A few months ago, an outbreak of what appeared to be blindness hit dozens of apparently random people. As the CDC investigated, they discovered that many of these people, if not all of them, were backpackers. And as they went further into making connections between them, they discovered that all of them had vacationed in Laos and had stayed at the same hostel over a period of several months and had, more particularly, drank the same kind of alcohol, something they call Tiger Vodka. The CDC soon put together that they were suffering from what is called menthol poisoning. Menthol is something that people will lace drinks with because it makes it seem like the alcohol content is higher than it really is, and apparently some hostel in Laos had done that to an extreme.

Menthol itself is not, directly toxic to your body, but what happens is your body processes it, it creates a byproduct, it creates an acidic byproduct that erodes nerve endings. And in some people, the most susceptible nerve endings are the, optic nerve nerves, the the eye nerves. As they process the menthol, they grow gradually and gradually blinds. When all was said and done, fourteen of these hikers died. Another several dozen from all over the world were blind.

This passage here presents us with a very similar kind of scenario. There's a toxin that's described in this passage here. It's called leaven. And if you're familiar with leaven, leaven works itself through the whole body. This leaven can cause blindness.

There's an expression that's used, twice in this passage about eyesight. It becomes the bridge word in this passage, what you can see and what you're blind to. So as we go through this passage together, pay attention to leaven and how it can produce blindness. Verse five, when the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread. The disciples at this point of their ministry are ping ponging back and forth across the Sea Of Galilee.

Remember, they have just returned from ministry in the gentile world. They were confronted by the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They turn back onto the boat and are crossing the sea. Yet again, it would take a couple hours to cross the sea by boat even by by rowing. It's not that far.

As they're onboard the boat, they are discussing the fact that they don't have any bread. Now this is normal. I'm not judging them for this conversation here. You talk about what you're gonna have for lunch at breakfast, many of you. Do you know what I'm talking about?

And at lunch, you're like, what are we doing for dinner? You haven't even finished the peanut butter sandwich. Come on, man. The disciples are eating every day, they're eating meals, they're on board a boat, and they're going to a desolate place, and it occurs to them that they don't have any bread and they're talking about it. Jesus, meanwhile, from the front of the boat turns and looks at them and enters into the conversation.

He was not part of the conversation, the 12 were talking amongst themselves. He enters into the conversation by saying, watch out. And the Greek is one word. It's the word for look. Spanish has an expression for this, pone trucha.

Don't get hit by a trout literally, but it means look out. And that's what this word conveys. Pone trucia, look out. Jesus warns them, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Leaven, like I mentioned, in their world, that's how you make bread.

In our world, you only really interact with this this kind of leaven when if you make sourdough bread in your house, you know, our family has the the sourdough starter. It's it's called in the refrigerator, and Deidre every now and then will wake it up. She'll take it out and throw water on it and set an alarm clock next to it. I don't know what all she does, but she wakes it up, activates it, and then works it into dough, and it works through the whole dough. The whole loaf gets, affected by that leaven, by that yeast when it's activated.

And so Jesus turns around and says, watch out for the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Now, at this moment, if you're discussing what's for lunch and you don't have any bread and Jesus turns and says that, it would be quite natural for you to interpret that in kind of humanistic terms. Like, you're talking about where are you going to get bread on the other side, and Jesus says, well, you definitely don't wanna buy any of the Pharisees' bread. And is it poisoned? Was it defiled?

And that would make sense in our world. In their world, it makes even more sense because, remember, their whole world is divided between clean and unclean foods. That is most of their conversations are revolving around is the has the food been purified? Has it been bought by a kosher market kind of thing? Like, that's every conversation about every chip is about this.

And so Jesus saying don't get bread from the Pharisees would make sense at that level to them, and that's certainly what they heard. Verse seven, they begin discussing it among themselves and said we don't even have any bread. So they're talking about what's for lunch. Jesus says, don't eat any of that Pharisee bread. And they're like, well, did you bring the Pharisee bread?

