In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the blindness of men to the glory of God, as they fail to recognize Him in His son. The sermon focuses on two main points: the perfect physician at work and the ideal patient. The preacher describes a scene where Jesus heals a blind man, illustrating the spiritual condition of the disciples who were also blind to the truth. The preacher warns against the danger of pretending to have complete understanding and maturity in the Christian faith when in reality, there is still much to learn and grow in. The sermon emphasizes the importance of humility, honesty, and a reliance on God's word for true spiritual growth.

Well now, shall we turn prayerfully together to Mark chapter 8, to the record of the healing of a blind man at Bethsaida. And you have that record beginning with verse 22 and proceeding to verse 26. Mark 8 verses 22 to 26. I have entitled this message, Blind Eyes Made to See. Now I don't think it's necessary for us to read the words again since we have done so once, and you're going to have your New Testaments open before you. This miracle of healing is exceedingly precious, of course. It's precious for two counts. It's exceedingly so because it brings to a man who had probably been born blind, though we can't be certain of that, if he was not born blind, then he had been blind for a considerable amount of time. And it brings to him again the precious, precious gift of sight. And therefore were there no other consideration whatsoever, the miracle is a very precious one. But it is doubly precious because it is also a sermon, a message to the onlooking disciples, as well as a ministry to the sightless man of the story. Jesus had earlier addressed his rather obtuse followers, you will remember, with these words in verse 18. If you've got good memories, you'll remember we heard Greg Scharf expound considerably on this and very profitably. Look at this question. Do you, now we're talking to the disciples. Jesus was talking to the disciples now, not this blind man. We hadn't got to Bethsaida then. Do you have eyes but fail to see and ears but fail to hear? Do you have eyes but fail to hear? Do you have eyes but fail to see? The disciples were no longer utterly blind spiritually. They had never been blind physically. They were no longer utterly blind. They were able to see some things with some measure of clarity. Even so things were still in a little bit of a haze. Their vision was far from clear so that their gracious master, superbly blessed man, brings together in this one miracle a physical benefit for one man and a spiritual benefit for them. If you read carefully, you will find that our Lord is, dare I use the old saying, killing two birds with one stone, but he's not killing anyone of course. He's bringing a message to them all and he's bringing sight to the blind in both cases. In the one case physical and in the other case spiritual. We do well to remember of course, particularly if this is new to us and we have not seriously studied the Gospels, we need to remember that the granting of sight to the blind was one of the predicted, prophesied ministries of the Messiah. In the Old Testament, as the prophets foretold the coming of God's Deliverer that God was going to send into the world to be man's only Savior, one feature of his life was said to be this. He will be able to bring sight to the blind. Many other things were included of course, but this was one of them. Our Lord Jesus Christ when he presented himself in the synagogue, the Jewish synagogue in Nazareth where he was born or where he went to live as a child, he quoted from the book of the prophet Isaiah and one statement in his quotation was this. He, that is God, he has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and the recovery of sight to the blind. So that you see when Jesus was healing blind people he was doing what the Old Testament had predicted he would do if he were the Messiah. The Messiah would do this kind of thing. We are not surprised in the light of such a passage that Jesus healed this physically blind man, nor that he and his apostles often referred to the spiritual experience of grace of becoming a Christian as one of the restoration of sight. You often have this in the New Testament. The whole experience of salvation, of being saved, of becoming a Christian, of becoming a child of God, it's described in terms of having our sight restored. Jesus said for example in John 9.39, for judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind. The blind again, Paul described his divine commission as being sent, quote, to open their eyes, the Gentiles, to open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me. The spiritual condition of the world is reflected in these words of Paul. The God of this age or of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel even though that gospel be the gospel of the glory of Christ and Christ is the image of God. What he's saying is this. The all glorious God has come down in his all glorious son and he stands before men and they don't recognize him as the person he is. Men are blind. Now, bearing these things in mind, let's take a glimpse of the passage before us and I want us to look in turn at two things, particularly the first I shall have very little to say about the second. I want us to take a glimpse of the perfect physician at work and then perhaps a few words concerning the ideal patient. I was going to take an entirely different tack and I was going to fasten on one or two of the main threads in this text and then I kind of sat back and saw the magnificent picture that we have before us and when I considered that the main purpose of the gospels is to bring forth the excellences and the glories of the