Good evening. You would open
your Bibles back to Mark chapter two. Mark chapter two. Let us begin this message by
me telling us something about ourselves. We see it in this
chapter here, but we as a people are full of doubt. We are just
such a doubtful people. We are so slow to believe, and
I mean anything. We're quick to judge, but we
are so slow to believe. We doubt everything. In this
passage here, The top of my Bible from Mark 1 says, Christ preacheth
and healeth many diseased persons. Then it says, a leper is cleansed.
It says, one sick of the palsy healed. So this is what our Lord
has done. And we look in verse 7, and these
Pharisees, these men sit there and they say, why did this man
thus speak blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God
only? 16, it says, And when the scribes
and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said
unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with
publicans and sinners? Why is he doing that? Some of
our doubt comes to us honestly. Our nature, our sin, we're just
doubting people. We just don't trust people. We
trust ourselves. We just don't trust others. Some
of it is because of this world seems like at every turn we're
worried about being tricked, worried about being fooled. As
liars, we honestly are consciously worried about everyone else lying
to us. How about every time our phone
rings and the number isn't familiar, we think, oh, who's trying to
scam me? I wonder what they want. Everything is just doubt, full
of doubt. And that's who we are. An illustration
of this is one day I was at my office and I saw something. I
told one of my co-workers about it. I said, look at this. Isn't
this amazing? Have you ever seen this? They're like, no. Like,
this is incredible. We talked for a minute or two. Then someone
else walked by. They said, what are you talking
about? And we told them what we were talking about. And they
said, oh, I've got one of those. Now, I could have said to them,
well, what do you think of it? Is it as good as it seems? How
long have you had it? What did it cost? Do you like
it? No. What I said was, no you don't. Now that's embarrassing, but
that was my reaction. I didn't have a good reason to
say that. It wasn't that they didn't have money to get it.
It wasn't that it wasn't accessible. It was just that because I didn't
know about it, I thought there's no way they could know about
it. So what did they do? They immediately put their hand
in their pocket, pulled out their phone, and turned and showed
me a picture. And when they did that, you know
what the picture did? It proved they were right. It proved I
was wrong. In that moment, all I could do
was just say, I'm sorry, I'm wrong, you're right. And it was
embarrassing. The title of this message is
Thank God for Pictures. Thank God for pictures. This
book is the word of God. Every single word of it in here
is inspired word from our Lord Jesus Christ, from God in heaven.
All of it is true. It's not debatable. It's factual
because it was written by God. It is true. Our creator wrote
this. It's true. Yet, why do we doubt
so much of it? Why do we bicker about the parts
of it? Why do so many people have trouble
believing what this says? It's just because we're doubters.
That's who we are. Thankfully, our God is merciful
to us. He's loving. Our Lord shows his
love to us in many ways. One of them is that throughout
his word, he has given us so many examples, so many pictures
of what he's done, of who he is, and what the truth is. And
so we must say, thank God for these pictures. In education,
it was often said that every child learns differently. Every
student has a different way to grasp things. And there's a lot
of details on it. And it's also said everybody
learns at a different pace. Well, the greatest teacher is
the one who wrote this book. And it included every single
method there could be of teaching his children the truth. Some
of it is said in complex language. Some of it is said in simple
language. Some of it is given over one word, one line. Some of it over a chapter. Some
of it in a book. Some of us are shown things through examples,
through pictures, through stories. Sometimes we see the failure
of one of his children in his word, so it teaches us the truth.
We have all of these things to teach us the gospel. In this
way, his love to us to not just quit on us and say, they don't
believe me. No, his love for us shows us.
