Well this lockdown, if it's doing
nothing else, it's forcing a reality check on the faith of those who
profess to be believers, because they either have true faith,
the faith of God's elect, or it is just a profession and it
isn't real. And we can tell where our true
desires lie, our true life desires. Are we yearning for the world
to return to normal? Well, let's be honest, I'm yearning
for the world to return to normal. Let's not be false about this. In my flesh, I want to be able
to go out and do the things that I always used to do. I want to
be able to go to concerts. I want to be able to mix with
people. I want our congregation to come here again. Of course,
in that sense, I want the world to return to normal, but Is that
my long-term goal? Or is this, if I've got true
faith, is this lockdown loosening our grip on the world as our
believing hearts increasingly yearn for glory? This is truly
what this creation is all about, you know. The message of God's
Word is that this creation is not the end in itself. This creation
is, as it were, the canvas on which God paints gracious salvation. Gracious salvation that culminates
in eternal glory for the objects of that salvation. People leave
this life, believers leave this life and go into that presence. For, as Jesus said to the dying
thief next to him on the cross, verily I say to you, this day
you shall be with me in paradise. To be absent from the body is
to be present with the Lord. Our brother Don Fortner left
this life this week, as saints down the ages have done, as they
do all of the time. And we know, we who believe know
this, that he has gone into that glorious presence of our glorious
God and is beholding the face of our Lord Jesus Christ, beholding
the reality of the truth that he's preached down fifty years,
he's beholding it right now in the presence of God. This is
the confidence that the faith of God's elect has. Is this lockdown
making us really, showing us really that our heart's desire
is in this world? because we're missing it so much
and we want it to be back, or is it causing us to loosen our
grip on this world and long for that eternal glory? Do we really
lay up treasures on earth? For you know that Jesus said,
treasure on earth is subject to moth and rust and decay and
all of it is fleeting and all of it will soon be gone. For
it is appointed to man to die once and then the judgment. We
all must die, we all must leave this life. Here we have no continuing
city, not here. Is it setting our affection on
things above where Christ is? Is it causing us to lay up treasure
in heaven where he is? Christ came into the world 2,000
years ago. Why did He come? Answer solely
for the purpose of accomplishing the redemption that was promised
in the covenant of grace. He came as a man in the flesh
of the children whom He came to save. He came to satisfy justice
on their behalf, the justice of God which is offended because
of the sins of the people whom He came to save. That justice
is offended, and he came to satisfy it, to make satisfaction to it.
He came to justify, the elect, those sinners chosen by God in
Christ before the foundation of the world. He came to preach
the good news of the Kingdom of God. the reality of the Kingdom
of God, the certainty of the Kingdom of God. This is what
he came preaching. He came preaching the Kingdom
of God. He didn't come preaching peace
on earth. He said, I came not to bring
peace on earth. I came not to bring peace, but
a sword, a sword of division. Not a sword of physical violence,
but a sword of division between the truth and falsehood. He came
to overthrow the kingdom of Satan, the kingdom of Antichrist, that
world which Adam had given over the headship of. Adam was the
viceroy of God in the Garden of Eden, in the creation of God.