Lord Jesus Christ so that men seeing him may worship him and trust him and come to know God the Father, I determined this is our tack for Sunday morning and here it is. Let me share it with you. The perfect physician at work. You see, our Lord Jesus Christ manifested his perfection in every kind of circumstance. This is one. First of all, I would like you to see our Lord in his approach to this patient who has need, a desperate need. He's blind. Now I want you to see his perfection in the establishing of ideal relations with the patient. We read in verse 23, the first part, he took the blind man by the hand and he led him outside the village. Now most of us know something about the importance of being properly related to our physician or surgeon in times of physical stress so that we can the better appreciate our Lord's attempt to put this man at ease and to secure his confidence and this is what we have here. And the point I want to get across, you see, is the sheer understanding of Jesus. He is divine but he is God incarnate and I want you to see his concern as the God man to put the patient at ease before he prescribes or rather before he exercises the sovereign work of a surgeon. Now try to visualize the situation. We're in Bethsaida. There is a babel of confusing voices of friends and of strangers that this blind man hears. He can't see. Now most of us here this morning, if not all of us, we've got the gift of sight and we really cannot enter into the experience of anybody that's blind. Now remember, this man hasn't seen exactly the situation around him. He can't see the buildings. He can't see the road. He can't see the trees if there are any. He can't see the features of anybody around. He can't see nothing. And he's been suddenly brought here by some friends who are concerned that he should talk to Jesus and Jesus might do something for him. He's come into a strange place. He's been brought by his friends, but everything is new and he can't see anything. But he's just hearing this babel of voices, this clatter and chatter of the crowds. All of them are strange. And he is the central figure of it all. And then he's no sooner arrived than he hears his friends. He knows their voices. You see, he hears his own friends who have brought him, begging of this stranger from Galilee that he would touch him, touch him, touch their friend, touch the blind man. How very self-conscious the poor blind man must have felt as he became the subject of the conversation of the throng and the object of men's scrutiny and the anguished appeal of others. He could hear their clatter. He can hear their cries. He can hear everything. Perhaps he can hear better than other people. Generally, those who are blind can hear better than others. They're more sensitive. But oh, how lonely he feels and how estranged and how sensitive to what on earth is going on, and perhaps fearful. Then he felt a hand, the touch of a hand. Then a voice said something to him. I don't know what he said. And the hand gradually got hold of his arm. And we see these two who've never met before. We see Jesus putting his arm into the arm of the blind man and gradually leading him away from the center of the crowd that had gathered toward an unspecified destination. And we see them beginning to get into conversation on the way. Now, please try and get that in your mind. Jesus has gone into the crowd, as it were, to extricate this man in order to take him aside for some purpose or other. And I have no hesitation in saying that we have a good key as to what the explanation is. Jesus knew how the man felt. He knew how nervous he must have been. He knew how awkward the man must have felt in a situation where he could see nothing and everybody was strange. And so he takes him aside to a place where they can have comparative privacy. He takes him aside to a place where the man can have quietness to think as Jesus speaks to him and unfolds to him his purpose. In other words, he wants to take the man aside where Jesus can really minister to him and do much more for him than his friends ask on his behalf. Now, had the story ended there, it would have been a very wonderful day. You see, it's not often that you come across someone who really is as concerned for your comfort as Jesus was to this point. If every doctor, if every physician, if every nurse, if every teacher in a school, if every one of us had something of this, of this concern to put people at ease. If we were as sensitive to the fears and anxieties and phobias and nervousness of people as Jesus is here, I say to you that and that alone would be a marvelous revelation of the God of glory. I can never get across that statement in the Psalms where the psalmist says, your gentleness has made me great. Who's he talking to? He's talking about the almighty God, the Lord of all creation, who set the stars in their courses and holds the constellations in their places. The Lord God almighty. And then says the psalmist, your gentleness. Let not the greatness of God obliterate his gentleness from your thought or your mind. He is as gentle as he is great. And this is what comes out here. You see, he's concerned. He's concerned for the way this man feels. Establishing ideal relations with a patient. And if I was speaking to medical people, I would go a little further, but I will stop there this morning. The second thing, the employment of natural means in order to achieve his supernatural design. Now these two things are related. How is Jesus going to approach this apparently nervous man? This timid character, how, how's he going to approach the situation? How is he going to attempt to heal him? I use the word attempt. They don't know as yet, whether Jesus will or can. Assuming that he can, how is he going to