Many years ago, I was a school
teacher. And I got the privilege of teaching
history. And I needed an illustration
one day of how historians are biased. And so I talked to my daughter
about coming in and disrupting my class. Now, that was easy
for her to do at that time, because sometimes we were just, you know. Anyway, she came in to my class. And she started an argument with
me, which was also easy. And she raised her voice, and
I raised my voice, and we got there, and we were having a fuss
right there in the middle of the class, and the class was
just, and then she, on my, I'd already planned to have her do
this, she had a glass of water behind her back, and she just
came up to me and went whoosh, like that, and ran out. And I
says, we need to report this to the principal, so everyone
write down what you saw. Well, I read those papers, and
I don't think some of those people even saw what happened. They
had no idea what happened. And some of them were ready to
take out after and bring her back and have her disciplined.
Well, I thought about an illustration this morning, but Brother Donnie
and Brother Wayne, neither one would volunteer for me to spit
in their face. I'd like to talk a few minutes
this morning. Spit on me. Turn with me to the book of Isaiah,
if you would. I love going to the Bible and reading and finding
out and seeing types and shadows and pictures of how God saves
his people. Miracle of grace. God saving
his people. We have many illustrations found
in the scriptures about that. But here in the book of Isaiah,
would you turn with me to the book of Isaiah chapter 55? And
I would like to read the first 11 verses of Isaiah chapter 55. And in this passage of scripture,
we read those renowned words, those famous words, those blessed
words, my ways are not your ways. You know, when we're in our religious
condition, we can't understand that, because we've got it all
figured out. And then when the Lord saves us, we say, oh my
goodness, human logic is so flawed. It is just terrible to go by
human logic with spiritual things. Well, here in the book of Isaiah,
he starts out saying, Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the
waters. And he that hath no money, come
ye, buy and eat. Yea, come buy. wine and milk
without money or without price. Wherefore do you spend money
for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which
satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and
eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself
in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto
me, hear, and your soul shall live. And I will make an everlasting
covenant with you, even sure mercies of David. Behold, I have
given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander
to the people. Behold, thou shalt call a nation
that thou knowest not, and nations that knew thee shall run into
thee because of the Lord, and thy God, and for the Holy One
of Israel. For he hath glorified thee. Seek
ye the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts. and let him return unto the Lord,
and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly
pardon. Notice verse eight with me, and
nine. For my thoughts are not your thoughts. You know, most
of our trouble is that we try to make God like us. That was
the problem that God shared with the children of Israel. I'm not
like you. You try to make me like you,
but I'm not like you. All right, my thoughts are not
your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher
than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my
thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down and
the snow from heaven and returneth, not thither, but watereth the
earth, and maketh it bring forth the bud, that it may give seed
to the sower, and bread to the eater. So shall my word be that
goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void. But it shall accomplish that
which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereinto
I sin it." What a promise. But we notice there in verses
8 and 9, the will of God, the purpose of God is so far above
our feeble minds in our natural state that we can't even measure
it. There is no measuring ability possible, as God says, as far
as the heavens are above the earth. How far is that? immeasurable,
light years, I don't know, it just cannot be comprehended.
