"When Jesus Marches Around Jericho" Matthew 20:29-34 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Matthew chapter 20, verse 29 is where we'll begin.

Matthew 20:29

This is the word of God.

They went out of Jericho, and a great crowd followed him, being Jesus.

And behold, there were two blind men sitting by the roadside.

When they heard that Jesus was passing by, they cried out, Lord, have mercy on us, son of David.

The crowd rebuked them, telling them to be silent.

But they cried out all the more, Lord, have mercy on us, son of David.

The crowd rebuked them.

Stopping, Jesus called them and said, What do you want me to do for you?

Verse 33.

They said to him, Lord, let our eyes be opened.

And Jesus, in pity, touched their eyes.

Immediately they recovered their sight and followed him.

I pray that God would seal these words in your heart.

This is an incredibly profound story about a pair of blind men who see better than the Pharisees.

One of them is named Bartimaeus, which means son of honor, and in God's sense of irony, this son of honor is abandoned on the side of the road, destitute and forgotten.

We see, per usual here, the disciples keeping people who need Jesus away from him.

And we see Jesus going around and over his disciples' objections to minister to those in need.

We see Jesus calling the needy to himself.

We see Jesus elevating the outcast.

And the outcast responding in faith shaming the crowd.

In this story, Jesus is marching to his own death.

That's where he's headed.

And yet he shows that he has the power over death.

Ultimately, we see blind beggars with more spiritual insight than the learned disciples, more accuracy than the esteemed Pharisees, and that's the main point of this passage.

A blind, a pair of blind men with spiritual insight becomes a picture for us of what it means to see the Lord.

It becomes a warning to us about spiritual blindness.

Before we get into the story, it's not from nothing that it takes place in Jericho.

Jericho is the first phrase of this text here back in verse 29.

They went out of Jericho.

Jericho is a city that might, you might remember where the walls came down.

It is a city with profound biblical importance that we often overlook.

Because we don't live in Israel, I want to help bring you up to speed on Jericho, and I think it'll make this story come more alive for you.

Jericho is about 30 miles outside of Jerusalem.

It's out in the desert.

Jerusalem is up in the mountains.

You wind through a canyon to get out of Jerusalem through 30 miles.

You could walk it in a day.

In fact, Jesus will walk it in a day pretty soon.

And that canyon empties out into the desert.

About halfway out of the canyon to the Jordan River is Jericho.

It's a desolate city, but a strategic city.

If you're coming from the Egyptian wilderness like the Israelites did, you would probably cross the Jordan River right here to get into Israel.

You could cross it on the other side of the Dead Sea, but that's so far away, and there's nothing down there.

But if you crossed it here, you'd come through Jordan.

The Jordan River is so narrow here, you can wade across it.

In fact, that's what the Israelites did.

This is the entry point into Israel.

Jordan, uh Jericho has nothing going for it except its strategic location along that highway, and this set of springs that are inside of it.

The springs give it water.

Palm trees go around it, date trees go around it.

So it's this little kind of respite of springs in the middle of the wilderness on your way to Jerusalem.

I know not all of you are from California, but this is Palm Springs, isn't it?

30 miles away from the city you're actually going to.

Nobody would willingly go to Palm Springs.

Aww.

I mean to golf or something.

This is a city with snobby people.

I'm talking about Jericho.

When Joshua crossed into Israel, the walls collapsed and Joshua cursed it.

He said, Cursed be before Yahweh this city.

Cursed before Yahweh is the man who undertakes rebuilding of the city.

He will lay its foundation at the cost of his firstborn.

He'll set up its gates at the cost of its youngest son.

So this is a dual curse.

You rebuild Jericho, your oldest kid dies, and your youngest kid dies.

That's the curse.

I don't know another curse like that in the Old Testament.

Well, it sat vacant for 500 years.

Nobody touched it for 500 years.

And then Ahab becomes king.

Wicked king Ahab.

Three times.

The scripture says that Ahab was the worst of Israel's kings.

There will be some after him that are worse than he is, but the time that Ahab became king over the ten tribes of the north, he was abominable.

His evil was unimaginable.

First of all, he married Jezebel, who was a wicked queen, the worst queen Israel ever had.

Sometimes somebody might marry someone because they're like, oh, she's godly, she'll make me a better person.

That was not Ahab's logic.

