Well, good morning. If you care
to open your Bibles with me to Matthew chapter 13, we're going
to continue our study in Matthew chapter 13. Lord willing, we'll
finish up the chapter this morning. Before we begin, let's bow together
in prayer. Our great God, our holy Sovereign
and merciful Heavenly Father, we come into your courts this
morning with thanksgiving. Oh, how thankful we are for the
Lord Jesus Christ, for his obedience that makes his people righteous,
for he could come no other way. We're so thankful for his precious
blood that he willingly sacrificed to put away the sin of his people.
Our sin could be cleansed and forgiven in no other way. Father,
we're thankful. And we're thankful for the gospel
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the gospel that declares who he is,
that commands sinners to come and bow to him. And Father, I
pray that you'd bless your word as it's preached this morning,
that you take it as it's preached and show us your glory. Reveal
the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ to the hearts of your people
and cause us to worship. in awe and in wonder to worship
Thee in spirit and in truth. And what we pray for ourselves,
we pray for our children's classes, we pray for your people as they
meet everywhere. Father, make this a special,
special day of worship that all across this land, Thy glory may
be seen. For it's in the precious name
of our Lord Jesus Christ, for His sake and His glory, we pray.
Amen. All right, Matthew chapter 13.
I titled the lesson this morning, The Character of Unbelief. Our text begins in verse 53.
And it came to pass that when Jesus had finished these parables,
he departed thence. And when he was coming to his
own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that
they were astonished and said, whence has this man wisdom and
these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son?
It's not his mother called Mary and his brethren, James and Josie
and Simon and Judas, and his sisters. Are they not all with
us? Whence then hath this man all
these things? And they were offended in him.
But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honor, save in
his own country and his own house. And he did not many mighty works
there because of their unbelief. Now there is a very frightening
display of unbelief in these verses. These people saw the
Lord Jesus Himself work miracles that could only have been done
by God. They heard the Word incarnate preach the Word. They heard the
Word incarnate teach the written Word. You know, we think we've
heard preaching, we've seen these things. Could we still be in
unbelief? They were better preachers than we've ever heard. They heard
the prince of preachers declare the word of God and they did
not believe. They heard the gospel preached
by the subject and object of the gospel himself. Yet after
all that, they refused to believe on Christ. And he never came
back to town again. You think of that. That frightens me. Now man by
nature is dead. and cannot believe Christ. I
know that. The natural man does not have
the ability to believe on Christ because he's spiritually dead,
so he can't do anything spiritually. I know that. And that's why I
never, ever try to talk somebody into making a decision. Because
the natural man cannot decide to trust Christ. He cannot do
it. He doesn't have the ability to believe on Christ. So if he's
going to make a decision, he's going to make the wrong one.
The natural man will make the wrong decision every time. But this
is also true. Unbelief is a choice that people
make, which is a very good reason not to try to talk somebody into
making a decision, isn't it? Because if they decide for themselves,
they're going to decide not to believe. That's the only decision
a fallen man can make. Unbelief is a choice. It's a
matter of our fallen nature. Now listen to a few scriptures. John 5, verse 40. You will not
come unto me that you might have life. I know you cannot come
to me, but the Lord also said you will not. It's your choice. You refuse to, you will not come
unto me. Luke 22 verse 67, art thou the
Christ? Tell us. And he said unto them,
if I tell you, you will not believe. Well, you're going to choose
not to believe. John four verse 48. Then said Jesus unto him,
except you see signs and wonders, you will not believe. And maybe
you think, well, that's, that's the Pharisee. That's the unbeliever.
That's those who don't, don't know the gospel. Listen to Thomas,
a man who knew the gospel, a man who knew the Lord in John 20
verse 25, except I shall see in his hand, the print of the
nails and put my finger in the print of the nails and thrust
my hand into his side. Not just like I see him, I got
to put my finger in it. I got to push my hand in there.
Thomas said, I will not believe. Unbelief is a choice. It's a
matter of our fallen will. And it's very frightening to
think where would we be if the Lord left us to our unbelief?
Where would we be? Well, I'm going to give you this
morning five characteristics of unbelief. And then I want
to tell you what can be done about them. We know what unbelief
is. I want to give you five characteristics
of unbelief. But then what can be done about
them? Number one is this. This is the character of unbelief.
Unbelief ignores the obvious. Now, these people heard the Lord
speak in great power. I mean, they didn't deny it.
