Seeing & Trusting in Jesus // Mark 8:1-26

In his sermon, Pastor Evan Bialk focuses on Mark 8:1-26, which recounts two significant miracles performed by Jesus: the feeding of the 4,000 and the healing of a blind man. Through these acts, Pastor emphasizes Jesus' compassion and divine power, highlighting that true faith extends beyond just recognizing physical needs. He challenges the congregation to trust Jesus in both spiritual and physical aspects of life, especially amid doubts and uncertainties. The key takeaway is that faith transcends what is visible, and believers are encouraged to assess their trust in Jesus.The pastor also draws attention to the differences between the two feedings, noting that the first fed a Jewish audience while the second served a Gentile crowd. He explains this as a demonstration of God's intention to extend blessings beyond the Jewish people, reaffirming the inclusivity of God's love. The subsequent interaction with the Pharisees showcases their hardened hearts as they demand signs, revealing a lack of faith despite the evidence before them. Ultimately, Pastor Evan underscores the importance of seeing Jesus clearly, urging the congregation to recognize His compassion and to trust in His provision in every circumstance, supported by the assurance found in Scripture, particularly Psalm 91.

Transcript

This morning we're in Mark 8:1 26, and in this passage we're going to be seeing Jesus perform a couple of miracles that showcase his compassion and divine power. And these acts Scripture is revealing a deeper, important point of seeing beyond physical needs and trusting in Jesus for both our spiritual and physical sustenance. My hope this morning is that this sermon will help us recognize our need to trust Jesus in both their physical and spiritual lives or our physical and spiritual lives by reminding us that faith transcends what is visible. Furthermore, I would like it to challenge us as a church to assess our own trust in Jesus amidst the doubts and life's uncertainties. I would hope that it would challenge us to assess our own trust in Jesus because as we've talked before, true sight of who Jesus is requires faith.

This morning we're going to be seeing how Jesus is the fulfillment of God's promise to provide for his people both physically and spiritually. And this passage illustrates how he embodies the ultimate provision as the bread of life in the light of the world, manifesting God's love and intention for restoration. Let's stand together and we're going to read Mark 8:1 26.

In those days when again a great crowd had gathered and they had nothing to eat, he called to his disciples to him and said to them, I have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away. And his disciples answered him, how can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place? And he asked them, how many loaves do you have?

And they said, seven. And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground. And he took the seven loaves, and having give thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people. And they set them before the crowd, and they had a few small fish. And having blessed them, he said that those also should be set before them.

And they ate and were satisfied. And they took up the broken pieces left over seven baskets full. And there were about 4,000 people. And he sent them away. And immediately he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha.

The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, why does this generation seek a sign? Truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this Generation. And he left them and got into the boat again and went to the other side. Now they had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one left loaf with them in the boat.

And he cautioned them, saying, watch out. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven 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? Having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the 5,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?

They said to him, 12. And they said, and the seven for the 4,000, 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 understand? And they came to Bethesda.

Beth said and said. 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. When he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked, do you see anything? 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 home. He sent him to his home saying, do not even enter the village. You may be seated.

That was a mouthful.

All right, I want us to know where we're at.

We ended chapter seven in the Decapolis area. The Gentile land. Right, the Gentile land directly west of the Sea of Galilee, across from a Capernaum. Okay, so this is where we find ourselves. Still, this whole trip through Tyre and Sidon and Decapolis took several months.

And we saw him heal the Syrophoenician's daughter and heal a deaf man. And now he's down in Decapolis, and he's traveling through the land, the Gentile land, and he's preaching. And so that's where we're at this morning in chapter eight. And that's. So he's.

He's going through this land, and we see a great crowd had gathered around him. And we'll notice here in the passage that they had been here, been with him for three days. They had. They had sat under his teaching. He was spiritually feeding them for three days.

Now, I don't know about you, but If I went three days preaching, I could almost guarantee nobody would be left in this room. All right? But these people were so eager for the truth, so eager for Jesus and to hear his message, that they went three days without eating to hear him preach. And they get to this, to the end of these three days. And he's sitting there and he says he notices and he has compassion on the crowd.

The term compassion here in verse two is. I'm going to try and pronounce the Greek term here. Splanknizmeo. Splanknizzemao. All right?