Adam was the viceroy, and in the fall, in his sin, he had
ceded the rule to Satan. And ever since, Satan has had
that rule. But Christ came to overthrow
Satan. He came into the strong man's
house, as he says in Matthew chapter 12, to bind the strong
man, to plunder his goods. His goods? The people that are
really Christ's, whom he came to save. You see, the enduring
reality is not this world, This world is not the happy, steady
state. If you have the faith of God's
elect, please do not think of this world as the happy, steady
state to which you long to return. Heavenly reality is the happy,
eternal state of God's people. Here's the objective, listen
what Jesus said in his prayer in John 17 verse 24, he said,
Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me, that's
the people that he came to save, that they be with me where I
am, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me. That's
it, that's what I've just said, Don Faulkner and all that have
gone before, they're in glory now, beholding his glory, beholding
the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Praising him, worthy is the Lamb
that was slain, for thou hast redeemed us unto God by thy blood. This is the song of the redeemed
in heaven. John looked in John 19. because
outside of time he looked in eternity, and in John 19 he said,
I looked and beheld much people in heaven. Much people in heaven. That's what it is. In Matthew's
Gospel, chapters 8 to 10, we saw the first of the miracles
in the first four verses of chapter 8 of the leper who came last
week. And then there's a series of
miracles in chapters 8 to 10. We see several miracles. And
the purpose, as I told you then, was to confirm the truth of the
word that Jesus preached and the credentials of who he was
as the Messiah of God. He was the promised seed, the
seed promised to Eve in the Garden of Eden after the fall, that
of the woman's seed would come the victory over Satan. The promised
seed to Abraham of his descendants would come the one in whom all
nations of the earth should be blessed. The promise that he
would be the Messiah, the Messiah would come. God would come in
flesh to redeem his people. that the messenger of the covenant,
the covenant of grace, the one who fulfills the covenant of
grace, that he would come in flesh into this world as the
redeemer, the one who pays the ransom price of his people, to
save his people from their sins, for he shall be called Jesus.
Why Jesus? He shall save his people from
their sins. The surety, the one who stood
guarantor, the one who took on him all of the responsibilities
for the people that he came to save. He took upon him their
debt. He took upon him responsibility
to pay that debt to the fullest. He came a surety of the people
for whom he prayed that prayer, I will also that those whom you've
given me be with me where I am. He took on him responsibility
for all them who he's determined to take to eternal glory. He
didn't pray for the world in general. Almost every time I
turn on a religious service on the radio, I hear them praying
for the world. How strange that, because the Jesus they claim
to worship and follow, he prayed in that same prayer, John 17,
I pray not for the world. I pray for those whom the Father
has given me out of the world. It is so clear. And Jesus himself
summarises what the miracles have demonstrated in Matthew
chapter 11 in the first few verses. Just read these first few verses
with me. Chapter 11 verse 1. It came to pass when Jesus had
made an end of commanding his 12 disciples, for in chapter
10 he calls out his disciples and sends them out. He departed
thence to teach and preach in their cities. Now when John had
heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his
disciples and said unto him, Art thou he that should come,
or do we look for another? Jesus answered and said unto
them, Go and show John again those things which ye do hear
and see. The blind receive their sight,
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the
dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.
And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me. I've called
this message, Blessed in Not Stumbling, Blessed in Not Being
Offended in the Lord Jesus Christ. He summarizes the miracles that
he's done and the purpose of them. In Luke's account of it,
in Luke chapter 7, verses 19 to 23, it says there that he
actually performed miracles in front of the ones that John sent
to him. You see, there have been no miracles
since the time of the apostles. You say, oh, that's a very bold
statement to make. I mean, I don't rule out miracles
of providence that God orders at times. In a sense, He interferes
with the natural flow of things all the time, for He causes all
things to work together for good to those who love God, who are
called according to His purpose. But in the sense that the blind,
the physically blind, John chapter 9, one man, I believe, was born
without eyes, and Jesus created eyes for him. We don't see miracles
like that, we haven't seen since. When the apostles went to the
temple, Peter and John went to pray, and they met a lame man
by the way, and he held out his palms and asked for alms, and
this is what Peter did say, silver and gold have I none, but such
as I have, give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of
Nazareth, rise up and walk. And he went walking and leaping
and praising God. didn't go stumbling and hobbling
and trying to make out that a miracle had been performed. A miracle
had been performed. He went walking and leaping and
praising God. We don't see miracles like that now. The deaf being
healed of their deafness, the dumb being enabled to speak,
the lame being, that means the crippled, being able to walk,
the leprous being with a word cured of their disease, the spirit
possessed, having their demon possession taken away. The dead. Dead bodies, rising from the
dead. We don't see any of that now.
