Mark chapter eight, verse 11
to 21. Our passage today, which Nick
has so ably read to us, is without a miracle or a parable for the
first time in several weeks but it is not without a lesson, both
for the disciples and, I trust, for us as well. May the Lord
make us wise today to hear his word and may he apply it to our
hearts that we might better see him and the glory of his grace. and that in the vein of seeking
the Lord's help, He may endow us with a sense of personal care
and responsibility for our own spiritual well-being, for our
own spiritual life. The Lord Jesus Christ was with
these men during his own ministry, and yet he felt the necessity
of warning them to beware of false religion and self-righteous
hypocrisy. And that is an admonition which
is equally as valid to us today as it was so many years ago. It is so easy for us to take
our eyes off of the Lord Jesus Christ. To take our eyes off
from looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. To take our eyes off from looking
for and hastening unto the coming of the day of God. to take our
eyes off from looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ
unto eternal life. That's a little reference from
the 21st verse of the little book of Jude. Let me tell you
what Jude means by that when he says that we are to look for
the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. We need mercy
every day. And we have God's mercy every
day. So we should look to discover
instances and evidences of God's daily blessings to us, God's
daily mercy every day. in order that we might have more
specific reason to wonder at his goodness, to thank him for
it, and to worship him. We live in a day when much of
the so-called Christian church has become infatuated with free
will preaching, and with works, religion. You and I, brothers and sisters,
I trust, have learned better things than that. We have learned
Christ, and I dare say we have learned the simplicity of sovereign
grace. and we have learned that we will
never lose our salvation having once trusted in the Lord Jesus
Christ, nor will we be long deceived by the wiles of the devil. And yet it behoves us to realize
that if anything distracts us from looking wholly to the Lord
Jesus Christ for all spiritual grace and all spiritual blessing,
then it is a threat to our spiritual health and the comfort of our
soul. And it is therefore wise for
us to seek every opportunity to sharpen our awareness of the
risks and dangers posed by sin and by false doctrine and by
such as we see in the world around about us. And it is wise for
us to take every opportunity to come back again to the Lord
Jesus Christ, to hear what he says, and to take his words seriously. And that is our springboard to
turn to this passage today. When the Lord arrived in Dalmanutha,
the Pharisees came out to ask him a question. but their motives
were not good. And Mark chapter 8 verse 11 tells
us that the Pharisees came forth and began to question him, seeking
of him a sign from heaven, tempting him. They were tempting him by
their request. I'm going to come back to that
a little bit later. But one might have thought that
they had had plenty of signs from heaven already. I think
it was last week or perhaps the week before that we remarked
how, that the Lord looked up to heaven when he prayed. That the Lord looked up to heaven
when he fed the 5,000, when he healed the deaf man. So the Lord always acknowledged
that he was looking to heaven, he was looking to God. And we
remark, not that it was the power of God apart from Christ that
accomplished these miracles, but that the Lord was showing
his disciples, showing us That all good and perfect gifts come
from the Father of lights. That all grace comes from on
high and all that we are is by divine gift. The Lord acknowledged
that, even in his bodily actions, even in the way in which he stood
in the stance that he took. So these men had no excuse to
think that in some way these miracles were earthly. but there
was probably more to these Pharisees' request than might be immediately
obvious. They were desiring a sign from
heaven, or we could perhaps phrase it another way. They were requesting
a sign in heaven. because signs in the heavens
were expected by the Jews as proof and evidence of the coming
of the Messiah. So that what these men were saying
to the Lord Jesus Christ is, prove to us that you are the
Messiah by giving us a sign in the heavens. Give us a sign from
heaven that you are the true Messiah. In so doing, they were
despising all the miracles that Jesus had performed. The miracles that he had performed
around about Galilee and Capernaum. They were saying, these are signs
from the earth and sure, The common people are impressed by
these signs. The common people, they marvel
at the bread and the fishes. They marvel at the dumb speaking
and the deaf hearing and the blind seeing. But we, we seek
something more than that. For us to believe that you're
the Messiah, we need a sign from heaven. something definitive, something
decisive, something conclusive from above. And let me make a
parallel here because I think it's merited. This is very much
like many people today who resist the gospel because they say with
an air of self-righteousness, We would believe if only we received
a sign from heaven. Something perhaps like what Paul
received on the Damascus Road. If only we had a Damascus Road
experience, then we would believe. Then we would have that personal
evidence by which we could believe the gospel. Well, let me tell you something
about miracles and signs and wonders. Miracles cannot soften
a hard-hearted sinner towards Christ. They can't. They never have, and they never
will. Not in the time of Christ, not
now. The new birth by which men and
women and boys and girls believe and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ
is a spiritual act of divine power. Man's will cannot be swayed
by signs and wonders, be they on earth or be they in the heavens. Because believers live by faith,
not by signs. And indeed, a sign is the very
antithesis, the very reverse of faith. People can't get to
faith through signs, because signs oppose faith. They're opposite
to faith. Let me tell you another thing
about signs and wonders. All those, everyone who try to
