Show Notes
Mark 9:10
Pastor Stephen Lauer
View Full Transcript
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Let us pray.
[00:00:02] Our glorious and almighty King.
[00:00:06] You shine brightly in heaven.
[00:00:12] And we know that the full radiance, infinite radiance of God's glory shines in you, Lord Jesus.
[00:00:27] We know this because you came and the fullness of God's glory, you as his Son, revealed when you came and took on our human nature.
[00:00:42] And what a remarkable thing it must have been to see you in your every word and your every movement, your every gesture, the looks on your face, all of them perfectly reflecting God's goodness and mercy, justice and compassion and glory.
[00:01:02] But we thank you, Lord Jesus, that you still shine just as brightly.
[00:01:09] In fact, you shine even more brightly through your Word as we hear it read and proclaimed. For in the reading and preaching of your word, you promise that your spirit works directly on our hearts to remove the veil of our sin and the confusion it causes and the unbelief that we have. You remove all of that, and there in our hearts, you cause us to behold the glory of the Son of God and God's glory shining brightly there.
[00:01:46] Help us then in your Word to see just a little bit more of that glory tonight, that we might be drawn to you, to your goodness, to your salvation, that we might respond in praise, in adoration, in faith, in obedience.
[00:02:05] Help us by your Spirit, in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:02:11] Our sermon text is going to be from Mark 9. I'm going to read verses 2 through 13, Mark 9, 2, 13.
[00:02:20] And our sermon text we're going to focus on is verse 11.
[00:02:27] Hear God's word.
[00:02:29] After six days, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves.
[00:02:38] And he was transfigured before them.
[00:02:41] And his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them.
[00:02:50] And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses. They were talking with Jesus.
[00:02:57] Peter said to Jesus, rabbi, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents. One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.
[00:03:08] For he did not know what to say, for they were terrified.
[00:03:12] And a cloud overshadowed them.
[00:03:15] And a voice came out of the cloud, this is my beloved Son.
[00:03:22] Listen to him.
[00:03:24] Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them but Jesus only as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
[00:03:43] So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead might mean.
[00:03:53] They asked him, why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come? And he said to them, elijah does come first to restore all things and how is it written of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt?
[00:04:14] But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him.
[00:04:24] Please be seated.
[00:04:29] Again, we want to focus on verse 10.
[00:04:32] So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead might mean.
[00:04:43] There are some things that we ponder, what they mean.
[00:04:50] Some things are fairly familiar. Now, if you've been in the church for any period of time, you know that the idea of resurrection and rising from the dead is something we talk about a lot.
[00:05:01] We love it. We have a whole day every year that we remember. Easter Sunday, right? We set this aside. We have sermons, we think about the resurrection of the dead. It's important to us, but it's also familiar to us, hopefully, as Christians. But sometimes it's the things that are familiar to us that we really have to ponder what they mean.
[00:05:25] Even if, and maybe sometimes because it's familiar to us, it's good to take time to think about them.
[00:05:33] For example, let's just throw a few ideas out there. But for example, most of us are pretty familiar with the concept of love, but now try to define it.
[00:05:50] What is love? What does it mean?
[00:05:55] And when we say, what does something mean?
[00:05:58] We mean different things, right? We might mean its definition. And you could go to, of course, different Bible verses that define love, right? This is love that we keep, his commandments. It's a way that we can define love. We know there's other aspects to love.
[00:06:14] There's the attitude and the motions of our hearts. That's a part of love.
[00:06:20] After all, love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, mind and strength.
[00:06:25] And it's not just the heart. If it's love the Lord your God with your mind and strength, that means there's love has implications.
[00:06:34] When we think about what does love mean? It doesn't just have to do with how we define it.
[00:06:39] The meaning of love also has to do with our actions. There's things that flow out of this concept of love. And you could think of other things. For example, friendship. What does friendship mean? Of course, you could define it in words. You could think about a friend.
[00:06:54] And then there's the nitty gritty of, when you get down to it, what does friendship mean? Sometimes the meaning of a thing and its implications. What does this mean? What does my being a friend to this person mean? What does my needing to love this person mean? Sometimes it means there's some problems that arise, right? As we consider that idea and its meaning.