And this term, it's a weird word. This term means to be moved in one's bowels. All right? So we translate it compassion. Because he is demonstrating compassion.

The idea of being moved in one's bowels would be. He had a pit in his stomach, right? He had a pit in the stomach. It was a gut wrenching feeling he had toward these people. And in this.

And that's because in the ancient world, they believed the emotions came out of the gut, right? Your stomach ruled your emotions. And so that's kind of why they're using this term.

But it demonstrates that the Lord is having literally a pit in his stomach, a gun wrenching compassion for these people because they had been with him for three days having nothing to eat. And he noticed that. He says, if I send them away hungry, if I send them away, they might faint because a lot of them have come from a long way away. They are in a desolate place. He had been traveling through this gentile land, and they were in a desolate place.

And a lot of people would come from far away to hear Him. And the Lord is compassionate. We know this because throughout the Old Testament, the Lord testifies to us that he is compassionate. In fact, in Psalm 10:38, he says, the psalmist says, the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love. The Lord is compassionate toward his people.

He is compassionate to the world. And so he is both wanting to take care of them spiritually, and he notices that there is a physical need. And so he wants to take care of them physically. And so he is being compassionate on them. And I want us to notice in verse four or verse verse one through four, there is a kind of a difference between the two feedings that I want us to see, right?

The two mass feedings that we saw. So we talked about the feeding of the 5,000 in Mark 6:34 through 38, and now we're talking about a feeding of 4,000 in Mark 8:1 through 10, the first thing I want us to notice is that the audience is different. So in Mark 6, the audience, the primary audience that Jesus was preaching to was Jewish. Jewish people, right? We talked.

We talked about last week how in his conversation with a Syrophoenician woman, he displays that he came to give the message to feed the Jews first, right? And this is a physical outplaying of that of Romans 1:16. Even that says, for the power of God, for the salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. And so Mark Six, the first feeding of the 5,000 was primarily to a Jewish audience in a Jewish land. Now we're sitting here in a Gentile land with a Gentile audience.

Okay, this is a primary. Primarily a Gentile audience. And the first feeding in Mark 6, we'll go to it real fast.

In verse 34, it says, when he went to. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd and had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And having begun, and he began to teach them many things. And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, this is a desolate place and the hour is late. Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages to buy themselves something to eat.

I want us to notice here in chapter 8, it is instead of his disciples coming to him in chapter eight, it is Jesus himself recognizing that they had been preaching for he had been preaching for three days and they were hungry, right? The disciples never came up to him and said, hey, these people might want to eat, right? They did that for the Jewish people, but they didn't do that for the Gentiles. In fact, it's Jesus who has moved with compassion for them. And I bring that up is because Jesus is trying to demonstrate, and he has been trying to demonstrate through the last several Scriptures that the Gentiles are going to be brought into the fold, right?

That the Jews, being God's chosen people, being God's chosen people, were meant to bless the world. They were meant to be a blessing to the world. And we know this because in Genesis 12:1 through 3, God talks. When he's talking to Abram right before he becomes Abraham, he tells him to go from your country and your kindred and your Father's house to the land I will show you. And I will make you a great nation.

And I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who. Who bless you and him who dishonors you. I Will curse in you all, and in you all. The families of the earth shall be blessed.

So this goes all the way back, all the way back to Genesis 12, all the way back to Genesis 12. And he is trying to get his disciples to understand that after the cross and after his resurrection, they are going to be called good. To go to the world, not to just Jerusalem and to the Jews, but to all of the world. And he is wanting them to understand that the discrimination that they have toward the Gentiles needs to stop. Because God's plan was not for the Jews to be discriminatory toward the Gentiles, but rather to bless them, to be a blessing to the world.

Now, Jesus is that embodiment to the Gentile, to the world. First to the Jews, then to the Gentiles. And he is counting on them of carrying that message to the world. And so he is. He is teaching them through these feedings that he is opening up the blessing of God to the Gentiles.

Because the Jews disregarded the Gentiles greatly. We talked about that last week, about how they would call them dogs and how they saw them as not worthy of salvation. But Jesus, the disciples cared for the Jews in the first feeding. Jesus is showing his care for the gentiles in this second feeding of the 4,000.

And we see here where he is directing them to sit down and sit on the ground. He's taking the seven loaves and the fish, and he is blessing them. And he is opening up the blessing through the feeding of the 4,000 to the Gentiles. Now, in verse nine, it says that there are around 4,000 people there. This is kind of incredible.