No. I mean, what's we don't have any bread, much less bread from that nefarious Pharisee. Jesus, aware of this in verse eight, rebukes them. Oh, you of little faith. Why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread?

So Jesus in this sense gets, I mean frustrated might be too strong of a word, but he rebukes them. Like, it's almost like a you've gotta be kidding me kind of statement here. And keep in mind, what's been happening in Matthew's gospel, they're very close together, but it's been over the last six to nine months or so. It was maybe six months ago that Jesus multiplied the fish and the loaves to feed the 5,000 Jews. Remember, there was a massive number of Jews, 5,000 men, in addition to women and children.

They hardly had any food at all, a couple of loaves. Jesus took it, miraculously multiplied it. And when He was done, do you remember how many baskets were left over? And when I preached that sermon, I told you there will not be a quiz on this. However, Jesus is giving you a quiz right here.

Notice what He says. Verse eight. Why are you talking about this? Verse nine. Don't you remember the five loaves for the 5,000?

And then he asked, and how many baskets you gathered? Do you remember how many baskets there were? How many? 12. Yay.

You're better than Bartholomew. Good job. 12. One for each of the disciples to show they were gonna bring the good news to the world. It was gonna be the message of the apostles that would feed the world.

Jesus continues. Verse nine. Don't you remember the five loaves for the or verse 10. Or the seven loaves for the 4,000. It was a few months later, and this would be just like a week ago or so, in this timeline, that he fed the gentiles.

Away from the the Jewish world out in the Gentile territory, there were 4,000 Gentiles including, plus women and children, and He took a number of loaves and He multiplied it. And how many baskets were left over there? Seven if you recall? He reminds him of this. Now, in our Bible, that's like the last page, but in their mind, it was a week or so ago.

They've eaten several meals since then, but Jesus is still rebuking them. Like, how can he really be worried about not having food? How many times do I have to create food out of whatever crumbs we have that you're really still worried about food? Don't you see? So see what would be the question.

Verse 11. How is it that you fail to understand that I'm not talking about bread. And in verse nine, do you not yet perceive? That word is translated in ESV, perceive, it's the word for sight. Don't you see this yet?

So Jesus is saying, do you really not see what I'm talking about? How can you not understand this? Then he repeats the warning, verse 11. Beware the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Beware.

Now, they understood that he wasn't telling them to be aware of the leaven of bread, but the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The bird has been circling, and now it's starting to land. I've mentioned a few times Matthew 16 is kind of the crux of the gospel of Matthew. What's gonna happen next week is that the Peter is gonna confess Jesus as the Lord, And for the first time in Matthew's gospel, first time in the New Testament, first time in the bible, Jesus is gonna talk about the church. He's gonna say, great.

You're right. I am the lord. And upon that confession, I'm gonna build my church. So that's the real game that's gonna take place in Matthew 16. Jesus is gonna start his church.

This is his last conversation with his disciples before he launches the church. The analogy I can think of in my own mind that soccer season is about to start next week, which I have mixed emotions about, depending on if we win or lose. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it. At this point, I'm hating the idea of it right now. But I'm thinking of, you know, the the players are gathered in the field right before the kickoff and the team gathers around.

And this is a moment where the coaches got to see how the other team is setting up. Like, for the first time, you see what 11 are on the field and where they are. And so it's very common for me as a coach to jog back out on the field and talk to the 11 guys circled up there and say, hey, one last thing. Now that I look at them, one last thing and it's almost always the same kind of thing like I see they're putting number seven in the middle. Watch out for him.

I might even say, Jacob, you watch him, and if Jacob's not there, the rest of you collapse around that guy, watch out for him. That's my last words, and I go back to the bench where I, you know, they don't listen to me for the next ninety minutes. This is that kind of conversation. It's the 11 on the boat, 12 with Judas, and Jesus leans over to them. They're they're about to land on the shore.

He's about to start the church. The whistle's about to blow. There's one more thing. Watch out for their leaven. What does he mean by that?

