Thank God for what we've all felt already this morning. Bless my soul. Thank you, Becca and Kylie, for that. Really, really enjoyed it. I want to tell you a story this morning as we begin. The story goes that there was a businessman who was late for an important meeting, and he simply couldn't find a parking place. And so, as some of you may have done in the past, he frantically was circling this parking lot, circling the block, just trying to find somewhere. to park so he could get into this meeting. And finally, in desperation, he decides to pray. So he looks up towards heaven and says, Lord, please take pity on me. If you find me a parking space, I promise I'll go to church every Sunday for the rest of my life. And not only that, I'll give up drinking. And miraculously, a parking space appeared, and the man looked up to heaven and said, never mind, I found one. I want to preach to you this morning a message titled Signs, Signs Everywhere, Signs. If you would, would you turn with me to Mark chapter 8 this morning as we continue through our series in that gospel. Mark chapter 8, we're going to look at just three verses this morning, verses 11 through 13, about a group that we've been following quite closely known as the Pharisees. And we'll see once again they appear on the stage trying to cause trouble, trying to find fault, trying to trip Jesus up and once again he has a response for them as he usually does. So Mark chapter 8, look with me at verses 11 to 13, we'll read those together and go to the Lord in prayer. The Bible says, The Pharisees came and began to argue with him or began to question with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation. And he left them, got into the boat again, and went to the other side. Father, today we thank you for what we've already felt. We thank you for the Holy Spirit that moves among us, God, convicting of sin and drawing those in need, whether it's to salvation, to recommitment, God, to service. And so we ask you this morning that you would continue to bless as only you can, God, that you would increase and I would decrease, Father, that you would use my humble vessel to just reach people, God, through your Word, and we just thank you. Lord, for your grace and love to people. We thank you for forgiveness and second chances. We thank you, God, that you receive us as we are, Lord, that those that have come in today with all sorts of sin in their life and issues that they're facing and just broken hearts, God, that you meet them on that ground, that the ground is level at the foot of the cross. And Lord, we thank you for that. I just pray that you will open eyes and hearts today to hear your word and to receive whatever it is you have. For each and every person here, God, that we could leave here changed and transformed and challenged to not be what we were when we came in. And we thank you for what you're going to do today in Jesus' name. Amen. This portion that we get into, Mark, is kind of a transition chapter. Chapter 8, we'll be beginning to see some new things happening in the teaching of Jesus and in the life of Jesus. And this morning, as we look at these verses, you're going to see chapter 8 focuses a lot on what we could term spiritual blindness. We've seen that quite a bit with the Jews and the Pharisees already, but it's going to become quite evident in this portion of Scripture this morning that the Pharisees had everything that they needed to receive Jesus Christ as the Messiah, as the Son of God, and to trust Him as their Savior. And it simply comes to a place today where it wasn't that the evidence was not there for them. It was that their heart was so hardened in unbelief. that they simply refused to believe. You see in verse 11 it says the Pharisees came and began to argue or began to question with him. That means that they came to dispute with him as they always did. They weren't genuinely seeking answers. They weren't looking for truth. They simply wanted to discredit Jesus. They wanted to remove him from the public eye because quite frankly he was casting quite a shadow of doubt on the Pharisees and their religious traditions. You remember we spent a lot of time talking about their self-righteousness and their hypocrisy, and the Lord was pointing that out, and they were angry with Him to the point that they already were planning and plotting to kill Him. They were looking for an opportunity. They were trying to trip Him up so they could justify their murderous intentions that were already in their hearts. And so they come along again, and they come disputing with Him, arguing with Him, And in verse 12, they say, we'll back up for a minute, they say in verse 11 that they were seeking a sign from heaven to test Him. And when I read that this week, I thought, first I thought about when Jesus began His earthly ministry, and the Holy Spirit took Him out into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil for 40 days, and how the devil came along to Him. And didn't the devil do the same thing? Didn't he want Jesus to perform some kind of sign to prove who he was? Didn't he say, Jesus, I know you're so hungry. Why don't you turn these stones into bread and eat? Jesus, why don't you just fall down and worship me and I will give you everything that you see? Jesus, why don't you cast yourself off the pinnacle of the temple and the angels will save you and prove that you are who you say you are? Satan himself tried to get Jesus to perform a miracle, to show a sign, to worship Him. And the Pharisees who were following right