SPEAKER_00 0:11

Thank you everybody for your testimonies. Um you're making it harder for me to to uh say goodbye and to leave. Um thank you. Thank you for all the testimonies. Uh the fleshly ray is not a quitter, and part of me feels like you're just quitting and it rubs me the wrong way. Um but but I know what I heard and um I want to be obedient to the Lord. Um but just know it's not an easy thing for the fleshly ray to say goodbye. Mark chapter 8, verse 22. Unexpectedly, this is the passage the Lord gave to me. Mark 8, verse 22. And they came to Besida, and some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. And when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, Do you see anything? And he looked up and said, I see people, but they look like trees walking. Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again, and he opened his eyes. His sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. And he sent him to his home, saying, Do not even enter the village. Okay, let's pray. Father, we pray that you open up our eyes and our ears. We want to hear from you and you alone. We avail ourselves to you, we humble ourselves in your presence. Thank you that you are God who speaks. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. The passages passages we covered in Revelation, there's that recurring line, he who has ears to hear, let him speak. And so if I were to say, what is the most important quality of a church, or most important quality of a Christian, is we have eyes to see and ears to hear. We need eyes to see, ears to hear. If you have that, then you are the church. In Isaiah chapter 6. There is a prophecy that Isaiah is given to proclaim to the people. And here is a prophecy in verse 9 of Isaiah 6. And he said, Go and say to its people, keep on hearing but do not understand, keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull, and their eyes heavy, and blind their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. Then I said, How long, O Lord? And he said, Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land, and though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled. The holy seed is its stump. And again, the theme that we see recurring throughout scripture is you have someone like Isaiah, you have someone like Ezekiel, you have someone like Jonah, maybe Jonah is not the best example. We have prophets in the Old Testament, and then we have apostles in the New Testament. And the quality that links them all together is they see and they hear. And they preach to a people who do not see, who do not hear. And so what is the church? Is a group of people we see and we hear. And once we see, once we hear, we respond, we obey. And that is the church. Did you ever wonder why this text that I read at the outset is there? That a blind man has to be touched twice by Jesus. Did you ever wonder that? Jesus is powerful. He raises the dead. He doesn't, he doesn't lack power, and that's why it took him two chances to heal a blind man. There's something, a deeper message that he is trying to communicate. Like, who is truly blind here? Is it the blind man? Yes, he's blind, but is that all that's going on? And to when the Lord first gave me this text, I was struggling to understand why. And then just reading the surrounding passages, it became so clear why the Lord gave me this text. Let's start in verse 14 of Mark 8. Now they had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat, and he cautioned them, saying, Watch out, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of the of Herod. And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread, and Jesus, aware of this, said to them, Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see? And having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand? How many baskets full of broken pieces did you wait? Did you take up? They said to him, twelve. And the seven for the four thousand? How many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? And they said to him, seven. And he said to them, Do you not yet understand? And I bet this was a rhetorical question, but the disciples struggling in their hearts, I bet still they didn't understand. Even though Jesus says, Here is the meaning. Don't you perceive it? Nobody is bold enough to say, Jesus, I don't get it. You still are not making sense. I'm seeing it, I'm hearing it, I don't understand. And then let's read the surrounding context. Verse 27 of this chapter. And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, Who do people say that I am? And they told him John the Baptist, and others say Elijah, and others one of the prophets. And he asked him, But who do you say that I am? Peter answered him, You are the Christ. And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him. And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly, and Jesus took him aside, Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man. Again, I want to ask the question: Who is blind in this chapter? Who is deaf in this chapter? Who is lacking understanding in this chapter? Anybody? I think I heard Jackie mouth and answer. Disciples. Did you catch it? Why does Jesus take two times to heal this blind man? The first time the blind man sees people walking like trees. So before it was blind, utterly blind, black, dark. Now he sees shapes. He sees people walking like trees. That includes Jesus. Jesus is a shape. He hears a voice. He doesn't quite understand. He's healed partially. It's not fully there. And this is a picture spiritually of the state that disciples are in. Even their leader, Peter. One day, such an amazing proclamation. He says, You are the Christ. Praiseworthy, clear, resounding commendation given. And then the very next moment, Jesus talks about his suffering. Jesus, what are you talking about? Rebukes Jesus. Can you imagine rebuking Jesus? And that's how blind Peter is. Seeing shapes, understanding partially. Yet still things are fuzzy, out of focus. You hear things, you don't quite understand what he's saying. And maybe you locate yourself in this story. I locate myself in this story. Why is the Lord taking me on a sabbatical? He's saying it's time to grow up, Ray. You've tried your best with what you know, and you've been faithful. You've finished this assignment. But it's