approach it? What's he going to do? Well, listen to these words. Now they may take us by a little by surprise, but here they are. When he had split on the man's eyes, he put his hand on him and Jesus said, do you see anything? But now notice that was not as sudden as it appears here. Everything that I very, very briefly described, all that I've tried to describe in brevity had taken place before. So that Jesus has established rapport with a man and, and they've become a little bit friendly. They've walked arm in arm to that place, wherever they are at the present time. And so there is this rapport between them. I cannot begin to describe the traumatic experience. It normally is for a blind man to contemplate the period of hospitalization, even going to the doctor's office and all especially to surgery. Same thing as we referred to a little earlier on. He can't see anything. He can only hear. And therefore his fear and his dread and his anxiety, all these are multiplied over and over again. Now, how will Jesus approach that? Well, he could, as in other cases, he could, and the man would have been healed. He didn't do that. Why? Well, we're not told. I dare hazard a guess. And my guess is this, and it's only a guess, so don't treat it as anything else. But my guess is this right from the beginning, Jesus wanted to do much more for this man than the people had asked him to do. You know, in the Christian ministry, this is one of the great thrills as far as I'm concerned. Jesus Christ never does less than you ask him. He always wants to do more. And Jesus, I believe, wanted to do much more for this man. You see, he might have uttered the word, be healed, have your sight, and the man would have gone and the thing would have been done, but he wouldn't have known the Lord Jesus. And if he didn't know the Lord Jesus, he wouldn't have known the father. And so he would have died again and he would have lost his sight never more to find it spiritually or physically. But you see, Jesus wanted the man to know him because of the knowledge of him that is of Jesus comes the knowledge of God. And in order to do that, you see, he wants to prolong the experience a little. And so he doesn't do it all at once. He doesn't do it in one stage. He does it in two. But the thing I want you to notice now is this. Jesus proceeds with due regard to the sensitivities of the patient and he would not overwhelm him with one blinding flash of revelation. The man is nervous. The man is afraid. The man is timid. And Jesus doesn't want to overwhelm him like a steamroller. He doesn't do that. Neither should you and I try to do that. It's a staggering statement in the book of Revelation. And I think that those of us who preach the gospel and to teach Christian things should take this seriously. Jesus said, behold, I stand at the door and knock. He doesn't gate crash. He doesn't tear the door down and smash people up in order to save them. He doesn't disregard the reasoning processes and the conscience and the individuality of a person. Jesus, Jesus, the Son of God, stands at the door and knocks. And I say to you, if that is so, you and I have no right to tear the door down, even when we say we want to save the man inside. And it's that gentleness that we see here. This concern for the whole man. One common means, let me come nearer the point, one common means whereby folk attempted to heal blindness in these days was by the use of saliva. Now I don't know whether it worked or not. I just can't tell you. But this was a common method. And probably whatever physician you would have gone to in these days, the first thing you would have done would be to use spittle or saliva and bathe your eyes. And now don't laugh at these quaint people of yesteryear, because you do exactly the same thing. Of course you do. You like to think you're sophisticated. What do you do when you hurt your finger? In 90 cases out of a hundred. Isn't that right? Of course it is. We believe that there is some magic formula here, or at least it simplifies it and it hits soothing. Jesus knew about this, that this is what the man might probably expect. And if Jesus were to do something else, he would only add to the confusion and arouse the anxiety of the man. And it would be going into another new experience, which would shatter him emotionally, even if it healed him physically. And you see, it's his concern for the man. Oh, this is what I want to see. Someone here this morning who thinks Jesus doesn't care about you. He only wants to save your soul and get you to heaven. I tell you, no. He's concerned about your frayed nerves and he'll employ certain means which are applicable to you and your circumstances exclusively. He's concerned for you as if there were no one else in the world. And if I can say nothing else this morning, I believe it's worth coming to this pulpit to say that. And so you notice what Jesus does, he uses this old method. But now there's something that he did that no one else did. I'm going to mix my metaphors terribly. He kind of wrapped up in that little spot of spittle, which he must have got on the tips of his finger. He wrapped up in that his dynamic word. You see, before he spit on his own finger, Jesus had decided to heal the man. And the word that was expressive of his will, I say he had metaphorically wrapped up in the spittle or bathed in the spittle. And as he put the spittle, the saliva on the man's eyes, he conveyed not only bare natural saliva, but the almighty power that could only be communicated by himself. What appeared to be so natural actually conveyed the supernatural power of God. And that without exciting the poor patient who was so timid and so fearful. What a revelation of the sensitivity of the God man. His sensitivity to the