Usually they only counted males. All right, so when you're thinking 4,000, in reality, that could be upwards of 10 to 20,000 people that Jesus is feeding that day, because they would only count the males. Women and children weren't worthy of being counted. They weren't worthy of being counted. And so that's 4,000 households, essentially there.

So roughly 10 to 20,000 people could have been in attendance. And so he is teaching them, he's feeding them both spiritually and physically.

And as we wrap up here, as we're wrapping up this feeding of the 4000, he sends them away. He teaches them, he feeds them spiritually and physically, and then he sends them away. In verse 10, the scene shifts and he wraps up. He dismisses the crowd, and he gets into the boat and goes over to the district of Dalmanuthia. All right, some of your translations might say Magadan.

All right? The same area. And you see in verse 11, in verse 11, they get off the boat and the Pharisees come up to him immediately and began to argue with him. Now, he had been in the Gentile land for several months, and this is his first time crossing over into Jewish land for months, okay? And so they spot him.

And I imagine this is probably kind of a spur of the moment thing. Group of Pharisees spot him and they run up to him immediately and begin to argue with him. And they are seeking a sign from heaven to test him. Verse 11. He came to argue, seeking a sign from heaven to test him.

Now, what does sign from heaven mean? Sign from heaven is a. And why do we see in verse 12, he sighs deeply in his spirit. You can tell he's frustrated with them. He is.

He is over. He is over the Pharisees. And why does he tell them that no sign will be given to this generation? Well, there's several reasons. I think Jesus balks at this request.

First of all, they are testing him. They are tempting him. They are tempting him like Satan tempted him. Give us a sign of your power. Now, he had demonstrated his power and authority.

For the last year and a half of his ministry, almost two years of his ministry, he has repeatedly shown signs of power and authority to the people of Israel. He calmed storms, he raised. He healed sick, he raised people from the dead. He casted out demons. And the Pharisees, Pharisees, if you remember, they attributed that several chapters ago.

They attributed that all to the power of Satan. And so when they come up to him and they ask him, show us a sign from heaven. That is a specific phrase they are using. They're not asking for a sign from God. They are asking for a sign from heaven.

You might be asking, what's the difference? Sign of heaven in scripture is oftentimes used to refer to an apocalyptic sign. All right? A sign from the sky. The Israelites believed that demons and Satan could do powerful things here on earth, but they had no authority in the sky.

And so they were asking for a sign from the sky or an apocalyptic sign, a sign that would embody one of the mighty deeds of deliverance that God had worked on Israel's behalf before in rescuing them from slavery. And what they are asking for. What they are asking for is exactly what the disciples thought Jesus was there to do. And most people saw the Messiah there to do to destroy the Gentiles and give the land back to the Jews. Right?

They were asking for, and they were seeking Gentile destruction. Now, this Comes directly after the feeding of the 4000, where he is opening up and demonstrating to his disciples that he is opening up the blessing of God to the Gentiles. And so they are coming and asking for a sign from heaven, an apocalyptic sign, an embodiment of deliverance. They are seeking to destroy the Gentiles. They are asking him to satisfy their wants and desires, their expectations of what a messiah should look like.

But as we. As we remember that Jesus came to give his life on the cross for all of humanity, not to smash Israel's enemies, not to hand over land to Israel, that when Jesus came, he came with a purpose. God sent him with the purpose to come and die on the cross for our salvation, to take up the sins of humanity upon himself and bear that weight, that punishment on Himself so that we might be redeemed. We might have the possibility of redemption through belief in him and his resurrection.

And so they are tempting him. They are tempting him as Satan tempted him in departing from the mission that God gave him. And we do this so often because the Pharisees were wanting Jesus to satisfy their wants and desires, and they were not interested in what God had planned. We want. We oftentimes want God to do it our way.

We want God to fit into our idea of who he should be. We so often are not interested in what God's plans for our lives or for certain situations or changes in circumstances. We oftentimes forget that God is God.

We are not. We don't dictate. We don't dictate to God.

We don't tell him the way that we want him to be seen, the way we want him to move.

God is not one that we dictate to. And we so often, just as the Pharisees are in this chat, in this verses 11 through 13, we are asking, we so often seek a sign from heaven, testing God. God, do it our way, do it my way. Fit into my idea of who you should be. And we have no care for God's plan.

