Seeing Jesus

[0:00] Welcome. My name is Ben Parker. Again, I am from Swansboro. I went on eldership there. It's my beautiful wife, Catherine, and we have three beautiful red-headed children.

[0:11] They're all bopping around here somewhere across the street. So, greetings. Greetings from the friendly city by the sea. So, a little bit about myself. So, we've been at the Swansboro site since it started in 2016.

[0:25] We came out of a kind of a church hurt situation. So, for some of us here this morning, I know that's probably relevant. Found a place at One Harbor where we could be fed and cared for, loved on, and One Harbor has been that for us.

[0:43] Stevens family has done an amazing job. They are transplants. We won't call them traitors. We'll call them transplants. But they are up there. They have been a huge part of our lives. They were our first community group leaders. They gave us a soft place to land.

[0:58] They fed us. They cared for us. And they are lifelong friends. And so, we're so glad to have them. Just full disclosure, I have never been to a service at another One Harbor site except for first service this morning.

[1:12] So, you guys, good on you. It's been great. It's been great. Yeah. And I just want to take a second to thank the guys, the eldership team here. Really overwhelmed that I even got asked to come up here and bring the word this morning in Jesse's absence.

[1:27] And so, just, yeah, so thankful. So, we're going to jump right into it. We are in the series of Mark. And we're going to pick right back up where we left off.

[1:38] This title of our series has been Mark, a story of discipleship. And so, we've been in this series for about 19 weeks now, which is, I mean, that's incredible.

[1:49] It felt like 19 weeks. And this is a fast-paced, it's an action-packed story of this rendition of the story from the vantage point of Peter.

[2:01] And Mark is writing it down. And so, two of the major themes that we have picked up on through this series is, one, Christology, who is Jesus? And then, what does it look like to follow Jesus?

[2:15] So, discipleship. And we're going to pick up and follow those themes again this morning in our text as we talk about how we clearly see, what it means to clearly see who Jesus is.

[2:28] So, our text this morning is Mark 8, verses 22 through 33. So, I'm going to give you guys a minute, if you've got your Bibles, to get there. And as you're turning to this scripture, let's kind of get a little context of where we're going.

[2:42] So, last week, Elliot preached about the Syrophoenician woman. So, that story takes place in Tyre and Sidon, which is kind of like in the north on the sea there.

[2:54] And so, this story, we're going to be coming south a little bit. You'll notice, too, that we've kind of skipped a portion of scripture. So, we've gone from the middle of chapter 7, skipping the end of chapter 7, the first part of chapter 8, and we're going to land squarely in the middle of chapter 8.

[3:13] And you may say, like, hey, I'm pretty sure I've heard you say or people say that, you know, we preach all the way through books of the Bible here. So, what's going on? Why did we skip around? The reality is that there's a couple of themes in here that we've already kind of touched on.

[3:28] And so, in the interest of time, we're going to skip those. But what I would encourage you to do is to go back and to read those scriptures, especially kind of in light of what we're going to talk about today.

[3:40] Because I think what you'll see is that Jesus is doing something in this section of scripture. He's preparing us, and it's kind of going to lead in to what we're talking about this morning.

[3:52] So, to set up our text a bit, you know, this section of Mark's story is really the end of the first act.

[4:05] And Mark's narrative to this point has been really talking about who is Jesus. Again, we talked about that, the Christology. And what we've seen is we've seen that people are getting these glimpses of who Jesus is.

[4:18] You know, Jesus has made a couple of statements about who he is. You know, the demons, they really seem to have it dialed in. They seem to know who Jesus is, even if the disciples don't know.

[4:31] But to this point in the story, nobody's really come out and said definitively that who Jesus is. And so that's kind of the climax of this story this morning.

[4:42] It's this huge moment that Mark has been building to, to this point. And this, the end of this first act of the story is really going to set us up for the second act that we're going to be going into here in the coming weeks.

[4:57] The other thing that I want us to see, and if you will go back and read the sections of Scripture that we skipped over, is that Jesus is building, and has been from the very beginning, this idea of trying to get people to see who Jesus is, who he is clearly.

[5:13] And so the title of our message this morning is Seeing Jesus. Jesus is challenging and shaping and reshaping the way people see him.

[5:25] He's done this from the moment that he comes onto the scene. And in order for us to properly follow Jesus, we kind of have to see, we have to see who he is clearly. So another thing we kind of talked about a little bit is like geographically what's going on in the Scripture is like we went from the north, he's going to go and heal the blind man at Bethsaida, and then he's going to head back north to Caesarea Philippi.

