Chapter number nine, and this is one of my favorite chapters in the book of Matthew, and those of you that were here maybe when I was on Wednesday nights and I went through the whole book of Matthew, might remember some of the great passages from this chapter and some of the things that I preached on then.
But the Bible says in verse number one, it says that he entered into a ship and passed over and came into his own city, and behold they brought to him a man sick of the palsy lying on the bed.
And watch these next words, and Jesus seeing their faith, said unto them, the sick of the palsy, son be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven. So whose faith was he looking at?
Not even just the man that was lying in the bed, not even just that, but he was looking at the people who had the faith to put him in the bed, bring it to him, and remember they took apart the roof and they lowered this guy down to the roof.
They couldn't even get to the house where Jesus was preaching, because it was so packed with people, because it was surrounded by people, that they actually had to climb on the roof, dismantle the roof.
Think about this, they're destroying this people's property. They probably knew they were going to have to pay for it. They dismantled the roof, they lowered him down in a bed, and they brought him there and Jesus saw their faith.
And he said, wow! He said, I think it's amazing that you have the faith to do whatever it would take, I mean to go through whatever steps necessary, I mean whatever cost it would cost you, whatever burden you'd have to bear, or the physical brunt of carrying a grown man on a bed.
He said, you're willing to do anything to get him here, because you have the faith to know that if you could get him to Jesus they'd be saved, and that he'd be physically healed.
But not only that, later on Jesus is going to say to him, thy sins be forgiven me, he's going to be saved, and that's even more important than being physically healed.
And so he saw their faith. Now look down if you would, we had that story at the beginning of the chapter, but look down if you would at verse number 36.
The Bible reads, but when he saw the multitudes, this is Jesus looking at the great multitude of people that are gathering to hear him, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd.
Then saith he unto his disciples, the harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord the harvest, that he will send forth labors into his harvest.
And then we know in chapter 10, is when he sends them out two by two, and tells them as you go preach, you know, he sends them out soul winning.
In chapter 10, two by two the apostles gave him power, and he told them to preach the gospel.
Now turn if you would to Acts chapter 1, this is just kind of the introduction to this sermon, but look at Acts chapter 1.
In Acts chapter 1 verse number 8, a very famous verse, I'll read this for you, it says, but ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
Now let me ask you something, don't you think it took a lot of faith for the disciples, I mean he was really just talking to the eleven disciples only, if you read Acts chapter 1.
This wasn't even the whole church, you know, this wasn't even the whole 120 that we read about later in the chapter.
Just the eleven disciples, just his most loyal faithful part, he looks at these eleven men, and he says to them, you shall be witnesses unto me.
He said, you're not only going to preach the gospel in Jerusalem, you're going to preach the gospel in all Judea, which was the state that they were in.
He said, you're going to preach the gospel in Samaria, which was the next state north from there, and he said, you're going to preach under the uttermost part of the earth.
It must have taken a lot of faith for those eleven men to think that they could be used to turn the whole world upside down, as it later would be said about them in the book of Acts.
They had the faith to believe that, and that's why they waited in Jerusalem, they prayed on their faces for ten days, until they were in tune with power from on high,
God's Spirit rested upon them, and they went out with boldness and the power of God, the word of God, and they preached the gospel to every creature.
I mean, these men went all over the world. They went to Samaria, they went all over Judea and Jerusalem, they were spread throughout Macedonia and Greece,
and then, of course, the apostle Paul, who would come along later, the last apostle, he called himself in 1 Corinthians 15,
the apostle that was born out of due time, the final apostle, the apostle Paul, who would preach the gospel to every human being living in Asia at that time, out of his own mouth.
He preached to every single one of them. He said, nobody's blood is on my hands, because he said, I went to every town and every city.
Now, he didn't do it in a few years, I mean, he did it in a lifetime. But in his lifetime, he went and preached to all these different towns, all these different cities.