And so that's why in verse 12, he comes and he sighs deeply in his spirit. He sighs deeply in his spirit. He is so disappointed with the Pharisees. He's so disappointed with the Pharisees. And he asks, why does this generation seek a sign?

Now, that's a. It's an interesting phrase, right? Because he has just given them tons of signs, and they come asking for another sign. Think about it in our own life, of how God provides for us every day and the signs that we have of his blessing, the Signs that we have of his goodness, of his grace, of his mercy. And yet we oftentimes go to him and say, God, I need another sign.

If we're far from God, oftentimes we go to him and say, God, if you only just give me a sign, then I'll believe in you.

God, if you only do this for me, then I will believe in you.

And so he sighs deeply in his Spirit. And he tells them that no sign will be given to this generation. And the reason why he says no sign is because they have ignored all the other signs. They've ignored every other sign that he has provided to them.

And so he leaves. He washes his hands of the Pharisees. And this is the point in Mark where Jesus is done. He is done with the Pharisees. And there is a break now for him, for the Pharisees.

That break came way back in chapter three, when they decided, hey, we're going to start plotting to kill him and discredit him. And this is his break. And he is saying, you have ignored every sign that has been put in front of you. There will be no signs for you, because no sign would be good enough. No sign would cause you to believe in me, in Jesus.

And he gets in the boat again and leaves and goes to the other side.

And in verse 14 again, the scene shifts. They're back on the boat. And maybe they had left. Maybe. Maybe the disciples had planned on hanging out there a little bit more.

And Jesus was like, pack up your things. Buses leaving, we're leaving, we're getting out. We don't know why, but the disciples hop into the boat. They had forgotten to grab bread. They've only got one loaf left.

And in the midst of them arguing, you have. In verse 14, you have this. In verse 15, you have Jesus cautioning them, watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.

Now, leaven in ancient Israel was used in baking. And one commentary says this. It says, in the ancient world, leaven was used and was more dangerous. It was produced by keeping back a piece of the previous week's dough, storing it in suitable conditions, and then adding juices to promote the process of fermentation. But this homemade rising agent was fraught with health hazards because it could easily become tainted, and then it would spread poison.

When baked with the rest of the dough, it in turn would infect the next batch. And this is the idea that Jesus uses to refer to his enemies. And so what would happen was they would bake a loaf. And before they bake that, they would take some of the dough and they would keep that dough for the next week or the next time they baked. But that piece could then spoil if not kept in the right conditions.

It could spoil and they might not notice it. And then they would take that and they would make more bread with that piece. And they wouldn't know until they ate that bread that it was spoiled, right? But before they ate that bread, they would take that piece and possibly and set it aside. And so that leaven would permeate the entirety of that loaf.

So it was all bad. Then it would be bad for the next batch and bad for the next batch. And they would have to go back and start all over. And so he is cautioning them to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. The leaven here symbolizes the corruption and the infection of power.

The power of evil had taken root in the Pharisees and Herod. Now, the Pharisees and Herod being mentioned in the same sentence and compared in a similar way is kind of odd because the Pharisees were the, remember, the religious elite of the day. And Herod was this propped up Roman sympathizer who had been appointed by Rome to rule over the region, okay? And so they were not friendly, the Pharisees and Herod, Herod's court were not friendly. They were not best buds.

They were enemies. But as we saw earlier on in Mark, they come together because the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? They had that. They had common enemy, Jesus. And so they came together to see about disrupting Jesus ministry.

And they both do this because they refuse to believe despite a mountain of evidence, a mountain of evidence that Jesus is the Christ, Jesus is the Messiah.

And so he is warning them, do not be corrupted, do not, do not be corrupted by this unbelief that both the Pharisees and Herod have.

And in the midst of this, they begun, they began discussing with one another the fact in verses 16 that they have no bread. And so Jesus is trying to warn them, trying to warn them, do not become like the Pharisees and like King Herod. And in their disbelief, and instead of listening to Jesus, instead of paying attention to him, they are going right back into their disbelief. In verse 16, they start arguing about how they have no bread. They got one loaf and they have no bread.

They don't have enough for everyone.

And this is, this is the insane part, because they had just been with Jesus where he took seven loaves of bread and a few fish and fed 20,000 people with it. There's 13 people in the boat.

