July 5, 2026 "When Faith Comes Into Focus" (Mark 8:22-30)

Pastor Jeff Manning's message from the series, "Mark: Living with Gospel Urgency."

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

So, how many of you see 2020 without any kind of assistance? No glasses, no contacts at all. How many of you have what we would might call perfect 2020 vision? Don't be ashamed. You're probably thinking, ah, but he's going to get me to do something. No, I'm just curious. So, not that many. I do not. When I first started realizing that maybe something was changing with my vision, with my ability to see, I was sitting there and I was watching the ESPN. I don't remember exactly what sports event I was watching, but I'm looking at the scores as they are perpetually scrolling at the bottom, and I'm thinking, are the Yankees up five to six or are they down five to six? I wasn't real sure. And then I got to thinking, well, wait a minute, is my team is that an eight, a six, a five, or a three? I'm not real sure. And so I felt I found out that maybe it was time for me to go to an optometrist. And so next thing I know, I'm in front of one of those um snelling eye charts. That's the official name for it. You know, when they close one eye and you close the other eye and you're trying to read and squint, don't lean forward, stay back. And you try to you try to see how far you can read down. So when I went to the optometrist however many years ago, did that, next thing I know, I'm sitting in front of that machine that makes you look like you're, you know, from outer space. And uh and the the optometrist, the doctor, she'll say, okay, now how about does this look clearer or this? One, two, one, two. And then they'll make some okay. Now, how about this? Two, one, two, one. Those of you, you you you know what I'm talking about. Well, um, even when you get your eyes properly focused and you can see with contacts, glasses, etc., that does not rule out the possibility of your eyes playing tricks on you. Let me prove it. Let me just show you a picture. Do you see a duck or a rabbit? Do you see both? All right, what about my next picture? Do you see a vase or two faces? Do you see both? All right, what about the next one? Do you see a 22-year-old Katie who's a college student, graduate student, or do you see a 40, I mean uh uh your Aunt Harriet who smokes four packs of cigarettes a day? Do you see both of those? That one's a little bit trickier. Vision. We're gonna be focused on vision this morning. The scriptures are gonna teach us a lot about our vision, not literally, but spiritually. And just because you have eyes, it doesn't mean you see things clearly. And just because you are affirming of scripture and the things of God, it doesn't mean your spiritual vision is always what it needs to be. As our biblical text will show, it's possible, literally and spiritually, to have eyes and not see very clearly. Again, it's possible, literally and spiritually, to have eyes and not see very clearly. My concern this morning will not be with your physical eyes, it will be with your spiritual ones. How do you perceive the Lord? How do you perceive God? How do you perceive what he's doing in your life? How do you perceive his operations in the world around you? Now, as we work through our biblical passage this morning, I'm gonna give you some plot points, some things that will just kind of help us track where we are in the narrative. And then, like I do sometimes with these plot points in a narrative passage, I'm gonna give you several take-home truths that all of us need to apply to our lives. So, beginning in verses 22 to 25, we're gonna see a gradual restoration. A gradual restoration of eyesight. Verse 22. And they, Jesus and his 12 apostles, they came to Bethsaida, and some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. Now, Bethsaida, it is on the northern tip of the Sea of Galilee. It was a notable fishing village, it was the hometown of Peter, Andrew, and um Peter, Andrew, and Philip. And though Jesus and his disciples had been there already, you have to understand this. Jesus did not have a very high opinion of Bethseita. Not a very high opinion at all. Listen to what he says through Luke's gospel, chapter 10, verses 13 and 14. Woe to you, Corazon, woe to you, Bethseida. For if the mighty works done in you, and by the way, one of those mighty works we looked at just a few weeks ago, the feeding of the 5,000 men plus women and children, 15 to 20 plus thousand people, that was done at Bethseita. So with that, and who knows all else Jesus did that's not recorded in this book, that's not recorded in John's gospel, but what's written is written so that we might believe. In addition to all of that, woe to you, for if the mighty works in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But folks, listen, some of the most sobering things Jesus ever said, but it will be more bearable in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. So, folks, it just is a very sobering reminder. A, judgment's coming. It's coming for all of us, it's inescapable. There are two judgments. Believers will be at the judgment seat of Christ, unbelievers will be at the great white throne judgment. But folks, I'm telling you, you are going to stand before God and give an account of your life. Also understand that at both judgments there will be degrees of reward and suffering. That's