Take your Bibles and turn to
the book of Mark, chapter 13. We're going to be looking at Mark,
chapter 13, verses 9 through 13. Those of you who have been
on this way for a while and have been studying the Word of God
are aware that there's many difficult things to understand concerning
our relationship to God and our relationship to this world. In dealing with our attitude
and conduct as believers in an unbelieving world, Peter points
us to the writings of Paul whom he said in 2 Peter 3.16 speaks
of these things in his epistles, now listen, and which are some
things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned
and unstable rest, as they do also the other scriptures unto
their own destruction. I want to give you just a few
examples of what I'm talking about before we get into our
study. The Bible states clearly that
faith is the gift of God. It's not of works lest any man
should boast. And yet it demands that all men
everywhere repent and believe. In John 10, 26, our Lord tells
those unbelieving Pharisees that they believed not because they
were not of his sheep. Yet in John 3, 18, he says, but
he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath not believed
in the name of the only begotten Son of God. These things are
difficult. It takes time. They're difficult,
they're hard to be understood. And God's grace, 100% pure grace,
and yet the scriptures talk about the full accountability of man
to God. God's grace is not an excuse
for sin. Man is accountable. He's accountable
to God. And this which we're studying
today, God's people, his elect, redeemed, justified, sanctified,
born of God, reconciled by the blood and righteousness of Christ,
and their sons and heirs of God. They have a home in glory secured
by their Savior, yet subject in this world to great trouble,
great trouble. Now this is what these verses
are dealing with. These things are contrary to
our flesh and they're contrary to our thoughts and ideas. I
don't know how much natural principles and thoughts and concepts that
we actually carry. We're unconscious of them. We
react to situations and afterward we look at it, why did I do that?
Why did I act that way? Why did I say that? because you
still have those things in you. That's why. And these things
are contrary to our flesh. They're contrary to our thoughts
and ideas. Now, I just have a few things
this morning, and I hope you'll jot down some notes, or I can
make you a copy of the message, or if you know how to do it,
you can go online and download it. But the first thing that's
apparent to me in our text is that we shall not be spared trouble. Trouble is coming. Trouble is
coming. It's coming to all of us. Trouble,
you're not gonna escape trouble. Being a believer does not keep you from suffering trouble. There are certainty. Now religion
has a false sense of security concerning this world. They have what one writer calls,
and I jotted this down, I thought this was a good definition. He said they have what he calls
a dreamy-eyed speculation, or a dreamy-eyed acceptation of
all their troubles. They expect these things to go
away. Just to go away. I believed.
I joined the church. I walked the aisle. I signed
the card. I'm a member. Now everything's
fine. Oh no. No, no. Now I want you to listen to me
before we get into this, and especially those of you who are
young and got all these things yet to learn. I've got every
reason to believe that some of our young folks will ignore the
teaching or the teaching will go right over their head or they'll
be thinking about other things or just simply dismissing what
we're teaching. And they're going to go out into
this world and they're going to satisfy whatever wants and
desires they have, whatever it is. And then some of you may
wind up making a mess out of your lives. It happens. It happens. It's happened in my family. It'll
happen in yours. And then seeing what's happened,
they'll come back, either here or find somebody else, and they'll
say, I need you to fix it. Or before you do, let me tell
you something. I can't fix it. I can't fix it. The only thing
I can do is point sinners to Christ. Point to Him for forgiveness,
point to Him for wisdom, point to Him for help. But I can't
fix your life and nobody else can. If you've made a mess out of
it, you're gonna have to live with that mess probably the rest
of your life. Could be. No man can fix your life. All
I can do is point you to Christ, and I can tell you something
of the grace of God and salvation. I can tell you where forgiveness
is, but I can't fix what you break. If you ignore the commandments
of our Savior and the apostles' teaching, your life's gonna be
in a mess, and then you're gonna have to live with it. So this
is why our Lord begins this passage by saying, take heed to yourselves. Take heed. Don't ignore these
things. Don't ignore what I'm telling
you. Don't ignore the commandments of God. Don't ignore the word
of God and the worship of God. Don't ignore these things. Take
heed to yourselves. Too many believers have the idea
that they can say and do anything they want to and everything gonna
be okay. No, it ain't. No, it ain't. You'll fill your life with trouble
and you're gonna be miserable and nothing you can do is gonna
make it go away. Job said, man is born under trouble