It's a delusion if anybody tells you that there is that going
on now. We don't see it except in a spiritual sense. We see
it in a spiritual sense. That's what I want to focus on
this morning. First of all, think of John's
enquiry. John the Baptist had been the
forerunner of Christ. You know, Isaiah 40 said that
one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord.
This is John the Baptist coming in the spirit of Elijah, in the
type of Elijah to proclaim the coming of the promised Messiah,
to prepare the way, rough places made plain, to make a smooth
way for the Messiah to come. He prepared the hearts of the
people to hear the message of the Redeemer when He came. He
pointed to Christ. He said, I am not worthy to unloose
the latchet of His sandals. He's coming. I baptize you with
water as a symbol of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,
but He Christ will come and baptize you with the Holy Spirit, not
many days hence. John had laid the way for the
coming Messiah, but now he's in prison because Herod has put
him in prison. Herod has had him put in prison
and eventually, shortly, Herod is going to have him beheaded
because of a promise he made to a girl who danced for him.
He's going to have John beheaded and the work of John is over
and he's leaving this life. And it has been said, I might
have even said it myself in the past, that surely John never
doubted He just sent the disciples so that the disciples, his two
disciples, would see that Jesus truly is the Messiah. But, you
know, thinking about it, I wonder, John himself, though he was a
great prophet, Jesus himself said there's been none born of
a woman like John the Baptist. John himself was sinful flesh
and blood. John had done his great ministry. He'd baptised thousands. He must have been wandering in
the prison. He must have been plagued by
fleshly doubts. It's not beyond possibility,
is it? Plagued by fleshly doubts and questions. There he is, he's
thinking great things are going to come from the Messiah. But
now he wonders what's going on. He's in prison. Things don't
look good for him. He'd heard his parents' testimony.
The parents of John the Baptist were Zacharias and Elizabeth,
who was old when she gave birth to John the Baptist, and it was
all the promise of God. And her cousin, Elizabeth's cousin,
was Mary, the mother of Jesus. And he'd heard their testimony,
and he believed that it was true. And God's blessing had been on
his preaching in the wilderness. And then Jesus had come to him,
and he'd heard the voice from heaven saying, this is my beloved
Son in whom I am well pleased. And he saw the Spirit of God
as a dove alighting upon him. He saw all of that, but here
he is in the prison. Was it all a delusion? Did it
really all happen? And so, verse three, he sends
his disciples to Christ. He says, go and find out what's
going on. What's happened to him? What's
happened to this son of my mother's cousin? Go and find out what's
happened. Are you he that should come?
Who that should come? The Messiah that should come?
The promised redeemer that should come? The promised savior of
his people? Are you the one? Or are we looking
in the wrong place? Should we be looking for somebody
else? This is what he sends his disciples to ask. Was it all
a delusion? And Jesus gives him answer. Verse
four, Jesus answered and said unto them, the disciples, go
and show John again these things which ye do hear and see. They
had seen. Luke chapter seven, verse 21,
in his account of this incident. And in that same hour, he, Jesus,
cured many of their infirmities and plagues and of evil spirits,
and unto many that were blind he gave sight. They had seen
the one to whom John had sent them, perform these miracles. You've seen. Go and show again
those things which you'd hear, the blind receive their sight,
etc. You've seen it. Go and tell John,
yes, all of the signs, all of the signs of the coming Messiah
are there. They're all being performed before
your eyes. Then shall the eyes of the blind
be opened, said Isaiah 35, and the ears of the deaf unstopped.
