Say unto the righteous, it shall
be well with them." If you would open your Bibles
now to Mark chapter 5. Mark chapter 5. We'll read the first twenty verses. And they came over unto the other
side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes. And when he,
that is the Lord Jesus, was come out of the ship, immediately
there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit,
who had his dwelling among the tombs. And no man could bind
him, no, not with chance. because that he had been often
bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked
asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces, neither could
any tame him. And always, night and day, he
was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying and cutting himself
with stones. But when he saw Jesus afar off,
he ran and worshipped cried with a loud voice, and said, What
have I to do with thee, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure
thee by God, that thou torment me not. For he said unto him,
Come out of the man, unclean spirit. And he asked him, What
is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name
is Legion, for we are many. And he besought him much that
he would not send them away out of the country. Now there was
there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding.
And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine,
that we may enter into them. And forthwith Jesus gave them
leave. And the unclean spirits went
out and entered into the swine. And the herd ran violently down
a steep place into the sea, they were about two thousand, and
were choked in the sea. And they that fed the swine fled,
and toted in the city and in the country, and they went out
to see what it was that was done. And they come to Jesus and see
him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion sitting
and clothed. and in his right mind, and they
were afraid. And they that saw told them how
it befell to him that was possessed with the devil, and also concerning
the swine. And they began to pray him to
depart out of their coasts. And when he was come into the
ship, he that had been possessed with the devil prayed him that
he might be with him, howbeit Jesus suffered him but saith
unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things
the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.
And he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great
things Jesus had done for him, and all men did marvel." Now can you imagine a more pitiful
man? than the one who met the Lord
as he disembarked that little boat. There's nothing right about
him. Nothing. He has a life, but what
kind of life is it? He has a mind, but it is completely
subjugated by another mind. No amount of education. will
make him see things right. He is alive, but he lives among
the dead. In his torment, he cries out
loudly, and his emotional pain is so
great, and his sanity in such shreds, that he cuts himself
with rocks. There was no medicine then, nor
is there any medicine now that would help this man. This man
was not suffering from mental illness. Now, there are mental
illnesses that might make a person act something like this man does
or did. But this man is not suffering
from mental illness. No amount of psychotropic drugs
or counseling is going to fix him. because his problem's not
psychological. His symptoms may be psychological,
but his problem is spiritual. And I'd have you understand there
is a big distinction between the psychological and the spiritual. There are many in this world
who are healthy psychologically, but spiritually dead. Likewise,
there are many who are spiritually alive, who believe God, and trust
them with their spirits as we spoke of this morning, and yet
undergo such mental torments as you and I may not understand
at all. I will leave it to the Lord in
His own time to tell you the wisdom for allowing some of His
people to suffer those things, but He does. But this man's not
suffering a mental illness. He's got a spiritual problem.
And you can't fix a spiritual problem with a psychological
remedy. The sad thing is that the visible
church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I mean by that all those
groups who call themselves Christians, in the last half century have
pretty much traded a spiritual message for a psychological one. Most people can see through the
mere health and wealth message of so many religious charlatans.
But the feel-good, feel-whole, feel-saved charlatans are more
difficult for people to see for what they are. Salvation, as
we experience it in this life, is not a means by which God makes
you feel better. In fact, it has been the experience
of many people that they felt worse after God opened their
eyes. At least for a time they did. Most of the people running around
in this world who are happy, are happy because they are completely
deceived about their condition. But we do live in a day, at least
in the United States of America, where the concept of counseling
has, and I'm not opposed to that, I'm not talking against counseling.
Things are good if they're kept in the right place. But when
counseling becomes a substitute for gospel preaching, there's
a problem. When helping a person overcome
the deficiencies of his natural life becomes a description of
salvation, there's a problem. So don't mistake one problem
for the other. Psychological problems can be
helped with psychological means. Spiritual problems cannot. This
man has a spiritual problem. And there was nothing that any
man could do to fix it. Now, this story that we read
here is included in all three of what is called the Synoptic
Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Of the four Gospels, the first
three all tell just about the same stories. There's very little
variation. In what stories they tell, John
took a completely different way of describing the life of our
Lord. He told different stories that you don't find. But they
call these a synoptic gospel. The word means to see together.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they saw together in the way they
told their accounts. And this story appears in all
those three gospels. And in all three of these accounts,
they are preceded by the story of the Lord calming the wind
and the waves. Now that's an impressive story.
