You know, it takes a lifetime to really get to know a human being. And it would take a thousand lifetimes for us to ever really know the Savior, and we still wouldn't be there. We're learning who He is. That's what we're doing. Because everything revolves around that. The more we know who He is, the more hope we have, the more comfort we have, the more peace we have, the more confidence and assurance we have. And He is the answer to every question worth asking. Are you having problems? Do you have troubles? When the Lord Jesus Christ solves your sin problem, and you know that, you don't have any more problems after that.

You just think you did. Really? I mean, there's things that make us sad. There's things that are tough to endure. But the Lord has given us a family. We comfort one another and we endure things together. And we all look to him for peace that only he can give. We need to know who he is. Every problem that we have is because of our sin. And he put away our sins by the sacrifice of himself. And in our experience every day, we go to Him for that. We're reminded of that. We have perspective on what's going on in this world. It's not the end of the world when something bad happens, because we know that our Savior doesn't do bad stuff. He does the things that people call bad, but they're for our good.

Yes, we might have to, the flesh might suffer. And that's a very real thing. But we can rejoice even in the sufferings. We lose somebody that we love. But at the same time, we rejoice if they knew him. We're going to hurt, we're going to feel sad, we're going to mourn the loss of them. But at the same time, we're going to praise the Lord Jesus Christ. If they're his, because we know where they are and who they're with and how much he loves his own.

But in this passage of scripture, I deliberately skipped over a passage that you might've noticed, but I wanted to spend more time than we'll take tonight on that passage. But this is such simple, beautiful language. We saw very powerfully asserted sovereignty of God in this morning's message. But I want us to understand that our sovereign God is merciful. He is plenteous in mercy.

And Jesus departed from thence and came nigh unto the Sea of Galilee. He left that place where he encountered the portion of scripture that we skipped over for now. We'll probably look at next week, the woman of Canaan that was crying for mercy and the Lord ignored her. And you're familiar with that story. And when he had dealt with her in mercy, it says he moved on to another place near the Sea of Galilee. We've seen before how our Lord traveled. There's teaching even in the movements that the Lord made across the countryside.

He went to that place where that woman of Canaan was, and he moved on near the Sea of Galilee. As far as we know, that woman was the only person he encountered where he was there. We don't have any other account, at least. We know that not everything that the Lord did or said is written in these books because it tells us that. In John chapter 20 and 21. But. The way that it's recorded, he'll save one person in a place and move on to another place and save multitudes or heal multitudes like he did here.

And the madman of Gadara, he crossed the sea to have mercy on that man. And then he went back across the sea after he had had mercy on him. And he left that man sitting and clothing in his right mind, and then he sailed back across. We're told in John 4 that he went from Judea into Galilee by way of Samaria, which if you look at a map, it's self-evident that if you're going to go from Judah to Galilee, you're going through Samaria.

So why does it say that? Because we know that there was a woman at a well in Samaria and he had chosen in purpose to have mercy on her soul. And when not everything is recorded, but we see a pattern and it can't be denied that our Lord at times deliberately avoided multitudes.

It says that he walked away from the multitude. He left and deliberately sought out places where he could be alone. And at other times he sought out individuals. He didn't always avoid the multitudes. Like in our text today, he dealt with masses of people, everybody that was brought. Sometimes amid multitudes, he would pick out one person like he did at the pool of Bethesda and have mercy on them.

Here he went up into a mountain and it says he sat down. The son of God sat down. We think about how that he's seated right now on the right hand of the majesty on high, having finished the work of salvation for his people. He's at rest because his work is done. At this time, he sat down because he was tired. How do I know that? Well, John 4 is a different passage of scripture. It's a different context, but it says in John 4, 6, Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus, therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well. God got tired.

What does that tell us? It tells us that It behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God." When I think of God being a man, it's easy to get lost in the wonder of that. Of course, I was trying to think about the Trinity that God had, three persons, one God, And of course that's beyond our understanding, but there's so much that is revealed about that. God Almighty, there has to be God Almighty strictly considered as the ruler of the universe, as the one who elected a people, the one who chose us, and there has to be the God-man because And when I say there has to be, I don't mean that God has to measure up to certain conditions.

I mean, of course, there's the God-man, because if God is going to have mercy on wretches like us, He didn't take on Him the nature of angels, because the angels that fell had no hope. He could have done that. He could have redeemed them, some of them, all of them, if it pleased Him. He didn't do that. He took on Him the nature and seed of Abraham. that he might intercede for us, that there might be a mediator between God and man, and that man had to pay for man's sin.

So God, the Son, and then God, the Holy Spirit, a work inside of us, a work that's done in time. The Lord Jesus is sitting on the throne. He's in glory. You're not going to see him bodily. People say they see him here and there, and the Lord said, you will. They'll be saying, lo, here is Christ, and there is Christ. Don't listen to him. Don't listen to him. But God, the Spirit, Who's going to give me life? Who's going to dwell within me? How is Christ going to literally dwell within me? By the Spirit of Christ that dwelleth in us, the new nature, who gives life to the soul, spiritual life.