The idea of sight here is this will make you blind. JC Ryle writes, quote, that Jesus foresaw the two greatest plagues of his church on Earth would always be the doctrine of the Pharisees and the doctrine of the Sadducees. Let's look at them one at a time. First, the doctrine of the Pharisees will make you spiritually blind. And that's because the Pharisees used the Word of God to look down at people, not in at themselves.

That's the danger of the Pharisees. The Pharisees knew the word of God. They loved the word of God. They studied the word of God. They're not ignorant.

They're not atheistic. They cherish the word of God. They knew the numbers of words on each page of the Bible. I I know they use scrolls and not pages, but the point stands. They knew the number of words in each book, in each section.

They knew the number of laws in in the Bible. Positive laws, negative laws. They had intramural debates about the structure of them and the hierarchy of them. They were in the weeds of the law. But they used the law to condemn others, not to sanctify themselves.

And the word in the bible for that is hypocrisy. And I'm not reading into this because Matthew, Mark, and Luke all carry the same warning. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell you of this conversation. And they each give you a little bit more details so you can put the whole thing together. But the detail Luke throws in, Luke kinda gives you a little parenthetical break there.

Jesus says beware the leaven of the Pharisees, and Luke gives you a little parenthesis here and says, which is their hypocrisy, close parenthesis, carry on. So because Luke is in the Bible, we're not left guessing about what the leaven of the Pharisees is. The leaven of the Pharisees is their hypocrisy. They use the word of God to judge and condemn and measure others while being blind to themselves. They're the ones that want to do eye surgery on someone to get a sprint, a splinter out of their eye, but they have a railroad tie in their own eye.

That's the Pharisees. We talked about them earlier in the Sermon on the Mount. They are, as Jesus said in the last chapter, the blind leading the blinds. Which is meant to be funny if it were not so sad. Clearly, hypocrisy is a danger for them.

Now the warning to everybody to watch out for the Pharisees and their hypocrisy, that makes sense if Jesus shouts it from the mountaintop. Gather everybody together and say, don't be a hypocrite. That makes sense. This is not shatter from the mount the mountaintop. This is a conversation with the 12 disciples the moments before he launches the church.

So Jesus in putting this here Matthew in putting this conversation right here before the great confession of Peter that Jesus is the Christ, Matthew and Jesus are both telling you that this leaven is still a danger. Now, the Pharisees were Jesus' greatest opponents. They hounded Him everywhere. It is remarkable. Just pause for a second.

It's remarkable how thoroughly the Pharisees were defeated. They are nowhere to be seen. The empty grave obliterated them. They were the main opponents of Jesus and the empty grave nuked them into nonexistence. Like, you've never met a Pharisee, like, have you ever met somebody that described themselves as a Pharisee?

Like, it's the worst thing to call somebody, isn't it? Like you, you know, you're arguing with your wife and she's like, you're a slacker loser and you're like, okay, it's Monday. And she's like, you're a Pharisee. And you're like, what? Pull the car over.

A Pharisee? How darest thou? Like it is you you wanna cut down a Christian, you say that guy's a Pharisee. It's like, oh, there's nothing worse to call him. But they're gone, aren't they?

I mean, no college kid comes back from his first year of college. He's like, mom, dad, sit down. Hard conversation coming. I want you to know, I've walked away from the Christian faith. I have decided to become a Pharisee.

Like, they're destroyed. It's a joke. You're not gonna meet somebody running for the third party who's like, I'm a member of the Whig party. I'm Bull Moose all the way. They're gone.

And yet, that's why the image of leaven is such a good image. Yeah, they're gone, but they left some starter dough in the church freezer. If you went over to the church freezer, you would find it sitting there. We've tried to get rid of it, but it's always there. And every now and then, it gets taken out and it gets activated, and it works its way through the whole church.

