See More Clearly (Mark 8:22-33)

This morning we're gonna be in Mark chapter 8, so you can go ahead and open up there.

Mark 8 · chapter mention

We're gonna be starting in verse 22 and going through verse 33.

From day one that we started our Sunday services, we started in the Gospel of Mark, and we've just been taking little chunks at a time, going all the way through it, and we're landing here today in chapter 8, verse 22.

Um and I want to encourage you, I've done this in the past, but for some of you new people here, I love it when people write in their Bibles.

If you have something against that, that's totally fine.

But to write in the margins, to highlight, to underline whatever it is that you're maybe learning today or God showing you, to put that in your Bible.

Because if we keep notes, a lot of times we we lose those.

But I love coming to my Bible and then coming to a verse that I haven't been to in a while and then just seeing some notes because I'll sit there and I'll go through and what does that mean?

Oh, I have a note here that kind of explains that or says a little bit more about the word that was used or something like that.

So feel free to do that, and that's why we give our Bibles away.

We want people having something physical in their hands that they can take notes in, underline, highlight.

And it's great too because if you're in a home group and you come across one of these verses, you know, uh in a couple years or something like that, you're gonna have these notes that you took from today.

So I encourage you.

I love one of my favorite things as a pastor when I'm teaching is to look out and see people doing this.

Like something's getting through, you know.

Uh so anyway, let's all stand for the reading of God's word.

Mark chapter 8, starting in verse 22.

Mark 8 · chapter mention

Says, they came to Beth Seda, they brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him.

He took the blind man by the hand and brought him out of the village.

Spitting on his eyes and laying his hands on him, he asked him, Do you see anything?

He looked up and said, I see people.

They look like trees walking.

Again Jesus placed his hands on the man's eyes.

The man looked intently, and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

Then he sent him home, saying, Don't even go into the village.

Jesus went out with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, and on the road he asked his disciples, Who do people say that I am?

They answered him, John the Baptist.

Others, Elijah, still others, one of the prophets.

But you, he asked them, Who do you say that I am?

Peter answered him, You are the Messiah, and he strictly warned them to tell no one about him.

Then he began to teach them that it was necessary for the Son of Man to suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes.

Be killed and rise after three days.

He spoke openly about this.

Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

But turning around and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan.

You are not thinking about God's concerns, but human concerns.

Lord, I thank you so much for this passage.

Lord, I pray that you would open our eyes to see more clearly the things that you have for us, to see not just the physical things around us, but the spiritual things.

Lord, I pray as we dig into these verses that you would change us, that we would have open eyes, open ears, open hearts to the things that you want to speak to each one of us here individually.

Pray that you would use me as your mouthpiece to deliver your word here this morning.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

And everybody said, Amen.

Maybe seated.

So last week we saw Jesus feed the multitude.

He fed the 4,000.

He got tested by the hard-hearted religious leaders.

Then we saw him leave that place to look for better soil, so to speak.

That would be more receptive to the seeds of truth that he was casting out to these crowds.

And as they crossed the Sea of Galilee, Jesus warns them of the influence, he warns his disciples of the influence of the religious leaders of that time.

And then he reassured his disciples that he is their provider, if you remember from last week's sermon.

He was reminding them to stop worrying, to just listen to him and to obey and to have faith.

And what we're going to see is chapters 8 through 10 as a whole, we're going to see Jesus trying to help his disciples see more clearly.

Isaiah 8 · chapter mention

And that is the theme of our message here this morning is to see more clearly.

Everything that happens in these next three chapters is a lesson for them.

Last week in Mark 8.18, Jesus literally says, Do you have eyes and not see?

So it really makes sense that stuck right in the middle of this training that Jesus is doing with his disciples is the story of Jesus healing a blind man.

It really makes sense that it's nestled right here.

Because what Jesus is going to be doing is he's going to be, you know, he asks his disciples, Do you have eyes and not see?

We're going to see a guy that has eyes and cannot see.

And then we're going to see what Jesus does with that.

So there's a purpose of why, because it seems awkward sometimes you're reading through chapter 8 of why is this just kind of stuck right in the middle?

And I think it'll become very clear.

So let's jump right into verse 22.

It says they came to Beth Seda, they brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him.

So we find Jesus geographically at the northern tip of the Sea of Galilee.

And it says that they brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him.

So right off the bat, something that we should notice is the faith of these people that brought this blind man to Jesus.

They knew just a touch from Jesus was going to be enough to heal this man.

And we're going to see that they were right.

