You'll return in your Bibles
to Mark chapter seven. Now the story that we read is one of the few stories which
appears in only one of the four Gospels. The first three gospels,
Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are often called the synoptic gospels,
because synoptic means to see together. And most of the stories
you find in any one of them, you can find in the other two. John chose different stories
to tell. But Mark is the only one who
records this story for us. In verse 37, the people were
overwhelmed with amazement. He has done everything well. Now let us join with these people
from a couple of thousand years ago in praising our Savior because
He has done everything well. There is no glory for the one
who does not do everything or who does not do it well. If you want to be praised for
your work, you must complete the work and it must be done
well. It is a sad reality that the
Christ preached up in many pulpits today would not fit this description. On the one hand, they will say
he has done everything, but when they get done saying that he
has done everything, they give you something to do in order
to make his supposed everything effective. Well, if what he did
is not effective all by itself, then he didn't do everything. Doesn't that make sense? If I've
got to add something for me to what he did, then he didn't do
everything. And this Jesus that's often preached,
whatever he has done, he has not done it well. For it leaves
the majority of those whom he came to save unsaved. They say Jesus Christ came to
save every individual. That was his desire, that was
his purpose, that was the intention of his coming. Well, if that's what he came
to do, he did a poor job of it. You say, that's blasphemous.
Well, not against our Lord Jesus, but it is blasphemous or a word
of contempt, shall we say, toward that Jesus who came to save people,
but did not do everything required to save them. If he did His work, that is,
if He came to save a people, and yet the vast majority of
the people on earth are not saved, what does that say about the
quality of the Savior's work? The Lord Jesus Christ glorified
Himself in this, even as He prayed to the Father. You know, there's
very, well, there's only one man. only one man who could ever
make a boast in the presence of God. And that's the man Christ
Jesus. And he said to his father, of
all that you have given me, I have lost none. It was true in that
day, it's true in this day. There is a people who belong
to God by sovereign grace, by sovereign, unconditional election. And our Lord Jesus said of them,
as he prayed to the Father, they were yours and you gave them
to me. And I have lost none of them. It is well and good that we should
be proud, proud of and boast in our Lord. I'm not talking
about boasting anything about us. In fact, I'm talking about
exactly the opposite. We have nothing about ourselves
suitable for boasting, do we? Shall we boast of our righteousness?
Filthy rags. Should we boast of our morality? Well, even by human standards,
we don't measure up. Shall we boast of our faith?
Oh, I'd hate to rest anything upon my faith. Here today, gone
tomorrow. He said, don't you always believe?
I realize that everybody born of the Spirit of God always believes
from his heart. But when you take in consideration
the whole person, flesh and spirit together, there are times I can
scarcely tell that I believe. In fact, there's times I can't
tell at all. If anybody tries to get to heaven
on their faith, they're going to miss. Shall we boast of our
devotion? I spoke highly of our brother
Don, and I don't know of anybody who was more devoted to the work
that he believed that God had sent him to do. He was tireless
from the time God revealed himself to Don until five hours before
he left this world. He was virtually constantly in
the business of making known the unsearchable riches of Christ. Humanly speaking, his devotion
is an example to us, but I will tell you this of Don's devotion. It wouldn't have gotten him one
inch out of hell. We should be completely devoted
to Christ and his gospel. But our devotion to him is nothing
to boast about. But while we have nothing to
boast about, we certainly have someone to boast about. Christ himself. There's something to glory in.
There's something to be proud of. I don't boast that I believe
in him. I mean, I'm not afraid to confess
it, but I'm not boasting about it. But I am quite willing to
boast about him. The world may mock our love and
devotion to our Lord Jesus as so much superstitious religion. And I come across more and more
of those on the internet. I'm going to have to learn somehow
or another to quit looking at the comment section after YouTube
videos and stuff like that. Because if it's anything proclaiming
Christ, eventually an atheist is going to get on there and
start mocking everybody. But let them. Let them. It is not us. But they who shall
be ashamed in that day, whosoever shall trust in him
shall not be put to shame, says the scripture. And on that word,
we rely and we live our lives in confidence of acceptance with
God and the fullness of eternal life to come, not because we
have found anything in ourselves that is praiseworthy, but because
we have found every praiseworthy thing in the Lord Jesus Christ
Himself and we have trusted Him, that is, we have entrusted ourselves
to Him. We have said, we can't do it.
