Setting The Scene In Mark 7

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We've been in Mark chapter seven, and the place that we find ourselves in today is right at the end. So I'm going to just dig right in here. Mark chapter seven, verse 31. Says this. Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis. All right. Did any of that mean anything to any of you? No, because we don't live in ancient Israel. So our geographical knowledge is a little bit, I don't know. But here's what you need to know. So Jesus is in northern Israel in a place called Galilee. And above him is what we would call Gentile territory. It's where non-Jewish people live. And Jesus has gotten to some conflict with the religious leaders in the beginning of chapter seven. And so he needs to kind of take a break. And so he he kind of escapes where all the Jewish people are and he goes up to Tyre, which is a Gentile area. And we see last week, Andrew led us through a story of how he encounters this woman who is a Syrophonician. She's she's not an Israelite, she's not a follower of God. And yet he encounters her and she asks him to do a miracle for her. And they have this whole conversation. And in the end, Jesus says, Yes, absolutely, I will heal you. And then we find ourselves today, and Jesus is still in this Gentile territory, and he doesn't just like hang out there for a second and drop back down. No, it says that he goes to Sidon, which is north of Tyre. So he goes further away from the Jewish territory. And then he comes back. And instead of diving right in again to the uh to the western side of the Sea of Galilee, he goes to the eastern side, which is called the Decapolis, which is predominantly lived in by non-Jewish people. Now, why do I tell you all this? Sometimes we have this proclivity when we read the Bible to read things in isolation. Here's the problem with that. Mark has written this encount, uh, this account very intentionally. Can I do a little bit of like Bible nerdery with you today? Some of you are like, I wish you would do that all the time. I don't know why you give me all this like heart fluff. Like, just give me the facts. And some of you are like, uh, okay, fine. A little Bible nerdery. Mark, uh, as history tells us, uh, he was not an eyewitness to all these things. History tells us that Mark sat at the feet of Peter and Peter would recount to him stories of Jesus. So when Mark constructs the gospel, he doesn't do history like you and I do history. If I were to write a history account, um, I would go sequentially. I'd say, this happened here, this happened here, this happened here, and it would be chronological order. But the way that ancient historians wrote accounts is they would think about things more thematically. They wanted to help you not just understand the facts, but what the facts actually meant. And so when Mark is putting these stories together, he's not just simply trying to tell you information, he's trying to help you have understanding. And we go right back to the beginning of chapter seven. There's this odd story about how Jesus is having this confrontational conversation with the religious leaders of his day and age, the Pharisees. And they're getting mad at his followers because his followers aren't following the ceremonial cleaning laws. Well, later, Jesus pulls his followers aside and he essentially says, guys, don't pay attention to how the Pharisees live their lives because they care more about what's on the outside. But what actually matters, what actually makes you unclean is what's in your heart. It's the sin that bubbles up from your heart. So why

Clean And Unclean Gets Reframed

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is it that right after those two stories, Mark puts these stories of Jesus going into Gentile territory and encountering people who were not Jewish? Because Mark is helping us see that Jesus is actually pushing his followers to see that he did not just come for one people, but he came for all people. You see, in Jesus' day and age, the Jewish people were very isolated. They looked at the world like it was filled with the bad, the other, the unclean. It wasn't just about inner purity in their ceremonial washing of their hands before a meal or before worship or the sacrificial system. It was about how do we separate ourselves from all the bad people out there? They didn't just think you were unclean because you didn't cut, uh, you didn't wash your hands. They thought you were unclean because you weren't Jewish, because you didn't know God. And therefore, their response was don't have anything to do with those people out there. Have any of you uh ever been in a in a place like that? Where the dominant mindset of the church, of the group, of the whatever uh community you're part of is like, we are the good, the faithful, the clean. We don't want to have anything come and soil us. I was listening to a sermon this week from a pastor that I follow, and he was telling the story about an early moment in his ministry. Uh, he got a part-time youth pastor job, and he didn't make enough money from that job to actually survive. And so he ended up getting a job at a local gym in a place called Myrtle Beach. Just so happened that across from the gym was a strip club. Now, the gym owner was not a uh he was not a uh follower of Jesus. And so he's like business opportunity. So he actually went over to the strip club and told all the strippers, you come over and you do your workouts here, like in between shifts, and you can come for free. And so he would come and then he would upcharge all the dudes who were coming in to work out at the same time. Now that's skeezy, that's gross, whatever. But here's the here's the the point of the story that matters. These women would come over, and here was this youth pastor, and he was like at the desk and he was making all the protein shakes and the smoothies, and they started to get to know each other because they'd come after their workout and they sit and talk to him, and he'd be like writing his youth sermons, and they'd be like, Hey, you should come and you should come and see us at work. And he's like, uh I'm a pastor, I don't do that kind of thing. But he would then start kind of pushing back at them, hey, you should you should come and see me at our work. We're like, Well, we are you working? He's like, No, no, this isn't my real work. He's like, I work at a church. So finally, one of the strippers says, Okay, I will come with you next Sunday.

