So we're moving along in our study of Mark, the gospel according to Mark, and we're in Mark chapter 9, and I'm going to read today from verse 14. I could end in 29, but I'm going to carry it through to 30. So we'll look at Mark 9, 14 to 30. Let me pray for the word. Our Father and our God, we pause before the reading of your word to acknowledge that we are handling here reverently the very word of God. And Lord, we know your word is powerful and mighty, but Lord, we are weak, and so we need your help. So I pray that you'd open our ears, that we could hear, open our minds that we could understand, and Lord, open our hearts that we can receive the implanted word. And Lord, we thank you for that. In Jesus' name, amen. And when he came to the disciples, he saw a great multitude around them and scribes disputing with them. Immediately when they saw him, all the people were greatly amazed and running to him, greeted him. And he asked the scribes, what are you discussing with them? Then one of the crowd answered and said, Teacher, I brought you my son who has a mute spirit, and wherever it seizes him, it throws him down. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. So I spoke to your disciples that they should cast it out, but they could not. He answered him and said, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to me. Then they brought him to him. And when he saw him, immediately the spirit convulsed him, and he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth. So he asked his father, how long has this been happening to him? And he said, from childhood. And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. Jesus said to him, if you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit saying to it, deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more. Then the Spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him, and he became as one dead, so that many said, He is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up, and he arose. And when he had come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could we not cast it out? So he said to them, this kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting. Then they departed from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know it." I'll probably pick up verse 30 again next week because it kind of fits both what came before and what comes after. So all of this is tied, and I believe on purpose here, the episode that we just read is as Jesus is coming down off the mountain. We talked about those mountaintop experiences last week, the transfiguration, all that happened there. Luke puts it like this. Now it happened on the next day. the day after this whole transfiguration took place, happened on the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, that they saw this great multitude and this whole scene that we just looked at together. Billy Graham said, mountaintops are for views and inspiration. And we've all had some type of spiritual mountaintop experience. I think of places I've gone and week-long conferences where I just felt like I could reach out and touch an angel or something. But then Billy Graham says, but fruit is grown down in the valleys. So it's wonderful to go up the mountain and have these mountain top spiritual experiences, but it seems like we really grow, we really produce fruit in our lives when we're just in the difficult days down in the valley. So the scene says, when he came to the disciples, he's down, he's got three with him, right? So there's nine disciples that are here trying to minister while Jesus and the other three, Peter, James, and John, are up on the mountain. It says, when he came to the disciples, he saw a great multitude around them and scribes disputing with them. So you get this great multitude. I put in my notes the sneering scribes. They aren't good characters in the Bible. You have the disciples failing. And then you have this pathetic situation with this son and this desperate, despairing father. And if you notice, Jesus doesn't confront his disciples, he doesn't confront the multitude, he confronts the scribes right away. Because it says in verse 16, he asks the scribes, he sees what's going on here, he asks the scribes, what are you discussing with them? It's almost like as if Jesus here has righteous indignation that while he's up on the mountain, he's away, the nine disciples are there, and the scribes take advantage of that. And they're disputing with the disciples. But in the story, in Mark's telling of it, the scribes don't respond. The scribes don't say, well, we're arguing because your disciples can't do this miracle. The disciples don't respond. It's the Father. of the child that comes and speaks out. This is one out of the crowd. It says, Teacher, I brought you my son who has a mute spirit. And the idea there is that the father probably was seeking Jesus, the miracle worker, and Jesus isn't there. So the disciples step up and try. He said, wherever he sees him, it throws him down. He foams at the mouth, he gnashes his teeth, he becomes rigid. So I spoke to your disciples, almost as to say, in your absence, I went to your disciples and asked them that they should cast it out, but they couldn't do it. They could not cast it out. And it's almost surprising to me, as I read through this story, Jesus's lament. Because when Jesus hears