Matthew chapter 15. My subject this morning is the
wondrous ministry of Christ. I just want to focus on three
verses here in Matthew chapter 15 beginning with verse 29. And Jesus departed from thence,
and came nigh to the Sea of Galilee, and went up into a mountain,
and sat there. And great multitudes came unto
him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed,
and many others. and cast them down at Jesus'
feet, and He healed them, insomuch that the multitude wondered when
they saw the dumb to speak, the lame to behold, the lame to walk,
and the blind to see, and they glorified the God of Israel."
Now having demonstrated by the Canaanite woman that we looked
at last week, the very depths, the utter depths to which our
Lord is willing to go to save needy sinners, I believe what
He's doing here is to show us now something of the breadth
and the width of that ministry. The breadth and the width of
His mercy and His grace to fallen sinners. Now, I punched in on
my computer, I just hit a little thing there and it came up. Because
I've never seen, to my knowledge, I've never seen a picture of
the Sea of Galilee. I just wondered what it looked
like. And so I brought it up and with the modern science that
we have available to us, it allows you to start at one end of the
sea and it'll slowly scan the whole sea, so you can see all
the terrain around it, and it's very mountainous, this lake.
It's a freshwater lake, and it's the lowest lake in the world,
something like 607 feet below sea level. But what impressed me when I
looked around in all these high mountains is that there were
no trees at the base of them. just like pasture, not really
for cattle so much as for goats. It was very steep and rolling. And then as it went back, the
mountains got larger and larger in the background. But up front,
they were just kind of like bald knobs, which were just perfect
for the Savior to take a multitude and teach them. And everybody
in that group, there were some 20,000 people, they estimate
the crowd to have been. And they could all sit on the
side of that mountain and see him and see what he was doing
and he could see them. So I believe that's what he's
doing here. And this was just the perfect
place for seating the multitude and ministering to their needs.
In these verses and also in Mark's account of this day, there's
a wide range of maladies which he lists of those who were brought
to him. Now, it tells us in many places
that he went about doing good and healing their infirmities
and casting out devils. But there's very few verses that
I've ever read in any of the accounts that list so many maladies
as that verse I just read to you, and singles these things
out. Over in Mark, I think it's chapter
7, in his account of this day, he just speaks of one example.
Here we're told there was just large groups of people with all
kinds of things. But over in Mark's account, he
talks about a man who was deaf and had also a speech impediment,
or he was dumb rather, but had a, I had it right the first time,
he was deaf and had a speech impediment. And to this man,
the Lord demonstrated the use of means. So there's no telling
what he did. Before these people, as he healed
the one in Mark, he put his fingers in his ears and he spit. And then he touched his tongue.
And that man was healed and went away. Sometimes he used means
and sometimes he didn't. But my point is this, that there
was multitudes being brought to him on this mountain. And
in whatever fashion, also that man over in Mark's account was
led apart from the multitude. And he did those things privately.
where these are said to be public so that the whole multitude could
see exactly what was going on. And he lists such things here
as lame and blind and dumb and maimed. I don't know that I've
ever noticed that word maimed before in any of his accounts
of healing. Is that word familiar to you,
some of you in here? The maimed. I sat and thought
about that a minute and I know what that word means. You know,
something of some major catastrophe, something happened, some terrible
incident happened, a great fall or something has happened, and
this man was maimed for life. Or maybe he had some kind of
debilitating disease that left him that way. But in this crowd
of some 20,000 men, women, and children, the Lord suffered all
manner of people in great need to be brought to Him to be ministered
to. And as I've told you on many
occasions, his healing was not just done to show compassion.
Certainly he did show compassion. Certainly he was compassionate. It tells us that over and over. But that wasn't his primary reason
for doing these things. His primary reason in doing these
things, it tells us in Acts, was that God would establish
him as the Christ. It's through the miracles that
he did, through these wonders and signs and things that he
did, God did through him on this earth that he ratified him in
his office as Savior. And also, I believe in these
things, he shows us how God saves sinners. And he describes our
inabilities spiritually through these physical disabilities of
the sick. Now, I've got three simple, plain,
easy-to-be-understood observations for you this morning. And yet,
as simple and basic as they are, I believe they are the very basis
and living examples of who these sinners are and how he saves
sinners. Everyone brought to Christ that
were cast at his feet had three things in common. First of all,
these people were beyond all human help. Nobody could do them,
they couldn't do themselves any good. And as many people as loved
them, they couldn't do them any good. And their mother and their
father, their sisters, their brothers, their grandparents,
nobody could do them any good. Whoever, whatever you called
the man who was over the synagogue, couldn't do them any good. Nobody
could do these people any good. They were beyond all human help.
