Mark's Gospel chapter 8. I appreciate what Brother Baker
had to say this morning about the seeds being sown. Someone made the statement when
he announced a couple of weeks ago that that's what he would
be looking at, those four grounds, the four seeds sown on the four
grounds, Someone said they were anxious to see what ground their
heart was. And I tell you, we've all seen
the two grounds he was talking about this morning, haven't we?
When I think about that and when I listen to that, I see some
of those things in me now. Satan coming, stealing so much
of the Word from your heart as you read it and as you hear it.
And two, when you get into trouble, sometimes you just think, just
throw up your hands and quit. We find a struggle in us, don't we? We're constantly, and we
have to be this way, we're constantly looking. Our sight is set on
another world. And we're constantly winning
and wooing and teaching and subduing our hearts to that end. This
world is not our end. It's just the means to get to
another world. either glory or damnation. And
boy, the heart is so important, isn't it? Keep your heart with
all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. So how
the Word affects us is so important. It's so important. It will either,
as Brother Larry said, it will either win us, it will bow us,
bring us to faith, bring us to repentance, or it will harden
us. It will bring us in or shut us
out, make us happy or make us mad. But it will work. It will
work. Here in Mark in our text, in
Mark chapter 8 and verse 22, a very peculiar incident in the
life of our Savior when He was here. And let's read it. And
He cometh to Bethsaida, and they bring a blind man unto Him, and
besought Him to touch Him. They begged Him to touch Him. And he took the blind man by
the hand and led him out of the town. And when he had spit on
his eyes and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw anything
ought. And he looked up and said, I
see men as trees walking. After that he put his hands again
upon his eyes, and made him look up, and he was restored, and
saw every man clearly. And he sent him away to his house,
saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town."
Now that's a very peculiar incident, and we never see this like this
before in the life of our Lord Jesus. But I want to look at
every verse, I want to begin by looking in verse 22 where
it was said here, they brought a blind man unto him. Now that was very gracious, wasn't
it? How they pitied this poor blind man. The time and labor
that they took to bring this man to the Savior, to the healer
of the blind. We often see this in the Lord's
ministry. People bringing other people
to the Lord. You remember the four men that
had the friend that had the palsy? He was paralyzed and he couldn't
walk. And they took him to the Lord
Jesus and couldn't get in the house. So they got him some way
up on the roof and tore up the tiles from the roof and led him
down in the midst of where the Lord Jesus was preaching to heal
him. And the Bible says they brought
him to the Lord Jesus. Remember the mother that brought
her daughter to the Lord? and cried, Lord Jesus, have mercy
upon my daughter. She is grievously vexed with
the devil. Have mercy upon her. Remember
the children that their mother brought to the Lord Jesus and
begged Him to lay His hands upon them and bless them? You find
this all in the Gospels. Men and women and mothers bringing
friends and children to the Lord Jesus to bless them and heal
them were told in the Gospel that they brought unto Him all
sick people that were taken with diseases and torments and those
that was possessed with devils and He healed them. And another
place we're told this, that great multitudes come unto Him, having
with them the lame, the blind, the maimed, the blind, and others. And they cast them down at Jesus'
feet, and He healed them all. You remember when He was in the
country, they called the country of the Gennesaret. And when they
had knowledge that He was there, they went out and gathered all
their sick folks together. And they brought them for Him
to heal them. So when He was here, you see
this all the time. People going out and getting
the blind. That's what they did here in our text. They knew this
blind man and they brought him to the Lord Jesus for Him to
touch him and heal him. This is what happened here at
Bethsaida. And you know what? We think these people have advantage
over us. And I guess in a way they did.
They could see Him. They could physically hear Him.
But you know something, brothers and sisters, they came to the
Lord Jesus the same way you and I come to Him. They come by faith. There's only one way to come
to Him now or then, and that was by believing Him by faith. Those four men that brought that
man paralyzed and led him down before Jesus, you know what the
Lord said? He saw their faith. He saw their
faith. What does that mean? They said,
if we can get him to Christ, he will be healed. They believed
Him. They believed Him. And those
two blind men who cried after the Lord to be healed of their
sight, He brought them into the house and He said, do you believe
that I am able to heal you? You believe I'm able to do this?
