Matthew 13:53-58: "And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these parables, He departed thence. And when He was come into His own country, He taught them in their synagogues, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's Son? is not His mother called Mary? and His brethren, James and Joses and Simon, and Judas? And His sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? And they were offended in Him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house. And He did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief."
Mark 6:1-6: "And He went out from thence, and came into His own country; and His disciples followed Him. And when the Sabbath day was come, He began to teach in the synagogue; and many hearing Him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto Him, that even such mighty works are wrought by His hands? Is not this the carpenter, the Son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not His sisters here with us? And they were offended at Him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in His own country, and among His own kin, and in His own house. And He could there do no mighty work, save that He laid His hands upon a few sick folk and healed them. And He marvelled because of their unbelief."
There is the most astounding things I ever found in the Word of God, my Lord Jesus Christ in His manhood, He was astonished, He marvelled at their unbelief. What a terrible thing unbelief must be. In Matthew He wouldn't do many mighty works there because of their unbelief, but Mark says He could there do no mighty works and the thing that stopped Him was unbelief. The one thing that limits, the one thing that hinders the mighty working of the Lord Jesus Christ is unbelief. I have seen God do mighty things in every other atmosphere, but He never does mighty works where there is unbelief. There is a challenge there to God's people. Oh! my soul, God help us never to doubt the power and the working of God. And brother, that is going to be a battle if you can come to that.
There isn't but one message that has got any hope in it, and whether men will listen to it or not that is the message of the Gospel. This is the most pessimistic generation of people that God ever had to put up with, because this world has so long heard from the pulpits the world around, of the helplessness of God. Men now do not have a great Sovereign God, and that word sovereign just means that He is God. And so having lost faith in a God, Who has got control, and Who hasn't turned this world over to Satan or man either, but He is still the great Almighty God, Who has all power in heaven and in earth. If you don't believe that, you are in a bad condition. This is a challenge to God's people, it challenges me. The one thing by which Almighty God is hindered is unbelief, the unbelief of His believing people. Somebody wrote a book and I read it some time ago, and he said this is the generation of unbelieving believers.
A man was witnessed to about our Redeemer, and the man said, "You Christians will have to look more redeemed, before I will believe in your Redeemer."
I read in the Bible about this kind of a God we got. The children of Israel were encamped about the city of Jericho, and the walls were fortified, and it looked impossible. And I declare unto you that Almighty God came to Joshua and gave him the most foolish instructions that I ever read about. He told the Israelites to march around the city of Jericho one time each day for six days, and the priests blow their trumpets. Then on the seventh day they were to march around the city seven times and blow their trumpets, and at the seventh time, they were to shout. They obeyed the Lord, and the walls fell down flat. Bless God! It just took faith for those folks to obey God. It did some good, because it was God's way of using the weak things of this world to confound the mighty. It just took faith.
There isn't anything on God's earth that I have to fight harder for, and I need more than f-a-i-t-h, faith in the Mighty God, we are supposed to believe in and preach. For unbelief is the opposite of faith, and I am amazed at the unbelief of today. I believe in the Sovereign God, a God Who is very God. But the Scriptures are very plain that He is hindered by the unbelief of His people.
I do not think that the word unbelief here in Matthew is the unbelief of God's people. I think it is just plain old unbelief of the people to whom He was speaking. He had come back to His own country in Nazareth and Galilee, and most everybody knew Him. They thought it was a nice story He was telling, but it just can't be so. We know Who You are, You can't be as smart as what You are talking about. You can't do the mighty works that You are talking about, they were stumbled about what He said. He said, "A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house." Mark 6:5: "And He could there do no mighty work, save that He laid His hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them." (1) They greatly hindered Him, but (2) they couldn't stop Him altogether. All these years I have been preaching in that atmosphere, I have never seen God do many mighty works. I have seen God do a little bit, but it has been my lot to live in a day when men and women have ruled God out of the world He created. These people stumbled because they had no room for the supernatural. They reasoned everything out and certainly that is the spirit of this hour in which we live now. Men are bound to have a reason for everything they see.