Well, he had the faith to believe it was possible, and he did it.
John 4.35, don't turn there, I'll just read this for you. The Bible says,
The Bible says, Say not ye, there are yet four months, and then cometh harvest. Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest.
You see, Jesus in Matthew 9, he lifted up his eyes, he looked on the multitude, and he had compassion.
Now, before you're going to have compassion, you've got to lift up your eyes on the multitude.
I mean, what do you see? Let me ask you, what do you see when you see people walking down the street?
You know, what do you see? You know, I like the story that Virginia shared with us just a moment ago, and it fits in well with my sermon.
I mean, you don't know what's going to happen. I mean, you think that guy had any clue that that was going to happen to him?
I remember when I first started going to Regency Baptist Church in Sacramento, California.
There was a guy there that was a, you know, he was a soul winner, he was a preacher, and he was a young guy, I believe he was about 30 years old.
And his name was also Steve. And he died right about the time I started going to church there, a few months later.
He died, he was working on a car, and the car just fell on him and crushed him.
And he was a young guy, he was a young married guy, and this car, he was probably, you know, just a little older than I am right now.
And this car landed on him and crushed him, and killed him like that.
I mean, you know, these kind of things can happen. And we don't know what a day is going to bring for us.
You don't know, you know, our life is just a vapor that pears through a little time and vanishes away.
But, you know, I thank God for that story where, you know, Brother Scott Carpenter is a great guy.
I know him personally, I had lunch at his house in Ohio, and they're a great family.
I mean, did you catch what she said about how her granddaughter won the kids across the street to the Lord?
Okay. If the granddaughter can do it, you know, I think any of us that are adults that ought to be more spiritually grown up,
more mature, more grown in the faith, should be able to give the gospel to our neighbor, and our friend, and our co-worker.
And so what do you see? Let me ask you this. Do you see across the street was Scott Saul?
Do you see a never-dying soul? Do you see somebody who needs to be saved?
Do you see somebody who needs Jesus? Or do you just see, just, body, just people walking around, they don't mean anything to you.
Who are they? You know, that's a human being. That's a real person.
And so, when I'm driving around, and when I'm looking around, I'm not just looking at people as maybe a business contact, or, you know, just a body, or just another person, just a stranger.
You know, I'm looking at people as people that I could be winning to the Lord. I mean, that's the way you ought to think.
When Jesus looked at a crowd of people, he looked at them and said, man, we need to get somebody to win these people to the Lord.
He's like, man, there's not enough of us. I mean, there's me, and I got my 12 disciples. It's just not enough people to give the gospel to this crowd.
What are we going to do? Hey, we're going to have to pray that God sends more people to bring these people to the gospel.
What did Jesus think of when he saw that crowd? He said to his disciples, you need to lift up your eyes and look around.
Don't you see what I see? Don't you have the faith to see that these people could be saved if you just give them the gospel?
If you just open your mouth and preach it to them, that they could be saved? Oh, you know, so many people say, oh, it'll never work.
You know, door to door soul when he's outdated, it doesn't work. How could it be outdated when he was invented before God even said, let there be light?
In the beginning was the word, my friend, and the word was with God, and the word was God, and one part of that word is Acts 5 42, where it says,
daily in the temple and in every house, they seek not to teach and preach Jesus Christ, Acts 5 42.
That was spoken by the mouth of God before the first man was on this earth, before God said, let there be light, before he separated the water from the dry land.
He said, how's the house? That's the truth. I get so tired of people telling me the Bible is outdated.
The Bible is not outdated because it has no days. I was reading the Bible to my children last night, and we were reading Psalm 94, or we read Psalm 93 and 94 is the last thing we read.
And it said this, to God, thou art from everlasting. And I said to Solomon, my son, I said, what does that phrase mean, from everlasting?
What do those two words mean? And he said, it means that God never started.
He knew what it meant, he understood what it meant. From everlasting, no beginning, unto everlasting, no end.
