Finally meet you all and get
up here. As Wayne said, I was supposed
to be up here last year. And so when we were coming over
from the Parsons, I said, take my hand so I don't trip and fall.
And then he has to preach, which that would be a problem for me.
So I do want to say thank you all for the prayer request, keeping
us, my wife and I, in prayer. And we got that card from you
all a year or so ago. And it means a lot to God's people,
when other people, and you've never even met me, just through
correspondence from Wayne. Like you said, I've known John
Claude for a long time and just treasure his honesty and his
fellowship, truly, in the gospel. We really appreciate the prayers
of the saints because there's something special about the prayers
of the saints for sinners like my wife and myself. So I do appreciate
that. George Spurgeon was known to
say that at the tabernacle it was just full all the time. People
that couldn't hear, they were to be in the basement. And he
said, those folks downstairs, they're praying for the preaching
of the gospel. And he said he didn't take that lightly. He
said that their work in praying was very instrumental, and the
Lord used that to redeem a lot of sinners. So we are thankful
for your prayers. Let's turn. to Matthew chapter
11. That's going to be our main text,
and then I'm going to go in the Old Testament briefly and then
come back to this. Matthew chapter 11. Hopefully everybody can hear
me, because this building is a lot bigger than I'm used to. So I will try to speak up for
sure. Matthew chapter 11, the first
six verses. It is stated in here, and it
came to pass when Jesus had made an end of commanding his 12 disciples,
he departed thence to teach and to preach in their cities. Now
when John, that's John the Baptist, had heard in the prison the works
of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said unto them,
art thou he that should come or do we look for another? And Jesus answered and said unto
him, go and show John again these things which you do here Faith
cometh by hearing, and you do see there's going to be evidence,
evidences. The blind receive their sight,
the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised
up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed
is he whosoever shall not be offended Now Christ was telling
his disciples, you go back and tell John what you see and what
you hear. And basically what he's saying
is that if you know the Old Testament, or if you know the writings of
four times, you're going to find these things which are written
of me. The first one, and you don't have to turn here, but
I'm going to read it to you. The first one is Isaiah 35. The wilderness
and the solitary place shall be glad for them. And the desert
shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly
and rejoice even with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon
shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon. They shall
see the glory of the Lord and the excellency of our God. Strengthen
ye the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them
that are of a fearful heart, be strong, fear not. Behold,
your God will come with vengeance. Even God with the recompense,
he will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall
be opened, the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. And then
the lame man shall leap as a heart, and the tongue of the deaf sing.
For in the wilderness shall waters break out and streams in the
desert, and the parched ground shall become a pool, and the
thirsty land springs of water. In the habitation of dragons,
where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes. And a
highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the way
of holiness. The unclean shall not pass over,
but it shall be for those the wayfaring man, though fools,
shall not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor any
ravenous beast shall go up thereon. It shall not be found there,
but the redeemed shall walk there. And the ransomed of the Lord
shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy
upon their heads, they shall obtain joy and gladness, and
sorrow and sighing shall flee away." Isaiah 61. Isaiah 61. The Spirit of the Lord God is
upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings
unto the meek. and has sent me to bind up the
brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening
of the prison to them that are bound, to proclaim the acceptable
year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort
all that mourn, to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give
unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the
garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they might
be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that
he may be glorified. Back in our text in Matthew.