sell the gospel by a sign and wonder ministry are themselves
deluded and the leaders of deluded people. All the charismatic ministries
and all the power preachers that you might want to line up or
put into a big pile, they have thousands, sometimes tens of
thousands of followers. And they claim all manner of
signs and wonders, but like those Pharisees there on the coasts
of Dalmuthia, the Lord turns his back upon them and he leaves
them in their self-delusion. They have no more spiritual insight
than the dead stones on the ground. And here's a third point about
the signs and miracles. The Lord Jesus Christ said, no
sign shall be given this generation. not at least in the sense that
they looked for. If you want to read, I'm not
going to expound anything from it, but if you want to read an
enlarged narrative about this incident, Matthew chapter 16
is a place to go for your homework. But they wouldn't receive a sign,
that was what the Lord told them. they would have the resurrection
of the Lord Jesus Christ to testify against them. They would have
the defeat of death and hell and Satan. They would have the
Lord Jesus Christ's victory over sin and his acceptance with God
as our intercessor. That is the sign. That is the
faith validating sign that is possessed by every child of God,
because that attests to the completed work of our salvation. What Jesus Christ accomplished
on the cross is the object of our faith. Christ and his work
That intercessory work, that sacrificial work, that bloodletting,
that cleansing power, that sacrifice, that substitution is what we
look to as the grounds of our acceptance with God. Therein
is our faith validated. Therein are we justified before
God because of what Jesus Christ has done. So that is my comments
upon the signs and wonders of our day and our age, and that
is the way in which we are to properly understand these so-called
power works today. They are not of a spiritual kind. They are not of the Lord, and
they will not lead men and women to salvation or to faith. Here's another point about the
way in which the Lord dealt with these Pharisees. And I think
this is very interesting as well. We're told that the Lord sighed
deeply in his spirit. And that is a blessed reminder
of our Lord's human nature. Indeed, we see both the Lord's
human nature and his divine nature on view in this passage that
we have before us today. We're told that the Lord sighed
in his spirit, but we're also told that he knew men's thoughts,
he knew men's motives, and he knew men's hearts. But here in
this sigh, we are reminded that the Saviour empathises with His
people in their trials, in their weariness, in the obstinacy of
our sinful nature. Some people have suggested that
the Lord sighed because the Pharisees didn't believe. Well, I very
much doubt that that is the case. I don't think that the Lord sighed
for that reason at all. The Lord knew that faith was
naturally impossible. The Lord knew that faith comes
as a spiritual work of grace and mercy. The Lord had called
these Pharisees a generation of vipers. And surely he did
not sigh because they did not do what they could not do. Maybe it's unwise for me to speculate
here, but I'm just going to touch back upon this request that they
made for a heavenly sign and the fact that we are told explicitly
by Mark that the Lord was tempted by their request. Mark says that they tempted the
Lord when they sought a sign from heaven Maybe they wanted
the sun to stand still as it had done in Joshua's day. Or maybe they wanted to see a
rainbow appear as it had done in Noah's day. Or perhaps they
envisaged that they might get a spectacular display of thunder
and lightning as there was at Sinai in the times of Moses. But we're told that their request
tempted the Lord. And I wonder if perhaps the Lord
God was tempted to send down fire from heaven as in the day
of Elijah and just thoroughly consume them there and then. Later, in the Lord's ministry,
James and John, asked that this fire, this judgmental fire of
Elijah, be brought down upon Samaritans who had been inhospitable
to the Lord Jesus Christ and his followers. And the Lord rebuked
them. He said to them in Luke 9, verse
55 and 56, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the
Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. That was the reason why the Lord
Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ came to save men. But
oh, he must have been tempted at times in his righteous indignation. in that holy divine nature to
judge men for their obstinacy and for their cruelty and for
their sin. Our gracious God will not be
tempted, he will not be tempted to bring righteous judgment upon
men and women prematurely because God has a time for all things
and though they deserve it, And though we desire it, let us remember that we also
deserve it too. This world will run its course
until the fullness of time is come. Then cometh the end, and
we shall then see signs in heaven. They are called the signs of
the times, and they shall come upon earth. Revelation 15 verse
1 tells us, And I saw, John is speaking, another sign in heaven,
great and marvellous, seven angels having the seven last plagues,
for in them is filled up the wrath of God. There will be signs
in heaven. but they will be the signs of
the times and they will be the signs of judgment and they will
not come before time. Praise be to the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to draw your attention,
as a sort of final point, to the Lord's words to his own disciples. I've got a few things to say
there, so I'm not just a paragraph away, even though this is my
last point. Let us think about the Lord's
word to his disciples here in the context of the leaving that
he spoke about at 11. because he speaks about the leaven
of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. And that's today's
lesson. The day's lesson for the disciples
and the enduring lesson for all ages is the Lord's words to them,
take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the leaven
of Herod. and it is a very good idea to
stop and to listen when the Lord Jesus Christ uses words to us
like take heed and beware. In the Old Testament perhaps
in Exodus and Leviticus we would find it coming out most frequently. The effect of leaven in bread