along, Jesus condemned them many times for many things and called them, you are of your father, the devil. And we see it in the way that they speak to Him. They utter the same type of things that Satan did in the wilderness. And they said, show us a sign from heaven. It's been ridiculous how many things Jesus has already done for the people to see. I mean, twice He had fed a multitude of people with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. I mean, He had raised the dead. He had calmed storms. He had walked on the water. He had cast out demons. Is there any more signs that these people needed to believe? I would say no. But they said, show us something from heaven. Call down fire. You know, make the sun stand still like Joshua did. Do some miraculous heavenly sign so that we can believe. But the problem was, their hearts were already hard. They didn't really want some more evidence to believe. They were simply coming with evil intentions to trip Him up. And no matter how many signs, how many miracles Jesus would have performed, the fact of the matter was simply this. They did not want to bend their knees to Jesus Christ as Lord. They did not want to confess their sins and repent and turn to Him as Savior. They simply had hardened their heart towards every bit of evidence ever presented to them up to that point. And my question this morning is simply, what about you? What about you who have seen countless miracles that the Lord has done in maybe your life or around you, that you've sat under the preaching of the Word of God and been convicted and been moved and been pulled to take a step of faith? And you continue to say, maybe just a sign. Maybe just show me one more thing, God. Maybe just move one more time and I would commit my life to you. And the problem is that you are spiritually blind to the evidence that's already right in front of you. Just like the Pharisees, they had all that they needed to trust Christ. You have all that you need this morning to repent of your sins and to respond in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ. And you have continued in your unbelief. And you will stay in that unbelief, ultimately, until you die in your sins and are condemned to hell if you do not turn to Christ and receive Him. And the Pharisees were dangerously close to that place. The psalmist says in Psalm 19, verses 1 through 4, these words. He says, The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them He has set a tent, or a dwelling place, for the sun." When you get up in the morning, and you look out the window, and see the sun rising, and the birds singing, and life all around you, Do you ever stop and think about the glorious handiwork that God has put into His creation? We live in a fallen world that's certainly been marred and disfigured by sin. And yet in all of that, there's a beauty in creation. There is evidence everywhere that you look that screams design. And yet we harden our hearts towards that sign that we wake up and see every day because it becomes commonplace to us. We see it so often we take it for granted. We don't rejoice, we don't praise, we don't honor God as we look around at the things that He's made. And as we look at His creation, let me give you some things to just think about. The magnitude. of what God has done. The earth travels around its own axis at a thousand miles per hour. It moves around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour. It moves around the orbit of our galaxy at 481,000 miles per hour. Every 24 hours we cover 57,360,000 miles. That's just this one planet That's what God has said in order. Do you really, for a moment, have enough faith to believe that an explosion and chaos created order in life? It's a scientific absurdity that nothing can create something. And yet scientists lean on that belief because they refuse to, by faith, receive what God has spoken. They refuse it. And many of you, despite the signs right in front of you, are still waiting for God to do something else for you to see so that you'll trust Him and believe Him. One writer said that everything in life, every living thing, all matter is made up of atoms. There are, listen to this, there are so many atoms just on the head of a pen. that if you lined up an army of four soldiers abreast, side by side, four men, and marched them past, each carrying one atom, it would take 20,000 years just to march them by carrying enough to cover the head of a pin. That is the creation that we live in. Those are the signs that God has put all around us that we don't seem to notice every day. There are 7.5 trillion cells in the human body that make you up, that make you into the image of God, that make you different from any other person. Look at your hand at your fingerprints. No two sets of fingerprints are alike. It sets you apart. It identifies you from every other person. Is that an accident? The complexity of creation? It's absurd to think that there's not a God. It is the pride and unbelief of a human heart alone that would keep someone from looking at those signs and concluding that there is no God. And despite everything around us, many of us, some of you in this room, I have no doubt today, are waiting for something else to see. And the danger of that is you've got all the evidence that you need. You simply won't believe. You've got all that you could possibly need to receive Jesus Christ. Why are you still turning him away? Why are you still rejecting him? One poet wrote this poem. He said, One asked a sign from God, and day by day the sun rose in pearl