If you would, open your Bibles
back to Mark 2. Mark 2. Before we read part of this from
Mark 2, in John 9, there's a story of our Lord with His disciples.
And our Lord sees a man which is blind from his birth. And
His disciples and Him are discussing this man. And the Lord spits
on the ground, makes clay, anoints his eyes and tells him to go
wash. And then that blind man can now
see. And this blind man comes back into town and other people
see him and they say, is that not the man that was blind? And
there's this discussion and confusion, and surely it can't be him. And
as he comes in, he says, it's me, I was blind, and this man
gave me sight. And this was on the Sabbath.
And as the Pharisees see this, they start to question it. And
they say, there's no way that this is not the same man. And
he says, I promise, I'm the same man. And so they go to his parents. They bring his parents into the
church. And they say, is this your son? And they say, yes.
They say, was he blind? And they say, he was blind from
his birth. And they say, what happened? And they say, we don't
know. He's of age. He's a grown man. Ask him. So
they go back to him. And they say, what happened?
And he says, this man healed me. And they say, well, this
can't be true. This is the Sabbath. Only a sinner
does something on the Sabbath. And they go back and forth. They
say, one more time, tell us what happened. And he said, I already
told you. Why don't you believe me? If
I tell you again, it won't change anything. And they get mad at
him and they kick him out of the church. And initially, when
I hear that story, I think to myself, how can they not believe
him? If we all knew somebody that
was blind, and they walked in here and they could see, Wouldn't
we believe? I don't think so. I think we'd start trying to
figure out a way that this was a trick. Somebody would, you'd
lean to the person next to you and be like, is that really them?
Can they really see? We naturally doubt and question
everything. We see what this man, the evidence
he had. He said he was blind and he could
prove he could see. His parents came in, everybody
around him said it, but nobody believed. We have this book that
has so much evidence and proof in it, yet we doubt and we just
don't have belief. We shouldn't look at others and
say these things when we're the same way. We are such a doubting
people. That's almost all we do is doubt
things. In so many things in our lives,
we doubt in so many ways. Now, a big part of that is because
we know ourselves. When someone says something to
us that we're not sure about, we question it because we know
that we say things sometimes. Let me give you an illustration
of this. A while back, I was at my office with a friend of
mine, a co-worker, and I had noticed something. I saw a video
of something, of a tool. And I thought it was amazing.
So I went to him and I said, look at this. And he said, well,
I've never seen that. I said, I know. Isn't it incredible?
And he said, yeah. And so we looked more about it.
And we kept looking. Well, another person that works in the building
walked by. And he said, what are you doing? And we said, look
at this. And he goes, I've got one. Now
there are a lot of things I could have said to him. I could have
said, do you like it? Where'd you get it? How much
does it cost? Does it work well? All kinds
of questions. But do you know what I said to
him when he said I have one? I said, no you don't. I didn't have a reason to doubt
him. It wasn't something that was crazy expensive that he couldn't
afford. It wasn't an item that somehow like I was the first
one to notice it. It wasn't that he was the type
of person that wouldn't have had this. I had no reason whatsoever
other than I just thought in my mind, no you don't, you're
lying. To which he then pulled out his phone, took a few seconds,
turned and held up a picture of it. To which my only response
was, I'm sorry. It was so embarrassing once that
happened. Now, it should have been embarrassing
when I said it, but it was embarrassing once he proved to me that he
had one. The title of this message is
Thank God for Pictures. Our Lord uses pictures to prove
things to us doubters. There's plenty of evidence in
here. There's plenty of things that have been written, and there's
plenty of proof that we've had in our lives that we should believe
100% of who the Lord Jesus Christ is and who God is, but we don't. So He gives us all these pictures
so that He can turn and show us, and the only thing we can
say is, you're right, I believe. In education, there's a famous
saying that all kids learn in different ways. Some people learn
by seeing things, some people learn by doing things, some people
learn by hearing things, and so on and so forth. And a good
teacher uses these things to help kids learn. Well, the greatest
teacher in the world is our Lord. And He has written the perfect
book that gives us every single means to learn. And one of those
is pictures. Now here in Mark II, there is something that I want
to start with. Using pictures in the Bible is
an endless thing. There are thousands, if not tens
of thousands, millions of pictures in here. Every single verse.
