I invite you, brethren, to take out your copy of God's Word and turn with me now to the Gospel according to Mark, chapter 8. Mark, chapter 8, picking up today in verse 27. Mark 8, 27, we will read through to verse 33. And we will once again seek God's help in prayer. Hear once more now, brethren, the Word of the Lord. Now Jesus and his disciples went out to the towns of Caesarea Philippi and on the road he asked his disciples saying to them, who do men say that I am? So they answered, John the Baptist, but some say Elijah and others, one of the prophets. He said to them, but who do you say that I am? Peter answered and said to him, you are the Christ. Then he strictly warned that they should tell no one about him. And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He spoke this word openly. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But when he had turned around and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get behind me, Satan, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men. Let us pray. Our Father, we know that we are about to enter into even a more sacred time as we have Your Word revealed to us. All that light to which now we all will be held accountable. And so we are asking, Lord, for grace and help by Your Spirit to embrace this light, to obey it, that we might be true servants of the Most High. We might love the Lord Jesus Christ with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. We pray for help, Lord, to the listener and the preacher. And that, Lord, truly You will get all glory for what You will do here today in our midst. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Our text today, our Lord asked the most important question that a human being could ever be asked. Your answer to that question will not only affect your whole life on earth now, but it is the difference between heaven and hell. Who do you, who do you say Jesus is? Now, everyone has an answer. The unconverted people of this world have a long range of answers to this question. Some cults, many cults, some cults believe that Jesus is the brother of Satan. Some cults believe that Jesus is Michael the Archangel. New Age religions think that Jesus was a great mystic, a great spiritual teacher. Muslims teach that Jesus was a great prophet, only second to Muhammad. Everyone has an opinion and a belief concerning who is Jesus. But at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is who do you say he is? What do you believe about it? And your true answer will not be a mere intellectual understanding of basic facts or theological facts, right or wrong. Your real answer to who Jesus really is. Will be made manifest and how you're seeking to live out your life right now. Today. There are literally millions of people who profess to be Christians in this world. who could answer correctly that Jesus is truly man and truly God, very orthodox. Yet they have no profound, it has no profound effect on their daily life. I fear it may be some in here today who know theologically who Jesus is, could explain to their elders all the facts and theology about who he is. But does it have any effect on your daily life? What our Lord will clearly teach us in this section of Mark which we will not fully get to today, is that those who truly know Him, who savingly know Him, are those who give up their own lives, who surrender up all of their worldly desires in order to be fully committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Jesus has come into the world to save sinners. And while that salvation is fully and completely a work of sovereign grace on God's part, The call to all who want to be saved by Jesus must be willing to surrender to Jesus. And the text pass where I've read in verse thirty four, if you start reading, if you have a red letter edition, start reading where the red is. Jesus says, whoever desires to come after me, would you like to do that today? Well, then he says, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it. You will. This is not how you earn your salvation, but Jesus does have the right to dictate the terms of all who would come to him. Now, we are at a crucial point in Mark's account of Jesus Christ, very crucial point. There is a seismic shift in the direction of the narrative right now. From chapter one up to this very section that I just read to you, our Lord's ministry has been focusing primarily on validating his authority as the promised Messiah. Mark has thus far placed his focus upon our Lord's authority over creation by calming his calming of the waves and of the sea. His authority over disease and human frailty by healing a multitude of sick people, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the blind see, and even Lepers have limbs restored back to them. The case is clear. The evidence is overwhelming. No man speaks as this man speaks, and no man has ever done what this man has been doing. We've also seen our Lord's authority to create something out of nothing. As He on two separate occasions fed the five thousand, not including women and children, and then most recently in our text here before in chapter eight, Four thousand with only a few small fish and a few loaves. Christ has clearly established thus far about these miracles and by his teaching and preaching that he is the promised Messiah, the son of the living God. His kingdom has arrived in the person of Jesus Christ. With all of these