is presented as a picture of the swelling up or the invading
effect of sin and evil and heresy. A little bit of sour leaven influences
and ferments a large lump of dough, making it of the same
nature as the leaven. And that seems to have been a
proverbial saying amongst the Jews because the Apostle Paul
uses it when he's writing to the Galatians in chapter five,
verse nine. He says, a little leaven leaveneth
the whole lump. And the sense is that all false
doctrine of any kind, of any nature, introduces by its acceptance,
in purity, into our thinking and our understanding, and once
it is present, it will grow. The Jews had great religious
concern that no leaven should be found in their houses, especially
during Pentecost. And this was a picture that had
a gospel significance for us. It taught us that nothing would
be permitted to leaven or to mix or to mingle with the blood
and the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ for our acceptance
with God. It's either Christ alone or not
at all. The Lord Jesus Christ, immediately
after his encounter with these Pharisees, and knowing that this
works righteousness would forever be the enemy of free grace preaching,
took the opportunity to stress to his disciples the great danger
of trying to mix works with grace in order to please God. And he
says to them, take heed. He's saying, listen well. Give
attention to what I'm saying here. Beware of the leaven of
the Pharisees. And of Herod. Maybe thinking
about the Sadducees there. But were the disciples listening
carefully? Were they reflecting on the actions
of their master? Were they considering the wisdom
that fell from his lips? No. No, they were not. These disciples in their boat
had become preoccupied with something else entirely. They'd been forgetful
and they realised that they were hungry and they didn't have any
bread. Now, I know that it's not easy
to preach to men and women with empty stomachs, but that's not
the point here. The Lord was claiming their concentration
and Jesus points out to them that their concern ought not
to be about bread for their tummies. He could provide bread and to
spare. And he had done so for the 5,000
with the 12 baskets over and the 4,000 with the 7 baskets
over. He had given them more bread
than they could ever eat. They shouldn't be thinking about
these mundane things. Food was not the issue. The Lord
is saying to them, it's not about the bread. Remember the Lord has said on
another occasion, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every
word, every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. If the
Lord Jesus Christ precedes those words with, take heed and beware,
then it should cause us to give double the attention to what
he's saying. That was true for the disciples
then and it is true for believers today. We should be careful to
consider every word that proceeds from the mouth of Christ. Let
us be people who hear and listen and reflect upon what the Lord
says. When the Lord says take heed,
let us do so. And here's another point. If
It is my job to bring the food along. Then I ought to be careful
to do my job. These disciples were upset because
somebody had forgotten to bring bread. Well, let us take that
practical point and deal with it in a moment, in a sentence. As believers, we have obligations
one to another. To pray for one another, to care
for one another, to support one another, to support those with
whom the Lord joins us in fellowship. If he lays someone upon your
heart, then take his prompt seriously. Paul says, let us not be weary
in well-doing. But the Lord had a deeper lesson
here for the disciples. It was as if he was reminding
them in, as he said in Matthew chapter six, verse 33, seek ye
first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these
things shall be added unto you. These disciples would soon be
apostles. The Lord was with them but for
a short time. He was there to teach them that
they in turn might be able to teach others wisely and they
needed to learn their lessons themselves. The Lord had recently
taught them about distributing the bread of life, preaching
the gospel, taking from His blessed hands and distributing to the
hundreds and the thousands, to the ends of the earth. But that
gospel must be pure. That gospel must be the sovereign
grace truth that the Lord Jesus Christ is the beginning and the
end of all our salvation. It is no gospel if it is mixed
with works. Paul tells the Galatians, the
essence of the gospel is that God in Christ has himself done
everything necessary for our full, free and complete salvation. It is a finished work upon which
we trust and believe by faith. And it is a successful work that
Jesus Christ accomplished. So taking the Lord's words at
face value, beware of anyone who would link any human contribution
to any extent upon the work of salvation. Free will cannot be
mixed in. It is anathema to sovereign grace. People tell me, oh, I can hold
both things together. No, you can't. If you think you
can, you don't understand the gospel or you're a liar. Good works cannot be linked. Anything we do to merit God's
favour or to gain God's pleasure is anathema to the gospel. Our
personal holiness can have no place in God's estimation because
even our righteousnesses are as filthy rags and we are all
as an unclean thing. All our righteousness must be
from Christ. All our sanctification must be
from Christ. All our holiness must be from
Christ. All our comfort must be drawn
from Christ and His completed work. All our joy must be from
Him. All our confidence must be in
Him. And all our glory must be from
Him. Our Lord Jesus Christ has to
be our all in all. Paul says to the Galatians again
in chapter 6 verse 14, God forbid that I should glory save in the
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world is crucified
to me and I unto the world. Beware the leaving of the Pharisees
and the leaving of Herod. Beware mixing the gospel of free
sovereign grace with any human contribution or claim. The gospel
must be all of grace or it is no grace at all. Your works will
damn you to hell. We look to the cross, we look
to the blood, we look to the righteousness of God in Christ,
we look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, and
we look for his soon return. Amen. May the Lord bless these
thoughts to us.