[5:48] So this is kind of going to be the height of geographically of his ministry. And then what's going to happen is he is going to slowly work his way back to Jerusalem and back to the cross.

[6:00] So let's open our Scriptures this morning and read. So Mark 8, 22 through 33. And they came to Bethsaida, and some people brought him a blind man and begged him to touch him.

[6:13] And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. And when he spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, Do you see anything? And he looked up and said, I see people, but they look like trees walking.

[6:27] And then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again, and he opened his eyes. And his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. And he sent him to his home, saying, Do not even enter the village.

[6:41] And Jesus went on with his disciples to the village of Caesarea Philippi, and on the way he asked his disciples, Who do people say that I am? And they told him, John the Baptist, and others say Elijah, and others say one of the prophets.

[6:54] And he asked them, But who do you say that I am? Peter answered him, For you are the Christ. And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him.

[7:06] And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, and the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly.

[7:18] And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.

[7:31] This is God's word. Let's pray. Father, as we open your word, we thank you that it is truth. We thank you, God, that we can wholly rely on it for teaching, for learning, and for understanding more clearly who you are.

[7:46] God, would you do that for us this morning? Would you open our eyes? Would you open our eyes to see you, to see the real you, and God, to honor you. In Jesus' name, amen. So the first point I want us to see this morning is that only Jesus can make us see clearly.

[8:03] So I'm going to go ahead, and I'm going to run to two tensions here at the very beginning, just so we can get them out of the way, so we can make sure we're not distracted by anything as we go through this. You know, Jesus spits on this guy.

[8:14] Let's just, we can acknowledge that that happened, okay? And so why? Why did Jesus do this? I don't know. Not 100% sure, and I think it's okay for us to not know.

[8:26] Let's be okay with not knowing some things. But I want to, but one thing I will say. I will say that I think that these healings, that Jesus is doing something more here than simply, he didn't just spit on them for no reason.

[8:41] He's demonstrating something. And see, for each of these two men, because he does this twice, he does this back in chapter 7 as well with the deaf and mute man, where he touches his tongue and heals him of not being able to speak, and he touches his ears, and he now can hear, that this touch for these men, because of their infirmities, this would have been a very intimate touch, right?

[9:06] And the addition of saliva would have further made this more intimate. And I think what Jesus is doing is he is healing them the most vulnerable and the most intimate parts of how they receive him.

[9:22] We receive him through our ears, through hearing, and through our eyes, through seeing. The senses, these are the senses that help us the most to navigate the world, how we intake information.

[9:33] And so I think he's doing something more than just simply healing them. There's something beyond that. The other thing I want to address real quick is that, you know, this healing of the blind man at Bethsaida seems like Jesus kind of like goofed it up on the first half, and he's like had to redo it.

[9:53] Let's be clear that that's not the case either, right? Jesus didn't mess up. He didn't half heal this guy and then have to come back in for a second try. Jesus is teaching us something.

[10:06] He's doing something. Jesus' ministry is always specific. Everything Jesus does, everything he does has a purpose. Jesus healing this blind man is just a simple byproduct in a way of what he is trying to teach his disciples about seeing him clearly.

[10:28] Just like the man who is deaf and dumb, like he is being healed as a byproduct of Jesus' teaching. I think that's beautiful.

[10:40] That means that God is, our Savior is sovereignly in control of all things, that he's intentional, and he may just heal you to teach somebody else something, or he may give you a trial in your life to help you to understand what it is to serve him, or to teach somebody else something.

[10:59] Our God is so much bigger than the box that we put him in. So why is this story in there?

[11:10] Why is this story so important? You know, Matthew and Luke don't record this story, but John 21, 25 says that if all of the story, if all the books could not contain all the actions of Jesus, that the world isn't big enough to contain all those books.

[11:33] And I think there's this narrative aspect of what Peter is recalling, because Peter is dictating this to Mark, and then Mark is writing it down, that Peter has the benefit of hindsight, and as he is speaking to Mark and telling him to write it down, he's going, look at what Jesus did.

[11:52] Jesus healed this guy over here because he was trying to teach me something over here. That's really, I just think that's such a cool thing. And so there's some parallels in this story.

[12:07] These are the parallels that I think Mark is, or that Peter is kind of recalling to Mark, that he thinks are so amazing. And the first parallel that we see is that in both instances, Jesus kind of removes them.