He constantly teaches us more and more from the word. Have
you ever heard someone say, the scripture that that verse just
came alive to me? Well, that's the Lord just opening our eyes,
showing us what it means. It's embarrassing that we can
read something over and over and over again, and it doesn't
mean anything to us. And then one day the Lord opens
it up to us and we think, how did I not see that? How did I
not know that? Well, I just want to take a couple
minutes. As I started preparing this, It became huge. When you think about what the
Lord shows us in the scriptures, the illustrations, the pictures,
I kept thinking, how am I going to get all this in? Well, obviously
you can't. So I just narrowed it down to
three different things that I wanted to touch base on. Just wanted
to look at three different things and how the Lord has used different
means, different stories, different pictures to show us that these
things are true. So there's three things that
I want to talk about that are all things this world, and I'm
including us in this, this world seems to not want to believe.
These are three things that we just always doubt. We just don't,
we just can't get it. The first one of those three
things is going to be in verse 16 and 17 of Mark 2. It says here, And when the scribes
and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said
unto his disciple, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with
publicans and sinners? When Jesus heard it, he said
unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician,
but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance. If you take out the couple words
in that where he's saying he didn't come to save the righteous
or call them, it actually says, I came to call sinners to repentance. The Lord Jesus Christ came to
save sinners. Turn with me to Joshua 2. Joshua
2. just after Deuteronomy, Joshua
chapter 2. I came not to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance. This is a wonderful story. I know a few people who this
is one of their favorite stories. This is the story of Rahab the
harlot. Look at Joshua 2 verse 1. And Joshua, the son of Nun, sent
out of Shittim two men to spy secretly. So let's stop there. Why did Joshua send two spies
into the city of Jericho? This is a city that the Lord
had told them, we will take the city. I will deliver this city
to you. This is your city. Everybody
knows that just days later, the people march around the city
and they shout at the Lord's beckoning and the walls just
crumble of the city. They had no need to send spies
into the city. So why did they send the spies
into the city? Because they had to go see this
woman. And then look at the next line. sent two men to spy secretly
saying, go view the land, even Jericho. And they went and came
into an harlot's house named Rahab and lodged there." Why
did they give this description to Rahab? Really, there's no
bearing on this story that we know that she's a harlot. It
doesn't really affect anything except for one thing. All of
us now know The one person in the city that would be saved
was a sinner. There were a lot of people in
that city, thousands of people in that city. There's no doubt
that there was someone else in that city more worthy of being
saved. There's no doubt. But the Lord here wrote that
word to describe her for one simple reason, that we understand
that the Lord Jesus Christ saves sinners. If we did not know that
about Rahab, would that not kind of change what we think? But
seeing that about her, we can look at that and say, if he would
save her, maybe he might save me. Then what happens in that story?
Rahab helps those spies, they escape, and they tell her, if
that red scarlet thread is out your window on the wall, you
will be saved. What's that a picture of? When
I see the blood, I'll pass over you. The Lord Jesus Christ will
save his people. Is that story not amazing that
they shouted and the walls of an enormous city crumbled to
the ground except for one simple place? I mean, I don't even know
how you could make that happen. But the Lord did that for one
sinner, for one of them. Turn with me to John chapter
9. John chapter 9. The scriptures are just full
of so many stories and examples that show us that the Lord Jesus
Christ came to save sinners. Look at John 9. This whole chapter is about a
blind man who was born blind and the Lord healed him. He took
clay and spittle and put it on his eyes and healed him. And
through this chapter, just so we can get through it, we don't
have the time to see it, the Lord healed him, gave him vision,
and everybody started seeing him and think, well, you were
blind. What happened? So he told them that something happened.
Well, the Pharisees got word of it. And they didn't believe
him. They doubted. They're like, you weren't blind.
You're just making this up. And he was like, no, I promise. And
everybody else says, he really was. And they said, no, no, no, that's
not true. Go get his parents. We'll prove this. So his parents
came. And he said, is this your son? They said, yes, he was blind
since he was born. And so they didn't have any use for them
anymore. So then they said to him, well, where's this man who
did this? And he goes, I don't know where
he is. I don't know. And they started saying, well,
he must be a sinner. He did it on the Sabbath. They kept complaining
and doubting all these things about it. And finally, this man
just said, how can anyone do this but be of God? Nobody can
do this. So they kicked him out. They
kicked him out of the church on this. So look at verse 35. Jesus heard that they had cast
him out. And when he had found him, he
said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? Think about
this. The Lord healed him and walked away. This man didn't
know where he was. And it says the Lord found him.
