[0:00] Matthew chapter 9, starting in verse 18, is where we will be at this morning. Matthew 9, verses 18 through 38, as we just continue to make our way through the gospel of Matthew.
[0:11] And again, just to repeat what has been said a number of times, we are mindful of the reality that Matthew is writing and exalting Jesus as the king, right?
[0:22] He's the king of kings and Lord of lords. And he is the king that has not only been long anticipated, but he is the king that man desperately needs. And we have seen a number of these things.
[0:32] And in the last couple of chapters in particular, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, often referred to as the Sermon on the Mount, kind of shows us what life looks like by kingdom people, how kingdom people live, how they behave, what sets them apart from other people within the world.
[0:47] And then we get into Matthew chapter 8 and then on into chapter 9, where it seems to be all these displays of his kingdom authority and his power. And it is really the validation that he is who he says he is.
[1:00] And because this has been validated through his actions and been validated through the things that he does, Jesus says, if you will not believe me, at least believe the works which I do, right? He testifies that reality.
[1:12] These things really just defy humanity because man can't do in his own strength the things that we see Jesus doing. And we are confronted with this truth.
[1:23] I can't remember. I think it was C.S. Lewis who said that when reading of the life of Christ and seeing the work of Christ, man is faced with two realities.
[1:35] Man has to make a choice. C.S. Lewis said either he says he is, C.S. Lewis said, either Jesus is who he says he is, or he is a raging lunatic.
[1:46] Because he claimed to be the very Son of God, God in the flesh, and the works that he did validated that, and proved that, and there is no middle ground when we see this. Now we understand that Christ is not a raving lunatic.
[1:59] We get that. We understand the reality. But we also see how Matthew highlights the works of the king. And we see those continue here in Matthew chapter 9.
[2:11] So if you are physically able and desire to do so, I'm going to ask you to join with me as we stand together and we read the word of God in Matthew 9, verses 18 through 38. If you remember, he has just called Matthew.
[2:24] He met Matthew at the tax collector's booth. He called Matthew to himself. Matthew threw a party. They had this big party of all these tax collectors and sinners hanging out, and Jesus is there. You need to know this because we're about to kind of pick up right mid-scene there.
[2:38] And they're asking him about fasting and why they don't fast. And Jesus talks about putting a new piece of cloth on an old garment or new wine and old wine skins and how the new and the old can't blend together.
[2:48] And he's teaching them here this reality. And then it says in verse 18, While he was saying these things to them, A synagogue official came and bowed down before him and said, My daughter has just died.
[3:01] But come and lay your hand on her and she will live. And Jesus got up and began to follow him, and so did his disciples. And a woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for 12 years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak.
[3:14] For she was saying to herself, If I only touch his garment, I will get well. But Jesus, turning and seeing her, said, Daughter, take courage. Your faith has made you well.
[3:27] And once the woman was made well. And when Jesus came into the official's house and saw the flute players and the crowd in noisy disorder, he said, Leave, for the girl has not died but is asleep.
[3:38] And they began laughing at him. But when the crowd had been sent out, he entered and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. This news spread throughout all that land. As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, crying out, Have mercy on us, son of David.
[3:53] And when he entered the house, the blind men came up to him, and Jesus said to them, Do you believe that I am able to do this? They said to him, Yes, Lord. And he touched their eyes, saying, It shall be done to you according to your faith.
[4:06] And their eyes were opened, and Jesus sternly warned them, See that no one knows about this. But they went out and spread the news about him throughout all that land. As they were going out, a mute, demon-possessed man was brought to him.
[4:18] After the demon was cast out, the mute man spoke, and the crowds were amazed and were saying, Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel. But the Pharisees were saying, He cast out the demons by the ruler of the demons.
[4:31] And Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Seeing the people, he felt compassion for them because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.
[4:47] Then he said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore, beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest. Let's pray.
[4:57] Lord, we thank you so much for this day. God, we praise you for every opportunity which you give us together, together as your people. Lord, we thank you for the great privilege it is of opening up your word and being able to read it together.