[12:19] First, he removes these guys from populated areas. So he leans the blind man out of the village, and he takes his disciples away to Caesarea Philippi, which is kind of a remote and desolate kind of journey.

[12:33] The first time Jesus lays his hands on the blind man, he asks him, what can you see? And he says, I see people, but they look like trees. When Jesus asks his disciples, who do you say that I am?

[12:47] And then he asks them, who do you say that I am? Like the blind man, they can see Jesus, but they just can't see him clearly. Then Jesus goes and he touches the blind man's eyes, and his sight is fully restored.

[13:02] And then we see that Jesus opens the disciples' eyes, and he reveals not only that he is the Christ, but he reveals something that they weren't prepared for. That he's a king, but not the kind of king that they're thinking.

[13:17] He's a king that's coming, a king that's coming to die. See, Jesus opens the eyes of the blind man, and then he finally sees clearly.

[13:31] Jesus opens Peter's eyes and the disciples' eyes, and what do they do? They choose to rebuke him. See, Peter and his disciples are suffering from spiritual blindness. Peter sees Jesus just like the blind man sees the people who look like trees.

[13:48] He can see just enough to know that he is no longer blind. And Jesus' movement towards Jerusalem in the coming chapters is going to be this progressive attempt to try and rid them and heal them of spiritual blindness.

[14:05] And what are Peter and the disciples blind to? See, they're not blind to the fact that they recognize him as the Christ because they acknowledge that that's who he is, and they're right.

[14:19] But again, they are blind to the type of king that he is, one who will die, one who will be a servant. And they're also blind to the type of life that Jesus is calling them to.

[14:32] See, later on, they are going to ask Jesus, who among them is the greatest? They're going to ask questions that are pertaining to this, they're standing in this future kingdom.

[14:48] James and John are going to come to Jesus, and they're going to request to sit at his right hand and at his left hand in the kingdom. But they're not thinking about a heavenly kingdom. They're thinking about earthly kingdoms.

[14:58] They want power and they want status. So the question for us this morning is, are we blind to who Jesus is?

[15:10] See, because you and I are not so different than the disciples. See, what they had done is they had created for themselves an image of what the Messiah should look like, how he should be and the things he should do.

[15:24] And now they're getting confronted with the reality of who Jesus actually is. So for us, do we see Jesus as this vague, dull representation of who he actually is?

[15:39] I'm going to pick on my beautiful wife this morning, just for a minute. She's sitting right down here. One of the things that I love most about Catherine, and one of the things that attracted me to her the most when we first started dating was her beautiful eyes.

[15:52] She has gorgeous eyes. But the reality is that those eyes don't work very well. If she didn't have her glasses on, girl is blind.

[16:04] Girl is blind. And I asked her, I cleared with her before I used this illustration, but last night we were getting ready for bed and I went over and I took her glasses off of her face and I started backing up.

[16:20] And I got about 10 feet away from her and I said to her, I said, if I was standing here and there was another man next to me who was of my same build and same general shape, I said, and we didn't speak, could you tell who I am?

[16:38] The answer was no. Like, I couldn't make you out, you know? And like, she knows me, right? Like, we've got three kids. Like, she knows me.

[16:49] We know each other, you know? And so without my voice, she has this intimate knowledge of who I am, but she, if I back far enough away, she can't see who I am without her glasses.

[17:04] And so like Catherine's glasses, it's only Jesus that makes us see clear. Without him, we can view him as something other than who he is.

[17:19] We need him to come and put glasses on and fix our eyesight and give us clear vision. And for us, this has to be our prayer. This should be our prayer every day.

[17:31] The world is at odds with the true vision of Jesus, the true vision of God. The enemy would love nothing more than to take and to distort our view of God and make him into something that he is not.

[17:47] This morning, we need to be praying that he would open our eyes. We would not simply see him as the person who is walking and looks like a tree, but that he would heal our vision.

[18:01] See, because this is the big thing about what Peter, Peter will later have a problem in or be Jesus because the truth of the matter is that only Jesus gets to, only Jesus gets to say who he is.

[18:14] Right? We don't get to say who Jesus is. Jesus gets to say who Jesus is. So one of the reasons for their spiritual blindness is that they had created for themselves a picture of who Jesus was, they had, of what he was here to do, of his purpose and his mission.

[18:31] And Peter and the disciples are now making Jesus into their own little image. J.I. Packer, in his book, Knowing God, kind of speaks to this. He says, if we don't believe the correct things about God, we will create an idol, a God of our own design that fits into our image.