Our fathers and mothers used to think God was in the rain drops, that God Almighty was in the sunshine, that God Almighty was in the cheerful days, and God Almighty was in the storm. They had not ruled God out of His universe like this generation has. There is no room inside or outside of our churches now for the supernatural movement of a Holy God. I say to you now, there are just two great needs of this hour. Our churches need to come to the truth of God's ways with men, and learn how to pray. For if there is one need above every need now, it is not simply the proclamation of truth, but it is for God Almighty to manifest His Almighty power and intervene in this godless day, that men might see the finger of God one more time.
I believe God has never left Himself without a witness and I am not trying to run God's business. But if there ever was a time since Jesus went back to glory when the only hope is for God to intervene and come back down here, and cease His silence, and begin to manfiest His power; this is the hour. I believe if we believed that, we would learn how to pray, that is the need of this hour, for God to intervene. I expect to get up some morning, maybe in the morning, and God will do that very thing. Oh! my soul: but God manifests His power through men and women, and He brings miracles to pass by the hands of His ser-makes it possible, God does it, but He uses men and He gives men the credit for it. He gave Abraham the credit: Hebrews 11:8-10: "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." Hebrews 11:7, "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith." God gave Noah the credit. By faith Moses did some things and God gives him the credit for it. Hebrews 11:24-26: "By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter: Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward." We need to do some thinking there and it will arouse us from our lethargy and our some time sinful perversion of the sovereignty of God. If we will always remember, and never forget it that God has given us this treasure in earthen vessels, no where else, and that will challenge us.
Unbelief is not ignorance; I believe that unbelief is the will's rejection of truth, and the heart's rejection of evidence, and refusal to be influenced by it. For although men are dead in sin, it is a spiritual death, but they are powerfully active in rebellion against God and His Holy Law. They are powerful in action using all of the strength they got to literally refuse to bow in the face of truth. And there is one thing I know that from Genesis 1:1 to the last word in Revelation, truth always demands decision, and truth always evokes decision. Men make some kind of decision every time they are faced with truth. All truth demands decision, and unbelief is the will's rejection of the truth that you are faced with. There can be no unbelief apart from the revelation of truth; as well as there can be no faith apart from the revelation of truth. Unbelief isn't ignorance, unbelief is men and women with their eyes wide open; rejecting what they know to be so, and with their hearts rejecting to be influenced by the evidence that is on every hand. This sort of unbelief hindered the Lord, wounded the Lord, and He could do no mighty works there; only He laid His hands upon a few sick folk and healed them.
We have seen a little of the work of God, but living in a generation where we can explain everything by an absent God, and where we can get along fine without Him, unbelief hinders the mighty working of God. I want to call your attention to four things that only a Living God in Christ Jesus can do. All of our preaching, and everything we do is doomed to failure unless the Living God is able and is pleased to manifest the might of His right arm in our midst. A church has got no right to call itself an assembly of the called-out people of the Mighty Lord, unless that church is mighty concerned about whether or not He is being hindered in His own people. My Lord said, "All authority is given unto Me."
My ministry was ruined, I suppose, of ever being a popular preacher, or making any money and getting anywhere; while I was a student in the seminary at Fort Worth. One day I went down to a second hand bookstore and browsing around I found a book of sermons by Brother B.H. Carroll, one of the old giants of the faith, the founder of the school where I was going then. I bought that book for a dime, and I still got it. I was reading a sermon by that dear man of God, and just like a key that unlocks a door, my Lord revealed a truth to me. I was rebelling against what my professors were teaching me. My professors believed in the great doctrines of the Word of God. What little I have ever learned about them, I was taught by those men, but at the first I rebelled against them. My professor told me that election was God's purpose in redemption, and he actually taught me that God chose people in Christ, the ones who would be saved. Why everything in me hated that, so I rebelled against it, and I argued with them.
I had been pastor of a big church, and I baptized many, many people; and I was a big shot in those days. To hear such teaching from a Baptist professor and all the attendant things that go along the foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I couldn't take it. I fought them and I was miserable. I read this one sentence from the pen of our dear Brother Carroll in a Sermon he preached. He was preaching on "The Voice of Authority" and he quoted John 5:25: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live." One sentence the dear man said is this: "I well know," said Brother Carroll, "that if my voice is the only one you hear in this Gospel service, you will go away from here, nothing bettered, but if in the providence of God, you hear His voice speak to you, He has authority in His voice, and if you hear Him, you shall live. That is the heart of the truth of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ."