why Jesus says it will be more tolerable for those folks than for those folks living in Bethsaida. The more light, the more accountability. The more opportunity to know the Lord, you talk about the blessings of living in the old, good old US of A. Do you know how accountable we're going to be? Churches on every corner, copies of scripture by the boatloads, accountability. So we're in Bethsaida, Jesus and his apostles. And this passage, it reminds us of some very sobering truths. Jesus also said in Matthew 10, verse 15, truly I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town, that town, whatever town that might be, that rejects Jesus, that rejects apostolic teaching. Now, back to our guy in our story. Um, some people brought to him a blind man. It's hard to imagine all the hardships that come with blindness. Even with the surgery and the bruising, it's not affecting my eyesight at all. And there have only been just a handful of times in my life when maybe uh drops were put in my eyes for an eye exam. Has my vision been so I I can't imagine what it's like to be blind. And I don't I don't know that anybody here today is blind. Um, we're not told how long this man was blind, we're not told how old he is, we don't know what stages of life have been affected by his blindness, but you know, any number of his contemporaries, when they see him or when they saw him, I don't know if he would have had a crude stick. Like, you know, we see people today when they're you know they're walking, you know, he may have had one of those. Invariably, no matter how slow your pace or whatever, you're gonna run into something, you're gonna fall off a ledge or whatever. Who knows how many times people thought, man, how sad is that? What a pitiful sight. But however long this man was blind and however pitiful his situation was, he had some friends who cared enough about him that they bring him to Jesus. They are convinced that Jesus can make a difference in his life. Their belief was not simply theoretical, but very practical. They brought him to Jesus, begged Jesus to touch him, implied, if you touch him, Lord, then we're convinced that he will be able to see. They had very high expectations of Jesus. They might have had higher expectations of Jesus than a lot of us in the 21st century Americana environment that we're living in. Now, as we've we've seen this kind of thing before, right? In chapter 7, we saw again some unnamed friends who brought this man who couldn't hear and he had a speech impediment. Back in chapter 2, we saw those four friends who brought their crippled uh friend to Jesus, and here it is again. And folks, please don't miss this. This is kind of subtle, but yet it is so impactful. God may honor your faith by transforming somebody else. God sometimes delights in taking your faith and your longing and your praying for somebody else and their situation, and God just might honor your faith by changing theirs, by establishing their faith, changing their life. And therefore, I'm begging you, grab a hold of this. Do not underestimate the impact your faith might have on somebody else's life. Oh, so what if you're not a pastor or a preacher? Whoop-de-doo. So what if you've never been ordained as a deacon? So what if you don't have the gift of teaching in front of a large group of people? So these people, a bunch of them, unnamed. We don't know who they were. But God's spirit thought it appropriate to put all of these stories about all of these unnamed people. So don't underestimate what you as maybe a perceived unnamed person, what the Lord might want to do in your life to be a benefit to somebody else. Um, God often uses the faith, prayers, and loving persistence of one believer as the means by which he works in another person's life. Notice the blind man doesn't ask for anything. I don't know where his faith is. We're not told. They believed, the friends did, that Jesus could do what no one else could do, and they pleaded with him to intervene. How many people have been brought to Jesus because someone else refused to give up? Think about it. A parent kept praying, a spouse kept believing, a friend kept inviting, a Sunday school teacher kept investing, a coworker kept sharing, a grandparent kept interceding. Folks, God delights to use the faith of one person to become the blessing of another. And so I want to encourage you, keep on, keeping on. Whatever it is that you're doing, you might think, man, I'm not doing much. You might think your prayers aren't accomplishing much, you might think your invitations are being ignored, you might think your witness is falling on deaf ears. But my friends in Bethsaila, probably they had no idea. What these friends had no idea, the impact that they're coming together. Hey, man, look, Jesus is in town. We couldn't get him to Jesus before. There were too many people. He's back. Let's go. They had no idea that 2,000 plus years from then we'd be talking about it and drawing some incredibly encouraging life principles. Back to our text. We're about to read something that is absolutely unique. It is the only place in the entire Bible, specifically, it's the only place all throughout the New Testament where Jesus performs a miracle in stages. I must confess to you, as a veteran in pastoral ministry, when last Monday I was reading my text for today, I thought, what in the world? Why is Jesus, and you're