SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: Good morning, friends.
SPEAKER_01: I want to invite you to give praise to our God with me for what God has given to us here at Faith.
SPEAKER_01: The last six to eight weeks or so have been really stretching here at Faith.
SPEAKER_01: We've had weddings and funerals and all kinds of things going on.
SPEAKER_01: And I am so thankful that the Lord has given us a pastoral team where they can step in and fill the pulpit and help me out and bring God's word to us.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm so thankful that we have so many able and willing musicians to be able to step in and lead us in worship when our normal worship leaders are not able to be here.
SPEAKER_01: Webb has been speaking at Cooperstown at Automatics the last few days.
SPEAKER_01: And Pastor Jeremy's there and Joe Hogberg with them.
SPEAKER_01: And so we're missing quite a few people today, but the Lord has just gifted us with so many individuals.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm so thankful for what the Lord has has done here among us.
SPEAKER_01: And thank you for those who all participate.
SPEAKER_01: I'm so thankful too for those who make the coffee on Sunday mornings.
SPEAKER_01: I might be a bit jittery this morning, so you just beware, right?
SPEAKER_01: Please take your Bible, Matthew chapter 9.
SPEAKER_01: I'd like to walk us through this passage this morning as we pick up again in Matthew's gospel.
SPEAKER_01: We are nearing the end of a major section in Matthew where there's a shift, a change taking place.
SPEAKER_01: From chapter 10 through the next few chapters.
SPEAKER_01: After that, the focus is on the disciples.
SPEAKER_01: Up until this point, Matthew has been primarily interested in showing us again and again and again how Christ fulfills the Word of God.
SPEAKER_01: He did not come to push it away, but to bring it to fulfillment.
SPEAKER_01: So we're nearing the end of that section where we have two more miracles taking place.
SPEAKER_01: If you would like to read Matthew chapter 9, beginning in verse 27 through verse 34.
SPEAKER_01: When he entered the house, the blind men came to him, and Jesus said to them, Do you believe that I am able to do this?
SPEAKER_01: They said to him, Yes, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Then he touched their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it done to you.
SPEAKER_01: And their eyes were opened.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus sternly warned them, See to it that no one knows about it.
SPEAKER_01: But they went away and spread his fame through all that district.
SPEAKER_01: And as they were going away, behold, a demon-oppressed man who was mute was brought to him.
SPEAKER_01: And when the demon had been cast out, the mute man spoke.
SPEAKER_01: And the crowds marveled, saying, Never was anything like this seen in Israel.
SPEAKER_01: But the Pharisees said, He casts out demons by the prince of demons.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Many of you, I can see this morning, are like me, and you you have to wear spectacles, right?
SPEAKER_01: You have to wear glasses.
SPEAKER_01: I've had trouble seeing for most of my life.
SPEAKER_01: If my memory is correct, between my second and third grade years, my family took a vacation to Glacier National Park in Montana.
SPEAKER_01: And that vacation may be the most frustrating vacation of my life.
SPEAKER_01: Because as we were driving along in the beautiful country of Glacier, my parents were talking all about everything that they were seeing.
SPEAKER_01: And I couldn't see it.
SPEAKER_01: Now, some of it may have been that I was, you know, a second grader, seven, eight years old, and was just oblivious to everything going on around me.
SPEAKER_01: But much of it was I couldn't see.
SPEAKER_01: So a few weeks after that, I had my very first pair of glasses.
SPEAKER_01: And I have needed help seeing ever since.
SPEAKER_01: In high school, this new creation came out called disposable contact lenses.
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, hey, I'm going to try those.
SPEAKER_01: So I tried them.
SPEAKER_01: And they were fantastic.
SPEAKER_01: They were really enjoyable.
SPEAKER_01: But the problem with disposable contacts is that they're designed to be disposable.
SPEAKER_01: And me, being a cheap high schooler, didn't want to pay for more contacts, and so I kept them in too long and got an infection in my eyes.
SPEAKER_01: And after that, contacts aren't so enjoyable anymore.
SPEAKER_01: So I went back to glasses.
SPEAKER_01: And then in my mid-30s, heaven came to earth in the form of LASIK surgery.
SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you, that was so fantastic.
SPEAKER_01: Nearly 30 years of corrective lenses had stolen away the joy of perfect vision.
SPEAKER_01: And when perfect vision came back, let me tell you, that was fun.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you how bad it was.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: Tell you the change that was made.
SPEAKER_01: From that second or third grade year on, I had to get a stronger prescription for my glasses just about every single year.
SPEAKER_01: So by the time that I had LASIK, I was really in poor shape.
SPEAKER_01: So we talk about 2020 vision being being perfect vision.
SPEAKER_01: It actually can get a little better than that, but 2020 vision, right?
SPEAKER_01: When I had laser vision correction, my my vision was 2550.
SPEAKER_01: Within a few hours, I was seeing it 2015.
SPEAKER_01: It was fantastic.
SPEAKER_01: I felt much like I'm sure these blind men felt.
SPEAKER_01: Figured it was just better for everybody if I finally just gave up and went back to glasses again.
