It is not that I did choose thee,
Lord, for Lord, that could not be. Cuba Sutter Grace Church
would like to invite you to listen to a sermon by our pastor, Rick
Warda. We currently meet at the Yuba
County Library, located at 303 2nd Street in downtown Marysville,
California, on the corner of 2nd and C Street. Weekly services
are held on Sunday at 11 a.m. at the library. For more information,
visit our website at ysgracechurch.com. Now here's our pastor, Rick Warda. The scripture for today's sermon
is found in Matthew chapter 14, verses 34 through 36. And when
they were gone over, they came into the land of Gennesaret,
And when the men of that place had knowledge of him, they sent
out into all that country round about, and brought unto him all
that were diseased. And besought him that they might
only touch the hem of his garment, and as many as touched were made
perfectly whole. I want to be made perfectly whole,
don't you? I want to know that all my sins
are taken away. I want Christ to touch me and
I want to touch him as these did. There is a close connection
in scripture between sickness and sin. Sickness affects how
we feel and our outlook, similar to the way that sin affects us. When we sin, we feel weak. We feel anxiety and despair and
even fear. Scripture uses physical sickness
and healing to teach us about our sin condition and salvation
from sin. I've entitled this sermon, Made
Perfectly Whole. Sickness is a physical condition. Sickness mirrors our spiritual
condition. In Scripture, every disease,
every plague, every sickness that Jesus healed teaches salvation
from sin. He opened blind eyes. He unstopped
deaf ears. He made the mute speak. The crippled
and lame walked. Lepers were cleansed. Those who
were paralyzed carried their beds. A woman bent over, unable
to stand up, was made straight. A mother-in-law's fever was cooled. The woman's unclean flow of blood
was stopped. The withered hand was restored. Lunatics were put in their right
mind. The demon-possessed were delivered
from Satan. The hungry were fed. Infants
were blessed. The dead were raised. Jesus Christ
healed every physical malady, sickness, disease, and plague
of body and mind. All of these ailments describe
the condition of our heart as sinners, a condition from which
only Christ can save us. He is the great physician of
men's souls. He alone can take away our sin.
Jesus said, the whole do not need a physician, but the sick
do. I am not come to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance. Listen to what Peter said about
how Jesus Christ heals our souls. who, his own self, bear our sins
in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins,
should live unto righteousness, by whose stripes you were healed. Jesus bore our sins in his own
body. By his stripes we were healed.
Christ heals our souls from sin by bearing our sins in his own
body under the curse of God's law. How he does that is clearly
explained by this one verse. He bore our sins in his own body,
carrying them up to the cross, suffering the punishment of God
against those sins in himself. He took the beating my sins deserved. And Jesus healed all who had
need of healing. Luke 9 verse 11. Christ saves
all who have a need. Having a need to be healed from
sin is a gift of God's saving grace. Jesus told the Pharisees,
if you were blind, you should have no sin. But now you say,
we see. Therefore, your sin remaineth. John 9 41. Needing Christ is
the gift of God and the sign of life. He heals all who have
a need. and Christ healed all who came
to Him for healing. None were turned away. Can you
find one case in all the New Testament where Jesus turned
away a sick person or a needy sinner? He said, Him that cometh
to me I will in no wise cast out, John 6, 37. If you come
needy in all your sin, He will not cast you out. Jesus healed
multitudes, and he saves untold millions from their sin. Revelation
5.11 Christ healed all manner of sickness. He takes away and
forgives every sort of sin, and sin of every degree, whether
small or great. Psalm 25.11 says, For thy name's
sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great. Some in Jesus'
day had one kind of sickness and some another. Like sheep,
every one of us have turned to our own way. Each one of us have
a special bent toward the evil that is uniquely our own. But
know this, Christ alone can make us whole. He came to save sinners. In Jesus' day, each person usually
was healed of only one illness. But each one of us have the full
combination of every sin in our heart. Every sickness described
in the Gospels is in each one of us in totality. We are spiritually
blind. Our natural heart is unable to
see and know God in Jesus Christ. We are deaf. We cannot hear the
truth of the gospel. We cannot speak. Because the
truth of Christ is not in our heart, there is no abundance
of Christ out of which we can speak the gospel. We are plagued
in heart. We are unclean before God because
of our sin. We are withered, lame, crippled,
and paralyzed. We cannot do the will of God.
