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Power Trusted and Proclaimed
11 Plays4 days ago
Series: Discernment of Jesus' Person
Mark 4:35-5:20
Recommended
Transcript
Humorous Sermon Introduction
00:00:02
Speaker
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1-1. And I know I can see it in your face. Lord, we're never going to get to the Thanksgiving dinner if he's starting there.
Apostle Paul's View on Jesus' Power
00:00:17
Speaker
If you believe that God is indeed the creator of all things, can I get an amen? The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Colossians said, Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn, over all creation, for By Him all things were created both in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers, all things were created through Him and
Affirming Belief in God's Power
00:00:44
Speaker
for Him. For He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together, in that everything He might have complete and utter supremacy. If you believe God reigns supreme overall, can I get an amen?
God's Omnipotence and Omniscience
00:01:02
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The Psalmist writes, great is our Lord, and abundant is his power, his understanding is beyond measure.
00:01:14
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If you believe that our Lord is all-powerful and all-knowing and ever-present, meaning he's with you always, can I get an amen?
Worry in the Face of God's Power
00:01:24
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Why is it then, friends, when the storms of life hit us, we worry and we fear?
00:01:32
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If he is indeed over everything, both natural and supernatural, why do we worry?
00:01:44
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For some of us, ah the storm doesn't even need to come in for us to start worrying. but We simply see the dark clouds on the horizon, and the worrying starts to happen, and the fear starts to happen.
00:02:03
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Janice has left the school district.
00:02:09
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Mary is going to take Janice's place. Do you know what that means? What's that mean for me and my job? You know how Mary is. She's so anti. And the wording just starts. What does that mean for my job? Mary's going to be my boss.
00:02:33
Speaker
Is she gonna let me go? And the fear and the worry starts happening. Friends, the storm hasn't even hit. Janice hasn't even left the school district, and Mary hasn't even taken her job, and yet you're sitting there worrying. If we indeed believe in the power of Jesus, that he has to save us from life's storms, why are we so fearful when when those storms come?
Jesus' Power Illustrated in Sea Voyages
00:03:01
Speaker
This is what we're gonna look at today and Mark chapter four, verses 35 through all of chapter five, verse 20, to which when you read that, you think that is a lot to cover, much like your Bible study lesson was today in class. It's a lot to cover. Don't worry, I'm gonna tie it all together for us in a real pretty boat. We're gonna look first at, if you have your outline with you, situations of calamity that cause fear.
00:03:32
Speaker
These are the storms of life that cause us fear. This is what we're gonna look at first. The solution to that problem we're gonna see second is trusting in the power of Jesus for he is over and above nature in what I call super nature or supernatural. And third, how can we faithfully proclaim the power of Jesus over those storms in our lives that for some reason always cause us fear? Mark chapter four.
Calming the Storm: Nature Obeys Jesus
00:04:02
Speaker
I thought this week, am I going to put these verses up on the screen or am I going to do what every Baptist preacher has done since the beginning of time? Would you please pull out your Bible if you have it with you? why do i Why do I want you to look at your Bible? Because what I want you to see today, and if you don't have one, there's plenty there in the pews in front of you.
00:04:23
Speaker
What I want you to do is I want you to be looking at God's word, not looking at the screen, because what I will teach is directly from God's word. And I want you to see it so that when you go home, you can discuss it with your family. And you'll know it's not my opinion, but it is right here from the scriptures. Mark chapter four is fantastic in the narrative of the stories that unfold here in in chapter four.
00:04:52
Speaker
and in chapter five and in the week to come, chapter six. What we're gonna see is several sea voyages that happen in Mark's gospel. There's three of them. There's actually four, but three of them are really, really eventful. And the first of these sea voyages, we're gonna see today. And you're gonna see that it's referred to as going on a sea trip to the other side.
Encounter with Unclean Spirits
00:05:20
Speaker
So if you're taking notes and you want to just write a little note to yourself to study something this week, just write to the other side. Because what they're going to do today is take a trip on a boat to the other side, to the the land of the Gentiles, where Jesus and His disciples are going to encounter some unclean things.
00:05:42
Speaker
unclean spirits, unclean pigs. Next week they're gonna see an unclean woman who's dealing with hemorrhaging, and of course that following week he's gonna deal with death itself, the ultimate of unclean ritualistic things. All of these stories, however, are tied together with one common thread, and that thread is Jesus has the power over all of these elements.
00:06:09
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He has the power over nature, over demons, over disease, and over death itself.