You know, in three weeks, as we look ahead into chapter 9, in the middle of chapter 9, there's a story that stands in stark contrast to the text that we're in here this morning.

Where the father brings his son that's possessed by a demon.

He brings them first to the disciples, and if you remember that story, the disciples couldn't do anything with them.

And then we see that the father brings this demon-possessed child to Jesus.

And we'll see that Jesus has to straighten out a bunch of stuff first before he's able to heal this man's son.

There were issues of faith and issues of doubt and confusion among his disciples, among the crowd that was there, and among this boy's father that was demon-possessed.

So specifically, Jesus has to kind of iron a bunch of stuff out because of the father's unbelief.

And Jesus gets all of this straightened out and then he heals the boy.

But today we see faith right off the bat.

And we see that Jesus can work with the faith of these people that brought this blind man to him.

So Jesus is able, because of their faith, to jump right in and get to business.

He doesn't have to straighten anything out, he doesn't have to deal with issues of faith.

They just come to Jesus already with faith.

And Jesus is able to just jump right in.

And it's my prayer that our lack of faith would never get in the way of Jesus jumping right in.

That we would have so much faith in the power and authority of God that he doesn't have to straighten those things out first before he can truly deal with what the main issue is.

And it's just such a great example here of what Jesus can do with faith.

Look at verse 23 with me.

It says, He took the blind man by the hand and brought him out of the village, spitting on his eyes, and laying his hands on him.

He asked him, Do you see anything?

So let's stop right there.

I have so many questions at this point, just from verse 23, with the spitting and all of that kind of stuff that Jesus is doing.

But the first question I have is, why didn't Jesus do this in the village?

Why did he have to lead this guy out by the hand?

The second question I have is, why did Jesus spit on his eyes?

Because that just seems extremely strange, doesn't it?

And then the third thing is, why did Jesus have to do this in stages?

Why is there multiple stages that take place in this healing?

So the first question, I think it's kind of easy to answer.

Jesus led him out of the village because he didn't want to draw a crowd.

And that's probably because Jesus in Matthew 11, 21, had already pronounced woe or an exclamation of grief on Betheda because of their unrepentant hearts.

Jesus had done ministry there.

He had given them a chance to accept the truth and the gospel that he was giving them, and they didn't accept it.

So Jesus made an exclamation of grief and basically just kind of shook the dust off of his sandals regarding that city.

So he'd given them an opportunity to repent and they didn't.

And we'll see after this man's healed that Jesus tells this man to not even go back into the town.

He says, just go around, just don't even bother going in there.

But I want you to notice that even though Jesus had pronounced woe on this city, he still goes into the town.

He went into the town for the one.

He rescues the one.

And then we're gonna see at the end of this, he just leaves the whole region.

The reason that I point this out is that Jesus will go to great lengths for one sheep that's in need.

Or another way to think of it is if there's one righteous, Jesus will go there.

He'll cross the sea, like in our text today.

And like we saw with the man with the legion of demons earlier in Mark.

He'll cross a whole sea, he'll minister to the one, and then he leaves.

So Jesus leads this guy out of the town.

And what a picture that this is.

He takes him by the hand and he leads him out.

The God of the universe takes his time, like this man is the only person on the face of the earth, and he leads him by the hand out of the city that he has pronounced woe on.

And when I think of this, it makes me think of Lot in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Makes me think of Rahab in the story of Jericho.

You know, and what an amazing picture this was.

And we need to know that if God will do this for the blind man, if he'll do it for Rahab, if he'll do it for Lot, you better believe that he will do this for us as well.

His care and attention and love are as if we're the only person in existence.

You know, it's God, it's in God's nature.

You know, he's all-knowing, or maybe know the word omniscient.

You know, he's all powerful, he's omnipotent, and he's present everywhere all at the same time.

He's omnipresent.

So he has the ability to give us the time and the attention as if we were the only child that he had.

To spend the whole day with us, with his undivided attention.

Just like he's doing with this blind man.

And that's what God desires.

He desires to spend the whole day with us, every day, giving us that time and attention like he's giving this blind man right here.

Now, to answer the second question that I have of in verse 23 of why did Jesus spit on this man's eyes, I have no problem saying, I have no idea.

Because this is just strange.

But I do know that Jesus seems to change up his methods every time that he heals somebody.

And it's probably just to keep us from getting superstitious.

You know, if we saw Jesus spit on someone's eyes every time he healed a blind person, do you know how many blind people would be getting spit on today?

You know, well, that's how Jesus did it.