[5:12] Lord, we thank you for that. And we pray now that it would be so much more than just a collection of information, Lord, a hearing of words, or a reading of scripture, but Lord, that it would be the very word of God penetrating our lives, showing us, O God, who we are and where we are in relation to you.
[5:29] We pray that by the power and presence of your spirit that you would speak to each and every one of us. Lord, that we would hear the word that you have for us, that it would not be the thoughts or the opinions or even the application of man, but it would be the very word of God that does its work among us.
[5:44] We give you all the thanks and the glory, and we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. I want you to see this morning from the passage before us, Truths Revealed at the Feet of the King.
[5:58] Truths Revealed at the Feet of the King. It was Warren Wiersbe who said, It's amazing how many different types of people will gather around the feet of one individual. Now, we've heard the saying that the foot of the cross is level ground, but the feet of the king is also a pretty awesome place to be as well.
[6:15] At the foot of the cross, we find forgiveness, and we find redemption, and we find mercy, and we find grace on display. At the foot of the cross, we stand amazed at the price of our sins, and we stand amazed even more so at the penalty which has been paid for our sins, and the fact that we're not the ones on the cross, but that someone else paid that for us.
[6:33] But around the feet of the king, in his presence, bowing down, some in humble adoration, others desperately crawling just to try to touch the fringe of his cloak, which more than likely was the shawl that went around his neck.
[6:46] Just trying to be near him, we see amazing things happening, and we have a number of truths revealed to us here at this one place. And we see it through the interactions of these stories which Matthew puts forth for us to read.
[7:03] This is so much more than just Jesus doing a bunch of miraculous activities or doing a bunch of miraculous things. Here we see what takes place around the feet of the king and the same presence that we are invited into because he is our king and he is our lord for those who have trusted him and come before him and fall down in his presence.
[7:24] But it's really becoming of us to know exactly what we can expect in his presence. And it is very fortunate that we have the word of God for us that shows us these truths.
[7:37] The first thing we see, it is here that man finds one he can run to in his moments of desperation. Here at the foot of the king, we find a place that we can run to in our moments of desperation.
[7:53] All three of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all three synoptic gospels, record these same events of the synagogue official and the woman with the flow of blood. All three of them record them just a little bit differently, and it is really a blessing to read all three of them at the same time and to see how it transpires, but we're not going to do that for the sake of time.
[8:14] But we can go and we can look and see these things. We know that the synagogue's official's name is Jarius, and we know that his daughter was 12 years old. We also know that when Jarius went into the presence of Jesus at the first time, his daughter was not yet dead, but she was deathly sick.
[8:28] We find from Mark and Luke that when he gets there, his daughter is sick, but because Jesus delays a little bit with a woman with the issue of the flow of blood, another person comes from his house and says, Jarius, don't bother the king because she has just died.
[8:42] But what we see here is we have Jarius who comes to this one individual. Now, Jarius is a synagogue official, which means that it is his job and his occupation to maintain the synagogue, to be the one who kind of upkeeps the building, to be the one who kind of leads the order of service, if you will.
[8:59] He is there in the place where the word of God, as they had it, the Old Testament, is taught on a weekly basis where the people of God gather together and long to learn and long to grow.
[9:13] And this man, rather than running to any other place or running to any other individual, in his great moment of desperation, runs to Jesus. And he runs to him because he has this great need, his daughter.
[9:26] And what's really moving in this is when you read Mark, it says his only begotten daughter, his one and only, his only child, is in a moment of illness.
[9:44] And it's really when he gets there on the brink of death and while he is there, actually dies. And it is this great moment of desperation. And yet he runs to one place.
[9:58] And that place is to the feet of the king where he bows down and he calls out. And we see Jairus there, but we also see this woman, this woman with the issue of blood.
[10:12] And she's in a crowd, as we find from the other gospel accounts. She's kind of around this multitude of people who are following Jesus. Jesus is just kind of overwhelmed by this crowd and she kind of makes her way through the crowd and she's there and she's coming to his feet and she wants to touch the fringe of his garment which would be the mantle which hung around him that had the tassels on the end of it that would remind them of the Ten Commandments or remind them of the law and remind them of the standard.