Jesus' Superiority Over Natural and Supernatural
00:06:16
Speaker
He is all-powerful. Say it with me. He is all-powerful. In your outline, the first point, I want you just to write right above the words natural and supernatural. You'll see those two words in your outline. Just write right above that Jesus's power.
00:06:35
Speaker
right over top of it. So when you read it back this week, you'll will be reminded Jesus' power is over both nature and super nature or the supernatural. Let's look at this first voyage, if you will, to the other side. This is chapter four, starting verse 35, and it reads, as evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, let's cross over to the other side.
00:07:04
Speaker
the other side of the lake, so they took Jesus in a boat and they started out, leaving the crowds behind them, although other boats indeed followed. But soon a fierce storm came up and the high waves were breaking into the boat and it began to fill with water. Now let's pause there. So you have Jesus and the disciples that are in the boat on the Sea of Galilee.
00:07:30
Speaker
And they're heading over to the other side where they're going to experience these unclean things. Now, if you know anything about geography in the Sea of Galilee, it sits about 700 feet below sea level. And to the northeast is Mount Hermon. Mount Hermon is 9,200 feet above sea level.
00:07:56
Speaker
So what happens, friends, is the cold air comes over top of the mountains down into the warm air that's on this sea and it stirs it up. Why is that important to know today? Because, friends, it still happens today on the Sea of Galilee. It is known for the sudden and ferocious storms.
00:08:16
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And they're on this boat with Jesus, it's just Jesus, and it's just them, and we're told, verse 37, that this fierce storm came
Disciples' Doubt and Jesus' Authority
00:08:26
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up. Your translation may say a great storm, a loud storm. This is our Greek word megas. It's magnificent. And the author does something here, and your translation may not do it justice, so I wanna give you the picture of what it's saying here.
00:08:46
Speaker
It says these high waves are breaking over the boat. This word epibalo. epi meaning to be on on top of or on po a upon, and ballo, which we learned about last week when we talked about parable, was paraballo, right? It was something thrown alongside. Well, this is something that's thrown on top of. The author's letting you know these waves almost have a ferocious human-like personification to themselves. they are These waves are beating the boat
00:09:25
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so violently that the water starts filling into the boat. Anybody ever been on open water before? I mean, where you can't see the land anymore and been in the middle of of a even a very mild storm? It is frightening because it lets you know just how small you are and just how big the sea is. It's ah it's a real feeling of helplessness when you're out there.
00:09:53
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But what's fantastic, if you look at the story, verse 38, it says, as the water is filling the boat and it's being beaten up by this storm, Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion. How many of you have read that and thought, that is an interesting detail. Why in the world would the author put that in there? In the midst of life's storms, when it seems so rocky, Jesus could almost care less.
00:10:22
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He's not bothered at all. Matter of fact, he has a head on the pillow and he's asleep. Why? Why is that detail important for us to know? Because he is over nature.
00:10:37
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If you have authority and dominion over nature, friends, when the storm comes, it doesn't bother you. You don't worry about it. The insiders should have known who Jesus was by this point. If you simply just flip back in your Bible, this is why I wanted you to have it today, just flip back and look at the head headings of each one of your sections.
Jesus' Control Over Chaos and Demons
00:11:02
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He heals many people. He heals the paralyzed people. He heals on the Sabbath.
00:11:11
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He heals. He heals. We get a couple of parables. We have this storm going on. Chapter five starts with, he heals.
00:11:23
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Friends, the disciples know who they're in the boat with. They know what he's capable of. But in the midst of the storm, don't miss this. How do they respond? Look what they say. And i asked I asked Darrell to turn up my mic just a little bit, because I want you to hear this. Teacher! Teacher! Don't you care about us? Don't you know we're going to drown?
00:11:54
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Friends, we often just read right past that. Verse 39 continues, when Jesus woke up, he rebuked the wind and he said to the waves, silence and be still.
00:12:16
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Stop that! And the wind calms. That's the picture here. They're worried about something that he already has power over. And instead of getting up and rebuking them, that's the irony of this little picture here. Ye of little faith. Hush. Hush, disciples. No. He says, hush, storm. And it says it goes from being violent to calm. Not just calm, but
00:12:53
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a great calm. Can you imagine that picture? You're out on the boat and the water's pouring in. No doubt the boat is tossing and turning. And at that moment, Jesus just says calm and it completely goes calm.