They said, Lord, we believe. And He healed them there. Those
who come to the Lord Jesus to be healed and those they brought
to be healed, they all came just like you come and just like I
come. They come by faith. They come
by faith. Not everyone brought their sick
loved ones to the Lord. Some of them couldn't come. They
came to the Lord themselves and left their loved ones at home
and pleaded for them before the Lord. Remember Jairus that had
the 12-year-old daughter that was dying? And he said, Lord,
my little daughter is at the point of death. If you would,
come and heal her. Where's she at? Don't you have
her with her? She's too bad. I can't even bring her from the
house. She's on her bed. She's dying.
He said, I'll come and heal her. I'll come and heal her. You can't
bring her to me. I'll go to her. I'll come and
heal her. What did the Lord say to Jairus?
Be not afraid. Only believe. Faith is it, isn't
it? When we come to Christ, it's
by faith. When we bring others to Him, it's by faith. Other
times, people who had sick folks and dying loved ones, They not
only didn't come themselves to plead their cause, they couldn't
get away. They sent others to do it. They
sent others to do it. Remember Martha and Mary? Their
brother Lazarus was so sick, they couldn't come. They couldn't
leave him. And what they did was send somebody else to the
Lord Jesus. And they came. And the Scripture
says they sent word saying, Lord, he whom thou loveth is sick. And there was a centurion that
had a servant that was dying, and he loved him so dearly, he
sent the Jews to the Lord Jesus. And they said, there's a fellow
that has a servant, and he's very sick. Would you come and
heal him? You and I are apt to think that
these people have such a great advantage over us because they
could see Him. Because of the physical aspect. And in a way I suppose they did.
But brothers and sisters, in a way they don't. We have the
same access to Him they had by faith. In whom we have access
by faith unto this grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope
of the glory of God. Look over here in Matthew's Gospel
chapter 8. I want you to hold our text.
Look in Matthew's Gospel chapter 8. Here we have a very good example
of this. Here is a very good story that
tells us about a man who had a strong faith in our Master
that He would heal His servant. Here in Matthew chapter 8 and
look in verse 5. And when Jesus was entered into
Capernaum, There came unto him a centurion, he was a Roman soldier,
had men under him. And he was begging him and saying,
Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously
tormented. And Jesus said unto him, I will
come and heal him. The centurion answered and said,
Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but
speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man
under authority, having soldiers under me, and I say unto this
man, Go, and he goes. To another come, and he cometh.
And to my servant do this, and he doeth it. When Jesus heard
it, he marveled and said, to them that followed him. Verily
I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. In verse 13 he says, Go your
way as thou hast believed, so it be done unto thee. And his
servant was healed from that same hour. He said, I have not
found so great a faith. And I want you to know what he
said about this faith. Look what his faith brought him
to say in verse 7 and verse 8. He said, Lord, You don't have
to come to my house. You don't have to see my servant.
You don't have to put your hands upon him. He said, Just speak
the Word and he shall be whole. Look here at the faith He had
and the power of Christ's Word. There's no such thing as distance,
is there? Distance hinders us, but distance
don't hinder our Lord. We're upon this earth and He's
in heaven, but what about it? He just speaks and it's done. That's the power that He had.
He told the Jews, He said, Am I God at hand? That's what you think. He said,
you think, boy, He's a God at hand. If He was here, He'd be
a God here. He said, am I a God at hand and
not a God in heaven? Wherever He is, He's God, isn't
He? And He's not limited by time
or space or distance. And all He has to do is just
speak the Word. And that's what this man said,
Lord, just speak the Word and my servant shall be healed. Speak
the Word. You believe this morning, brothers
and sisters, there's that kind of power in the Word of Christ.