If we were smart enough and we could get liberty from the Lord,
we would see something in it that would be miraculous. But
he uses pictures to show us so many things. But I just have
three things that I want us to see this morning. I want to be
brief and there's just three things. The first thing is the
Lord Jesus Christ came to save sinners. Secondly, He saves them
by His grace. And thirdly, He keeps the sinners. He keeps them to the end. The
first one is here in Mark 2. Look at verse 16 of Mark 2. And when the scribes and Pharisees
saw Him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto His disciples,
How is it that He eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?
When Jesus heard it, He said unto them, They that are whole
have no need of the physician, but they that are sick. I came
not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." That's
why He came. That's why he became a man to
call sinners to repentance. We will not repent unless he
calls us. If we have repented, it is because
he called us. Anything that we do, any faith
that we have, any belief that we have, all of that is because
he has called us. In the Old Testament, there are
many stories that show us this. One of those, and one of my favorites,
is Rahab. Turn to Joshua chapter 2. Joshua chapter 2. In Mark 2 there, where we just
read, he says to them, What's easier, to say, the sick
of the palsy, thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, arise and take
up thy bed and walk? Why did he heal that man? Why
did he heal them? He did it so that they would
believe that he could save sins, that he could forgive sins. Here
in Joshua 2, verse 1 says, And Joshua the son of Nun sent out
of Shittim two men to spy secretly, saying, Go view the land, even
Jericho. This land of Jericho had been
promised to the children of Israel from years and years before.
They had been told, you would go to this land and this would
be your land. So why would they send out spies? Did our Lord
need spies? Did He need to see what the city
was like? Did He need to see the enemy? Of course not. But
He sent two spies because, and they went and came into a harlot's
house named Rahab and lodged there. because of Rahab, that's
why they went. And there's a really important
word in this sentence that says, and they went and came into a
harlot's house. We all naturally, when we say
Rahab, it almost just flows off the tongue to say Rahab the harlot.
That part of her, the description of who she is, is irrelevant
to the story, to what happens, the events. It wouldn't have
mattered in that if Rahab was a farmer, Rahab was a seamstress,
whatever Rahab would have been, it's the same thing. But why
do we find out that she's a harlot? Well, later in the story, obviously,
Rahab is the one person in the entire city that is chosen to
be saved, Rahab and her house. And isn't it nice for those of
us as sinners to get a description of Rahab that tells us she's
a sinner? If we didn't know that about Rahab, if it did not say
that she was a harlot, the rest of the story is very impressive
on Rahab's behalf. All the things she does, that
she trusts these men, she believes these men, she protects these
men, they say, leave that court out, she left the court out.
There's a wall and she leaves a red cord hanging out her window
that anyone that would have seen it thought, this looks very suspicious. This is something she had to
have faith and belief to leave that there. Otherwise, the soldiers
could have come and taken her. But that whole story makes Rahab
look really good. But we know who she is. That's great news for sinners.
If we didn't have that, wouldn't we say to ourselves, well, I
mean, Rahab kind of deserved it. All the things she did for
those men, all that stuff. But no, she's a sinner just like
us. In 1 Timothy 1 it says, Someone who thinks they're the chief
of sinners thinks they can be saved? Our Lord said, I came not to
call the righteous, but to call sinners to repentance. What about
the Pharisee and the Publican? What about those two who go into
the church and the one stands in the front and says all these
things and the one in the back hides? If you ask anyone in that
city, You've got this Pharisee and this Publican. Which one
of those two is the better person? They all point to the Pharisee.
Which one of those two is more likely to be saved? They go to
the Pharisee. Everything points to the Pharisee. But which of
the two of them did the Lord say in the end He went down to
His house justified? He said it to the Publican. We
get so many pictures like this, so those of us who the Lord has
shown who we are, I mean, I talk to you and you talk to me and
we see enough of each other outwardly that makes us realize we're sinners.
