Lake Martin Presbyterian Church July 12, 2026 Podcast

Join Rev. William Skinner for this week’s message from Mark 8:22-9:1, "Who Do You Say That I Am?" Explore Scripture, hear thoughtful teaching, and let us encourage you in your walk with Christ. For more information and resources, visit lakemartinpca.com.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Lake Martin Presbyterian Church Podcast. We're glad you're listening. Lake Martin Presbyterian Church is a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America, located near Lake Martin, Alabama. Each week we share the preaching ministry of our church and pray it encourages you in your walk with Christ. Here's this week's message.

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Mark chapter 8, beginning in verse 22. This is God's holy and errant and inspired word. Give careful attention to the reading of God's word. And they came to Betheda, and some people brought him a blind man and begged him to touch him. And he took the he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. And we had when he had spit on his eyes, he laid his hands on him and asked him, Do you see anything? And he looked up and said, I see people, but they look like trees, walking. Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again, and he opened his eyes, and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Then he sent him home, he sent him to his home, saying, Do not even enter the village. And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages 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 one of the prophets. And he asked them, But who do you say that I am? Peter answered him, You are the Christ, and he strictly charged them to tell no one about him. 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. 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. And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, If any one would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For for whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it. For what does it pro what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in glory, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. And he said to them, Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God, after it has come with power. This is God's word. Look first with me in verses twenty two through twenty-six, the revelation of Christ. Jesus and his disciples go to Beth Seda, and on their arrival, the people brought him a blind man to be healed. Now, by this point, for us, this is very routine in the ministry of Jesus. He'd been healing all sorts of people every place he went. However, there are some peculiarities in this particular account that I want you to notice. First of all, Jesus took this blind man away from the people, out of the eyesight, out of earshot from the people. He took this man away from the crowds, out of the village, alone. It was just the blind man, Jesus, and the disciples. So that's the first thing. Then secondly, Jesus heals this man's eyes in a strange way. Look at what he does. He first spit on them, and then he touched them, and then after making an inquiry, did that work? He touched them again. So that's a strange process. Both of these things, taking the man away and then the spitting and touching twice, that's out of the norm for Jesus. That's not what Jesus normally does in his healings. If you remember, Jesus was actually in the habit of not trying to do physical touch so that people didn't become superstitious. Remember in him rebuking the woman with the flow of blood. It wasn't the touch that made you well, it was your faith. So both of these things are out of the norm for Jesus. He's not in the habit of taking away people when he performs signs because the signs are to reveal who he is. He's the Messiah. And he didn't typically indulge in physical contact and the healings. Both of these elements in the passage are unique. They're out of the norm. But the text gives us some strong clues as to why Jesus did this in this particular case. Look with me in the text we studied last week, back a few verses above, when Jesus' disciples missed what he was trying to teach them. If you remember, Jesus was trying to teach his disciples about the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. And as soon as he said leaven, all they could think about was bread and the fact that they had forgotten bread, and so they missed everything Jesus was trying to say to them because of their distraction with physical bread. And when that happened, Jesus asked them a series of questions. Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you see not? And ears do you hear not? Are you blind? Are you deaf? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Jesus connects this lack of understanding and trust on the part of his disciples to blindness and to deafness. And in chapter 7, verses 31 through 37, we had another unique healing where Jesus touched people. If you remember, he touched a deaf man's ears and his tongue. And he made his ears to hear and his tongue to speak. And here, in verses 22 through 26, Jesus physically touches a blind man to heal his blindness. So what's Jesus doing? He's using these two physical healings, the one we saw in chapter 7, verses 31 through 37, and the one here in chapter 8, verses 23 through 26. He's using these two parables, two healings as a parable, as a physical lesson, as a living parable for his disciples, to paint a picture. This is what is taking place in your life. This is what I'm doing to you. As I touch this man and now he can hear, and I touch this man and now he can see, so too I'm touching you. I'm touching you and you will believe. Ordinarily, Jesus refrains from this type of touching people. He