[10:41] And all she wants to do is touch that. Now to touch that, you have to be at his feet because that's at the bottom of his garments and she is there. Now we know how desperate she is and this is one of the humorous things that we find in Scripture.
[10:54] Mark speaks quick but there are some things which Mark clarifies for us and knowing our authors of Scripture is important. And I've told you this before when we look at the synoptics, Matthew is a Jewish tax collector.
[11:07] Mark is John Mark who traveled with Paul, traveled with Peter, really based his writings, many people believe on the preachings of Peter. That's why in the book of Mark Peter kind of looks worse than any other gospel because we are reminded that he heard Peter's first-hand account and when man grows closer to Christ he sees himself worse.
[11:26] And then there's Luke. Now Luke is a Gentile. Luke is a physician, right? So he's a doctor. He's also a traveling physician. He goes with Paul. He's with Paul on his missionary journeys. And when we read this account, I love this.
[11:38] Matthew tells us there's this woman who has a hemorrhage, right? And she's there and she needs Jesus. When we go to Luke, Luke says this. There's this woman who had this issue of blood and she could not be helped.
[11:49] She could not be healed. That's how Luke, the physician, I keep this in mind. Luke, the physician, says that she could not be healed. Mark says it like this.
[11:59] This is kind of where we see man in his humanity, but we also see God in his honesty through his word. Mark says it like this. Mark said this woman had a flow of blood for 12 years and she could find no help at the hands of the physicians because she only grew worse.
[12:15] Now Luke, being a physician, doesn't tell us that the physicians made her worse, but Mark does tell us that. That all the help she tried to find from other people only worsened her condition.
[12:27] It never helped her condition. Luke says she couldn't be helped. Why? Because he's a physician. He understands that. Mark just says the doctors couldn't do anything for her. All they could do was make her worse. Kind of sounds a lot like our own society today, right?
[12:38] Some of us, depending on who we know, have one opinion, but if it's somebody in our field, we are a little bit more understanding of it. This is why we cannot separate the humanity of the author away from the beauty of the word of God.
[12:49] God chose man to write his word, and he used who they were to write what he wanted to tell us. And it is here that we see this, and I'm thankful that we have Mark who tells us that no matter where else she turned, the matter only got worse.
[13:05] For 12 years, she went somewhere else, somewhere else, somewhere else. For 12 years, it was not helped. It did not slow down. It just got worse and worse and worse and worse and if there is a place of desperation, it is this place that no matter where I go, it just gets worse.
[13:21] So where do you go when it's that desperate? The same place Jairus goes when his daughter is about to die and he stays even after she dies. You go to the feet of the king.
[13:33] Then you got two blind men. Now to be blind or to have any physical illness in Jewish society was to, for it to be assumed that either you had sinned or your parents had sinned.
[13:44] It is to walk around as a cursed individual and you know that being blind men, you couldn't walk around on your own. You had to have someone lead you. But I love how it says they followed him crying out, Jesus, son of David, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on us, right?
[13:56] And they even went into the house. Why would they go into the house? Well, they were kind of pushing themselves upon him. No, they were desperate. Then you got the man who is mute and demon-possessed.
[14:10] Again, very desperate condition. Each and every one of them go to the same place in their moment of desperation.
[14:22] And that is to the feet of the king. Here's the beautiful thing is it doesn't matter what your desperation is. It doesn't matter what led to your moment of desperation. It doesn't matter how different your moment of desperation may be from anyone else.
[14:36] There is a level ground for every individual who's in a desperate moment and that is in the presence of Jesus Christ. There is one place that all men can run to in times of desperation.
[14:55] Unfortunately, so many try to go other places. And I love Mark's honesty. All it does is make it worse. But there is but one.
[15:07] one place where man in all desperation can go. And the beautiful thing in this passage is that no desperate situation was denied.
[15:19] None was seen as more important than the other. None was seen as taking precedence over another. And none was discounted and said, I don't have time for that. Think about this just for a moment. Jairus comes and his daughter is deathly ill and she's about to sick.