SPEAKER_01: But then it got worse, and so now I'm at bifocals.
SPEAKER_01: Just keeps getting better, right, folks?
SPEAKER_01: I've needed help to see for all but about 12 years of my life.
SPEAKER_01: And after laser correction for six to seven years or so of perfect vision, I felt, boy, I I think I can understand a little bit about what those blind men felt.
SPEAKER_01: It was so freeing, so so wonderful to be able to see perfectly.
SPEAKER_01: Now, as helpful and as exciting as sight may be, I'm here to tell you that it is not the most important thing in life.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, sight takes a back seat to one other sense, the sense of hearing.
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's a truth that even these blind men would affirm.
SPEAKER_01: It's better.
SPEAKER_01: It's better to hear the good news of Christ than to see with your eyes all of his miracles.
SPEAKER_01: It is better, in other words, to listen to a biblical sermon than to watch Jesus perform a miracle.
SPEAKER_01: I'd like you to notice the theme of sight that's woven through this passage.
SPEAKER_01: So we start in verses 27 and 28 with blind men, right?
SPEAKER_01: Twice, twice Matthew emphasizes to us that these men cannot see.
SPEAKER_01: There is no sight, there's no ability to observe.
SPEAKER_01: After being given sight in verse 30, Jesus says to them, Alright, now see.
SPEAKER_01: See that no one knows about it.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 33, the crowds are going to respond by saying, This has never been seen before.
SPEAKER_01: We'll touch on this a little bit next week in verse 36.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus saw the crowds.
SPEAKER_01: All throughout this passage is woven this idea of being able or not being able to see.
SPEAKER_01: What is a little less clear but still present is the idea of the blinding of the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: The blinding of the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: And we need to consider some background information here to make sure we don't miss this.
SPEAKER_01: Hold your finger here and look over at Matthew chapter 23.
SPEAKER_01: So this is near the end of the book.
SPEAKER_01: It's near the end of Christ's earthly life, and we know that the end of the story is good news, right?
SPEAKER_01: Christ dies, but he rises again, and the tomb is empty.
SPEAKER_01: Well, just before that, before all of that happens, there's some rough interaction between the Lord Jesus and the religious leaders of the day, the Pharisees and the scribes.
SPEAKER_01: And chapter 23 gives us what Jesus has to say to those scribes and Pharisees, and it's not good news.
SPEAKER_01: It's all judgment, and the judgment comes in in this form of woes, woe to you, woe to you.
SPEAKER_01: Over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, Watch out.
SPEAKER_01: You don't recognize what's ahead of you, so you need to open up your eyes and pay attention.
SPEAKER_01: So in verse 13 of Matthew 23, Jesus says, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.
SPEAKER_01: Starts off on a good note, doesn't he?
SPEAKER_01: You shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces.
SPEAKER_01: For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.
SPEAKER_01: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.
SPEAKER_01: You travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 16, Woe to you, blind guides.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 17, you blind fools.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 19, you blind men.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 24, you blind guides.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 26, you blind Pharisee.
SPEAKER_01: You get the you get the hint?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus very clearly says that these religious leaders, by and large, are blind themselves.
SPEAKER_01: Now, are they physically blind?
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: They are not physically blind, but they may as well be.
SPEAKER_01: Because there is something to which they are blind.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what's really important here is what John says in his gospel in John chapter 9.
SPEAKER_01: John chapter 9, John chapter 10, you might remember, is about the Good Shepherd, Jesus saying, I am the Good Shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: But just before that, Jesus makes this statement in John 9, 39.
SPEAKER_01: He says, For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see, those who are blind, may see, and that those who see may become blind.
SPEAKER_01: Those who see may become blind.
SPEAKER_01: Back in Matthew chapter 10, Jesus is about to send his disciples out into ministry by themselves.
SPEAKER_01: That is, without him.
SPEAKER_01: There's a shift in ministry that's taking place.
SPEAKER_01: It's as though the disciples have been in an internship for a while, and now they're going to go out and put what they've learned into practice.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is sending them all throughout Israel, and he's giving them authorities, investing them with responsibility, saying, Go, but I'm not going with you.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, up until this point, has been fulfilling messianic expectation after messianic expectation after messianic expectation.
SPEAKER_01: Everything that the Old Testament said the Messiah would do, Jesus is doing.
SPEAKER_01: Even so, many people are still blind to the truth.
SPEAKER_01: They can't see it, they won't hear it, and they won't receive Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: So, what is Jesus telling the disciples?
SPEAKER_01: Telling them, listen, you need to expect what I receive.
SPEAKER_01: If they won't receive me, they're not going to receive you either.
SPEAKER_01: When you go out, you're going to preach, you're going to teach, you're going to heal, you're going to raise the dead, you're going to cleanse the lepers, you're going to cast out demons, and they're not going to receive you.
SPEAKER_01: Now, in the previous passage of Matthew chapter 9, last time we were here, we saw Jesus' authority to raise the dead.
SPEAKER_01: He raised this 12-year-old girl from the dead.
SPEAKER_01: It's his power, his authority over death and life itself.