You know, let's oh man, I could go so many places with that.

But what would happen is that we would rely if we if Jesus healed the same way all the time, is we would start to rely on a formula instead of relying on the Holy Spirit.

Because performing a formula is easier than walking in step with the Holy Spirit.

It's easier than depending on him in the moment.

Because depending on the Holy Spirit in the moment can be really scary sometimes.

But this is similar to what we saw in chapter 7.

Jesus putting his fingers in the man's ears, if you'll remember, and then he spit on his fingers and then he touched the man's tongue.

You know, this is some strange stuff we're looking at.

But Jesus is mixing it up.

It's going to be the power of the Holy Spirit that's performing these healings, not a formula that's going to work, you know, for everybody.

So Jesus does these things to this man, and it says in verse 24, look at it with me.

He looked up and said, I see people.

They look like trees walking.

So this tells me that this man at some point had the ability to see, and he somehow lost that, and now he's blind.

Because he knew what trees looked like, he knew what people walking looked like.

And as we're going to see, I'm going to jump ahead just a little, but in verse 25 it says, his sight was restored.

It was brought back to how it was prior at some point.

So whatever his issue was, it was something that he it was not something that he was born with, I should say.

It was something that had onset later in life.

So what we see in verse 24 is this guy gaining partial vision, but things aren't completely clear yet.

So it says in verse 25, again, Jesus placed his hands on the man's eyes.

The man looked intently, and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

Now make note of that word clearly.

We're going to get back to that.

So the man is completely healed at this point.

And that gets into my third question.

Why didn't Jesus heal the man completely on the first attempt?

This is the only miracle that we see Jesus perform that was in stages throughout all of the Gospels.

It's not as if, you know, God had used up all of his power on the first attempt and he needed to recharge his batteries.

It's not that that's not the case at all.

There was a purpose.

And I'm speculating here, but maybe this is on purpose, just to be a reminder to us that God doesn't always heal immediately.

Sometimes he does, and we see a lot of those examples in Scripture, but sometimes it's a slower process.

And sometimes he chooses to heal through the hands of doctors.

And sometimes, and this is the hardest one for us, usually, is he chooses not to heal.

But I take great comfort in Romans 11, 34.

It says, Who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been his counselor?

Who knows the reasoning, you know, behind his methods?

Who knows his timing?

Who knows his locations and the whys behind all of that?

Who knows his reasons behind anything that he does?

You know, we may not know those things, but we can trust him.

We know that he's good, that he's faithful, caring, loving, long-suffering, filled with grace, pours out his tender mercies upon us every day.

But even when we don't understand, we can remember those things.

You know, the other option is maybe Jesus healed in stages to show that, or relate this, I should say, to a spiritual blindness.

That Jesus just pointed out, uh, like what I was saying last week, pointed out the blindness of the religious leaders.

He pointed out the blindness of his disciples as not.

So maybe he's pointing out that spiritual blindness and healing from spiritual blindness is not going to be a quick fix for anybody.

It's going to be a process with multiple stages as his disciples start to gain clarity in their spiritual vision, so to speak.

And I pointed out the word clearly there at the end of the verse.

And that is the word in the Greek of telegos.

I'm probably saying it wrong, Angie.

Forgive me, but Angie speaks Greek.

But it's uh telogos, and it means clearly from a distance.

So it's not just the word clearly, it means you can see something clearly that is very far away.

So this blind man went from blind to nearsighted to seeing things clearly from a distance.

And Jesus is going to continue to help his disciples to see more clearly until they can see more clearly from a distance.

And that's what I was saying is what really what chapters 8 through 10 are.

Jesus helping his disciples to see more clearly.

Look at verse 26 with me.

It says, Then he sent him home, saying, Don't even go into the village.

And Jesus tells him, you know, on your way home, don't even go back to Beth Seda.

Don't even bother telling anybody about what happened.

Don't even bother giving your testimony of how I restored your sight.

He says, just go around the city.

I've pronounced woe on it.

Just don't even bother.

Jesus wasn't going to do any more ministry in that village.

And he's telling this guy to not bother with giving his testimony there.

Like I said earlier, Jesus had shook the dust from his sandal, so to speak, regarding Beth Seda.

He had given them their chance and he was done doing ministry in that place.

Look at verse 27.

It says, Jesus went out with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi.

So, like I said, Jesus started at the northern tip of the Sea of Galilee.

And basically what they're doing on their journey is they're going to go about 20 to 25 miles on foot all the way up straight north to Caesarea Philippi.