Ahab married Jezebel because she was ungodly and she'd make the whole nation worse off for it.

That was Ahab's strategy.

He worshipped Baal.

He built temples for Baal all around Israel.

He built an altar for Baal, an altar is where you offer sacrifices.

He built an altar for Baal in the middle of Samaria, the capital city of Israel.

Can you imagine?

This is Israel from God's twelve tribes, and he led across the Egyptian wilderness, put them in the promised land, their king, clears out any mention of Yahweh, replaces them with idols and an altar to Baal in the capital city.

That's Ahab.

He builds Ashrath poles where you can worship God through sexual immorality.

But the scripture makes a point, despite all of that, the worst thing he did was he rebuilt Jericho.

He ordered one of his advisors to take a group of people and rebuild it.

Now, this must not be an advisor he liked.

Because the advisor's son, oldest son and youngest son, died in the process, exactly like God said.

But they built it, and then God cursed the water, the springs.

The one thing that makes the city inhabitable, God cursed to punish them for rebuilding it.

For 50 years, people lived in Jericho with water that was barely drinkable.

Bitter, cursed water.

Fifty years later, Elijah comes by, but Elijah doesn't go into Jericho, he walks around it.

Elijah, if you remember, is going out to the wilderness to get called up to heaven in the whirlwind.

Elijah was so over Israel at this point, he wouldn't even die in Israel.

This is his second time leaving Israel because he's so frustrated with them.

He actually leaves the country.

He doesn't want to grace, he doesn't want Israel to be graced with the presence of his body, even.

And yet God brings his body from Jordan up into the heavens.

Elisha, if you remembered, followed with Elijah across the river to the wilderness.

Then Elisha comes back totally despondent, goes to some bar in Jericho.

I don't know if it was the actual bar, but that's what I imagine it to be.

To sit there and just cry.

I don't think they served him water.

While he's there, just lamenting his life, Elisha.

People come up to him and say, Hey, it'd be nice if we found a prophet around here.

Our water is cursed by God.

Can somebody fix it?

And this is one of the strangest miracles in the Bible.

Somebody brings Elisha a jug of water from the springs to his little seat at the bar here, and Elisha scoops up salt and throws salt in the jar and says, Now your water's healed.

What in the world?

It doesn't even say that they took the salty water and dumped it into the spring.

It's like, and how would salt heal water anyway?

It's a strange miracle.

And the springs are healed.

The city that was cursed by God becomes a place of blessing by God through Elisha.

And I know I'm too far afield here, but indulge me for a moment.

I think this kind of thing is cool.

Moses never got into Jericho.

He died overlooking it.

Joshua took his space.

Joshua not only gets into Jericho but curses it.

Elijah didn't get into Jericho but walked around it.

Elisha goes right into the heart of it and forgives it.

John the Baptist, you never see him in Jericho, but you know where he did all his ministry?

Right outside of it at the Jordan River.

You could see Jericho from where he was.

And John gives way to Jesus.

I think it's cool that the name Joshua, Elisha, and Yeshua, Jesus are the same name in Hebrew.

You have three people: Moses, Elijah, John, who were the most noteworthy, outlandish, incredible personalities, perhaps in Israel's history, all three of them gave way to somebody greater than them, who goes into Jericho, one to curse it, one to forgive it.

What will Jesus do here?

Jericho teeters.

It is right on the edge of the ten tribes that worship Baal and Judah, where Jerusalem is.

It's right on the edge.

It is on the edge of Egypt and Israel.

It is where Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt right across the river, right there.

You can see it.

This is Jericho.

And it's going to be the site of Jesus' last miracle.

He's going to curse the fig tree in a few days if you count that.

And yes, I know the soldier's ear gets cut off and put back on.

This is his last, like, legit miracle here.

A desperate person calls to him for help, and he heals them.

That's Jericho.

We'll work our way through the passage this morning with a description of how to cure spiritual blindness.

That's the main driving crux of the story here.

You have two people who are blind, and they're not going to end up that way.

First, you have to see your blindness.

And I know that's a bit of a paradox.

If you're blind, how can you see your blind?

If you see your blind, you're no longer blind.

Exactly, I say.

That's the story of these two men.

First of all, Jesus is on his way, verse 29 says, a great crowd follows him.

Mark describes this as well.

Jesus is walking from Galilee.