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So he's like, uh, uh-oh. Uh-oh, uh, uh-oh. What do I what do I do?

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She's like, Oh, that's okay, I'll pick you up. So she picks him up the next uh Sunday. He's like getting ready to go. He's like, I gotta be there early. He's trying to, he's actually trying to dissuade her because he didn't think she would do it. She calls his bluff. She comes with her daughter in this like crazy white convertible Corvette, and uh she's wearing like a you know a sundress. And the way he tells the story, he's like, she was invested in her trade, okay? So she was, you know, she was looking like a stripper trying to dress up for a Sunday morning. And they walk into church, and everyone stares this gal down. And at the end of the service, the pastor, the lead pastor of the church is like, Joby, get into my office. Pastor Joby comes in, and he just gets berated for 20 minutes. How could you bring that person into this place?

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We have this place to protect us from people like that. Church. When we

The Church That Forgot Its Mission

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hear that, doesn't it feel like someone lost the plot a little bit?

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When we gather together on Sundays, you see these uh these movements above us, right? Creation, fall, promise, redemption, church restoration. What Jesus is doing is he's actually living out the story that God has been writing from the creation of the world. Like we talk about mission, and some of us are like, I don't know about this mission thing. It's a little bit uncomfortable. I'm not very good at it because we think about mission like an activity, but it's not. Mission is an identity, it's a key part of who God is. And if we are in Christ, we are not just called to do mission. We are called to be mission, to be a people by which God is pursuing the world. We have story after story after story of a God who would not abandon his creation to our own terrible devices. Creation, God makes us in his image and likeness and invites us to join him in cultivating the world to its fullest potential. And yet we think we can do it on our own. We think, Jesus, we don't want it to be for your glory, we want it to be for our glory, so we rebel. And God could have wiped the slate clean, but what does he do? He pursues, he chases us, he makes a way for us. He promises that he will enter into our rebel, our brokenness from our rebellion, and he will make a way to bring us into right relationship with him again. And so God goes and he takes one man out of all nations, a man named Abraham. He changes the name to Abraham, and he says, Out of your family, I am going to bring the means to bless all nations. And from Abraham's family, he raises up a nation called the nation of Israel, and they are called to be a contrast people, to live in relationship with God's wise, so the rest of the world could see what life with God was like and be drawn to right relationship with him. Why? Because God is a missional God. He does not stop pursuing. The Father sends the Son, the Son sends the Spirit. And if we lose the plot, we forget where we are. We are here. We are the church. We are the people who have experienced the saving work of Jesus and have been invited to join him to see all nations blessed through him. And this church had lost the plot. And my fear, church, is that sometimes we can do that too. Tony, who was up leading music for us earlier, we were having a conversation last Sunday, and he's like, you know, I'm feeling maybe we're getting a little too comfortable. We're sitting here in our nice leather recliner seats, our nice air-conditioned building, and it can be so easy to be like, man, I just want to come hang out with my friends. I just want a good place for my kids. But suddenly what's going on is we're actually losing sight of who we've been called to be. Maybe we're not sitting here in judgment when someone broken comes into our midst. But we're also not actively looking for the people that God is bringing into our life on a daily basis who need to encounter Him. And what Jesus shows us in this story, what Mark wants us not to miss, is that Jesus never lost sight of the plot. He is in the Gentile territory, he's going to rest, but he has not forgotten the mission of God. And so when God brings people into his path, what does he do? He pursues them.

Why Evangelism Training Went Wrong

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Now, some of us can hear that. And we have some tensions with this.