So, probably a couple days' journey for them.

Lots of time to walk and lots of time to talk, as we'll see.

Look at the second half of verse 27.

And on the road he asked his disciples, Who do people say that I am?

What's the rumors?

What are you guys hearing?

Verse 28.

They answered him, John the Baptist.

Others, Elijah.

Still others, one of the prophets.

So it's not as if Jesus doesn't know the answer to this question already.

He's hearing all the same things that they're hearing, but he's going somewhere with this.

This is a conversation that he needs to have with his disciples.

It's something that they need to understand.

And I believe he's trying to see if they're listening to him or if they're listening to what the word is on the street.

Are they listening to his words or what they're hearing from others?

Verse 29.

But you, he asks them, Who do you say that I am?

And who do you think speaks up?

Peter answered him, you are the Messiah.

Now, they're getting to where Jesus wants to be.

They're getting to what Jesus wants to know.

Who do you say that I am?

And Peter answers correctly.

The Messiah.

You know, we define this in the past, but it's been a while.

Messiah literally means anointed one.

Another word that we use is Christ.

You know, we hear the words Jesus Christ, Jesus Messiah, Jesus the anointed one.

That's all the same thing.

And Peter is saying, in this short answer, you're the one that we have all been waiting for, that have been prophesied about so many times in the Old Testament.

You are the anointed one, you are the Savior of Israel.

And this is all wrapped up in Peter's simple answer to Jesus.

But this is such an important question for Jesus to ask his disciples then, but also for him to ask his disciples right here today in this room.

Who do you say that I am?

And not just when somebody asks you, you know, who is Jesus, but in your heart and in your mind, who do you say that Jesus is?

A.W.

Tozer says in his book, Knowledge of the Holy, what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

I'm gonna read that again.

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

And he goes on.

He says, Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high.

Or low thoughts of God.

Basically saying, you know, if you approach God and your mental image of Him is one of a disappointed father, you know, with his arms crossed, if that's our image, that's going to affect how you pray, how you worship, how you make decisions, how you live your daily life.

But if you come to God and you see him as the good shepherd, as we've seen throughout the Gospel of Mark, if you see him as loving and as an accepting father that is long-suffering, that's full of grace, that's full of mercy, that will also affect how we pray, how we worship, how we make our everyday decisions, and how we live our daily life.

So Jesus asks him this very pointed question Who do you say that I am?

And Peter responds, You are the Messiah.

And then there's something that we get in the account of the same story in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16, starting verse 17, that we don't get in Mark.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

So I'm just going to read you that.

It's right after Peter responds, You are the Messiah.

Jesus comes back and tells Peter this.

It says, Jesus responded, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jodah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my father in heaven.

And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth you will have been or will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.

So this is some high praise for Peter.

He finally gets something right.

You know, we've seen him fail so many times so far.

But he's finally starting to get some spiritual clarity in his vision.

And the reason I read that from Matthew, so you can see that he's making that progress.

And Jesus actually points that out to him.

And Jesus is saying, God revealed this to you.

So Peter's eyes are starting to be opened to spiritual things with an emphasis on starting.

Because as we keep going, you'll see why I say starting to see spiritual things.

Verse 30.

And he, meaning Jesus, strictly warned them to tell no one about him.

Again, it was not Jesus' time to be arrested.

And at this time, you know, the crowds were ready to make him their physical king.

And they were ready to go to war against Rome with Jesus as their physical king.

And Jesus didn't come to get famous.

He didn't come to draw big crowds or start a war with Rome.

As we saw in the beginning of the Gospel of Mark, he came to preach the good news.

So he starts to tell his disciples about the fate that does await him.

But his time has not come.

So he's saying, don't start broadcasting to everybody that I'm the Messiah.

It's going to speed things up too quick, and they're going to try and start murdering me ahead of time or making me a king and starting a war against Rome.

So he's basically saying, let's not rush things by broadcasting to the crowds that I am the Messiah.

Look at verse 31.

So then he began to teach them that it was necessary for the Son of Man to suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes.

Be killed and rise after three days.

He spoke openly about this.

So before Jesus tells them these things in verses 31 and 32 that we just read, he made sure that he had already established with them that he was the Messiah.

And now that that is established, Jesus needs to start deconstructing any false expectations of who the Messiah is and what his purpose will be.

He needs to make sure in his disciples' mind that he starts to unwind these false expectations that they have.

He needs them to know that he's not a political leader.