But inwardly, we know ourselves. We know who we are. And it's
so great to see that the Lord has saved those that could be
as bad as me. If he saved Rahab, if he saved
this publican, there's hope for a sinner like me. If we didn't
have these examples, wouldn't we feel like we had a part in
this? Wouldn't we feel like we had
to do something? So much of this world is confused
that in the Scriptures they save all the good people. That's not
what happens. The Lord says over and over again,
Christ came to save sinners. That's who He came to save. I
thank God that there is hope for a wretched sinner like me.
In Romans 5 it says, "...but God commendeth His love toward
us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
When we were sinners, that's when we're saved. Everything's
the cart before the horse in religion. Everybody's like, if
you do this, if you live right, if you stop doing this, do this,
all this stuff. Well, you were either saved or not before the
foundation of the world. How could those actions be any
good? We see Lazarus. He was dead. He was in the grave,
dead. And the Lord raised him from
the dead. There's nobody in their right mind would have sat there
and thought, well, you can see Lazarus had his part in this.
That's who we are. We're dead in our sins. Dead
in trespasses and sins. We can't do anything. Thankfully,
the Lord came to save sinners. And secondly, it's great news
that He came to save sinners, but that He saved them by His
grace is even better. If someone said Christ came to
save sinners, but we had to do something or we had a part, I'd
just lose all hope at that point. But the Lord did it. Turn to
Ephesians chapter 2 with me. Ephesians chapter 2. There are so many verses that
we could look at to show that our Lord saves by grace. But Ephesians 2, starting in
verse 5, says, Even when we were dead in sins, like Lazarus, we
were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. By grace
ye are saved. Verse 6, And hath raised us up
together, made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ
Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches
of His grace and His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. Look at verse 8, For by grace
are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is
the gift of God. Twice, he says it. Verse 5, he
adds that in, in parentheses. By grace are you saved. He's
like, I've got to put this in there before somebody thinks
it's something else. Then verse 8, he says, by grace are you
saved. He keeps saying it over and over
again. I tell my children sometimes,
why do I have to keep telling you this over and over and over
again before you do it? Well, why does our Lord have
to tell us a thousand times something before we even... we still don't
believe it. He says again, by grace are you
saved. Then verse 9, He said it multiple
times, but what does He say? Not of works, lest any man should
boast. He says, by grace are you saved.
By grace are you saved. By grace are you saved. And He
knows what we're thinking in our minds. So then He says, it's
not of works. By grace are you saved. It's
not anything you do. It's by grace are you saved.
What are some pictures of that? What about Abraham and Sarah?
The Lord comes to them and makes a covenant and says, I will give
you a seed. I will give you a child. And
through that child, that's the seed of Israel. And I get it. If you're 90 years old and you
hear that, maybe they... I mean, it says Sarah kind of
laughed about it. You know, that would be an embarrassing moment,
wouldn't it? But I get myself doing it. Think about that right
now of someone who's 90 years old to think, well, they're going
to have a child. It would be like, you've lost your mind.
Well, it goes 10 years pass and they still don't have anything.
So they think to themselves, you know what? When he told us
he would give us a seed, you know what he meant by that? He
meant he would give us a seed after we did what we needed to
do. So they brought in someone else and had Ishmael. And the
Lord came and he said, that's not what I said. It is not of
you. I am the one who's going to do
this. You don't get any credit for this. You don't get any glory
for this. I'm the one who did it. Cast him out. It's not just
he's not the seed. He has to be cast out. Then what
happens? Then they have a child. And who
gets the glory? Everything in these pictures
we see, there's so many things that happen, and they take these
steps, and they get to a place, and we see something, and we
think, why did it not work in that situation? Well, Abraham
and Sarah were old, and 10 years passed, and they think they have
to do it on themselves, and then the Lord tells them that's not
it. Doesn't the Lord get even more
glory then because of all that happens? And that happened so
that we can see, wait a minute, they tried to do something themselves
and the Lord said no. He's teaching us through this
picture, you can't save yourself. You have no part in this. I'm
going to do it all. What about Jacob and Esau? In
Romans 9 it says, Another example, Jacob and Esau. If you put those
two side by side, what do we have? Everybody's going to pick
Esau. He works harder, he's stronger,
he's honest. All these characteristics that
we look in religion tells us now if you do this, this, and
this. Well, that's who Esau was. And he said, Jacob have I loved,
Esau have I hated. It's amazing to think that. And I know you've heard this
plenty of times. And that phrase, and for most of my life, I was
in the same boat. How in the world did he hate
Esau? What did Esau ever do? And then
the Lord shows you, and the more miraculous thing is, how did
he ever love Jacob? It is very easy for us to hate
someone. Someone just has to cross us
one time, and we're just, man, we're just, don't you, I don't
want to hear it anymore. I don't want to have anything to do with you.