They said He speaks in great power. They had to agree. Never
man spake like this man. They were astonished when they
heard him preach. They were astonished at the wisdom of his preaching. They were astonished at the power
of his preaching. They were utterly astonished
at the power of his miracles, the power they had to work these
miracles. And it should have been obvious to them that the
Lord Jesus is the Messiah. There's too many evidences. All
those Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah, he fulfilled
every last one of them. It's just too obvious. There
are too many evidences for them to ignore, yet they would not
believe. Because that's the character
of unbelief, to ignore the obvious. I mean, at the very least, they
should have known. This man is from God. Nicodemus
knew that, didn't he? Nicodemus said, no man can do
the miracles that you do. Except God be with him. At the
very least, they should have known God's with this man. God
sent this man. And they should have known he's
the Messiah. And it should have been obvious to them, we should
listen to what this man's got to say. And we should believe
it. We should bow to it. But they
didn't. Because that's what unbelief
does. It ignores the obvious. You know, the gospel is obvious. Gospel preaching. is done simply,
where people can understand it. Our Lord used one and two syllable
words to preach the gospel and people were amazed at his wisdom.
You don't have to use big words. This is the wisdom of the gospel.
The gospel's obvious. Children can understand the gospel. Salvation in Christ is obvious. It's just you read the Scriptures,
it's obvious that salvation is by grace, through faith, without
any of our works being added to it. And that's obvious. Just
a cursory reading of the Scriptures tells you that. The truth of
it, the power of it, is undeniable. Yet men do not believe because
they ignore the obvious. Well, alright, what can be done
about our nature ignoring the obvious? Well, the Lord has to
make it obvious to us. The Lord has to reveal the obvious
to us. And here's how He does it. By
revealing Christ. If God the Holy Spirit will reveal
Christ to your heart and give you eyes of faith to see Christ,
every point of the gospel will be obvious to you. And you'll
believe it. And until the Lord is pleased
to reveal Christ, Don't make fun of people who ignore the
obvious. Don't make fun of them. They're
blind. They can't see. They can't. I mean, yes, they are ignoring
the obvious, but they're doing it because they can't see. Both
are true. They cannot see and they will
not see. They cannot come to Christ and they will not come
to Christ. Tell them the truth. Point out their error. Point
them to Christ. But don't make fun of them. They
can't see. It's their nature. The nature
of unbelief is to ignore the obvious. All right, number two,
this is the character of unbelief. Unbelief is hung up on the irrelevant. They're just hung up on stuff
that don't matter. They can't see the obvious, but
they sure can't see the irrelevant. Now, the power of the Lord's
miracles. was undeniable. They saw it.
They were amazed at His power. But rather than be amazed at
the power and be thankful for it and say, this is of God, they
got hung up on what doesn't matter. They got hung up on where does
a man like this get all this power? The wisdom of the Lord,
the wisdom of His message was undeniable. But rather than listen
to it and believe it and be thankful that God sent this man with wisdom
They got hung up on what doesn't matter, on the irrelevant. They
got hung up on where'd the Lord go to school or where didn't
he go to school. They said, you don't learn these things in the
carpenter shop. Where'd he learn them? It doesn't matter. What matters is the wisdom of
his message. And rather than love the wisdom
of the message and believe the wisdom of the message and bow
to the wisdom of the message, they got hung up on the irrelevant
and try to figure out who taught the Lord these things. They got
hung up on irrelevant things about the Lord, the preacher,
about the man. And that made it so that they
could not hear the truth that he was preaching. They knew there
was wisdom in what he was saying, but they were so hung up on the
irrelevant, they couldn't believe, they wouldn't believe the wisdom
of what he was preaching. They got so hung up on whose
mother who his earthly brothers and sisters were. They're just,
they're nobody. They probably said these names
of kind of, you know, disgust. These are nobody. These are the
low people, you know, of society. They're the rabble of society. They're not the, you know, the
ruling class. They just said it with such disdain
who his brothers and sisters were. They got so hung up on
these things about the man, Jesus of Nazareth, that they missed
the message of eternal life. They got hung up on the man and
missed the message. They were so busy arguing about
the irrelevant. They were so busy trying to figure
out the irrelevant. They're trying to figure out
what does not matter, that they missed the important truth for
their soul. That's the character of unbelief. You know, it's unbelief
that makes a person find things to pick at the preacher about.