SPEAKER_01: Now we see his authority over sight and over hearing.
SPEAKER_01: Again, fulfilling even more messianic prophecies.
SPEAKER_01: Here Jesus fulfills these prophecies about the Messiah coming and opening the eyes of the blind.
SPEAKER_01: But is that all there is?
SPEAKER_01: Or is there more for us to understand here?
SPEAKER_01: Let's look at it and see.
SPEAKER_01: First, let's consider the fact that the sightless see.
SPEAKER_01: The sightless see.
SPEAKER_01: There are two blind men following Jesus and they are crying out, have mercy on us.
SPEAKER_01: Consider the fact that blind men are following.
SPEAKER_01: How are they following?
SPEAKER_01: Today we have seeing eye dogs, right, that can lead the blind to where they're going.
SPEAKER_01: In this day and age, they didn't have seeing eye dogs.
SPEAKER_01: They had friends and family members.
SPEAKER_01: And these were most likely destitute men who are relegated to begging.
SPEAKER_01: So they would have somebody, some friend, some relative, some person who is caring for them, lead them to a place where all the people were gathering so that they could beg for alms.
SPEAKER_01: But they're not begging for alms here, they're following after Jesus because they want mercy.
SPEAKER_01: What is mercy?
SPEAKER_01: Most of us have been in a situation where we understand exactly what mercy is.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, that that time when you went by the speed limit sign and you ignored it, and you're going 10 or 15 or 20 miles an hour over the speed limit, and the patrolman pulls you over, and you know he's got you.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: You deserve the ticket.
SPEAKER_01: But instead of giving you the ticket, he says, just go.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna let you go with a warning, right?
SPEAKER_01: That's mercy.
SPEAKER_01: When you deserve to receive something, discipline, judgment, correction, but it is instead withheld.
SPEAKER_01: It is not given to you.
SPEAKER_01: That is mercy.
SPEAKER_01: When God looks at us and says, You deserve to receive the full punishment for your sins.
SPEAKER_01: You have trespassed, you have gone across my boundaries, you have not followed my law, and God says, I am withholding that judgment, that is mercy.
SPEAKER_01: That is mercy.
SPEAKER_01: These blind men knew, they understood somehow that there was something that they deserved.
SPEAKER_01: Were they thinking about their blindness?
SPEAKER_01: Were they thinking that they deserved their blindness?
SPEAKER_01: Or were they thinking more spiritually, thinking they deserved to have judgment for their sin?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they were thinking, as was common at the time, that something such as blindness was a result of sin.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's more than that, that the closing of the section of Matthew that includes the Sermon on the Mount, the Sermon on the Mount is pinnacle in this section.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's fitting to include this healing as an example of the Beatitudes.
SPEAKER_01: We've seen this in many of the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ, that there seems to be a connection to the person mentioned in the Beatitudes.
SPEAKER_01: Here are two men, poor in spirit, mourning over their sin, hungering for the righteousness that Jesus offers, and seeking mercy.
SPEAKER_01: But it also seems that they're just wanting their eyes opened.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus asked them, Do you believe that I am able to do this?
SPEAKER_01: Well, we find out that there's something missing here, at least it feels like it's missing.
SPEAKER_01: What is the antecedent to this?
SPEAKER_01: I know you don't want to think about grammar on a Sunday morning at 11:30.
SPEAKER_01: That's okay, neither do I.
SPEAKER_01: But we need to.
SPEAKER_01: What is this referring to?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus comes up to you and said, Do you want me to do this?
SPEAKER_01: Do you believe that I can do this?
SPEAKER_01: What's this?
SPEAKER_01: What are you talking about?
SPEAKER_01: Because up until this point there's been no conversation.
SPEAKER_01: It's just the blind men following him and crying out, have mercy.
SPEAKER_01: So is Jesus asking him, Do you believe that I can give you mercy?
SPEAKER_01: Is that what he's asking?
SPEAKER_01: Well, we know that when they say, Yes, Lord, we we believe that you can do this, the result of this is sight.
SPEAKER_01: It's the ability to see.
SPEAKER_01: So is it are they asking for the ability to see?
SPEAKER_01: Or are they asking for something spiritual?
SPEAKER_01: I would suggest to you that it's it's likely both.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew often has a twofold focus that includes both the physical and the spiritual that are coming together and happening at the same moment.
SPEAKER_01: Here are two men who possess faith.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew identifies that from the mouth of Jesus, no less.
SPEAKER_01: Because you have faith.
SPEAKER_01: Here's mercy.
SPEAKER_01: So the blind are following Jesus in faith that He is merciful.
SPEAKER_01: Think about that.
SPEAKER_01: Two blind men craving mercy, and they believe Jesus can give it to them.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know that these sightless men are the first people in the book of Matthew to proclaim the true identity of Christ?
SPEAKER_01: It's true.
SPEAKER_01: We often think that it's Peter in Matthew chapter 16.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus asked the disciples, who do people say that I am?
SPEAKER_01: And then he asked the disciples themselves, Who do you say that I am?
SPEAKER_01: And Peter responds with, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
SPEAKER_01: You remember that?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the blind men declared the first part, not the second part, the first part.