You know, because the expectation of most of the people in Israel at this time was that the Messiah was going to come and overthrow the Roman occupation and bring some sort of a physical salvation.

And in a sense, what the Israelites were looking at at this time, they were looking more for Jesus' second coming than for his first coming.

You know, in the Gospels, we see the lamb that would be led to the slaughter.

In Revelation, we see a roaring lion squashing his enemies.

So Jesus needs his disciples to know that he did not come as a roaring lion this time.

That's going to come, but this time he came as a lamb.

And he wasn't, he didn't come to overthrow Rome.

He came to overthrow death.

He needs them to know now that the people that they grew up respecting and revering, the elders, the chief priests, the scribes, were not only going to reject him, but lead him to his death.

Spit on him, blindfold him, and beat him with their hands, it says.

They need to know that not only was he not going to overthrow the Romans, but he would actually die at the hands of the Romans.

And then Jesus throws in for good measure and rise three days later after that, if they're not already confused enough.

But then the disciples, they needed to know this right now.

Otherwise, think about what would have happened once Jesus was murdered on the cross.

Think about the doubt that would have entered into their minds.

You know, if Jesus died on the cross without all of these warnings, at the hands of the religious leaders and the Romans, they would probably have just thought, well, I'm never getting those years of my life back.

I was wrong about everything.

I'm just going to go back and do whatever I was doing before.

Guess I was wrong.

You know, that might have been if Jesus hadn't started to prepare their hearts now.

So basically, Jesus is slowly just starting to unpeel this onion for them of who the Messiah really is and what the Messiah is going to do in his first coming, which is what we're seeing right here in the Gospels.

So Jesus says all of these things to his disciples.

And then look at the second half of verse 32.

Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, which I do not recommend.

Do not do that with God.

Peter's still thinking in physical terms regarding what the Messiah was going to do.

He's only seeing men that look like trees walking at this point.

He's still nearsighted.

He's not seeing things clearly at a distance yet.

Peter's heart is getting softer, praise the Lord.

There's things that God's doing in his heart, but he still has hardness in his heart.

There still needs to be some tilling that needs to happen in Peter's heart before he can start accepting the seeds of truth that Jesus is casting to them right here in this chapter.

He believes that Jesus is the Messiah, but he still doesn't think that Jesus knows what he's doing.

And I don't know about you, but that is really convicting to me.

How many times have we done this?

In essence, Peter is saying, I believe you're God, but I don't think you know what you're doing.

And if we're saying this, what that really means is that we don't think God is as powerful as he actually is.

If we don't think that God knows what he's doing.

Or we think we need to counsel or rebuke God in any way.

And if our picture of God is too small, or in our lack of faith, we um, or I should say in our lack of faith, then we end up limiting the ability for God to do a work inside of us.

Because we won't take him at his word.

You know, this all goes back to what the image of God in our head is, that A.W.

Tozer quote.

That first thing that we think about, our understanding of him, when somebody asks us, who do we think that Jesus is?

You know, if we have a true biblical image of God in our mind, we'll take him at his word and we'll trust him with everything.

If we ever feel like we need to coach God, whatever we're feeling at that moment is wrong.

Flat out.

If we ever feel like he doesn't know what he's doing, I need to give him a little counsel, he doesn't fully understand all that I'm going through right now, we're wrong.

We just need to take him at his word and surrender everything to him.

That is why it's so important for us to be in God's word in our Bibles on our own.

Not just depending on podcasts and what you're hearing here today, to not only learn more about the image that we should have in our brain, but to get to know God personally on a relational level.

You know, Peter's starting to get a clear picture, but he's not quite there yet.

Look at verse 33.

But turning around and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan.

You are not thinking about God's concerns, but human concerns.

Seems kind of harsh, doesn't it?

Get behind me, Satan.

But Jesus saw this as a real temptation from Satan.

His temptation was not finished in the wilderness when Jesus went out for 40 days and the enemy tested him there.

It wasn't finished there.

The enemy kept tempting him his whole life.

And what was the temptation here in our text?

That he didn't have to die on the cross.

That's basically what Peter was trying to tell him.

That he didn't have to suffer all of the rejections that he was getting ready for.

Jesus was getting ready for this moment of pain and suffering and rejection from so many.

And the temptation is, oh, you can bypass that.

And it's this one of the same temptations that we see in that story with Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, where Satan said, If you just bow down and you worship me, all of these kingdoms will be yours.

It was a way to circumvent the work on the cross that Jesus was going to do.

And this must have been a real temptation.

Because Jesus doesn't say, Yeah, whatever, Satan.