A man tells the ocean to be peace, and it does. You think about
that. You find you a big body of water
all whipped up with the winds and the waves and everything,
and you stand out there and you say, peace, peace, still, and you see if
anything happens. Not likely going to be any result
from that except you getting wet. And they were overwhelmed when
they saw that. They said of the Lord Jesus,
what manner of man is this that the winds and the waves obey
him? And that was an impressive feat
on the part of our Lord Jesus Christ. But it's as though this story
was told in the order that it was. First, calm the wind and
the waves. The disciples get impressed.
And the Lord says, you think that's great. You watch what
I'm about to do. People in our day, as in all
days, seem to think that doing something of an outstanding nature
in physical miracles is really impressive. And preachers, mostly
the charlatans, it's the day of miracles. And they think it's
great if somehow or another they're able to heal someone of a disease.
And I notice it's always diseases you can't see. Therefore, you
can't tell whether they've been healed or not. But they claim
to heal this person or that, or that they can make you wealthy,
or that they can make you speak languages you've never learned
or languages that nobody else ever learned either. And they
are all impressed by this. Well, I tell you, if those things
could be done, they are indeed impressive on a certain level. But there is no miracle to be
compared with the miracle of God's grace when he takes a spiritually
insane man and restores him to his right mind. You and I have witnessed the
greatest miracles ever done, even by God. It is the day of miracles. though
the world doesn't notice the miracles that God is doing and
is not impressed by them because they don't see them. These miracles
are spiritual things and carnal men cannot perceive spiritual
things. But you who have been regenerated
by the Spirit of God know exactly what I'm talking about. That we who once hated God now
love Him. That we who once did not trust
Him but trusted in ourselves trust Him implicitly and explicitly, that we who are dead in trespasses
and sins are now alive unto God. That's a miracle. Now, there
are some things that our Lord did. By the way, the title of
this message is What Only Christ Can Do. Now, there are some things
that Christ did in this story which we can and should do, like
Him. First of all, Christ went to
sinners, and so should we. Now we meet like this week by
week, and thus we should. This is a family meeting of the
family of God. Now we open it to the public,
and they're allowed to come in and to watch what we do. But
they can't really participate in what we're doing, because
what we're really doing is spiritual, and if they're not spiritual,
That is, if they're not born again, they can't do it. But
they can watch as the family of God meets and talks about
the oldest brother in the family and the father and worships them. But we are to do more than simply
meet. We do have a message for this
world, and we are to go to sinners. That's what God did. God did
not sit in heaven and say, y'all come. If he had, what would have
happened? Nothing. If God had invited sinners,
if he'd merely opened the door for us to come to him, we never
would have. All that would have been accomplished
is as much was accomplished on the day of Lazarus when he said,
roll away of the stone. They said, that's not a good
idea. He smiles. He said, go ahead and do it.
And so they rolled away the stone. And that is the gospel for a
lot of people. They think that all that God did was roll away
the stone because they think the stone is the problem that
sinners have. And the stone is what's keeping
sinners from coming to God. It's not. You know why Lazarus
didn't come out? He was dead. You could roll away the stone,
you could carve the hole bigger. He's still not coming out. We go to sinners. Christ went
to sinners and so do we. He says, I've come to seek and
to save that which was lost. And I realize we can't save them.
But God being gracious, we're looking for them. I'd love to
find a sinner. They're hard to find. I mean, just ask anybody. Are
you a sinner? Well, yeah. OK, so you're worthy to go to
hell? Not just a minute. They're a
sinner, but they're a sinner after their own definition of
it. They aren't as good as they could be. You'll have a hard
time finding someone who admits to no good at all. And quite frankly, that includes
us. Because we will defend our honor,
won't we? I've heard people say things
like, oh, I'm a sinner and I deserve to go to hell. You want to find
out if that's real? Just agree with them. I was thinking the
same thing the other day, brother. You're a sinner and you ought
to go to hell. See, we aren't really sinners
even in our own eyes. We know it in our hearts, but
we still kick against that reputation. I may be a sinner, but I'm a
sovereign grace sinner, you know. And we make our doctrine to be
our righteousness. Oh, we look for him. I'd like to find one
because if I can find one, I've got good news for him. We seek
him out for we've been sent to do so. The Lord said, whom shall
I send and who will go for us? I know the Lord God can do whatever
he wants to do and he can do it without us, but he's not chosen
to do it that way. We seek them because we have
what they need, or at least we know where it can be found. If I know where a man can get
food, then let me find some hungry people so at least I can tell
them where they can go and get food. In Acts chapter 3, we read of
Peter and John, and here's this man begging by the side of the
road. Peter said, look at us, and he looked up thinking he
was going to get food, because that's all that he could feel
that he needed. But Peter said, I don't have
any money, but what I have, I will give to you. In the name of Jesus,
stand up and walk. The man got far more than he
was looking for. Now, we can't make people rise up and walk
At least I can't. I don't know anybody that can.