SPEAKER_01: They say, You are the son of David.
SPEAKER_01: That's something that we call formal equivalence.
SPEAKER_01: It's the same thing as saying, You are the Christ, you are the Messiah, you're the Son of David.
SPEAKER_01: So these blind men who cannot see Jesus are the very first ones in the Gospel of Matthew to say, This is who you are.
SPEAKER_01: Based on hearing alone, they believed that Jesus was the promised one.
SPEAKER_01: And in that act of faith, they are submitting themselves to Christ the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Notice that.
SPEAKER_01: Now that's a that's a common refrain that we've seen in these healings since the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_01: You can go all the way back to chapter 8 and verse 2, where the lepers proclaimed Christ as Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And then right after that, the centurion did in chapter 8, verse 8.
SPEAKER_01: The disciples did, as they were out on the lake in the middle of the storm, and Jesus calms the storm.
SPEAKER_01: They cried out to him, referring to him as Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the word Lord could be just a matter of respect, that is like saying Sir, yes, sir.
SPEAKER_01: Or it could go all the way to the other end of the spectrum and be a reference to Jesus as God.
SPEAKER_01: You are the Lord, the God of the Old Testament, in other words.
SPEAKER_01: It's the way it's used most often throughout the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: And there are lots of places in between as well.
SPEAKER_01: It all depends on the context.
SPEAKER_01: So, what kind of context do we have here to help us understand them referring to Jesus as Lord?
SPEAKER_01: Well, it goes back to the previous statement.
SPEAKER_01: They believed him to be the Son of David, the King, the Messiah, the promised one who would come.
SPEAKER_01: And in that they say, You are our Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And because you are our Lord, we believe that you can grant us mercy.
SPEAKER_01: And so those who cannot see are given sight.
SPEAKER_01: He touched their eyes, saying, According to your faith, be it done to you.
SPEAKER_01: And their eyes were opened.
SPEAKER_01: Now the obvious fact here is that they did receive mercy from Jesus, right?
SPEAKER_01: They had faith in Jesus, and he said, I recognize your faith.
SPEAKER_01: You believe that I can give you mercy, therefore I'm giving you mercy, and it was instantaneous healing.
SPEAKER_01: The particular verb that Matthew uses here is one that he uses it in a way that indicates it was instantaneous, right then and there.
SPEAKER_01: Now, even with my LASIK surgery, they told me to go home.
SPEAKER_01: They put swim goggles on my face and sent me home and said, go take a nap.
SPEAKER_01: The first time anybody said that to me since I was a kid.
SPEAKER_01: Go home and take a nap.
SPEAKER_01: So he did.
SPEAKER_01: And I woke up from that nap, and it was about three or four hours later, and it was the most amazing thing.
SPEAKER_01: Even through the swim goggles, I could read that small print going across the bottom of the TV without glasses.
SPEAKER_01: It took probably a few weeks, I don't know, something like that, to for all the fuzziness to go away and for perfect vision to come into place.
SPEAKER_01: None of that for these men.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said, Let it be and it was.
SPEAKER_01: Just like Genesis 1, let it be and it was.
SPEAKER_01: But it came with a warning.
SPEAKER_01: See.
SPEAKER_01: See that no one knows about it.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, you have received a gift of mercy in your sight.
SPEAKER_01: Make sure you receive and use that gift of mercy appropriately.
SPEAKER_01: The appropriate way to use that new gift of mercy is don't make a big deal about it.
SPEAKER_01: What?
SPEAKER_01: How do you not make a big deal about it?
SPEAKER_01: How do you not make a big deal out of not seeing your entire life and then all of a sudden I can see?
SPEAKER_01: How do you keep your neighbors from knowing that?
SPEAKER_01: Hey, isn't this the guy that we gave alms to?
SPEAKER_01: How is he now seeing?
SPEAKER_01: Wouldn't you feel jipped off?
SPEAKER_01: Gibbed out of your money?
SPEAKER_01: What's going on here?
SPEAKER_01: How could you not make that known?
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus says, no, I the best way to make use of this gift of mercy is to be quiet.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think Matthew tells us in verse 31.
SPEAKER_01: They went away and they spread his fame through all the district.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever watched a famous person try to make their way through a crowd?
SPEAKER_01: Or some important official?
SPEAKER_01: Often they have to have a bodyguard to help make their way through a crowd.
SPEAKER_01: Having fame makes it difficult for Jesus to minister to people.
SPEAKER_01: And instead they go out and increase his fame, making it more difficult.
SPEAKER_01: Now imagine then that the crowds believe that you might be the promised king.
SPEAKER_01: What's going to happen then?
SPEAKER_01: They're going to go out and say, hey, let's make him king, increasing the difficulty even more.
SPEAKER_01: But I'd like us to think a little bit about what is not so obvious.
SPEAKER_01: Not what's missing, not what's not here, but just what's more difficult for us to perceive.
SPEAKER_01: These blind men had no sight.
SPEAKER_01: They had no sight.
SPEAKER_01: Yet they saw that Jesus was worth pursuing.
