I'd like for you to take your
Bibles and turn with me to Matthew chapter 8. Matthew chapter 8. Let's read verses 16 and 17.
When the even was come, They brought unto him many that
were possessed with devils, and he cast out the spirits with
his word, and healed all that were sick, that it might be fulfilled
which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, himself took
our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." Now the lesson this
morning here in Matthew chapter 8 is about bringing sinners to
Christ. That's what this miracle is about. That's what it's picturing. That's
what it's saying in figure. It's talking about bringing sinners
to Christ. And I know that the Holy Spirit
who inspired this book does not put words in the book needlessly. And I don't say that as you read
these things, you need to do the word studies and look up
the Greek and go into all of that. I'm just simply saying
that there's words in there that are not there needlessly. They
mean something. And you might not always see
it the first go around or the second go around, or you may
not see it for years. And then all of a sudden, that
word, as you mature in the Gospel, takes on takes on a significance
to it. And I know that he doesn't insert
these words needlessly into the Scriptures, and that we don't
always know their meaning. But in the verses before us this
morning, it's one of those words that caught my eye, and the word
is even. Now, what he's talking about
there is evening. I think that's apparent from
the verse. He's talking about evening. And knowing that these
miracles are pictures instructing us on the sinner's condition
and how God saves sinners, this word evening has a little spiritual
significance. Let me just give you a few things
to think about. First of all, it might be used
in this verse to describe the age in which they lived. We have accounts in the Bible
of the creation of the world. And we have accounts and genealogies
that date from Adam all the way up to the days of Noah when God
did something else significant. He destroyed the world by water.
And they call that the antediluvian world, that world that existed
before the flood and those men and women who lived in that day.
And then it takes on another age and it goes from that days
of Noah after the flood all the way up to the calling out of
Abraham. And then when he calls out Abraham,
all of a sudden he takes the entire rest of the book of Genesis
to deal with him and his children. This man called Abraham. And
so in these ages, but if you want to consider From the beginning
of creation until time, we have ages of significance. And this
age in which we are living is the last age. We are living in
the evening of time. And it was the evening of time
when Christ appeared on this earth. It says, once in the end
of the world. Over in Hebrews chapter 9, it
says, once in the end of the world. hath He appeared to put
away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." So we're living in
the last days. And when you read in the Scriptures
and He's talking about the last days, He's not talking about
those days yet to come. He's talking about all of those
days from His appearance on this earth to the end of time. We're
living in the evening of time. So it might be used in this particular
verse to describe the age in which they live. And then secondly, evening might
be a declaration of the time in the sinner's experience. It
might be talking about the evening of his time. The scripture said
the old must die and the young may. But whether old or young,
we're all in the evening of our lives. Our lives are but a vapor.
Just but a vapor. And then thirdly, it might be
said of all of us that are in the evening of opportunity. There is for sinners a nighttime
or an evening of opportunity. I know this goes against the
grain of most folks, but in Proverbs 1, verse 23, he said, turn you
at my reproof. Behold, he said, I'll pour out
my spirit unto you. I'll make known my words unto
you. And twice here, God declares His willingness to open His Word
to any and all that will turn to Him. But He said, you set
at naught all my counsel. You didn't want my counsel. It
wasn't because it wasn't there, but that you didn't want it.
You didn't want it. You set it aside. You wouldn't
have my reproof. I reproved you. I told you you
were wrong. I told you what to do. You didn't
do it. You set it aside. You set all
my reproof aside. Now, he said, I also will laugh
at your calamity, and I'll mock when your fear cometh. Then,
he said, when your fear cometh, then you're going to seek me.
You're going to seek me early then. There'll be no fooling
around and setting things aside then. You're going to seek me
early, but he said, you're not going to find me. And you're
going to call upon me. You're going to call upon me.