Can't do what Peter did, but there is something I can do. Something I know. I know the
gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we can all say silver and
gold. We don't have a lot of that.
But we do have this. We got Christ. You ever look in the newspaper
at the advertisements churches put out? And you figure that
what they're putting in their advertisements, they're saying,
this is what distinguishes us from the other churches and why
you ought to come to ours instead of theirs. That's what an advertisement's
for. I mean, when businesses advertise,
they're trying to tell you what's different about them so that
you'll go to them instead of the other business. And churches
do the same thing. Do you realize that the Church
of the Lord Jesus Christ has only got one thing? Not too many people interested
in it, but there are some whom the Lord will make interested
in it. And we can say, well, you know, the answer to life's
problems, we may not have that. And we don't have a big whoop-de-doo
musical program down at our church. We sing our songs and we listen
to some of the brothers sing. We're blessed by it. But, you
know, nobody's offering us a recording contract. We don't have a theater
or a drama presentation. We don't have puppets or clowns.
But we got Christ. Are you interested? What we have,
we gladly give. And we seek them because we truly
desire their salvation. Paul said, I am all things to
all men that by all means I might save some or win some. We know
that we really can't save or win anybody. You understand the
sense in which Paul is speaking. But just what are you willing
to give up in order that you might minister to some of God's
sheep who haven't been awakened yet. What of your freedoms are
you willing to relinquish that you might be able to draw near
to them and they'll listen to what you have to say? Paul said,
when I'm among the Jews, I'll act like a Jew. I'll restrain
my liberties so that they'll listen to me. And when I'm among
the Gentiles, I'll make sure I don't put on religious airs
to offend them. Because none of these things
matter to God and they don't matter to me. Here's what matters. Let God's sheep be found. And then we should and we can
confront the spiritual error of our day. Now, it is not the
job of the church to make unbelievers stop their fleshly sins. It is
not the job of believers to go out and protest the social and
moral ills of the day and try to, quote, impact their culture
for God. You know what God's going to
do with this culture? Going to destroy it. It's already been
weighed in the balances and found wanting. And that's the culture
of our day and the culture of the generation of our parents
and their parents. There has never been a day when
the world was pleasing to God. Now, don't misunderstand me.
There have been some days, some times, when it was more pleasant
to be a believer than at other times. You and I got it pretty
good, living in the United States of America. We aren't under threat
of death, not even the loss of anything that I know of. It may
change, but right now I mean, we got a big sign out front telling
everybody what we're doing in here, you know. Early Christians,
they met in secret. Some of them did. Lost all their
property, lost their families, some of them lost their lives. We got it pretty easy, but don't
kid yourself. Those times of peace for the
church, God makes them for his own reasons. But when he does
so, he's not more pleased with that world than with the world
of Rome or the world of Babylon or the world of Hitler or anybody
else's world. We're not here to change the
world. We're not here to try to find Christian politicians,
to make Christian laws so we can once again have a so-called
Christian nation. Our brother read that psalm and
it said, blessed is that nation. whose God is Jehovah. And I've
seen that thing twisted so much. I remember back in 1976 when
we had our bicentennial, and you had all these churches singing
these patriotic songs, and I remember one, Jesus is calling America
back. Back to what? America has been extremely blessed
by God with worldly blessings. But the nation whose God is the
is the holy nation, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
blessed is that nation. Blessed is that nation. Rather,
we are sent to confront the darkness of spiritual wickedness. The spiritual wickedness that's
resulting in the eternal death of millions of people. We confront
the spiritual wickedness of legalism. This do and live. They say, wait a minute, that's
scriptural. Yes, it is. But when men try to bind other
men under that system, it's wickedness. You've got the spiritual wickedness
of ceremonialism, which is simply a different kind of legalism. All kinds of spiritual wickedness
out there. And most of it, most of it's
going on with a clerical collar or a nice suit and a pulpit. and a TV show, or a radio broadcast,
or a book. And we are sent as light in this
world to confront the darkness. We are to flush them out. Remember
what our Lord said as we read there? That demon started to
protest. He said, Remember, he did that at least
one other time to Jacob. What's your name? It was tough
for Jacob to tell him what his name was. I used to preach for
a group of people in Minnesota in a home, and the son in that
home, his name was Jacob. And I often referred to what
the name Jacob means. It essentially means cheat or
scoundrel, ne'er do well. The kind of guy you don't want
to do business with, poor old young Jacob. You know, standing
there, and I say, I'm sorry, Jacob, but that's the way it
is. And this demon, these demons, these spirits of darkness, the
Lord called them out. Who are you? And as we preach the gospel,
as we're declaring the truth of God, we are forcing agents of spiritual darkness
to declare their name. By declaring the name of Christ,
their name is made clear. We can and we should preach the
gospel to them. Some of us do it regularly as
a vocation, but all can and should do it some. I've had people say,
do you believe in women preachers? Yes, I do. Oh, you women have got children?