doesn't want to create superstition. He doesn't want to believe that it's some weird magical formula that you can spit, touch, spit, touch, and then they're healed. They can see. It's not that. Jesus is teaching his disciples in a physical way, a way that they can see what is spiritually happening in their own souls. Gradually, bit by bit, their blindness is being removed. More and more as Jesus touches them, as he teaches them, as he works with them, as they see miracles, they can see more and more. Every time he stops to teach them, every time he performs a miracle, bit by bit their vision is coming to. They can hear, they can see. Just like this blind man, upon the first touch, he was able to see a little bit. It was blurry. Men walking looked like trees. And then Jesus touched the man's eyes again, and now everything comes into clarity. He can see. And that's how it is with Jesus' disciples. Jesus had been pouring into them. He'd been training them, he'd been teaching them. And they were picking up more and more on who he was. But it was blurry. It was like trees walking. They trusted him. They thought they understood, but it wasn't clear. It wasn't clear. And in the next verses, in the next section, they're going to have a moment of clarity when for the first time, for the first time in Mark's gospel, they confess who it is that Jesus is. He is the Christ, the Son of God. So in this healing of the blind man, Jesus is revealing to his disciples and to you who he is. And before we move on, I just want you to note three things. First, that Jesus is revealing, Jesus is revealing that he is the prophesied Messiah. Remember, with every healing that we see, Jesus is doing something. He's fulfilling the Old Testament scriptures of who the Messiah is. Restoring the sight of the blind, along with other healings and miracles, fulfills the Old Testament prophecies of who the Messiah is. The Psalms and Isaiah in two different places prophesy that the Messiah, the Christ, would restore the sight of the blind. So first, Jesus is revealing that he is the Messiah. Secondly, in this text, Jesus is painting a living picture, a living parable. He's showing his disciples what's happening in their own souls. He's showing them that their own blind eyes are being opened, that their own hard hearts are being softened. And then thirdly, Jesus is showing all of his disciples, not just the twelve, but all of them, including you and me. He's showing us how we grow in our understanding, how we grow in our knowledge of God. It's gradual. It's not all at once. You don't fully arrive the day that you come to Christ. You're fully justified the day you come to Christ, but you grow in your knowledge of God. By his Spirit, Jesus touches our own deaf ears and our own blind eyes and our own hard hearts, and so that we can see Him. A little bit today, more tomorrow, and perfectly in eternity. We're always in need of the Spirit of Christ to touch our eyes and our ears. And that's what we pray. Before I read the scriptures or preach the scriptures each week, that's what we pray. We pray the same thing every week. God, send your spirit, soften our hearts, open our eyes, open our ears. We're praying exactly for this to happen to us each week as we open God's word. That we might see clearly, that we might know more of Him and of His Word. That prayer is not just for non-Christians to be converted, it's for us to grow in our knowledge of Christ. And this is not some sort of weird second blessing theology where first you come to Christ, but if you really want to be a disciple, if you really want to be a Christian, you need a second anointing of the Holy Spirit. There's no such thing. If anyone tries to tell you that, they're wrong. There's no second blessing, there's no second anointing, there's no stages of the Christian life. You're either a Christian or you're not. But as a Christian, we all grow in our knowledge of God from one degree to another. So in this passage, you must see that Jesus is giving sight to the blind. He's showing that he is the Messiah who restores sight to the blind. He's the Christ of God, the one that the prophet spoke of. And you must know that what he did for this blind man in Bethsaida, he will do for all of his people. He reveals himself in his own timing. But chiefly, chiefly, what we see here is that this healing of the blind man is a living picture of what's happening in the souls of Jesus' disciples, the twelve who are with him there. He's touching their blindness and he's giving them sight. Jesus is revealing himself as the Christ. That his disciples might identify him as the Christ. And that's exactly what happens in the next three verses. Look with me now at the identification of Christ. The identification of Christ, look with me in verses 27 through 30. Jesus and his disciples left Beth Seda and they moved towards Caesarea Philippi. And on the way, as they were walking or going by boat, however they went, I think they walked, Jesus asked them two questions. The first question was this Who do people say that I am? Who do people say that I am? The answer to this question was already recorded for us in Mark chapter 6, verses 14 through 15. If you remember when Mark gave that account of Herod Antipas' reaction to Jesus, as sort of a prelude to that account, he told us the popular reactions to Jesus. That some people said he was John the Baptist resurrected. Some people said this is Elijah returned, and some people said this is one of the prophets, as the prophets of old. Well, here in this text, his disciples give the exact same answer. Who do people say that you are? Well, that's who they say you are. John the Baptist, Elijah, or one of the prophets of old. And now all of those responses are good responses. They're