powerful miracles, the disciples are slow to understand who Jesus really is. And what his purposes are for after feeding the 4,000 and after all of those glorious miracles, they're still concerned with natural bread. Rather than the bread of life, in verse 21, Jesus has to say to them, how is it you do not understand? My translation says yet do not understand. So you think, you know, Jesus. Do you really? Well, after a year, of face to face ministry with our Lord and seeing all that they saw, these disciples still don't know who he really is. They just don't. And this lack of clear understanding leads our Lord to perform a miracle in a way that he had never done before. He goes to Bethsaida and heals a man, a blind man, in two stages. I feel fairly confident after studying the passages after that this week, That Jesus did this in this way is an object lesson for his disciples, in many ways for us as well. They have been given some light to see that Jesus is not just a mere prophet. It's made clear from Peter's confession, isn't it? He believes now at this point he's got enough light to see that Jesus is the Christ. However, it is only a partial understanding. Because they had absolutely no concept of seeing Jesus as the suffering Savior. And that's where all of the rest of Mark, much of the rest of Mark is going to be focused on. This is what our Lord Jesus introduces today, I'm going to go to Jerusalem and I'm going to suffer and I'm going to die. At the hands of wicked men. So let's take a look at it again, verse 27. Jesus and his disciples went out to the towns of Caesarea Philippi. This would have been a town directly 20, 25 miles north of the tip of the Sea of Galilee. They were in Bethsaida. So they leave Bethsaida and go due north. They're not going right into the town, they're going around the villages. And it says, and on the way there on the road, he asked the disciples, saying to them, who do men say that I am? I believe the context will dictate here that our Lord asked this question not to be curious about the crowds and what the crowds thought about him, but to show and to see if his disciples, whom he's been training now for a year, if they've made any progress at all in understanding who he really is. Past that of the unbelieving crowds. It's going to be a contrast in the hearts of the minds of the disciples once they tell him what they think the crowds think. Well, they're going to have to compare it now to what they really think. Verse 28. So they answered John the Baptist, but some say Elijah, others say one of the prophets. Now, the speculation that he could be Elijah comes from a prophecy at the end of the Old Testament. If you're an Israelite and you have the Old Testament, you have your Bible, then you would think that like the New Testament, one of the most important things God would have to say is at the end. So at the end of their Bible in that day where this was a prophecy that came Malachi 4, 5, 6, behold, God says, I will send you Elijah, the prophet. Before the coming and great dreadful day of the Lord, and he will turn the hearts of the fathers of the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers. So an Israelite would read that and a lot like a lot of others today who think that you have to have a wooden interpretation of every text. Thousand years is a thousand years. Well, Elijah in Malachi 4 doesn't mean actually Elijah. Jesus himself would interpret Malachi for us in Mark 9. And we'll see later on and also imagine the other synoptic gospel, he's very clear that who this is and Malachi 4 is fulfilled in John the Baptist. Luke 1 7, an angel interprets it as well. As he speaks to Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, he says of him, of his boy, he will also go before him, before Jesus. And the spirit and power of Elijah, and here's Malachi's quote, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. So the prophecy of Malachi 4 was clearly fulfilled in the life of John. The crowds did not pick up on this. They could only see the name Elijah, Elijah, Elijah, for some of them. Now, there were other speculations in the crowd. Some followed Herod's hypothesis. that perhaps it was John the Baptist's comeback from the dead. Others were saying maybe it's some other prophet. Moses had predicted also in Deuteronomy 18, 18 that God was going to send a great prophet. But no one, no one among the crowds were saying that he, Jesus, is that promised Messiah of the Old Testament. No one had made that leap yet. At this point, the crowds were not even seeing men as trees walking. They had not been granted even the first stage of that miracle of sight of who Jesus really is. But some light had dawned upon Peter and perhaps the disciples as well, and maybe he's speaking here for them. And so Peter says at the beginning of verse 29, he said to them, But who do you say that I am? Peter answered and said to him, You are the Christ. Who do you say, Jesus says? Who do you say that I am? Well, the you here in this particular text is very emphatic in the original. Young's literal translation puts it this way. And ye, who do ye say need to be? It's very strong. And here now is the very public, very first public profession of faith that Jesus is the Christ by Peter in verse 21. Thou art the Christ, the Son. of God. You are the Christ. Other gospel accounts say that you are the Son of God. And here now is the one, Peter's figured