[15:32] Jesus is the son of God. He knows what's about to happen. We can see this in the story of Lazarus. One of the things we understand about the story of Lazarus is when word gets to Jesus that his friend Lazarus is sick, the Bible says so Jesus waited.
[15:45] That's kind of intentional there. I love how it says so Jesus waited. Jesus chose to wait. And then after a number of days he says okay, now we can go. And as he says that they say, oh, but why should we go?
[15:56] They're going to kill you there. He goes, oh, we got to go because our friend Lazarus is sick. And the disciples said, well, if he's sick he's going to get better, right? He's sleeping off. And then Jesus says, no, he's dead. And for your sake I'm glad I wasn't there. So what we find when Jesus hears that Lazarus is sick Jesus waited until Lazarus dies.
[16:12] That doesn't sound right, does it? Well, it does when he who is over the power of life and death is the one that you have run to. And Jesus knows that when Jairus comes his daughter is still alive and he knows that he's also going to die but yet Jesus stops.
[16:29] Mark tells us that the people are pressing around and this woman touches God and Jesus stops and he turns around and says, who touched me? And Peter says, Jesus, everybody's touching you.
[16:41] Remember how I said Mark makes Peter look a little worse? Jesus said, what do you mean who touched you? I mean, Peter's like, who do you mean who touched you? He said, everybody around you is touching you. And Jesus says, no, but there was one that touched me and I felt the power come out of him because a lot of people were touching him to be near him.
[16:57] There was one touching him in faith. He says, I want to find that one and then the woman came forward. Jesus stopped and in his delay someone came from the synagogue official's house and says, your daughter has died.
[17:10] Do you think that Jesus didn't know that was going to happen? No, he knew it was going to happen but this is the thing I'm trying to show you. Her desperation wasn't seen as less important than Jairus' desperation because he can handle it all.
[17:24] You run to him in your desperation and I run to him in my desperation and it's not like he's not going to have time for me because he's dealing with you. That's awesome. Last Sunday morning I got a little, well for lack of a better word, befuzzled.
[17:40] Sometimes your pastor gets that way. I was walking, it was a great time, the kids had done a pancake breakfast, there was a lot of activity. I'm not really a particular guy but I like walking into an empty building and I drive to church by myself on purpose.
[17:55] I try to get in and that's fine, I love it. I'm not, don't anybody say, oh the pastor said we shouldn't do that anymore. Don't do that. That's why I walk in, I say hi and I kind of get to my office just for a moment because I got to have my time and the church is happening and it's great and it's exciting and I go have my time and I kind of get everything gathered together and I'm getting my sermon there, right?
[18:13] I don't type my outline until Sunday mornings because it helps me remember what I had already laid out on paper Thursday slash Friday, right? I kind of, as Adrian Rogers said, you put it in a slow cooker and let it sit there for a while and simmer.
[18:25] Sometimes you have to put a sermon in a microwave and warm it up real quick but if it's one you've worked on you've got to put it in a slow cooker so I do that and then I come in and I'm like, alright, now it's time to put it on the dish. That's me, I type it in my outline so I had all that done and I was ready and I walked out and I loved it but the pastor tends to be this hub sometimes.
[18:41] We had a toilet plugged up, we had an air conditioner unit that wasn't heating, there was something I forgot to make copies of in print and then there were a number of other things and I'll just be honest, I got to the point I just walked to my office and went, I don't know what I'm doing.
[18:54] And none of you knew anybody else had come to me for anything and that's fine but I just couldn't handle it all because for one, the plunger we had had broken and I knew it had broken because I was the one who broke it the last time we had a toilet that was plugged up and I took care of all that stuff and then all this other stuff and you're like, I didn't know this, churches don't have toilets that plug up.
[19:17] Yes, they do. Churches have kids, they have toilets that get plugged up, right? And all this things are behind the scenes stuff that you don't see and I was just like, you know what? For a minute I just need to stop and just be still.
[19:32] I was a little overwhelmed and I was standing up here during fellowship time and someone else in all sincerity and truth because they didn't know I already knew came up to me I had my microphone already on and they said, Pastor, there's a toilet plugged up in the women's bathroom.