good responses. That meant that people were witnessing Jesus and they believed he's come from God. The things he does must be from God. God is doing something in redemptive history. God is doing something. Just like what he did with Moses and the prophets and Elijah, he's doing something again. Jesus must be a linchpin in the plan of God. Something's happening with this Jesus. He's coming to usher in a great movement of God in human history. And so, whenever people said he's John the Baptist, he's Elijah, he's a prophet of God, those assessments were high praise. The people believe something about Jesus, but that they all missed the mark. They were all wrong, and Jesus gives no response to those three answers. He doesn't even engage them, he doesn't entertain them. Instead, he presses the point directly to his disciples. Okay, well, who do you say that I am? Who do you say that I am? And all the disappointments that we've seen in the disciples missing who Jesus is. Missing Jesus, their hard hearts, their unbelief. This is the first time that Jesus presses in and says, Okay, who do you say that I am? Who am I to you? Peter stood up to respond on behalf of all the disciples. And I don't want you to see this as just Peter's confession. This is the disciples' confession. Peter stood up to respond on behalf of all of them. If you look at the text, Jesus asks them, Who do you plural? In the Greek, this is the second person plural. In the South, we call that y'all. Who do y'all say that I am? And Peter steps forward and responds for the group. You are the Christ. Su eha Christos. You are the Christ. That's who you are. This is the high point of everything that we have read in Mark's gospel. This is the answer to the question that Mark has been asking the entire time. This is better than the resurrection of Jairus' daughter. This is better than the feeding of the multitudes. This is better than the calming of storms, healing for the deaf, sight for the blind. This moment surpasses all of it. This one phrase from Peter, you are the Christ, the confession of the disciples. Because it's at this very moment that men have realized for the first time that Jesus is the Messiah. That Jesus is the Christ of God, the Savior of sinners, that this is God incarnate come from heaven to earth. This is the seed of Eve, who would crush the head of the serpent. This is the offspring of Abraham who would bless the nations. This is the new and better Moses who would deliver his people out of their slavery to sin. This is the heir of David's throne who would sit as king forever. This is the Messiah. This is the Christ of God who's come to save his people from their sin. This is the one of whom all the Old Testament scriptures speak. And in Peter's confession, that's exactly what he's saying. You are the hope of all mankind, the hope of sinners, the hope of all God's elect. He's here. In this one phrase, it's as if Jesus has spat on their eyes and touched them, and for the first time they can see. You are the Christ. It was here all along, but now I can see. I haven't seen it before. I once was lost, but now I'm found. Was blind, but now I see. If this question were put to you this morning, who is Jesus? Who do you say that he is? What would you say? Is he a good moral teacher? Is he a good moral teacher? That's what the liberals say. Is he a great healer? Is he a great healer? That's what the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel says. Is he a great prophet? That's what the Muslims say. Is he the revealer of mysteries? Is he an inspiration? Is he a role model? Can Jesus be reduced to what would Jesus do on a bracelet? Every one of those responses is correct. Jesus is a good moral teacher. He is the great healer. He is the great prophet. He's the revealer of all mysteries. He's an inspiration, and he's role model. But if that's your response, you don't know who Jesus is. You're still blind. You've missed the mark. Jesus is all those things, but none of it matters if you can't say that Jesus is the Christ. This is the fulfillment of all the scriptures. He's the center of every verse of the Bible. He's the anointed Son of God, the Savior of sinners. None of those identifications matter if you can't say that Jesus is the promised one who came to save you from your sins. That's the only identification of Jesus that matters. That Jesus is the eternal Son of God who came to save his elect people from their sins. This is the most wonderful passage that we've read in all of Mark's gospel. And those are the most wonderful words. You are the Christ. Because in those words we see the correct identification of Jesus. That he is the Christ. So we've seen the revelation of Jesus, that he opens blind eyes, the identification of Jesus, that he is the Christ. Let's now look at the cross of that Christ. Look with me at verses 31 through chapter 9, verse 1. Having finally identified who Jesus is in his person, Jesus immediately began to teach his disciples about his work. What exactly is it that the Christ does? We know that he's the Christ, but what does he do? What does he come to do? Verses 31 through 32, in those verses, Jesus tells his disciples plainly, clearly, what must take place, what he must do. That he must suffer, he must be rejected by the elders, the priests, and the scribes, and he must be killed. And on the third day, that he would rise again. And immediately upon hearing this, Peter, the one who just uttered the most beautiful words we've heard in all of Mark's gospel, Peter is incensed. He's angry, he takes Jesus aside and rebukes him, telling him, This can't be true. You won't suffer, you won't die. Peter can't imagine that Jesus, the Christ, would face such a destiny, that he would be made subject to