0h! We keep on witnessing, we keep on preaching publicly and privately; by radio, Gospel tracts or wherever there is a child of God, who is surrendered to the Lordship of Christ, and is under commission and has a mission to preach the Gospel wherever Christians find a place. We keep on in the hope that once again we will find out that we are messengers of a present God, Who does all the preaching that is ever done. He does the preaching, and that is how men are awakened to faith. When actually some humble child is handling God Almighty's eternal truth, the Spirit of God works the greatest miracle of eternity. He opens a man's heart to where he actually hears the voice of the Living Son of God, Who carries with Him all of the power of His shed blood in His person. If a person ever hears that voice, decision will he made right there I don't know whether you believe it or not, but it is a solemn thing that when the powers of hell are backed off and men hear from God, how terrible it is when men and women deliberately with all the power of their will refuse to bow to Him as He speaks. Men and women who do that, ought to go to hell and God help us, men and women who do that will go to hell. That is the reason our Lord marvelled at their unbelief.
There are four things that this Living Christ can do, Who alone has any authority. If you have any authority on earth, it is delegated to you, if you have any power on earth, it is delegated to you, for you have none in yourself. (1) He alone can give life to dead sinners. Eternal life is to know by experiencing His power, Almighty God. Christ must be revealed to you for you to have eternal life. John 17:2-3: "As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou has given Him. And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, Whom Thou hast sent." Matthew 11:27: "All things are delivered unto Me of My Father; and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." Luke 10:22: "All things are delivered to Me of my Father; and no man knoweth Who the Son is, but the Father; and Who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him."
The most solemn thing that I have faced for 30 years going up and down this country is that life is absolutely in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ, there isn't any life anywhere else. I have had men cuss me, I've had them to storm up on the pulpit with their Bibles, I've had them to have all night prayer meetings, praying that I would get the light; as I have tried to press upon men and women this truth. The only way on God's earth that this old preacher knows there is any hope of an eternity-bound sinner is to recognize and openly confess to this godless world that the Lord Jesus Christ is my Lord, whether I ever get saved or not. God has appointed Him to be my Lord, I know it is so, and I want you to know that I am in His hands. I am subject to Him, and He can do with me as He pleases. I am dead and He has got life, and I will never have life, unless He gives it to me. Life is in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. Life is not yours, if you will accept Jesus as your Saviour, life will become yours if the Living Christ gives it to you. If you believed that, you would seek, you would cry, you would pray, you would beg for mercy. You would do anything to get His ear and pray "Oh God if thou wilt, Thou canst make me a new creature in Christ." Bless God, that is a good safe place for a sinner to be, pleading at the feet of the Sovereign Redeemer in Whom is life. John 5:21: "For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom He will." Verse 26: "For as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself" What is the gift that the Lord Jesus gives? Eternal life. What's that? That is to know God in His Son, that's to know Him.
It is still true that a man isn't saved unless he has received from the Living Christ l-i-f-e, life. There are just two men God deals with in Adam. Adam was a living soul, and as long as you are out of Christ you are a fellow very much alive. But Christ hath been made a life-giving Spirit, He has got life and bless God, He has ordained that Christ will give life to other people. That is the reason we go up and down this country, and wear our bodies out, and fight the preachers and everybody else and tell you that hell is full of people who believed a fact of the death of Christ. But heaven will be full of people who have been joined by faith to the Christ Who died and rose again. There isn't any life in the death of Christ, but thank God there is life in the Christ Who died. He has been made a life-giving Spirit. My lost friend, nobody can give you life except Him. That is the reason the Word of God in the hands of the Holy Spirit does the best that God can do to strip you of all hope in yourself or anybody else, and leaves you with just one way to look, and that's up, for there is life in a look. The Lord Jesus Christ can give life, but He won't do it in the face of wilful refusal to bow to truth. The surest way for you to be dead certain that you will go on to hell, is to keep on sinning against what is so.
There is a second thing that the Living Christ alone can do. If you will look at this outline, you will find that it takes care of everything men need. Men are dead spiritually, so they need life. If he has life, bless God, he needs liberty, and there is nobody on earth that can give a man freedom, real liberty except the Lord Jesus Christ. John 8:32-36: "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered Him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man; how sayest Thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever; but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." There is just one way on God's earth, a man can ever have liberty and true freedom and that is to have a change of masters. The way God's Son gives true freedom to bound slaves of sin, is by putting His yoke on men and they find rest in His service. The way the Lord God sets men loose is not by just breaking the old bands but by put-ting His yoke on men. A man is free if he is free to be a man. There has never been but one real man on God's earth, and that was Jesus Christ. He was free, absolutely free. He was free in all of His choices, He had true freedom. The way men are brought to the place of freedom is by being joined to Christ, being yoked up with Him, being united to Him. Otherwise, there is no freedom.