And I wondered as I read and studied this text, is this the
way I really view myself? Because this is a description
of those God saves. Do I really view myself this
way? Is this how I look at myself?
Is this how I feel when I wake up in the morning? Do I realize
each day that I live of my own disabilities. Do I realize that
spiritually? I know I've got healthy legs
and a mouth and I can breathe and all of that type of stuff,
but I'm saying spiritually. Do I realize that? Is that how
I view myself? Because that's the fact of the
matter. That's the thing about those
who seek the Lord. They seek Him because they are
beyond human ability. I can't do anything for myself.
Do I really know and accept the fact that I'm spiritually blind? I can't see anything if the Lord
God Almighty doesn't intervene by His Spirit and reveal it to
me. This book is so full of things
that are controversial that you can sit and listen to a man talk
and pretty soon you'll say, well, You know, he's got some good
points here about infant sprinkling. You know, you sit down and talk
with a Presbyterian who has some study behind him. Before long,
you're going to be baptizing infants because he's got a strong
argument. And these other things. And if
God doesn't reveal it to you, if He doesn't impress it upon
your heart, if He doesn't show you clearly in the Scriptures
these things, you're just going to get lost in the mystery. You're
going to get lost in the mystery. That's why these game-sayers
must be stopped that the Lord talked about, because they can
convince people. They can convince people. And
pretty soon they've got these people going their way. And these
people, it didn't take them very long in the churches at Galatia
before they began to bewitch the people, Paul said. Who has
bewitched you? Who has told you these things
and drew people away? Do I really believe and act?
Now, let me tell you something. You don't believe anything that
you don't act on. That's just so. That's just so. You know, sometimes people wonder
if they believe. Do you act on that? Do you trust
Him? Because you don't believe what
you don't act on. You don't believe it. Do I really believe and act
upon a spiritual evaluation of myself as it's set before me
in this physically impaired men and women? Do I really know and
accept the fact that I'm spiritually blind, blinded by a fallen nature,
blinded by false religion, blinded by worldly philosophy, blinded
by well-meaning but besieged friends and family? Do I not
understand that? that apart from being enlightened
by the Lord of glory, I'll go on in my blindness and ignorance
till I die. Unless I'm brought to Him and
He sees fit to give me eyes to see, He said, blessed are your
eyes, for they see. Those Pharisees didn't see. Those
scribes didn't see. And they had thousands of years
of tradition behind them. They had worldly acceptance and
recognition of their religion behind them. They had a whole
nation behind them, but they were blind. You think I'm being
critical? The Lord said, leave them alone,
they'd be blind leaders of the blind. That's as plain as words
can make it. Here's what the Lord said, if
the light that's in you be darkness, how great is that darkness. Do
I act that way? Do I believe that? When I open
this book, do I believe that or do I just sit down here and
scratch my head and say, now let me figure this thing out?
Huh? Do I really believe I'm spiritually
deaf? Our Lord said they have ears,
but hear not. They hear not. How many times
has this poor sinner read the Word of God and heard the Gospel
proclaimed and heard nothing? Heard nothing. Like reading and hearing a foreign
language. But when Christ opens the ears,
then you hear Him say, blessed are your ears, for they hear. Do I really believe I'm maimed?
That's something brought about by a horrible act, maybe a great
fall off a building or a mountain, or maybe by conflict, wounded
and bruised, like he described Israel in Isaiah chapter 1. Maybe
by being run over by some runaway wagon or animal or whatever it
is. It talks about unruly beasts
back under the law of God and that people were maimed by those
beasts and that man held accountable. But whatever the cause, it's
left you broken beyond repair. You can't talk right. You can't
walk right. You can't look right. I've known
people who've been maimed in horrible things, car wrecks,
train wrecks, different things like that. And I've known these
people. And after that, they're totally different people. They
can't walk right. They can't hold their head right.