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And I get it. When I was a kid, teenager, I did some evangelism training. Do you know that is like how to share your faith? And the way that I was trained was they were like, hey, here's a notepad with like two really icebreakery questions, and then go for the kill. So I was out in Vancouver area getting trained, and then they drop us off at Stanley Park and, like, you got two hours, see how many people you can convert. I'm like, all right, I'm an introvert. Like, I don't like talking to people randomly on the best of days. Like, someone shows up at my door and I'm like, I'm not home. So I was like totally out of my comfort zone. And I'm sitting there around this pool in Stanley Park and I'm gumping up to people and I'm like, hey, do you would you like to take a survey with me today? And they're like, oh, sure. I'm like, you know, can you tell me on a scale one to five how good your day is? Okay, is a four? That sounds great. Oh, you're a two. Oh, well, how much worse would it be if you found out you were going to hell? And so we sit here and we're like, that's what we think it means to share our faith. We think it's like this shotgun approach, this impersonal approach, but that is not what Jesus models for us. Listen to this story.

A Strange Healing With A Purpose

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Verse 32, this is what it says. There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged Jesus to place his hand on him. And after he took him aside, away from the crowd. And listen to this, this is weird. Okay, this is gonna get a little funky. Jesus put his fingers into the man's ears, then he spit and touched the man's tongue, and then he looked up to heaven and he's and with a deep sigh said to him, Ephiphatha, which means be opened. At that time the man's ears were opened, his tongue was loosened, and he began to speak plainly. Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone, but the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it.

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Now, I have a confession to make.

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When I read that I had this passage this morning, I was like, oh my gosh, not another miracle story. Done a bunch of miracle sermons. I don't know how I'm gonna do this miracle story. Now, guys, can can we just all acknowledge like how insane that is? Like, this is a story of how the creator God of the universe entered into the brokenness of humanity, saw someone who was broken, and restored them. That is not something that should just be like, oh, you know, another one, right? Like my heart is so hardened to the goodness and the work of God in that moment. And God had to punch me in the face a little bit this week and say, Are you taking me for granted? And church, so I want to pause here for a second and just ask. Some of us have been in this thing for a long time. And and have we so taken for granted the work that Jesus has done that our heart has actually been hardened to the amazement of it? Think about your own moment where you encounter Jesus for the first time. And maybe some of you aren't, you're not even there yet. But for those who are, and the way that you watched him change and transformed your life, the way that you continue to see him, have we have we gone have we gone hardened to the work of Jesus? You know, perhaps one of the reasons it's hard for us to imagine pressing out and sharing our faith with others is because we've actually been hardened to the work that Jesus has done for us. We've forgotten the joy of it. But as I was working through this, Spirit started to show me something beautiful about this passage. It's not just another miracle story, it is a very specific miracle story. So Jesus is traveling again through Gentile territory. So presumably the people who are coming to him are Gentiles. Why have they heard about him? Why do they know to come to him? Well, we heard a few weeks ago how Jesus had crossed over into this area and he had cast out several demons from a man that got sent into pigs. And so Jesus' reputation in this area is there, and people start responding to him. And so these friends, they're like, Man, you got a problem, dude. You can't, you can't speak and you can't hear. Let's bring you to Jesus. And just as a side, man, do we not all want friends like that? Do we not all want someone when they see us in need? They're like, hey, I might not be able to fix you, but I am going to find someone who will.

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And church, do we do we not need to be called to be those people?

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Maybe some of us are being called this morning to step into that place where there's someone in our life who has need. And Jesus is just saying, bring them to me. So these friends do, they bring this man to Jesus. And do you notice how Jesus responds? Like we've seen again, tons and tons of miracles. Jesus has calmed the storm, he's healed a bunch of people, he's cast out demons, but we've never seen this. Like, again, it's weird. My uh my daughter Emerson, I don't know what it is. She's like a tactile person. And I put her to bed at night. She's on a little tot bed, so I'm leaning down. And sometimes she just feels the need to try and stick her fingers in my orifices. And I'm like, I don't want your fingers in my ears, baby. She's like, but daddy, I love you. And I'm like, this love does not feel good to me. This is awkward love, baby. And we look at this and we're like, this is weird. Like Jesus is literally just like shoving his fingers in this guy's ears, and then what does he do? He spits and puts his spit on the guy's tongue. That's gross. So why is it that Jesus, out of all the miracles, heals this man in this way?