as sparks fly upwards. You sit up there and watch that
fire and poke it and those sparks take off. That's man. That's
man. And then again in Job 13, he
said, man that's born of a woman is of a few days and full of
trouble. He's just full of trouble. But in the context of Mark 13,
our Lord is talking specifically about troubles that attend the
life of believers. Spiritual troubles. Troubles
on every side. And the first of these is persecution. If you're gonna live godly in
Christ Jesus, you're gonna suffer persecution. He tells them they shall deliver
you up to councils. Because your faith and their
concepts go different directions. What you teach and what they
teach is contrary. Because your declarations of
Christ and their ideas are totally opposite. In John 16, 2, the
Lord said, they shall put you out of their synagogues. They're gonna put you out. Yea, the time cometh that whosoever
killeth you will think that he's doing God a service. He's doing
God a favor. They'll set you up before their
counsels believing that they're serving God. And in the synagogues,
you shall be beaten. Now they can't beat you anymore
under our government, they can't beat you. That is with a whip. But they can lash you with their
tongues. And they can whip you with their influence and their
slander. Many are the servants of Christ
who've been beaten physically in those synagogues, but today
they're brow beaten. They're beaten with the tongue,
beaten with slander, beaten with men who try to ruin their reputations,
disclaim them in their moral standing. They make a mockery
of you. They degrade you. and they publicly
slander those who would teach the truth. And then he goes on
to say, and you shall be brought before rulers and kings for my
sake, for my name's sake, and for a
testimony against them. Now these persecutions are not
the judgment of God against us, but the judgment of God against
them. It's against them. Paul calls them in 2 Thessalonians
1.5 a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God. This is a token
of the righteous judgment of God that these men will persecute
you. And it's done that you may be
counted worthy of the kingdom of God for which also you suffer. Now it's to be considered by
the believer as a privilege, a great privilege, to suffer
persecution for Christ's sake. That's what Paul said. He counted
it a privilege. He counted it an honor. And it's also a testimony against
them. It's a testimony of their, in
fact, it's a public display of their sin and unbelief. He said,
in this world, you shall have persecutions. Secondly, what brings these troubles
upon us? Verse 10, look at this. The gospel
must first be published among all nations. That's what brings
the trouble. If you just stay silent, you
just don't go there. Just don't go there. You know
some people get offended by this, that, and the other, and so you
just don't go there. You just avoid it altogether.
And if we were to do that, if we were to keep silence and hold
our tongue and just don't say anything, we're just silent in
the matter and let things go on as they are, there wouldn't
be any persecution. Wouldn't be any trouble. Now it's interesting to me to
note that he uses the word published here instead of preached. And
some say this has to do with the entire New Testament scriptures.
That is the four gospels and the acts of the apostles and
all the New Testament epistles in the book of Revelation. All
the New Testament. And certainly this was a necessity
and it had to take place and did take place. These things
were written. But these epistles and gospels
must be taught. The natural man can't just pick
the Bible up and read it and God saves him. Men think they
can. I hear men talk to me on the
telephone, write me letters from here, there, and yonder when
I was preaching about the necessity of hearing the gospel, and they
write me letters. Well, I never heard it. I just
read my Bible. I didn't hear it. I was just
in my closet one day. It's a lie. You've been deceived. These epistles and gospels must
be taught. And they can no more be understood
by the natural man than the Old Testament scriptures. There can be no faith apart from
the word of God. Now if you'll read in Romans chapter three, he starts
it out and he said, what advantage then hath the Jew over the Gentile? Well, much in every way, but
chiefly they had the oracles of God. They had the word of
God. They had the word of God. The Gentiles, they didn't have
that. They had philosophies and all this kind of stuff, but they
didn't have the word of God. The Jews had the word of God. They had the book of God. They
had the prophets. To Him give all the prophets
witness. They had great advantage. And he said, so what then, are
we better than they? He said, no, I before proved
we're all under sin, there's none that understandeth. There's
none righteous, none that understandeth, none that seeketh after God. That's what I'm trying to tell
folks. You're not just going to pick this book up and read
it and understand it. You're not going to do it. The
Bible tells us, I have not seen or ear heard, neither have entered
into the heart of man of things, which God hath prepared for them
that love him. But God hath revealed them unto
us by his spirit. And how does that spirit work?