[00:07:16] We run into issues. You might say sometimes there's things that love or friendship mean in a relationship that mean we have to do or say things that feel. They don't feel loving, but they are, right.
[00:07:30] It's loving for parents to discipline their children. It's loving for parents to not let their children stay up late at night and eat all the candy they want and so on. You get the idea. There are things that we have to.
[00:07:45] That love means, these kinds of things.
[00:07:50] Well, when the disciples are chewing on this question of Jesus rising from the dead, I think there's all sorts of things there.
[00:07:58] Pondering, what does it mean when he says the resurrection from the dead?
[00:08:05] We're going to look at that this evening.
[00:08:08] I'll throw. Maybe we'll continue this. Just illustrating the problem. What does the resurrection of the dead mean? Well, there are.
[00:08:16] There are things that are hard to understand about the resurrection from the dead.
[00:08:21] We haven't experienced. I don't. Have you experienced. Have you seen someone rise from the dead? Everyone I know that's died hasn't come back yet. I haven't seen this with my own eyes.
[00:08:30] And science tells me it's impossible.
[00:08:34] It's kind of hard to understand and even to accept.
[00:08:39] And further, why does it matter?
[00:08:44] Why does Jesus have to die and then rise?
[00:08:51] There's lots of meaning bound up in this idea of Jesus rising from the dead. And if you read the Gospels or just the Gospel of Mark here, if you look at chapter 8, 9 and 10 over, and there's at least four places we see that the disciples are struggling with this statement that Jesus has to die and rise from the dead. What does it mean?
[00:09:16] Now, you might think that as they had time to ponder it and chew on it and ask Jesus questions about it and hear him, even see him raise Lazarus from the dead, you might think that as time went on, it would get easier for them to understand what the resurrection from the dead means.
[00:09:35] But when Jesus actually rises from the dead and they're faced with resurrection, the empty tomb, and then even when they see him face to face, it doesn't solve all the problems. There's still. What does this mean?
[00:09:51] When resurrection happens, People are frightened by this.
[00:09:57] What does this mean?
[00:10:00] They're bewildered.
[00:10:01] They won't tell anyone.
[00:10:04] Some of them, we heard this morning, doubt.
[00:10:07] You can see this is something that even those who are familiar with really need to wrestle with.
[00:10:14] I want to look with you this evening at this question. What does the resurrection from the dead mean?
[00:10:23] We'll look at it under three points. First, the meaning of the resurrection, sort of generally. Secondly, the meaning of Jesus resurrection.
[00:10:33] And then thirdly, the meaning of resurrection for you. So resurrection generally, then Jesus resurrection, and then resurrection for you.
[00:10:45] What is this resurrection, this rising from the dead business?
[00:10:50] You think it's simple and I suppose it is. God made our bodies and our souls and then he gave us life.
[00:11:00] You have that story in Genesis. He takes the clay, he makes Adam and then he breathes life into him, and then he's alive.
[00:11:09] And then because Adam rebelled and sinned, he was thrown out of the garden, away from God and friendship with God.
[00:11:18] God didn't just push him away, broken relationship, but he took this rebel and all of his descendants, you and I, and he said, now one day you're going to die.
[00:11:30] One day I'm going to put an end to this physical life that you have. I'm going to take that life away from you. Your body will fall to the ground.
[00:11:37] Your soul will return to Me, its maker.
[00:11:41] That's life and death in resurrection. God says, one day I'm going to take that body that's rotted in the ground or that has been cremated into ashes and scattered, or whatever's happened to it.
[00:11:57] I'm going to take that body and I'm going to put it back together and I'm going to put that soul back in it and I'm going to breathe life back into it. And I'm going to raise you again from the dead.
[00:12:11] That's what the Bible means when it says the resurrection from the dead. That's what Jesus is saying is going to happen to him.
[00:12:20] Now, as we've already commented, most of us, pretty sure most of us haven't actually seen this happen.
[00:12:27] So as simple as the concept is, this is still something we got to take on faith that it's something that could happen.
[00:12:36] At least our experience leads us to question it. Perhaps. Now, the disciples who are pondering this statement, they know something about resurrection from the dead.