and scarlet set. Each night the stars appeared in bright array. Each morn the thirsty grass with dew was wet. The corn failed not its harvest or the vine, and yet he saw no sign. I want you to think today about everything you see on a day-to-day basis in creation. Every detail, every minute thing that you take for granted, and realize that sometimes we look for the sensational. We're so busy looking for the big sign that we miss all the small things that God has put right in front of us. All the details. We miss the forest through the trees, so to speak. In Romans 1 20 Paul says, For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they, they being those that reject him, are without excuse. There will not be a single person that's ever lived that will stand before God one day and say, I just didn't know. I just didn't have the evidence. I just didn't see a sign that you were real. Creation, again, as I said, screams of a creator. You are simply left with a choice. Do you believe? Do you have enough faith to believe the absurdity of a Big Bang Theory or the evidence of the Word of God? You're following one of those two, I would almost guarantee, this morning. And I would say this, for those that maybe are looking for a sign, something that you need to see to believe on, I would say to look to a hill called Mount Calvary. I would say look to that hill, look to the cross where Jesus Christ gave his life for all sinners. That's a sign for you this morning, a sign of eternal love, a sign of grace and mercy for anyone that would come and receive it. Romans 5, 8 says, but God commendeth his love towards us and while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That is the ultimate sign of love when you look at that old rugged cross. and you see a bloody and beaten Savior hanging there for my sin and yours. I've often heard it said, and it bears repeating again, someone wrote a long time ago that nails hung Jesus on the cross, but love kept Him there. And that's so true. He could have came down. He didn't have to even go. But His love for lost humanity put Him on that cross and kept Him there until He drank that cup of wrath that God poured out upon Him. He became the atonement and propitiation for our sins and on the third day rose again. And I would say if you want another sign, look to that empty tomb in Jerusalem. Look at the evidence. Look at the accounts of so many eyewitnesses who saw the resurrected Lord. Look at the risen Savior that we serve. Every other religion demands that you do, that you do, that you worship a dead God. But we serve a living God. We serve a living Christ. And it sets us apart from any other religion because it proves that who Jesus said He was is true, that He has the power over sin and the grave. And Jesus Himself said, I am the first and the last and the living one. I died and behold, I am alive forevermore and I have the keys of death and the grave. He is alive today. And if you need a sign, look to that risen Christ. Look at the Word of God in your lap, that Bible that you hold that I hope that you carry with you. Look at the attacks that have come against it. And look how it's withstood, every one of those. Look at how it's endured and it will endure. until the end of the age. There's a sign that His Word is faithful and true and enduring through every generation. Look around you at the testimony of so many changed lives. Look at the people that have been transformed, that have become new creatures in Christ Jesus through the Gospel. How many signs do you still need to believe? What more could God possibly do to convince you? We walk by faith and not by sight, and He's given you everything to believe, and out of the hardness of your heart, you reject it. as did the Pharisees. And in verse 12 we see Jesus, it says, sighed deeply in His spirit. It was a groan from deep within. It was a moaning that their hardness and their unbelief was continually before Him. And he sighed deep within him. And I can't help but believe that he looks down upon his children even today and sighs at their unbelief. That he's amazed at everything he's given for mankind to see and live. And yet they continue to turn from him. And the issue becomes this also. Signs don't save you. Grace does. And so no matter how many signs you get, they'll never be enough. But Jesus is. You can have sign after sign after sign and it will never satisfy your curiosity. It will never quench that unbelief like the living water that Jesus Christ is. He can quench that thirst that you have, and He is the only one that can do so. And some of you are waiting this morning for some dramatic thing to happen, a Damascus Road experience like the Apostle Paul had, something that just will set you apart and show you without a shadow of a doubt that Jesus Christ is for you. But I would say that these quiet signs that He's been giving you and showing you are what you need. That quiet sign when you sit in a service like this and you're convicted over your sin. That you know that the things in your life are storing up wrath for you in the day of judgment. That you will one day stand before a holy God and give an account for everything that you've done. And that you will be found guilty because the law condemns all of us under sin, he said, so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world will become guilty before God. There's nothing that you can say, no case that you can bring, no evidence that you have that will justify you before a holy God other than the blood of Christ. And many of you feel that