Yet he promised that I'm right here with my people. So this
subject that we'd like to look at today is how does God save
his people? There are so many illustrations
in the scriptures about that, and one of them that capstones
the whole thing is some words that a brother of ours spoke
while he was in the belly of a great fish at the bottom of
the Mediterranean Sea. Salvation is of the Lord. Now, you know, we can go through
all the Old Testament and people do and say, look at the law,
look at the law, look at the law, and Jonah comes up and sums
it all up, salvations of the Lord. We have Habakkuk come up
and say, the just shall live by faith. That's what we find
throughout the entire Old Testament, but we find here that God demonstrates,
illustrates so many ways how he saves his people. We find
as we study the word and as it's revealed unto us, that our human
logic and every bit of our human logic is so erroneous and wrong. We just cannot come up with the
right plan. We cannot come up with the right
way. Our logic tells us to go worship a rock. Our logic tells
us to go worship a piece of wood. Our logic tells us to get wrapped
up in religion. Then we find out that God said,
my ways are not your ways. In the end, we thank God so much
that he brought us out of our logic and put us on Christ. We so often are like a man by
the name of Naaman. You remember Naaman? By the grace
of God, he had captured a little Israeli girl, and she became
his servant. Naaman is a leper. She said, The God of Israel could do something
for you. And so he traveled over to the
king and the king said, are you trying to mock me? And then he
was sent to a prophet. Now turn with me, if you would,
for just a couple of verses over in the book. This is just the
way we are. By nature, this is the way we
are. We haven't figured out. Did you
know Naaman had it all figured out how God was going to heal
him? He had it all figured out. Here in the book of 2 Kings chapter
5, turn with me to the book of 2 Kings chapter 5, and we have
this great leader, this Naaman of Syria, chapter 5 of the book
of 2 Kings, and there in verse, I'm going to say 10 and 11. And
Elisha, he didn't even go out to talk to him. He sent a messenger. You know, God sends his messengers. And if you not hear Moses and
the prophets, you wouldn't believe if one rose from the dead. And
you know that's still true today? As it was then, in that day,
and as it was in the Old Testament, Jesus Christ himself said, Moses
wrote a me. Everything that Moses wrote was
a reflection in type and shadow and picture of the glory of Jesus
Christ and the salvation by God Almighty. And here we read, Elisha
sent a messenger unto him. He didn't even go out there.
Now that's the first thing that Naaman said, I thought. Thought
he had it all figured out We have it all figured out by our
human reasoning and human logic We have salvation all figured
out and before you know it. We're worshiping a rock Nancy
and I were over there in Hawaii and we went down to the seashore
there and here is a rock to the sea god so that they would protect
those people that go out in the ocean, those Polynesians. We look at that and laugh, but
that's just the way we are by nature. We might call it Baptist,
we might call it Methodist, we might call it Catholic. The other
day my granddaughter was talking to me and she says, ''Granddad,
I want you to know I've become a Catholic.'' You know my response? ''So?'' It's no different than me starting
out in Arminianism and becoming a Calvinist. No difference at
all. I just traded a Ford for a Chevy.
Now, I don't know what you folks are, Chevys or Fords, but I just
traded a Ford for a Chevy. Came out religious again, and
it was more intellectual. It rose in stature because now
you believed in a God that was sovereign, but you really didn't
believe it anyway. Well, look here, he said, and Elisha sent
a messenger unto him saying, go and wash in Jordan seven times,
and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.
And Naaman rejoiced. Did you read the next verse?
Did you read the next verse? He said, but Naaman was lost. His logic was so flawed. His logic was so in error. His logic was so humanistic. His logic was way down in the
dumps. It was in the graveyard, if you
please. He was in a horrible pit with
his logic. He couldn't see out of that pit.
And here he says, Naaman was wroth and went away and said,
behold, I thought. He will surely come out to me
and stand and he had it all figured out. Every bit of it was figured
out in his head and it was all wrong. Every bit of it was wrong. You know what we find out when
God saves us by his sovereign and free grace? Every bit of
our logic that we thought of how it was going to be done was
wrong. because his ways are above our ways as far as heaven is
above earth. He is not satisfied with our
ways. They're flawed, they're broken,
they fell in the fall. We're sinners by nature and sinners
by practice and sinners by choice, and God has no choice but to
overrule that. I thought he will surely come
out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord, his
God, and strike his hand over the place and recover the leprosy.