00:13:14
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I love what R. Allen Cole says here. He's an author and a theologian. He says, faith which the disciples should have had, is rightly defined as this, the ability to respond to a crisis with confidence in the power of God. These are the insiders. These are His people. That's why the author is very careful to let you know who's actually in the boat. It's Jesus and the insiders.
00:13:46
Speaker
These are the very people who should have known who he was and the capability to the ad, and they should have known that nature would obey him. But they say, teacher, teacher. Not Lord. Not Savior. Teacher. Don't miss that.
00:14:09
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He calms the storm. Look what it says how they respond. He says, why are you so afraid, verse 40? Do you still have no faith? Look at their response just before verse 40. It says, they were filled with what? With what? Y'all.
00:14:35
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Here's Jesus who has just calmed the storm and he took what was going to be a great violent storm and he now made it a great calm water to which they respond being gratefully fearful. Who is this man? They say. That even the wind obeys him.
00:15:00
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It's almost laughable if you're a disciple. Really? You're in the boat, you know what he's capable of, and you're asking yourself, who is this man? We go from a violent storm to a violent man. Look at me, verse one of chapter five.
Transformation of the Demon-Possessed Man
00:15:18
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So they arrived at the other side.
00:15:24
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in the region of the Gerasenes. And when Jesus climbed out of the boat, a man possessed by an evil spirit came out from the tombs and met him. This man lived in the burial caves and could no longer be restrained, even with a chain. Whenever he was put into change and shackles,
00:15:42
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As he often was, it says he snapped the chains from his wrist and smashed the shackles. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Verse five says day and night he wandered among the burial caves in the hills howling and cutting himself with sharp stones. Do you see this picture? Who is this guy? He's a demon possessed man who is violent. He's unbridled.
00:16:11
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He can't be shackled just like the storm. It's no coincidence the author is telling us right after this violent storm we have this violent man. He's saying there's there's some commonalities he wants to point out to us. He says this man is so bad off he wreaks havoc not only upon those around him but himself. Not even chains could restrain him. He lives among the dead.
00:16:43
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It says, I like this word here, subdue. He can't be subdued. this This word here in the Greek is also used in James. It's to subdue an animal, a wild animal. That's the picture what the author's saying. This guy is like a wild animal.
00:17:02
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He's just like that wild storm. We know how the disciples reacted in the boat. How's this wild man gonna respond? Look with me.
00:17:15
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Says verse six, when Jesus was still some distance away, the man saw him and ran to meet him and bowed lowly, bowed at Jesus' feet. And with a shriek he screamed, why are you interfering with me? Jesus, say it with me, son of the most high. But wait a This is a demon-possessed man. and
00:17:47
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This is an outsider. How did the insiders respond to Jesus? Teacher. But we have an outsider who says, Jesus, you're the son of the Most High.
00:18:04
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In the name of God, I beg you, don't torture me. For Jesus had already said to the spirit, come out of this man, you evil spirit. And then you know the rest of this story. What is your name? It's Legion. And he takes this, all these evil spirits, and he takes what is unclean. Don't miss this. This is funny. I want to hear a laugh. He takes what's unclean in this spirit, evil spirit, and he takes it and he throws it into the unclean pigs, right?
00:18:41
Speaker
This demon that's unclean that causes so much chaos and calamity, he takes it unclean and throws it to the unclean pigs, and he sends the pigs into where? The sea. The sea, y'all, for those of you who are who love to study your Bible and know a little bit more, the sea almost always represents chaos in the Bible.
00:19:08
Speaker
So he's taking something that's unclean and chaos in itself, but he puts it in the unclean pig and he sends it off the ledge and they go drowned in the sea. It's a beautiful picture, the way the authors put this together.
00:19:24
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To which you ask yourself, what a sight that must have been.
00:19:35
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Imagine if you're there with Jesus as ah just a fly on the wall, and you have this guy that's the dredge, right cutting himself dirty, bleeding, chains hanging off himself, violent, living among the tombs, and he runs and throws him at himself at the feet of Jesus.
00:19:57
Speaker
And in a word, just like he says to the wind, be silent and the wind obeys him, Jesus says to the demonic, get out, get out of him. And he tells us a very important lesson right here that the church needs to learn. Quite often what we wanna do is we wanna send the man out of the church. But what he says here is, demon, you get out of that man. You get out of that man.
00:20:26
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you leave that man alone." And the man responds, how? Look with me.