He's got his face set like a flint towards Jerusalem, where he's going to go die on a cross.

He's been saying that over and over and over again.

He says it in Matthew 20, verse 17, I'm going to go die.

Matthew 20:17

Mark describes the crowd as increasingly growing.

He's like a comet re-entering orbit here with all of the debris behind it.

The longer he walks, and several days from Galilee down to Jericho, the longer he walks, the more he draws the crowd.

It's growing bigger and bigger and bigger.

Matthew, if you remember a few weeks ago, made the point that Jesus was leading the march.

He wasn't reluctantly being drugged to Jerusalem.

He's walking out in front.

He's pulling everybody else.

They come in through Jericho.

And of course, other things happen in Jericho.

This is where Zacchaeus is called by the Lord out of the tree.

That happened here.

But on his way out of the city, behold, there's two blind men sitting by the roadside.

It's a sad scene.

Jesus has, at this point in his life, basically driven illness out of Palestine.

He's healed everybody.

He has been on a three-year at least healing crusade through Israel.

Everybody who could be carried to him has been healed.

Everybody who could walk to him has been healed.

Everybody who's called to him for help from the pools in Jerusalem has been healed.

There's almost no sick people left.

The hospital waiting rooms are cleared out.

That's what Israel was like under Jesus' life.

These two guys are the ones left behind.

Do you remember the paralytic early in Jesus' ministry?

Who knows how far that guy was drugged to Jesus?

And they, there's so many people there for healing.

They sought a hole in the ceiling and laid the paralytic at Jesus' feet where they were healed.

What's up with these guys?

They had no guides to bring them.

They had no friends to bring them.

They had nobody who cared for them enough to hold their hands and walk them to Jesus at all.

We know from Mark's gospel they weren't born blind.

The word used in Mark's gospel for recovery your sight means that they had it before.

Blindness was common in Israel, perhaps from a disease.

There's a viral disease that crusts the eyes and fills it with gunk.

And the I don't know, the there's a way better medical terminology than this, but the body has a way of sealing that off so it doesn't kill your brain.

Perhaps that's what happened.

Perhaps they were injured.

Who knows?

They're blind though.

And they're left on the side of the road to beg.

They'd be visibly blind.

Like you could tell from looking at them, they can't see.

They're begging on the road in the desert.

It's a desperate situation.

They're aware of their situation.

It's an ironic situation, as I mentioned, one of them is named Bartimaeus.

Bar meaning son, Timaeus Timothy, meaning honor.

Son of honor is what it means.

It's ironic that this son of honor has been abandoned on the side of the road in the desert left to beg.

They know their desperate situation and they cry out, don't they?

They heard that Jesus was passing by.

I think it's funny that Matthew says they heard of it.

Mark says they heard that it was a son of David from Nazareth passing by.

They knew who this was, in other words.

They had heard of Jesus' healing.

Nazareth was a town of a few hundred people out in the, you know, way far away from here.

They heard that this person, Jesus of Nazareth, could heal blind people.

They'd known about it.

People probably passed them on the road, bringing other sick people to Jesus for healing, but not these two.

That's why it's so sad.

They hear Jesus coming, of course, they hear the rumors.

Finally, they hear Jesus passing by.

And they cry out, Lord, have mercy on us.

The crowd rebukes them.

The crowd shushed them.

Why in the world would the crowd shush blind people wanting healing from Jesus?

And it seems, if you say it like that, it seems so odd, doesn't it?

But you really do have to put yourself, imagine yourself in that situation where you are part of the entourage of Jesus.

You're up front with him, means probably one of the 12 people who fancy themselves important.

They're the ones kind of escorting Jesus on his way.

They just left the feast at Zacchaeus' house, and this is, you know, pomp and circumstance.

Picture the trumpets and the branches and the whole thing.

That's all going on right now.

And here's two blind people.

They're the lowest of society.

Forget these clowns.

Like, what are they interrupting?

They should shut up and mind their own business.

That's the attitude.

Why would they interfere with this march of important people to Jerusalem where important things are going to happen?

So they tell them to be quiet.

These guys don't have any righteousness, they don't have any clout, they don't have any friends to carry them, and they definitely shouldn't be interrupting Jesus.

That's the attitude.

It is worth just marveling at that kind of attitude, isn't it?

To be so, first of all, perceptive of a situation and yet so blind to what's actually happening.