[00:12:46] The Old Testament talked about it.
[00:12:48] The Old Testament taught that there would be a resurrection from the dead on the last day. That every man, woman and child who had ever lived, whom God had made, who lived and then died, God would raise them all from the dead.
[00:13:04] And the Old Testament associated this resurrection from the dead with the coming of the Savior. That God would send a Savior to deliver his people from their sins and from all sorts of problems.
[00:13:16] And then when the Messiah had come and set up God's kingdom, he would raise the dead and that would be the end of his history.
[00:13:25] We see in the Gospels some references to this. For example, In John chapter 11, when Jesus is talking to Martha about Lazarus, Martha's brother who's died, Jesus tells Martha, now you're going to see your brother again. And Martha, a good Jewess, she knows her Old Testament. She knows the doctrine of the resurrection. She answers, yes, I know, Lord, I will see my brother again on the last day in the resurrection. That's what she's talking about.
[00:13:56] Martha believed this. Now there were some other Jews who weren't so sure.
[00:14:02] They weren't so sure about the miraculous. They weren't so sure about souls and angels. We have Christians today that doubt these things, deny them even.
[00:14:14] But the leaders of these sorts of non supernatural today, we would call them liberals, they don't believe.
[00:14:22] The leaders of this in Jesus day were the Sadducees.
[00:14:26] And they came to Jesus and they had a debate with him about this very question of the resurrection of the dead.
[00:14:34] They seem to think maybe something like this, that. Well, these references in the Old Testament to resurrection, they're just metaphorical. You know the story of Ezekiel, he sees the vision of the valley of dry bones. There are these bones of soldiers that have died.
[00:14:49] That's disgusting. All the flesh has rotted away. And the bones are sitting there bleaching in the sun. And God tells Ezekiel, okay, now preach prophesy to the bones, tell them to come to life. And the bones start rattling and they reattach themselves, right?
[00:15:05] And then he's to prophesy again. And then flesh grows and then there's all these bodies of men standing before him. And he says, prophesy to the wind, to the breath.
[00:15:17] And then God's wind, his breath comes and it breathes life into these men and they come alive again.
[00:15:23] And they said this, this is a metaphor for what God is going to do for his people when he restores his people back to the land of Canaan. You see, they were in exile and God's just saying he's going to restore them back to Israel. It isn't about an actual literal resurrection of bodies from, from graves. Something like this. People say this sort of thing today too.
[00:15:49] Isn't that sweet? God's going to restore his people. That's a wonderful picture. They say the same thing about Jesus resurrection, that there's this resurrection myth that Jesus was in a tomb and he came out. And it's this wonderful, beautiful myth about new life. And we see the same thing in nature every year in, in the spring when the flowers start Growing again. You have life coming out of death. There's new hope for you every year. And Jesus, resurrection is just another way of talking about hope for life.
[00:16:22] That's a problem because that's not what the Bible teaches. But it is a problem that we wrestle with.
[00:16:30] It's a problem of the power of resurrection. Is this really possible?
[00:16:37] When the Sadducees come to Jesus, these are the guys, the teachers, the Jewish teachers who don't believe that resurrection is going to happen. They come and they think they can trip Jesus up with this story. It's not possible that the resurrection could happen.
[00:16:53] It's basically what they say to him.
[00:16:56] And Jesus answers, you can look it up. It's in Mark, chapter 12. I'll read verse 24 here.
[00:17:02] Jesus answers, is this not the reason that you are wrong?
[00:17:07] Because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God?
[00:17:15] The Scriptures, the Old Testament scriptures, clearly taught that God would raise the dead. He says, you're not believing those.
[00:17:22] Not only are you not believing those, you don't understand the power of God.
[00:17:27] That's your problem. And that's one of our problems when we consider this idea of resurrection. Maybe we're looking at life in a scientific way and we say, well, we can't, under our microscope or anywhere else, observe resurrection, so it can't possibly be true.
[00:17:47] Can you take your body, burn it, scatter its ashes, put it back together and breathe life into it again?
[00:17:56] You can't. I can't.
[00:17:59] But Jesus says God can.