[18:50] but he, that little idol is not God at all. If we try and put God in a box and to look and act and think like we think he should, the very best thing that we're doing is creating a God that reflects like the highest form of humanity that we can think of.

[19:10] But Packer clearly points out in his book that God is not any sort of man. When our minds or with our minds or with our eyes we cheapen or bring God down to our level, we are worshiping something other than the true God.

[19:28] We are worshiping a false God. Even if we approach him with the very best of intentions. And this is what's happening to the disciples in our text. And it can so easily happen to us.

[19:41] The disciples are seeing a blurry picture of Jesus. They are seeing him through the lens of what they thought the redemption of Israel was going to look like.

[19:52] This Messiah who was going to come and he was going to establish this earthly kingdom. He was going to push out the Romans. He's going to reestablish the throne of David. He's going to make the nation of Israel back to be this dominant power.

[20:06] They are going to now, they're going to be safe from all of their enemies. They don't have to live in fear. They don't have to sacrifice anything. Now they'd be able to rest easy.

[20:19] Jesus the Messiah in their minds is going to make all things right. They expect an earthly king and they expect an earthly kingdom, but that's not what they get.

[20:32] Jesus was here to heal their spiritual blindness. And only he gets to say who he is. This little piece is why Peter rebukes him.

[20:44] Verse 31, And he began to teach him that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again.

[20:55] And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan.

[21:06] For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. Again, Jesus is supposed to be this big, great military ruler in their mind.

[21:17] And now he's telling them that he's going to suffer many things. Now he's going to go to the cross and he's going to be killed. And Peter really has no frame of reference for this. So biblical scholars will agree that the people at this time, their idea of who the Messiah would be and what he would look like, what his coming would look like would be a very varied thing based on who you talk to.

[21:40] But it would be wrapped up in various political and social ideologies and agendas. Does that sound familiar? It should. Because we're not so different, are we?

[21:54] I mean, do we base our view of Jesus on how we view social issues? How about whether or not Jesus is a Democrat or he's a Republican? We could probably argue that, right?

[22:07] You know, whether or not we believe that we should be healthy and wealthy, whether we should be automatically happy all the time, should we be comfortable all the time?

[22:22] Have we made our view of God this little idol that doesn't represent who he is? Jesus says that this is not why I have come.

[22:38] He is, are we making him this idol? Jesus, a Jesus that fits into our vision of who and how life should go. We are idolaters by nature.

[22:52] We place value and we worship the things that are most important to us. Are we worshiping a Jesus who died and rose again? Are we worshiping and following a Jesus that calls us to lay down our lives?

[23:06] Because if we are worshiping anything other than the Jesus Christ of the Bible, we need to pray that Jesus would heal our blindness. We need to be in the word. Like Titus 1.9 says, we need to be holding fast to the word as it's been taught to us.

[23:22] We need to measure our ideas of who God is against his word. Just as the disciples did not get to choose who Jesus was, neither do we.

[23:37] We do not get to decide for ourselves who Jesus is and what he's doing. Another great book is A.W. Tozer's book, Knowledge of the Holy.

[23:49] If you had, if I could recommend two books about God's nature and who God is, J.I. Packer's Knowing God and A.W. Tozer's Knowledge of the Holy are two fantastic resources.

[24:01] The very opening line of Tozer's book says this. It says, what we believe about God is the most important thing that we can think.

[24:12] The most important thing that we can think. So Peter's thoughts about who Jesus was, the part that earns Jesus this rebuke is this idea that that Jesus is saying, I must die.

[24:35] So the third point I want us to see this morning is that only Jesus could go to the cross. Verse 31, and he began to teach him that the Son of Man must suffer many things, must suffer, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again.

[24:56] And he said this plainly. It's that declaration of the fact that he must die is what Peter rebukes him for.

[25:08] See, again, Peter's life from the time he was born until this point would have been shaped around the idea that the Messiah would come, but he's gonna come and he's gonna come into a position of strength and a position of authority that all of the wrongs that had been done to Israel would now again be made right.

[25:27] But instead, Jesus comes and he says that death and weakness rather than power and prestige are gonna be his mission. He's very clear.

[25:37] He pulls no punches. And Peter's like, whoa, Jesus, easy. Let's pump the brakes. It's not how it's supposed to go. I think it would have been one thing if Jesus had kind of said that he might die or that there's gonna be this great battle and ultimately Israel's gonna be the victor and I'm gonna go down in a blaze of glory and, you know, but that's not what he says.