that, and that his disciples couldn't do this miracle, couldn't perform this miracle, in verse 19 it says, speaking of Jesus, he answered, he says, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? bring them to me." So a little bit of a change of scene. Jesus, who was just prior, transfigured and his glory shone forth. And there's on the mountain Elijah and Moses and the father speaks, this is my beloved son, hear him. And this is a great episode and he comes back down and what does he see? Immediately, demonic activity, according to the scripture. Now, we'll pause there and say that some commentators will look at what this boy has and say, well, that's epilepsy. And probably in that day they didn't understand that that's just a physical ailment. It's horrible, but he has a very severe case of epilepsy. But the scripture says that his epilepsy, not all epilepsy obviously, but in this case, the source of it was demonic. That's what the Bible says. Either the word of God is true or it's not. I believe it's true. So he comes down, he sees the demonic activity, this wretched child, son, probably an adult son, and he sees the helplessness of the father, who's a doubting believer, who's probably had his faith shattered because I don't know what the disciples are doing trying to do this healing. Doesn't tell us what they were doing. I don't know if they commanded it in their own power or if they laid hands on it. I don't know what was going on, but it wasn't working. He sees the faithlessness of these disciples, and I'll get to this in a little bit, who are ministering in their own self-reliance. And we'll look at that in a little bit. the impotence of the ministry. Here he leaves them and they're doing ministry and there's no power whatsoever in the ministry. And then of course these wonderful sneering scribes who are probably gloating over their failure. And that's the scene he walks into and so he laments, oh faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? And he wasn't going to be with them much longer. We're about three years into his ministry at this stage, and Mark, maybe another six months, and he's heading to the cross. He'll rise from the dead, he'll teach for a time, and then he's going to ascend to the right hand of the Father. These are the guys he's leaving in charge. And he comes down and they're miserably failing at everything. And so, geez, you almost get a little bit of a taste of frustration, holy frustration, with Jesus. And then you look at his actions. With all that going on, with him seeing that, he sees the faithlessness of the whole crowd, his own disciples, even the leadership, the scribes. And then Hendrickson picked up on this. I thought this was really good. He says, by means of the heartwarming and positive command, bring him to me. All that going on in this beautiful command, bring them here, bring them to me. And Hendrickson says, Jesus gave the perfect example of proper behavior during annoying and distressing circumstances. And what he was about to do, he revealed not only his power, but also his love. And isn't that a loving scene? He doesn't say, I'm turning my back on you guys. This whole thing's a mess. I've had situations in my life where I felt like that. I was like, this is a mess. I'm out of here. Jesus doesn't do that. He has compassion. He has compassion for the father who's dealt with this for so many years. He has compassion on this son who's completely helpless if Jesus doesn't intervene. And in his love, he does intervene. You get a little more fully orbed picture of the condition of this young man, this son, if you look at a few of the texts from various of the Gospels. Mark 9.17 tells us that he's mute, right? Teacher, I brought you, the father says, I brought you my son who has a mute spirit. Verse 25 tells us that he's deaf. Jesus commands, in a deaf and dumb spirit, I command you. So he's deaf, he's mute. I'm going back to running the film in my mind that I always do. I'm thinking about this young man, and I put down, he's probably covered in bruises. I mean, look what he says. He says, wherever it sees him, it throws him down. It doesn't say he gently goes down to his knees. It throws him to the ground. He foams at his mouth, gnashes the teeth, he becomes rigid. Luke 9.39 says, and behold, a spirit seizes him and he suddenly cries out, it convulses him so that he foams at the mouth and it departs from him with great difficulty, bruising him, right? Bruising him. So this guy's just a mess. He's tortured, he's scarred. He says often he's been thrown both into the fire and into the water to try to destroy him. And Matthew actually says that he's a demonic lunatic, is the language. In Matthew 17.15 it says, Lord have mercy on my son for, this is the King James, for he is a lunatic. He says, "...and sore vexed, for oft times he falls in the fire and into the water." He's a lunatic. Now, why did the King James translate that original language to lunatic? Because in the original, in the Greek, the word there is moonstruck. We use that language now, right? Lunatic is related to the moon, right? I remember every time we went to have a baby, Karen would say, you didn't have a baby. We didn't have a baby. I had a baby. It's like if there was a bunch of women coming in to have babies, I remember the nurses would always say, is there a full