What is the leaven? Well, it's hypocrisy. It is the posture of the heart that uses the Word of God to judge others without an introspection to oneself. The Pharisees took Scripture, built their traditions on top of it, and used it to justify their own self reliance, their own good standing before God. That has the effect of blinding them to the God who gave them the Bible.

They were experts in the scripture but couldn't identify the author of scripture when he's walking around them. They use their tradition to protect their self reliance. That creates over time outward holiness and inward wickedness, inward lovelessness. And because we don't see any self professed Pharisees, it's easy and they're the villains of the Bible, of course, it's easy to forget a very basic thing about the Pharisees. They were good people.

They were good neighbors. You would let them watch your kids. They were very good people. That should start to change the way you view of them a little bit. Like, do you know people like that?

That are good people. They don't recognize the need for redemption. Quite frankly, they don't need redemption. But they're they're good. I mean, their whole scam only works if everybody sees them as a good person, a good, hardworking person.

That's what makes the scam work. And that's why it's so dangerous. They were scrupulous in all the wrong ways. You have to remember, these people were so godly. They would never eat anything impure.

They would never let anything impure touch their lips. Never. Now, you might not know that at first because of all the awful things they say. Like, they just tear you down, they slander you, they talk about how good they are and how low you are, they magnify your faults. You might think, man, they're saying a lot of wicked things, that's just your naivete.

They're actually quite godly because they've never eaten anything impure. That's my sarcasm voice. Some of you I feel like weren't. They were way too godly to heal somebody on the Sabbath, for example. We saw that earlier.

The man with the withered hand on the Sabbath, and you're not allowed to work on the Sabbath. And the Pharisees, they're so godly they would never dream of healing somebody on the Sabbath. They're too godly for that. So much so, they're gonna kill Jesus for healing the guy on the Sabbath. And Jesus didn't even lift a finger, remember?

He just healed him directly without touching him or moving a muscle. And does that work? Well, that's too close to work for the Pharisees. The sins of the flesh are bad, of course. Adultery, sexual immorality, drunkenness, those are bad sins, and they'll ruin your life.

Of course, they will. But they're, in a sense, less dangerous and more obvious than the leaven of the Pharisees. I mean, the leaven of the Pharisees, it's the root of so of a person's actions. Like, you find a divisive and a toxic person, the root of that is the leaven of the Pharisees. But by virtue of it being the root, it's hard to see.

It's imperceptible because roots are buried underground. You don't see them. So you see somebody who's like toxic and judgmental, but thinks they're too godly to need a savior, scrupulous in all the wrong ways. That's the leaven of the Pharisees. Using the word to tear people down, to bite them in the back, to slander them, to find their faults, to boss them around, that's the leaven of the Pharisees.

The Pharisees would find the smallest fault in somebody and magnify it to the nth degree. They make any small difference a gospel issue. It's the old joke about, you know, you meet a new person at work and you're like, I'm a Christian, you're a Christian, yay, we're both Christians. You go to Bible church. I go to Bible church.

Yay. Do you guys baptize people? Yay. Do you baptize forward or backwards? Forward?

Oh, you're probably a heretic. Do you even know the gospel? I mean, it's meant as a as a joke, but I'm sure you've met that kind of person. You don't have to think hard before you can come up with the kind of person in your mind that when they meet you, they start prodding out to find the area where the two of you disagree, and then they magnify that to where it defines the relationship. That's the leaven of the Pharisees.

They view more gifted people as rivals. They view their friends with suspicion. And they view everybody in the least charitable way imaginable. And that creates a toxic culture around them. They're anxious in their own self sufficiency, and that makes everybody afraid around them, everybody's walking on eggshells around them.

They're intolerant of other people's weaknesses, They're apt to judge those around themselves according to the conformity of their own convictions. They arrive at some conviction yesterday, and they imagine that everybody else who does not match that conviction is lost. Michael Reeves writes in a wonderful little book called Evangelical Pharisees. He writes quote, they are pitiless and partisan, and they eye others with suspicion over minor doctrinal differences, which they imagine constitute a different gospel. I have met people that will make lists, actual lists of all of your faults, and they will squirrel them away and bring them out whenever they get the opportunity.