preach to them. I don't mean set up a pulpit
and you tell your children from the beginning what the gospel
is. Do you know that nearly every man that has been used of God
to preach the gospel was taught the gospel by his mother? Or at least she was instrumental.
The first one that ever told me I was a sinner in need of
salvation was my mother. The first one that ever told
me that Jesus Christ is that salvation was my mother. Of course,
mothers are the ones who teach their children about many things
the first time. But what a blessed privilege
women have. I feel sorry for those of you
who have fallen for the feminism of our day. It has put low regard
on the work of mothers. It is true that phrase, the hand
that rocks the cradle rules the world. And it's a mighty hand in the
kingdom of God that trains children. You do the Sunday school. You
know, I'm so glad there's somebody to do Sunday school with those
kids. I don't do it very well. I can do it one or two weeks.
But after that, I'm kind of frustrated, you know. And I delight in the
women. But the women do that. You men,
it's your job. You don't have to preach a whole
message just like this guy was told here. You go home and you
tell everybody what great things the Lord hath done for you. Don't
get in your mind the idea that all gospel preaching comes as
exposition of scriptures. Most people don't really want
to hear that. And they probably wouldn't be able to understand
it if you did. But they do understand if you tell them what great things
God has done for you. Because you're a human being
like they are. And all of us share in the preaching
of the gospel when we support those men who have been called
of God to publicly declare the gospel. You support your pastor,
therefore you have a share in his ministry. When he's preaching,
you are. Well, that's about as far as
we can go with it, though. Those things Christ did, and those
things we should do also. But there are some things that
He can do that we can't. We're utterly dependent on Him.
The Lord is able to do what we are not. He talked to his disciples
one time and he said it's just nearly impossible. Yea, it is
naturally impossible for the rich to enter the kingdom of
God. Why, it would be easier to get a camel through the eye
of a needle. Some say that the gate, where
there's a gate in the city called the needle's eye, that the camels
were forced to go through and they'd have to bow way down and
you know, walk on their knees. I don't know. I'll tell you this.
I think it's about as easy to get a camel through the eye of
a sewing needle as it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom
of God. And how easy is that? Impossible.
And he doesn't mean just a rich man that's got a lot of coin
in his pocket, he means those who are rich in themselves, who
are rich in their own estimation of themselves. And that's everybody. You can go into prisons. I tell
you the story. You can go into a prison, find
a man guilty of the most heinous crimes, and he will find something
in which to boast. He's not as bad as somebody else.
I've got down there and I'd say, you know what he did? It's impossible. And the disciples
said, well, who can be saved? The Lord said, well, with men. It's impossible. But with God,
by all things are possible for God. And the Lord Jesus Christ
is God. He's the God we worship. And
there's some things he can do that we cannot do in this business
of the ministry of the gospel, first of all. And we look here
at verse 15. It says, and they come to Jesus
and see him that was possessed with the devil. Now, they knew
about that guy. They didn't know about Jesus, but they knew about
the guy possessed with the devil. They'd seen him. They knew what
he was capable of doing. One that had the legion. He was
sitting and clothed and in his right mind. Now, here's something
that the Lord can do that we can't do. The Lord can make a
man rest. So they found the man sitting.