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Well, as I was processing the pro through this passage, the Holy Spirit showed me something. This man had two problems. He couldn't speak and he couldn't hear. But what could he do? He could see and he could feel.

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When Jesus was meeting with the uh the religious leader or the synagogue leader Jairus, he had a whole conversation with Jairus. He called Jairus to respond verbally in faith. When there was a woman who had a shameful disorder that was isolating her from people, Jesus healed her in complete animinity and didn't talk to her until after she'd been healed. And this man is deaf and can't speak.

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So what does Jesus do? He shows him what he's doing and he allows him to feel what he is doing. Church, here's what the Spirit showed me.

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This is not just another healing. Jesus met this person exactly where he needed to be met. He knew what he had wrong with him, he knew what he needed to understand what was going on, and Jesus did it. Jesus wasn't shotgun approaching his methodology for bringing people to him. He met people exactly where they were at. Some of us are in this room this morning, or we're watching online, and we're wondering, is there a God who sees me?

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Is there a God who knows me? And you hear about this God, but it's kind of general.

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You're not looking for some amorphous force out there. You need to know that there's a personal God who actually sees not just you as a generic human being, but you as the person that you are. And what Jesus is putting on full display for us this morning is that he does.

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He knew exactly what the blind the deaf mute man needed.

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The mute man needed to see that Jesus was going to heal him. He needed to feel that Jesus was going to heal him.

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And so that's exactly what Jesus does. That's a beautiful message.

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And some of us, we need to cling to that reality. You are here this morning, and you are bringing something heavy, and you are bringing something unique to you, and you are wondering, is there anyone who cares? And Jesus is saying, Yes, there is. I see you, I know you, and I can heal you.

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But there's this interesting thing that

When Jesus Does Not Fix It

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happens next.

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In verse 36, Jesus commands them not to tell anyone. And this has puzzled me for a long time. Why is it that Jesus doesn't want people to tell the stories about what he's done? I mean, I'm like a full-time paid professional Christian. Like when things are going well, I'm like, I want everyone to know. Like, let's get on this train, let's keep moving things forward. I want to take this ministry momentum and take it to the streets. Let's keep building this thing. Jesus is like, hey, hey, hey, things are getting out of control. Everyone's finding out about me. We gotta, we gotta shut this thing down. What is going on here? Well, I think as we look at this, what started to happen is that people started to look at who Jesus was as what he did, and they actually started to miss his true identity. He became more known as the person who healed than the person who was there to bring God's kingdom to the world. And so when Jesus was calling them to say, hey, don't do this, he was recognizing that we as human beings might have a tendency to sensationalize Jesus. We take a moment and we we we kind of put Jesus in the box of that moment. We like, you can only be this Jesus. You can only be this healer. But Jesus didn't just come to heal. Jesus came to restore. And people were We're starting to actually miss who he was because they focus too much on what he did in these moments. And some of us today perhaps we need to check our hearts because we're maybe we're a little frustrated with Jesus. We're a little frustrated because we've heard all these stories about healings, about casting out demons about miracles. And we're sitting there and we're like, but but Jesus, where's my miracle?

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Jesus, where's my healing? And we're starting to wonder is this is this the guy? Is this who he says he is?

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Like I've been praying and asking Jesus for a baby for five years and I still can't get pregnant. I've been begging Jesus to fix my marriage and it's still a mess. I've been praying for this illness to go away and it just won't. I've been asking for that next job opportunity and it's just not coming. Jesus, do you really see me? Because I'm bringing my need to you. And yeah, it's really great to hear a story about a deaf man who gets given his hearing back, but what about my thing? It's still there. So this begs the question for us. Does Jesus still see us when we bring our need to him? And it seems like he's doing nothing? There's an interesting passage in scripture. One of Jesus' early followers, he's a man named Paul. And he was writing a letter to some churches. And in the letter, he talks about this incredible experience that he has, where he has this moment where God gives him a vision of heaven. But then he says something really, really interesting. He says in chapter 12, verse 7 of 2 Corinthians, therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me, but he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

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You see, I love my kids dearly.