The Lord came to him. And he said, Do you believe on
the Son of God? And this man answered and said,
Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? And Jesus said
unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that walketh
with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him. The Lord
came and found this man. He found him. He looked for him. He found him.
He seeked him out. And he saved him. He taught him.
In 1 Timothy, it says, this is a faithful saying and worthy
of all acceptation. Everyone has to accept this.
There's no doubt about it. That Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners of whom I am chief. What about a Pharisee
and a publican? What about that story? We see
two men go into the temple. One seems to think pretty good
of themselves. The other just says they're a sinner. That's
what they say. And so what happens? The Lord
says, this man went down to his house justified. Which one? The
sinner. That's who it is. Now, if we
didn't have these examples, and there are literally hundreds
more, there are so many examples of this. If we did not have these
examples, and we just had the phrase that, I came not to call
the righteous, but sinners to repentance, would we not say
to ourselves, well, nobody's righteous. We're all sinners.
He's probably going to save the ones who are not as bad sinners.
I mean, really, if we didn't have those examples, we could
argue that. But we must say thank God that there is a hope for
the wretched sinners like us. Because He has shown us in His
Word. He's given us the example of two people and He's shown
us He saved the sinner. He saved the worst one. In Romans
5 it says, But God commendeth His love toward us, in that while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Isn't that amazing? Christ died for sinners. So stepping
to the next thing, he came to save sinners. The second is found
in Ephesians 2. Look with me over here at Ephesians
chapter 2. Look at verse 5 of Ephesians
2. Even when we were dead in sins,
were sinners, hath quickened us together with Christ, by grace
are ye saved, and hath raised us up together, made us sit together
in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come
he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness
toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through
faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Not only
did Christ come to save sinners, but he saved them by his grace.
Look at verse nine, not of works, lest any man should boast. I
don't think we really grasp how good news it is that we're saved
by grace and not by our works. I just don't think we really
grasp how amazing that is, that the Lord Jesus Christ would choose
a people and save them on no merit whatsoever. He would choose
sinners, the worst of the worst, and he would pluck them out and
save them. There must be examples of this. We must see this. It's
not of our works, but of his grace. What about Abraham and
Sarah? We heard about that this morning.
Abraham thought, God made a covenant with me, but I will kind of amend
that, or I will do something on my own. So they had Ishmael,
went through Hagar. Well, the Lord came back and
said, no. He said, I am the one who will provide the seed. I'm
the one who will do the work. Anything that has our hands in
it, anything that has our opinion in it, anything that has anything
to do with us, it's just sin. There's no salvation in it. It
must be of Him. It must be His miracle, His grace,
His mercy that a child was born through a dead womb, through
a hundred-year-old parent. so that we can look at that and
through that story, think to ourselves, there is no way that
as that blind man said, I don't know much, but it has to be of
God that this was done. No one else can do this. It must
be of him. What about Jacob and Esau? In
Romans nine, it says, for the children being not yet born,
neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of
God, according to election might stand not of works, but of him
that calleth. That shows us that it's not of
us. The Lord chose a people. He did
the choosing. He did the saving. He did all
of it. What about Noah? Right before this verse, it says
in the scripture, there's none good, no, not one. The Lord looked
upon the earth and there was none good. There was nothing.
Every single thought of every single person was evil continually. Now that's a pretty good description
of us. There are not many better descriptions of our nature and
our sin in the gospel other than it says every single thought
of every single person is not just evil, it's evil continually. There's not a moment that we
go up and down, we don't have good and bad thoughts. It's literally
all evil all the time. Right after that it says, but
Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Is there any doubt there? Did
that leave any inkling of a part of our works or of us playing
a part in it? I mean, we're damned because
of our sin. We heard it this morning. One
single breaking of the law, one thing in any part, we're sinners.
That's who we are. And we're condemned to death.