It is astonishing.

And it is a picture of our spiritual blindness, by the way.

You do need to remember the blind person Jesus healed on an earlier visit to Jerusalem in John chapter 9.

John 9 · chapter mention

You remember he heals by spitting and making mud and rubbing on the dude's eye on the Sabbath?

And the Pharisees, the esteemed perceptive religious leaders of Jerusalem, were bugged that Jesus made mud on the Sabbath.

That's against the rules.

There's a blind guy who has been suffering in his blindness that Jesus heals, and they're upset that he got healed on their day off.

Remember, they give that guy the inquisition, and he's like, I don't know, I didn't even see the dude, which is funny on its own right.

And so they corner Jesus.

And they say, this is John 9, verse 40, we're not blind too, are we?

John 9:40

And Jesus said to them, If you were blind, you would have no sin, but since you say, We see, your sin remains.

That's what Jesus' point is.

Because you say you can see, you're blind.

So the flip side of that is if you realize your blindness, you can see.

I know it sounds like a catch-22, but it is true.

If you recognize your own inability to perceive spiritual truth through your own reasoning and your own flesh, you have more spiritual sight than those that claim that they can figure things out on their own.

Thank you very much.

It is, of course, worth asking yourself if you've had an encounter with Christ like this.

Have you come to Christ aware of your own spiritual blindness?

Aware that had you been left on your own, outside the agency and the acting on you of the Holy Spirit, would you be able to figure out spiritual truths?

This is remarkably humbling, and I know there are so many people who fancy themselves Christians and have the Jesus fish in their car and whatnot, yet who think themselves emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually above the whole thing.

They're not aware of their spiritual blindness.

These two blind men stand as a warning and rebuke and an invitation to such a one.

To see your own blindness, secondly.

See your need for grace.

They cry out a second time.

Notice verse 31 the crowd rebukes them.

They cried out even louder.

The crowd keeps shushing them, they keep amping it up.

Lord, have mercy on us, son of David.

Mercy is what they're asking for.

Mercy.

The Jews shush them.

In this world, blindness would be physically devastating.

Spiritual poverty is connected to it.

Physical poverty is connected to it, of course.

The Jews honestly had the practical theodicy of Hinduism here.

They believed that if you were blind, it was because you sinned or your parents sinned and your suffering is therefore earned by your sin.

So to help somebody who was blind is almost to circumvent the justice of God.

You don't help a blind person because God's doing something in their blindness.

That was their attitude.

And so they're just wanting these two guys to be quiet.

These two guys, listen, blindness is because of sin.

You're really living in a fallen world.

Blindness is because of sin.

We'll talk about that more in a minute.

That's what Jesus is going to grant here.

But it's not a one to one correlation, like you sinned in this way, therefore you are blind.

It's a fallen world with suffering, and these guys are suffering, and they are desperate.

And so they cry.

And what's amazing, they cry for mercy.

How different.

How different from other people that have had their encounters with Jesus.

Remember the rich young ruler?

He didn't walk up to Jesus and say, Have mercy on me, Lord.

He walked up to Jesus and said, What must I do for salvation?

Remember the Pharisee in the temple next to the sinner and tax collector beating his breast in walks the Pharisee and says, Lord, I thank you, I'm not like him.

That is a far cry from mercy.

The lawyer who provoked the story of the Good Samaritan.

I think of that only because that also took place in Jericho.

You remember that lawyer?

He says, and Luke lets you know, he was seeking to justify himself by asking Jesus, who is my neighbor?

Man, you gotta love a self-justifying lawyer right there, don't you?

Seeking to, and it's the word vindicate, seeking to vindicate himself, seeking to prove himself right in front of Jesus.

I'm thankful for his question because it produced the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Look how different these blind guys are.

They're not seeking to justify themselves.

They're not saying, what must I do for salvation?

They're not saying, Lord, I'm so thankful I'm not like those Pharisees.

And they cry out, have mercy.

Have mercy.

Notice there's no negotiation.

Give me sight, and I'll serve you the rest of I'll be a missionary.

Lord, if you give my sight, I will go spend my life with the Samaritans.

There's no negotiation.

There's just the need for grace.

Third.

See the deity of Christ.

The deity of Christ.

Son of David, son of David.

It's repeated twice.

Lord, they identify in verse 31.

Lord.

That's the word kurios.