But someone who loves us and has done nothing but show us
how much they love us, we struggle with that. You know, we don't
reciprocate that. Our Lord loved Jacob. Why? Because he was his chosen
seed. He was his child. He loved him.
What about Noah? And no, it says there's none
good, no, not one. It says all the thoughts of everyone
was only evil continually. Now, that's a phrase that you
can't get around. There's no way you can say anything
positive about anyone when they say all the thoughts of everyone
was only evil continuously. There's no good in that, right?
And the Lord was gonna, He was gonna get rid of everyone. And
then it said, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
Noah didn't do anything. It was the grace of God. That
is our only hope, that the Lord Jesus Christ saves us by His
grace. That's all we can ask for. What
about Nebuchadnezzar? as a king in Babylon, the most
powerful man in the world at the time. They had a dream and
he couldn't figure out what it was and Daniel came to him and
Daniel told him, listen, this dream says that you are at the
height, you have all these things and you are going to be caught
up in your pride and the Lord's going to take it all away. And
the Lord's given him this chance of this dream. Don't do it. Don't give in to your pride.
Well, what does he do? One day he wakes up and think about this.
He has been told, if you do this, you're going to lose everything
and much worse than that, which I'll say in a second. And yet
he's just like us. He does it. He wakes up and says,
this great Babylon that I have built. And in that moment, Everyone
forgets who He is. He loses His mind. He goes out
into the field and starts eating grass. His fingernails grow to
like claws like a bird. His hair grows to be feathers.
And for seven years He's that way. All of that because His
pride in one moment. But what does our Lord do? It
says that His mind came to Him. How did that happen? The Lord
did it. His mind came to Him and He realized
in that moment there is one God who gets all the glory and is
the foundation of everything. Now, there are not many worse
punishments that I have ever even imagined. Seven years of
you not knowing anyone, you losing your mind, everyone forgets about
you, you turn into an animal. But what does the Lord do? in
that moment, after seven years, brings him right back to where
he was, puts him in the place that the Lord had given him.
He didn't lose his throne. It's just this miraculous thing
that our Lord, by His grace, shows us what He's done. And it's scary to think that
that's what the Lord will have to do to us. But for His children,
the Lord uses many different means and many different ways.
But the thing that's so comforting is the Lord always does what?
He always keeps His children until the end. He keeps us. He saves us. He came to save
sinners, us. He does it by His grace and He
keeps us. You know, if it said the Lord
saved us and He saved us by His grace, that's wonderful news.
But if we had to keep ourselves, it wouldn't matter, right? I
mean, how many times in our lives has something happened and someone
does something to save us? Whatever that means is. And it's
just a matter of moments or hours or days or months later and we
just fall again. You know, somebody, I run out
of money. I don't have anything. I can't do anything. Can you
help me? And you help me. And what happens the next week?
I don't have any money or whatever it is. You know, that's who we
are. Thankfully, our Lord keeps us. Turn to Jude 1, right before
Revelation. Jude 1. Jude 1. I heard Mike read this verse,
I don't know how many times as a kid, as a benediction, an ending
to a service. And boy, what a great verse it
is. Verse 24 says, Now unto Him,
unto our Lord, that is able to keep you from falling, and to
present you faultless before the presence of His glory with
exceeding joy. To the only wise God, our Savior,
be glory and majesty, dominion and power both now and ever.