time to grow. You see shapes, you hear things. Some days you're spot on, others' days you don't know what to preach because things are so fuzzy, out of focus. I don't know if you can identify, but for me it's it's um I didn't realize how much of a sabbatical I needed until I pressed into it a little bit more. I was thinking, okay, a month should be enough. I'm a worker. Uh it is hard for me to shut down or to leave a church. It is really tough for me. I I want to work, I don't give up. But I hear what the shepherd is saying. He says, You gotta clarify your vision. You have to see me clearer so you can testify clearer. You have to hear me more clearly so that what you say is not from you, but is from me. And that's gonna take longer than I think it's gonna take. I don't think in one month we'll do it. Hopefully, it won't be a year. That'll be uh a slow death for me to be in a sabbatical for a year. It's not my personality at all. Um, but the Lord is the Lord, he knows what I need. And I am trying my best to hear his voice, and um in a sense, I'm saying I'm stuck. I've done as best I can with what I have, but it's time to press in and to go deeper. Um for Paul before he launched into ministry. It was three years. I hope it doesn't take three years. I will die if it takes three years. Uh I'm asking for your prayers so that my my vision for Jesus can sharpen, my my ears can uh be more attentive, um, that I would not come up uh in the future if I'm preaching and say, I don't know what the Lord has for me. I hope I get it right. Um I remember the days when I I I didn't have anything but a uh uh when I just had a manus, when I had a manuscript, and then I was starting to wean myself from the manuscript and going uh taking uh going uh on a limb and trusting the Lord for for the word. And it was it was a faith, um it was a decision, it was a it was an act of faith, a leap of faith for me to trust that the Lord will speak. And and he did, and now that I've been doing it for a time, I realize that I'm more comfortable now winging it, which is not good. Um I can have a shape of a sermon, a fuzzy sermon, and I think, okay, this is enough. I'll I can wing it. That's that I don't want to I don't want to be in that place. I want to know clearly as I do this Sunday, this is a message from the Lord. And I I preach it confidently because I know it's not from me. It actually goes against everything in my being to obey what the Lord is saying. But he is inviting me to grow. Um Elijah is very motivated to grow. I'm not sure where he is, uh, but Elijah is very motivated to grow. He's trying he's heard from others that uh you have a short window uh to grow, and you better maximize your sleep and nutrition and shut down the the technology an hour before you sleep so that you can get a deeper sleep, all the things that we've heard. And he's starting to take it to heart, and so he's measuring on a uh on our wall his progress. And a month when he actually obeyed it, there's a little bit of progress. And then a month where he kind of uh lost focus, uh, it didn't really, the the mark didn't move. And then I also put my height there, and I'm slightly still edging him out. And I know as a 50-year-old, of course, I don't expect to grow physically. If anything, I'll probably shrink as the vertebrae, the the cartilage gets worn down as osteoporosis uh may set in, I may actually shrink over time. But spiritually, I don't want to see a mark and say, a year later, it's still the same mark. You deserve better than that. You deserve a pasture who can speak and uh where you can grow, and the pasture is growing. And um I hope the next time I speak publicly, I can I can say the line it it inched up a little bit. Because my focus has gotten clearer, my ears have gotten better, my understanding of the Lord, who he is. Because I know him, there's fruit, but there's change. I hope I can testify that the next time I do it publicly. It says in First Corinthians fifteen, and I'll end with this. First Corinthians fifteen. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall be, we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable. And we shall be changed, for this imperishable, for this perishable body must be must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. Some will not sleep. The people who are alive, they will see the Lord descend. And in that moment they will be changed. Because you can't enter into the kingdom with this flesh suit. And if we see Jesus in his full glory as you read in the book of Revelation, John the Apostle, he is just flat on his face. Even an angel delivering the vision and the message from Jesus Christ is enough that John is tempted to bow down and worship the angel, and the angel says, Get up. I'm just I'm just a servant, just get up. And when you catch even a glimpse of Jesus, we will all be changed. And when you catch the fullness of Jesus, in an instant we will change. That is our destiny. But even now, before we see him in his fullness, just catching a little glimpse, you will change. I will change. And so my sabbatical is Lord Jesus, I want to see you. Lord Jesus, I want to hear from you. Let me just rest in you and change me. Okay, let's pray. Father, thank you. That before the foundation of the world you knew us and you called us to be saved. And many of us in this room, we responded to that call. And before you called me to be a pastor, you called me to be a child and a son. Sometimes I get the order wrong, but Lord, in this next season, help me to know that I'm loved for who I am, not for what I do. Help me to rest in your presence. Help me to be more like Mary than Martha. Help me to slow down everything in my life instead of being distracted by many things, troubled by many things. Help me to sit at your feet. I want to see you, I want to hear you. May that be all of our hearts cry here as we are the church. We want to see you, we want to hear from you. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for dying on a cross for our sins. Thank you for your blood that was shed. Pray that you minister to us. We just want to catch a glimpse as we leave this place. We want to catch a glimpse of you and your glory that we may be changed. Thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name.

unknown 21:35

Amen.