Believing yes, Understanding yes, Loving yes

I'd like to read three scriptures. The first one is in Matthew chapter 9. Matthew chapter 9, verse 27 of chapter 9. And when Jesus departed thence, two blind men followed him, crying and saying, Thou son of David, have mercy on us. And when he was come into the house, the blind men came to him, and Jesus saith unto them, Believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto him, Yea, Lord.

Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you. And their eyes were opened, and Jesus straightly charged them, saying, See that no man knoweth. Now over to chapter 13.

Chapter 13, and he's gone through all these parables, and I just want to speak about verse 51. After he gets through with these parables, he says, Jesus saith unto them, Have ye understood all these things? They say unto him, Yea, Lord. Now over to John chapter 21.

John 21, and we'll read verse 15. So when they had dined, Jesus saith unto Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonah, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord. Thou knowest that I love thee.

He saith unto him, Feed my lambs. He saith unto him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonah, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, yes, Lord. Thou knowest that I love thee.

He saith unto him, Feed my sheep. He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonah, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he saith unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things. Thou knowest that I love thee.

Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep. Now just one more reading over in 1st Samuel. Could we just take a look in 1st Samuel chapter 18.

1st Samuel chapter 18 and verse 1. 1st Samuel 18 and verse 1. And it came to pass when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit unto the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as as his own soul. And verse 16, But all Israel and Judah loved David, because he went out and came in before them. And then in verse 20, And Michelle, Saul's daughter, loved David.

And they told Saul, and the thing pleased him. Now the Lord has asked these three questions, and he could be asking you more, but unless we're willing to answer these three questions in the affirmative, our Christian life will not get too far. Taken from different passages at different times with different people, and he could ask us the same questions, and that's just what I want to speak upon.

I want to speak about these two blind men. And the Lord said to them, Believe ye that I am able to do this? They said, Yea, Lord. The believing yes.

And then over in chapter 15, he told them all those parables, and he said something that I've wondered how they could do it, but he said, Do you understand what I just told you? And they said, Yes, Lord. That's the understanding yes. And then, of course, we read over in John chapter 21 there that where he was speaking to Peter, a very well-known passage of Scripture, and he said to him, Peter, do you love me? And Peter said, Yes, Lord.

The believing yes, the understanding yes, and the loving yes. And I just want to apply it, first of all, to myself and to you. Here are two men with a need that nobody else could ever meet.

You remember in the case of Naaman when they came to the king of Israel, and they came for healing, and the king of Israel said, Am I God? I can't do this. Only God can do this. Now, when they came to him, they came asking for mercy.

They cried, have mercy on us. So they came with no individual inside greatness to themselves. They cried as beggars, but they cried in faith.

And I want to just ask you, has there been ever a time in your life, your Christian experience, when you were face-to-face with the believing yes? Do you really believe I can do this? Will you say, yes, we're Christians. Don't you believe Max that all these things he can do? Yes, but sometimes he puts it to the test, you know. I can remember, you know, I think I waited through six grandsons and eleven years to get a little granddaughter.

And all you grandfathers that have gone through that, you know exactly what I mean when you get one of those sitting on your knee. Our youngest daughter, Caroline, in London, about an hour away, and she phoned, she's in the hospital. And we drove down, and because we were grandparents, we're able to get into the next room beside the delivery room, and we waited, and finally a nurse come out to my wife and Craig's mother, and they said, you two mothers come in.

And Don and I, we showed great patience of two grandfathers waiting in the waiting room. And finally Adele come out, and she said, come here. I said, what is it? She said, come here.

And we walked over, and Craig came out of the room. He said, Dad, and he took this little girl, and he put her in my arms, only a few minutes old. He said, this is Laura.

Well, you know how we felt. It was wonderful. We stayed for an hour or two, and then we drove home, went to bed, and about 11 o'clock that night, the phone rang.

And we have the phone beside the bed, and I picked it up. And it was Caroline, and she was crying. I can hardly make her out.

And she said, Dad, Mom, she said, they took two blood tests, and they think Laura's got meningitis, and she might not live to morning. And they're going to take another test. They can't get her veins, but they're going into the ankle and see if they can get another test.

Well, you know what I did. I got on my knees, and I started to pray. And I don't think I prayed 30 seconds.