Then shall the lame man leap as an heart, and the tongue of
the dumb be loosed. These are all the signs of the
coming Messiah prophesied hundreds, thousands of years before he
came. Jesus summarized the account of the miracles that we read
about in Matthew 8 to 10, and elsewhere as well, as proof that
He indeed was the promised Messiah. He summarized it when He said,
the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are
cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor
have the gospel preached to them. He summarized it there. He summarised
the account of the miracles in those previous chapters, the
proof that he was indeed who he said he was, that he was indeed
the Messiah come from God for the redemption, the salvation
of his people. John and his disciples needed
to look no further. He is the one. The Redeemer has
indeed come to redeem, to accomplish salvation to the uttermost. And
he cites the miracles that are performed. He cites the physical
miracles that he performed. But let us think about them in
terms of what he does today, in our day. In our day, spiritually. Miracles of spiritual performance. Miracles of spiritual reality. The blind receive their sight. The miracles that Jesus performed
were literally amazing. I've mentioned that man in John
chapter nine who was born, it seems, without eyes. And of clay,
the Lord Jesus Christ made physical eyes. Any concept? If you're an ophthalmologist,
you'll know how complex the eye is. But the average person doesn't
really know how amazing is the physical eye. And it seems that
he created physical eyes out of mud and put them into the
sockets and go and wash in the pool of Siloam. And he went and
he saw, he saw. And they said to him, not doubting
and trying to pour scorn on the works of Jesus. The Pharisees
were asking him about this, asking him what he knew, and he says,
I don't know, I don't understand. All I know is I was blind, but
now I see. I was blind, but now I see. But this is speaking to us of
spiritual blindness. We're blind naturally to our
state as sinners, aren't we? We can't see it. The natural
man in the world all around cannot see what we are in the judgment
of God, as sinners before God, as those that are fundamentally
evil. vile in the sight of God because
of sin. For in the eyes of God, sin is
utterly vile. It is a stench in his nostrils.
It is repulsive. Sin is that which is fundamentally
against the holy, pure, perfect character of God. And bound up
in the heart of man, the heart of man is deceitful above all
things, says Jeremiah, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? I the
Lord try the rains. The Lord knows the true sinfulness,
and the Lord gives sight to see that. We're blind naturally,
spiritually, as to our state as sinners. We're blind to the
truth of God, blind to the reality of God, even though everywhere
all around us in creation is screaming the fact that God is
in everything. The handiwork of God is everywhere. The scientific world, as it's
called, professing themselves to be wise, says Paul to the
Romans, they became fools. They changed the glory of the
incorruptible God into that which is corruptible and said that
we evolved from slime and this, that and the other. When all
around is screaming the handiwork of God. The one thing you're
not allowed to teach in science, the one thing you're not allowed
to say you believe in science if you want any credibility,
is that this world is designed by God for his purposes. And
yet that's the truth. We're blind to it, naturally.
And God gives sight. He gives sight We're blind to
the character of God, the holy nature of God. We're blind to
the kingdom of God, the truth of God, His eternity. We're blind
to the determined purpose of God, declared in His Word. We're
blind to it. This book of God, although we
can read the same words, we're blind to it. We do not have eyes
to see it. It's exactly as Paul writes to
the Corinthians, the natural man, 1 Corinthians 2.14, the
natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,
for they're foolishness to him, neither can he know them. Why
can't he know them? because they're spiritually discerned,
is what it says. We need spiritual discernment. Where do you get spiritual discernment? You don't get it in a college.