it out. He's gotten some light. The Lord has spit upon his eyes and touched them and he's gone that far. He calls him the Christ, which means anointed or the anointed one, the Christos in the Greek. And if you go back to the Hebrew, the Old Testament word is the word for which we get our word Messiah. So it's the same. Greek, Messiah, relates back to the Hebrew. Now, there was an understanding among the Jews that the Old Testament taught that God indeed had promised a great deliverer for Israel someday. He would come from the line of David and he would deliver Israel from all of her enemies. They wanted it. They desired it. They longed for it all of the time. They still do, the Orthodox Jews. One of very familiar texts that we could pick out many of them to prove this to you, but one of very familiar that I think all of you are familiar with in here today comes out of Isaiah, Isaiah 9 and 6 and 7. Listen to this. For to us a child is born and to us a son is given and the government will be upon his shoulders. Now, if Israelite would hear that, they'd say, yes. Yes, we want Rome gone and the government upon the shoulder of our great deliverer. And his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end. Israelite says, Amen. It goes on upon the throne of David and over his kingdom to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever, the zeal of the Lord of Hosts, the zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this. This was their hope. And so here at this point, Peter is fully convinced that Jesus is that promised one whom God has now sent to deliver his people, Israel, from the tyranny of Rome. This was a glorious and magnificent revelation, though it was partial. It was more than all the others in the crowds had ever been given. It was a revelation that Peter did not figure out on his own, by the way. Matthew's account, we're very clearly told by the Lord Jesus himself, and he calls Peter, not Peter, but Simon, Simon Barjona, flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven. You see, that first stage, the blind man of Bethsaida was in complete darkness until Jesus gave him partial sight. Peter was in likewise in complete darkness over who Jesus truly was until the father gave him partial sight at this moment. You can only see that Jesus really is the Messiah. Now, going from complete darkness to seeing a man as trees walking, men as trees walking, that's a major step forward. If you've been blind for years and you've been in total darkness for many, many years, all of a sudden somebody came up to you and touched your face and spit on your eyes and you could start seeing light and you could start seeing bodies. Whoo! Boy, that is a great big hope there, isn't it? Look, I might get this. I'm a lot further than where I was. But if that's all you see, you still have to stumble and fall because of partial blindness. And brethren, this is exactly where Peter and the other disciples are at this present time and would remain this way until the resurrection leading up to Pentecost. From here on off through Mark now, we're going to see them full of pride, arrogance. They don't want Jesus to die. They don't want Jesus to leave. They don't want to hear anything about a resurrection that's not even entering their minds. They've come to see Jesus as the promised Messiah, as the One who's come to deliver Israel. But because they had only received partial understanding of who Christ really was and what He had really come to do, they could not and indeed would not see Him as the suffering Savior. They were oblivious to Isaiah 53. And they think, and they could think, all they could think of was, Jesus has the power. Surely he now is going to use it to overcome our enemies and overthrow the Roman government. It was now time in their minds for the government to rest upon Jesus's shoulder. But that was missing completely. What Christ had come to do in his first advent and this, my brethren, is the reason for the next verse and what Jesus says in verse 30, look at it. Then he strictly warned them that they should tell no one about him. Now, here the disciples have come to see and believe that Jesus truly is the Christ, the promised Messiah. Let's go tell all of Israel about it. Yet he strictly warns them to tell no one. The word for strictly warned is a very strong, strong word. The word actually means to rebuke. It was the same one used when Jesus rebuked the waves in the sea, when Jesus rebuked the demons. It's the same word. It's used down in the few verses below in verse 31 and 32 when Peter rebukes Jesus and then Jesus in turn rebukes Peter. He rebukes him, do not tell anyone I am the Christ. Don't do it. So the question is why? Why was our Lord so emphatic about his disciples not telling anyone what they had just come to see and believe? I mean, even if I had only had a partial, been given partial sight back, I'd even want to tell somebody about that. So the great opportunity to go spread the good news far and wide. Here he is, the promised one. Well, I believe the reason our Lord commands them to not go out and to proclaim him as the promised Messiah who had come was very clear. This messianic secret has other reasons why he's told him. Now, obviously, we talked about it because of judgment and Bethsaida, why he told him not to go back. He didn't want the enemies of the Jews to stir up. They didn't want the crowds to overthrow him