But he said, I won't hear. And so we're all in the evening
of opportunity. God sits before sinners, opportunities
of grace, and they set them aside. It's not that they cannot come
so much as they cannot as in the will not. You will not come
unto me that you might have life. That's what Christ said. Don't ever presume that God will
give you another opportunity to hear. Don't ever presume that. Boy, you're on dangerous ground. Well, when I get ready, no, more
than likely you'll never get ready. More than likely. Blind Bartimaeus knew in his
heart that Christ would not pass that way again. He knew that. He knew that. He was going to
be hurt, wasn't he? Some folks I read about in the
Scriptures, brought a friend of theirs and put a ladder up
and drug that man up that ladder and tore away the roof and lowered
that man down to Christ through the roof of the house. Why would
they do that? Huh? Because they believed there
would never be another occasion where he might better be approached.
That's why. And then still others said this.
They listened to Paul preach, who wrote nearly half the New
Testament. They listened to him preach on Mars Hill. And when
they got done listening to him, the last thing he said, he talked
about the resurrection of Christ. And when they heard that, they
said, well, we'll hear you again in a more convenient season.
But the season never came, did it? And then Felix listened to
Paul reason with him of righteousness and judgment. and all of those
things, and reason with him over the gospel. And Phoebus, even
trembling, even trembling before Paul, as he listened to him preach,
he said, now you go your way for now, and when I have a more
convenient season, I'll call for you. Now, I'm going to tell
you something. Are you listening? Let me tell
you something. You're going to find God on His
terms. on His terms, not on yours. You'll
never find God on your terms and at your leisure. You'll never find God at your
convenience. And you'll never find God dictating
your own times and seasons. You'll find God on His terms,
in His times, and by His means, or you won't find God at all.
Now that's just the truth. And so it might be speaking here
the evening of opportunity. These folks were dying. These
weren't just people with a head cold that were being brought
to Christ. These were people with serious
illnesses, life-threatening illnesses, life-altering illnesses, demon-possessed
men and women. And they brought them to Christ,
and it was the evening of opportunity for them. It was this or die. There was nowhere else to go.
Nowhere else to go. But I believe in its context,
and this is how we're to interpret scripture, the word evening has
to do with the law of God in this particular place. If you
read Mark's account in Mark chapter 1 and Luke's account in Luke
chapter 4, you'll see that the significance of the evening is
because it marked the end of the Sabbath. It doesn't say that
here in Matthew, but in the other two accounts, He kind of fills
in the blanks and he tells us that they came in the evening
of the Sabbath. Now under the law of Moses, as
it was interpreted by the Jews, even the healing of the sick
and the care for the suffering was forbidden during the Sabbath.
So what's all that got to do with bringing sinners to Christ?
Just this. The law forbids the coming of
any man who is a sinner to Christ. The law forbids it. The law forbids
it. The law says the soul that sinneth
shall surely die. Shall surely die. The law says
cursed is everyone who continueth not in all things written in
the book of the law to do them. The scripture says, what thing
soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law
that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty
before God. The Bible says, by the deeds
of the law shall no flesh be justified before God. Sinners
cannot come to Christ or be brought to Christ until the law is fulfilled
and honored on their behalf. And so in picture, what's taking
place here is He waits until the Sabbath day was done. When
it was done. When it was finished. When the
Sabbath was fully accomplished. Then the Lord healed their sick
and cast out their demons. Now He healed a few on the Sabbath
day. And you know why He did it? He
tells you why He did it. That He might show you that He's
the Lord of the Sabbath. He is the Lord of the Sabbath,
and He is our Sabbath of rest. The Lord Jesus Christ came into
this world to fulfill every jot and tittle of the law, to exalt
the law and make it honorable. And this is primarily what's
being taught here, that Christ is the end of the law. When the
law was fully honored, then He brought unto Him, all those people
brought unto Him, those that were possessed with devils, and
He healed all their sick. So it's in the satisfying of
divine justice and the honoring of God's law that opens the door
for sinners. That's what has to take place
first. The churches are standing with
open arms and are calling men to the front They're calling
upon men to make decisions, and they're calling on you to join