SPEAKER_01: They saw that Jesus was worth pursuing.
SPEAKER_01: They had no sight, yet they had faith in Jesus the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: Which is exactly what the New Testament tells us is the way it works, right?
SPEAKER_01: Romans chapter 10, verse 17.
SPEAKER_01: So faith comes by what?
SPEAKER_01: Hearing.
SPEAKER_01: And hearing by the word of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: They heard of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps they'd heard him teach.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know.
SPEAKER_01: We're not told that.
SPEAKER_01: But at the very least, they had heard that this man is able to do these kinds of things.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe he's the Messiah, and that led them to believe, to trust that, yes, this is the Son of David, this is the promised one, and through hearing they were led to faith in the Messiah, and as a result, they received mercy.
SPEAKER_01: Faith comes by hearing.
SPEAKER_01: Let's think more about this.
SPEAKER_01: I think there is a neglected passage of Scripture, neglected largely by the modern church in Psalm 138.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 138, verse 2, the psalmist says, You, God, have exalted your name, that is, who you are, your being.
SPEAKER_01: You have exalted your name and your word above all things.
SPEAKER_01: What's left out of all things?
SPEAKER_01: Big old zero, right?
SPEAKER_01: So everything that exists, everything that exists within God's created realm, everything that is, is here.
SPEAKER_01: And God says, All right, I'm putting my name, my being, and my word above that.
SPEAKER_01: There is nothing more highly exalted than the person of God and his word.
SPEAKER_01: Now, why would God exalt his name and his word above all things?
SPEAKER_01: I think it's very simple.
SPEAKER_01: He has done that because faith comes through hearing his word.
SPEAKER_01: Faith comes by hearing the word of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Do you want true life?
SPEAKER_01: And hear the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Do you want hope in a hopeless world?
SPEAKER_01: Then hear the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Do you want healing?
SPEAKER_01: Then hear the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Do you want restoration?
SPEAKER_01: Hear the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Do you want reconciliation?
SPEAKER_01: Hear the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Do you want guidance?
SPEAKER_01: Hear the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Do you seek wisdom and understanding?
SPEAKER_01: Hear the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: And we're not talking about worshiping this book.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about comprehending and applying the truth about how highly God views himself and how highly he views his word.
SPEAKER_01: And the psalmist declared that there is nothing greater than knowing God, your name, and knowing his word by which we know him.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you're not a Christian, praise God that you're listening to me and you haven't left yet.
SPEAKER_01: If you're not a Christian, put yourself in the position to hear the Bible read and explained and do it again and again and again and again.
SPEAKER_01: It's not that just hearing is going to change everything, but it's the way that God has set up for the way faith comes in.
SPEAKER_01: Faith comes by hearing.
SPEAKER_01: Hearing what?
SPEAKER_01: The word of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: The two greatest things for you as a non-Christian are knowing God and knowing his word.
SPEAKER_01: Because God has ordained that those two things are sufficient for you for all of eternity.
SPEAKER_01: Believe what he says because it shows what he has done to give you mercy.
SPEAKER_01: What is mercy?
SPEAKER_01: Mercy is understanding that you have a debt of sin that God could say comes due any minute.
SPEAKER_01: You have to pay right now.
SPEAKER_01: But instead God says, I'm putting the payment for that on my son.
SPEAKER_01: That's mercy.
SPEAKER_01: Most of you are Christians.
SPEAKER_01: So for us, I think this demands that we do some soul searching.
SPEAKER_01: God has has set his word above all things.
SPEAKER_01: Says it very plainly.
SPEAKER_01: He has set himself and his word above absolutely everything.
SPEAKER_01: Does it have that place in your life?
SPEAKER_01: I would dare to suggest that perhaps there's one way that we could really answer that question, and that is whether or not we give more time to God and his word than we do to the social media apps on our phone.
SPEAKER_01: Do we effectively rely upon God's word as all sufficient?
SPEAKER_01: We're continually tempted to trust something other than Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: We're tempted to trust our feelings.
SPEAKER_01: We're tempted to trust our own way of thinking through things.
SPEAKER_01: We're tempted to trust our experiences in life.
SPEAKER_01: We're tempted to trust what our culture says about things.
SPEAKER_01: We're tempted to trust science.
SPEAKER_01: We're tempted to trust this.
SPEAKER_01: We're tempted to trust that.
SPEAKER_01: And whether we realize it or not, before long, what has happened is we have devalued Scripture, or at best, we have undermined it, and it's just a matter of time before it crashes.
SPEAKER_01: Beloved, if you do that, it's idolatrous.
SPEAKER_01: Because God has said, I have exalted my name and my word, so that nothing is above it.
SPEAKER_01: Not only that, let's take that a step further.
SPEAKER_01: Remember that old Sunday school song?
SPEAKER_01: Be careful, little ears, what you hear.
SPEAKER_01: Take care, little ears, what you hear.
SPEAKER_01: If faith, whether we're talking about the initial saving faith moment, or whether we're talking about continuing discipleship faith, if faith comes by hearing, do you not think that God's enemy would seek to influence what you hear?