and force him to be king. So there are other reasons why he would strictly warn people to not say anything about him. It goes on all through Mark. It'll come up again. But here, brethren. I believe it's very clear that it's because the disciples at this particular time would have proclaimed a false understanding, or at least only a partial, which would have made it a false understanding of who Jesus really is and what He had come to do. And it would have deceived many, leading to false conversions. And that's what we have in churches today. People who preach a half Christ and they get half conversion, where at the end of the day is a no Christ and a no conversion. A Jesus with no hell and no judgment. And no repentance. The Jesus of only love. Who overlooks all your sins. The disciples would have gone out and preached the false hope. That this Jesus is the Messiah and that he's come back to deliver us from Rome and all of Israel. Most of them would have turned out to be like the zealots. They'd have gotten behind him. But that is not what he's about to do. There have been many who had a wrong and an incomplete understanding of who Jesus really is, and they went out and they proclaimed a false Christ, a watered down Christ, and it's changed nobody. There's no power in it. Even today, there are those who preach of Jesus who come along and He can fix all your problems if you just give Him your heart. Professing Christians are still trying to get Jesus to throw off the tyranny of Rome today. Jesus, I believe you can get rid of my cancer. Jesus, I believe you've come to get rid of my debt. You've come to help me. Jesus, I believe you've come to save my spouse. Jesus, I believe you've come to save my children. Jesus, I believe you've come to take away my pain and my suffering." Jesus would reply, I may or I may not do these things for you, but none of them are the reasons for which I came. He says to us, I have come to suffer. And I have come to die for sinners like you. If Peter's confession was a seismic shift in his thinking, what Jesus is about to tell him next is like a 7.9 earthquake. Peter was no doubt filled with hope and joy at the thought of Jesus being the true Christ. And he would overthrow Rome. And then Jesus turns to him and says to him in verse 31, And indeed says to them all and began to teach them. The son of man must suffer many things to be directed by that and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed. And after three days rise again, that did not sit well. That is not the Christ they believe in, that's not the Christ they know. That's a different Christ, we don't know this Christ. This would be the first of three times in Mark our Lord will speak of his passion, his coming suffering and death in Jerusalem. And here our Lord is not speaking in parables. It says here that he spoke, verse 32, this word openly, plainly. He will indeed suffer greatly at the hands of Jewish leaders and they will put him to death. And even though our Lord said he would rise again on the third day, that part never seemed to register. in their hearts and in their minds, nor in the hearts of any of the other disciples. The idea of Jesus coming to suffer and to die and be raised the third day would not be understood, as I said earlier, until the resurrection leading all the way up to Pentecost. The idea of Jesus being sent to overthrow Rome and reestablish Israel as its own nation was ingrained in Peter's heart. The hearing of Jesus speaking of suffering and dying led him now to rebuke The son of the living God. This will not be so for you, Lord. Verse 32. Then Peter took him aside and began to what? To rebuke him. Rebuke him. The words Peter spoke in Matthew's account was far be it from you, Lord, this shall never happen to you. The Lord would not let Peter influence the others by this carnal thinking. Because see, when they saw Peter do it, it would have been something of a temptation for the other 11 to get behind Peter and say, yes, Lord, we're not going to let you die. We're not going to let you suffer. And of course, if they had to force that, they would have all ended up in hell, wouldn't they? They don't know what's going on here. They don't know who he is. Their eyes have not yet been opened to see the whole Jesus. And so verse 33, but when he had turned around and looked at his disciples, see the disciples caught on to what Peter was doing and Jesus would have none of it. So he says, he rebuked Peter saying, get behind me, Satan, for you're not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men. Talking about going from a great high to a great low, Peter just rode the ultimate roller coaster emotionally. Going from boldly proclaiming Jesus as the Christ to speaking and thinking as the devil himself. This is what happens, brethren. This is what happens when you proclaim a Christ you do not know. If you're not willing to embrace the full revelation of Jesus Christ, then you will proclaim a Christ that is not of God, but of the devil. This is why there are so many views about who Jesus is today. Unless the Father reveals the true Christ to you, you will believe in a Christ that is only an imagination of your own heart. You will come up with a Jesus, the one you want, the one you like, that does what you want, that believes the way you believe. You will tweak him and turn him to fit your mold. You will not humble yourself as dirt to fit into