probably wondering the same thing, right? Why would Jesus in this case heal somebody in stages? I think I've got an answer, but I'm gonna hold off on providing the answer until the end. And I believe that if you'll hang with me, the wait will be worth it. Verse 23. And he took the blind man, Jesus did. He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. Unlike the aloof religious leaders of Israel, Jesus did not keep a distance from hurting people. He was accessible. They could touch him and he would touch them. And by the way, Jesus is just as accessible, even in many respects, he's more accessible today than he was then. Because then he was in one location at one moment in time, but now he sits on the throne, and his spirit indwells all believers, and we can go to him at any moment of any day of our lives. If you know Christ, he's accessible. So Jesus is now serving as this man's guide, making sure he doesn't run anything, trip over a rock, telling him where to step, when to step up, when to step down, steadying him, perhaps when he stumbled. Jesus becomes his eyes and guides him from the crowds. So speaking of crowds, it was back in uh 2001, April the 11th, it was on a Wednesday. Then President George W. Bush made an appearance here in Greenville at Menji's Coliseum. I was there. Anyone else in the room? Were you there? How many? I just a handful of hands. So as you'll see here, then Chancellor Aiken just made a big to-do of it and gave him an East Carolina jersey, which I understand he still treasures above all other jerseys. Um, but you know, so the crowd, man, we we we all just we just had a good time with it and cheering him on, as you know, being a being a one-day pirate. And then so after President Bush gave his, and by the way, this was the uh the first time, I'm trying to think if it's the only time. No, I don't think it's the only time, but it's the first time a sitting president had ever visited Greenville. So it was a it was a big to-do. Well, after he gave his speech, he exited. And there's a part of me that wants to think I was told ahead of time that he would come back and shake hands. And he did. So in this picture here, trust me, he is saying, aren't you Jeff Manning? Obviously he wasn't, but I'm I'm somewhere right about there because he shook my hand. That one right there. He shook, I didn't wash it for like, well, I don't remember now how many weeks it was, but finally Jennifer said, enough's enough. And to keep from getting one of those, I I washed my hand. Now, I must admit it was neat to put my hand in the hand of the person that many would call the most powerful man on earth, because that's commonly the attribution that is made to the president of the most powerful nation on the earth. Man. Oh, but folks, this guy, he's put his hand in the hand of the creator of the universe. He's put his hand in the hand of the one that the whole world we sing as kids is in his hand. And so Jesus, man, I love this. It's maybe not the most manly thing for two guys to be holding hands, but boy, in this, it is tenderness, it is compassion. Here, come with me. We're gonna get away from all the crowds. Watch a step, watch a step. Trust me, it's gonna be okay. Jesus takes this man's hand. Um, what an honor. Verse 23 continues. And when he, Jesus had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, Do you see anything? Now, I think most all of us understand that spitting in our culture, you talk about disrespectful. I want I somebody spit in my faith. I mean, I'm gonna tell you now, I want I want to be like Jesus. But I'm gonna be tempted to dot both of his eyes and maybe adjust a couple of uh cheekbones. So this is shocking, isn't it? That Jesus spit on his eyes. Um from Jesus' perspective, and I don't believe the onlookers were nearly as shocked because it didn't have quite the um the disrespect behind it, but this would be symbolic of an act that the man could feel. And so after Jesus, and by the way, there's nothing magical, there's not even anything supernatural about the spittle. Jesus is just doing an object lesson. And so there's a spittle in his eyes, and then Jesus puts his hands up there. And folks, in my sanctified imagination, that guy's heart, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, it is pounding, it is pounding. Because he's he he he probably senses along with his friends, something's getting ready to happen. And now notice, Jesus asked him, Do you see anything? That question itself lets us know that Jesus knew he had no intentions of completely restoring the man's sight. Otherwise, he would have known the answer to the question anyway. Do you see anything? The recovery of sight is in process. Verse 24. And he looked up and said, I see people, but they look like trees walking. Now, the people that he sees in a very blurred state are probably the apostles and the friends. The fact that he says they look like trees lets us know that more than likely he wasn't born blind. He's got a frame of reference. He knows something about what trees look like, and so the initial being able to see is so blurry that people remind him of trees. Verse 25. Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again, and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Again, we're told his vision was restored, not established, and so probably nothing congenital, but he might have had you know an accident, might have been given improper meds, and that's what caused the blindness. That brings us to verse 26 and a very fateful prohibition. Verse 26, and he, Jesus, sent him to his home saying, Do not even enter the village. Now, why am I calling this a fateful prohibition? Because I think there's more going on here than just Jesus telling the man, Don't go, don't go tell the crowds, because I really am not looking for another great big crowd of people getting all worked up. That's not what no, I think I think Jesus is saying here, most of the residents have already rejected me, and they don't need another eyewitness to go in there and tell them something that they have no intentions of believing. So just keep on. You go home and don't don't I'm I'm supplying this, but don't don't make their judgment even worse. Verse 27. Oh, yeah, verse 27. We're gonna look at an insightful confession now. So we're shifting, and I haven't forgot the question, we're gonna come back to it. An insightful confession is made in verses 27 to 29. And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. So at Bethsaida, he's at the very northern tip of the Sea of Galilee. They traveled about 25 miles due north to Caesarea Philippi. And if you'll look up, you see where Galilee is in big letters? Just look at about 12:30, 1 o'clock up, and you'll see Caesarea Philippi. Now, Herod the Great built a temple to Caesar Augustus there, and his son Philip built the town, naming it in honor of Augustus and adding Philippi to distinguish it from the better-known city of Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast. Verse 27. And on the way, on the way from Bethsaida to Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked his disciples, Who do people say that I am? And they told him, Well, uh, John the Baptist, and others say Elijah, and others one of the prophets. Now, the disciples don't know it yet, but Jesus is testing them. He's testing to see have they come to grips with who he really is? Now, so first he asks, what's the word on the street? What are the most popular thoughts about who I am? No, Jesus was not a politician. He is not, which way are the winds blowing? What are people saying about me? Because I need to change if things aren't. No, that is not this at all. He just wants to get it out there on the surface. Who do people say that I am? John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the other prophets, favorable responses. They they probably chose not to tell him about the scribes and the Pharisees and what they were thinking. That might have stretched their vocabulary to not be vulgar. And then verse 29, he asked them, but who do you say that I am? And I think Jesus wanted them to think, to crystallize their thoughts, to crystallize everything they've come to know about him before they gave an answer. In the depths of your heart, mind, and soul, who do you, who do you men, say that I am? Let's just forget popular opinions. Who do you say that I am? Have the disciples finally perceived that Jesus' miracles, what Jesus' miracles have demonstrated, what his teaching has proven, what he's been driving them to see. Have they come to understand Jesus is the Son of God, the long-awaited Messiah? What's the answer going to be? And for the first time of future many instances, Peter speaks as the spokesperson of the group. Verse 29, Peter answered him, You are the Christ. Yes, Peter. Yes! Peter knocked it out of the park. You are the Christ. Christ means the anointed one. It's the equivalent of the Hebrew term for Messiah. Jesus didn't promote the usage because he didn't want to send mixed signals to people about some political agenda. No, no, no, no, no. But when people attributed the title to him, he did not reject it. He was indeed the Christ, the Messiah. Now, Matthew's gospel gives us a fuller response to what Peter said. Simon Peter, Matthew 16, 16, Simon Peter replied, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Bravo, bravo. With clarity and conviction, and without a shadow of a doubt, Peter boldly proclaimed Jesus to be God's Son, the Christ, the Messiah, implied the Savior of the world and the lover of men's souls. They fully believed that Jesus was the one Israel had been waiting for centuries. Now, Mark also omitted Jesus' joyful response to Peter's confession. Listen to Matthew 16, verse 17 to 18. And Jesus answered, Blessed are you, Simon Bar Jonah, or Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. Now, one theologian wrote, if you fully believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and He's your Savior and Lord, then the same benediction that Jesus pronounced on Peter is yours. Blessed are you. Blessed am I. Blessed are you because this is not something you and I learned in kindergarten. I didn't learn this at D.H. Connolly. I didn't learn this at Bible College. I didn't learn this at the foot of my mom, who was diligently teaching me and Rex and Susan things about God before we hardly even knew what was going on in this world. The spirit of the living God is the one who opens our eyes literally and figuratively to know truth like this. So if you are ever downcast, if you are ever jealous of someone else's status or possessions, if you ever cry to God, why me in the midst of your affliction, hear these words. Blessed are you. To know Jesus as your Savior, to know your name's written in the Lamb's Book of