[00:18:02] And it makes perfect sense that God could.
[00:18:06] God made your body. He put life into it. He gave you a soul.
[00:18:12] He takes it away. He can give it back again.
[00:18:16] This is no problem for him. It's a problem for you and I, but it's not a problem for him.
[00:18:25] But there's a bigger problem of the resurrection, this general teaching of the resurrection.
[00:18:31] We have a problem with our doubts.
[00:18:33] We doubt God and his power. We don't understand it. Jesus says, you need to grapple with it and that problem will be resolved.
[00:18:42] Resurrection can happen, will happen, because God is powerful.
[00:18:49] But there's a second problem, and there's a bigger problem that flows out of this teaching of the resurrection.
[00:18:56] It's not just that God has the power to raise the dead. It's not just that he can raise the dead. The problem for every man, woman and child, the problem is that God will raise the dead.
[00:19:10] And that that's really a problem that we need to grapple with.
[00:19:16] We think that death is a problem.
[00:19:19] Death is just like the beginnings of the problem, death happens in this lifetime, and it puts an end to our sin and all the misery that we caused through our sin and rebellion against God. So God, in the curse after we started sinning, God said, you're going to die. And he put kind of a cap to the amount of death and misery and awfulness and sin that we can cause in this life by saying, one day I'm going to take your life.
[00:19:47] We think that's a problem, but it's just the beginning of the problem. Because when God comes again and raises every man, woman and child from the dead, he is going to raise us up to an eternity.
[00:20:03] We read this in Daniel 12. Two, many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
[00:20:20] That's a real problem.
[00:20:23] Death, physical death, is temporary.
[00:20:26] But everlasting shame and contempt, or other places, the Bible calls it everlasting death, that's a permanent problem.
[00:20:37] Physical life, you die, God will bring you back to life.
[00:20:40] But everlasting death, shame and contempt, or God's judgment, we call it, that's a permanent problem that flows from the problem of resurrection.
[00:20:53] Now, there's something of the meaning of resurrection, the general resurrection. And you can see why the disciples are grappling with this.
[00:21:01] What does this mean? We have to grapple with it.
[00:21:07] Secondly, we want to look at Jesus resurrection.
[00:21:12] It appears that they were grappling with the idea of resurrection generally, if you look at chapter 9, verse 10. But they're also thinking about it primarily in the context of Jesus saying that he is going to die and rise.
[00:21:33] There's a specific question here. They're wondering both about the general resurrection, but especially here. They're wondering, why does this Jesus have to die and rise?
[00:21:47] Now, they had just seen something remarkable. These three men, Peter, James, and John, with Jesus. They had gone up on a very high mountain, it says, and there they'd seen a vision where these two Old Testament figures, Moses and Elijah, appeared.
[00:22:03] Men we thought were gone. One of them definitely died. And God buried him. Moses and the other one, God took him away. Here they are in front of us.
[00:22:13] That's a mystery.
[00:22:15] But they saw something special about Jesus. They saw him shining with divine glory, that is God's glory shining brightly in him. And then they hear a voice from heaven, from God. This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
[00:22:36] They had seen clear, indisputable proof.
[00:22:40] God speaking directly to them so that they would know that this Jesus, whom they were following around was his Son, the Son of God, therefore God himself in the flesh, and that he had come to set up God's kingdom.
[00:22:55] In other words, that all of the things they believed and knew from the Old Testament, that one day God would send a Savior who would deal with the problems of men's sin, who would deal with all of the results of sin, the misery, conflicts, problems all over the world. God is going to come and through his Son, Jesus Christ, he's going to deal with all of these problems, set everything right, and. And then we'll enter eternal life through him.
[00:23:23] They had seen the proof of this on the Mount of Transfiguration.
[00:23:28] Here he is, our Savior, our Messiah, God's Son.
[00:23:33] This is it.
[00:23:35] It's happening.
[00:23:37] This is that salvation we've waited for, for hundreds of years.
[00:23:43] And Jesus, you're telling us you have to die and rise.
[00:23:49] You can see why they struggled.
[00:23:54] Why does the King, God, have to die and rise?