I believe it, don't you? I believe it. I know as Brother
Larry said this morning, we've got this written Word, and just
by itself, it's just some old words on paper, isn't it? But
boy, when He speaks it, my words are Spirit and they're alive.
And when He speaks it, it's effectual. And that's what this man said.
Just speak it. Just speak it. That sort of applies to us today,
doesn't it? We've got loved ones lost, haven't we? We've got relatives,
we've got co-workers, we've got neighbors that are sin sick and
dying. And here, here is the way we
take them to the Lord. Lord, just speak the Word and
they'll live. They'll live. Just speak the
Word. Secondly, his faith was in our Lord's authority. Oh,
this is amazing. You're what he recognized to
be in Jesus Christ of Nazareth. He said, Lord, I'm a centurion,
and I've got men under me, and I've got servants under me. And
he says, I have authority. And all I say is, you do this,
and they do it. You come and they come. You go
and they go. All I have to do is speak and they do it. I have
authority over them. And you know what he's saying?
Lord, you've got authority over this sickness. My centurion's
dying. All you've got to do is speak
the Word. Everything is subject to your authority. Man, that's faith, isn't it? You and I know people, every
lost person, though they may not admit it, they're bound.
They are slaves to sin. They are servants of the devil.
They are in bondage. But listen, everything that binds
them, sin, Satan, the curse of the law, everything that binds
them is subject to the Lord Jesus Christ. And all He has to do
is say, Let Him go. And they have to let Him go. In this case, it was sickness.
What about sin? Just let Him go. Loose Him. Let
Him go. And they have to let Him go.
Why? That's the authority that Jesus
Christ has. He said, Lord, You don't have
to come and lay Your hands on My servant and touch him. Just
speak the Word from a distance. He may have been over the hill.
It may have been ten miles away. We don't know where he was. It
makes no difference. You have all authority. That's
faith, isn't it? Oh, he said, I've not found so
great a faith as this. I've not found so great a faith
as this. This is why we don't come here and tell a bunch of
stories. This is why we come here and teach the Word. Why
we come here and preach the Word. Because when he speaks through
the Word, things happen. Things happen. Got somebody and
they're just bound up in sin and slavery to Satan. And the
Lord just speaks. The chains are broken. They're
free. On the authority of His blessed
Word. But there's another twist of this story that I read to
you here in Matthew chapter 8. And it's found in Luke 7. And
you may remember this. And Matthew doesn't mention this,
but Luke does. There's another little twist
to this, and when you get into the little details about it,
here's something that happened that Matthew didn't tell us about.
This centurion didn't come himself. It seems to indicate that he
did, but when you study it closer, the Scripture says that he sent
the Jews. He was a Roman centurion. Didn't
feel worthy to approach unto the Lord. Didn't feel worthy
that the Lord should come into his house. But he sent these
Jews. And the Jews came and pleaded his cause before the Lord. They said, Lord, he's billed
us a synagogue. He's been good to us. Would you
come and heal his servant? And then when the Lord Jesus
was coming, He sent some more Jews out. And He made this statement,
Lord, I'm not worthy that you should come under my roof. Just
speak the Word only. And why is that? Well, here's
the difference. If this centurion had been there
before the Lord, he could have watched his face. He could have
saw his facial expressions and maybe got some indication whether
or not he was willing to come and heal his servant. He had
nothing physically to depend upon or to encourage him at all. He wasn't even there. Boy, that's
faith, isn't it? Saw nothing. Felt nothing. His
faith was in the Word of Jesus Christ. His faith was in the
authority of Christ. And that's what he pleaded the
cause of his poor servant. Lord, you speak the Word. Lord,
you have the authority. And something else I think we
should think about in this, it didn't seem to enter this centurion's
mind whether or not the Lord had any concern at all for his
dying servant. That didn't enter into his mind
as far as we know, did it? Does he even care about my servant?
As far as we know, he never even thought of that. Does he even
love him? Does he even care? You ever had thoughts like that?