Life, to know you're not going to hell. Blessed are you. And if the Lord never ever in your lifetime did another thing to be a blessing to you, that would be enough. Just to know that you're saved, that would be enough to understand. Blessed are you. Blessed are you. Verse 30. There's a gospel prohibition given in verse 30. And he, Jesus, strictly charged them to tell no one about him. Maybe a little surprising, right? He said, No, don't. For them to go out and proclaim that he was the Messiah, it would only raise false hopes among many people who were expecting an earthly Messiah who would do political things and break the chains of Roman oppression. And that's not why he came. Furthermore, the disciples themselves are not yet qualified to proclaim the full truth about him as the Messiah. You see, the the the disciples, they recognize Jesus as the promised Messiah, the Son of God. They understand who he is, but they don't yet understand why he's come. And when we come, Lord willing next week, we're going to see the shocking truth. When Jesus tells them, men, I must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the scribes and the Pharisees. I must suffer many things and die. What? And we're going to see Peter like, what? They don't understand. Not in their wildest imaginations that any Jewish person, not a one, read the Old Testament passage about a suffering Savior, a suffering Messiah. They didn't get it. So they're not prepared to proclaim the full gospel yet because they don't understand what Jesus' mission is going to involve. And they will not understand it until after the resurrection. So it's coming. They're getting there, but they're not there yet. Now, let's go back to the question. Why? Why did Jesus perform this miracle in two stages? Now, we know that Jesus always did things with purpose, right? And therefore, there must be some purpose behind why Jesus healed this man in two stages. Well, unfortunately, the text does not explicitly tell us. It doesn't answer all the questions that we would like for it to. But I think we can ask some other questions, all of which will have no responses, and it'll help us make some progress. So, was this miracle in two stages because of any lack in Jesus' power? No. Was it because this blinds man, this man's blindness was a particularly hard case? No. Was it because Jesus tried and failed the first time? Big no. Jesus obviously could he could have fought the thought. He didn't have to take him by the hand and get him away from the crowd. He just could have thought, be healed. And he and he would have seen. After all, Jesus has already performed many miracles and raised somebody from the dead. If you can bring somebody back from the dead, you can certainly hear heal dead eyes. So that's not the problem. So where do we go from here? If the text doesn't provide the answers that we're looking for, and in the text that we just read doesn't, um maybe the answer will be in the context. Maybe we need to look at that miracle, the two-stage miracle in its context, the verses before and the verses after. If you go back to the beginning of Mark 8, you have the miracle of the feeding of the 4,000, verses 1 to 10. Immediately after that miraculous feeding, the Pharisees, they came to argue with him. And after that, Jesus told the men, Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod. You'll remember that was a picture. Leaven goes into bread to make it rise, it spreads, it permeates. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. And unfortunately, the disciples still thought Jesus was talking about literal bread. And that's why Jesus rebuked them, we saw last week in verse 18. Having eyes do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? Or we could paraphrase it this way how can you be so blind after having been with me so long? Do you understand anything I'm saying? Then in verse 21, do you not yet understand? Do you not understand who I am? Then, after the two-stage miracle, the next text is got it's got the incredible confession of Peter about the identity of Jesus. You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Something clicked. It's almost as though the light came on. The light came on, and there was progress on the part of the disciples. Now, with that in mind, let's draw a few, two more take-home truths. First, it's possible, I mentioned this earlier, it's possible literally and spiritually to have eyes and not see very clearly. Those of us with glasses and context, we know that's uh physically, literally, but it's also true spiritually. Uh without my glasses, I would probably need to increase the font on my notes. Matter of fact, that's that's what my notes look like. I'd have to increase them. Now, some of you are blind as a bat. For some of you, if you were to drive without your glasses, you are a danger to humanity. It's possible to have eyes and not and yet not see very clearly. And that's precisely what Jesus was saying to his disciples. Do you have spiritual eyes to see what I'm doing? Do you have spiritual sight to understand what I'm doing? Folks, cloudy spiritual vision affects every Christian to some degree. Every Christian. None of us sees with absolute clarity like we would like to. That's because for now, according to 1 Corinthians 13, 12, for now we see in a mirror dimly. Even, even with the precious word of God, he didn't tell us everything. He