conviction, you sit in these seats, and God is moving in your life, and you hold on, and you stay in your sin. And there's coming a day where it will be too late for you. If He's drawing you, if He's moving in your life, What are you waiting for? What else does He need to do to prove Himself to you, to show Himself to you, to reveal Himself to you? What more are you waiting for? Because the scary thing about this is look at verse 13. He sighed deeply, it's said in verse 12, and He says, there'll be no more signs given. There'll be no sign given. And verse 13 says, He left them. He left them. And those are scary words. There's a lot of power in those words. He simply left them. He didn't try to argue with them. He didn't try to persuade them. He had done everything necessary. And he finally just moved on. One writer put it this way, and I'm going to close by reading this to you. He said, Friends, no one goes to hell because God sends them there. People go to hell because they refuse to turn from their sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. People go to hell because they love darkness rather than light. People go to hell because God is a God of love who does not force himself on anyone against their will. People go to hell because God allows them to have their own way. And I would simply ask you this morning, is that what you want? If you want to continue in your unbelief, if you want to continue to your own way, you can stay on that broad road that leads to destruction and you will ultimately die in your sins. That is the choice that God has given His creatures, but He has provided a way for that any that would come by faith can receive Him and be saved. So Jeff, this morning as you come, as we stand and sing, we give you a warning every Sunday. Every Sunday we plead with you to turn from your sins and be reconciled to God. And it's my prayer this morning that you would Do that, that you would take that step of faith and believe if you haven't already. And if you're outside of the will of God, if you're walking in sin, isn't it time to come home and serve Him? Isn't it time to live your life for Christ? Isn't it time to join a local church and begin serving? Isn't it time to take the first step of obedience and baptism? You're outside of the will of God already if you've never followed him in baptism. The first command he gave is to be baptized in the water. And many people live half of their Christian life and never take that first step. You're outside of the will of God before you ever started. So as we sing this morning, what do you need to do? What's God calling you to do? Will you come? Jesus keep me near the cross. There's a precious fountain where he shed his blood. He shed his blood for you and me. It's the only way you can be saved is to come through that cross, to come through the Christ. from Calvary's mountain. In the cross, in the cross, be my glory My wretched soul shall find rest beyond the river. At the cross I stood one day Love and mercy found me You need to count this morning. There the bright and morning star Shed his beams around me In the cross As we have those that are praying, just bow your heads for a moment. I can't help but feel this morning that someone is dangerously close. to turning God away for the last time. I felt a burden for months for someone or maybe several people in this church. And I don't think God burdens my heart often like that, but he has for a while now. And I believe that that someone or several people here today are at a crossroads in your life where you need to make a decision. And I don't know how many more times God is going to woo you and draw you and convict you and speak to you the way that he is. But I would make that choice today. The Bible says that today is the day of salvation. Harden not your heart. And you are callousing that heart up to a place where you're not going to feel anymore someday. So I don't try to guilt people. I don't try to be pushy. I think the Holy Spirit is more than adequate to do what He needs to do. But we're going to sing another verse. And if it's you that He's speaking to, then I would run. to the cross. I would run to Christ. I wouldn't care what a person in this room thought. I wouldn't care what my friends thought. I wouldn't care what my family thought, because one day you'll stand alone before a holy God, and to Him only will you give an account. And His opinion is the only one that matters. And He stands with open arms this morning, ready to forgive you, ready to remove your sin, ready to cast any shame, any guilt, any doubt, if you'll simply come by faith. So one more verse. as we close. ♪ Near the cross, the Lamb of God ♪ Bring his sins before me As God's moving this morning. Don't turn him away. ♪ From day to day ♪ With its shadow holding me ♪ In the cross, in the cross ♪ Be my glory evermore Sing that chorus again. rest be on I thank God that He still provides that rest. And if you don't know it today, I pray that this week you have no rest. I pray that you are the most miserable that you've ever been in your existence. And if you're against that, it may sound cruel, but I care more about your soul than I do if you ever come back to this church again. If you get saved and never darken these doors again, I would praise God. It'd be even better if you'd come back. But if you don't, I'm here to try to present the gospel and see souls saved. And so if you need somebody to talk to, just know that you can call me day or night and I would be happy to talk to you about Jesus Christ. Yes. Amen. Amen.