I have. Lord, do you even love, are you
even concerned about lost people? I'm praying for that person,
but does he even care? You know what I think? This centurion
thought, if he thought of such things like that, you know what
I imagine entered his mind? I know I care. I hear how shallow his breath
is, and I'm concerned. I've felt of his brow, and I
see the fever wracking his brain. I care. And I know he don't have
long if the Lord don't intervene. I care. And here's the thing,
brothers and sisters. If we care about lost people,
don't you think He cares? If we convince ourselves that
He don't care, then we're not going to care either. Don't we
underestimate our God? Does He care? He cares, doesn't He? He cares. The Lord Jesus was seeing especially
the scribes and Pharisees and probably even some of His own
disciples. When they had a feast, they were
inviting their friends and they were inviting the rich and the
famous. and those that could afford to
bring a dish. And he said, don't do that. When
you have a feast, go out and find the lame, and the blind,
and the maimed, the helpless, and you bring them in. And then
he told her the parable where the man made a great supper and
sent his servant out to invite those that were bidden. And who
did he say to bring? The maimed, the blind, and the
lame and the haught. Brothers and sisters, I believe
that our Lord has more pity and more concern for our lost loved
ones than you and I could ever have. That's what I believe. That's what I believe. And I
think when we realize that, and the more we realize that, The more our attitude will be
like the attitude of these people here in Mark chapter 8 and verse
22. And they begged Him. They besought
Him that He would touch this blind man and give him sight. Why did they do that? What provoked
these men to bring this blind man to the Lord Jesus? And they
had such an attitude, they pleaded with Him. They begged Him. I think probably if you look
at the Greek, it would say they were begging him. I wonder what they said. I wonder if they didn't say,
Lord, would you look at him? Lord, look, he's pitiful. He's
pitiful. And maybe it was his daughter
was among them. Maybe she was there saying, Lord,
he's never seen my face. Or maybe it was his mother that
said, Lord, I've never seen any life in his eyes. Will you please
give him sight? Maybe it was his neighbor saying,
Lord, I've seen that poor man stumble. I've seen bruises all
over his body. He can't see. Lord, please have
mercy upon him. They come begging for him. Why? They knew the Lord was able to
give him sight. Don't you pity people that can't
see? I'm talking about spiritually. They just can't see. Bless their
hearts, they can't see. They can't see their desperate
condition. They can't see the helplessness
of the sinful, perishing state they're in. They can't. They
can't see. What should we do for somebody
like that? Why not go to the Lord and beg Him Why not go to
Him like this centurion did and said, Lord, just speak the Word
and his eyes will be opened? They really don't have an advantage
over us. Really, they don't. We can come
today just like they can and say, Lord, touch him. Lord, I
pity that man. Open that poor man's eyes. Elijah and his servant was in
Dothan. They got up one morning and his
servant went outside and they were surrounded by the Syrian
army. They were going to kidnap them
and take them back up to Syria and who knows what they were going
to do with them. And it disturbed that servant to death. He began
to cry, Oh Master, we're in trouble now. Look at all these soldiers. And Elijah said, Lord open his
eyes. He's blind. He can't see what
I'm seeing. And He opened His eyes and He
seen angels and chariots of fire. And He said, My, there is more
with us than is with Him. That's what we need, isn't it?
Lord, please open their eyes that they may see the beauty
and the merits of the Son of God to save them. His power to
save them. His willingness to save them.
Lord, they can't see it. They just can't see it. Open
their eyes. Don't you think that's what we
should do? Don't you think that's what we should do? Cure that much for people. Now here in verse 23, quickly
look at this in verse 23. And He took the blind man by
the hand and let him out of the town. Let him out of the town. And over here in chapter 7 in
verse 32, they brought another man to the Lord Jesus. He was
deaf and had an impediment in his speech. And they bring him
to one that was deaf and had an impediment in his speech.