What I would like for us to notice here this evening for our comfort
and for our help is to look at the roll call of these folks
who are the called, the quickened, and the faithful. Let's just
look at them. blind, lame, lepers, deaf, dead,
and poor. Who in their right mind would
want to be numbered or identified with such a group of folks like
this? Well, you're looking at one,
and I'm looking back at a bunch of others, I hope. This is contrary
to what the world views. They don't want to be identified
with these type of folks. They say, not I. We'll not have
this man to reign over us, not this sovereign ruler, king of
kings and lord of lords, blind, lame, lepers, deaf, dead, poor. But I bet you these who received
these miracles, I'm not downplaying the miracles of our Lord Jesus
Christ by any means, but these who received were on the receiving
end of these miracles They were glad. And that's what we read
in Isaiah. They were the spirit of joy for
the spirit of heaviness. They rejoiced. They were glad
in this day, this time that Christ did these things. But I want
to look at it a little bit deeper. You see, I'm not taking anything
away from our Lord's actual healing and helping such people with
numerous afflictions. But I will say this, eventually
all those that he healed, they died. And so are we. We're heading every day one step
closer to the grave. I know that a little bit more
this year than I did last year. But what I want us to look at
and I want us to see is the spiritual nature and aspect of this passage
before us tonight. These are those who Christ came
to redeem and call and quicken. These are those who knew by Holy
Spirit conviction, not so much their physical inabilities, but
our true spiritual deficits. So let's just quickly look at
these and see what we see. Are you
numbered? Am I numbered? It will identify
with these. Blind. Blind. Blindness. We know our true Adamic nature
of blindness. We are blind to all things good. The scripture says there's none
good, no not one. Now again, people do good things. Doctors help. We have people
who in the community that are outstanding or upstanding, I'm
not saying that, I'm saying spiritually, scripturally, in the eyes of
a thrice holy God, there's none good, no not one. So we are blind
to all things good, all things grace, all things free in the
Lord Jesus Christ. Because when you start to hear
something and you start to get a little concerned, as I did
when I was in high school, you're doing some bad things, You're
going to try to remedy these things on your own. Totally blind. Totally blind to the way of grace.
I have my own way. It's not God's way. But I was
totally blind. We're blind to our need of salvation. We think we're fine. What are
you talking to me for, preacher? We're totally blind of our need
of substitution. We need one among a thousand. We need a redeemer. We need a
substitute. We need somebody to take our
place. We're blind to the fact that
we cannot, we think we can earn our way to glory, earn our way
of salvation. We're totally blind to our need of salvation, substitution,
and justification. Justification. The second thing,
blind, lame. We are crippled in our dereliction
of duty towards God. We're weak in our servitude to
the sun. We're unable to perform anything
necessary for forgiveness of sin and impotent in self to persevere
unto the end. Lame. Lame. Lame. Lepers. The lepers, unclean from top
to bottom, stem to stern, no soundness found within us at
all. Thusly, we must be, as in the
Old Testament, thrust from the camp. No fellowship. None whatsoever. Deaf. Deaf. Unable to hear by natural ability. I've got a college degree. I
can figure this out. No, you can't. I know a little
Greek. I know a little Hebrew. It's
just words until, as we'll see a little bit later, the deaf
hear. Unable to hear by natural ability,
we're unable to hear the wonderful sonnets and lovely stanzas of
the free grace of God found in him who, as it is said, was full
of grace and truth. Can't do it. We can't hear the
way, so we walk our own way. And the scripture says, they're
in the ways of certain destruction. Dead. Scripture says we're dead in
trespasses and sins. We're a corpse, unalive to all
things spiritual, whether it be compassion, mercy, or love,
and so much so that Paul It's describing his old nature, oh
wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this
death. That's why we don't go to law,
because no man can be justified by the law. It's just death.
It's death over and over again. And then he says poor. Last thing
here. This group of, we're talking about this numbered,
these numbered people, poor. Blessed are the poor. Poor and we're in total debt
with nothing to pay. I mean, you and I, we've both
been in situations where we've had struggled with one thing
or another and we're reaching the back pocket and hopefully
if it's a good day, there's some money there to take care of the
problem. But that's not what we're talking about. We're not
talking about physical poor, spiritual. We're bankrupt. We're bankrupt. So we are poor. Total debt with nothing to pay
in a spiritual hole with no way out. But I tell you, if you know
this, if you understand this, then this is good news found
in the truth of the gospel, and it's in the embodiment of Emmanuel,
God with us. It's a true joy. It's a true
joy unmeasurable. It's a treasure surpassing Solomon's
house. unspeakable, unmeasurable, and
liberty and freedom that's found in Christ is boundless and full
of splendor. I'm thankful to be up here, but
after me, pay attention to what I'm saying because I'm telling
you the truth. I'm not going to back down from that, but listen
to that man. He's been doing it longer than
I have. What you're going to get from me is the simplicity
in Christ. You're not going to get a bunch
of little children, hopefully, who
understand. I remember Henry Mahan, he told me one time, he
said the greatest compliment I ever got, he said he preached
a meeting And a 12-year-old kid came up and he said, I like you.
I understand what you're saying. That's wonderful. And why is
it so wonderful? Well, let's go back to our text.