But this right here says, but Noah, but someone, but a sinner
found grace in the eyes of the Lord. What a miracle that is. It's of him. What about Nebuchadnezzar? This king who'd seen a lot. This
is after he had seen some of the things that happened in the
book of Daniel there with Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
And he says, All of a sudden, after all this, the kingdom that
he had from the Lord, he just in a moment said, this great
Babylon that I have built. And in the moment, the Lord struck
him down and he found himself feeding in the fields, eating
grass with claws and hair like a beast. In just a moment. And think about this. It's as
if no one knew who he was. This is the king of the greatest
kingdom in the world at the time. And in a moment, no one knew
who he was. But what happens at the end of
that story? The Lord comes back to him and shows him who he is. And Nebuchadnezzar says, God,
the Almighty is in control. He's the one who's done all this
thing, all the works of his hand, all those things. So we see that
the Lord Jesus Christ came to save sinners. We see that they're
saved by grace. And lastly, we'll see that He
will keep us. Turn over to Jude 1. Jude 1,
right before Revelation. Look at Jude 1 verse 24. Now unto Him, the Lord Jesus
Christ, that is able to keep you from falling and to present
you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. To the only wise God, our Savior,
be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever.
Amen. unto him that is able to keep
you from falling. What a wonderful thought that
we don't have to keep ourselves. If the Lord chose sinners to
save sinners and he saved them by his grace, what good would
it do us if we had to keep ourselves? I mean, we just, I mean, everything
we've read so far, I mean, it would just be, he saved us. Oh,
there it went. We blew it. But of course, He
keeps us. That's amazing, He keeps us.
And then the next line, He's able to keep you from falling
and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory
with exceeding joy to the only wise God our Savior. This third point in particular
is something that in religion and even everyone does this.
We see this and we hear this line that the Lord will keep
us. And it very often lends our minds to go to this flesh and
this world. We think of he'll keep us, he'll protect us, he
won't let anything happen to us, we won't get in an accident,
we won't get sick, we won't lose our job, all these things like
that. The Lord here is speaking of spiritual things. I was thinking
about it and this is a crude example of this. But comparing
this flesh and our life in this earth to our souls in eternity,
if you were in your house and it was on fire, and the fire
department came, and the firemen came and went in your house,
do you want them to save you? Or do you want them to save your
clothes, your coverings? I mean, it's comical to think
that. But for us to be conscious and
be so worried about what the Lord has done for us in the flesh,
in this life, these material blessings, these things that
we have, that I constantly, I can't tell you how often I'm driving
down the road and I hear an advertisement or something, a religious thing,
and it says, good news is coming, that promotion's on its way,
all this kind of stuff. And honestly, who cares in comparison
to eternal life? We're sinners who are gonna die.
This book says without the Lord Jesus Christ, we'll spend eternity.
Hell, that is so scary to think of. There's one thing needful. But it says here that the Lord
is faithful, will keep us, and will present us faultless before
the presence of His glory with exceeding joy to the only wise
God, our Savior. In 2 Thessalonians it says, the
Lord is faithful who shall establish you and keep you from evil. Turn
over with me to Daniel. We'll look at a couple things
here before we're finished. Look at Daniel chapter 3. Right
after Ezekiel, Daniel chapter 3. Daniel 3, look at verse 23. Of course, everybody knows this
story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego being thrown into the
fiery furnace. These men wouldn't bow down to
the idols, and so King Nebuchadnezzar, who we talked about, threw them
into the fiery furnace. So look at verse 23. And these
three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down, bound
into the midst of the burning, fiery furnace. Then Nebuchadnezzar
the king was astonished, and rose up in haste, and spake,
and said unto his counselors, Did not we cast three men bound
into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the
king, True, O king, yeah, that's what we did. He answered and
said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire,
and they have no hurt. And the form of the fourth is
like the Son of God." What an amazing picture of what our Lord
does for His sheep, does for His children. We are bound and
destined for the fire, to be completely consumed in it. But
He comes and consumes the fire and takes our place. What a glorious
picture that He will keep us. We all know. These stories are
so amazing because we know there's no logical way that you can throw
three men tied up into a fiery furnace that's a thousand degrees
hot, and a few minutes later, they're just walking around in
it. It doesn't matter what they're wearing. It doesn't matter how
much time they have to prepare. Nothing matters. We all know
they couldn't do it apart from the fourth one in the fire. They
couldn't do it apart from their Savior, the one who saved them.