And I guess the only conclusion really when you start thinking about the Trinity is, that it's a real good match, you know, who God is and who a sinner is. It's a good match. I need somebody to choose me in spite of me. I need God to look down on me and have mercy on me. He said, I'll have mercy on whom I'll have mercy. And he sent his son. It wasn't just talk. It wasn't just an offer. It was a promise. It was a promise. It's always called that in the scripture. It's never called an offer. It's a promise. You must be born again. Not it'd be a good idea. You must be. And he says to his own, come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. God is God. But God got tired. David wrote in Psalm 139, one old Lord, thou has searched me and known me.

Thou knowest my down sitting in my uprising. Thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but O low, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain unto it. You ever feel like that?

That's what happens when we try to think about God being a man. God being born of a woman, made under the law that he might redeem them that are under the law. In order to see God, you've got to look to the man Christ Jesus. He is the one who reveals who God is and in whom all of the fullness of the Godhead dwells in his body.

1 Timothy 3.16, without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, Why would God have to be justified in my place, as my representative, as a man? As a man, he had to be found guiltless, sinless, perfect, holy, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. Why did God become a man?

Well, we quoted part of it a while ago. Wherefore, in all things, it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren. You might think that that scripture should say it behooved us. I'd say it behooved us. Wouldn't you, that he became a man and represented me? He lived for me? He died for me, that behooves me, but it behooves him too because his glory is wrapped up in that.

That he might be a merciful and faithful high priest. We know what a high priest is, he's the mediator. He's the one that goes to man for God and to God for men. He's the one that offers sacrifice acceptable unto God, a sweet-smelling saber, so that you don't die and go to hell. A merciful and faithful.

In all things, faithful high priest, in things pertaining to God, there are with you things that pertain to God. to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. Because he was made like me, there's reconciliation for my sins. It behooved us. It behooved him, didn't it? So the son of God sat down and then what did he do? Look at what he did in verse 30. A great multitudes came unto him.

Can you imagine? People are hearing now that he's able to heal the sick. And think about this, not just as a doctrinal point, but think about if you loved somebody that was in miserable case, somebody that was blind, somebody that was lame, these terrible maladies, these disastrous, incurable conditions. and dumb, not able to speak, maimed, and many others, many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet. If it was going to say many others, why didn't it just say many that had diseases and maladies to begin with? It mentions some because That's our condition by nature in our sin spiritually before God. We're blind. We're dumb. We're maimed. We're lame.

And the last four words of verse 30, and he healed them. He healed them. He never turned anybody away. Never. You find me a place where he ever turned anybody away that needed him, that needed him. The whole have no need of the physician, but the sick do. And he never, ever turned one away.

You think about we're gonna, we're gonna find out who he is tonight a little bit better than we've ever known. He is one that looks upon need. He looks upon misery and pain and shame, which is one of the big factors in that type of thing. And he does so with pity, with mercy, with kindness. What a scene.

He sat down. And that indicates, of course, his condescension to come where we are, to become what we are, yet without sin. What was the results of him doing so? He sat down and he healed them. When God becomes man, there's a reason for it. And whatever reason he did it for, it's done. It's gonna be done. He sat down to heal them and he healed them. He came down here to heal his own, to save his own sheep for this cause, came out into this world. And what did he do? He saved his sheep. That's what he did.

All of them. He healed, he healed them all. Never turning anyone away. You know, there's just, We have to see that about him just as surely as we have to see his sovereignty and his inflexible justice. The Lord Jesus didn't come down here to condemn the world. We had already done a good job of that ourselves. We placed ourselves under full and uncompromising condemnation.

But he came down here that the world through him might be saved, that his garden would bear fruit to his glory. Let's talk a little bit about his sufficiency to do so. He healed them all because he could. He healed them all because he was able. And he asked that often. He deliberately called attention to that aspect of himself. Are we going to learn who he is? Then listen to what he says about himself.

He said to those blind men, do you believe that I'm able to do this? And they said, yea, Lord. And he did it. That lame man that was lowered down through the roof, he said, your sins are forgiven. And everybody, the Pharisees went crazy and murmured against him. Who is this that can forgive sin?

And he said, I could have just as easily said, rise, take up thy bed and walk. I've said that, and I'm not putting words in his mouth, but he had said that many times. He had healed the blind, the lame. He could have said, rise up and walk, and that wouldn't have, Cause the turmoil that it did, but he said, I said it that way. So you'd understand. So you'd learn who I am. The son of man has power on earth to forgive sins. That's worth knowing. And he still does. He's still in that business. He's still in the sin forgiving business and nobody that comes to him with a need. It's ever turned away. Do you need your sins gone? Or are you doing a pretty good job yourself in that scenario? You're good outweighs your bad. I'm good and fine. Well, if you ever need all of your sin put away, you know where to come. You know where to come.