00:20:37
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Verse 14, he says, the herdsmen fled to the nearby town and the surrounding countryside, and they start spreading news about what had happened. People rushed out to see what had happened. Verse 15, a crowd soon gathered around Jesus and they saw the man that had been possessed at one point, who was no longer possessed, he was sitting there fully clothed, perfectly sane, and they were all, say it, greatly afraid.
00:21:09
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As Jesus is getting into the boat, the man who had been demon possessed, pleaded with him, please take me with you. You've changed my life so radically I must follow you." To which Jesus says, no, here's what I want you to do. Go back to your family and tell them everything that the Lord has done for you and how merciful he has been. So the man started off to the 10 towns, verse 20 says, of that region and began to proclaim
00:21:48
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the great things Jesus had done for him, and everybody was amazed at what had been told.
Emulating the Healed Man's Testimony
00:21:54
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The very response Jesus was expecting from the disciples, the faith that was expected to be seen from the disciples in the boat is shown by a man who was delivered from a demon. He couldn't control himself. I have to tell somebody. I have to be with Jesus.
00:22:17
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Friends, this man demonstrated the true qualities of a disciple. One who has faith in the power of Jesus and who proclaims that power fearlessly to everybody he encounters.
00:22:31
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Let us put a note to myself. How can we be more like that guy? And you're like, really, pastor? You want me to be more like the guy that was just recently
00:22:45
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healed from the demon? Yes, I do. If you respond the way this guy does, when Jesus transforms your life, that you can't help but proclaim it to somebody else.
00:23:03
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What I like is just as we see the different reactions of people, right, we see that the disciple who should have reacted and responded one way didn't The crowds didn't understand Jesus. They were afraid of him. But the one person we probably wouldn't expect to respond the way he did was this guy that got healed.
00:23:27
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So how do we proclaim the power of Jesus over the storms in our lives? How do we do that? That's where I want to land today. Just a couple of practical,
00:23:42
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ways that we can walk out of here today.
00:23:48
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Two words I want you to write.
Journaling Personal Experiences of Jesus
00:23:50
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Remember and recall. Remember and recall. Why is it important to write down, by the way? Why do we provide the outline? Why do we have you take notes? It's for your benefit, not for mine. It really isn't. I take notes all week long.
00:24:08
Speaker
What it does is it helps me to remember, because I'm writing it, so not only do I learn it, I write it, and then I'm thinking about it, and then I review it during the week. That's the power of writing notes. Remember and recall, how do we remember the times Jesus has saved us from life's storms? That's the first question. How do we do that? The first way, oh, and by the way, there's only two points today. Happy Thanksgiving.
00:24:36
Speaker
I'm going to say something that I've said before, so if you have taken notes, you're going to write this down and you're going to say, yeah, he's mentioned this before. It's journaling. It's journaling. It's taking notes on a longer scale.
00:24:51
Speaker
And I've said this before, it's hard to do this. Unless you're really gifted in this area where you like writing stuff down, this is a skill that pays for itself tenfold, but you really have to work at it. How do we remember what Jesus has done for us, how he showed up in our lives, so that when Janice leaves the job and Mary's taking her place, we don't start freaking out?
00:25:24
Speaker
Well, it's simple. We go back and we review the journals. The journal, what we do is we write what storm that we're facing, and then we write a Bible verse that contradicts that storm. So the storm says, I may lose my job.
00:25:44
Speaker
But the Bible verse says, God's in control over everything. Matter of fact, He's in control over Janus and Mary. Matter of fact, He's allowing Janus to leave and Mary to take her spot.
00:25:58
Speaker
He's all-powerful. He's all-knowing. He knows what He's doing so that when you accept that and He takes you through that storm, and I don't want you to miss this, He's not going to take you around that storm.
00:26:14
Speaker
It just doesn't work that way. He's gonna let you go through that storm, but he's gonna be with you, just like he was with the disciples in the boat. And he's he's asking you, and he's asking me, do you have the faith to realize I am over that storm? So when he does take you through it and you get to the other side, oh look, I used the other side, that wasn't even on purpose. When he takes you through that storm and you get to the other side, friends, you write it down.
00:26:43
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Oh, this is a reminder. This is how, this is how he delivered me from that.
Power of Sharing Testimonies
00:26:50
Speaker
We have a good friend of ours that, uh, I think I've mentioned recently, he had a brain tumor. Uh, things were not looking great. Diagnosis was not great. Um, nobody wanted to do surgery on him. It was a spot in the brain that they just thought that it was not a good outcome regardless.