And it wasn't these exact words, but I'll tell you, they were very close. And as I was down on my knees crying to God, it's something just as loud as I'm saying it. Max, do you believe that I can raise her up? Do you? And I stopped praying.

And I said, what? Do you believe? Are you just down there going through a little recitation? And I got off my knees, and I got up, and I sit on the side of the bed. And I had about a five-minute talk to Max McLean. And finally, I got on my knees again.

And when I got down, I said, Lord, I believe, I believe you can do this. Have you ever been there? Oh, I should tell you, the third one came back negative. She's 14 now, and a beautiful little girl.

But you know, I don't know. Your case won't be that. But possibly tomorrow, or tonight, or yesterday, you had a situation in your life that was so thing.

You said, God can't even do this. This is so hopeless. It won't, God can't even do anything.

Have you ever been there and experienced it? I have, a couple times. And I'm sure that afterwards, if I talk to someone, you might say, you see, we're just failing Christians. We're just failing people.

But you know, they publicly met him on the street. And they said, have mercy on us. You know what he did? He walked right by them.

Oh, he might have stopped and looked at him. He said nothing. Did you ever have that happen to you? Ask him a prayer and get nothing.

He didn't answer you. What do you do? Quit praying? You say, well, that's enough of that. And away you go.

Not these boys. You know what they did? It says they followed him into the house. He went into a room and they said, no, we are not giving up.

We are going to be determined. We're going to get this. And they walked into the room.

You know, it's strange that they never, he never said to them, or they never asked them, Lord, we want our sight. They never said that. And this is something that he never, ever asked them what they wanted.

And I think that's just because maybe he let me be able to tell you this afternoon, you can put anything in there. They want their sight. What do you want? What do I want? What do I want? But they came to him privately.

And then why did they do this? They were desperate. And you know, before you got saved, you know what you were? You were desperate. That rich young ruler, you know why he didn't get saved? If with all the good things you could say about him, there was one thing he wasn't, he wasn't desperate to get it.

And you know, God wants us to rely on him and depend on him 100 percent. They were desperate. Do you believe? Do you believe? That's the beginning of our Christian experience.

Then I want to come to the next one here in Matthew chapter 13. The understanding. Yes.

You know, this seems quite remarkable, as I said, when he come to these parables, I've got commentaries on them, trying to understand them. And you most likely do too. But here's these two fellows here.

And he said, do you understand? And they said, yeah, we understand. Do you understand all the workings of God in your life? Has there been times in your life that something's happened and you just didn't understand why it happened? You know, I got saved in 1960 through the personal efforts of David Kember, the man in the glory that I owe. Humanly speaking, more of that man than anybody else in this world.

But, you know, in 1958, David, for his living, had 700 hives of bees. That's how he fed his family, six children and wife, very faithful in the gospel, went to all the meetings, nothing stopped him. I don't know, you know, the Kembers out here too much, but they were they were for the Lord.

In 1958, there was a honey failure. There was no crop. And David got down and prayed different times.

Lord, I just want to feed my family. Why? Why? Surely you think of honey. That's a God given thing.

1959, he got through the year. And in 1959, it was worse. David told me, he said, I even had to feed the bees.

He had nothing. And he wondered why? Why? Why? And he had to go get a job. And he come down to Polysar, where I was working.

And he got a job in the labor gang. And that's where I met him. I met him in a pump house.

And I'd heard about that. We all had our hard hats on with our name on it. And I saw this name Kember.

And I thought, where have I heard that? And I knew where it was, the boys. And this was 2,500 men worked there. This was no little quarter thing.

Oh, there's a fella down there. Every time he sees you, he's preaching to you. Well, you know, we used to drink a lot.

I was 27 years of age and we used to get drunk. And every time we'd get drunk, we'd get in a religious argument. We knew everything about the Bible and we didn't know anything.

And I thought, I wonder if he'll speak to me. How would I get him to do that? So I had a piece of broken glass that I'd taken out of a window. And when he wasn't looking, I dropped it on the cement floor.

And when it hit the floor, I started to curse. And I started to curse. And I cursed for one reason.

I said, if he's a real one, he won't like that. I knew the phonies. They used to drink with me on Saturday night and go and take up the collection at the church on Sunday morning.