When He healed the woman with the issue of blood. It says that he immediately knew in himself that virtue had gone out of him. He turned him about and said, who touched my clothes? Virtue, that word means strength, power, ability. The ability has to come from Him. Do you see that? Virtue went out of Him. Strength, power, ability. How is the man with the withered hand going to stretch forth his withered hand?

Strength, power, ability goes out of Christ into you. He is mighty to save. He is our power unto salvation. He is our ability to do what He commands. and to believe on Him. When the Gospels preach, that same virtue of Christ goes forth in the preaching of the Word, because it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save. Saving a sinner requires power, and it's not in you.

It's going to have to go out from him like it did with that woman who was dying with the issue of blood. When strength goes out of me, then it takes a while for it to come back. There's only so much of it. But He healed them and healed them and healed them all evening until there was none left to heal.

And His power was never diminished. That power is something that we don't possess. We don't have any spiritual power to do anything for anybody, but our Lord does. And that power is abundant. It is in endless supply. His mercy, they kept coming and He kept healing. And it didn't matter what was wrong with them.

We tend to divide people up. We're all dead and trespassed. It's not like there's some sinners that are blind and some that are lame. We're all of that. We're every one of these things. We're lame. We can't walk to God. We can't come to Christ. He said that. You can't come. False preachers are all over this place saying, come, take the first step, walk down here. And the Lord says, you can't come to me except God Almighty brings you to me.

He's plenteous in mercy. Where sin abounds, His grace doth much more abound. He's infinitely able to save. Could He have mercy on everybody if it pleased Him to do so? I'll just answer that with His own word. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. If he's pleased to do so, he'll do it. He's the only one that can have mercy on you. Why would God have mercy on anybody? Where in the world? Sinners don't want mercy until he gives them some of it. Do you know that? We don't ever change our mind about that.

Repentance is a change of mind and God gives that. Paul said peradventure to Timothy, he said peradventure, God might just grant them repentance so that they might acknowledge the truth. He can grant it or he can withhold it. But why would he have mercy on anybody? You don't want it anyway. He gives mercy though to every sinner that asked for it. And I guarantee you this, you'll never ask for it until you already have it.

The power, the virtue goes out of him to stretch forth your hand unto him, to rise and take up your bed and walk. Why do you think he tells lame men to walk, blind men to see? Why don't he tell a blind man to walk? to show us the impossibility of the matter. With men, it's impossible. The one thing a sinner will never do is believe on God's Son.

Until He in power, until the virtue goes out of Him, be not faithless, but believing. He's gonna get all the glory, and you're gonna be fine with it if He saves you. You're going to have a problem with that all your life unless He saves you. And when He saves you, you'll say, not unto me, O Lord, but unto thy name give glory. For thy mercy and for thy truth's sake. We don't want any mercy by nature. We want to be God.

And look at the next thing that we notice here, these particular ones that are, he healed lame people. That's our inability to walk. We can't walk before God. Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him, but he didn't walk by nature with God, he walked with God by grace. These picture our spiritual condition. No man can come to me, John 6, 65, you're lame, spiritually lame. We can't walk together with God like Mephibosheth.

We're lame on both of our feet. What happened to him? Well, David said, go fetch him, because I want to have mercy on him. God's going to have to fetch us. No man can come unless God fetches him. And when he does, then we sit at the king's table. From then on, we're blind. John 3, 3, Jesus answered and said, verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. The things of the spirit are spiritually discerned and you are spiritually dead.

You're not going to see the truth of God. You're not going to see the holiness of God. You're not going to see the mercy of God. You're not going to see anything about God's kingdom. Nothing spiritual. You can still argue, you can still debate, you can still learn things in your head, you can still learn doctrine and quote it. But you're not going to know God.

Until you're born. Look and live, they said, when the serpent, the brazen serpent was lifted up in the wilderness. What was it that healed the people? They were poisoned by fiery serpents and they were dying like flies. And Moses, God told Moses, tell them to look and live. And they looked to the serpent and lived. How are you going to look to Christ? You're blind as a bat. Except you'd be born again. You can't see.

But when you're born of the Spirit, who, by the way, births who he wants to, if you look at the context there in John 3, he goes where he wants to and gives life to who he wants to give it to. And when he does that, now I can look. And when I look, I live. When I look to God's Son. As a serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.

As Jesus passed by in John chapter nine, he saw a man which was blind. You ever think about the interesting play on words there? He saw, the Lord saw him, but he was blind. He couldn't see the Savior. Same thing with me. That's my testimony. I was blind as a bat, but the Lord saw me and he had compassion on me. He was blind from his birth.