We are incapable. We are lost. We are blind. We are ignorant. We are foolish. We cannot please God. We dare
not come into His presence. Oh, Lord Jesus, go before the
Father for us. Intercede for us. Be our substitute. Save me by your grace. We rely upon him for everything. And because our reliance is on
him who has done everything well, we shall not be put to shame. Everyone who trusted in something
else or nothing at all shall be put to shame. They shall be discovered naked
and undone in the presence of God, their sin fully exposed. And God, the judge of all, shall
punish them with an everlasting punishment. No, we may boast in Christ. We
don't do so to elevate ourselves above others. We do so to elevate
him above all other proclaimed saviors. We set forth the Lord
Jesus Christ as our God. And we say, who is a God like
this one? We're not afraid to challenge
the world, to say to the world, can your God compare to mine? Is your God able to save to the
uttermost them that come to God by him? Is your God able to do whatever
he wills in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of
the earth, and no one can stay his hand or say unto him, what
do you think you're doing? Is your God like that? In the Song of Solomon, she calls
upon the other women of the city to go looking for her beloved,
her husband. And they said to her, why are
you bothering us with this in the middle of the night? What
is it about your beloved, your husband, that is better than others, that
you should disturb us to go in search for him? And this woman
did not say, oh, well, I don't want to boast. I don't want to
make any of you feel bad about your husbands. She said, I'll tell you. I'll
tell you what it is about him that makes it worthwhile. Yea, that even compels me in
the darkness of night to leave my bed and go in search of him. And she begins to list his qualities. every one of them excellent. And she summarizes her argument
with this, he is altogether lovely. We should not fear to tell the world that their
Savior can't save them unless he's this Savior. I mean, if
they got the same Savior we've got, then yeah, they're well
off. But if they're worshiping false
gods or false versions of the Lord Jesus, they are worshiping
a God who cannot save. And His preachers freely admit
that. Or at least they did in the days
when I was growing up. They would say, God wants to
save you, but he's done all he can. And he can't save you unless
you let him. They may as well have stopped
after the words, he can't save you. Because if he can't save you
unless you first give him permission, he's never getting permission
and you will never be saved. There are many separate points
about our Lord Jesus which we will mention, which might be
mentioned. And each of them is worthy of
our utmost praise. Each one of them, just like in
that Song of Solomon, you know, she said, his hair is like a
raven, and his eyes are like doves, and his arms like brass,
his legs like marble. She was bringing together all
the figures of speech she could to describe someone magnificent.
And we could go through all the individual aspects of our Lord's
person and all the different parts of his work and note that
each one of them all by itself is glorious. And we're gonna
do some of that. But all these glorious things
about our Lord Jesus Christ are gathered together and set forth
under this one statement, He has done everything well. Oh, I rejoice in that, don't
you? Doesn't that make your heart
love Him? He's done everything well. Doesn't that make your
heart Lift up in praise. Doesn't that make you wish you
could sing with a wonderful voice? You know, we croak out our praises,
and I realize the Lord's looking on the heart, but we think to
ourselves, He's worthy of a much better voice than I've got. I've been preaching, well, for
40 years now. Actually, a little longer. It
was about 40 years ago I started preaching on a more regular basis. And I'm still in the position
where I'm thinking, oh, if I could preach him as he ought to be
preached. If I could just one time declare his glory as it should be declared. That would be a wonderful thing
indeed. And it's a wonderful thing to
think that someday I will and so will you. Someday we will
praise our Lord as he deserves to be praised. So someday we
shall have voices fit to praise the King. Until then, we just
do what we can and pray for His grace to make it to be useful. What has our Lord done? He has done everything well.
What has He done? Well, the people who said this
a couple of thousand years ago were reacting to a miracle our
Lord had performed and likely to some teaching that he had
done before this man was brought to him. But we can be sure that these
people witnessed a work of remarkable power, unexplainable power. For it says that the people were
overwhelmed with amazement. Anyone who has ever come to any
kind of knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. I mean any measure
of knowledge of who He is and what He's done. They are overwhelmed
with amazement at Him. There's a reason we sing Amazing
Grace. That grace is amazing because
of whose grace it is. It's His grace and it amazes
us. They were amazed, and they said,
he has done all things well, everything well. He created the
heavens and the earth. And in the end, he declared it
to be very good. He is the creator of all that
is, and he did a very good job of creating it. He created all
things by the word of his mouth, and when he created, there was
no flaw in it. Today marks the beginning of
a three or four-day period I look forward to every year. We have
what we think is a flowering crab tree or something like that,
but it's just an ornamental tree. And this time of year, it puts out
its blossoms. I can no longer smell them. I
used to be able to, and it was nice, but I can't anymore, but
I can see them. Thousands upon thousands of beautiful
little white blossoms in that tree, just full of them. That only lasts three or four
days. Puts out its flowers, and according to the way of this
world, as the scriptures say, the flowers fade, and they do. And generally, within four days,
we're back to a nicely shaped but just plain green tree. And
it being an ornamental tree, it's been bred so that it bears
no fruit. But I look forward to this time
every year just to see that tree. And tomorrow morning, Lord willing,
I will take a cup of coffee out to my back porch. And I'll sit
there and drink it and look at that tree. And think about what a wonder
it is. What a beautiful thing our God
has made. And that's just a tree. In Sunday
school class a few years ago, I was talking about creation
and I pointed out that there, according to scientific estimates,
presently, that in our universe, there are 10 to the 26th power
stars. So what does that mean? You take
a one and then you put 26 zeros after it. That's how many stars
there are in the heavens. We look out on a clear autumn
night if there's no moon, and we're far enough out in the country
that city lights aren't obscuring the view, but they say we can
see about 3,000 stars. Three followed by four zeros.