I knew those. But this man come over and he said, you shouldn't do that. I said, do what? I'm going to tell how it, no, I'm not going to tell how I got saved.

I'll just tell you this. But that man come out to oil springs that night, knocked on my door. And about six, seven weeks later, I got saved.

That was in 1960. And I was the first one. And Lorne Mitchell and Edna got saved.

Lorne's in the Lord's work now. And Lance and the Smales got saved. And in 1961, on April the ninth, in a little portable hall behind the house where we rented, we sit down in this little portable hall and broke bread for the first time in oil springs.

I said to Dave after, do you know why you were taken out of the honey field? You see, it didn't make sense at the start. But a little while later, I've had prayers. I've had prayers.

And you have too. I can read. I heard one time of a fellow that was out in your states or someplace.

And he was out in the country someplace. And he always did business. And he wrote away in the catalog to get his supplies.

And this one time, he needed something. He would need it desperately. And every time he made out the thing, would you accept a substitute? He would write no.

But that time, he needed it. He needed it. And he wrote down reluctantly yes.

And sure enough, about a week later, the part came. He opened it up and the first thing he saw, substitute. And he was so upset.

He opened the package. And he saw this piece of paper. He looked at the thing.

And it wasn't the one he ordered because that was the most expensive one. And he didn't want to pay that for it. And when he looked at the piece of paper, it said the policy of our company is that if we cannot supply what you want, what you ask for, we will supply a substitute of greater value for no extra price.

And ever after that, he said, every time I filled it out and it came, will you accept a substitute? I got the red pen out and I inked yes, I'll accept. You know what I want to say about that? Most of my prayers that have been answered have been substitutes. I never got what I wanted.

I can look back at my life and there was grievous things and I was in all sincerity and honesty. And I got down on my knees at the back of our little farm. There was a log that had come out of the spring of the year, but it was a good one to lean on to pray.

And I used to go back there and pray. And the Lord never answered my prayer. But years later, I look back.

He supplied the substitute. And it was better than I ever thought of asking for. That can be yours.

But then I just want to finish with the loving yes. You know, we would all say yes, wouldn't we? This isn't, do you love me for salvation? No, this is a little bit of a test, I think. Do you love me more than these? And I don't think that, but we could say, do you love me more than material things? Do we? How do you know? How do I know that I would? Do I love them more than you do? Do you love them more than the one sitting beside you? How would you know you loved them more than me? Is there an answer? I believe there is.

If you love me, keep my commandments. And I read over in first Samuel that Jonathan loved the Lord, but he went back to his own house. He wouldn't follow him to the outside place.

And there's a lot of Christians that love them, but they don't go that far. Then we read that all Israel loved David, but they served another king. Do you serve another king sometimes? Where are you on your Thursday night Bible reading or prayer meeting? Are you there? Or maybe you're serving another king.

Maybe that could be the case. And then we heard that we read that Michelle loved David, but she despised these principles. And I won't say much about this because I don't believe there's anything here with that.

But she despised David. And he comes to Peter. He said, Peter, do you love me? Peter said, I do.

Feed my lambs. I kept sheep. That was the easy part.

You can get a bottle and put a nipple on it and a little milk through a fryer and you could feed them. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord. Then tend my sheep.

That was the hard one. I was no shepherd. And when I first got the sheep, I would go to work in the morning and be one all by itself.

And I told him that night he would be dead. I think I lost about seven sheep before I finally realized that you've got to do something, Max. They're not going to get better on their own.

Tend them. And then he said to him one more time, Peter, do you love me? He said, yes, Lord, I love you. And he said to him, Peter, that one is going to cost you your life.

You'll die for that one. I remember a young girl, Melissa. I remember as a young girl and she got saved and I tried to just we were friendly and help her out and write and email.

And she was about 16 and I wrote her an email one day and I said, Melissa, what are you going to do with your life? And she was a nice Christian girl. She wrote me back. She said, Uncle Max, I want to finish school.

And then she said, I want to take a course in medicine. And I want to go to this other continent, another place in this world that don't have near what we got. And I want to live my life for him there.

And the tears come in my eyes. And I said to myself, Melissa, you love him more than I do. And I'm not saying you've got to go to some foreign, foreign field to prove your love for him.

But what would you give for him? What will you do for him? Do you love him more than these? Believing, understanding and loving.