He had it all figured out and was all wrong. Finally, a messenger
said, why don't you just do what he said? And he did and came
clean. That's just the way we are. I
thought, I thought, I'd like to illustrate a point. The Bible
has quite a bit to say about a subject called spitting. Did
you know in certain places in the United States it was against
the law to spit on a sidewalk? And the most grievous thing a
man could do to another man was spit on him. People died over
it. People were killed over doing
that very thing. And yet we find in the scriptures,
there's a number of scriptures that have to deal with this subject
of spitting. You know, in the book of Leviticus,
if there was an unclean man and he spit, now it doesn't mean,
it doesn't say that he spit on him, if the wind carried the
spit. If the wind carried the spit,
if you just spit out there and the wind got it and it got on
you, you know what you were to do? Go home, bathe, wash your
clothes, and you were unclean until the evening. That's a serious
thing, as God illustrates that point. We find that Miriam, turn
with me if you would to the book of Numbers chapter 12. The book
of Numbers chapter 12, it illustrates a point that when two people,
even relatives, get upset with the man of God, God is not very
pleased with it. Here in the book of Numbers,
in Numbers chapter 12, verse one. And Miriam and Aaron spake against
Moses because of the Ethiopian woman. You know, that's the same
thing that we said, how in the world would God ever love sinners? You know, the Pharisees had the
biggest problem when Jesus would eat with publicans and sinners.
They're black. They're wretched. They're not
like me. I think, God, I'm not like other
men, and especially this man right over here. I think, God,
I'm not like that publican. I fast every day. I tithe of
everything I have. And I pray. I do all those things. And yet God said, not enough.
Those are your ways. They're logical ways. But I'm
going to save a man that you have ridicule for, and he went
to his house justified. That's what we want, to be justified
before God. And so Miriam spake against Moses
against the Ethiopian woman. She was a black woman, and he
married her. What did the Lord Mary tell us there in the book
of the Song of Solomon? Thou art black and comely. You're
black. Our sins are black, but we're
beautiful in the eyes of the Lord, because he saved us by
his grace. And then it tells us there in Numbers chapter 12,
verse 10. Numbers chapter 12 and verse
10, it says, and the cloud departed from off the tabernacle, and
behold, Miriam became leprous. White as snow, and Aaron looked
upon Miriam, and behold, she was leprous. Now turn down to
verse 14 there, and the Lord said unto Moses, if her father
had but spit in her face, Should she not be ashamed seven days? Let her be shut up out from the
camp seven days, and let her be received again." So she's
going to spend seven days outside the camp. But the point that
the Lord shared with Moses, if her father had just spit in her
face, now he's saying there, if he had disciplined her, she
probably wouldn't do this. Spit in her face. Turn with me
just a little further if you would. into the book of Job chapter
30, Job chapter 30. In the book of Job chapter 30,
Job is, he's in a terrible situation. It's beyond logic. You know,
I have heard people tell me time and time again, God wouldn't
do that. Have you heard that? God, and
I would, I answer, your God wouldn't do that. My God did it because
it's written in the book that he did it. And I appreciate what
I heard about that. Job wasn't in on the conference
about it. God had a conference in heaven all about it, and Job
didn't know about it. Found out what the contents was,
though. Here in the book of Job chapter
30, if you would, please. Job chapter 30. And there in
verse 9 and 10. Job chapter 30, verses 9 and
10. And now am I their song, yea, I'm their byword. You know,
that's... That's not a good place to be
when you're everybody's byword. And then he says, they abhor
me, they flee far from me. and spare not to spit in my face
what disregard, what disrespect, what dishonor that is to be spit
upon. It goes against all logic, if
you please. We're not going to make friends
doing that. And yet people do that. And you know, then we find
that the scriptures teach us that we by nature are enmity
against God. We're at warfare with him. It
doesn't seem natural, but we are by nature. And we can't get
over it by ourselves. We just cannot. Logic tells us
we can do it by ourself, but that is illogical because God
said, my ways are not your ways as far as heaven is above the
earth are my ways not your ways. Turn with me to the book of Isaiah
chapter 50 and we find out here in the book of Isaiah chapter
50 that the Lord himself speaks about what is going to take place
when he comes down to this earth, when he comes before men, when
the God of glory takes upon flesh, human flesh, the God-man, comes
to this earth, this is what's going to happen to this man,
this God-man, because of the enmity of man against him. In
the book of Isaiah chapter 50, we read here in verse 6, Isaiah
chapter 50 and verse 6, the scriptures share this wonderful passage
of scripture about the indignity that the Lord would take on our
behalf, that he would take our enmity. that he would pay for
our enmity. He would go to the cross with
our enmity. But it's borne out here in Isaiah chapter 5 and
verse 6, I gave my back to the smiters. They beat him. And then, and my cheeks to them
that plucked off the hair. They pulled his beard out. I
hid my, not my face from shame and spitting. You know, in the scriptures,
there are five different records of what they did to the Lord,
how they paid such indignity, dishonor, disrespect, and they
represent every one of us. Before God saves us, we are so
disrespectful, so dishonoring. When we are willing to bow down
before a stone, a piece of wood, or some religion, we're disrespecting
Almighty God. We're disrespecting his grace.