What great news, now unto Him, that is able to keep you from
falling. The only One who can keep us
from falling. And not only that, but to present
you faultless before the presence of His glory. And He does all
that with exceeding joy. We're His children and He has
exceeding joy in doing this for us. I don't know why I oftentimes
think of Our Lord in these things He does for His children as this
almost reluctant, just like, here we go again. No, He rejoices
to do this for His children because He loves them. And it says, to
the only wise God, the only one, our Savior, be glory and majesty. Why does He get the glory? Because
He's the only one who can do this. And He's done it all by
His grace. 100% of it is in Him. He's done
it all. Second Thessalonians says, the
Lord is faithful who shall establish you and keep you from evil. He will keep us from evil. So
many of these stories in these pictures that we see, and we've
got just a couple more, they show us so much evidence and
proof of things, but all of them are physical stories. These are
all things that actually happened. And so when we see them and we
use them as the man who was healed in his blindness, and we see
Nebuchadnezzar was raised up, we see that the seed came from
Abraham and Sarah, all these things, all of this is all a
spiritual application. When our Lord says He keeps us
from falling, He doesn't mean us physically in the flesh. Because
if that were true, it wouldn't happen. Because don't we just
continually fall? We continually sin? That's who
we are. That's what we do. But this is
a spiritual thing. This is our souls that it's talking
about. So when it gives us these examples, it's telling us that
he is going to keep us from falling into the punishment that we deserve.
As sinners, what do we have coming to us? Well, let me do this.
Let's go to Daniel chapter 3. Daniel here with Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego is a wonderful story that gets us into this. Daniel, right after Ezekiel,
Daniel chapter 3. We must always realize through
the Scripture and through this work that these are spiritual
applications that the Lord is teaching us. And Daniel 3, we
know this story, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the king had set
up a golden idol, and they said that when the music is played,
everybody must bow down to the idol. Well, Shadrach, Meshach,
and Abednego said no. Well, they didn't say that, they
just didn't do it. They bowed down to God. And the men brought
them before and said, these guys aren't bowing down to your golden
statue. And so the king said, well, the punishment is what?
They have to be in the fiery furnace. They've got to be thrown
in the furnace. So Daniel 3 verse 23. And these
three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down bound
into the midst of the burning fiery furnace. This fiery furnace,
as they said, was heated seven times hotter than it was necessary,
than normal. And the strongest men in the
army went and threw them in. It was so hot that those men
died just by getting close to the fire. It just killed you
on the spot. But they threw the three men
in bound, and verse 24, Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonished
and rose up in haste and spake and said unto his counselors,
Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They
answered and said unto the king, True, O king. He answered and
said, Lo, I see four men loose walking in the midst of the fire,
and they have no hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the
Son of God. This story is an amazing story. I can't imagine being in that
room at the time. I can't imagine seeing that happening.
Do you know why the furnace was heated seven times hotter and
why those strongmen threw them in there? So everyone in that
room knew when those men outside the fire died that there was
no escape of the fire that was inside. And the king looking
in there, and he said, he had to ask the question. He was in
the room. It was just moments ago they threw him in there.