SPEAKER_01: The voices that you allow to influence your hearing will influence you to value what God has said and strengthen your faith, to exalt his name and his word even more, or they will lead you to devalue God's word until it becomes meaningless and worthless in your life.
SPEAKER_01: Let's take that one step even further.
SPEAKER_01: Not only should we take care of what we hear, we should take care of how we think about what we hear.
SPEAKER_01: Satan wants us to hear his lies and believe them to be true.
SPEAKER_01: That's the way he's done it from the very beginning.
SPEAKER_01: He wants us to consider what God has to say, but understand, no, what Satan has to say is truer.
SPEAKER_01: It's better, it is more reliable.
SPEAKER_01: He will use every trick that he has learned from the beginning to get you to buy into something that will lead you astray from God's word.
SPEAKER_01: You know, too often we we naively think that something is good and useful simply because it's produced good results for us.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's been beneficial and it's helped us in the past.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe we've felt good about it and we've experienced it positively.
SPEAKER_01: We naively think that something is good and useful because it's a bestseller.
SPEAKER_01: It feels good.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe someone we trust is doing it or using it or feeling it or saying it.
SPEAKER_01: Too often we cannot discern between what is what is right and what is biblical and what is almost right.
SPEAKER_01: See, Satan is so good at what he does that he even convinces us to rely upon what is false, even to the point of believing.
SPEAKER_01: I can't be wrong.
SPEAKER_01: He convinces us that we're not wrong when we're believing a lie.
SPEAKER_01: You wonder if that's true?
SPEAKER_01: Read Genesis 3 and you'll be convinced.
SPEAKER_01: It's the way he does things and it's the way he's done things from the beginning.
SPEAKER_01: He will convince us that scripture says something that it does not say.
SPEAKER_01: He will convince us that scripture twisting is right.
SPEAKER_01: He will convince us that reading something into it that is not there is appropriate.
SPEAKER_01: So take care how you treat the hearing of God's word.
SPEAKER_01: How do you receive it?
SPEAKER_01: Do you receive God's word as, oh, you know what, I've heard all of that already?
SPEAKER_01: Do you approach hearing God's word that you've heard before, saying, oh, there's nothing there that I didn't already know?
SPEAKER_01: Do you do you allow even even repeated truth to soften your heart and draw you closer to the one who reveals himself through that word?
SPEAKER_01: Beloved, I can't tell you how many times I've looked at a passage that I've had memorized since I was a kid and thought, huh, I've never seen that before.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize that was there.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize he was saying that.
SPEAKER_01: And yet so often we can go about life and we can treat God's word as if there's nothing new.
SPEAKER_01: Do we do we pridefully approach scripture as having nothing more to learn, no more insights to gain?
SPEAKER_01: Those who trusted Jesus, but cannot, could not see or given sight through their faith.
SPEAKER_01: All they had was hearing about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: But that's all turned around in what follows.
SPEAKER_01: And what comes next?
SPEAKER_01: Satan uses physical sight, the ability to see to lead people to eternal destruction.
SPEAKER_01: Look with me at the seeing, being stunned.
SPEAKER_01: As they were going away, behold, a demon-oppressed man who was mute, he couldn't speak, was brought to him.
SPEAKER_01: And when the demon had been cast out, the mute man spoke.
SPEAKER_01: And the crowds marveled, saying, Never was anything like this seen in Israel.
SPEAKER_01: So we have Christ's power over the spirit world on display here, much like we saw previously, after the storm on the sea, they landed on the other side, and they had the demon-possessed man and the Gaterenes coming out and approaching Jesus, and Jesus cast out the demons from the individual.
SPEAKER_01: It seems in this case that the man couldn't speak because the demon had control over speech in some way.
SPEAKER_01: But we're not even told how it's happened.
SPEAKER_01: It's very simple, it's very plain, it's very straightforward.
SPEAKER_01: This happened when the demon was cast out.
SPEAKER_01: That's all we know.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus' power and his mercy are assumed.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he did because that's who he is.
SPEAKER_01: And this is the fulfillment of the Messiah's mission.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is merciful to both the sightless and the speechless.
SPEAKER_01: But it's not the miracles themselves that are most important for Matthew.
SPEAKER_01: It's the response to Jesus that is significant.
SPEAKER_01: We see here that the crowds are back.
SPEAKER_01: They're put here as witnesses.
SPEAKER_01: The miracle.
SPEAKER_01: They marveled.
SPEAKER_01: Never was anything like this seen in Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing in their history, nothing in their ancestors' history, nothing about their experience or their knowledge or their understanding matched what they were seeing.
SPEAKER_01: They had no context to help them understand or interpret what they were witnessing in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 15 and verse 30.
SPEAKER_01: It says, Great crowds came to Jesus, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others.
SPEAKER_01: We cover all the categories.
SPEAKER_01: They put him at his feet and he healed them so that the crowd wondered.
SPEAKER_01: They wondered when they saw the mute speaking, they wondered when they saw the crippled healthy.
SPEAKER_01: What did they wonder?
SPEAKER_01: They wondered if Jesus was the one.
SPEAKER_01: They wondered if Jesus was the one who the prophets promised.