Why is it so wonderful? Only because of and on account
of the healer, the Lord Jesus Christ. What he has done, what
he successfully accomplished at Calvary's Tree. He took upon
himself the form of a servant and became sin, that we might
be made the righteousness of God in him." What does that mean? I don't
know, but I believe it. I mean, it's amazing. So we go back to our text. The
blind, they received their sight. Go back and tell John what things
you have heard and what you have seen. This is what I've done.
And this is what Joe and I, we get up here and we just, you
made a comment, you just open the book and you retell a story.
You're just telling it back. We're not inventing anything.
At all. So we're just gonna stay in our
text. The blind receive their sight. How'd they receive their
sight? Because he's our light. He causes us to see the glory
of God in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because we know
we can't see. Secondly, we're lame. We understand that. But he is
our strength. He enables us to walk and to
live unto him. Not the law. We don't go back
to the law. The Galatians is clear about that. We don't go
there. We go to Christ. And we go to Christ. And we put
on the new man. We go to Christ. Situation happens. What do I do? Look to Christ.
It's when we take our eyes off Christ is where trouble begins. Lepers are cleansing. He is our very cleansing that
makes us white as snow and pure as He is and presents us, what's
the Jewish say? Faultless before the presence
of His throne, His glory. Faultless? I have a hard time
with that. Standing up here, a sinner preaching
to sinners. But if you're in Christ, you're
faultless. You're faultless. Deaf. He is our very hearing. We now hear that still, small
voice in the wilderness crying, look unto me and be ye saved,
all the ends of the earth. I am God. There's none else.
Isaiah 45. That's what we hear. Dead. He is our life. He is our existence, our hope, And soon this corruption shall
put on incorruption." Every day, I get up. It seemed like it just happened
in the last couple of weeks. I get up, and I don't move as quick
as I got. I have to stretch a little bit. I have to do some things
to move around. This body is deteriorating. But one day, we'll see him face
to face. And this corruption will put
on in corruption. I should have looked that word
up to see what that meant, but I like it. Poor. He is our very
riches for grace and glory. He became poor so we might be
made spiritually rich in gifts, in love, and service one towards
another. Is he not all these things and
more? Why do we? I don't know how far
some of you have driven, but why are we here Friday night? Because he's everything to his
people. As Psalms of Solomon says, I
recommend read Psalms of Solomon. Don't read any commentaries on
it. Just read it and just fall in love with Christ all over
again. He is all together. Lovely. And the greatest of these
is love. And in the law, we fulfill the
law by love. It's filled in one word, love. But there's one thing more that
I want us to see in this passage. Jesus said to John's disciples,
go back again and Those things which you do here and see and
tell them these things, the blind receive their sight, the lame
walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, dead are raised up,
the poor have the gospel preached to them, and blessed is he whosoever
shall not be offended in me. Did I read that right? Blind,
lame, poor have the gospel preached. He's talking about miracles here.
You telling me, and I am telling you this, every time the, like
Paul says, not another gospel, because there's not another gospel.
Every time the gospel of God's grace is preached, it is a miracle. It's included in this one verse.
Every time, every time it's preached, It doesn't make any difference
who's preaching it, every time it's preached. It's a miracle
the fact that we even believe this, but I just want us to,
as we start these meetings, and tomorrow comes, and then Sunday
comes, and then when Joe and I go back to our perspective
assemblies, and then Wayne preaches, every time, Wednesday, we had
to change ours because we had people working and we changed
it from Wednesday night, we went to Tuesday night, and now we're
back to Wednesday night because the gospel's for people. We're
not trying to exclude anybody. But let us remember, every time
we gather together in his name, he's there. It's a miracle. It's a miracle of the grace of
God. We kind of tend to think, well,
these things that he did, were miracles, and this is what he
did over here. If I'm reading this right, and the poor have
the gospel preached to them, it's a miracle. As we begin this
meeting at Alma, all things mentioned in this text are miracles, yet
the preaching is right in there. So I ask you, and I ask myself,
and I challenge us, may we prize the proclamation of his truth
as it is indeed a miracle of the grace of God to sinners such
as we are. Prize it highly, for in prizing
it highly, you show you prize him highly. Never take it, never
take him for granted. May God help us to do so this
night and as we go forward. Wayne.