And I'm telling you, you pick any gospel preacher that you
know. I mean, I know and love a bunch of them. It's not hard at all to find
something to pick out. I mean, starting with this fellow
right here. It's not hard. It's not hard at all. You can
pick at his background. You can pick at his personality. You can pick at the decisions
he makes concerning governing the church. And those things
are never things that are important. It's never preaching the gospel.
It's always things that just are utterly not important. They're
trying to figure out and argue about the irrelevant, picking
at the man so that they miss the Savior he's preaching. You
mark this down, and I hope God makes you remember it. The man
is not important. The Savior is important. The
message is important. Look at verse 57. And they were
offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, a prophet
is not without honor save in his own country and his own house.
A prophet has honor everywhere he goes except in his own country
and his own house. Your over familiarity can breed
content. And it is normally, normally
very difficult for a man to pastor in a place that he grew up. People
tend to remember him as a little boy, and in their mind, he's
stuck as that little boy, and they can't give him the respect
that he's due. Todd Nyberg told me about this,
about the ladies that would remember keeping him in the nursery and
things, you know, and by the time years have passed, Todd's
a pastor, a faithful preacher of the gospel, and he'd come
back home and preach, and they would actually grab his cheek
and say, you're such a good little preacher. And it's cute. Todd loves him. It's fine. But
now they did that to Todd. He's the finest preacher that
I know. The finest preacher that I know.
Usually, people respect anything, but especially a preacher that's
from far away. Not homegrown. And it's unbelief
that causes that. See, it's unbelief that makes
it where we're just not able to see past the flesh. And I tell you, it's a miracle,
really. It's a miracle that we don't have that problem here.
I grew up here. Many of you knew me when I was
a boy and a young man. And I thank God you don't hold
it against me. But it's unusual. It really is. It's unusual. And I pray. It is my fervent prayer every
single day that that continue so that you don't see me and
you see Christ more than anything in this world. I want to preach
Christ and get out of the way so that you see Him. But the
way God's ordained it is if you're going to hear of Christ in this
place, you're going to hear from this pastor that many of you
have known for a long time. And it's unbelief that makes
a person get hung up on the man that's preaching and miss the
most important thing. He's not preaching himself. Paul
said, we're not preaching ourselves. They get hung up on the man and
miss the Lord and Savior that he's preaching. They get hung
up on the voice and miss the message. And it's unbelief that
causes that. Unbelief makes the issue to be
anything but Christ. Anything. Unbelief tries to make
the irrelevant relevant. Makes something that doesn't
matter to be the issue. Anything but Christ. And that's
our nature. So what can be done about this
matter of getting hung up on the irrelevant, about things
that just don't matter? Well, here's what can be done
about it. The Lord has to show us what's truly important. The
Lord has to reveal Christ to us so that we see He's all that
matters. And if we see Christ and our
attention and our focus is on Him, we're not going to notice
the irrelevant. You cannot notice the irrelevant.
when you're looking at Christ, when your focus is on Him. If
we see Christ, we're not going to be focused on things that
don't matter anymore. All right, here's the third thing.
Unbelief cannot see the glory of God. Now, these folks, they
saw the power of the miracles. I mean, there's some glory there,
isn't there? They saw the wisdom of the Lord's message. but they
did not see the glory of God in it. They wondered about it.
They were amazed by it, but they didn't see the glory of God in
it. It's unbelief that makes us say, no, I will not believe
even though I see the evidence. It's unbelief that makes us see
the evidence and not see the glory of God and his power in
it. The glory of God. shines in the
face of Jesus Christ. The glory of God can only be
seen through the preaching of Christ. The only place it can
be seen. His greatest glory, I mean, there
is a glory of God in creation. There is a glory of God that's
seen in how He governs the universe. But the greatest glory of God,
His saving, redemptive glory can only be seen in the preaching
of Christ. And by nature, you and I are
so blind, we cannot see the glory of God, even when it's shining
as bright as the noonday sun. Brighter, I should say brighter
than the noonday sun. Because we're blind. We cannot
see the glory of God. Well, what can be done about
our blindness? Well, the Holy Spirit has to
give us eyes to see. That's the only way we'll ever
be able to see Christ. is if the Holy Spirit gives us
eyes to see Christ. And if the Spirit will give us
eyes to see Christ, suddenly we'll see the glory of God. And
here's the glory of God. Now I see. Now I understand how
it is that Almighty God, the thrice holy God, can save a sinner
like me and still be God. still be just and still be holy.