00:27:10
Speaker
They found one guy recently who came from out of the country who came here who operated just the other week and he made it through our friend. um The prognosis better than what it looked like. I think they said if there was no s surgery it would have been less than a year. Now they're giving them five to seven years and they think the recovery is going to go oh like they're anticipating. There might be some loss of vision. There may be some loss of word recognition. But friends, this friend of ours, this lady, she's journaling for everybody to see the struggles of what they're doing. She she makes the joke that they they do flip cards for him. And she says they'll show a picture of a cat, and then he has to say cat, or they'll pick a picture of a dog.
00:27:56
Speaker
And she says, some days are great. Some days, you know, he's getting three out of every five, and then they let him rest. She said, for some reason, he keeps giving the pin to their ATM card. So, show a picture of a cat, and he'll say, five, two, one, four.
00:28:12
Speaker
And she's like, what in the world is 5214? She goes, it took me several days to realize that's the pin to my ATM card. She goes, and we laugh about it now. you know It's sad that he can't recognize that. But she goes, isn't it amazing how what the mind does and what it remembers and what it chooses to forget? she's She's almost brutally honest in this journaling to let you know the struggles that she's having, the struggles he's having, but yet how God is coming in and intervening.
00:28:40
Speaker
and providing grace and peace and mercy in a time which is, if you can't call this a life storm, I don't know what it is. Many of you have experienced something like this in your own lives. Write it down, review it so that it strengthens your faith. Journal, journal, journal, I cannot stress that enough. Second, and when I heard Brother Pease say this today in class, I thought, thank you, Lord, for reinforcement.
Recognizing Jesus as Savior
00:29:09
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Second is your testimony.
00:29:13
Speaker
This is the recall portion. So the journaling is remember, this is the recall. As modeled by the ex-demoniac, he went out to all the towns and all the areas to proclaim what Jesus had done in his life. He gave his testimony, right? The beauty of the testimony is it's unique to each one of us.
00:29:39
Speaker
You don't have to have a Paul, Apostle Paul testimony. You don't have to have a next demoniac testimony. But you do have to have a testimony. You do have to let people know, this is where I was at one point. This is what Jesus has done and is doing now in my life.
00:30:04
Speaker
and You'd be surprised how many people respond to the most generic and basic of testimonies. You don't have to have some massive conversion, or you're living in the gutter, or you're in the tombs, or you're a drug dealer, or you're an abuser, or an alcoholic. You don't need to have that type of testimony.
00:30:25
Speaker
You simply need to say this is what Jesus has done in my life and he's radically transformed me and he's still, and I love this term when I hear somebody else say it, I'm still a work in progress.
00:30:40
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Because what that does is that immediately identifies that person who is not a believer in what they're struggling with to go, you know what, this guy or this lady doesn't have it all figured out just yet. God's still working on them. He's still transforming them. He's still strengthening their faith. And some days it's much better than others.
00:31:03
Speaker
I'll just put just a quick note for myself and more more for you.
00:31:10
Speaker
If you don't realize you need a savior, it's okay to call Jesus a teacher or a prophet or a good man. But let me tell you something. If you need a savior, you better call him savior. He's not gonna respond to teacher or friend. How many times I've heard pastors say that?
00:31:40
Speaker
I just love that Jesus is my friend. Is Jesus your friend? You bet he is. But he's your savior. He reaches down in the most dire spot that you are in and he pulls you up out. He takes the water that's pouring in the boat and he scoops it out and he tells the raid, stop.
00:32:01
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ah
00:32:04
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That's the man That's the son of the Most High, who deserves the title Savior. Friends, if that's you today and you don't know him as Savior, when when Judy plays here in just a minute, please, please, please come forward.
00:32:25
Speaker
Brother Pease was so eloquent today. There's two destinations for you, and they're both eternal. You're either gonna be eternally apart from Jesus, or you're gonna be eternally with him.
00:32:38
Speaker
If you don't realize you're heading for eternal hell, you don't realize just how dire your situation is. My prayer for you today is that your eyes are opened and the Holy Spirit convicts you and He lets you know that there's only one way, and that is through Jesus, to be saved.
00:32:59
Speaker
If you believe that God is the creator of all things, can I get an amen? If you believe that He is supreme over all things, can I get an amen? If you believe that He is Lord and over your life, that He's all-powerful and all-knowing and ever-present, can I get an amen? May we be a people that trusts that and proclaims that to the world.