We're disrespecting his honor. We're disrespecting his place,
his position. But it's by nature that we do
that. We can't help it. We can't do anything different.
If you'll turn with me to the book of Matthew, chapter 26.
Matthew, chapter 26. We're going to read five verses
of scripture, five passages here in Matthew and Mark. In the book
of Matthew, chapter 26. Notice with me here, Matthew,
chapter 26, verse 67. This is just prior to his Crucifixion, the indignities. Now all his life, people have
been indignant to him. Pharisee after Pharisee, religionist
after religionist, ruler after ruler. And here we have, and
then did they spit in his face and buffeted him, and others
smote him with the palms of their hands. This is a king of glory. And yet he submits himself to
this to demonstrate the enmity that we had against a thrice
holy God. We would spit in his face. Turn
with me just a little further in chapter 27 of the book of
Matthew. Chapter 27, and there in verse
30, And they spit upon him and took
the reed and smote him on the head. Again, the most, I don't know what you do, but
I have a feeling of what I would do if someone cleared their throat
and spit on me. And yet he was silent. He was
silent. He took it. bore in his own body. In Mark chapter 10, would you
turn with me to Mark chapter 10? We'll look at two or three
others of these passages of scripture that share with us the indignity
that our Lord bore. He shares this, this is what's
going to happen when I go to Jerusalem. Saying, behold, we
go up to Jerusalem, Mark chapter 10, verse 33, and the Son of
Man shall be delivered unto the chief priests. You got to be
kidding. Who's going to take him up? The
chief priests, the religionists. and unto the scribes, and they
shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles,
and they shall mock him, and scourge him, and shall spit upon
him, and shall kill him, and the third day shall rise again."
Hallelujah. They shall spit upon him. In
the same book of Mark, would you turn with me to Mark chapter
14 and verse 65. Mark chapter 14 and verse 65,
we have this mentioned again. And some began to spit on him
and cover his face. Can you just imagine the Lord
of Glory allowing all these folks to just cover his face with that? I can't. They covered his face and to
buffet him and to say unto him, prophesy. And the servants did
strike him with the palms of their hands. Here's the King
of Kings and Lord of Lords. You know, I've had preachers
say, if he came back now, it wouldn't happen. If he came back,
if this is the day of him coming, it happened just like it's recorded.