Remember, in the Greek world, kurios goes with doulos.

Kurios means Lord.

Dulos is a slave.

All doulo is the plural.

Have a kurios.

You're only a curios if you have doulos.

You're only Lord if you have slaves.

Do you remember last week's passage?

Jesus just taught that the way to greatness is slavery.

In God's providence, the very next verse, he encounters two people who are calling Jesus Lord.

He says, you want to be great, you become the slave of all.

The Son of Man didn't come to be served, but to serve and to give his life.

And here you have two people that are now calling him Kyrgyz.

They're recognizing that he's the Lord.

That's the illustration.

The disciples elbowing each other out of the way from the way to greatness.

And here's two blind dudes who are like, this is the Lord.

They call him the Son of David.

It's an unusual expression in the New Testament, at least.

Filled with messianic hope.

It speaks of the son of Son of God, speaks of the eternal nature of the Savior.

Son of man speaks of a man who's going to come, sent according to Daniel's prophecy.

But son of David brings the two together.

Son of David comes from God's pledge to David that one of his descendants will sit on the throne and reign over the nations.

His days will have no end.

And then Psalm 89 picks that up and says, that son of David will also be the eternal son of God.

That predates David.

Don't think that the promise for David, David's son to be the Savior, started with David being called out of the sheep pen.

This is the promise Psalm 89 says that it starts before there was light.

Psalm 2 says he'll be the Son of God and yet a put on the holy hill promised to David in Jerusalem.

Other passages as well.

Son of David is a claim that he is the eternal Son of God, robed in human flesh.

The blind men see it.

Matthew 1 begins by identifying Jesus as the Son of David.

What these beggars lack in eyesight physically, they make up for in perception spiritually.

And it's typical of the way Jesus works, that the blind would see him more clearly than those with sight.

If you believe in the name of the Lord, you'll be saved.

If you call on his name from faith in your heart, you'll be saved.

But how can you call on someone whom you've never heard of?

Well, these blind men heard Jesus coming and they cried out and they placed their faith in him forth.

Respond to the Lord's call.

Respond to the Lord's call, verse 32.

And stopping.

These blind men's fate hangs in this.

I mean, that was that was the suspense, wasn't it?

Is Jesus going to listen to the crowd?

Who says, shh, are going to listen to the blind men?

Jesus comes to a screeching halt.

I picture all of the disciples piling up on top of him.

It's like a pile of disciples everywhere.

Peter hitting him first.

Jesus stops.

The whole entourage, the whole parade stops.

You know what else stops?

Jesus is marching towards Jerusalem to go on the cross.

Remember what I said earlier?

Mark says his face is set like a flint, which is drawn from Isaiah.

There's this whole imagery that he is compelled to Jerusalem.

He stops all of that.

In John's gospel, he says he can only do what the Father sent him to do, namely to go die on the cross.

He stops everything.

His walk to betrayal, his walk towards his beating, his walk towards his murder, his crucifixion on the cross, he stops all of it for two blind beggars that asked for help.

He says, What do you want me to do for you?

Isn't that a question?

What do you want me to do for you?

Ask yourself.

If the Lord appeared before you and said, What do you want me to do for you?

It might be worth you spending just a second in your own mind and thinking, what would I say?

And what you say is probably going to reveal a little bit of an idol in your life, if we're being honest.

Does the question sound familiar?

It's not the first time Jesus has asked it in this chapter.

James and John's mom had come up to Jesus and said, Can I have a favor, Lord?

And Jesus said, What do you want me to do for you?

He asked it just a few verses ago.

I want you to compare the answers.

The mom said, Make my children the greatest in the kingdom.

Alright, that's an answer at least.

Notice what the blind men say.

Lord, let her eyes be opened.

Let her eyes be opened.

They want to see, and they want to see Jesus.

That's a way better answer than let my kids be the greatest in the kingdom, I think.

Lord, I just want to see you.

That's what I want.

If I have one request, I want to see you.

It reminds me of the people in Jerusalem that came and found Andrew and some of the disciples, Nathaniel, and said, We would see the Lord.

Take us to see Jesus.

That's what we want.

That's their request.

They want to see Jesus.

They want their eyes open and they want the first person they see to be Him.

It's a passive verb here.

It doesn't say, Let me open my eyes.

That's not what it says.

It can be confusing in English, but in Hebrew, I mean in Greek, it's crystal clear.