We are bowed down by the weight of our guilt under God's law
and cannot lift ourselves up. We have a fever. God's law condemns
our guilty conscience with scorching heat. We are in darkness under
the deception of Satan. We are deceived concerning God,
concerning ourselves, and concerning His salvation. And we are dead
in sins. We are unable to perform any
function of spiritual life. Our disease is not limited to
a single sickness. Sin has affected our entire body,
nature, and soul. Though most whom Christ healed
had but one affliction, we are guilty of every sin, and have
a nature full of sin. All those healed by Christ had
a condition that only He could heal. There is nothing a man
can do to save himself. Christ alone can save me from
my sin. and all whom Jesus healed were
made perfectly whole. Naaman's skin was made fresh
like a child's. The blind saw all things clearly. The lame went walking and leaping
in praising God. The high priest found no uncleanness
on the leper that Jesus cleansed. The bowed together woman was
made straight. The paralyzed man carried his
bed. The deaf man, with a speech impediment,
both heard and spoke clearly. The man's withered hand was restored
as the other. Christ cleanses us from all sin. He covers with His own righteousness. God finds no sin in His people. He sees only the perfect righteousness
of His own beloved Son, with whom He is well pleased. Song
of Solomon 4.7 says, Thou art all fair, my love, I see no spot
in thee. How the Lord Jesus Christ healed
sick people in the Gospels shows how he saves sinners from their
sin. Jesus healed by his will. The
leper said, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. Jesus said,
I will, be thou clean. Matthew 8, 2. Christ is the absolute
sovereign. He must will my salvation. He said, I will. He is willing
to save. He is able to save. He alone
can save. I must come to him as guilty.
with no excuse, owning my sin as all my fault. I sin against
clear revelation. Sin is all my fault, and Christ
is absolutely sovereign. Therefore, I have only one plea. Have mercy on me, the sinner. Find reason, O Lord, in yourself
to pardon and cleanse me by your sovereign grace. And Jesus, healed
by his word, All creation leaped out of nothing into perfect completion
at His command. Where the word of the King is,
there is power. Ecclesiastes 8.4 He upholds all
things by the word of His power. Hebrews 1.3 The gospel is the
power of God unto salvation. Romans 1.16 He must speak His
gospel to our heart. He must command the light of
the knowledge of the glory of God in Christ to shine in us. 2 Corinthians 4.6 Jesus is the
Word of God. We are saved by Him only. His Word alone is the power of
God unto salvation, and He healed by His touch. At Gennesaret they
went throughout the whole region and carried sick people to Jesus.
They begged him to touch the hem of his garment. All who touched
were made perfectly whole. Question, how is Jesus able to
heal sinful people? Could he have continued on earth
healing and raising the dead without going to the cross? No. We have a sin problem. God has
been offended. Our sin is against God and God
must receive His due. He will by no means clear the
guilty. God's law must be honored. Full obedience must be rendered. His justice must be compensated. The guilty must be punished.
Man failed to glorify God, all have sinned and come short of
the glory of God, Romans 3.23. Therefore, before any man can
be healed or raised to life from the dead, God must be honored
by perfect, continuous obedience in heart, mind, soul, and strength
He must receive full satisfaction for sin. For God to be just and
forgive a man's sin, Christ must take that man's sin and die under
God's curse for it as that sinner's substitute. Sin cannot be dealt
with apart from the cross of Christ. Grace in the heart without
Christ on the cross cannot save. It is not the work of grace in
you that makes you righteous before God. It is only the work
of Christ for you. Remember Romans 8.34, Who is
he that condemneth? It is Christ that died. Christ
could not heal men by coming to earth only without dying. Only the death of a substitute
could take away sin. If God could have made men righteous
by infusing grace into them, then Christ died for nothing. God would never afflict His Son
needlessly. God required His death. Therefore,
God could not save one sinner unless Christ died for them.
Galatians 2.21 says, If righteousness come by the law, then Christ
is dead in vain. Our personal obedience to God's
law cannot put away sin. It cannot clear the guilty. It
cannot make us righteous. Christ must die. This is the
crux of the matter. There is only one way God's justice
can be satisfied. There is only one way God can
justify the ungodly. Christ must die as our substitute. Christ had to take the place
of all those he saved. He must be holy in his person. He must be holy in his life.
He must obey all God's law required of man. And, after yielding perfect
obedience, he must bear the punishment for all of the sins of all those
he came to save. God removed his people's sins
from them. He laid them on Christ. Jesus
Christ did no sin, and he was not guilty of any sin, yet he
was made sin for us. 2 Corinthians 5.21 He is holy. He had no sin. He did no sin.