churches, or they're calling on you to come and learn their
creed, or learn their system, or learn their doctrine, or all
of these things. Here's the problem. Here's the
problem. The law has to be honored. You
have to have a righteousness. And your sins have to be atoned
for. God doesn't just take a big eraser
and erase things away. Those sins have to be paid for. And we have to learn. You can't
believe what you don't know. You have to learn how God can
be just and justify a sinner. You got to learn that. And how
can He do that? He does that in Christ. He does
that in Christ. And so He tells us that all of
this healing and all of these things that's going on here,
He said this is a fulfillment of what Isaiah said. He bore
our illnesses and our sicknesses. He bore our sins. Now, there
is no sickness that doesn't come from sin. Sin is what brought
sickness into the world. There was no sickness until there
was sin. Wasn't there? Huh? Wasn't no
death, was there? Adam would have lived forever
if he hadn't sinned. By one man, sin entered into
the world, and death by sin. So there must be a satisfying
of divine justice and an honoring of God's law, and that's what
opens the door for sinners to be brought to Christ. See, Christ
had the ability. We could treat illnesses. We
can put a little salve on it, and we can give them some medicine
to drink, or give them a shot in the arm, or whatever. We can
treat illnesses, but we can't take them away. Christ took them
away. And it's the taking away of our
sins that opens the door for the sinner. Now the sinner can
come. Now he can come. I want to ask
four simple questions this morning that came to my mind as I read
the ending of this day of miracles that we've been looking at now
for over several weeks. And the first is this. Who brought
these people to Christ? Who brought them to Christ? It
just says they. That's all it says. They. They. All three accounts say
they. But Luke takes it just a step
further and he says, they that had any sick. They that had any
sick. Now here was a man, I'm talking
about Christ, who was willing and able to heal the sick. Here was a man who had already
healed and raised the dead. Here was a man whose whole life
was described as going about doing good and healing all that
was oppressed by the devil. You can read about that over
in Acts 10 verse 39. He was willing. He was able. He had multitudes who witnessed
these facts. He had hundreds who had experienced
it themselves. He went about every day doing
that. There was no big question mark
on whether or not he could. And there ought not be a question
mark on whether or not he would, because he never turned one way.
He never did. Never did. So whether by experience
or testimony, those who truly believed brought everyone they
knew who was sick to Christ. Now, apply this to bringing sinners
to Christ. Just take this illustration and
turn it to what it ought to be, which is a picture of those who
had any sick, talking about sin sickness, bringing them to Christ. And those of us who have experienced
this saving grace, who are convinced of God's power and reputation
and willingness to save, do everything in our power to bring men to
Christ. That's what we're about. I'm
not out here campaigning against alcohol and all of these things. I don't promote that type of
thing. I don't promote pornography and all of these things that
churches go out. But I don't go out with them and campaign
against them because that's not the cause of sin. That's the
effects of it. The cause of it's in here. In
here. And the only way you can get
rid of the cause is to get a person to Christ. Bring them to Christ. Then you won't have to go campaign
against alcohol and drugs and pornography. God will teach them.
God will teach them. You won't have to stand up here
every week with a whip, get folks to give or get folks to work
in the ministry or get folks to do anything. They'll do it
because they love Christ. They love Christ. I found Luke's
description very enlightening on this subject, which sometimes
makes it so confusing. He simply said, they who had
any sick. You know any sinners? Do you
know anybody sick with sin? And that brings me to my second
question. What sort of folks did they bring?
It says, they brought the sick and those possessed with devils.
That's who they brought. And brethren, the Lord said to
the Pharisees, He said, the well need not a physician. They don't
need a physician. You're not going to bring them
to a physician. They're not coming to the physician. They might
come and with criticism, the way the Pharisees did, they might
come expecting to cause trouble, to cause division. But they don't
come to be healed until they realize they're sick. The well
need not a physician, but the sick. And our Lord said, you
go learn what that means. He said, I'll have mercy and
not sacrifice. I'm not come to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance. Do I know what that means? Now all men need Christ. And
they all need brought. They're not coming on their own.