You know what he'd been doing up to then? Running wild. They'd
chain him up. He could break chains. There's
your miracle. I don't think it was by the Holy
Spirit though, do you? A lot of these demonstrations of power
by religious people aren't done by the Holy Spirit either. He'd weary himself. He'd cut
himself. He'd cry out. Can you imagine
what that sounded like? That howl coming from the tombs
late at night. No rest ever. I suppose from
time to time his body would succumb to utter exhaustion and he'd
just pass out. But as soon as whatever sleep
and rest had been accumulated to make him conscious again,
it was back to the working, working, working. For the first time since he'd
been possessed of those demons, he was sitting down, awake, not
working. And in our insanity, We were
crying out and we were working and running and cutting ourselves
thinking that by some kind of religious pain. And friends,
that's all these religious rules are. They think if they'll make
themselves miserable enough by their religious restrictions,
God will be pleased. They're like cutting themselves
with rocks. And one day the Lord came by
and said, just sit here. Just sit down. You rest. I'll do the work. Are you resting? Sort of. Once again, that two-nature
problem. Oh, in my heart, man, when I
can hear the gospel preached, and I'll admit not every time
a man's preaching it do I hear it, but when I can, oh, in my
heart I just rest. But this old mind, well, that's
just what it is, it's an old mind. It was born running wild,
and it just won't settle down. And it's not going to settle
down until God fixes it. Boy, the inner man, he's at rest. And only Christ can make a man
rest. And I'll tell you how He made
him rest, how He makes us rest. It's one word in Greek, it's
three words in the English language. It is finished. You know, there's sometimes I'm
doing a job and I just get so tired I quit doing it. And I
go sit down. I'm really not resting. Because
in my mind I know there's more to do. I'm just on break, that's
all. The Gospel doesn't put us on
break. The Gospel says the work's done. There is no rest like the
rest of a job finished. Then you can go sit down and
you rest the rest of the innocent. Nothing more to do. The Lord
did it all. Secondly, only the Lord Jesus
Christ can clothe a man. He was sitting and clothed. Now,
before, he'd been running around naked. Now, the word naked I
don't know how naked this man was. They used the word naked,
actually, to describe a guy who was just in his undergarments.
Men in those days, they had to robe, but underneath they had
a tunic-like thing. But it wouldn't surprise me to find this man
was just buck naked. He wasn't in his right mind,
that was obvious. And you know, we run around, spiritually speaking,
buck naked, thinking we're clothed. Like that Emperor's New Clothes
story? And we have clothed ourselves
in fig leaves like Adam and Eve did. But you know what happens
any time you take a leaf off of its branch? You put it on. I mean, you could make yourself
a fine looking coat, but how long is it going to last? For
long, the leaves wither up. And once again, there you are
in the shame of your nakedness. And religion comes and makes
more fig leaf aprons. and keeps trying to clothe us
in this experience, or that experience, or this work, or that work, and
we just keep ending up the same old way, naked. There's only
one person who can clothe a man. That's the Lord Jesus. He's the
only one who's got clothes. He robed me in a glorious robe
of His righteousness. A robe that never withers. This man was clothed. And the
Lord put clothes on him, and he wasn't trying to take them
off. And he wasn't trying to fix them up. He said, this is
pretty good, but I think, you know, if I would do this to it,
it looks good to me. I tell you, a man in his right
mind, spiritually speaking, is completely satisfied with the
garment of righteousness given him by the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thirdly, Only Christ can put a man in his right mind. Sometimes we preach the gospel.
I'm sure that any of you that have tried to testify the truth
to anybody else, sometimes you go, don't you get it? I don't
see why you don't understand this. Why wouldn't anybody love
the message that you and I love and listen to all the time? For
the life of me, if it weren't for the Bible, I wouldn't know
why. If it weren't for my own experience, I guess I wouldn't
know why. Why don't men love this God? Because they're not
in their right mind. Have you ever tried to talk to an insane
person? It just doesn't work. Now, here's the miracle, though,
the mystery. The very message that men cannot understand is
the message that God uses to give them an understanding. So
we keep right on saying it. Why? In the hope that Christ,
by His Spirit, will put them in the right mind. And then they
can hear reason. The Lord said, come now, let
us reason together. And so we're doing the reasoning
with them. It'll be up to the Lord to give
them a good mind. Only the Lord can do these things.
But boy, can He do them. People say there's a big change.
And I've heard this, you know, big change when a man comes to
know the Lord. And they always define it in
terms of these people do. You know, this sin, they'll quit
doing that. I remember when I was in college
and I worked with a fellow that delivered milk and bread out
to the stores in the hollows of West Virginia. And we had
one store and it was about the middle of the day. We were always
there. And the fellow was just one of these really irritating
self-righteous free willers. I mean, I don't know any other
way to describe him. Just everything that would make you feel uneasy
around him. He was that. And I had to put
the milk, you know, those old meat cases that, you know, with
the angled front, you know, and you can see the meat there. And
then they'd have a compartment underneath. And that's where
he stored his milk. So I'd have to wheel it around there and
pull all the old milk out, you know, because you've got to rotate
the stock and then put the fresh stuff all the way out there and
then the older stuff behind it. And I had my head stuck way back
in there. And this guy was waxing eloquent about what he thought
amounted to salvation. And I guess his son, and you've
got to realize this is about 1974, and his son is growing
his hair long. And he said, I told him if he
don't cut that hair, ain't no way God's going to save him.