And these stories, these pictures, often support and provide evidence
for different aspects of this. These stories we read about Rahab,
and what a great example it is. They show us that the Lord saved
this sinner. He chose her out of this. But
can't we also see in Rahab that we see a picture of the Lord
keeping his sheep? I imagine that she did what she did, and
she watched as the people of Israel walked around that city
for seven days. And they came in that last moment
and she's been told, if you put that scarlet cord out that window,
you will be saved. If the blood is there, you'll
be saved. But I have a feeling those were a really tough few
days for her. And then all of a sudden they
shouted and around her, I mean, she's in her house is on the
wall. And so the wall everywhere around her starts crumbling.
I mean, this is a lot. I can't imagine what that would
have been like. She looks out her window and the walls are
crumbling to her left, crumbling to her right. I can't think of
anything other than just sitting there and praying, Lord, save
me. Keep your word. You told me you would save me.
You have a covenant with me, Lord. Please uphold your covenant.
I haven't done anything on my end, but please, Lord, uphold
your covenant. And what about Noah? We saw that
the Lord had grace on Noah. But how about him being in the
ark? Our Lord keeps us. We have to be in the Lord Jesus
Christ. As the waves crash, the water comes down. As long as
they were in the ark, they were safe. As long as we're in the
Lord Jesus Christ, we're safe. That's the only thing that matters.
Nothing else matters apart from being in Him. Turn with me here
real quick to Luke 23. I think this is the last place
we'll turn. Luke 23. Luke 23, verse 39. This is our Lord on the cross.
In verse 39 it says, And one of the malefactors which were
hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself
and us. But the other answering rebuked
him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing that thou art in
the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we
receive the due reward of our deeds. But this man hath done
nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord,
remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. In verse 43,
and Jesus said unto him, verily I say unto thee, today shalt
thou be with me in paradise. Not only keeps us, but presents
us faultless before the throne. In Exodus 23, it says, I send
an angel before thee to keep thee in the way and to bring
thee into the place which I have prepared. This is not something
that as we go day by day, our Lord is just blocking things
and trying to make sure we're okay. No, this is all designed. This is all His plan. His salvation
was from before time began. He chose us. He came and died
for us. He buried our sins. He quenched
the fire, wrath of God for us, and He will keep us. There's
no doubt about this. This is the same argument that
I said earlier about everything in this book because He wrote
it. It's true. Him keeping us because it's Him we are kept.
We are all still going through this life. Everyone here has
doubts. Everyone here is so unsure of
so many things. We can be sure that if we are
one of His, if He chose us, He has kept us. It's done. It's done. We're safe. We should
never concern ourselves with that. Really. We should pray
to Him and say, Lord, please save me. But we don't have to
ask Him to keep us. If He saved us, He's kept us.
That doesn't mean I won't. I'm sure at some point here soon
I'm going to be thinking and panicking and saying, Lord, help
me, keep me. But because it's Him, He has.
So from this message, let's thank God. Let's thank Him for what
He's shown us. The Lord Jesus Christ has come
to save sinners. That's what He did. He did it
by His grace on His own. And He will keep us to the end.
So that's why we tell Him, Lord, thank you. Keep showing us all
these things in your scripture. We know so little. We just, oh,
it's so weak. We just don't understand anything.
But we ask him, we ask him for us. This book is so clear and
plain. Is it not so wonderful to be
sitting in the pew and all of a sudden our pastor says something
and it's like, that's so obvious. That's great. He makes things
clear to us for our sake. Lord, we ask, Lord, please give
us pictures, give us illustrations, show us who you are and give
us faith to believe. All right.