needs and feelings and emotions of frail humans. My dear friends, I want you to be assured of that this morning. I'll not say it again, but oh my, we need it. And perhaps some of us need to be reassured of this very especially. The perfect physician, not one other thing. I see something of the perfections of the Lord Jesus in the execution of the miracle in stages best suited to the physician's purpose. When he had spit on the man's eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, do you see anything? He looked up and said, I see people. I have a feeling he got a bit excited. Don't you think? I see people. They look like trees walking around. Once more, Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes. Then his eyes were opened. His sight was restored and he saw everything clearly. Now we can hardly miss the fact that as well as being an act of generous sight giving to the blind man, this miracle was, as we've already indicated, a sermon in action. A sermon that also spoke directly to the spiritual condition of the disciples generally. Now thus seen, the episode clearly exposed the manifest ease with which Jesus of Nazareth delicately and purposefully exercised his healing power. Here is again something which reveals the excellence, the nobility, the greatness of the Savior. You see that he could heal a blind man was marvelous, but that he could employ his mighty power in such a manner that he can serve two ends at one and the same time is something which is over and above that. He wears his almighty power so lightly he can do what he wills with it under the will of God, subject to the will of God. So that you see he orders the affairs of the healing of this man in such a manner that at the same time he's preaching a sermon to the disciples that are looking on. Now I just want to say a word about his approach to the blind man here. The physician's perfection is reflected, I believe in part. By the way, he was not satisfied with anything less than the total restoration of sight, though it appeared at the beginning and halfway through as if he might be. But actually he was satisfied with nothing less. He wanted the best for this man on the plane of the physical to start off with. It's difficult to tell what mental or spiritual reaction secured, was secured from the patient by the procedure that Jesus employed. He put the saliva on his eyes and then asked him, do you see anything? And the man said, well yes, he says, I do. I see what I think must be men, but they look to me like trees on the move. What a graphic description, you see probably he was born blind. And this is how I see it. He says, they're all like trees. People have described trees to him. And he had the idea of trees standing with branches going out. And probably there were people waving their arms as they often do and did in the Middle East. And here he sees people, they're like trees moving around. He says, now was he disappointed or was he satisfied? I don't know. He had a measure of sight. How did he feel? I can't tell you. My impression is that Jesus' attitude towards the blind man to date and his conversation with him had created clear expectations in the man's heart and that he performed this miracle in two stages in order to focus attention upon himself. Now I've referred to this before, but I must come back to it. I believe that Jesus performed the miracle in two stages because he wanted the man's mind and heart to be focused upon himself, upon Jesus. Why? Because Jesus was self-centered? No. But because he was the only one in whom God is revealed and in and through whom God can be fully known and especially as Father and Savior. And so you see, he wanted to prolong the whole process. And so he performed the miracle in this way so that the man's thoughts should continue to linger upon himself. We all find it difficult to remember. Oh, we know it. If we were asked the question, we would answer without any hesitation that Jesus is greater than his gifts. But you see, so many of us, so many of us forget the giver if you can get the gift. You have a need this morning and you bring it to the Lord and you say, Oh Lord, give me what I need. Give me this. There's no one else that can give me this. And you'll pray and you may even shed tears of anguish in your prayer. You say, Oh God, give me this. I die without it. Do you know the tragedy of the human family? When we've got what we've asked for, we forget the giver. Which is only another way of saying that we attach a greater value to the gift than the giver. And what Jesus wants from this man is, is to prolong the vision of himself. He wants him to open his eyes ultimately and see before him the incarnate deity, to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ and know who it is. That's what he wants. I leave that there. I want you to see the perfections of our Lord, the execution of the miracle in two stages, particularly with relation to the blind disciples. I am persuaded that Jesus employed this method primarily in order to elicit the confession of the partly healed man in terms that exactly described the spiritual condition of the disciples as well as his own. Said the perplexed blind man, partly healed, I see people, but they look like trees walking around. My friends, that was exactly the spiritual condition of the disciples looking on. He couldn't have described it better. And if you remember Greg Schaaf's sermon two weeks ago, then you've got it. Of course they were changed from what they were when Jesus called them. They're not the same people at all. They're quite different. They're doing the different things. They're living a different kind of a life. Their life is on a new plane. Of course, they know that Jesus is Messiah. Of course, they know there is