such a fate. He's the Messiah, he's the king, he's the champion, he's the Son of God. Peter has witnessed his power. Surely this one won't suffer, he won't be rejected and die. Peter had seen the crowds that were so ready to follow him, following him, running around the Sea of Galilee just to hear him talk. How could these things happen to Jesus? He was powerful and he had crowds following him. And how could Jesus be okay with it? How could Jesus just submit himself to suffering, rejection, and death? Jesus takes Peter back to the rest of the disciples and says, Get behind me, Satan. Now, before we're too hard on Peter, Peter had addressed Jesus with genuine love. He loved Jesus. Maybe overzealously sometimes, but he loved, not overzealously, but zealously in a sloppy way. He addressed Jesus with genuine concern, with earnest loyalty, with love. But his words, when they came out, sounded an awful lot like Satan, didn't they? What did Satan say to Jesus when he was tempting him in the Wilderness. He'd say, Come, have this. Come rule over this area. All this, everything that you see will be yours. You can rule over it. It'll all be yours. You can have power. You can have prestige. You can have riches, Jesus. Just come, follow me and rule over all this. Satan was offering Jesus rule and reign and dominion, majesty and glory. Satan didn't want Jesus to suffer, to die, or to go to the cross and die. He hated Jesus. He wanted to destroy Jesus. But he didn't want Jesus to do that. And Peter didn't either. Peter didn't want a bloody Christ. He didn't want a crucified Christ. He wanted a victorious Christ, a triumphant Christ. Here we see the disciples may have had part of their blindness removed. But it was blurry. It looked like trees walking. Jesus must touch their eyes again so they can see not only his person, who he is, his identity, but his work. What must the Christ do to save his people from their sins? Jesus stated it plainly. He must suffer, be rejected, die, and rise again. And this is not new. This is not a new thought to the scriptures. This is not a new thought to the teaching of the Bible. It shouldn't have come as a shock to any of the disciples or anyone who studied the Old Testament that the Christ, the Messiah, must suffer and die. From the very beginning of the Bible, when Adam and Eve were in the garden, and God said, You may eat of all the trees of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not eat, or you will surely die. From that point, the consequences of sin were known. And then when God promised that the seed of the woman, the seed of Eve, would crush the head of the serpent, we were told that the serpent would bruise his heel. And Abraham, when Abraham received the promises of the covenant, what did God have him do? He had him go and take animals of all different types and kill them, and cut them in half and lay them and walk through the middle of this bloody mess, showing what must take place to fulfill this covenant. And when God, when Moses led God's people out of Egypt, the final plague before they left Egypt was what? It was the Passover, where they had to kill a spotless lamb and paint their doors with its blood so that God would pass over them, pass over his people. And the sacrificial system of Israel, the whole Old Testament system of worship, was centered around the Day of Atonement. The Day of Atonement was the pinnacle of Old Testament worship, where a sacrifice must be made to atone for the sins of God's people. And not only that one day, but all of the worship of the Old Testament, all of the worship of God's people was filled with death, with blood, and with suffering. We come to worship and it looks nice, it smells nice, we have fresh air, we dress nice. It's not how Old Testament worship was. You go to Old Testament worship and it's the sights, smells, the sounds of suffering and death. Animals shrieking as their throats are being slit. I'm sorry for being graphic, but I'm trying to paint a picture here. You can hear them screaming out as their life is being taken from them, and their blood being collected and thrown upon the people to atone for their sins. All of it was saying the Messiah, the Christ, must suffer. He must die. And if this wasn't already clear enough, Isaiah prophesied that the servant of the Lord, the true Israel, the Messiah, must be a suffering servant, that he must be despised and rejected by men. He must be a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, as one from whom men hide their faces, that he must carry our griefs, he must bear our sorrows, he must be pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, and upon him will be the chastisement that brought us peace. The scriptures are clear that in order for God's people to be redeemed, in order for you to be saved, in order for us to be made right with God, death and suffering must occur. Someone must suffer. This Messiah, this Christ must suffer. He must suffer pain, he must suffer rejection and death. And that someone can't be a sinner. They can't be someone born in sin, born out of the fall, born condemned of Adam and Eve's sin of rebellion against God. This sacrifice, this Messiah, must be the spotless lamb of the Passover, must be truly righteous before God. He must be able to satisfy divine justice. And only one person in the universe could do that. The Christ. Jesus, the eternal Son of God who took on flesh, fully God, fully man, fully righteous, without sin. This one is the only one who could save God's people, and he must suffer. Who is Jesus? He's the Christ. That's who he is, but that's not all. He's the Christ who must suffer and die for the sins of his people. He is the suffering servant. If you want to know who Jesus is, you must look to the cross. You