He knew the answer, but what he saw was so amazing, he thought
to himself, I got to ask to see if something's wrong. He said,
we threw three in there, didn't we? They said, yes. He said,
there's four. And the fourth one looks like
who? It looks like he looks like the
son of God. We saw in the garden when the
Lord had risen that he couldn't be recognized unless he opened
their eyes. Martha said she thought she was
talking to a gardener. This is a man that she knew and
that had been buried three days ago and she didn't recognize
him. We cannot see the Lord unless he opens our eyes and we see
him. But He says, there were three men in there, but now I
see four. And they come out of that. And it says that the smoke
didn't have effect on them. They came out and He said, your
God is God. This is a picture of us and what
we have coming to us. We've sinned. And what is the
punishment for sin? It's death. It's eternal death
forever. And this fire is a picture of
the wrath of God. That's what we have coming to
us. Sin is punished by the wrath of God. He's a holy God. He must
punish sin. There's no way around that. He
can't be holy and not punish sin. So as sinners, this is what
we have coming. So how in the world are we not
going to have this? Because if the Lord Jesus Christ
comes to us, if He is the one who consumes the fire for us,
He didn't come out of the fire. The three of them came out of
the fire. and the fire had no effect on them. This is Noah
in the ark. We're put in the ark. These stories,
pictures often support and provide evidence for so many different
aspects. We talked about Rahab before and seeing how he came
to save sinners. Well, we can see how he kept
her until the end. You know those days when that
army was marching around the city and she believed that that
army was going to take the city. She believed the city was doomed
and that army was marching around the city. You know everyone in
that city was scared to death what was going to happen. And
she had been told, if you stay in the house with the red cord,
if you are under the blood, then you'll be okay. And then at the
end of that, they all shout, and the whole city and the walls
and every single thing crumbles to the ground, but her house. The only place is the one with
the blood. That's the Passover when it says we're going to kill
the firstborn, but put blood on the post and the little. And
if I see the blood, I'll pass over you. That's our only hope. That's our only hope from death,
is that we're under the blood of Christ. That's our only hope. What about Noah and the ark?
I just said that. The only way to avoid the flood
To avoid the apocalypse before the end of the world, before
all of that stuff, is being in the Lord Jesus Christ. And in
that, did Noah think to himself, well he said it was going to
rain, maybe I need to build a boat. No, he didn't even know what
a boat was. The Lord had to tell him everything to do, had to
give him everything he had. He built the ark as a picture
of Christ, and then they were sealed in the ark. In Christ. Turn with me to Luke 23. I'm
almost done. Luke 23. In Luke 23, we can see all three things that
we've talked about. that the Lord came to save sinners.
He saves them by His grace and He keeps them. Look at verse
39 of Luke 23. And one of the malefactors, which
were hanged, railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself
and us. But the other answering rebuked
him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same
condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we
receive the due reward of our deeds. But this man hath done
nothing amiss. Verse 42, And he said unto Jesus,
Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. This is another
illustration that we can see. This man who hung on the tree
beside him, he deserved death. His actions had been judged by
the law to be killed. And he understands that. And
he says, but the Lord, but this man hasn't done anything wrong.
He's the innocent one. And he says, verse 42, Jesus,
Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And what does
the Lord say to him? And Jesus said unto him, Verily
I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise. The other thief said, If Thou
be Christ, save Thyself and us. Well, by Him not saving Himself,
He was saving His people. He had to die. Our sins had to
be paid for. He took our sin and gave us His
righteousness. For by one man sin entered into
the world, and by one man righteousness Our Lord Jesus Christ became
a man and did what we couldn't do. He had to provide us. He
had to be perfect. And in doing so, then He could
give us His righteousness. And this is an amazing thought.
And I don't understand all of this, but it tells us He died
on the cross to save His people. And the last thing He said was
what? It's finished. It's done. How can we be sure
that's what He was talking about? Because He kept saying, I came
to save sinners. I came to save my people. That's
why He came and He did it on the cross. And think about that
man, that thief at the end where the Lord said to him, Today shalt
thou be with me in paradise. I don't know what day our day
is, but one day, today, will be with Him in paradise because
of what He's done by His grace. In Exodus 23 it says, He has
prepared a place for His people and He has sent an angel to keep
us and to bring us there. He's done it all. He's done everything. How thankful I am that the Lord
has given us pictures of all these things. And from this message,
isn't it wonderful to know that the Lord Jesus Christ came to
save sinners, that He saved them by His grace, and that He will
keep His children until the end. Period. Don't doubt it. Don't question it. It says it.
Everything He's ever said All has come to pass. All of it. There are so many examples in
the scriptures of things that men did trying to prove Him wrong. Doing everything they could.
And you can't. He is God. And by definition,
everything He does comes to pass. He is truth. He is life. He's the only place. All right.
I hope that's a blessing.