That's the glory of God and his redemptive mercy to sinners.
But we can't see it unless the spirit gives us eyes to see Christ.
Right, here's the fourth thing. Unbelief stumbles over the truth. Now, these folks, they didn't
deny the power of Christ. They didn't deny the wisdom of
his message and the power of his miracles, but they stumbled
over the truth of it. over the truth of it. They saw
some wisdom and some power in the message that Christ preached,
but they could not see the truth of it. They stumbled over the
truth of it. Now the truth of the gospel,
the truth is Christ preached. The truth is the Lord Jesus Christ
himself. He said, I am the truth. He is
the truth of God. The only way we can see God as
He truly is is by seeing the Lord Jesus Christ. The only way
we can see the truth of God, how God saves sinners, is by
seeing the Lord Jesus Christ. The only way we can see our sin
and our need of a Savior is to see the truth of who He is, to
see Christ. And these folks could not see
the truth. And the truth is not a set of
facts. The truth is not a set of doctrines. The truth is a
person. They stumbled They were offended,
verse 57 says, in Him. In Him. Not the facts, not the figures,
not the miracles. They were offended in Him. You
see, Christ is the issue. And they took issue with Him.
He's too lowly. He didn't come as a glorious
reigning ruling prince with riches and an entourage and, you know,
He came as a nobody from nowhere, and his little bit of entourage
that's with him is a bunch of illiterate fishermen, some women,
some women maybe with some questionable backgrounds, followed around
by publicans and sinners. That's his entourage. They're
offended. They're offended in him. They're offended by his
lack of what they call education. They were offended by the people
that hung around him. They were offended by the people
that he saved. They were offended by the people These showed mercy
and kindness to, they were offended in Him. Now Christ is the issue. He's the issue here in Matthew
chapter 13, and here in 2021, Christ is still the issue. Don't
ever think anything but Christ is the issue, because it never
is. If somebody's making something else, the issue, go back to our
second point, they're hung up on the irrelevant. Christ is
the issue, and they were offended in Him. They just could not accept
that righteousness is a person. They just could not accept that
righteousness is not in their own works of the law and following
all the ceremonies of the law. They just couldn't accept it.
They could not accept that salvation is in God's mercy to sinners
through the sacrifice of Christ. They thought God's mercy was
I was born a Jew and God saves Jews and nobody else. They just
could not accept that salvation is in God's mercy to sinners,
even Gentile sinners. If that's true, Jews are sinners. And they couldn't accept it.
If that's true, Calvinists are sinners. We better accept it. We better bow to it because he's
the issue. They just could not give up all
their tradition. They could not give up their
self-importance. They could not lower themselves
to cling to Christ, to beg Him for mercy. They would rather
try to justify themselves than humble themselves before God
and man to bow and beg for mercy. They couldn't do it because they
stumbled over Him. They stumbled over that stumbling
stone. God told us it was going to happen,
didn't He? They stumbled over that stumbling stone. And this
is our nature. By nature, we stumble over the
truth. We're offended in Christ because
by nature we love a lie and hate the truth. I mean, we hate it
and we ignore it. That's why we stumble over it
because we don't see it. Well, what can be done about
that? Well, the Lord has to show us the truth. The Lord shows
us the truth by revealing Christ. who is the truth of God. We can
see that every point of the gospel is true. You can see that a message
that a man preaches is true if we can see Christ the truth.
There's too many points of the gospel and too many to list them
all, but let me just give you a couple to make my point. I
know that I am totally correct. I know that's true. You know
how I know that's true? Because I see Christ. in His
holiness, in His righteousness. See, there I see the truth of
righteousness. That's the only way I know I'm
unrighteous. That's the truth of holiness is Christ. That's
the only way I can know I'm unholy. I know that the Lord Jesus Christ
did not die for the sins of every son of Adam. I know that. Christ
died for the elect and only God's elect. I know that. I know that's
true. You know how I know that's true?
Because I see Christ. He's the truth of God. There
is absolutely no way that the Lord Jesus Christ can fail to
do anything. It's impossible. And I know that
if I see Him. He came to save His people from
their sin. And brother, that's just exactly
what He did. He saved His people from their sins. Not one drop
of His blood was wasted trying to save somebody that's going
to perish anyway. No. He died for the elect and every
last one of them will be saved. They will be. That's how I know
that all the saints will be preserved. Remember I told you unbelief
gets hung up on the irrelevant, trying to figure out the irrelevant.