must look to Calvary, where he bore the full wrath of God for the sins of all God's elect. No other Christ will do. If you don't have a suffering Christ, you have no hope. If you don't have the cross of Christ, you have no hope. You need Jesus, the Christ who went to the cross and fully atoned for all of your sins, past, present, and future. And in return, he presents you fully righteous before God the Father, without spot or blemish, his beloved, holy and beloved, his precious bride, adorned with white garments. It's not enough to just admit that Jesus is the Christ, you need the Christ of the cross. And to that, Jesus adds something else for his followers. And that includes you and me. We must be willing to do the same. We must be willing to follow our suffering Messiah. We must be willing to follow our crucified Christ. Jesus is teaching his disciples be under no delusions. Don't be deceived. This is what I'm calling you to. My sufferings, my cross, that's what you're being called to. As I've suffered, so will you suffer. The disciples of Jesus, all those who are saved by his sufferings will follow in them. The world who rejected and crucified Christ will do the same to you. When you look like Christ, when you follow Christ, when you speak like Christ, the world will hate you for it. So we must all be prepared, we who confess Christ, to share in the humiliation of Christ, to share in the sufferings of Christ. But that's not all. Look with me at the very last few verses, verses 38 and chapter 9, verse 1. That Christ will return again in glory. Not only does Christ have this ministry of humiliation, that he must suffer, that he must be rejected, and that he must die, but he will come again. Starting with his resurrection from the dead. That's the beginning of his exaltation, to his ascension into glory, to sitting at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, to coming again to judge the living and the dead. Jesus is now in glory, in his ministry of exaltation. And if you are trusting in him by faith, if you are trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will share not only in his humiliation, but also in his exaltation. And Jesus said in chapter 9, verse 1, that some who were standing there physically, who heard his words, some who were standing there who heard his words would witness this exalted glory of Christ before they tasted death. That some of them who were standing there would see that glory before they tasted death. And we're going to look at that next week when Peter, James, and John go up the Mount of Transfiguration and they see the exalted glory of Jesus Christ before they die. A foretaste of the eternal glory of Christ. We are members of a glorious kingdom. You need to know that. We are members of a glorious kingdom, the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of heaven. It's a kingdom of glory. But as we await that glorious kingdom, as we await the return of Christ, we share in the sufferings of Christ. We hope in a crucified Christ. We live a cruciform life. And this is all foolishness to the world. To the world, a suffering savior is a failed savior. But to you, to us, he's all the glory. To you, that cross, that humiliation is your boast. It's your hope. For in that cross, in your suffering savior, is the love of God displayed for you. That God would take a wicked sinner like you and like me and shed his own blood to present us holy and blameless, beloved, his own bride. Let me tie all of these things together. In this text, we've reached the high point of Mark's gospel. It's not the end, it's not the summit, but it's a peak where we can see it all. We've seen Christ revealing himself, opening the eyes of the blind, peeling back the scales so that men can see who he is. And for the first time, we've seen men identifying Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ. And we've seen what the Christ must do. He must bear a cross. He must suffer. I hope in this passage, in this high point from which we can look out and see the trajectory of Mark's gospel, that you too can identify Christ. That you can say, I see it. It might be blurry, it might not be clear, it might look like trees walking, but you can say that Jesus is the Christ of God, and that you know that the Christ must suffer. That he had to suffer rejection, beatings, and shame. If that's the Christ you follow, you can expect to suffer with him. You can expect to share in his sufferings. But you can also expect to be glorified with him, to be exalted with him. From this point in Mark's gospel, we can see it all. It might be blurry, but you can answer the question who is Jesus? He's the Christ. He's the Christ who went to the cross to save sinners from their sins. Let's pray together. Our God and Father, we thank you for this word. We thank you that we can say that Jesus is the Christ, the one of whom all the scriptures speak. And that he's not just the Christ, but he's the Christ who went to the cross for our sins. We pray that as we confess and believe this truth, that you would equip us to share in the sufferings of our Savior. And that you would hold before our eyes the glory of the exalted Christ, that we might know the hope that awaits us in Him. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. If you would, please take your bulletins with me and let's sing before the throne of God above on page six in your order of worship. Please stand.

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Thank you for listening to the Lake Martin Presbyterian Church Podcast. If this message encouraged you, please consider sharing it with someone else. To learn more about our church, including worship times and upcoming events, visit LakemartinPCA.com. We'd love to have you join us.