So you have to understand, God's word is eternal. It's as eternal as God is. If you don't believe God's word is eternal, I don't know what, maybe you need to get saved.
Maybe you just don't even believe the Bible if you think it's written by a man. Maybe you just need to find a liberal church to go to.
Because there's plenty of those around that'll tell you it's written by man, and they'll tell you how Matthew and Mark and Luke and John put their own personal spin on it.
Hey, there's no spin put on the Bible by Matthew, there's no spin put on it by Mark. Hey, God made Matthew, Mark, Luke and John for the purpose of the work that he called them to do, which was to write the four gospels exactly as he wrote them before the world began.
That's the truth. And so you've got to understand that God is saying in John 4 here, he said, lift up your eyes, look around.
He said in Matthew 9, I have compassion on these people that I see. And so we've got to have the faith to believe that God can use us to be witnesses unto him.
Both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and at the end of most part of the earth. We've got to have the faith to believe that if we maybe make ourselves a little uncomfortable and give the gospel to somebody that we normally wouldn't want to talk to.
We've got to have the faith that God's going to bless us for that and that God's going to help us to see people saved. Now not everybody you give the gospel to is going to get saved.
But he that goeth forth and weepeth bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheep with him.
And so you have to understand that the Bible's methods are not outdated. The fields are still white unto harvest, just like they were back then.
It's the same thing. It's the same methods. It's the same door to door. It's the same house to house that Jesus taught.
But here's the thing. In more than a sermon today, this is me just giving to you something that God has kind of shown me this week.
When I open my eyes as I'm driving around and I travel a lot and I drive around for my job and everything, for my fire alarm job, I travel a lot throughout the state and throughout the United States and different places.
And this is something that I saw as I was out and something I was thinking about and some verses that I saw from the Bible.
And then I started to study these verses. And it was just amazing to me how many times this subject was brought up.
Now I preached a sermon a couple months ago called, and it was when I just got back from Germany and Hungary from that trip that I took with my family to see relatives and everything like that.
And I preached a sermon called Preaching the Gospel to Every Nation. Remember that sermon? It was about two months ago.
Preaching the Gospel to Every Nation. Well, you know, I noticed another thing that came up even more commonly than Preaching the Gospel to Every Nation.
And the title of my sermon is this, Preaching the Gospel to Every Village. Okay, now let me explain this to you. It sounds like kind of an odd sermon.
And it's an idea that came into my mind this week, and I've been thinking about it. It's something I've been thinking about for a long time, but God really impressed upon me this week.
And I just wanted to show you what I saw this week. But listen to these scriptures before I get into the sermon, and you can just sit back and relax and listen to these.
I'm just going to give you all these different quotes from the Gospels about this subject. Of course, Matthew 9.35, where we just were, right?
And turn there if you would, but you don't have to turn to all these. But turn to the first one in Matthew 9.35. That's where we started the sermon. That's what we read.
Right before that great passage where Jesus said, hey, lift up your eyes to the harvest. He said the fields are white, we need more labors, we need more people to go out and reap this great harvest.
And God's looking for reapers. What does it mean to win somebody to Christ? He didn't say, man alive, we need somebody to hand these people a Gospel tract.
Oh man, we need somebody to invite these people to church. They didn't need an invitation to church. They were already coming to hear Jesus speak.
He said, no, we need somebody to go reap that sheep. We need somebody to go win that soul to Christ. We need somebody to preach him the Gospel and get him saved.
But look at verse 35, right before the famous passage. It says, and Jesus went about all the cities and villages.
Now, I believe that. I mean, that's what the Bible says, okay? Now we know that when Jesus was on this earth, he basically combined his ministry just to the nation of Israel.
And then after that, you know, he had done that for three and a half years with his disciples, then he sent out his disciples into the othermost part of the earth and to go to these other countries.