They love to argue about this. Once saved, always saved. Could
that be true? Of course it's true. Of course it's true. You know how I know that's true? Because I see the Savior. He
cannot fail. to go find every last one of
His lost sheep and put them on His shoulder and carry them all
the way home. They can't outrun Him. They can't
be so lost they can never find Him. They're not going to wriggle
and try to get away from Him. He's the sovereign, successful
Savior. He can't lose one for whom He
died. You know I know that's true.
By God's grace, I see Him. And He has utterly and completely
saved all of His people from their sins. And I'll quit stumbling
over that truth the moment God shows me Christ. That's exactly
right. And here's the fifth thing. Unbelief
is what damns the soul. Verse 58. And he did not many
mighty works there because of their unbelief. Now, the Lord
did not do many of the miracles and the mighty works of his grace
in his hometown that he did everywhere else he went. After this discussion
with these folks, the Lord left this place and He never came
back. Maybe He passed through going from point A to point B.
Maybe He passed through this area, but He never stopped. He never stayed. He never preached
again. He never performed another miracle.
He never healed another person in that place ever again. And the scripture says that He
never came back and He didn't work another miracle there because
of They're unbelief. That's what Scripture says. Now,
Scripture has plenty to say about the power of faith. There's so
much power in faith in Christ. And it's not because of the power
of our faith. It's because of the power of the Savior that
we trust. But Scripture has plenty to say about the power of faith. Abraham believed God, and it
was imputed to him for righteousness. That's power. Again, too many
illustrations to talk about. This afternoon, just sit down
and read Hebrews 11. You'll see the power of faith.
Our Lord said faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains. Isn't that something? And for
lack of a better term, Scripture talks about the power of unbelief,
too. Now, listen to me. I'm talking
about the power of unbelief. Unbelief never overpowers God's
power. Our unbelief will never overpower
God's will. Never. It's not like the Lord
wants to save us and can't because we refuse to believe. That's
not. We talk about the power of unbelief. That's not what
we're talking about. This is the power of unbelief. The Lord
often leaves people alone in cases of persistent unbelief. Pharaoh. Persistent unbelief. And God left him alone. Pharaoh,
that's a pretty good example, isn't it? He saw the power of
the Lord's word. Miracles he saw. He saw the power
of God's servant, Moses, and refused to believe, and God left
him alone. He wouldn't leave Moses alone,
would he? But he left Pharaoh alone. In our text, the Lord
left and he worked no more physical miracles, no more miracles of
grace there ever again because of unbelief. Unbelief is more
powerful than every other sin. I'll show you that. Look at John
chapter 8. The only sin that will damn our souls is unbelief. It's the only one. John chapter
8 and verse 24. I said therefore unto you, that
ye shall die in your sins. For if you believe not that I
am, that word he there is in italics, it's been added by the
translators and it shouldn't have been. If you believe not
that I am, if you don't believe that I'm Almighty God, the same
God that spoke to Moses, that burning bush, if you believe
not that I am, ye shall die in your sins. The reason you'll
die in your sins is because of unbelief. It's the sin that damns
our souls. Well, what can be done about
unbelief? You know, I prepared these notes,
went over them this morning, and it still causes my heart to race. It fills
me with fear. It's unbelief that will damn
our souls. And I know I'm full of unbelief. This nature of flesh
cannot and will not believe Christ. So what can be done about our
unbelief? Well, we can call out to God
and beg Him for mercy. God's the only one who can give
us faith. Faith is a gift of God. He's
the only one who can give it to us. But I tell you what, we can
call out and ask Him to give it to me. I can call out and
beg God for mercy. I can call out and say, Lord,
keep me from unbelief. Lord, give me faith in Christ.
Lord, make me believe. If God causes us to be born again
and gives us a new nature, He gives us faith in Christ, we
can't not believe Him. That nature can never not believe
Christ. Lord, every believer can say
this, I believe. By God's grace, I believe. I believe Christ. I believe the
gospel. I believe everything that you say in your Word. By
God's grace, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief. Help
thou mine unbelief. The Lord's the only one who can,
isn't he? He's the only one that can do anything about unbelief,
because only the Lord can give saving faith. Only the Lord can
strengthen our faith and help our unbelief. So that's the character
of unbelief. What can be done about it? Only
the Lord can. So let's look to Him. Let's call
out to Him, begging Him for mercy. All right, the Lord bless you.