And they begged him to put his hand upon him, and he took him
aside from the multitude. This is what the Lord did sometime. took Him aside, got along with
Him. This is what we love to see the
Lord do. Boy, just shut somebody up away
from the crowd, away from the hustle and bustle of life, and
get them along, just Him and them. Every time in the Scriptures
you find where somebody got along with the Lord, something good
come out of it. Jacob was scared to death of
his brother Esau. And the Bible says he was left
alone. And there wrestled with him a
man. The Lord wrestled with him. And
Jacob wouldn't let him go until the Lord blessed him. And he
couldn't call in any help. There was nobody there. He was
going to have to defeat the Lord Himself. Or he wasn't going to
be blessed. And old Bunyan said the Lord
was wrestling against Jacob with His left hand and wrestling in
Jacob with His right hand. And the Lord couldn't defeat
him. So the Lord blessed him. He blessed him. It's good to
get along with the Lord. It was said of Daniel, Daniel,
I was left alone and I saw this great vision. It was said of
the Lord Jesus, there in John chapter 8, that he was left alone
and the woman, the sinful, adulterous woman was standing there in the
midst, just him and her. And he said, neither do I condemn
thee. Go and sin no more. Oh, it's good, ain't it? It's
good when the Lord takes you by the hand. You know, it's apprehensive. It's apprehensive. It's apprehensive. Boy, I tell you, it can even
be scary and lonely. Can you imagine how this fellow
felt when the Lord got him to the arm? He didn't know where
he was going. He didn't know who had him. Where's
he taking me? What's he going to do with me? But the Lord has to get a person
along, doesn't He? That's what He did. And this
is strange. Look at this. And when he had
spit on his eyes, I'm just a poor old ignorant nobody that I can't
read Greek. I don't know anything about anything
else but just a little bit about language. And when it said here
that he spit on his eyes, I just take him for what he said. He
didn't say he spit on his hands and rubbed it on his eyes. It
said he spit on his eyes. I think he spit on this eye that
was probably all mattered up, and then he got some more slob
in his mouth and he spit on this eye. Both eyes was full of slob
and spit. Who ever heard of such a thing?
Ain't that amazing? Everywhere you read in the Scriptures,
every single time when you read about somebody spitting on somebody
else, it was offensive. It was a shame. Boy, that was
fighting. That was a fighting action when
you did that. Leviticus 15 tells us if somebody
spit on someone else, that person that was spit on had to go take
a bath, wash their clothes, and they were unclean the rest of
the day. If you were spit in the wind, blew it on somebody
else, you was unclean. Spit is unclean. It is today,
isn't it? Diseases spread by spit. When
Marian had sinned against Moses and said, Boy, the Lord is speaking
by us too, not just Moses. The Lord came down and afflicted
her with leprosy. And Moses began to cry out, O
Lord, have mercy upon her and heal her. And here is what the
Lord said, If her father had spit in her face, she had been
ashamed for seven days. And they put her out of the camp
for seven days. If a man refused to marry his
dead brother's wife and raise up children, here's what she
was supposed to do. She had to take him to court,
pull his shoes off, and spit in his face. And that changed
that man's name forever. From then on, they called him,
the house of him whose shoes is loosed. Spit. It was a shame. And Job said,
the young men do not hesitate to spit in my face. It was offensive. It was disrespect. And we are
told that they spit in the face of the Lord Jesus. They spit
right in His face. He hid not His face from shame
and spitting. It showed contempt. It showed
shame. But when our Lord spit on this
man, it was a blessing. Ain't that amazing? We're told
other times that He did something like this. In chapter 7 and verse
33, I just read it to you, He spit, He spit there probably
in His hands and rubbed the saliva on that man's tongue. Can you
imagine that? Can you imagine that? That makes
me almost sick to think about. Don't you? That's what he said
he did. And then John chapter 9, he spit
on the ground and made spittle and put the clay on this man's
eyes and said, go wash in the pool of Colum. And he came back
to see it. So our Lord takes that which
by human nature is unclean and shameful and a reproach and even
offensive. But when He does it, it's a blessing. When He does it, it's healing. Crucifixion upon the cross is
a most shameful thing. It's an offensive thing. Yet when Christ was crucified,
it's our salvation. The Jewish nation counted the
cross of Christ so offensive and shameful that Paul said,
I glory in the cross of Jesus Christ. Can you see some of these
Pharisees and scribes, if they were here and they saw this from
a distance, and they saw Jesus spit in that man's eyes, they
thought, man, what a shame. Must be mad at him. Oh my goodness,
I couldn't take that. Well, you couldn't if somebody
else did it to you. But Him, He was the source of healing. Oh, it makes you want to say,
Lord, spit in my eyes. Just walk up to me and spit right
in my eyes. There's more merit in His spit
than there is in all our works to do us good. Spit. He spit on the ground. Something
else we see here in verse 23, the last part of verse 23, this
is interesting. And we never see this. This is
what's so amazing about this. We never see the Lord spit in
somebody's eyes. And we never see this either.