They can't see right. They're broken. They're broken. Spiritually, by the fall, we're
totally depraved. We're maimed. We were maimed
in that fall. Everything's out of place. Things
that ought to bend won't bend. Things that ought to be straight
are crooked. Things that ought to be flexible are frozen stiff. And like my Phoebe Sheff of old,
you're ruined by the fall, left crippled to live out your days.
Is that my spiritual condition? Did I realize that? Everything
you need to to live unto God is broken and bent, stiff and
dead. And then what about lepers? The
lepers, the palsied, the paralyzed, the demon-possessed. Surely these
are among those that he describes this way and many others. Many others. My point is this. Nobody is going
to come or be brought to Christ and cast at His feet. They cast
these men. They brought them and laid them
down at His feet. And in that said this, we can't
do anything for them. We can't do anything for them.
Nobody's going to come there. Now I'm telling you, you're not
going to come there until he convinces you that you're beyond
human ability to help. Then you'll come. Then you'll
come. You're going to have to come
to terms with God's description of your fatal condition and realize
that you're beyond human help. All right, here's the second
thing I see that these all had in common, is that they were
all convinced that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, alone was
the only one that could do him any good. He's the only one. You're going to have to get to
him. Like that woman, she'd been to the physician, said she'd
went to many physicians and wasted her whole living, wasted all
of her money, things she'd worked a lifetime for, had spent it
all on these physicians and was nothing better. But she came
to him, and she went away home. That's where these people were.
They were convinced if they could get to him, if they could get
to this man, and lay at His feet that He would
heal them. And He could heal them. Do you really believe that? Do you and I really believe that? Do we cast ourselves spiritually
at His feet and say, Lord save me lest I die? I've got nowhere
else to go." Can we say like those disciples, when everybody
else left, they just stood there looking at Him? They didn't know
any better either. They didn't have a clue what
He was saying when He was talking about drinking His blood and
eating His flesh. And except you do these things,
you have no life in you. And those Pharisees said, He's
talking cannibalism. He's crazy. He's a man out of
His mind. And they turned and walked away.
And He turned to the twelve and He said, will you go too? And
they said, to whom shall we go? That's what we're talking about.
Where else are we going to go? Where else are we going to go?
I don't know every detail of this thing, and neither do you.
And neither does any man I've ever read. But I'll tell you
this, I know enough to know there's nowhere else to go. There's nowhere
else to go except to Christ. And I'll tell you this, if you
believe this with all your heart, You'd allow yourself to be cast
at His feet. Here I am. You'd leave everybody
and everything that holds you back and you'd be led or carried
to where the Lord is. You'd cast yourself prostrate
on the ground at His feet, sink or swim. You'd come to Him because
He's the only one that can do you any good. Where else are
you going to go to have your sins put away? Where else are
you going to go to get a righteousness? Christ has a uniqueness in His
person to save sinners. He's unique above all others
in that He alone has the eternal appointment of God to this very
task, to save sinners. He's that one John saw in the
Spirit taking the seven-sealed book from Him who sat on the
throne to fulfill all His decrees. This is He who was the Lamb slain,
the Scripture said, before the foundation of the world. His
eternal appointments of God tell me three things. It tells me
that He's always been. He's always been. and therefore
is not only with God, but He is God. Who else would be in
eternity to take those decrees from the hand of God except God? And then secondly, I see this
in these eternal appointments of God, of Christ, that God trusted
Christ to do all He decreed to do for chosen sinners. God trusted
Him. Do you realize that every Old
Testament saint that was saved was saved on credit, so to speak? Because Christ had not died yet.
He hadn't died yet. And we're going to be looking
at that in my morning message this morning there in Romans
chapter 3, where he talks about God setting him forth in the
Old Testament as the propitiation for sin. And then thirdly, if Christ is
set before us in His eternal appointments, we need not go
to another. If God has said, look unto me,
all ye ends of the earth, and be ye saved, then why would I
want to look somewhere else? Why don't I look where God said
to look? Why not forget what somebody
else says and let God be true and every man a liar? Why not
do what God said? He said, I am the Lord, I change
not, therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed. And then here
is something else that gives him a uniqueness in this thing
of salvation. His willingness, his willingness
to take to himself permanently the flesh and bones of a man. He took to himself the seed of
Abraham. The God of glory took to himself
the seed of Abraham. In the matter of our walk in
this world, in humility, we're told in Philippians chapter 2,
he said, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ
Jesus. Who being in the form of God,
thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself
of no reputation, took upon him the form of a servant, and was
made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as
a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even
the death of the cross, wherefore God also hath highly exalted
him." There is a man in glory. And that man is equal with God. He is God. But all the willingness,
the willingness of the eternal God to take to Himself our flesh
and bones, took not on Him the nature of angels, but the seed
of Abraham. The Son of God, by God's decree,
willingly took to Himself the body, blood, and bones of a man
to do for chosen sinners what they could not do for themselves.