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I love them like crazy. But I do not give them everything they want. Because I know, because I know them, that sometimes they want things that are not good for them. My son Ben is like a very materialistic person. And every night when we go to bed, he starts telling me all the things he wants for his birthday. So the other night, he's like, Daddy, I'm like, yeah, Ben. He's like, I want a remote control, like, I want a remote control dinosaur. I'm like, okay. He's like, I want a drone. I'm like, okay. He's like, and I want a pocket knife. I'm like, no. Now, I'll be honest with you. If it was just up to me, I'm like, I'm a dude. I'm like, get this kid a weapon. He's got a like, you know, he God's made him with a warrior spirit. We don't encourage that. I want to help him like learn how to use tools creatively. I'm like, let's go, let's go, let's get this kid a knife. But luckily, God in his grace knew I needed someone who was going to be a helper, which in the Bible means that they can do something that I cannot. And so he gave me Shannon. And Shannon's like, your son is super impulsive. Your son is super violent. Don't not give him a weapon. We will have kids without eyes. So I'm like, Ben, I love you, but no. But why, daddy? Because Ben, this is what you do in your life. And we don't want to give you something where you're going to hurt other people. Do I hold this thing from my son, this thing that he sees as a good thing? Because I don't love him? No, it's because I do. Paul is saying that there are times when God sees you, and because he sees you, because he knows you, because he actually loves you, he does not always give you what you want because he actually will give you what you need.

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Now I get it.

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We hear that and we're like, oh, that's easy for you to say. You're not going through what I'm going through, Andrew. And you're right. I'm not. But you're also not going through what I've been through. We all have our things, and we will all go through a moment where we're gonna look up and we're gonna be like, Do you see me? Do you see me? So, in those moments, how is that we can actually step in trust to know that God does see us and trust that he loves us in that moment, even when he does not give us what we think we need?

Isaiah Echoes And A Bigger Story

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Mark gives us a clue when he records this last verse, verse 37.

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Says this. People were overwhelmed with amazement, and they started saying, He has done everything well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak. See, Mark, as I said, he was writing this with intentionality. And so when he records this, he records this in such a way that those who are familiar with the scriptures are going to see echoes of the scriptures in what these people are saying. So when they say he has done everything well, right away, if you're familiar with the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis, that should bring some alarm bells. Well, where's another place where it sounds like God has done something well? Genesis chapter 1, verse 31. After God has made all of creation, he looks at all he has done, and this is what the Bible records God saw all that he has made, and it was very good.

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It was very good.

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So for Mark, he wants us to see that Jesus hadn't just come to heal a man, that Jesus had come to restore all of creation into its very good state. So when we're looking and we're asking the question, does Jesus see me? Does he know me? The first thing that Mark wants us to understand is that Jesus actually has a bigger vision in mind than just your circumstance in that moment. Jesus actually wants to make all things very good.

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But then the second thing is beautiful.

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They begin to say, He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak. And that's an allusion to Isaiah chapter 35, before Jesus, about 700 years before Jesus came onto the scene, God spoke through a man named Isaiah, and he began to promise his people who were rejecting him, who were not following him, that God would one day intervene on their behalf to make things right. And I'm just going to read chapter 35 for you. It's a beautiful poetic picture of what God will do. Chapter 35, verse 1 says this the desert and the parched land will be glad. The wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom. It will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it in the splendor of Carmel and Sharon. They will see the glory of the Lord and the splendor of our God. So here's what Isaiah is picturing for people. He's saying, You know the desert, you know how dry and arid and fruitless it feels. Well, just imagine that that's the human condition. But there's going to come a day when God enters our reality and that dryness, that aridness, that sinfulness, that brokenness, all of that is going to disappear and it's going to feel like life. And then he encourages the people, he says, strengthen, strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way. Say to those with fearful hearts, Be strong and do not fear, your God will come. Isaiah is looking at the people who are looking at a broken world, who are looking at their circumstances where it feels like God has abandoned them, where it feels like the desert, and he says, Take heart. God sees you, and he has a plan to bring all things together for the good. Now he starts off with a little bit of like a harsh note. He says, He will come with vengeance, with divine retribution. I'll pack that in a second. He will come to save you. Then, listen to this, church, then will the eyes of the blind be opened, hear this, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lamb leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness, in the streams in the desert, the burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs, in the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow, and a mighty highway will be there. It will be called the way of holiness. It will be for those who walk on that way. The unclean will not journey on it, wicked fools will not go about on it, no lion will be there, nor any ravenous beast, they will not be found there, but only, listen to this, but only the redeemed will walk there, and those the Lord has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing, everlasting joy will crown their heads, gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. Mark is helping us see is that in this moment, this is actually what Jesus has come to do. The healing of the deaf man, that wasn't the point. That was a marker of what the point really was that God had come to rescue, restore, and redeem humanity.