You don't get it by natural study. You get it from God. And God
alone, in his grace and mercy, is the one who is able to give
that spiritual sight of the soul. But then, By that working of
God's Spirit, miraculously, in a spiritual miracle, discernment
is given. And this one who was in darkness,
I was once in darkness, now my eyes can see. I was lost, but
Jesus sought and found me. I know it's a trivial chorus,
the way it's sung in so many places, but it contains a very
true spiritual concept that God God, in sovereign grace, it is
not of him that wills nor of him that runs, but of God that
shows mercy. And God chooses to give sight
to the blind of his choosing. He chooses to do that. We don't
know how. Jesus said to Nicodemus, the
wind blows where it listeth. You don't know where it's come
from, you don't know where it's going to. So it is with the Spirit
of God. The Spirit of God comes. You
can't control it. The Spirit of God comes. And
this one who was in darkness now sees the things of the Spirit
of God. We discern the effects of the
wind. But we don't know where it's coming from or where it's
going to, but it's like that with the Spirit of God. We can
see the effects when He gives faith. When He gives faith, the
one who couldn't discern the things of God now can discern
them, and is given a heart to believe God. He's given eyes
to see the things of God. And so with God-given soul sight,
which is faith, We see God in everything. All of a sudden,
everything, all around, we see God in everything. That hymn,
you know, loved with everlasting love. led by grace that love
to know. And one of the verses says that
sky above is softer blue, earth beneath is deeper green, something,
I can't remember the words, in every hue that Christless eyes
have not seen. With the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, with that in
the soul, that soul sight, everything speaks of the living God. Everything
speaks of his purpose in place of pointlessness. The purpose
of God is in everything, whereas in this world, as it is with
its philosophy, everything is ultimately pointless. We see
the things of holiness contrasted with the things of sin in the
flesh. We see the just demand of God for justice concerning
sin. We see the lost estate of sinners
that were lost, dead in trespasses and sins. We see the provision
of a substitute, the gracious provision of a substitute, and
the decree of God, the decree of the sovereign, that this one
substitute can bear the penalty of the sins of a multitude of
others. He can die the death that was
due to them, that they might go free. He it is who is sovereign
over all things, and He it is who can decree this. He is the
one who can show His Son coming, able to answer every demand of
His broken law and make satisfaction. And whilst we might hear these
things, when God's Spirit comes and miraculously gives the sight
of the soul, we see it. As Job said, I had heard of you
with the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye sees you, and
I repent, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. Has
God graciously given you spiritual sight? It may be blurry. It may be. One of the people
to whom Jesus gave sight, he came and he said, do you see?
And he said, I see men as trees walking. In other words, blurry.
He said, go and wash again. Go and ask again. And he went
and he came back seeing clearly. If you see only blurry visions,
Ask God. Ask God to give you the sight
of the soul, clearly, that you might see and understand. The
blind receive their sight. The lame walk. I said earlier,
when it says lame, it doesn't mean merely limping along. It means complete disablement
of movement. Has not Adam's fall in the Garden
of Eden which has come down on all of us as the descendants
of Adam, has not Adam's fall utterly crippled us regarding
any movement toward God? We're crippled in all the things
that would carry us toward God. Prayer, think of it, prayer.
Naturally, we're crippled when it comes to prayer. We're not
just lame, we're not just limp, we're crippled completely. We're
crippled in reading the scriptures. We're crippled in reading the
scriptures, in walking with God in that way. We're crippled in
hearing preaching, because somebody can preach a great sermon, and
to many, many whose hearts are touched, they hear the truth.
In it, they walk with God, and they walk towards God, and they
delight, and they rejoice in what they hear. And to others,
they're just utterly crippled, and there's no movement. We're
crippled in speaking anything concerning God, or thinking anything
right about God, or anything towards God. But the life of
God empowers and enables. God says through Zechariah, Zechariah
10 verse 12, I will strengthen them in the Lord. Who's the I?
He says at the end, it's the Lord himself. The Lord will strengthen
them in the Lord, and they shall walk up and down in his name. No longer lame, no longer spiritually
crippled, they shall walk up and down in his name, saith the
Lord. Just as the man with the withered hand, Jesus said to
him, stretch forth your hand. It was the one thing he couldn't
do, but with the command to stretch forth his hand came the power
to stretch forth his hand. And so he stretched it forth.
As Paul discovered God's strength, God said to him, he prayed three
times for the thorn to be taken away from his flesh, a thorn
in the flesh. What it was, we don't know, possibly blindness.