his. And you will not mind the things of God. All the religions of the world today, except for true Christianity, preach a Christ that is only mindful of carnal man. Christ is not preeminent in their hearts. He's not Lord and sovereign over their wills. They believe only in a Christ of their own imaginations, one that suits their carnal desires and passions. And we're all in here affected by that to some degree. People want a Jesus. who don't care if you go to a prayer meeting. It doesn't matter. Jesus understands. People who want to Jesus don't care if you go to church or not. It doesn't matter if you go to church. You're still a Christian. They want to Jesus, doesn't care if you sacrificially, financially give to the church. Other people take care of it. It's no big deal. God will take care of it. People want to Jesus where you can do what you want on the Sabbath day. Do what you want. They want a Jesus that doesn't make you deny yourself or take up a cross. They want an easy Jesus. One that doesn't command them to do things and get all strict and demand holiness. Liberty! Liberty! That's my Jesus. But brethren, that Jesus minds the things of men and not the things of God. Would you like to know if you believe in the full revelation of Jesus Christ? Would you like to know if you see Jesus clearly and not as mere tree walking today? When you live your life, are you minding the things of God? And what does it mean to mind the things of God, brethren? We'll look at this further next time in the next text, but it means you deny yourself and you take up your cross and you follow Him. It means that, you know, you're not your own. You've been bought with a price. You don't have choices. It means that you no longer conform yourself to the things of this world. But through the word of God and by the help of the Spirit, you're being transformed by the renewing of your mind day in and day out by faith. It means the glory of Christ and the glory of the Father consumes you more than the trifling dainties of this world. Which John says is passing away in the lust thereof. The Lord says it means to seek first the kingdom of God and all of his righteousness, that's what it means. So who do you say Jesus is? Which Jesus do you believe in today? The one that lets you pick and choose which commandments you'd like to obey? The Jesus that lets you go to heaven on a bed of roses while others suffer and their reproach and shame? Which Jesus will we have? I wonder, brethren, which Jesus are we following today? Do we all in here today, do we really see the whole Christ who calls us to holiness and to separation, who says in 2 Corinthians 6, come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and I'll be a father to you. I honestly ask you, and I ask myself this question, has our American prosperity blinded us from seeing the whole Jesus? The one who calls us to humble service, to faithful service, to deny ourselves, to proclaim a Christ that would bring us reproach. The Jesus who is not only King of kings and Lord of lords, but the Jesus who suffered and bled in great agony to rescue sinners like you and me so that we would not end up in an everlasting hell. The Jesus who said, if you desire to come after me, you must lose your life. That's the Jesus I'm preaching to you today. That's the one he's commanded me to preach. If you truly believe Jesus is the Son of God who suffered and died, listen now, listen, for you personally, then you know. You know Him. You know that you have been called to walk in His steps. And ever how weak that may be, you want to. You know that you don't have a right to do what you want to do when you want and how you want. You are a slave of Christ. You are a servant of the Most High God. You know that is Lord and in your innermost desire is to please him through faithful obedience to his word. Pastor Timothy and I have spoken often of a desire for you all to understand the importance of real churchmanship. Often thought about preaching a serious sermon or afternoon study, I don't know. After studying these verses this past week, I believe that if our eyes were really open to the whole Christ, the way the disciples would come to see him after the resurrection, we would be zealous for all things pertaining to his church. We would. We wouldn't need a preacher to keep guilt tripping us into things. We'd have that conviction naturally. We all struggle, brethren. We all struggle to some degree or another, some level in our own commitment to the Christ. We all do. The preachers do. The deacons do. And He's so merciful and patient with our weaknesses and our failures. But listen to me carefully. If you deny this radical way of living to which He calls all His followers, you're believing in a different Christ. You're believing in a different Christ. And if you're not willing to suffer, if you're not willing to be faithful to the Word of God, if you're not willing to submit yourself to the Lordship, His Lordship, over your life, then you do not believe in the right Jesus. You've got a different Jesus. The disciples were not ready to preach Christ yet. Because they had a wrong understanding of who He was and what He came to do. But once their eyes were open, what happened to them then? They turned the world upside down. That's what they did. They went from wanting to sit with Him on His throne in Jerusalem to embracing their own cross. And as history tells