No man is any better off if a bad habit drops off, unless a new vocation takes its place, that is no salvation. This world is full of people who quit something and called it salvation. One unclean spirit goes out and then later seven more come in, so now he has eight unclean spirits. Matthew 12:43-45: "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation."
Old man T.T. Martin use to say that a man, who just thinks that being a Christian is getting rid of one demon of the flesh is eight to one sure for hell, for where he had trouble with one demon, now he has eight; and his last state is worse than the first. Liberty is not freedom to do your will, liberty is freedom to do God's will. No man is free, unless he is free to do the will of God. That is true freedom, and nobody on earth can set you free except Him. John 8:36: "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."
There is a third thing that no one can do but Jesus Christ. Men need life and He alone can give it; men need to be free, and He alone can give them freedom. Men need peace instead of misery, and He alone can give peace. John 14:27: "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you." Peace instead of misery, the peace of God, the peace that the Saviour gives. Oh! these troubled days and nobody can give peace except the Son of God. We can speak peace where there is no peace, but God's Son can give peace.
Mother Merritt over 70-years-old was the queen mother of a little Baptist church, where I was in a meeting. After the meeting had been going on for some time, she began to lift her hand night after night; when we would ask; were there troubled souls needing help? Then finally instead of lifting her hand when we would stand to sing, she came and got down on her knees. Mother Merritt was thought of as the finest Christian of that section of the city. If anybody tried to deal with her, she would shake them off. After most people were gone, she got up off her knees and went home. The next night she did the same thing, and the next night she did the same thing. This caused people to wonder, and the crowds began to come to see what was going on. They were saying that I had disturbed her, and I had done this, and I had done that, but I can't disturb anybody, I can't get that close to you. Only the Spirit can disturb people. The pastor knelt down and said, "Mother Merritt, what's wrong with you?" She said, "Leave me be." The next night she got up off her knees and came to me, and said, "Brother Barnard, I've been trying to serve the Lord these 46 years and I have never had a moment of peace." I said, "Can I be of help?" and she said, "No. No one can help me except Him," and she pointed her finger upward to Him; she was right there. Sunday morning came, and I went out early. When I got out of my car and started toward the church building; here came pink-checked, white-haired Mother Merritt. She met me, and she said, "Dear Brother Barnard, this morning while I washed the breakfast dishes the Lord Jesus Christ did give me peace. He gave me peace."
I think a person is foolish to reckon himself to be a child of God, to whom the Living Christ hasn't made real to you that your sins are gone and put peace in you. Isaiah 38:17: "Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for Thou has cast all my sins behind Thy back." No one but Jesus can give you peace; faith about Him will not bring peace. But bless God, He gives peace. To be joined to Him, He gives peace. Men need life, but nobody can give you life except Him. Men need liberty, bound men need to be set free, nobody can set you free, except Him. Miserable men need peace, nobody can give peace but Him.
Men are lost; estranged from God and they need to find their way home to the Father's house. And I am so glad that the Lord Jesus Christ can take an old sinner by his hand and lead him to God. Hebrews 2:10: "For it became Him, for Whom are all things, and by Whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." I want to be in on this. That is His job, He earned the right to bring many sons to glory. How? God made Him perfect, a perfect Saviour, a suitable Saviour, the exact kind of Saviour, old dead, bound, miserable, strange sinners need. He was made perfect as my Saviour through suffering. And "Praise God," He is the One, Who can get men acquainted with God. I believe when a man is united to Christ, he is latched on to God, he is home if you will pardon the expression. That is the only way.
I can't lead you to God, He can. Nobody else can, but thank God, He can. My Lord Jesus Christ earned the right, when He died on the Cross to present anybody on God's earth in the presence of Almighty God; who can be joined to Him, and who will just come unto Him and turn yourself over to Him. Bless God, He will take you by the hand, and He will lead you home.
Let us do everything we can, not to offend the only Lord and Saviour, Who alone can do mighty works.