[00:24:00] It's an important question to wrestle with.
[00:24:04] What does it mean? What do you mean, Jesus, that you, the Son of God, will die and rise?
[00:24:13] Well, this is what he's been teaching. Mark 8, 31. He began to teach them that the Son of Man. It's a reference to himself as the Messiah. He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
[00:24:31] And he said this plainly.
[00:24:35] And then in our text this evening we read that he said not only that the Son of Man would rise from the dead, but in verse 12, that the Son of Man should suffer many things and be treated with contempt.
[00:24:52] That's a second time, a third time. Mark 9, 31. For he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, the Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him.
[00:25:05] And when he is killed, after three days, he will rise.
[00:25:10] He explains this a couple more times in the Gospel, but here, here in verse 10 of Mark, chapter 9, I'm sorry, verse 9, Jesus directly connects his rising from the dead with what happened on the mountain. Don't tell anyone about my glory, about what you saw, that I'm God and I'm bringing all of his salvation.
[00:25:38] Don't tell anyone about that until after I rise from the dead. There's a direct connection between the two. I have to die and rise before this glory business can happen, before the good salvation stuff can happen. I have to die and rise.
[00:25:56] And to give you hope and encouragement as you watch me Suffer and die. You got to see a glimpse of my glory.
[00:26:03] Seems to be what he's saying here.
[00:26:07] In order for all of that to happen, for the kingdom of heaven to come, for all to be made right in the world, for my glory to shine, I have to die and rise.
[00:26:22] What does the resurrection from the dead mean with reference to Jesus?
[00:26:29] I think Jesus is saying something like this.
[00:26:32] I have to die because in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.
[00:26:41] I have to die because you took from the tree and ate.
[00:26:47] I have to die because every single one of you since Adam was born a rebel.
[00:26:56] And because you're rebels, you deserve death.
[00:27:02] Yes, one day God will take come and take your life and give you physical death.
[00:27:09] But then someday in the future, he's going to come and restore that physical life only so that he can put you into eternal death.
[00:27:20] And so in order to save you from that eternal death, I have to go to the cross and die.
[00:27:28] I have to bear hell for you.
[00:27:33] And then I have to rise from the dead.
[00:27:38] When I come back from the dead, I will have the power to give life, not just physical life.
[00:27:45] That's the easy part.
[00:27:48] I will have the power to give eternal life.
[00:27:52] In other words, he's saying, you need me alive so that you can enter God's presence and be his friend.
[00:27:59] So that you can. Everything that happened in the garden can be reversed. And I can take you back to the Father.
[00:28:08] When I rise, I rise a conquering king. I rise with the glory of the Son of God.
[00:28:15] I rise as a son whose Father is well pleased because my work is finished.
[00:28:26] Jesus is saying, I'm going to rise in that majesty that you just saw a glimpse of.
[00:28:32] And I rise with the power to give life to undeserving souls.
[00:28:40] That's the meaning of Jesus resurrection.
[00:28:44] And that's important.
[00:28:46] That means that in a way that there never was before, since Adam took and ate from the tree, there is now a way for rebels to rise from the dead. Not just physical death.
[00:28:59] That was going to happen.
[00:29:00] No getting around that.
[00:29:02] There's a way for rebels who deserve eternal death to rise to eternal life.
[00:29:09] There's a way out of darkness and into life.
[00:29:15] Now think again about Jesus. Words to Martha.
[00:29:19] I am the resurrection and the life.
[00:29:22] Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet he shall live.
[00:29:28] And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.
[00:29:34] That's eternal life.
[00:29:36] Jesus is saying, I'm it.
[00:29:40] The one standing before you is the guy that has the power not just to raise your brother from the Dead once, but to take him and you and everyone else who believes in me, to take them all into everlasting life. Life.
[00:29:55] You're staring at the source.
[00:29:59] That's what the resurrection of Jesus means.
[00:30:02] What does it mean for you?
[00:30:06] Jesus didn't just promise these things, he went and did them.
[00:30:11] So what does it mean for you that he died and rose in Acts 17, verse 31. If you're taking references, Paul says this about Jesus resurrection. He says God has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.
[00:30:35] He's set the judgment day.