Look at this in the last part of verse 23. And He put His hands
upon him and asked him if he saw anything. And he looked up
and said, I see men as trees walking. After that, he put his
hands again upon his eyes and made him look up, and he was
restored and saw every man clearly. This was the only time that the
Lord gradually healed somebody. Every time before, especially
the blind man, he just said, you know, Lord, that I might
receive Messiah. And he said, go your way. And immediately,
the leper come to him. He said, Lord, if you will, you
can make me clean. He said, I will immediately.
The Lord did not have to gradually heal this man. But I think there's
a good lesson in it for you and for me. It's not any weakness
in Him. He does everything with a purpose.
Why did He do this? There are some spiritual lessons
in this. And the first one, let's consider
for just a minute, is this. Doesn't this show us? Doesn't
He teach us by this? That salvation is a process. It's progressive. He's not saving
us all of a sudden, is He? He's doing sort of like He's
doing this man here. He's opened our eyes. And we say like this poor man
too, I can't see! I can't see! Do you ever think
that? Lord, I can't see! You can't
see! Well, I can't see much. I can see men in the streets
walking. I can see, but I just can't hardly perceive anything.
I want to see better. And sometimes when He opens our
understanding, I tell you, He opens it so little that we can't
hardly understand much more than what we did before, at least
in our own sense, in our own apprehension. And what do we
say? Lord, open my eyes. Lord, open
my eyes. I want more. I want to see more.
I want to see more. Grace, grace begun can seem very
dim in our own apprehensions. Will our Lord stop there and
leave us like this? Will He leave us in this condition,
this burly sin? No, He won't. That's not His
purpose. What's He going to do? Well,
just what He did here. After that, He put His hands
again upon His eyes. Where the Lord Jesus begins a
work, He'll continue that work. In your own eyes, it may seem
very little. But if He began it, He'll keep it up. Being confident
of this very thing that's begun a good work in you will perform
it until the day of Jesus Christ. And He'll just come back again.
He'll put His hands on you again, and again, and again. He'll speak
again, and again, and again. Just like this. And here's going to
be the end of it all. He was restored and saw all men. Complete restoration. That's
what's going to happen. In the consummation of this,
His people that He's begun a good work in are going to be completely
restored. Even their bodies. Here's another
lesson too. It may teach us that our Lord
doesn't always work in a routine manner. You know the routine way that
He healed people? He touched them. He touched them. And people got in such a habit
of Him doing that, that's why everybody comes and says, would
you touch Him? Would you touch Him? Everybody kept saying, would
you touch Him? Why do you want me to touch Him? That's the way
you heal people. Boy, He didn't do that this time, did He? Oh,
He touched Him, but He touched Him twice. And He didn't just
touch Him, He spit on Him. They said, we never saw Him do
that before. Well, that's just the way the
Lord works. You can't put Him in a routine. We know He works
through His Word. The Spirit works through His
Word. But I'm telling you, Walt, there's such a wide variety of
the way He works, you can't pin Him down into one routine. I
may have told you the story. I still think about it and I
chuckle every time I think about the story that Martin Lloyd-Jones
taught about these two blind men, that the Lord healed. One,
He put mud on his eyes and sent him to the pool to wash and he
comes in. And the other one, he just said immediately, okay,
you can see. And he went in. And Lloyd-Jones
imagined the conversation between these two guys. He said, here
comes the guy. And he asked the other guy, he
said, how did you feel? when he put the mud on your eyes.