only one true God. Of course, they know something about the Holy Spirit and about much else, but they know nothing very clearly. Everything is in a haze. Everything's a little bit dulled and uncertain at times that they're not quite sure of hardly anything. If you challenge them, they say, yes, we believe that we know that, but really they didn't. And that came out. Of course, you remember when they had forgotten to take bread with them or to take sandwiches with them. And then Jesus told them now fellows, he said, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Herodians. By which, of course, Jesus meant unbelief, lack of faith. They scratched their heads in fury. What on earth is he talking about? And the best they could come up with was this. Well, he says this because we haven't got, we've forgotten to bring our sandwiches with us. Jesus wasn't talking about sandwiches at all. They had one loaf in the boat. And then Jesus said to them, without actually opening up the subject properly, he says, no, look, he says, don't you remember? Are you blind? Don't you see? Are you deaf? Don't you hear? And what's happened to your memories? Don't you remember? He says, I fed, I fed the five thousands and you picked up the pieces that were left. How many basketfuls? They had the right answer. Well, they remembered the facts all right. And then I fed the seven thousand and you picked up the pieces that remained. How many baskets? Well, they remembered all right. Well, now he says, can't you see it? And they were so blind. They couldn't. What's he getting at? What he's getting at is this. They know the facts, but they cannot see that in having Jesus, the miracle worker with them as their friend and savior in the boat or on land, then one loaf is enough. And if they have got one, he'll cope. But you see, they hadn't got it. They were half blind. Their eyes were dimmed. They could not see anything clearly. Doc. Finally, they said that they believed and they would have argued with you if you said they were not believers, but actually it was all a haze. Now, my friends, many of us may be in precisely that condition today. Let's not be foolish enough to build any pet theory of sanctification on the solitary method of our Lord's healing here in two stages. That would be ludicrous. Let us rather take the message at its face value and accept the image as indicating that the work of God is not complete in our lives at this stage. It may be real enough as far as it goes, but it needs to go a long way yet. And some of us sitting in Knox this morning would have to confess before God that we see, but we see things through a glass very darkly. We see, but we don't see anything perfectly. We see men as trees walking indistinctly, and we're not sure how to make of this and what to make of that. We are not the men we were. We've got some sight. We've come so far, but there's so much more to be done in us and upon us. In the words of Paul, to which I've referred, you remember the end of one Corinthians 13. Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now we know in part, but then we shall know even as we are ourselves known by God. Now there is a sense in which this need not reflect negatively upon any of us that the work of grace is not complete in our lives. I've never heard this said from a pulpit, but I want to say it this morning. There is a sense in which our imperfection does not reflect negatively upon anything, any of us. So what are you getting at? I'll tell you. God will never blame you because you're not walking about in your glorified body this morning. Well, why won't he? For this reason, that is something that is to come in the fullness of the time. Not yet, but then. God hasn't given you your new body yet, but the day will come, the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed, and we shall receive a new body like unto his glorious body, and so we shall be forever with the Lord. It'll come, but you see, you are not responsible for that this morning. That comes later on in God's program, and you and I can't hasten that. He's determined the day when that will take place, and he doesn't hold us responsible now for what he's going to do later on. Okay, let's get the point. Therefore, there is a sense in which what is imperfect in us may not be, may not mean that we are sinful. Hasten that process we cannot, but there may well be a sense in which we are culpable for the slow development of our spiritual life. Just as the disciples were at this stage. Like the disciples, we too sometimes see dimly and very dimly the Godhead beneath the humanity of Jesus. Like the disciples, we've really found him answering prayer and coming to our rescue many, many times in many, many circumstances, but still we doubt, still we can't trust, and let's come right to the point here. Still, even though he has taught us that man is a creature of God, a creation of God, made for God's glory and redeemed by the blood of Christ, still we but see men as trees walking. We don't see men for what they were meant to be in the purpose of God. We don't see man as the greatest creation of almighty God and what he was meant to be in this life and the world that is to come. We don't see men in that context at all. We just see men as the little preacher that moves around us, steps on our toes, smiles at us and says good morning, or doesn't, as the case may be. Let me get a little nearer home. Far too often we see men as trees, only for the way we can use them. I find this very challenging because, my friends, it is very, very much abroad. Rather than treat human beings as God's creatures, we treat men and women just for what we can get out of them and what they can minister to us. Now, I don't know how people use trees. There are many