It's not going to happen. They're not coming. Those folks,
there's a lot of folks over in our area who stayed up all night.
I was hearing car motors and stuff at 2 o'clock this morning.
Going in and out. I guarantee you they didn't wake
up this morning trying to figure out what church they were going
to or if they were going to church or even if the thought of church
was on their mind. They all need bringing, because
their sin-sick soul is hindered from coming itself. There's two
categories of people described in this verse, and I find this
very significant. One of them is the sick, the
other is the demon-possessed. Now, the sick describe sinners
to me that are ailing from their sins. That's what this is talking
about. I suppose, in a sense of the
word, you could say that cancer and heart attacks and all of
these things, they're kind of universal. They can happen to
anybody. They can happen to anybody. But they don't. They happen to
some. To some. And so the described
sinners to me, they're ailing from the sins. And I suppose
you could write a book on all these ailments that sin brings
upon men, broken homes, lost jobs, alcohol, drugs, broken
bodies, broken marriages, and on and on and on. Whatever it
is that ails the soul, sin is the reason. Sin is the reason. And then it says they brought
those possessed with devils. Now demon possession, I called
and talked to Brother Don for quite a while about this. Demon
possession is is the second category here, and I want you to listen
to me for just a minute. It's often characterized in the
scripture as losing one's mind. That Gadarene demoniac, he's
probably the most famous of all the ones demons possess. They called him Legion because
he had so many demons in him. And he ran naked around the countryside
and he slipped in the tombs. And they couldn't chain him,
they couldn't bind him, couldn't hold him down. They put chains
on him and he'd break them. And he cut himself with glass
and he just had lost his mind. He had no control over his mind.
He was wild and uncontrollable. But it's also described quite
clearly in the scripture as those taken captive by Satan and his
ministers, and they're characterized as false converts, false professors,
false prophets, and religious troublemakers. They suffer from the disease
of the soul called deceit. Satan hath blinded their minds. Paul said, if our gospel be hid,
it's hid to the lost whom the God of this world hath blinded
their mind. How do you blind a man's mind
against Christ and against his gospel? You sell him on another
gospel. That's how you do it. And he's
blind. You can't get the first lay.
You can't talk to him at all. He's already fixed up. He's already
signed up. Why, I'm as sure for heaven as
if I was already there. I've heard him say it. That's how you blind their minds.
They're not going to listen. They're not going to listen.
He's blinded their minds. Seared their conscience with
a hot iron. And perhaps these are the ones
who need Christ the most. Might be. Might be. In his madness, the demoniac
did what he wanted to do, didn't he? They couldn't control him. They couldn't bind him. They
couldn't do anything with him. He did what probably seemed natural
to him as unnatural to everybody else, but it is natural to him. And I'll tell you this. Most
religious folks don't know that they're deceived. They're not
even aware of it. To them, you're the deceit. Huh? They looked at Paul and listened
to him and they said, much study has made thee mad. You read too
much. You study too much." And on and
on. To them, you're the ones who
are demon-possessed. You're the ones who've lost control
of your mind. Most religious folks don't even
know they're deceived. Deception cannot be discovered
until you hear the truth. Isn't that what our Lord said? He said, something about you
shall hear the truth, know the truth, and the truth shall set
you free. I want you to listen to how Paul
describes the ministry. He said, we wrestle not against
flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, against
rulers of the darkness of this world, spiritual wickedness in
high places. That's Ephesians chapter 6 verse
12. Paul told Timothy that in the
last time, and that's as I told you at the beginning, any time
since Christ appeared as a man in this world. He said, some
shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits
and doctrines of devils. Now, I'm not saying that demon
possession is altogether looking and talking about religious men.
I'm just simply saying that part of that demon possession Even
described, sometimes our Lord described it. He described it
in a story He gave one time about this fella and the demons went
out of him and he got a broom and swept everything out real
clean, cleaned up the house. That's talking about a man who
gets religion. And he turns over a new leaf,
turns his life around and he makes professions of faith and
joins the church and all that. And the demon comes back and
says, boy, look at there. Look at there. And he got seven
more and they all went back in. And the second part of that man,
the second side of that story was worse than the first. Worse
than the first. So what I'm laboring to point
out here is that all who are sick need to be brought to Christ.