Man has not changed. Nature hasn't changed. Their
logic hasn't changed. It's still the same. They'd spit
on him. They'd spit on his face. They'd
spit and cover his face just like they did then. Well, they thought they were doing
the Lord a service. That's what he said. They shall put you out
of the synagogue, yea, and the time cometh that whosoever killeth
you will think he hath done God service. As we read over there
in the book of Isaiah chapter 55, the Lord said, my ways are
not your ways. As far as heaven is above the
earth are my ways above your ways. Now there's three passages
of scripture that I want to read where the Lord spit. It's against logic. Would you
let the Lord of glory spit on you? You better. It's the most
illogical. It is the most contrary thing
that could possibly be, and yet the Lord said, this is how I
heal my people. He did this to three different
people to illustrate he's going to do the most illogical, foreign,
most revolting thing. When he tells us your works count
for nothing, that is the most revolting thing we have ever
heard. Your works count for nothing. It's illogical. My works should
count for something and he says they count for nothing. I'm going
to spit on you to show you. Would you look with me at a couple
of verses, three verses of passages of scripture. There's a man that's
deaf and without, with an impediment of speech found in the book of
Mark chapter seven, Mark chapter seven. It is a salvation of the
Lord is so illogical. We have it all planned out, we
have it figured out, our parents have told us about it, the Sunday
school teachers told us about it, the preachers told us about
it. This is how you're going to be saved. You have to ask
Jesus into your heart, have to come forward, have to bow down,
have to pray through, have to do all this stuff. That's human
logic. We say, that's right, that's
right. Then God comes along through a preacher who knows something
and says, that ain't right. We're saved by the grace of God
and grace of God alone. Salvation is of the Lord, not
by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to
his mercy, he saved us. When I heard that message, I
came home the next morning or there at breakfast and I said,
I hate that man. The pastor came clear out to
Oregon who knew something. When he preached what he knew,
I disagreed with it because it didn't fit my human logic and
I'm a preacher. Here in the book of Mark chapter
7 verse 32, the scriptures share with us, there's a man that is
deaf. They bring unto him, unto Christ,
one that is deaf. He can't hear. Isn't that just
like we are? We can't hear spiritual things.
The word of God is spiritually discerned. We have it all figured
out and we have the verses of scripture to meet it. John 3,
16. Brother Wayne was saying the
other day, someone brought that up, and he says, what about John
3.14, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness? That's the gospel. That's the
gospel. And there's no place in all the
Bible that world means everybody in the world. Never. You'll never
find that. All the world came to be taxed.
Well, there's a whole bunch of indigenous people in North America
that didn't hear that message. All the people in the Roman Empire
heard that message. All right. Notice this, and had
an impediment in his speech, and they beseech him to put his
hand upon him, and he took him aside from the multitude. You know, I've been found fault
with when people come and says, you know, I don't think I'm saved.
He said, you need to get alone with the Lord. I can't help you.
I can't help you. I can't get you there. What'd
the Lord do? He took this man aside from the
rest of the people. It says there, he took him aside
from the multitude and put his fingers in his ears and he spit
and touched his tongue. Can you imagine? Come here, brother. the Lord of glory spit and touched
his tongue. Now, we have an impediment of
speech by nature. Over there in the book of Judges,
it talked about a group of men that tried to get through a passageway
and some people were there to stop them and all they had to
do is say one word, shibboleth. That's all they had to say. You
know what they said? Sybilleth. They knew that they
were traitors. They knew they were wrong. They
had an impediment of speech. They just couldn't get their
words around it. By nature, we cannot say grace
and mean it. We're always saying gorks. Gorks. We just can't get grace out.
We got to add works to it. So we can get halfway there,
we can say gorks. They missed that by one letter. Shibboleth, Sibboleth, we have
an impediment of speech. Are you willing by the grace
of God to have him spit on his finger and touch your tongue
and loose it? What he's saying here, my ways are not your ways. It's by grace and grace alone
and it will not happen any other way. By the grace of God, he
took this man aside. By the grace of God, he stuck
his fingers in his ears and he could hear him. By the grace
of God, he spit on his finger and put it on his tongue and
it's illogical. How could that help? You know
one thing about the spit of the Lord? There was not a germ in
it. Not a germ in it. Perfect, sinless, holy, righteous
Son of God. Look at, if you would, to Mark
chapter 8. The Lord does something again,
so illogical. My goodness, the logic that we
have is so prone to error. Boy, over there and wherever
we're governed here in the United States, there's no logic left.
We shouldn't expect any if they don't know Christ. They can't figure it right. Well,
here in the book of Mark chapter eight, would you turn there with
me to verse 22? Mark chapter eight, verse 22.
And he cometh to Bethsaida, and they bring a blind man to him,
and he besought him, touch him. And he took the blind man by
the hand and led him out of town. You'd think he'd wanna do this
in front of everybody, but he's gonna get the glory alone. It's
not going to be there because they're there praying about it.