ways of using them. Some people just chop them up and get comfort out of them. Have a fire in the gret. It's very nice. Fire in the gret, isn't it? Beautiful. And there are people who chop up human characters like that. Now let's face it, you may be one of them, and your tongue may be a vile one and a wretched one, and you move into the weak, and you chop people up, and you throw them into the fire to please yourself and to get some measure of comfort from the assassination of a character. God have mercy on you. You see men as trees. You can make another use of the timber, the tree metaphor if you like. You can get the timber and you can make a wood that helps to build your home. But again, it's the same thing. It's to minister to your comfort. And you only see men and women and others around you insofar as they minister to your comfort, sexually, physically, or anyway. God have mercy upon us. And you see we're all guilty of this in some measure. All of us. I see men as trees walking. The point is, my friend, you need a second touch as much as that dear man who was blind, and as much as the disciples who, yes, they saw, and no, they didn't see anything clearly. Over against the entire landscape, however, looms the portrait of a Savior who is mighty to heal, mighty to serve, the one who is compassionate and caring as he is competent, and who is as wise in the method he chooses as he is wholehearted in the blessing he undeservedly imparts both to blind men and blind disciples. Will you give me just one minute and I'm through. I want you to notice the ideal patient here. I want to say three things about him and just leave them with you. I see something ideal in this patient here. First of all, in the way he cooperates with those who brought him to Jesus and then with Jesus himself. You see, we do not know with any certainty who they were. What I want you to notice is this. They knew that Jesus could do for this man what no one else could and what he couldn't do for himself. They knew what he did not apparently, and they brought him to Jesus. Now what I want to say is this. If you're spiritually blind, try to understand the concern of those who know that Jesus can give you sight. Don't fight against those who love you so much they want the best of heaven for you now. If there is someone who is trying to influence you to listen to the word of the gospel, to be present among people who know the Lord whilst time is yours, if there are those who are trying to bring you to the feet of the Savior, don't fight back. They know the sight giver. They know the physician and you don't. Don't then become belligerent. Cooperate. The other thing is this. Some of us may well copy the patient before us in his apparently total submission to Jesus Christ. A word of caution there. Make sure, of course, that people bring you to the Christ of the gospels and not the Christ of popular theology. They're not one and the same person. Make sure that people bring you to the Christ of the gospels, the Christ of the Bible, the Christ of history, the real living Lord who died on the cross and rose again. But if men are bringing you to him, then cooperate with him, submit to him. He'll not ask you to do anything wrong. I never met a man whose life was made worse because he obeyed Jesus Christ. I never met a husband nor a wife who lived a worse life and was a worse husband or a worse wife because he or she obeyed Jesus Christ. I know many a husband who lived a worse life because he disobeyed. You need not fear he'll ask you to do anything that's wrong. You can trust him. And lastly, some of us may especially emulate this blind patient in honestly acknowledging what has gone on in our lives to date. Do you see anything? Oh, yes. You know, the common psychology, especially if you're involved in evangelism, you must show that you're on top. Salesmanship, you know, you must have a lovely smile and a great personality and you know, you get your ego into it and boy, you capture the whole population and you must be an extrovert. All right. Oh, the Lord save us. The Lord save us. The Lord save us. Do you see anything? The fact of the matter is this. You say you see everything, but you only see men as trees walking. Then say so. And don't pretend that the work is finished when it's only half done. I say to you, I believe humbly that this is the greatest tragedy in the Christian church. That there are men who pretend they don't need Bible teaching, they don't need fellowship, they don't need many of the disciplines of grace anymore. They don't need them. They've gone beyond them. When as a matter of fact, the work has scarcely begun in their souls. Their eyes have scarcely been opened and everything is dim. Be honest with God and honest with his word. And if you can only see men as trees walking, say so. Remember this. He who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Let him put his hand upon you again. Come close to him. Obey him. Submit to him. Yield to him. He has the end as he had the beginning. He is the end as he was the beginning. And to his name be the glory. Who else can be glorified when you consider a passage like this? No one else. To his name be the glory forever and ever. Will you say amen with me? Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your gospel. We thank you for your Bible. We thank you for your day. Thank you for the opportunity of being together. Grant that something of this glorious episode may get through to us and teach us. And not simply teach us intellectually the lessons we need to learn, but bring us spiritually and morally along the way. That we may see things with increasing clarity and can feel with increasing conviction as we ought, as you reveal yourself more and more. In Jesus' name, amen.