And then he got involved with religion and they cast him out because he was a sinner and he didn't have anything but good things to say about the Lord Jesus, and they didn't like that. So they cast him out. And Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and when he had found him, he said unto him, Do you believe on the Son of God?

You talk about getting to the point. The gospel gets to the point. And he 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 talketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped him. He worshipped him. We're done.

What's the command of the gospel? Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And we can't make a sound that's anything but harm. That's a problem. Lord's got to give us a voice. And we're maimed at birth. This word maimed is something that is I've experienced something about this a little bit, not of course personally, but this word means twisted and crooked. And I knew a young man as a boy who was like this, and I've seen some that are twisted and crooked from birth. It's a very, very sad thing to behold.

And it's something, if you love that person, it's something that you'd give anything in the world to see them straighten out, to see them not have to struggle just to move, just to walk. We take for granted just the act of walking. And some people, it looks like they're climbing a mountain just to walk across the floor.

And the Lord would touch them and they would be made whole, insomuch that the multitudes, when they saw the dumb to speak and the maimed to behold, and the lame to walk and the blind to see, they glorified the God of Israel. And when God does what only he can do, he'll be glorified for it. You know, we see, the only thing we've seen in the way of healing is fake stuff and it's not a joyful thing to see is it you ever seen him on tv he supposedly healing people that are lame it's not a joyful thing you know why because you smell a rat you smell a rat but can you imagine this scene it says they cast him down at Jesus' feet. That's where everybody is saved, at the feet of God's Son.

Can you hear the dumb trying out their new voices in their loved ones who are saved? They're just marveling at it, and a blind man being able to see for the first time. and a lame man able to walk, and it says that when that lame man in Acts chapter 3 was healed, he leaped up and stood and walked and entered with him into the temple, walking and leaping and praising God.

There's probably a little bit of that going on there, don't you imagine? What an incredible thing. We've seen the fake, but can you even imagine a scene where, just by the touch of his hand, pain and misery and sorrow and shame are wiped away. And that's just a physical representation of what happens on the inside.

To be able to see who God is. Have you just rejoiced about that lately? To be able to see God. And we don't know anything yet as we ought to know, but we know Him. We know God. We've experienced His mercy. To be able to speak, what a blessed privilege it is to be able to speak for God, to be a witness for Christ, and to be able to walk with God.

That's what it says in the beginning in the garden that Adam and Eve walked with God. We don't even know what that means. And to not be twisted up anymore, and many others. You could just imagine what a group of people. And it says they brought them because most of these maladies would keep somebody from coming on their own. And they brought them there, cast them down at his feet.

And that's always a sobering thing to think about. And I asked myself, is there a way in spiritual terms that we can cast our loved ones down at his feet? Do we care that much for them, that all of the busyness of this world and all of the things that we do just because that's what you do, and all of the activities, and all of the distractions of this world would somehow go away for a little while, and we would see our loved ones with the eye of faith, and see what's really happening. what's really happening, and to be able to understand what matters and what doesn't matter for a little while. And will we ever stop praying? Will we ever stop being an example and witnessing and exhorting them in the Lord?

The effects of Christ's power and His mercy on sinners, this scene would have been incredible. There's no way you could watch that and not just be bawling your eyes out. But what God does on the inside is so much more miraculous. I could see God. I could see my condition before God, and He made me whole. He made me whole. I was twisted in on myself, and I was blind and lame. and dumb and I was out of my mind and the Lord put me in my right mind. I can see how God can be just and yet justify a wretch like me by sending his son to live like I couldn't do and to pay for what I did do and couldn't do. with his precious blood, and before I was hideous and vile and wretched and a spiritual leper, to all the many other things, I'm every one of them, spiritually. But now I'm clean and seeing and clothed and in my right mind and walking and leaping and praising him.

If I could see with these eyes what happens to a sinner when the Lord comes in almighty grace, I would probably do a lot more of what these people did. They glorified God. They glorified the God of a people, the God of his people. They glorified the sovereign God. They glorified the God that loves his own.

But we have better ass than this. I don't know how to say this right, if I'm saying this right or not, but I don't think we use them much. Let's ask God to give us grace to see better, to see, to look, to see things as he does. There's too many just things that just pass as normal in this world that are absolutely horrible, if you think about them.

All that matters is Christ. Being with Him, all that matters for our loved ones is to see them at His feet. I don't care what else, how else I see them, if I see them at His feet. May that be true. May that be more and more true. And in any and every way that God has made it so, may we cast them there. You think about what was going on in these people's minds, it's not hard to imagine the spiritual aspect of that. They said, there's somebody, if I can get my loved one to his feet, all of their problems will go away. Can we think like that for a little while? May God give us grace to do so, and may he have mercy on those that we love. He clearly is plenteous in mercy. Let's pray.