SPEAKER_01: They wondered if Jesus was fulfilling Isaiah 35, especially verses 4, 5, and 6.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have time to look at that this morning.
SPEAKER_01: You can read it yourself.
SPEAKER_01: It's a short chapter that details messianic miracles.
SPEAKER_01: It details that when the Messiah comes, you will see this and you will see this and you will see this and you will see this.
SPEAKER_01: And guess what's in there?
SPEAKER_01: The blind seeing.
SPEAKER_01: The mute speaking.
SPEAKER_01: They had no history of this kind of miraculous stuff occurring.
SPEAKER_01: But the prophets said that the Messiah would come with these kinds of events.
SPEAKER_01: Could he be the one?
SPEAKER_01: Matthew doesn't have a very positive view of the crowds that gathered.
SPEAKER_01: They are not presented in Matthew as groups of disciples.
SPEAKER_01: Whenever Matthew has crowds, that's a negative thing.
SPEAKER_01: They're not presented as those who want to believe in Jesus and become disciples.
SPEAKER_01: They're presented as those who are curious.
SPEAKER_01: Those who see, hey, there's a faith healer, let's go check him out, kind of deal.
SPEAKER_01: They could see everything that the blind men could not see, but their sight did not lead them to faith.
SPEAKER_01: Would you?
SPEAKER_01: Would you rather be blind yet have faith in Christ?
SPEAKER_01: Or have sight and be eternally damned.
SPEAKER_01: The Pharisees' sight led them to an unforgivable sin.
SPEAKER_01: The Pharisees said he casts out demons by the Prince of Demons.
SPEAKER_01: Who's the Prince of Demons?
SPEAKER_01: Satan.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, he works for Satan.
SPEAKER_01: He's on Satan's payroll.
SPEAKER_01: They blaspheme the power of the Holy Spirit at work in the ministry of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You look over at chapter 12, this comes up again, the same idea.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says in Matthew 12, 31, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven, people, except for the blasphemy against the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: It will not be forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
SPEAKER_01: We'll look more at that when we get there.
SPEAKER_01: But suffice it to say, that is, Jesus is speaking about these Pharisees seeing the ministry, the power of the Holy Spirit at work in the life of Jesus, and they are saying they are attributing it not to the Holy Spirit, but they are attributing it to the work of Satan.
SPEAKER_01: That is blasphemy that Jesus himself says will not be forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: Those who see but do not believe are blind.
SPEAKER_01: What did Jesus say in John 9?
SPEAKER_01: John 9, 39?
SPEAKER_01: He said, For this judgment I came into the world that those who do not see, the blind, might see.
SPEAKER_01: And that those who see might become blind.
SPEAKER_01: The crowds and the Pharisees had all kinds of experience with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Word travels fast.
SPEAKER_01: The crowds have been around for quite a while.
SPEAKER_01: They've seen all that Jesus does, they've seen all of the miracles.
SPEAKER_01: They've observed everything.
SPEAKER_01: Yet they were blind to the truth that the blind men saw so clearly.
SPEAKER_01: And you know what, friends, I'm I'm afraid that too many churchgoers have experiences upon experience upon experience with Jesus, yet cannot see what the blind men saw.
SPEAKER_01: Let's kind of summarize this and try to wrap it up a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: We need to understand that the seeing don't perceive in themselves that they are really blind.
SPEAKER_01: The Pharisees and the scribes, they think they see.
SPEAKER_01: The crowds think they see everything that Jesus does, but they don't understand that they are truly blind.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know when Jesus said in Matthew 9, 39 that those who see may become blind, what happens right after that in verse 40 and verse 41 is an interaction with the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: The Pharisees sort of sit up straighter and they say, Hey, hey, hey, wait a minute, is he talking about us?
SPEAKER_01: Hey, Jesus, wait a minute, are you saying that we're blind?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: That's exactly what Jesus said.
SPEAKER_01: He said, You've seen everything, but you don't have faith in me, which means you're blind.
SPEAKER_01: Are we blind?
SPEAKER_01: Are there things to which we are blind?
SPEAKER_01: Are we blind to Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: Think about this with me for a few minutes.
SPEAKER_01: How do we define our reality?
SPEAKER_01: How do you define your reality?
SPEAKER_01: Is your reality defined by Facebook?
SPEAKER_01: About all the memes that you see and the ones that you want to gravitate towards?
SPEAKER_01: Is it defined by Twitter or Instagram or TikTok or whatever's the newest one after that?
SPEAKER_01: Is your reality defined by your own experience?
SPEAKER_01: Is your reality defined by your own thoughts and feelings?
SPEAKER_01: See, our minds receive information through our senses, right?
SPEAKER_01: We perceive things through our senses.
SPEAKER_01: So we we we perceive that the stove is hot because we receive through our sensation of feeling that there's heat coming from that stovetop.
SPEAKER_01: We perceive the power of a semi-truck because we see that it's loaded with sugar beets headed down the road, and we see how massive that load is, and we understand that semi-truck is powerful.
SPEAKER_01: We perceive that something is loud because we we sense the volume level in our hearing.