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But how is it that we can trust Jesus that he can actually do this?

The Cross As Proof He Sees You

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Well, if we fast forward to a story, we come to the cross. And what we see is that the Bible tells us that every single human being, we are the unclean. We are the ones who don't have any reason to be walking in the way because each and every one of us says, God, I don't want to do your will. I'm gonna go my own way. And therefore, this divine vengeance, this retribution is to be upon us. God needs to wipe the slate clean. He is a just God. He is not going to let evil go unanswered. Even the evil that we sometimes pretend isn't that big deal, a big of a deal in our own life. But this is what Jesus does. He goes to the cross. He who has done nothing wrong, he who has done nothing to deserve death goes to the cross and takes upon himself the penalty for your and my rebellion. In church, if there was ever a time where it looked like God probably didn't know what he was doing, was it not the cross? The creator of the world becomes his own creation, makes himself vulnerable to the people he created. And he calls them to know him, to love him, to follow him. He shows them what his love is like by healing them and restoring them and breaking apart the edges of society where people have been pushed to the fringes away and inviting them into the center again. And then what do we do? We're like, I still don't want you. And we put him on the cross, and it looks like God did not know what he was doing. It looks bleak. And yet, in that moment, when Jesus himself hangs there and suffers and dies at the hands of his creation, it is by that that God actually brings about your and my restoration. So, church, you can trust that when you are going through something, when you're crying out and you're asking Jesus, do you see me? When you are bringing your stuff to him and you're like, I can't hear, I can't speak, can you heal me? And sometimes he says yes, but sometimes he says not right now, and sometimes he says no. You can trust that he actually knows what he is doing and he can bring you to the place of flourishing.

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I'm gonna invite the band to come up.

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The thing I love about this passage, this story, is that on one hand it tells us this beautiful picture of a God who sees us. But it also reminds us that our individual circumstances sometimes when we experience them, we experience them from a limited viewpoint. And what Mark wants to encourage our hearts to do is to see the bigger story that we are living in.

Three Questions To Take Home

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And when we understand that story, when we see Jesus' bigger vision for our lives, it allows us to trust him even when we bring our stuff to him and he says no.

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So I want to just encourage us to take a moment to reflect. I'm gonna give us three questions.

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Encourage you, if you have your phone, take it out, snap a picture. I mean, that 30 seconds you get to reflect on it now is not enough. So take this home with you. Take some time for your journal or do it in your quiet time, journal through them. If you're part of a missional community or a DNA group, uh bring it to your DNA group, talk about as a group. If you're going out for lunch, which all of you are, right? You're all coming to the picnic. This is like the new picnic questions. Three questions. Number one, where have comfort, distraction, or busyness caused you to lose sight of God's mission in your everyday life? We started this whole picture by saying that Jesus demonstrated one who did not lose the plot. He knew the story that he was part of. Have we forgotten the story? Have we so got caught up in the mundane parts of life and the comforts of life that we've forgotten what we've been called to be? Number two. What need, burden, or brokenness do you need the personal touch of Jesus in today? Some of you are here and you are like the deaf man. And you're like, does Jesus see me? And he is inviting you today to see that he does. In church, I've seen so many times when Jesus in his grace and mercy knows exactly what we need, and it's to be healed, and he does it. I believe that's true today. So I encourage you, if that's you, identify it, respond to it, bring it to him. But then we also need to recognize that sometimes for our own sake, for the sake of what Jesus is accomplishing, he says no. Some of you are living in that moment. And so the third question is this what are you struggling to trust that Jesus is doing all things well in, especially when his answer is different than the one you hoped for?

SPEAKER_00 38:07

As we finish off, let me just remind you of this.

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The crowd looked at Jesus and they declared, He has done all things well. And today, as we look at the story, we stand on the other side of the cross. And so, how much more can we say it? Jesus pursued us. He entered our brokenness, he bore our sin, he defeated death, and because he has done all things well, today you and I are being invited to trust him in the individual parts of our lives.