And not only His incarnation, but His actual accomplishment
It's his faithfulness that constitutes the righteousness of all those
that believe. He tells us in Romans 3.21 that
now the righteousness without the law is manifested. That is a righteousness that
requires nothing from the believer as far as his obedience to the
law. He said Christ is the end of
the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. even the righteousness of God
which is by faith or faithfulness of Jesus Christ unto all and
upon all them that believe. And then he tells us something
additional about this righteousness in Galatians chapter 2 verse
19. He said, Paul said, I threw the law and did to the law that
I might live unto God. I'm crucified with Christ. The
law put me to death for my sins in the person of Christ. The
law killed me. It judged me, and God killed
me on the cross. I was crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth
in me. And the life which I now live
in the flesh, I live by the faith, the faithfulness of the Son of
God who loved me and gave Himself for me." And the death of Christ,
the death of Christ was not the death of a martyr to inspire,
but the death of a substitute to bear our sins. Now I want
you to listen to this here in Romans 3, verse 24. He said, being justified freely
by His grace through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus, whom
God sent forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to
declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are
passed through the forbearance of God. He set him forth in the
Old Testament in types and shadows as a substitutionary sacrifice,
not as the death of a martyr, but as a substitutionary sacrifice. Now, I want you to think about
that. That changes what men say about his death. If he died as
an example, or if he died to inspire, or if he died to make
salvation possible, then he didn't die as a substitute. There's
no such thing as an unaffectual substitute. All the substitutionary
sacrifices were accepted of God when they were offered as God
set them forth. He set them forth in the Old
Testament types and shadows. And if you want to this afternoon,
read Hebrews chapter 9, and it will show you the ending of those
Old Testament types and pictures. And it will show you how Christ
fulfilled them. And then in chapter 10, he'll
show you how that sacrifice was effectual. And then fourthly, I mean, we
have Him in His eternal appointments, in His incarnation, in His accomplishments,
and we have Him who is seated above all things on the throne
of glory as our victorious reigning redeemer. All those who come
to Christ come to Him with the realization that nobody else
can do them any good. And they come to Him being convinced
that He is uniquely fit to meet their needs. And then thirdly,
it says in verse 31 of our text in Matthew 15, that when this
multitude experienced the grace of God, when they just sat back
on the hill, some of them were whole and didn't need a physician.
Some of them were in bad shape and were dying. And they sit
there and they watched what he did. And they saw what he done
was effectual. These people went away whole.
They came up there. Some of them had to be carried
up there and laid at his feet and they got up and walked away.
Some of them carrying their own beds. Lepers going up there coming
away cleansed. Maimed people just being helped
up there and laid before Him and walking away under their
own power. They saw this. And they experienced it, whether
they experienced actual healing within them or they saw those
who were healed. Either way, they saw what was
going on. They experienced the grace of
God and they wondered. They were filled with wonder. Filled with wonder. And it says
that they glorified God, verse 31. They glorified the God of
Israel. One thing which I can truthfully
say, I've witnessed in all that I've seen in the workings of
God's salvation, both in myself and in others, is that all those
who have experienced His grace, all give all the glory to God. All of them. His salvation works
in a way where it's impossible. Paul says at the end of his arguments
there in Romans 3, he said, then where's boasting? He said, it's
done away with. It's done away with. And anybody
who's ever been saved knows that. They know that. Listen to this. In 1 Corinthians 1, verse 30,
and I'll quit. It says, but of Him, that is,
of God, are you in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom,
righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, that according
as it is written, he that gloryeth, let him glory in the Lord. That's
exactly what took place all the way through the wondrous ministry
of Christ. All that came to him, he didn't
turn any way. And that's what he tells us over
in John, isn't it? If you come to me, he said, I'm
going to cast you out.