[26:03] He says that his main purpose, the main reason that he has come is to die. And he said, but why?

[26:13] You know, I'm sure Peter is thinking to this point, it's like, Jesus, can't, is there any other way? See, this doesn't make sense because Peter's, Peter and the group, you know, they're really stern with Jesus.

[26:26] It's not like a, hey, Jesus, this, you know, okay, whatever you say, we'll, you know, this is hardcore. This is a condemnation. The condemnation of, of Jesus' statement is in the strongest of terms.

[26:37] It's the kind of rebuke that Jesus would have employed when excising demons. And what does Jesus say to Peter? He says, get behind me, Satan.

[26:49] For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. This is a huge moment in the story.

[27:02] And I think for many of us in the room this morning, this could be a hard pill to swallow because what it feels like is Jesus is equating Peter with Satan or telling Peter that he is Satan. And let's be clear that that's not what Jesus is doing here.

[27:17] But what he is doing is telling Peter that this idea that he has is a satanic idea. See, verse 33 in our text this morning should remind us a bit about the beginning of the book of Mark, of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness.

[27:38] Matthew's gospel, we see that Jason, or Jason, Jason, Satan, don't know where, don't know where that came from.

[27:53] Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness and he takes him to the top of the mountain and he shows him all the kingdoms of the world and he shows him every way in which he could get out of the end result, this dying and this sacrificing of his life.

[28:11] He says, Jesus, if you will just give your life to me, I can make all of this go away. He tempts Jesus to take the easy way out.

[28:21] He says, forget hunger, you know, forget being a servant. Jesus, just sell out. And you don't have to do any of this stuff. But Hebrews 4.15 says this, it says, we do not have a high priest, Jesus, who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin.

[28:45] There's this sense that in Jesus' rebuke of Peter, he is showing that he understands the gravity of what his purpose is. That he is he understands that there's this humanity, this human aspect that Peter is now tempting him just as Satan tempted him to take the easy way out.

[29:08] And Peter, in his understanding of what's going on, is he's thinking that his requests to Jesus, that these seem rational and they seem reasonable. they make logical sense.

[29:22] But again, the whole purpose of this passage is about seeing Jesus for who he truly is. It's about healing blindness and opening eyes.

[29:33] And Jesus sees something that they can't see. Again, Jesus' plans are always strategic. They always have a purpose. He does nothing without a purpose.

[29:48] So the question this morning is, is it possible for God to have done this some other way? Could God in his infinite power have snapped his fingers and saved humanity in another way?

[30:00] And the answer to that question is no. See, because Jesus knew that in order for all things to be made right, he would have to once and for all deal with our sin. See, we all need the forgiveness of Jesus.

[30:16] And Jesus knew and knows that the only way for this forgiveness to be given would be through death, through his death. Because the reality is that forgiveness always costs us something.

[30:33] We have a, we toss around phrases when we get hurt or somebody hurts us. we say things like, oh, it's fine, you know, don't worry about it. It is what it is.

[30:45] We say things like that all the time. But the reality is that that transgression is probably neither fine nor something to not worry about. That there's a cost that now has to be dealt with.

[31:01] So let's use this as an example. Think about a time when you've, when you've been wronged. And for the sake of simplicity, let's just think about a time where you gave something to somebody.

[31:11] You allowed a friend of yours to borrow something of value. And in the process of that person borrowing this particular thing, they break it. You're left with two options at this point.

[31:27] You can either demand that the friend pay, in which case, you know, now the matter is settled or if you choose to forgive this person and you say, don't worry about the loss of the item.

[31:42] Now what's happened is that you have incurred the cost. Like you are out the value of that particular thing. Whether that be money or nostalgia or whatever.

[31:55] How about if somebody wrongs us or, you know, they bring some kind of personal offense to you. So you can either retaliate, which is now perpetuating the offense, or if you forgive them, now you're taking on and bearing the cost of the offense on yourself.

[32:13] If you truly forgive that person, you are now taking the weight of the sin that they committed against you and you're putting it on your shoulders. You're saying to them, like, hey, you've offended me, but my forgiveness, but in my forgiveness, the penalty of that offense is something that I am willing to pay for.

[32:32] And that's exactly what Jesus is doing here in this passage. It's what he came to do. This is why it's so important for Jesus and the disciples, or Peter and the disciples, to see Jesus clearly.