There's a big difference between let me open my eyes and let my eyes be opened.

One you're acting, the other you're being acted on.

And this again is another of the million parallels of salvation in these kind of encounters here.

When you come to faith in Christ, it is the Spirit.

This is Pentecost Sunday.

This is what we're talking about.

It is the Holy Spirit who opens your eyes to behold wonderful things from the law.

No one can come to the Father except through the Son, and no one can come to the Son unless the Spirit draws him.

That's the idea.

The Spirit has to regenerate you.

You cannot even see the kingdom of God unless you are born from above by the working of the Holy Spirit.

It is God who saves, God who draws, God who said, Let there be light.

Cause the light of Christ to shine in our dark hearts.

And that's their prayer.

Not, Lord, let me open my eyes.

Not, Lord, bring me 90% of the way and I'll just finish this thing off.

Lord, if you don't do it all, there's nothing that can be done.

That's what they say.

This maps onto the outward versus inward call of the gospel.

The outward call of the gospel goes to the world.

The heavens declare the glory of God.

The sky speaks forth his handiwork.

Day after day pours forth speech.

Night after night proclaims knowledge.

There is no place in the world that does not have the outward call of the gospel.

But that doesn't save.

It's the inward working of the Spirit.

Jesus walking through Jericho is the outward call.

Jesus coming over to two blind men, that's the inward call.

And look what he does.

First, it says in pity.

That word pity is a wonderful Greek word.

We don't really have anything like it in English.

It means to have your spleen like ripped.

There's a word for that.

Probably the closest English idiom would mean to have like a pit in your stomach.

Like you see something that's so sad.

You're just like, you feel like you got a gut punch.

That's the word.

It's translated here into English pity.

That almost is too soft.

Having a spleen ripped open is too much, though.

I'll grant that.

Jesus looks at these two guys and he's just, he's broken.

He's so sad for them.

So sad for sin.

That's what I mean by sin wrecks the world.

And Jesus knows that.

Sin is gonna kill Jesus in a few days.

He knows what's what.

He's so sad for them.

He has such compassion.

So much compassion, he touches their eyes.

Not necessary, but he does it.

And if they do have the gook on their eyes, that's even he did not glove up, no mention of that.

You have to be really close to someone to touch their eyes.

I don't think these guys saw it coming.

I shouldn't have.

I shouldn't have.

But you do.

You have to be up close with someone to touch their eyes.

And that's where Jesus is.

Right with them.

Touches their eyes and they see.

Luke, who also describes this miracle, says, not only do they see, they went following him all the way to Jerusalem, singing songs to God.

Mark has a really cool detail that Bartimaeus, one of the two, threw off his coat to follow Jesus.

It's just a little detail that's thrown in there.

But for a blind beggar, your coat is all you have.

I know they're in the desert, but it gets cold at night.

The coat is what you sit on to beg.

It's what you sleep in, and he leaves it.

He's got no need for that anymore.

Well, he's gonna have to go to sleep that night.

Jesus didn't make him immortal.

He doesn't care, man.

He is on the road with Jesus.

The coat has been left behind.

He is a brand new man.

That's the idea.

Matthew just says they recovered their sight and followed him.

This passage depicts every faithful disciple of Christ.

You're aware of your own sin and your own inability to perceive spiritual truth.

You know that you need God to show you grace for salvation.

You cry out to him as God, as the one who will die on the cross, as the Son of Man and the Son of God, the Son of David.

You cry out to him and you respond to the Lord's call with faith.

These people weren't saved because they followed Jesus.

They were saved, and that's why they follow Jesus.

And that order is important.

This is what Christians look like.

You're aware of your own sin, you're aware of your need for grace, you're aware of what Christ did for you on the cross.

You cry to Him and you give your life to Him.

Have you had your own Jericho moment?

As I said, the city that teeters here on the edge.

It's on the cusp of the black hole.

You can fall into Jerusalem and worshiping God, or you can fall into Baal and worshiping yourself.

It's so like our Lord that He walks into a place marked by judgment and brings mercy instead.

Lord, we are grateful for your word for the salvation that you offer to those who turn to you in faith.

I pray this morning that you would draw hearts to yourself, that you would sanctify, save.

We rejoice in the working of your spirit.

We give you thanks in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.

If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to tms.edu.

Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.