It works through the preaching of the gospel. But he said, the
natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God,
their foolishness unto him. And that's the attitude I get
from folks when you teach them the word of God. Well, that's
foolish, that's foolish. The gospel must first be published,
and that brings about persecutions. These epistles must be taught.
This Bible must be taught. Now, there can be no faith apart
from the word of God. He tells us that. That's the
seed of regeneration. We're born of God. But then he
continues on, Peter does, and in verse 25 of 1 Peter 1, he
tells us this. And this is the word which by
the gospel is preached unto you. The word of God is the very basis
of our faith and the foundation of all we believe. And I open
this book before you every week. I will today, I am this morning.
And I'm saying to you, let God be true and ever man a liar. If your faith is built upon the
testimony of man alone, you're a fool. You're a fool. I believe what men say only so
far as they can show it to me in this book. Show me in this
book. Is this what God teaches? Show
me. Show me. And another thing about this
book is that it teaches the word God speaks dogmatically. It never speaks and leaves a
big gray area. It always speaks dogmatically. It doesn't declare things and
leave men to reach their own opinions. And if this were not
so, preaching would be no more than just offering an opinion. That's all you'd be doing. And
I've had men tell me, well, that's your opinion. No, that ain't
my opinion. It's the word of God. It's what
God said. The gospel, the person and work
of Christ, his glorious person, his appointments, his prophecy,
his coming, his accomplishments, his death, his resurrection,
his ascension, his reign, his kingdom, his return, his people,
his gospel. And this is gonna bring persecution.
Gonna bring persecution. And then in verse 11, and Most of this is. The first direction
of this text is toward his apostles. His apostles. He said, but when
they shall lead you and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand
what you shall speak, neither do you premeditate. But whatsoever
shall be given you in that hour, that speak you, for it is not
you that speak, but the Holy Ghost. Now superstitious religions,
different sects of so-called Christian religion, believe this
is talking to preachers about not studying the word of God. Don't try to premeditate on what
you're gonna say, just stand up here, open your mouth, that's
what they told me one time, open your mouth and God'll fill it.
Yeah, he'll fill it full of junk. That's exactly right. God's not gonna fill your mouth,
You're going to study to show thyself approved of God, a workman
worthy. This, I believe, applies to special
situations and circumstances beyond their control, and specifically
before their persecutors. But know this, when special help
is needed, special help will be given. He'll be given. Somebody said to Brother Mayhem
one time, I don't have dying grace. He's about 30 years old. Brother
Mayhem said, are you dying? He said, no. He said, well, when
you are, God will give you dying grace. Right now, he's giving
you living grace. Special help is needed, special
help is given. And all through these verses,
we're assured that God's everlasting purpose of grace cannot be hindered
by this world. It can generate troubles. We're
gonna have these troubles. We need to learn to deal with
these troubles and bear these troubles and understand what
these troubles are all about. I'll tell you, it's one thing
to go through trouble and just not understand what's going on.