But I personally believe that Jesus Christ preached and taught the word of God in every city and village in the nation of Israel.
And his earthly ministry. Agreed? I mean, that's what it says. Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the Gospel of the kingdom.
Listen to these verses. Just sit back and listen to this. Mark 1 38, and he said to them, let us go into the next towns that I may preach there also, for therefore came I forth.
Mark 6 6, and he marveled because they're unbelief and he went round about the villages teaching. Are you listening?
Verse 56, and whithersoever entered into villages or cities or country, they laid the sick in the streets and besought him that he might touch if it were.
But the border of his garment, as many as touched him were made whole. So what's a village? A village is a very small town, right?
So he says, he went about the villages. He went about the cities and the villages, every town, every village.
It says in verse 27 of Mark 8, and Jesus went out and his disciples into the towns of Caesarea Philippi.
And by the way, yes, his disciples sang of them, who do men say that I am? Luke 8 1, and it came to pass afterward that he went throughout every city and village,
preaching and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God, and the twelve were with him.
Luke 9 6, and he departed and went through the towns preaching the Gospel and healing everywhere.
Luke 9 52, and sent messengers before his face, and they went and entered into a village of the Samaritans to make ready for it.
Just a little village, he went there preaching.
Verse 56 of Luke 9, for the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them, and they went to another village.
And you notice how many times this word is coming up, village, village, he went to the villages, every village, every single town, every little village.
Luke 10 38, now it came to pass as they went that they entered into a certain village, and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.
Luke 13 22, and he went through the cities and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem.
Luke 17 12, and as he entered into a certain village, there were ten men that were lepers which stood far off.
And they, when they had testified and preached the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem and preached the Gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.
Now that's a lot of times that God mentioned that, I mean, it seems like we should get our attention a little bit.
If we see it just again and again and again, the same thing.
Every town, every little village, every person.
You see, Jesus Christ, when he was on this earth, realized the importance of just getting maybe one or two people saved.
I mean, he saw the importance in that.
We live in a day where everything's mass produced, everything's big, and you know, I'm all for big.
But you know what? The way to win people's lords one on one.
That's how Jesus did it with Nicodemus.
That's how Jesus did it with the woman at the well.
That's how Jesus did it with the blind men that we saw in Matthew chapter 8 and 9, and also the man who was possessed by the devil,
and Jesus cast out the devil, and got the man saved, and all these different people that Jesus talked to,
putting everybody aside and just talking to one or two people.
I mean, why would Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God in the flesh, take the time to go to some stupid little poda village,
some backwards village where there's barely anybody there?
Why would he even take the time to go there?
Why not just go to the big city?
Because Jesus knew that there were people in that village that if he didn't go preach in the Gospel,
and if his disciples didn't preach in the Gospel, nobody was going to preach in the Gospel.
And so he said, I've got to go to every single town.
He said, that's why I'm here. Therefore came my fourth, he said in Mark 1.38.
Let's go into the next town that I may preach there also, for therefore came my fourth.
I want to go to the next little town, the next little village, and see who I can find and when to look.
And he said, I can't get it all done by myself.
So then he sent them out separate, in groups of two.
He said, I'm going to go to this town, you two go here, you two go here,
and they split up everywhere in which all these towns increased the Gospel.
You see, in my many travels, and in my many journeys I do for my job,
and I'm driving around for work, and, you know, going all over Arizona,
going all over California, going all over the United States,
here's an often scene. Get in the car with me, would you?
Get in the car with me, we're going to go on a drive, all right?
And this is, welcome to my world, okay?
You know, we're going to drive about 420 miles to Albuquerque like I did earlier this week,
you know, and back in about a 24-hour period, okay?
And so, you know, get in the car with me and drive.
And we're driving through the road, we're in the middle of the desert.
I mean, there's nothing around. Are you there? Are you with me?
All right, you look around, I mean, you see the sagebrush, maybe some cactuses,
and it's dark, it's actually night.