There's 26, or there's one followed by 26 zeros of them out there. And the Bible says the heavens
declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork. It is written he spoke and it
was. I cannot in my mind even really
grasp the concept of a one followed by 26 zeros. I can write it down,
I can do the math with it if I want to. But you and I can't
think really what a number that big means. But our Lord called
them into existence with a word. And the Psalms says he calls
them out by name. I can't remember the names of
my own kids sometimes. There's only three of them. You
do that business when you try to talk to one of them and you
got to go down the whole list of kids before you get to the
right name? Our Lord knows every star by name. And we see in ourselves something
of the greatness of our Lord who shaped our race from the
dust of the ground and breathed into us the breath of life. Some would have us think that
that is not an accurate description of what happened. But really
what happened is that life came into existence from non-life
and began to organize itself into ever more complex versions
of life until it finally came up with us. As someone once says, I don't
have enough faith to believe that. The Bible tells us that on the
sixth day, God made the animals of the earth and included among
those animals was one named Adam. And while he told the earth to
bring forth animals, he did not tell the earth to bring forth
man. But he personally shaped man from the elements of the
earth. and breathed life into him, and
man became a living soul. And we think about ourselves
even in this fallen state, which is not to be compared with what
Adam was before sin. But understanding us as even
we are now, David says, I'm fearfully and wondrously made. In other
words, what he's saying is, my makeup is awe-inspiring and wonderful. I like watching shows, you know,
on public television or some of these special channels devoted
to science. And when they talk about life
and especially the human body, but when they describe all the
vast, intricate systems which must work together to keep this
thing going. It's amazing. He created and he did a good
job of it. We ruined it, but he's going
to fix it. He destroyed this wicked world,
yet saved one man and his family through a flood that was beyond
comprehension. Once again, people don't want
to believe the scriptural account of a worldwide flood. They say,
oh, it's impossible. It can't be done and all this.
Let them say what they want. The scriptures say that God destroyed
every bit of life. whose breath was in his nostrils.
That is all your standard animal life that breathes in. And he destroyed it by a flood.
And when you read about that flood and imagine in your mind
what must have occurred to cause the world to flood And I can't
remember how many feet deep it said it was. It was really, really
deep, all around the earth. To get all that done in 40 days,
not even that ark would have protected Noah. The Bible says that God shut
him in the ark. The ark was just there as a symbol
for you and me. But there isn't anything made
by a man that could have survived what went on. as the fountains
of the great deep broke up and the windows of heaven were open. But God preserved his chosen
through that storm, through that unbelievable flood, and we're
here today because he did. He called an idol worshiper out
of Ur of Chaldees and revealed himself to that man, Abram by
name, and said that through him all
the nations of the earth will be blessed, promised him a land, promised
him that he'd be the father of many nations, and he is. And
God entered into covenant. I say God, our Lord Jesus, that's
who did it. He is the I Am that appeared
in the bush to Moses. And he's the one that met Moses
on Sinai. And he entered into covenant
with this nation. And he gave them his word. And he gave them
a form of religion that in shadow and type pointed to himself. And he preserved that rebellious,
stiff-necked people. For 1,500 years, he bore up under
their unbelief and rebellion and idolatry. Why? Because he
had promised that it would be through them, through that lineage,
that all nations of the earth would be blessed. And that does
not mean that the Jews in general are going to be a blessing to
the world. It means one Jew, one Jew. It says, and in thy seed shall
all the nations of the earth be blessed. And Paul says, and
it did not say to seeds meaning many, but seed meaning one, even
the Lord Jesus Christ. I have nothing against the nation
Israel. It's the only nation in that particular area that
seems to have any common sense at all. But the Lord Jesus Christ did
not enter into covenant with Abraham in order to establish
a nation in 1948 AD. He entered into covenant with
Abraham that through his seed would the seed come. And he was
made flesh. What did he do? He who created
all things made a created version of Himself. That's the best way
I can put it right now. It's unexplainable. But the eternal
Word became flesh, one with us, a part of this creation. And
He dwelt among us. He became one of us and as one
of us, He bore all the sins, excuse
me, bore all the griefs and sorrows that you and I bore. I was listening
to brother Bruce Crabtree preaching Don Fortner's funeral message
yesterday. And if you can find that on YouTube, it's worth listening
to. And he talked about troubles. And he says, there's nowhere
you can go in trouble or sorrow or trial that you will not find
the Savior's footprints there, even in the tomb. Every moment we grow closer to
the grave, the child of God, don't worry. Lord's already been
there and he robbed grave of its power
he robbed death of its sting and though your body unless the
Lord returns pretty soon your body will be put in a box and
in a hole in the ground yet you will not die you will go to be
with him and our Lord who experienced everything that
it means to be human. Our Lord's been in the grave
before, and he came out, and so will every one of his people. He rose from the dead victorious
over death, for he has removed the sin that made death dangerous. We behold his sufferings. Here's
what he did. It says he's done everything
well. Well, what did he do? He died. Now, whoever talks about
dying well? The Savior. He's the only man that has ever
died. You say, wait a minute, a lot of people died. There's
a lot of people dying. Only the Lord Jesus Christ could
die in such a way. as to say of his death, it's
finished. Those who are in hell, and I'm
not gonna pretend I know what hell is like, but there are people
in hell this day. And they aren't dead, they're
dying. And forever they will die. And they shall never be able
to say It's finished. Only our Lord could say that.