He addresses it head on and he says, Get behind me, Satan.

Makes me wonder how many other times Satan had tempted him in this way.

And you know what brings a whole lot of caution in my heart as I'm going through this and seeing Peter's response?

That one minute as a believer, we can speak a word from God, like Peter did confessing the Messiah.

And in the very next breath, speak a word that came from Satan.

Like Peter's rebuke.

This tells me that just because someone is a Christian and gives you counsel doesn't mean that you should believe them right off the bat.

That just because I'm up here and you're sitting there, it doesn't mean that you should believe me.

What Peter was saying went against God's word.

It went against Isaiah 53, it went against Psalm 22 and so many other prophecies that we see throughout the Old Testament.

And Jesus tells them in verse 33, you are not thinking about God's concerns, you're thinking about human concerns.

Peter, you're getting mixed up with what is from God and what is from your fleshly concerns, is what Jesus is telling him.

And you that are sitting out here today, you may be asking at this point, you know, well, for us today, how do we tell the difference between the word of God and fleshly counsel from others?

Well, I want to tell you, you're holding it in your hands.

It's God's word.

We need to hold everything up against the word of God and test it to see if it agrees.

And again, that's why we need to be in God's word on our own, not just on Sunday mornings.

And even though I'm sure Peter had the best of intentions, he rebuked Jesus in the flesh.

And I think there's two things that we need to learn from Peter here.

First, test every piece of advice that you get against the word of God.

And two, test every piece of advice and counsel that we give to others before it comes out of our mouth.

Test those things against the word of God before we give counsel to anybody.

Even our own thoughts.

Where we feel like God's speaking to us, we can make our own emotions and our selfish desires sound an awful lot like the voice of the Lord, can't we?

But how do those things hold up to Scripture?

You know, if you feel like God's telling you, you know, to um to get a divorce or something like that, just because you've lost, you know, that feeling or something like that.

It's not.

That goes against scripture.

Or if you feel like he's telling you that you need to love yourself before you can love others, he's not.

That goes against scripture as well.

We need to hold everything up to the word of God and see what it says.

And if we do, that's what is gonna help us to see clearly from a distance.

God is working on us to see clearly from a distance, but we tend to be near sighted in the present, don't we?

We're not fully seeing things clearly from a distance.

It's the word of God that is our pair of glasses.

That's gonna be the lens in which God wants us to look at everything through.

So that we can see more clearly right now.

Now, if you're here today, you're probably in one of three camps.

And I'm gonna end with this.

The first camp, you're blind to spiritual things, and you need Jesus to start giving you clarity.

Let if that is you, let today be the day that Jesus heals you of your spiritual blindness.

Surrender to him and allow him to give you sight for the first time.

It's as simple as asking him to reign in your heart as king.

Asking him to wipe away all of your past offenses through his work on the cross that he did for each one of us.

And maybe you're in the second camp where you're nearsighted, but you're okay with it.

You know you're saved, but you aren't growing spiritually.

You're stuck in a state of seeing men, but they look like trees.

And everything spiritual is just kind of blurry at any sort of a distance.

And if that's you, then I think camp three, which I'm gonna talk about here, should be your goal.

And this is where I think we should all be if we're growing disciples of Jesus Christ.

That is, you're nearsighted, but you're allowing God to help you see more clearly day by day.

You're investing in time in his word, you're spending time with Jesus daily, you're learning to pray without ceasing.

You're growing, basically.

That's where we need to be in a state of growing as disciples of Jesus Christ.

And I don't think anyone will think see things absolutely clearly this side of eternity, but hopefully things are becoming clearer day by day as we're growing in our walk with Jesus Christ.

And if that's you, my encouragement is to keep going, keep growing, keep pressing in, keep walking with God's word and his Holy Spirit as your guide.

And may we all see Jesus more clearly every day.

You know, and that really should be our prayer every time that we open God's word.

Lord, help me to see more clearly.

Jesus, touch my eyes as many times as you need to to give me your sight so that I can start to see things as you see them.

Did you pray with me?

Lord, that truly is the desire of our hearts.

That is our prayer, Lord, that you would teach us to see more clearly, that we would continue to grow, not just in our knowledge of you, but in our relationship with you.

That we would be faithful, not out of obligation, um, Lord, but because we want to, to open your word, to get to know you more, to build that relationship closer and closer each day, to see things as you see them clearer and clearer each day.

Lord, help us in that growing process to become more and more like you on a daily prayer.

On a daily basis, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.