SPEAKER_01: And then we instantaneously interpret what we perceive.
SPEAKER_01: There's very little to no lag time between perceiving something and deciding what it means.
SPEAKER_01: If I hear something from my children in the other room, I automatically interpret the sound.
SPEAKER_01: Especially if it's screaming.
SPEAKER_01: I will know that one child has done something to the other child.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: I take something in through my senses and I automatically make a judgment, an interpretation about it.
SPEAKER_01: It's a response to what I perceive to be a real thing, a real situation.
SPEAKER_01: But friends, here's the hard truth about living in a sin-cursed world.
SPEAKER_01: Your perceptions are often wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Let that settle in.
SPEAKER_01: Your perceptions are often wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Worst of all is the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: They saw and heard and interpreted their perceptions wrongly, and it cost them, most of them, eternal life.
SPEAKER_01: Now, hearing doesn't always, in every case, lead to eternal life because the Pharisees heard Jesus too.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't just see him.
SPEAKER_01: Here the emphasis is again on sight, on seeing alone.
SPEAKER_01: The blind men had only what they heard.
SPEAKER_01: But they were the ones that perceived things correctly.
SPEAKER_01: So clearly, how we perceive and interpret things about Christ are most important.
SPEAKER_01: They are life and death matters.
SPEAKER_01: It's imperative then that we double check to see if we are perceiving and interpreting things rightly.
SPEAKER_01: Or if we're just feeding our own sinful thoughts and desires over and over again.
SPEAKER_01: And friends, we could go, we could go much further down that road.
SPEAKER_01: God calls us to be people of the truth, right?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says there's only one truth.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I am the truth.
SPEAKER_01: As the revealed word of God, as the incarnate word, Jesus says in John, that God's word is truth, right?
SPEAKER_01: We're to be people of truth.
SPEAKER_01: There's only one truth, but too many Christians simply assume that what they see on TV or on the internet is true and is right without even a shred of consideration.
SPEAKER_01: Never mind that everything today is tainted.
SPEAKER_01: There's no real news.
SPEAKER_01: Everything comes from a perspective.
SPEAKER_01: And it's not God's perspective.
SPEAKER_01: How often do we believe what we what we think or feel or perceive is truthful when it really may not be?
SPEAKER_01: This impacts our relationships, it impacts our lives on a daily basis, it impacts our church.
SPEAKER_01: Almost all of us, maybe all of us, have been in that place where we've said, you know what, so-and-so didn't talk to me today.
SPEAKER_01: They must be mad at me.
SPEAKER_01: What did I do?
SPEAKER_01: And you find out days or weeks or months later that, no, there was something entirely different going on.
SPEAKER_01: They weren't mad at you.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: How often are our perceptions wrong?
SPEAKER_01: Just flat out wrong.
SPEAKER_01: My neighbor didn't say hello today.
SPEAKER_01: They looked the other way.
SPEAKER_01: How do I perceive that?
SPEAKER_01: I haven't heard from the elders.
SPEAKER_01: The elders don't care for me.
SPEAKER_01: You know, he didn't respond to my email soon enough.
SPEAKER_01: Wonder what that means?
SPEAKER_01: Are your or my perceptions and the following interpretations of life, of society, of politics, of justice, of race, are they right?
SPEAKER_01: Or could they possibly be tainted?
SPEAKER_01: Could we be falling into the trap of the Pharisees unwittingly?
SPEAKER_01: They certainly thought they were right.
SPEAKER_01: They certainly saw everything that Jesus did, they saw the miracles, they heard all of the perspectives about it, they had all the information almost like they were the FBI and the CIA combined.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't think they were wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Beloved, there's only one way to know.
SPEAKER_01: And that is to remember that God has exalted his name and his word above all things.
SPEAKER_01: Run to Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Double check your thinking, double check your conclusions, double check your actions with Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: When you think that somebody has wronged you, give them the benefit of the doubt because that's Scripture, 1 Corinthians 13.
SPEAKER_01: When you perceive something, run to Scripture, knowing that your natural inclinations, your natural tendencies are generally not going to lean righteous.
SPEAKER_01: They're going to lean the other way.
SPEAKER_01: They're not going to be generally given to truth.
SPEAKER_01: Do we really see Jesus through his word?
SPEAKER_01: Or are we going off of faulty perceptions, faulty interpretations, something that so-and-so said, or something that that person thinks, or something that this feels like?
SPEAKER_01: Beloved, the rule of Christ the King came and has impacted the world through his word.
SPEAKER_01: Is that what we're hearing?
SPEAKER_01: Or are we listening to other voices?
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, we give you thanks.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, give you thanks that we can run to you.
SPEAKER_01: Keep us from being like the Pharisees in the crowds.
SPEAKER_01: Give us that insight, that understanding, that faith that comes by hearing that those blind men had.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we we we desperately desire it.
SPEAKER_01: Give new life where it's needed.
SPEAKER_01: Give clarity where it's needed.
SPEAKER_01: Cause us to be a people that stand on truth.
SPEAKER_01: Cause us to be people that are merciful and gracious like you.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.