13 people. You don't think he can feed 13 people in the boat with one loaf if he could feed 20,000 with seven? I don't. I don't. Didn't do the math of what that would take, but come on.

That's why he is. That's why in verse 17, he. He goes to them and he says, why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Did you not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened?

Having eyes do you not see? Having ears do you not hear? Do you not remember when I broke the five loaves and the 5,000? How many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? And they answer him, seven or 12 full baskets in the first time, and then in the second time, how many?

And they answer, seven. And then he goes and says, do you not understand?

I mean, you got to be thinking, jesus is like, how can you not understand this?

But if we're honest with ourselves, our lives are fraught with the same disbelief that the disciples had. As much as we want to pride ourselves in our belief and say we're not like the disciples, we're not like them. If Jesus was in our boat, we wouldn't be complaining about having one loaf of bread. We would turn to Jesus and say, jesus, can you give me more? We don't have enough.

Can you provide like you did to the 5,000 and the 4,000? Jesus, that's not how we live, though. We pride ourselves that we would live like that, but that is not how we live. Instead, we demonstrate the same disbelief the disciples had. And when times get tough, we experience the same disbelief.

We say, God, why? Where is God? Where is God?

Why God? Why are you not with me? I can't feel you. When our bank account is low and.

And we're worried and we're overwhelmed by anxiety, when we get diagnosed with a medical problem and we get diagnosed with a medical problem, and the first thing we do is run to WebMD to see what the treatment plan is, we run to our doctors and say, how can you fix this for me? You don't turn to God and say, God, I know you are with me. I know you are with me. See me through this. Provide for me, because I know that you love me, you care for me, and I'm going to trust you to provide for me in every situation.

No, we are like the disciples in the boat, squabbling over the fact that There is one loaf of bread when we have the God of the universe sitting right next to us, and we are not understanding what that means, how he both provides for us physically and spiritually to the fullest extent because he is compassionate for us. Verse 1 and 2, he is moved with compassion for us.

And the problem is, is that we don't see Jesus clearly.

We don't see who he is clearly. I don't mean by knowledge in our heads. In our heads, you can say, I understand that Jesus is Christ. He is God. I understand that I have the Holy Spirit living inside of me.

If I am a believer, I understand that Scripture says that I have the power of God to go and preach to the nations, that God is compassionate and that he loves me and that he will take care of me in every situation, that he will be with me and I can find joy even amongst the suffering, because I know Jesus.

We can say that with our heads, but we don't live it because in our hearts, in our hearts, we are filled with doubt. We don't see Jesus clearly when we approach situations where we're not turning to him and we're turning to the world.

And in verses 22 and through 26, Jesus heals a blind man. And this healing of a blind man is both a. It's a physical act of healing that Jesus does, but it is also.

It is also a spiritual metaphor of where we are as believers, where we are as humanity, as humanity without Christ. We are the blind man.

Verses 22. And they came to Bethsaida, and some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. And what does he do to them? He takes them out. He takes.

He. He takes the blind man by the hand.

He takes him by the hand. And he leads them. He leads him out of the village, and he lays his hands on him and he asks, do you see anything? Now, real quick, we're going to come back to this. There's several people in here that wear glasses.

All right. I used to wear glasses when I was age 8. Around 8, I think it was. I remember sitting at a Cardinals game because I'm a Cardinals fan, and I remember telling my dad, I can't read the scoreboard. And he was like.

He was like, seriously, you can't read the scoreboard? And I was like, yeah, I don't know what it says. What's the score? And he's like, you should be able to read the scoreboard. And I was like, well, I can't.

And he's like, well, how Long have you. How long have you not been able to read it? I was like, I don't know.

I don't know. So he took me in, and they got me glasses, right? They got me glasses. I needed glasses. And I remember going and wearing my glasses and going to all my neighbors and showing them my glasses and be like, I can see now.

I can see clearly. There's leaves on trees. All right? In 2010, I had 20200 vision. So this is an eye chart of what 20200 vision looks like for a person, right?

At 20 200, you are legally blind. You cannot drive. You cannot drive without corrective lenses. All right? At 2200, the United States says your vision is so bad that without corrective glasses, you can't drive.

And so at 2200, this is what the eye chart looked like for me.