moon out there? Because you're like the fifth woman to come in here tonight to have a baby. I don't know what that meant. I guess nurses know. I don't know. But he's moonstruck. A demonic lunatic. And the result of what he's suffering through is certainly what we would call epilepsy. I mean, that's what's going on. Matthew 17, 15 says, he is an epileptic, suffers severely. And think of all that. And then Jesus doesn't immediately heal, does he? The father lets him know that nobody can help my son. And he goes through the whole story of what the son's been going through. And Jesus doesn't say, come out of him. Jesus says, how long has this been going on? Now, I think he's just letting the father know how hopeless the situation is. So that when Jesus intervenes, you understand that there was no hope whatsoever. The father says, from childhood. Now think about that. We were just talking this morning about how exhausting watching grandkids is. We raise five kids and I guess God gives you grace while you're raising them and then all of a sudden they're gone. They move out and that grace is gone. You get grandkids and you're like, man, I can't even handle this kid for two days. But think about that, to have a child with that kind of a need for his entire childhood all the way, and he's probably a young adult at this point. Can you imagine that? Not being able to leave that individual alone, because as soon as you walk out the door and you leave him alone, the spirit takes over and tries to throw him into the fireplace. I mean, how exhausting would that be? How many nights did the father wake up and hear that noise of the son and knows, okay, he's having another one of these fits. I have to run over there and take care of him. An exhausting situation for both the father and the son. And then the scripture paints for us the father's doubt, right? The father says to Jesus, and Jesus takes issue with this. The father says to Jesus, he's often thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. Now, my new King James says, when the father said that, listen to what the father said, if you can, is what the father said to Jesus. Now, no fault to the father, he's just watched these disciples for who knows how long try to do this and they couldn't do it. So he says, if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. And Jesus said to him, on my new King James translation, says, if you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. My opinion from my study, I don't think that's the best translation of the original text. If you go to the earliest of the manuscripts, it reads like this. Now the NAS and the NIV, my wife has an NIV, picks up on this and translates it this way. That when the father says, if you can do anything, Jesus responds and says, if you can, Almost like an indignation, right? If you can, all things are possible to him who believes. Or the New Living Translation puts it like this. There's a paraphrase, this isn't word for word. But the New Living Translation probably grabs at the meaning here. It says, what do you mean if I can? Is what Jesus responded to the Father. Jesus is saying, it's not a question of my power. It's not a question of my ability. And it's okay, beloved, if we go to the Lord and we say things. As a matter of fact, we're instructed by James in his letter that it's okay to say, Lord, and you see this in some of the healing stories in the Gospels, to say, I know you have the ability. I know you have the power. I know you can. I just don't know if your will is in line with what I'm going to request. And that's okay. We're supposed to pray like that. But never get to the point where you think anything in your life is so hopeless and so helpless that Jesus can't intervene and take care of it. So Jesus calls them out on that, if you can. With men, it's impossible. That's what Jesus says in chapter 10 of Mark. They looked at Jesus and said, how can anybody get into heaven? How can anybody be saved? Jesus says, with men, it is impossible, but not with God. And then he said, for with God, all things are possible. Never forget that. And you're like me. We're in the flesh. We're human beings. And I've been up against some hopeless situations. where I've been in prayer meetings where I was the only one in that prayer meeting that knew God wasn't going to do nothing about that. That'll never happen. And I was wrong. I was the one faithless prayer warrior in that prayer room and they're all praying for a healing or praying for whatever they're praying for. And God had to teach me over time. I remember I was in a prayer meeting a long time ago down in the basement of this church. I was a young guy in my 20s and I was praying with the men that were at the church at the time. I don't think any of them are still here. And they said, Larry, we're going to pray that you don't have to travel every day all the way down to the city because you have kids. I'm going to pray that God will give you a job where you can be right here local. I didn't believe for a second that God would ever answer that prayer. And it wasn't maybe a year or so later that God had me working from my house. And I did not believe in that prayer. I was the one faithless dude at the table. They prayed anyway. And God answered that prayer and allowed me to be home with my family. So nothing's beyond what