[19:46] I said, I know and lovingly I don't care. I didn't say I don't care but internally I did so I guess I did.
[19:58] I really don't care I'm about to preach. You know why I was like that? It's because I'm man. Right? Everybody's moment of desperation can't be handled by me but when we run to Christ like that he's more than willing and able to stop because it never gets out of hand.
[20:16] isn't it good that there's one place that all man can run to in a moment of desperation? You don't have to try to find the right place you just have to go to the one who said I'm the place.
[20:35] Here is the one place all man runs to in moments of desperation. Why do they run there? Number two. Here is the man that we can run to and find hope for deliverance.
[20:55] Here is the man. We don't just go to him with our desperation. We go to him because we can find hope for deliverance. Everyone that approached me last week in all sincerity I mean they were it wasn't their fault.
[21:10] They knew if anybody knew where a plunger was it's probably Billy Joe. If anybody had any idea of what was going on with him maybe it's Billy Joe because Brother Glenn hadn't gotten here yet and they knew I had been here when the heat and air guys had been here before.
[21:22] I had failed to do other things but I had been asked that was my fault. And so in all sincerity that is the only one that could do the things that needed to be done at that time. Partly my fault. Not really good delegating but that was my fault.
[21:34] Right? But when we go to Christ we don't just go to him in our desperation we know we can go to him because he's the only place we can find hope for deliverance. We just don't bring our desperation to him.
[21:45] We come in anticipation and hope that he will deliver us from it. We fully expect that in our desperation he's not just willing to take it on he's willing to deliver us from it.
[21:56] Jairus comes and says my daughter is sick. She's dying. Matthew records he's already admitted she's dead but if you would just come and touch her she will live.
[22:09] Now that's faith. Right? He's not just saying Jesus just come look and just help me out with this. If you'll lay your hands upon her and if you'll do this Lord if you'll come and touch her she will live.
[22:20] This can be changed. My whole desperate circumstance my whole situation everything I have about me there's hope found in you because if you do it she will live.
[22:32] The woman with a full blood who could not be helped by any as Luke says it was incurable it just couldn't happen right? Luke speaking medically it couldn't happen. Mark is speaking humanely. Humanely everybody else just made it worse right?
[22:45] But it was just so terrible and she knew but if I just touch the fringe of his garment I know I will get better. What does Jesus say?
[22:55] Daughter your faith has the little translation is there saved you. The American Center says made you well. the actual word there is saved.
[23:07] Your faith has saved you because you knew if you reached out and touched me I wouldn't just take on your problems I would deliver you from your problems.
[23:18] Right? There's hope. The two blind men why wouldn't they leave him alone? Why wouldn't they follow him around? What gave them the audacity to walk into the house?
[23:30] Because they knew if we could just get near him. I'm reminded of blind Bartimaeus. I remember blind Bartimaeus one of the first sermons I ever preached even before I was a pastor.
[23:42] Blind Bartimaeus was crying out to Jesus. He's crying out to Jesus. Jesus son of David help me. Jesus son of David help me. And the other disciples came up and said be quiet man leave him alone. And the disciples were like shh be quiet.
[23:53] And blind Bartimaeus cried out and the Bible says even more he got louder and he got louder and he got louder because I don't care what everybody else tells me to do. I have a hope found in that person. If I can get in his presence my circumstances will be changed.
[24:08] Here is hope for deliverance. Can you imagine being the individuals who are leading the two blind men around? You know what he's not paying attention to you because Jesus is moving around the crowd so loud I'm sorry he's not paying attention and then they look and say take me in the house he goes into.
[24:23] What do you mean take me there? Because we know that if we can just get in his presence there's hope for deliverance.
[24:35] Jesus doesn't just deal with our problems. He doesn't just hear our problems. He is the one that we have hope and deliverance from our problems. And you see that for everyone who comes to the feet of the king.
[24:50] Third we see that here. Here. Now pay attention to this one. I hope you've heard the other two but if you don't hear anything else I want you to pay attention to this one. Here at the feet of the king here is the company that man can stand in where he is seen differently.
[25:09] Here's the company where man stands when one sees him differently than anyone else. Doesn't matter what everybody else says.