Yet God made him to be sin for us. Christ became guilty. He was not only guilty for our
sins, but he was affected by our sins. He experienced the
agony of our sin. He took our infirmities and therefore
he knew the feeling of our infirmity. Hebrews 4.15 His soul was made
an offering for sin, Isaiah 53.10. He carried the sins of his people
in his own body up to the tree. The flood of God's wrath came
into his soul. He drank the cup of the indignation
of the wrath of God. He drank damnation dry for his
people. All that God's law required to
be poured out on sinners was poured upon Him in His body and
soul. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace
was upon Him. Isaiah 53.5 With his stripes
we were healed. He himself bore our infirmities. He took our sorrows, our pain,
our griefs, our sin diseases. He bore them in himself. Thus,
Christ heals the sin of his people by his touch. When scripture
says Christ touched someone to heal them, it means that he took
their sin to himself. He owned it as his before God. And he answered God for it. Himself
took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses. Matthew 8.17
What Jesus did to heal Eni teaches us what He must do to save us
from our sins. Jesus touched the blind man.
He touched the leper. He put His finger into the ears
of the deaf. He touched the tongue of the
mute. He put his hands on the woman bowed together. He touched
the coffin of the widow's son. Why? Because his touch is his
compassion towards sinners. There is no way to adequately
describe the compassion of Christ towards sinners. A touch calms,
it soothes and comforts. How many times did your mother,
by her touch, comfort you as a child? Even grown men welcome
their mother's tender compassion. Babies are said to recover more
quickly and more completely if they are held. Christ's touch
was a touch of compassion. Compassion means to be affected
with the same feelings as another, to sympathize with them. Compassion
is a tender concern of sympathetic sorrow for someone who is suffering,
coupled with urgent aid given to relieve them. Compassion towards
the guilty is mercy freely granted to forgive and spare them of
the punishment they deserve. When you or I have compassion,
there is little more that we can do but to convey our deepest
sympathy. But Christ's compassion was vicarious. He not only felt the feeling
of our infirmity, He took it from us so that it was no more
ours but His. He was affected by it. He was
plagued, it says, stricken by God in Isaiah 53.4. His touch
was a touch of compassion, but it was a touch of power to relieve. His power to relieve suffering
came at a great cost. He bore the full cost to heal
us from our sin in his own person. He suffered the stroke of God.
He was smitten. He was afflicted. He felt the
anguish, the sorrows of our soul. He suffered. He was forsaken. He died. He experienced the full
payback for sin that God required in His law against guilty sinners. He cried, My God, My God, why
hast thou forsaken me? In Gethsemane, before any man
laid hands on him, he began to be sore amazed and to be very
heavy. And he said to his disciples,
my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death. In Luke 22,
he prayed that if it were possible, the cup of suffering would be
removed from him. He says, being in an agony, he
prayed more earnestly, his sweat, as it were, great drops of blood
falling down to the ground, bloody sweat from the heat of the holy
eye of God and his wrath against sin. He who is the Beloved of
the Father prayed, If there is any other way, O my Father, take
this cup from me. He who is well-pleasing in his
Father's sight, and who is always heard, prayed to Him, with whom
nothing is impossible, but it was not possible. He could only
take away our sin by bearing it in himself under God's just
wrath. He who had compassion on men's
bodies and souls asked if there was any other way that this cup
of God's indignation against sin could be taken from him,
and there was not. He therefore felt all the consequences
of sin and its punishment in his own body and soul. He knew
sin's guilt. In Psalm 40 verse 12 he says,
My iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able
to look up. They are more than the hairs
of mine head, therefore my heart faileth me. Do I see how Christ
was affected by my sins? Do you? He said, O God, Thou
knowest my foolishness, and my sins are not hid from Thee. Psalm
69, 5. He cried in Psalm 38, 7, My loins
are filled with a loathsome disease, and there is no soundness in
my flesh. Christ healed by His touch. His compassion moved Him to stand
in the place of those He healed. To heal any, he must bear their
sins. Matthew 8.17 He healed all that
were sick, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Isaiah the
prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities and bear our
sicknesses. Peter said, Who his own self,
bear our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead
to sins, should live unto righteousness, by whose stripes you were healed. 1 Peter 2.24 Jesus not only touched
sinners to heal them, but he healed all who touched him. When
Eni touched Christ, it meant that that person came into contact
with Him in a way that His virtue entered into them. This is what
happened to the woman who had an issue of blood 12 years, in
Matthew 9. She came behind Him in the crowd,
in the press. She touched the hem of His garment.