They're doing obeisance about it. He took the man out of town. Now notice what he did. The logic
of this is illogical. My ways are not your ways. I'm
going to spit on his eyes. Can you imagine? The most, Lord spit on my eyes. When he had spit on his eyes,
he put his hands upon him, and he asked him if he saw aught.
And he looked up and said, I see men as trees walking. And after
that, he put his hands upon his eyes and began to look up, and
he was restored and saw every man clearly. Whatever happened,
it was of the Lord. That's the way he was going to
do his business that day. He spit on his eyes, he touched
his eyes, and that man came away seeing. How glorious it is for
us as human beings, born after our father and mother, Adam and
Eve, to come and see Christ. to see him in the scriptures,
to see him everywhere in the scriptures. And then one more
time, if you'd look with me in John chapter nine, John chapter
nine. We are so prone to be like a
group that came to the Lord Jesus one day and says, what can we
do to work the works, works of God? We're gonna answer that
in just a moment from the scriptures, but turn with me here to the
book of John chapter nine. John chapter nine and there in
verse one. John chapter nine and verse one.
And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man that was blind from his
birth. Now I think, well, that's interesting.
Guess what? That's me, blind from my birth. Couldn't see a thing. I saw the
things of this world. I saw the attractions of this
world. All of those things, but I could not see Christ. I was blind to him. He was blind
from his birth and his disciples asked him, and this is all, those
friends of Job did the same thing. What wicked thing did you do
to get this? You know, and a lot of people
do that. When we get sick, when we have trouble, we lose a family
member, first thing people say, I wonder what they did. I wonder
what they did. Well, we find out what the Lord
said about that. He goes on to say here, Jesus
answered, neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but that
the works of God should be made manifest in him. I plan this
from eternity. We were determined before the
foundation of the world to meet right here with this blind man,
with these people, so that they could see what's going to happen
here. This is predetermined, predestined. You know, I've had
people say, I don't like predestination. I said, oh, you don't mind getting
on a plane and don't know where it's going? I don't know where we're going.
You know, I want to get on a plane that has a predestined plan.
I want to get to Detroit on time. I don't want to end up in Havana.
So he says, I must work the works of him that sent me, while it
is yet day, and night cometh, and no man can work. As long
as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. And when
he had spoken, what did he do? He spit on the ground, made clay, of the spittle, and
he anointed the blind man with clay, and he said, Go wash in
the pool of Siloam, which is by interpretation sin. And he
went his way therefore, washed, and came seeing." Now to his
disciples, that's the most illogical thing you could possibly do.
Spit on him. Spin on his finger and touch
the tongue. Spin on his eyes, spit, the most
illogical thing. But God does not work by our
logic. He does nothing by our logic.
It's flawed. It's after the order of Adam. and not after the order of the
priest, after the order of Melchizedek. This priest, when he works, he
does his job. He doesn't have to do it over
and over and over again, he does his job. There we find in the
book of John chapter 6, if you would back up, there were a group
of people that came to the Lord and says, you know, we're really
interested. John chapter 6 and verse 28,
we're really interested in doing the works of God. John chapter
6. And verse 28, then said they
unto him, what shall we do that we might work the works of God? Now notice that S. Now notice
the next verse. The S is gone. And Jesus answered
and said unto them, this is the work of God. Now it is not logical
to us. Their logic said we got to do
works. His logic was, God's going to do the work. What's the work?
This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath
sinned. Who provides that? That's the
work of God. That's the work of God. Salvation
is of the Lord. It doesn't fit human logic whatsoever. But God said in his word, summed
it up completely and totally by a man, a brother in Christ,
running away from the Lord, there in the great fish at the bottom
of the Mediterranean Sea and said, salvation is of the Lord. My ways are not your ways as
far as heaven is above the earth. And we say, come spit on us.
Spit on us. Do what is necessary. Do what
is necessary. boy.