God can do. And we all need to learn that. As a matter of fact, this man needs to learn that. And Jesus is going to help teach him that. The beautiful plea here of this helpless father, and think about that. I thought about this when I was studying, is pray for your children. Pray for your children. Oh my goodness, they need our prayers. I think of There's times where they won't listen to me. There's times I really can't intervene. But they cannot run your prayers. I mean, this father comes to Jesus and says, Lord, have mercy on my son. In Matthew 17, 15. Lord, have mercy on my son. Luke 9, 38, he says, Teacher, I implore you, look on my son, for he is my only child. I mean, look at the heart of the father. Mark 9.24, immediately the father of the child cried out, said with tears streaming down his cheeks, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. What an honest, honest prayer. That's one that we probably should pray to the Lord all the time. Lord, I believe, but yet I have imperfect belief. Help me with the part that's not believing. Barnabas Piper, John Piper's son, wrote a book called Help My Unbelief, Why Doubt is Not the Enemy of Faith. And in that book, Barnabas Piper writes, help my unbelief, that simple sentence is the key to the struggles, the ups and downs, the winding road of belief. In a breath, he expressed the highest of heights, the strength of virtue, the emptiness of doubt, and the yearning for something onto which he could hold. Christians who don't know the tension of, I believe, help my belief, might not be Christians at all, or at least they might be very infantile ones. Our faith is one of brutal tensions. Not everyone can express this, but every Christian knows it. We feel it in our guts. So honest. I believe. Help my own belief. R.C. Sproul in his commentary on this says, Every Christian reading this book has some level of authentic saving faith in his or her heart. However, The intensity of that faith is not constant. It waxes and wanes. It increases and diminishes. No matter how strong your faith is, there are moments in this life when it is assaulted by the enemy. Sometimes it can seem as if your faith is barely hanging on. And you make a prayer, much like this man made to Jesus, I believe, but my belief is not perfect. It is not pure. It is not strong. I need help. Help me with my unbelief. When you are assaulted with doubts and your faith seems frail, go to the source of faith, the Word of God. There is no time in my life, says R.C. Sproul, when my faith is stronger than when I am immersed in the Word of God or in prayer. Staying close to the Word, listening to the promises of our Redeemer, and opening my heart to Him are the things that kill unbelief and build powerful faith that does not let me down in the midst of the afflictions." I had a child, one of my kids, when they were fairly young, maybe seven, eight years old. I was tucking them in for bed, and they said, Dad. I said, yeah. And he said, I don't know if I believe. And I said, just like Sproul said, I said, have you been reading your Bible? No, not this week. And I shared with them, I said, I've had my moments of weak faith as well, but I've never, and to Sproul's point, I've never had that happen when I'm in the Word of God. I've never been in the midst of a study for a sermon, you know, laboring away, reading commentaries, digging into the Word, praying about it, where I thought, yeah, this is all baloney. I've never had that happen in my entire life. So if you need a booster, you know, we got booster shots for our COVID. If you need a faith booster, get in the Word of God. That's where you need to be. And then beautifully, we see the willingness of the Savior. He rebuked the unclean spirit. saying to a deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more. And the spirit cried out. It convulsed him greatly. He came out of him. He became as one dead. Many said, he's dead. But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up and he arose. Now there's a lesson to be learned here by all parties. Quite honestly, the scribes are watching this. The sneering scribes that just love the fact that disciples couldn't do this. Jesus just demonstrated his power, his authority, his ability to the scribes. You have the failure of these disciples. They needed to learn something here. You have the weak faith of the Father that's now got his faith bolstered by what Jesus does here. In Mark 9.28, It says, when they had come into the house, away from the crowd, away from the scribes, away from the chaos, the son, the father, they've gone on back home. And now him and his disciples are privately in the house. And in that private setting, the disciples asked him, why could we not cast it out? I mean, Jesus had empowered them when he sent them out on their own to go proclaim the good news, to cast out demons. They came back boasting about all that God had done in their ministry when they went out two by two and went out and witnessed. But now they couldn't do it. And so they asked, why couldn't we cast it out? You would have asked the same thing. Why didn't it work for us? In Matthew 17, Verse 19 says, Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, Why could we not cast it out? So Jesus said to them, Because of your unbelief. Think about that. because of your unbelief. For assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you because your faith failed. Mark 9.29, Jesus says, and my new King James, this kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting. The earliest manuscripts don't have the word fasting. And the earliest manuscripts, like the NAS, the New American Standard Translation, puts that same verse like this. And he said to them, this kind cannot come out by anything but prayer. What did the disciples not do? They didn't pray. I don't know if they thought because they had been empowered in the past and they went out and they saw success in ministry. And this is a lesson for pastors too, beloved, is you can sit there and study all you want. There's not going to be power in your preaching if you don't pray. I mean, God is the source of all power, all ability. He's the one that holds everything together by the power of his might. And we don't pray. And Jesus says, well, This isn't gonna happen unless you pray. Clearly. They thought they could do it, right? Because they said, why could we not cast it out? They didn't say, why didn't God permit the demon to depart as we commanded in your name even? Why didn't that happen? They said, why couldn't we do it? And Jesus says, because you need to pray. That's why. That's a lesson for them to learn. That's a lesson for us to learn. They didn't exercise faith in God's power, evidenced by the fact that they didn't pray. They had faith, and think about this, they had faith in their own gifting. Jesus had gifted them with these abilities earlier, and we get to the point, I guess, where we can start to believe that, well, God made me a pretty talented writer, or pretty talented at this, or pretty talented at that, and we begin to exercise our own talents, which is fine, but with no prayer, and that's not fine. We need to understand and confess to God, like, Lord, without you, I'm nothing. I can't do anything. I believe I had read one time, I can't remember if it was Spurgeon, I think it was Spurgeon, and he would climb the steps at the Metropolitan where he preached in London, and he said, every step, he'd say, I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. What he was doing was saying, I can't do this. I believe in the raised Jesus who's going to be in the preaching. and that's gonna give me the ability to do what I need to do here. So we don't wanna put our faith in our gifting or the gift or our abilities and our talents. Our faith needs to be in one, a confession of our inability, and two, in the fact that God can do all things. And we direct our prayer to God. The lesson, help my unbelief, right? I believe, help my unbelief. 1 John 5.14 says, now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him. And one of the keys in that passage is to know the will of God, right? To know what is the will of God. If I pray in the will of God, God's gonna bless that prayer and give me the ability and the power. And there's some things that are no brainers. I mean, the will of God, even our sanctification, Jesus said, is the will of God. This is the will of God, you being sanctified. So if you go to the Lord and say, Lord, please grow me by your grace. Please give me greater faith. Those are the kind of prayers God will answer. You're scared to go talk to your neighbor about the Lord Jesus and you feel like the Lord's leading you to do it? God's gonna bless that. You get prayed up. Lord, I'm scared to go over there. I don't even know what to say. I'm just praying and trusting that you'll give me the words because you want me to speak with this person and you go begin the conversation. You start talking about the Lord and God will take over. Preachers uniquely, I suppose, get to enjoy that, because I've never preached publicly. If I have ever preached on the streets, I'll have a passage, a verse, and I think, okay, I'm going to preach this, and I'm going to try to go over to this, and these two passages. And it's funny, you start preaching, and the next thing you know, 10 million verses are popping into your head, and by the time you're done, a half hour has gone by, and you only got to the one verse. Because the Holy Spirit just takes over and begins to bring into your own remembrance the scripture that you've already tucked away down inside. According to His will and response to faith-filled prayer. That's how God operates. A.C. Dixon wrote, When we rely upon organization, we get what organization can do. When we rely on education, we get what education can do. When we rely on eloquence, we get what eloquence can do, and so on. Nor am I disposed to undervalue any of these things in their proper place, but when we rely upon prayer, we get what God can do. And that is truth. We get what God can do. Jesus had taught in John 15, I'm the vine, you're the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit. For without me, you could do some things." Now, Jesus says, without me, you can do nothing. You can do nothing without me. Luther, in his famous hymn, A Mighty Fortress, understood that and penned, at least in our American translation of it, did we in our own strength confide our striving would be losing We're not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choosing. Just ask who that may be. Well, Christ Jesus, it is He, Lord Sabaoth, His name. From age to age the same, He must win the battle. And