[32:47] Because the weight of the sin of the world was more than they could bear. It's more than we can bear. The cost of our sin is far too great. And the penalty for that sin is death.

[33:01] Jesus knows that the only solution to this cost is to bear it himself. He is the only one who can take away sin and the only one who can pay the debt that we owe.

[33:15] Because forgiveness is always cost something. It is never free. And this is what Jesus is saying to Peter. He says, Peter, I am a different kind of king.

[33:28] And the only hope for this world is if I die. Peter, your sin means the death penalty. And I'm going to take that penalty away so that you can live in freedom, knowing that you no longer have to live in fear of paying the debt.

[33:46] I'm going to pay it. I'm going to take the cost. I'm going to take it, Peter, so that you can live in freedom to serve me without the fear of losing your life.

[33:58] See, Jesus takes away the fear of death. Peter, if I've conquered death, then what do you have left to fear? In the very next verse, which we're going to touch next week, Jesus is going to address the crowd and the disciples, and he's going to tell them that if they want to follow him, they have to die.

[34:27] And not only do they have to die, but they have to pick up a cross and follow him. Jesus is setting them up to see them more clearly, and this is why he's so emphatic that they see him clearly.

[34:40] He needs to know, he needs them to know that a life of following him is one that requires sacrifice. They need to be focused on who he truly is.

[34:53] So for us this morning, what is the measure of seeing Jesus clearly? And this question, we're going to answer over the next coming weeks. So you have to come back for this.

[35:06] Setting Alan up. But it's a life that reflects the cross. We have to have a life that reflects the cross.

[35:20] So I'm going to call the band up. So what's the takeaway for this morning? I think the takeaways for this morning for us, whether we are believers or whether we are non-believers, that we are all blind and we all struggle to see Jesus clearly.

[35:42] If you're a believer here this morning, we need to be praying that Jesus would heal our spiritual blindness. We need to pray that where we have made a false idol of who Jesus is, that he would challenge that, that he would reshape our thoughts, and that we would see him clearly.

[36:08] If you don't know Jesus this morning as Lord and Savior, you are blind. And I would challenge you that, see, simply knowing about who Jesus is is not the same thing as seeing him clearly.

[36:22] And I think that goes for both believers and non-believers. I'll say that again. Simply knowing about Jesus is not the same as seeing him clearly. If you're a non-believer here this morning and you've been challenged today that maybe Jesus is more than you thought he was, if you feel like maybe you can kind of see him, but he kind of looks like a tree, he's blurry.

[36:49] If you think you know that you need to see him more clearly, don't ignore the prompting of the Holy Spirit. We talked about it this morning, that you're not here by accident.

[37:02] If you darkened the door of this building today, Jesus is calling you. The gospel is being preached. The Holy Spirit is here.

[37:15] You are not here by accident. We talk about this in Swansboro a lot, but it might be the longest 40 feet that you ever walk. It might be from the back to the front here.

[37:29] But don't leave this place without doing business with the king. There are going to be people down here who want to pray with you, who care about you deeply, who want to see you come to see Jesus more clearly, to walk that with you.

[37:45] Don't leave here. If you're feeling that tug in your heart, don't leave without coming and seeing him more clearly. So we're going to move to a time of communion.

[37:57] And this morning, if you are not a believer, then what we would ask you to do is first come and feast on the bread of life. This is a meal that we take and this meal is for those who believe in Jesus.

[38:14] Again, the opportunity to know him is right here. And if you come to know him this morning, we would love to walk through communion with you, but it doesn't make sense to you if you don't know him.

[38:28] For believers, when we take these elements, the Bible clearly calls for us to examine our hearts. And if we come to him without examining our hearts, we can bring condemnation on ourselves.

[38:45] And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of walk us through a little bit of a corporate confession and then an assurance of pardon, and then we're going to do a time of individual confession.

[38:59] So Lord, this morning we confess that we are so often blind to who you are. Lord, that we don't see you clearly. Lord, we confess that we often rebuke you when you clearly tell us who you are.

[39:14] Help us to cry out to you for the healing of our blindness. Let's take a couple of minutes. We're going to take, or excuse me, we're going to take 30 seconds, and we are going to just have a moment to do business with the king.

[39:27] A time, you may have somebody you're sitting next to that you need to ask forgiveness. There may be something that you've brought in here this morning that you need forgiveness from, so do some business with the king this morning.

[39:38] Thank you.