Why, why? But it's another thing to understand
why you have to go through it, and whose honor is at stake,
and so on. That makes that trouble a lot
easier to go through, a lot easier. God's everlasting purpose of
grace cannot be hindered by this world. And just as he used those
old rebels and evil men to bring about the death of Christ, even
so he uses the same evil men to publish his gospel. Paul was
a prisoner at Rome, but he speaks in his letters that he wrote
from prison, he speaks how this was an open door to those inside
the palace. That's what, God used those evil
men to further the gospel. Did they know it? Oh no, they
didn't, but Paul did. Don't you imagine that helped
him as a prisoner in that prison to understand that God put him
there to preach the gospel? Oh my. And then thirdly, let
me mention some very unexpected sources of trouble. This is one
of the hardest things for us to learn. Verse 12, Mark chapter
13. Now, the brother shall betray
the brother to death. And the father, the son, and
children shall rise up against their parents and shall cause
them to be put to death. That's an unexpected source of
trouble, isn't it? We expect trouble from the world,
but we don't expect trouble from our own kids. We don't expect
trouble from our wives or from our husbands. It blindsides us when it happens. And we're in awe of it. We don't
know how to deal with it. In Matthew 10, verse 36, he said,
a man's foes, that's his enemies, isn't it? His foes shall be they
of his own household. Nobody gave David trouble like
his son. Nobody. And Cain will always
persecute Abel, his brother. Esau will always despise Jacob. And the seed of the serpent will
always bring persecution upon the seed of the woman. We're
told that from the very beginning of the book. And these earthly
relationships, although we put a lot of special recognition
behind them, they're just for this world. You're not going
to go into glory and there's your daughter, or there's your
son, or there's my husband. You'll know them, but you won't
know them as your husband or your wife. These relationships
are just for this world, and they're given specifically for
us to understand our relationship to God. That's what they are. They're just temporary. In heaven, he said, we'll be
like the angels. No marrying, giving in marriage,
no sisters and brothers and sons and daughters and all these things.
We talk about this. Will the circle be unbroken?
Yeah, it will. It'll be unbroken. Rather, it'll be broken. And because of the special emphasis
that we in this world put on these things, we're often blindsided
by a loved one's persecution. And then he tells us in verse
13, you should be hated of all men. For my namesake. For my namesake. Now you know
what his name is. His name is his character. That's
who God is. He's sovereign. He's just. He's righteous. For his namesake, he says everybody,
everybody not born of God is going to hate you. Anybody you
press that on is going to despise you, going to hate you. And that's all men, regardless
of their relationship, and all women, regardless of their relationship. And then lastly, let's look at
God's promise of salvation, even in the face of these troubles.
He said, but he that shall endure unto the end the same shall be
saved." Now the perseverance of the believer is declared throughout
the scriptures. He said, Christ is a son over
his own house, whose house are we if we hold fast the confidence
and rejoicing of the hope, firm unto the end. And he's reconciled
us, he said, in the body of his flesh through death to present
us holy and unblameable and unapprovable in his sight, if we continue
in the faith, grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the
hope of the gospel. So preacher, you're saying we're
saved in some degree by works. No, no I'm not. I'm saying that
his preservation of us manifests itself in our perseverance. That's
what I'm saying. In Hebrews chapter 10, verses
38 through 39. He said, now the just shall live
by faith. But if any man draw back, my
soul shall have no pleasure in him. But, there's three things. I'll tell you, that word's handy
sometimes. It's reassuring sometimes, and
it is in this particular verse, 39 of Hebrews chapter 10, but
we are not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that
believe to the saving of the soul. And when God raised our
Lord from the dead, he assured us of our inheritance, Peter
said, incorruptible, it's undefiled and fadeth not away. It's reserved
in heaven for us in him, who are kept by the power of God
through faith unto salvation. Where's this power come from?
It comes from God. And because it's his power and
his faith and his gift and his name and his honor and his purpose,
He's gonna show that through you bearing these troubles and
persevering through them. He's gonna prove beyond a shadow
of a doubt that this is His work in you. His work in you. Don't ever forget that. We're
His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, and those
good works talking about faith and repentance and these things. And he said, which God hath before
ordained that we should walk in them. May the Lord himself
enable us to do these things for Christ's sake. Take heed.