He finished death. And when he finished death, he
had put away the sin that brought about that death. And therefore the grave had no
hold on him. And therefore the grave has no
hold on those who were in him when he died. He arose on high
to be seated at the right hand of God, there to rule all things
according to his own will for the good of his people. And he's
doing a good job of it. Now, there are folks right now,
you know, it's amazing. When everything's going good,
people don't want to praise and thank God. But you let something
go wrong, they start to curse God. And they'll say things like,
well, you know, If there really was a God, if he was any good,
he wouldn't allow cancer. He wouldn't allow children to
die. If God was good, why, there wouldn't be this coronavirus. The very reason that there is
this coronavirus is because God is righteous. The reason that
there is all the sorrow that you and I experience and everybody
experiences in life is precisely because of the righteousness
of God. But our Lord Jesus is ruling
everything up there. That is, from up there, he's
ruling everything here where we are. And there are times we
wonder about the wisdom of the course that he has laid for our
lives, and we scratch our head and say, how could this be good?
How could this be beneficial? And the Satan may come to us
and even use that to cause us to cast doubt upon the goodness
of our Savior towards us or cast doubt on our interest in him. But is it not true that no matter
how severe the trial, no matter how deep the cut, once he has
brought you through it, you can say with David, it was good for
me that I was afflicted. It's not enjoyable, but it's
good. And one of these days, brethren, we shall stand before
him. We shall see things as he has
always seen them. And we will stand in slack-jawed
wonder. in his wise providential plan
and how well it worked for our good. He is doing all things
well, even now. Sometimes I feel like making
a statement, but I'm afraid it'll sound like I'm proud. And that'd
probably be true. Well, I know I'm a proud man.
We all are, aren't we? I hope I'm not saying this in
an attempt to make you think well of me, because that's not
the reason. But I have no complaint about
what God has brought about in my life. Were there things I
would have done differently? Oh, yeah. Most certainly. But that just means I'd have
messed it up. Does that mean that if here in
some short term God brings on me some terrible and awful trial,
does that mean that I won't whine under the whip? Does that mean that I won't say
some of the foolish things that Job said? No, it doesn't mean
that. When amidst a trial, we say some
pretty stupid things. But I know my Savior hasn't done
anything wrong. That nothing that he has done,
is doing, or will do, is going to bring me harm. But it will
all bring me good. And the last point to make, It
says he has done everything well. Sometimes it's better to just
take part of a sentence and learn something from it. He has done
everything. And what does that leave for
you and me to do? Nothing. Oh, but we gotta believe. Well, God's people do believe,
but they believe only because God worked in them to believe.
And the only reason they keep believing is because he keeps
working in them. They can't take credit for that. Yeah, but you got to persevere.
That's true. Why do you think we persevere? Because God perseveres. These things are not hurdles
which we must leap over to obtain eternal life. They are simply
evidences that we have eternal life. We believe because God
has given us that spiritual life by which we believe. We persevere
because God sustains that spiritual life that he first created within
us. Our Lord Jesus bore our sins
in his body on the tree. He offered himself without spot
to God. He said, it is finished and blessed
be his name. It was, everything was done. There's nothing else for you
and me to do. And of such a savior as that,
I'm proud. I am not ashamed of him. And
I gladly boast of His glory. And I gladly commit my soul to
Him. Heavenly Father, bless Your Word
now as only You can. In the name of our Savior, who's
done everything well, we pray this. Amen.