[00:30:37] He's determined who the judge is. He's fixed the day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.
[00:30:45] And of this he has given assurance by raising him from the dead.
[00:30:58] Let's restate that.
[00:31:02] God has made a promise to everyone on the face of the earth.
[00:31:09] The day of judgment is set.
[00:31:13] And the way that you can know that is I raised the judge from the dead.
[00:31:19] And one day he's going to come and execute my judgment in righteousness.
[00:31:27] Jesus was made, in his resurrection, the king and judge of all men, not just people who come to him, not just Christians who profess his name.
[00:31:37] He's the king and judge of every man, woman and child who ever lives.
[00:31:48] And the calendar date is set.
[00:31:51] I don't know where it is. Can't find it on my apple calendar.
[00:31:56] I don't know. But God knows and it's fixed.
[00:32:00] Hebrews says it's appointed once for man to die. So our death date is also set.
[00:32:06] But this isn't that.
[00:32:07] This is the judgment date. It's fixed.
[00:32:13] You have a calendar appointment with King Jesus as judge.
[00:32:22] And one day, when that day comes, you'll be somewhere lying in a grave, ashes scattered, your body floated away at sea when you drowned whatever gruesome death you can think of. Wherever you are that day, when it comes, you will hear the voice of the Son of God.
[00:32:46] And he will call you out of the tomb or out of the ocean or wherever it is. And you in an instant will be back to life.
[00:32:56] And his voice will not just call you back to life, but it will call you down before his throne.
[00:33:06] This resurrection business is personal.
[00:33:13] Remember we said that the resurrection means there's a problem.
[00:33:17] This is that problem.
[00:33:20] If you're a rebel when he calls you before his throne, if you haven't bowed the knee to him, if you haven't come to the resurrection and the life and received forgiveness and life from him, then you have a big problem, because you're a rebel being brought before a king who's in judgment mode.
[00:33:41] And he will judge in righteousness, which means you lose. You're guilty and away to everlasting judgment.
[00:33:52] The Bible's teaching on this is very clear. We talk about the resurrection, but for many of us, it's still a problem.
[00:34:00] It's not something to look forward to.
[00:34:03] There's two outcomes. We read them. There's a resurrection to life and a resurrection to death.
[00:34:09] The key here is, do you know Jesus?
[00:34:15] When Jesus speaks to Martha, he isn't just speaking to Martha. He made sure that his glorious, merciful, loving, compassionate words were written down in the Book of John and bound into Bibles so that One day, here, 2,000 years later, you would hear his words.
[00:34:33] The words he spoke to Martha. He speaks now to you.
[00:34:38] He says, not to Martha, but to you. I am the resurrection and the life.
[00:34:45] Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet he shall live.
[00:34:51] And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.
[00:34:57] Jesus came to solve your problem of the resurrection, to make it not a problem, but the grandest blessing, grander than any of us could ever imagine.
[00:35:11] He came to take you from a resurrection of death to a resurrection of life.
[00:35:20] Now, there's one more thing he said to Martha, and he says it to you tonight. He says, I am the resurrection and the life.
[00:35:27] Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.
[00:35:32] And this is the next thing he said.
[00:35:34] Do you believe this?
[00:35:38] The promise is that if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
[00:35:50] Let's pray.
[00:35:54] Our great God and our King.
[00:35:59] We confess that our minds are really small and our hearts are full of doubts.
[00:36:10] As we think about these things, resurrection seems impossible. It seems far away and distant.
[00:36:20] And the problems it brings we easily can dismiss as myths and fairy tales.
[00:36:29] O Lord our God, we ask that you, by the power of your spirit would open our hearts and minds so that we can clearly see Jesus on the throne, that he is reigning, that that day is set, that this is the real deal.
[00:36:50] Help us to see that and help us to be drawn to Jesus, the Lamb on the throne. The Lamb who was slain for sinners and who now reigns.
[00:37:03] O Lord Jesus, we ask that you would drive out the darkness and sin and unbelief and that you would fill our hearts with light and life and joy. Give us faith.
[00:37:16] We believe, Lord Jesus, but help our unbelief.
[00:37:20] Amen.