that's where it's won or lost is on our knees in prayer as we go forth in the power of Christ. I want to wrap up just sharing, I thought was a good outline, some little bit more insight from Alexander McLaren's sermon on this verse, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. He saw within that story that we just studied four stages of faith, if you will. He saw the birth of faith. which he would describe as the eager desire for rescue and relief. The father, he had faith, but help me with my non-faith. He was eager to rescue his son or have his son to be rescued. And then coupled with that, a sense of utter helplessness. When we get to that point where it's like, you know, we have a desperate desire for relief and rescue, but we know there's nothing we can do to help. We're completely helpless. It's a horrible feeling, by the way. And then the acceptance of Christ's calm assurances bring them to me. Bring them to me. I'll take care of what you cannot do, what my disciples cannot do. Just bring them to me. Then the second phase he calls the infancy of our faith. And he said, and I think this is wise, that the father didn't know that he lacked faith until he began to exercise faith. He tried to muster up that faith and exercise his faith that Jesus could do this. But in the middle of mustering it up and confessing his faith, he realized quickly how shallow that faith was. And in that infancy stage, he simply said, well, help with my unbelief. McLaren says, in its infancy, faith may and does exist, but it coexists with much unfaith and doubt. And then he calls this, the third step here, the cry of infant faith. Right? Heal my child, he says, though it is unbelief as much as faith that's asking you to do it. Heal my child. Weak faith, he says. Weak faith is faith. The cord may be as slender as a spider's web that binds the heart to Jesus, but it does bind. A smoking flax he won't snuff out. A bruised reed he won't break off. Jesus knows we have weak faith. And then his last stage here is the education of faith. And I'll read a little bit of a longer quote by McLaren. He says, Christ paid no heed in words to the man's confession of unbelief, but proceeded to do the work which answered his prayer. He responded to imperfect confidence by his perfect work of cure. And by that perfect work of cure, he strengthened the imperfect confidence which it had answered. In other words, the very fact that he says, I confess, I have weak faith, help my unbelief. And Jesus answers that and helps that through the miracle that he performed. And then McLaren says, thus he educates us by his answers. And this is beautiful. He says, his over answers. You know, we ask the Lord. He always abundantly goes beyond what we even asked for. his over-answers to our poor desires, and the abundance of his gifts rebukes the poverty of our petitions more emphatically than any words of remonstrance beforehand could have done. And he says, he does not lecture us into faith, he blesses us into it. Isn't that beautiful? And that's exactly what God does. If somebody says, well, Larry, why do you have faith? And I'm like, because God blessed me into it. I mean, just over and over again, I have my doubts. I've prayed many a doubtful prayer, and God blesses anyway. And even if I ask for something and God says, no, that's not good for you. That's not my will for you. I still know God's sovereign. He's on His throne. Well, how do you have that faith? Because God blessed me into it. And it's just blessing upon blessing. And I'll end with this beautiful verse. which really ties together everything we're looking at. There's a beautiful little bow on the package, Hebrews 12, two, that we're to be, what? Looking unto Jesus, who's the author and the finisher of our faith. In other words, Jesus was at work in you when you came to faith, and you have imperfect faith. We all do, and we will have imperfect faith until faith is replaced by the fact that we're standing right in His presence. But He knows that we have this imperfect faith. He authored that in you, but He's also the finisher of your faith. And the things that we go through in our walk, in our life, that at the time seem so frustrating, you feel so helpless. You're thinking, Lord, why? Every time I try to do this, this happens, or that breaks down. All of those things together, God is using to build our faith. to build our faith. And He'll do that until we get to glory, right? And I trust that your faith is a lot stronger today than it was for you that are older, you know, 20 years ago, you know, five years ago, maybe five minutes ago, that your faith gets strengthened because God's always at work in us, bringing things into our lives that will bolster our faith, you know? He who began a good work in you, He's faithful to complete it to the day of His coming, right? To the day of Jesus' return. Well, let me end with that. Our Father and our God, we thank you for your word, for it does bolster our faith. And Lord, we're all like this man who said, I believe, but help my unbelief. So Father, that's our prayer to you today. Lord, we believe, but help us with our unbelief. And we thank you, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen. Receive the benediction of the Lord. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. Go in the peace of Christ Jesus to a world