And he said, what mud? He said, I never felt any mud. He said, no, you remember. Then
you heard him spit. When he spit, you heard him messing
around in the ground. Then when he put the mud, how
did you feel when he put... He said, man, I don't know anything
about mud. All he did was told me. Yeah, you can see it. I went
seeing. He said, you didn't feel any
mud? No, I didn't feel anything. He said, well, man, you're blind
as a bat. You still can't see. And Lord Jones said, here's where
you had your first denomination born, the muddites and the anti-muddites. And I used to think when the
Lord first saved me, I thought everybody's experience of grace
had to correspond with mine. And it wasn't long I found out
the Lord didn't save everybody exactly the way He saved me. And here's the thing. Did He
do it? Did He open your eyes? That's it, isn't it? That's it.
I went through a deep conviction. A deep conviction. He may not
have put you through that long deep conviction like He did with
me. But here's the thing. Can you say this? I once was
blind, but now I see. And you know who gives you your
sight. That's it, isn't it? That's it.
And thirdly, I think we can learn from this gradual healing here
something else, that He gave this man just enough to keep
him hoping for more. He said, well, I can't see much,
but I can see. And if He did that to me, He
can give me clearer sight. So He put him to hoping, didn't
He? Put him to hoping. And that's the way He does us.
He gives us just enough to keep us hoping. This man was in the
dark, and the Lord gave him sight. Not perfect, but enough to make
him know, if the Lord has did this much for me, He can give
me more. There is grace, and there is
more grace. Where did that come from? There
is strength, and there is more strength. Where did that come
from? There is wisdom and love and understanding. And there
is more love and more strength. My little hope can turn into
a great hope, and my great hope can turn into hope realized. He gives us enough to just keep
us hoping, doesn't he? Keep us cleaving, keep us coming
back, keep us looking. And my last point is this, finally,
my last point is this. Verse 26, "...neither go into
the town, nor tell it to any in the town." Now, as far as
we know, if you look at all of these places the Lord told these
people this, this is the only one that did what He told them
to do. As far as we know. I won't have you to turn over
there, but in Mark chapter 1 verse 43, when He healed that leper,
and He did this to different people, He straightly charged
him Don't you tell anyone. And boy, that word, straightly,
it means strictly, narrowly, closely, sternly, to threaten,
to smort, to be angry, to have indignation. And what he's saying
is, don't you dare go tell anybody what I've done for you. And this
was the only man, as far as we know, that did. That leper and
so many of the others, the Scripture said, they went and blazed broad
the matter of what the Lord had did for them. He healed this
Gadarean and He told the Gadarean, He said, you go and tell your
friends and family and neighbors what great things the Lord has
done for you. There is a spiritual lesson in
this. And I think it is this. This is what I get from it. Don't
feel, if the Lord saves you and if He has saved you, don't feel
like you're under some strict command to go blab it to everybody. You ever get the feeling like,
boy, you just got to tell everybody, and you think, and you get burdened
about it, and you get this conviction, I just feel like I need to tell
everybody. I just really need, and you don't
want to. You just feel this awful legalistic
conviction. I was working one time at the
filter station and some religious nut jumped out of the car and
started speaking in tongues. And I guess he felt like he just
needed... And I got tickled at him. I just
started laughing at him. I couldn't help it. We can cast
our pearls before the swine very easy, can't we? The Lord's not
burdening you. to go out here and get in the
supermarket and start screaming out, hallelujah, the Lord's done
this or that for me. He's not. Probably the devil,
probably the flash, but not Him. But here's the thing I take from
this. If you just can't keep it in,
if your heart's just bubbling over, and you've got to tell
somebody, and the Lord opens the door for you to tell somebody,
then there's a good time to tell them. If you just can't keep
from telling them, Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will
declare what the Lord has done for my soul. Lord bless His Word. Let's pray.