When she did, virtue left Christ and entered into her. The issue
of her blood stopped. She felt in herself that she
had been made whole. Here, in Matthew 14, 36, all
who were sick begged Jesus that they might touch only the hem
of his garment, and all who touched were made perfectly whole. What
does this teach? It teaches us that when we come
to Christ, when by the Spirit of God we are enabled to believe
Him, we behold and receive in ourselves the effects of His
salvation. Numbers 15 verses 38-40 illustrates
how touching Christ's garments heals. God commanded the men
of Israel to make fringes in the border of their garments.
He said to Moses, Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid
them that they make fringes in the borders of their garments
throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringes
of the borders a ribbon of blue. And it shall be unto you for
a fringe, that you may look upon it, and remember all the commandments
of the Lord to do them, and that you seek not after your own heart
and your own eyes, after which you used to go a-whoring, that
you may remember and do all the commandments, and be holy unto
God. The blue band on the fringe of
their garment reminded them of God's commandments that they
were to keep to be holy before God. But since no man can be
holy by his personal obedience to God's law, this scripture
is only fulfilled in Christ and in all who believe him. Christ
honored God's law by keeping it. He honored God's law by enduring
its punishment. By his union with his people,
he stood in their place before God. All that God requires of
believers has been met by Christ's obedience unto death. all that
he did is theirs. In Luke 24, Jesus came to the
two on the road to Emmaus, and beginning at Moses and all the
prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things
concerning himself. Therefore, all things in the
Old Testament ultimately point to Christ. The blue ribbon on
the fringe of their garments reminded Israel what God required
them to do to be holy. In fulfillment of this law, Christ
made himself holy as our High Priest. He sanctified himself
and sanctified his people. In his high priestly prayer in
John 17, 19, he prayed to his father on behalf of his people.
He said, for their sakes I sanctify myself that they also might be
sanctified through the truth. How did Jesus sanctify himself?
by doing the will of his father. His father's will was that he
take the sins of his people and offer himself in suffering and
death under God's law with their sins made his very own. It was
by his obedience to this will of God that Christ sanctified
his people. By the witch will We are sanctified
by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once, in time, for
all time and eternity. This is the truth of the Gospel. This is the truth by which Christ's
people are sanctified. Jesus Christ sanctified himself
to God for his people, and they are sanctified in him. The truth
by which believers are sanctified is the truth of the Gospel, because
it declares how Christ sanctified his people by offering himself
to God. Believing this truth honors God's
justice and truth, and it sanctifies the believing heart. As the hem
of the garment reminded Israel what God required them to do
to be holy, the hem of Christ's garments signifies what He must
do by His obedience in life and death to make His people holy. He did not live for himself.
He obeyed God to establish everlasting righteousness for his people.
He did not die for himself. He died with the sins of his
people to satisfy God in justice and put away their sins. 2 Corinthians
5.21 He suffered and died with the guilt of those sins under
the curse of God. He repaid their debt to God's
justice in their place by substituting himself as their surety. We thus
see the significance of touching the hem of Christ's garment.
First, He touches us. His compassion moved Him to heal
our sin-sick souls. He answered for our sins. He finished the will of God.
His obedience to God's will is our righteousness. And by His
touch, He gives us life and faith in Himself. In His touch, we
see that He bore our sins before God. And in the second place,
we touch Him by faith that He gives. All who are made to know
the sickness of their sin come and take of Christ by faith.
They receive His virtue. They receive the knowledge of
the forgiveness of their sins. The plague of their sin is taken
away. When you or I are unable to touch
Christ by faith, we receive the virtue of His obedience unto
death. We know the forgiveness of sins
in our conscience by faith in His blood. He has made us holy
by offering Himself to God. We stand on this by faith. He
perfected us forever. His Word tells us, and we believe
it in our heart. We are comforted by His compassion. By touching Him, we have joy
and peace in believing. Romans 15, 13. All who touch
the hem of Christ's garments were made perfectly whole. It
is His righteousness that makes us perfectly whole before God.
As Ruth asked Boaz to spread his skirt over her, faith comes
to Christ to find Him to be our covering. Isaiah 6110 says it
all, I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful
in my God, for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation,
he hath covered me with the robe of his righteousness, as a bridegroom
decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself
with her jewels. You've just heard a sermon by
our pastor Rick Warda. You may contact us by email or
by phone or download a copy of this sermon by visiting our website
at YSGraceChurch.com