try and read Luke 18, verses 9 through 14, but
I'll just read the first verse. because it says that Christ spake
this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they
were righteous and despised others. And that's what we see with man-made
religion, when it's just a certain text that you've got to meet
to these conditions, these key conditions we've got to fulfill
that men have told us that we have to meet in order to count
ourselves among the Christians, you start inspecting and looking
at what everyone's doing, and when they don't rise up to your
expectation, that's where that despising comes in. Because now
you start operating in the flesh, like it says there in 1 Peter
2.1, where Peter said, Lay aside all malice, all guile, and hypocrisies,
and envies, and all evil speakings. Because that's as soon as when
you start inspecting everybody, you start thinking more highly
of yourselves. And if someone is doing better than you, you
envy them and you hate them because it seems to come easy to them
and so hard for you. And so it all just becomes this
work in the flesh. And that's not how We operate
we look to the Lord Jesus Christ trusting him for all our hope
and our salvation. I pray the Lord will Deliver
us from being just popped up vain dead religionist, but that
he forms that love For Christ and his people in our hearts.
Let's pray our gracious Lord. We thank you father for your
mercy your gracious kindness toward us The patience that you
show to us, Lord, in constantly bringing us out of the deadness
of religion and the wickedness of this world and the lust of
this world. Lord, please continue to draw
us, feed us, comfort us, wash us in the blood of Christ. Make us truly to be your servants
indeed, rejoicing and resting in Christ our Lord and our Savior.
In his name we pray, amen.