us, most of them were martyrs for the faith. They suffered. They died for the cause of the glory of God. They can all say with Apostle Paul, to live is Christ. That's what it is. We've got too many half-Christians because too many of them have a half-Christ. Who do you say Jesus is? What is your answer to that question? Well, I can tell you the answer to it is already made manifest in how you live your life. What you think. What you're doing when you wake up. When you're tempted to not go pray, when you're tempted to not give, when you're tempted to not obey. And you say, well, Jesus, I understand. No, those who know him fight. The Kingdom of God of suffering violence and the violent taken by force. We put on the armor of God and we go into battle because the whole Christ is worthy. He's worth it all. Do you keep your life? Or have you lost it? That's the question for all of us, really. Do you live for the temporal things of the world? Or do you die to the things of the world? You see, may the Lord be pleased to open our eyes today to not only see the sovereign Lord who has the power to calm the waves in the sea, but also to see Him as the true and glorious suffering Savior who suffered so much for me, willing to lay down His life for me, Chief of sinners in this place. If you could look out at a movie and it put everything up that has crawled across my heart and my mind, you'd beg Jesus to condemn me to hell. But if I saw yours, you'd say the same thing. What a merciful Savior. Even while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, for the ungodly. It's an interesting thing that in taking the Lord's Supper, it is not His resurrection that He tells us to remember. All the benefits of what Christ has done for us are included and profitable to remember in the Supper. But it is His death. It's His death that He told us to remember in the Supper. Why? Because there He suffered in our place. There we see love. A love so grand. A love so awesome. That every time we take the supper together, we are reminded of why we as Christians are willing to live the way we do. Why we commit ourselves to covenant membership in this church. Because the church is His body. And the church is His bride. And here as the gathered saints, We see our Lord not as a mere man walking. Here by faith, as we're gathered here this day, we see Him clearer than any time or anywhere else in our lives. Because here He's promised that where two or three gather, we're in His name. There He is in their midst. The Spirit of God has spoken to some of you today. It's not a premonition. It's the Spirit of God. He's here. It's not legalism. It's not legalism that draws us to such strict and holy life. It's love. The love of Christ compelled Paul, who himself knew what great sinner he was, but the Lord had mercy on him. You see, it's only in seeking His righteousness first, brethren, that you can continue to see the greatness of the love. Light. Walk in the light. He is in the light. You will have fellowship with Him and with one another. It's not easy. It's not easy to put on the armor. It's not easy to fight to be at the services. It's not easy to do all that it requires to be a faithful churchman. Because He died for you. Because He gave it all for you. Are you not ought to give all for Him? Do you not see Him? Do you see the full Christ? Do you know the full Christ? As long as the things of this world satisfy us, we will never hunger and thirst for Him. You're going to have to mortify. There is no easy path. But it is the way which leads to life. In joy unspeakable. Full of glory. Let me take this moment as Christ's ambassador to invite you, all of you, right now to go to Him just as you are. Are you a believer? Did God give you a clearer view of who He is today? Recommit your life to faithful love service. Give your all to Him in sweet obedience. Are you here today and you've not yet made a profession of faith? Do you see Him? Do you see Him calling out to you? Come unto Me. All you that labor and are laden, and I will give you rest. Don't take that heavy yoke of the world. The way of the transgressor is hard. Come to Me, Jesus says. He will. He will take care of you. He will lead you in paths of righteousness for His name's sake. Beside the still waters. And you will begin to hunger and thirst for righteousness. The Lord will be your Shepherd. And you will see Him as the whole Christ. Who? Who? If I could lay eyes on each one of you. Who? Do you say Jesus is? Let us pray. Our Father, we pray You would help us. We know that the path is narrow and difficult. Many of us through the years have strayed off the path from time to time and have felt the coldness, the darkness, As Your Word teaches, Lord, You will leave the 99 and go and get that one who strayed. Perhaps You're going this morning to get one among us here, or more than one. Pray that Your Spirit would do a great work in the hearts of all who are here today. That we could all leave here in love, in great love for our Lord. For You, our Father. That, Lord, You would help us in the supper now. to see Christ even clearer. Another picture to behold. We saw Him today in the Word. May we now see Him in the elements. May we take up the body. May we take up the blood. And may we remember His death and all the benefits that became ours because of what He has accomplished as the Son of Man and as the Son of God. In His name we do pray. Amen.