[25:21] Doesn't matter what everybody else thinks. It is here at the feet of the king we are seen in a different light. We are not judged. We are not cast out.
[25:33] We are not belittled. Nobody says anything about us. I mean people may call us all kinds of things and they may talk about us. I told you growing up and I told you not to call me that. There is one person who attends church here who can call me that.
[25:44] Some of you think that you still have the ability to call me that but you don't. I am just telling you I am trying to be lovingly rebuking here. There is but one I grew up with and he called me fat boy.
[25:55] He didn't call me fat boy because it was just like a funny name even though I wasn't really that fat I didn't think but evidently to him he looked like a beanpole. But anyway so you know he called me that growing up and you hear all these things people call stuff and we were friends and did that and that was okay.
[26:10] But you know people have this opinion that they form of you and this opinion they think of you and people see you in a certain way and they talk about you in a certain way. It is when you come to Christ he sees you differently.
[26:23] You know what Jairus the synagogue official asked Jesus to do? He asked Jesus to come touch a dead person. You know what that automatically did? For a Jewish individual to touch a dead person it would make them unclean and they would not be able to worship unless you're Jesus and as soon as you touch them they come back to life.
[26:45] So Jairus the synagogue official is asking Jesus the rabbi the teacher to come make himself unclean and touch a dead person. Nobody else would have done that. No other righteous Jew would have heard Jairus and said okay yeah that sounds like a good idea.
[27:01] No if I do that Jairus I will not be allowed to go into the synagogue I will not be allowed to go into the temple I will not be allowed to go into the presence of God because you're asking me to make myself unclean and I'm not doing that.
[27:12] Jesus got up and followed him. Didn't rebuke him didn't correct him didn't look down upon him because he saw him differently. This woman with the flow of blood.
[27:23] For her to touch a Jewish man it would have been to make the man unclean. Go back and reread the Old Testament. A woman has a flow of blood and she touches an individual she's not supposed to touch anybody because if she touches an individual she makes them unclean.
[27:39] So her actions were if I touch him he's going to become unclean because I touched him. You know how many people you know why she was hiding in the crowd? Because if everybody else knew the problem she had they would have ran away from her.
[27:56] No other Jewish male would have wanted to be near her because it would have made them unclean. That's why she was hiding in the crowd. You know why Jesus had to ask her? Look for her?
[28:07] And it says that she finally came bowed down and she confessed and said everything to happen. Can you imagine what the crowd's response would have been? You did what?
[28:19] And Jesus says be of good cheer my daughter because your faith has saved you. Does he judge her? No. Does he look down upon her?
[28:29] Does he rebuke her? Does he correct her? No. He doesn't do that. The blind man he asked him a question. Do you believe that I can do this? Yes I believe you can do this. And he asked him this question.
[28:41] He said yes well we believe you can do this. And he makes this statement. I have it underlined in so many other my Bibles. According to your faith let it be done to you. I wonder if things were done for us according to the faith we have in him how much we would see being done.
[28:55] Well let me back that up. What we do see him doing is absolutely according to the faith we have that he can do. Too often the reason we see too little is not because he is unable it's because we do not possess the faith that he will and can.
[29:14] Now let's not name it and claim it theology this is just biblical accuracy. We understand that Jesus went to his hometown and it says he could do no works among them because of their lack of faith. So the only thing that limited and we don't want to limit it as a bad word but the only thing that caused Jesus to limit what he could do among men was men's lack of faith.
[29:33] According to your faith let it be done to you. This demon possessed mutant individual nobody would have been around him wanted to be around the demon possessed individual but Jesus is there. Because here's the beauty.
[29:46] Jesus sees all people differently than anyone else. The gospel is this. And all of my filth and all of my messed up condition and all of my ugliness and all of my wretchedness and all the things that I try to keep from everybody else and then if everybody else saw it they wouldn't want anything to do with me and the reality is if everybody else saw you for who you really were you feel like in the depth of your core they wouldn't want anything to do with you either.