Although salvation has something to do with the length of your
hair. That man wasn't in his right
mind if he thinks that's where salvation is. It's going to be
a big change. And I saw people, kids, you know,
of course, I grew up there and I graduated high school in 73.
So those of you who know that time period, you know where I
was, you know. And we'd see the churches were really pressing
the young people, you know, big youth movements. And this is
how they could tell supposedly to them that somebody, some young
fellow really got right with the Lord. He cut his hair. He
even quit wearing blue jeans. Well, now there's a big change.
Now we mock that, I do. But brethren, we'd be right there
with them. We'd be right there with them.
What's the change? You've got a right mind. You
know what the real issues are. It's not your hair and it's not
your blue jeans. It's your heart. There's a big change in Saul
of Tarsus. But he didn't become more outwardly
righteous, because you couldn't get more outwardly righteous
than that man. He quit hating God. He quit persecuting
the church of God. He started preaching the gospel. Now, sometimes the great change
that goes on in the heart of a person whom God has saved is
more evident than with others. Because God restrains some of
us in our state of unbelief, restrains our expressions of
sin and rebellion more than He restrains it in others. But brethren,
it's the same in all of us. The nature's there. When those fellows went out there
and saw that formerly demon-possessed man sitting, clothed, and in
his right mind, It was such a dramatic change. You know what it did?
It scared them. This world is scared to death
of the gospel. Paul says it's the power of God,
the salvation, the power of God scares men. This was something
out of their control. They couldn't do it. And now
they couldn't undo it. Someone had come in their presence
who had the power to do what they could not do, and they couldn't
stop him from doing it. And he did one more miracle. Any of y'all ever worked with
hogs? They are one rebellious outfit. I helped a guy in our
church load hogs one time, take them to market. We only had to
load 56 of them, get them in a horse trailer. And it like
to wore me out. I was, by the time we got them
on it, because they are a stubborn, stubborn animal. And if they
can figure out what you want, they will do exactly the opposite.
I remember getting in the truck afterwards and I said, Jerry,
you know that story about the demon possessed man? I always
thought the miracle was casting out the demons. But evidently
the greater miracle was getting 2,000 hogs to go one direction
at your will. But that's the thing, and I don't
know that it was intended to serve as any illustration, but
you know what? The Lord God can make men do His will no matter
how stubborn they are. Whether it be His will to believe
Him or His will to rebel against Him, they will do what He has
determined that they shall do. And that scares men. Why'd they
crucify the Lord? He terrified them. He was the
real deal, and they knew it. Has He ever worked this work
of grace for you? I ask that question. The fact is, if He has, you're
aware of it. And if He hasn't, you don't have
a clue. Insane people don't know they're
insane. If you ever question your sanity,
don't worry about it. You're okay. You say, I think
I'm losing my mind. You haven't been yet, if you
think you are. Has lost his mind, doesn't know he lost it. A man
who's spiritually insane, he thinks everything's okay. What only Christ can do. Oh,
let us pray that he'll keep doing it. Keep doing it for us, that
we not end up back in the tombs, and that He do it for some more.
We don't count numbers, at least we shouldn't, in order to glory
in the size of our church. But I tell you, I'd rather see
500 worshiping Christ than 50. Now, I'm glad for the 50. But
I'm human enough to be glad for over 500, or 5,000, or whatever
the Lord is pleased. If it be eight in a boat surviving
the flood, that's the Lord's grace. Or if it be the 7,000
in Israel that Elijah didn't know about, or if it be that
multitude that no man can number, it's a work of His grace. But
I would rejoice to see some of that multitude. Let us do what
we can and stand back and watch Him do what He can. Heavenly
Father, bless us. Oh, thank you for the work that
you did for us and in us that only you can do. And we pray you do it some more.
Do it here in Ashland, up in Iowa, anywhere and everywhere, Lord. It says you're no respecter of
persons. Neither must we be. Wherever you're pleased to work,
even so work. In the name of Christ we pray,
Amen.