And in 2010, I was gracious enough. God graced me with getting PRK surgery. Similar Lasik, a little bit more intense. They drill a hole through your eyelids, and it's a lot more painful. But I remember walking into the surgery that morning, I couldn't wear contacts for, like, a full six months leading up to it.

So I was wearing glasses. And then you couldn't wear glasses for the first. For, like, 72 hours leading up to the surgery. And so I'm like, for, like, three days, I have been blind, essentially.

But I remember the doctor coming in, the eye surgeon, he walked in and he goes, hey, all right, you're ready. And he's taking me down this hallway, and we get to the end of it, and there's another hallway, and to the left, down the hallway, there was a clock on the wall, and I already stopped there. And he goes. He goes, can you tell me what the time is on that clock? And I looked at him, and I said, there's a clock there.

And he goes, not only you're going to be able to see the clock, but you're going to be able to tell me what time it is, all right? And I remember they warned you because as you went through the surgery, it's such a weird process because as you go through the surgery, you actually lose your vision first, all right? So they warn you because they don't want you to freak out. They warn you because they don't want you to freak out, that as the laser is doing its stuff in your eye, you are going to lose your vision completely. You are going to black out.

And it is a weird feeling, all right? There is a weird feeling from going to see light to see Nothing. All right? But it only lasts for about five to 10 seconds because after that you start seeing clearly and your vision goes from being really blurry to very clear. And immediately after my surgery, he walked me out to that same hallway and he said, tell me what time it is.

And I was able to see not only the clock, but the numbers in the clock. I was able to see the second hand moving, and I could tell him exactly what the time was. And so when I read a story like this of the blind man being healed, I understand what he's going through, all right? And we see it. And he takes the blind man by the hand and he spits on his eyes, and he lays his hands on him and he asks, do you see anything?

And in verse 24, it says, he looked up. And he says, I see people, but they look like trees walking. Okay? When I hear this, it's like he sees it, he gets it, but it is blurry. And I think a lot of believers, a lot of believers are walking around in life with that kind of vision toward Jesus where they.

They understand who Jesus is, they understand who he is, but they don't see him clearly because they don't live life like they see him clearly. There's a lot of people in this room that are probably blind completely, don't even know who Jesus is.

And that's where the disciples were at. And that's where we so often find ourselves, where we can see it. We can see Jesus. We can see people walking around. We can see the mission of God, but it is blurry.

It looks like trees walking around.

It looks like trees walking around. And then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again and he opened his eyes and his sight was fully restored and he saw everything clearly.

Now, the reason why I think this is a spiritual metaphor as well as a physical healing, because if you've looked, if you've been paying attention to all of Jesus miracles, Jesus doesn't have to do a do over. He doesn't have to do a do over. And so he is demonstrating to the disciples where they're at.

And in turn, he is demonstrating where we so often can be as disciples of Jesus.

Where we can see, we can see him, but it's blurry.

And what Jesus wants us to do is he wants our sight to be fully restored and for us to see him clearly.

He wants us to trust him with every ounce of our being, trust him with every part of our life, in every area.

I'm going to leave you with one of my favorite psalms as we close up this morning with one of my favorite Psalms. Psalm 91 says, he who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust. For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge.

His faithfulness is a shield and a buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the air that flies by the day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, 10,000 at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked, because you have made the Lord your dwelling place. The Most High, who is my refuge.

No evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent will trample underfoot, because He. He holds fast to me in love, and I will deliver him.

I will protect him because he knows My name. When he calls to me, I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will rescue him and honor him. And with long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.

And I leave you with this psalm because this is how we should be living.

This is the attitude toward Jesus that we should have, that in every circumstance we lean into Jesus. We trust him in every circumstance in our lives, both personally, professionally, spiritually, in every ounce of our lives. And as I stated in the beginning, we need to recognize our need to trust Jesus in both our physical and spiritual lives, and that faith transcends what is visible.

And as we leave here this morning, I would challenge each of us to assess our own trust in Jesus amidst our lives that can be in our doubts and life's uncertainties. Because we should remember that true sight requires faith. We must seek to see Jesus clearly, not ignoring the evidence in front of us like the Pharisees and Herod. For those who ignore the evidence that is put in front of them, there is no sign.

For those who believe, he demonstrates compassion and love and care, and he has earned our trust. And we can trust Him. Let's pray.