Take it away. And God said, my strength is
made perfect in your weakness. Therefore I'll glory in my weaknesses,
said Paul. So God's Spirit graciously enlivens
that which is spiritually crippled. The next one, lepers are cleansed. We saw this one last week, and
I'm not going to go through it again in any detail, because
leprosy, as we saw then, is a picture of the sinful condition. That
disease of leprosy is a picture of the sinful condition in which
we all find ourselves by nature. It's as Isaiah says, Isaiah chapter
1 verse 6, God speaking by Isaiah, says what we're all like as far
as sin is concerned, as far as spiritual health is concerned. From the sole of the foot, even
unto the head, there is no soundness in it but wounds and bruises
and putrefying sores. They have not been closed, neither
bound up, neither mollified with ointment. with the same power
that Jesus cured the lepers. He did it with a word, didn't
he? He did it with a word. Be clean. Lord, if you will, you can make
me clean. I will. Be thou clean. With a word. he
cured leprosy, and with a word he cures the sin disease of his
people by virtue of what he's accomplished at the cross of
Calvary. Though your sins be as scarlet,
says chapter one of Isaiah, verse 18, though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be white as snow. And so he says, to those of us
that know, are shown that we're lepers by nature in terms of
sin, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow.
We shall be clean. He cleans, how does he do it?
By taking it away himself. He does it by taking it upon
himself. He does it by paying the penalty
for it, the debt of it, in himself. He does it so that it is completely
taken off the balance sheet. It is removed from the books.
There's only one book that matters for the people of God, the ones
for whom Christ died, is that their names are written in the
Lamb's Book of Life. Then he says, the death here,
the deaf hear. Naturally, we're as spiritually
deaf as we are blind, as we are crippled, as we are leprous. But the Lord Jesus Christ said
this, He said, My sheep shall hear my voice. Jesus said that
He has in this world His sheep. He has people in this world who
are His, the people of His sovereign choice, the people, the multitude
that the Father gave to the Son before the beginning of time,
chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, says Ephesians
1 verse 4. And it means it, chosen by God's
deliberate choice of some as opposed to others. For this purpose
have I raised Pharaoh up and hardened his heart, that the
grace of God on his people might be shown. His sheep hear his
voice, his sheep that he has, not his goats. There are goats,
but he has his sheep and he says, my sheep, my chosen, my elect,
they hear my voice, they hear the voice of the gospel of grace.
Is that not this sovereign particular redemption? In John 5, 25 it
says, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear
the voice of the Son of God. Because you see, the dead by
nature are deaf, aren't they? They have no hearing. They're
deaf. The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and
they that hear shall live. They shall live. They hear the
still, small voice. You know when Elijah was fleeing
from Jezebel and he went into that cave and he saw the thunder
and the lightning and the wind and the storm and the tempest
and all of those things, but it was in the still small voice
that he heard the voice of God. And they hear a still small voice,
this deafness to spiritual things that is cured by the miraculous
work of the Holy Spirit, miraculously in the heart, giving them ears
to hear. Let him, how many times did Jesus
say, let him that has ears to hear, let him hear. Open your
ears and listen to that still small voice of God whispering
in the soul. True preaching, then, with the
ears unblocked, true preaching becomes bread from heaven for
hungry souls. I often think of the great treasure
chest that Don has left us of so many sermons, so faithfully
preached, so powerfully preached, so affectingly preached. I wrote
in my tribute to him in the bulletin, if you would read it, get it
and read it, because it had such an effect on me in the 1980s
in terms of hearing and understanding the truth of God. It was hearing
that preaching and that preaching really did become bread from
heaven. It was just food for the soul, we just had to have
it, we just had to have more of it. Man shall not live by
bread alone, physical bread, but by every word that proceeds
from the mouth of God. How does God speak? Primarily
through preaching. It is by preaching, by the foolishness
of preaching, that it pleased God to save His people. So everything in creation echoes
the truth of God when God causes the spiritually deaf to hear
spiritual reality. It's miraculous in a spiritual
way. It's miraculous. And then the
dead are raised up. Oh, the numbers of times that
Jesus raised somebody who had died. You know, Jairus' daughter,
the centurion's servant, Lazarus, when he comes to the tomb of
Lazarus, his friend, and he's been dead four days. And his
sisters say, if only you'd been here, he wouldn't have died.