[30:15] In that condition we run to Jesus and he wants everything to do with us. In that condition we go to the feet of the king of kings and lord of lords and he doesn't despise us he doesn't reject us he doesn't discount us he doesn't push us away rather he pulls us in and he wants everything to do with us no matter what anybody else thinks about us.
[30:37] That would have been a really good place to say amen. But for the fact that so many times I think we forget that.
[30:50] That we are the people who ask Jesus to make himself unclean to touch us because we are dead in our trespasses. That we are the ones who reach out in desperation and try to touch him knowing that we have so much worse a condition than this woman and we know as soon as we touch him he will be unclean and he says be of good cheer.
[31:08] That we are those who are blind to the realities of our own condition and we're crying out in death and saying Lord we believe or we believe or like the man who says Lord help my unbelief. That we are the demon possessed because the Bible says if you're not a slave of the son of God you're the slave of Satan.
[31:22] Right? So you are possessed of Satan if you're not possessed of the son of God. There's no middle ground there. That we are those people that the reality is that if everybody saw us as we actually are none of us would ever want anything to do with anybody else because we don't really want anybody to see that.
[31:37] And yet Jesus says come to my feet and we'll address that problem. Because he sees us differently. Which leads us to this final thing.
[31:50] It is here at his feet that we remember we remember he is the Lord who calls us to a life of dedication.
[32:01] dedication. Because we have come in that condition. He is the Lord who calls us to a life of dedication.
[32:14] It seems kind of an afterthought but it's really not. It says in Jesus seeing the crowds had compassion on them. Brandon Heath.
[32:27] Not to Brandon Heath the son of Chris Heath who lives around here but Brandon Heath the music artist sang a song many years ago. Give me your eyes. Let me see others the way you see them.
[32:43] Unfortunately Jesus is looking at the crowds and we are too busy looking at ourselves. That's just my problem. Maybe it's not yours but maybe it's mine. Jesus sees the crowd and he has compassion on them.
[32:56] And he tells his disciples though he has called to himself those who have been around his feet. He says the harvest is plentiful. Harvest is plentiful. But the workers are few.
[33:09] Pray through the Lord of the harvest that he may see workers into his harvest. Right? Here's the reality. In a day and time in which God has appointed us to live the harvest is greater than it ever has been.
[33:22] The world's population is soon to exceed if it has not already exceeded 8 billion people. 8 billion. For one of the first times in history professing biblical evangelical believers are becoming a minority in our own country.
[33:46] We're no longer I don't think can be defined as a Christian nation and that's not necessarily a bad thing. There are more lost people in our state you know that buckle of the Bible belt than there are redeemed people in our state.
[34:04] There are less workers going into the harvest than there ever has been. A number of churches looking for pastors a number of testimonies I've heard over and over again.
[34:17] we just can't find anybody that wants to be a pastor anymore. We don't know anybody that wants to be a pastor. I don't know anybody that's being called into the ministry or where are the people who want to just serve the local church because the church has lost its prestige in society.
[34:35] Yet we are reminded of this reality. There is a Lord who is over us who has called us to a life of dedication. It's not our harvest is His.
[34:46] pray to the Lord of the harvest that He will send workers into His field. When He calls you to Himself He appoints we'll see this just a minute He'll send them out. He sends us into the field.
[34:59] That's not our field. But we have been sent to labor in that field. Not all of us in the vocational ministry.
[35:10] Possibly some I don't ever want to discount that. Maybe God is calling some into vocational ministry. not all of us but each and every one of us into a life ministry.
[35:23] A life of dedication and commitment. Because if Jesus offers this at His feet, why would we not labor that others may get there?
[35:35] Why would we not want all to go there? We live in a world full of desperation. desperation. We live in a world where many people run to try to meet that desperation.
[35:47] We're surrounded by people that year after year after year it only gets worse and only gets worse. And yet, those who know the feet that one can run to and find hope of deliverance, those who know are sadly too often silent.
[36:02] They don't say a word. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you. Thank you for this day. Thank you for your word. We pray that it would have its way in our hearts.
[36:15] Lord, that you continue to lead and guide us. In Christ's name, Amen. Amen.
[37:07] Amen. Amen.