told us everything we need to be people who live righteously and to know faith, but we don't understand it all. Eugene Peterson paraphrased that scripture and said, We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. New Living Translation says, now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. That applies to all of us. Hang with me. No one sees all that God's doing in the here and now with perfect clarity. All of us have spiritual nearsightedness to one degree or another. And so therefore, sometimes Jesus disciples, you and me, we see what God's doing. We read and we are reminded of what God has done. But that don't mean that you fully understand what He's doing now. We all have questions at times. God, have you not, have you not thought it? If you've not said it, God, what are you doing? It's another way of saying, why did you let that happen? And this brings us to a crucial practical take-home truth. Spiritual growth takes time and full maturity is never reached in this lifetime. Just like the men couldn't see to start with, things look like men look like trees, and then oh, just like that. These disciples, they they they see you're the Christ, the Son of the living God. But but they don't quite fully understand why the Christ, the Son of God, has come, and that's coming. Salvation is instant, spiritual growth for all of us is gradual. Salvation happens in a moment, spiritual growth happens over the course of a lifetime. Salvation is immediate, sanctification is progressive. Spiritual growth never comes instantaneously, it always comes incrementally. And because, and because spiritual growth takes time, here's a corresponding principle I want all of us as believers to grab a hold of. Treat other believers' growth rate with the same patience and grace you desire from them. If we were to chart the spiritual growth of every believer in this room, we'll tack on those who are watching online. If we were to chart it, we're all over the place. And some invariably are slower learners than others. Some people have thicker heads than others. And there are so many of you. Well, um, there are many of you. You've been so patient with me. When I came to Unity back in 1990, I was I was a lot greener behind the ears than your grass is green right now with the drought. So green. And I made a bunch of mistakes, but you were patient with me. And by the way, I got more to make. I do. Because I my vision's not perfect. And by the way, I've tried my best to be patient with you too. Some of you make that very challenging sometimes. You understand what I'm saying? As you look around, you see a brother in Christ, you see a sister in Christ. It might be somebody, but then your own family. What's taking them so long to treat other believers' growth rate, their spiritual growth rate, with the same patience and grace you desire from them. So many of you know I've always liked the song He's Still Working on Me. I know it's essentially a kid's song, but buddy roll, it has got some adult level lyrics. He's still working on me to make me what I ought to be. It took him just a week to make the moon and stars, the sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars. How loving and patient he must be, because he's still working on me. There really ought to be a sign upon my heart. Don't judge him yet. There's an unfinished part. But I'll be better just according to his plan, fashioned by the master's loving hands. He's still working on me to make me what I ought to be. Took him just a week to make the sun and the stars, and to make the moon and the stars, and the sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars. How loving and patient he must be, because he's still working on me. Now, I also love the following simple, worshipful chorus. I want it to be an indication of your own heart's desire. Many of you will know it. I want you to sing it congregationally now as our closing. We did it, I think, the last time, maybe three or four weeks ago. You're you're more than welcome to just stay seated like you are. You can come and kneel here at the altar. You can kind of get up and reposition yourself, reposition yourself and just kind of put your arms on the seat back and just make it a personal altar. But I would like for us to close our service just praying in our own way for the Lord to open our eyes so we can see Jesus to open our ears to help us understand and to grow and become more and more and more like Jesus. So whatever you choose to do, stay seated and pray, kind of get on your knees and pray, come up here and pray. Either way, fine with me. Help us to see you more vividly than we ever have before. Open our ears, Lord, so that we might hear your spirit, that we might be sensitive to your leadership in our lives. But open our eyes, Lord, to your glory, to your beauty. Open our ears, Lord, that we might be reminded of your omniscience and your omnipotence, of your sovereignty. Open our ears, Lord, that we might be reminded of how much you love us in sending Jesus to die for us. Jesus, you paying the price. You're going to talk about that for the first time in Mark's gospel next week. It will be shocking to the ears of those men. And so, Lord, I just pray. Open our eyes, open our ears, that we might see and know you better than we ever have before. That is my prayer, Lord, and I pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.