Whether they're sick and blinded by the deceit of Satan and his
ministers, of the God of this world, blinded by religion, false
religion, or whether he's been brought in life's circumstances
down to the place where he has nowhere else to go. They all
need to come to Christ, and they all need bringing. All right, thirdly, where did
they bring us? You know, sometimes these easy
questions, you say, Pastor, those are just too simple. That's the
best kind. That's the kind you learn from.
Where did they bring these sick people? They brought them, it
says, to Him. To Him. Not to a creed. Not to a system of theology.
Not to a decision. Not to the front. They brought
them to Christ. Alright? Where is Christ in our
day? Huh? I want to bring folks to
Christ. Where am I going to take them?
Where is He? Where is He? Well, I can tell
you, first of all, He's seated as the King of Glory at the right
hand of God. And if I bring you to Him, I'm
going to have to bring you before His throne because that's where
He sits. That's where he's at. This poor
little Jesus boy running around here is an idol. There's no such
thing. The Jesus Christ of God is seated
at his right hand. He told his disciples, he said,
all power in heaven and earth is given unto me. Now you go
preach. You go preach that. You go preach there. So if I'm
going to bring you to Christ, I'm going to have to tell you
where he's at. He's seated at the right hand
of God. And I'll tell you this, if I'm going to bring you to
Christ, I'm going to have to bring you to where his presence is,
and the only place I can find him talking about his presence
is in the assembly of his saints. Now, you go through and check
it out. Show me if I'm wrong, but I can't find anywhere in
the Scripture where he promises his presence except in the assembly
of his saints. Where two or more gather together
in my name, there will I be in the midst. Now, that's what he
says. And I'll tell you this, he's
in his gospel. That's where you'll find him,
in his gospel. in His gospel. The Spirit of
the Living God takes that gospel and He applies that gospel to
our hearts. Paul said, if our gospel be hid,
it's hid to the lost, and whom the God of this world hath blinded
the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious
gospel of Christ should shine unto them. That's where Christ
is. He reveals Himself in your heart
through His gospel. And I'll tell you this, here's
one last place you'll find Him. He's in the ministry of the Holy
Spirit. Now, if you go into a place and
they're talking about the Holy Spirit this and the Holy Spirit
that, but they never make mention of Christ, or they make very
little mention of Him and exalt the Holy Spirit of God, that's
not the Holy Spirit of God. When He has come, He will not
speak of Himself, but He'll take the things of mine and show them
unto you. Jesus Christ is in the ministry
of the Holy Spirit. And I'll tell you this, when
you bring them, leave them alone. Just bring them, and then leave
them alone. Leave them in His hands. Those
folks brought those sick people, those demon-possessed, I can't
even imagine how you would bring a demon-possessed man. I guess
you'd just almost have to drag him. But you get him there, and
they got him into the presence of Christ, and then hand off.
Just leave him alone. Leave him alone. What are you
going to do to help? Nothing. If you could do anything,
you wouldn't have brought him to Christ, would you? So bring
him to Christ and leave him alone. You'll never find me trying to
get you down an aisle to the front of the church to join the
church or anything else. I'm going to take you as near
as I can to Christ through the gospel and I'm going to leave
you alone. Leave you alone. And I can't find anywhere in
the Bible any man assisting Christ to heal or cast out demons. And then last of all, what did
the Lord do with those who were brought to Him? Well, here's
what it says. He cast out the spirits with
His Word, and He healed all that were sick. Huh? Boy, I'm encouraged by that. Ain't you? Everybody they brought,
John, Every last one of them they brought, Christ healed them
and cast out those demons. Hadn't we all been encouraged
to bring those we know who are sick, bring them to Him and then
leave them alone. Thank you.