Well, now he is here. And he cries, Lazarus, come forth. And he comes out of the tomb. with the grave clothes still
on him. He was dead. The people had seen that he was
dead. They didn't want to go near the
tomb because they said he would be decaying and an unpleasant
smell by that stage. But Jesus called him forth and
he came. He raised the dead. Why did he
do it? To show that death is not the
end for the people of God. Death is not the end. Death is
but the beginning, this day you shall be with me in paradise.
In Ephesians 2 verse 1, speaking to believers, Paul writes this,
you has he quickened, you has he made alive from the dead,
you who were dead in trespasses and sins, you were dead as far
as God is concerned, you were dead spiritually, you had no
life from God in you, but he has made you alive. A dead spiritual corpse, physically,
can't hear or do anything. It's dead. But in regeneration,
in the newness of life, demonstrated by the miracles Jesus performed,
this is the spiritual reality. God's Spirit comes and gives
the life of God, so that we're born again and alert to divine
reality, just like Lazarus was. Then the gospel is preached to
the poor, spiritually bankrupt, with no good news, with nothing,
no currency to trade regarding the kingdom of heaven. And the
gospel comes, the good news of debts paid in the Lord Jesus
Christ, and riches bestowed through what he has accomplished. Riches
bestowed through the death and the shed blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ. The Gospel promises that God
has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places
in Christ. Those are the miracles that Jesus
performed in his ministry that are spiritual miracles now for
us. Where does it leave us in these
strange days? Where does it leave you? Does
it leave you believing the truth of the Gospel? or longing to
return to the world as it was, as your overriding priority. Ask yourself, are you blessed
in believing, or are you offended in the truth of the Lord Jesus
Christ? For he goes on to say, blessed is he whosoever shall
not be offended in me. The word offended means stumbled,
which is why I've called the message Blessed in Not Stumbling. Who is not stumbled at me? You
know what it says of the Lord Jesus Christ, that he was the
chief cornerstone laid in Zion. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
chief cornerstone of the temple of the living God. He is the
chief cornerstone, and it says that Paul says this to the Corinthians,
we preach Christ crucified and to the Jews a stumbling block
because in their religious zeal they tripped over, they stumbled
at the reality of the doctrine of Jesus Christ. To the Greeks,
the worldly materialistic folk, it's just foolishness, what foolishness
that you should think that these things matter. But unto them
that are called by the call of God, both Jews and Greeks, for
it is without any distinction of race, every tribe and kindred,
Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Many were
offended in Christ, many were offended in His person, who He
was, who He claimed to be, His claim of deity, I and my Father
are one. Many were offended in His doctrine,
His doctrine of particular redemption, of His sheep and of the goats,
of the fact that in The days of Elijah there were many widows
in Israel, but only to a Gentile widow was he sent. And in the
days of Elisha there were many lepers in Israel, but only to
a Syrian leper was he sent, Naaman the Syrian. And the people of
his own town Nazareth sought to kill him for saying that.
They hated his doctrine, they were offended in his doctrine
to such an extent. They were offended in that doctrine
of the sovereign grace, the particular redemption of God in Christ. Of the message that he preached,
of the sheep and the goats, of his practice, of all that he
did. Who was offended in him? The Pharisees were offended in
him. Those who were comfortable with the world as it was, and
they didn't want it upsetting, they were offended in him. Plain
unbelievers were offended in him. We read earlier the account
of the Gergesenes, you know where the two men met him, the two
from amongst the tombs, and he sent the evil spirits into the
herd of pigs. and they ran down the hill and
were drowned in the lake, and the people that kept them went
into the town, and the people of the town came and said, please
go away from us, we don't want you staying here. They prayed
Jesus that he would leave them, and he left them. He left them. That's a sobering thought. What
about you? Are you offended in Christ? Are you stumbled at the doctrine
of Christ? If God has performed like spiritual
miracles on you as the ones that he performed physically then,
you are blessed with all the riches of God's grace. Amen.