And and you think that doesn't sound very godly. Oh, that's because you don't understand their motives. They are so, so godly. So godly. They are godly that they can keep a list of wrongs without doing any wrong themselves.

That's how godly they are. You just don't appreciate it because you're not as godly as them. That's the leaven of the Pharisees. The sexually immoral person is generally obvious, but the Pharisee is obtuse and camouflaged with no self awareness at all. Hypocrisy in that sense, it creates shallow people.

Because imagine, you're using the word of God to judge everybody else, but it's not doing work in yourself. And so you're going to be very shallow. The field above ground is going to look nice and green because of how godly you are, but the field below ground is just poison. Jesus calls them whitewashed tombs. What an incredible metaphor that is.

I think he invented it, I don't know, but it works so well. And, you know, Arlington provides a great example of that. Beautiful tombs, white, lovely wreath. Man, you would be so disappointed if you thought, man, that tomb looks so beautiful. I wonder what the person under the ground looks like.

They've decayed. That's the analogy Jesus uses. Yeah, you look so good on the outside. Your beauty on the outside is just a faint cover for decaying bones. The Pharisees are smart enough to know that God is a God of grace.

They're not, like I said, they're not dumb. They know God is a God of grace, but they don't see that they need God's grace. That's the difference. They were orthodox without integrity. They proclaimed grace by being blind to what it is.

They believed in grace, but also that God might be gracious to them. A Pharisee would even say God is gracious to me, but why would God be gracious to me? Well, because they wouldn't say it like this, but you know what I mean, of how good they are. They would talk up and down about how God is a God of grace, and they grace grace grace grace grace. God's grace.

Why do you receive God's grace? Man, I because of how accurate I am with the word. Because of how good I am with the word. Because of how profound my ministry is. Not because of how depraved I am.

The Pharisees see God's commands in the Bible and they elevate them, do this and do that, but the disciples of Jesus Christ see God's promises in the Bible. Come to me and live. That's the difference. God had revealed Himself to the Pharisees time and time again, they just refused to see. And of course, had they said, Lord, I'm blind, I can't see.

When Jesus calls them blind, had they just said, you're right, I am blind, I can't see help, they wouldn't be guilty. But they don't do that. They say, how dare you call me blind? If I could see you, I would give you a piece of my mind. It's hypocrisy, which is difficult to identify because by definition it is a pretense.

The solution, of course, is a new birth, a new heart, a new life, a new faith, but even that, the leaven stays in the fridge and gets brought out every now and then. There's a CS Lewis quote about this that I used I used to really get bothered by this quote. Pastors use it all the time and it just never struck me right, but I've learned to appreciate it more and more. He writes this quote, a cold, self righteous prig who goes regularly to church is actually far nearer to hell than a prostitute. Then he goes on to say later, this is in Mere Christianity, Of course, it's better to be neither, you know.

Should I be the prostitute or the Pharisee? Well, don't be either. And of course, the New Testament refers to sexual immorality also as love in first Corinthians five. Don't associate with the sexually immoral so called brothers. A sexually immoral of the world, fine, whatever.

But those who are brothers sexually immoral don't associate with them, it's leaven that destroys the whole church. That's elsewhere in the New Testament, but Jesus in his warning is talking about the Pharisees. And again, nobody says it. So how do you ID the Pharisee? You know, it's here's a test.

When you confront somebody in their sin, how do they respond? They respond with, I am a sinner. Thanks for the help. Help, pray for me, encourage me. That's a great response.

Or do they respond with, How dare you? Do you know how hard it is, my life? My life is so hard. So hard. And I'm actually doing quite well at it, thank you very much.

Like, I'm doing well with what God gave me. My marriage is bad because my spouse is bad, but me, I'm doing as best as I can possibly do. If you knew how hard it was to be me, you would actually be impressed with how good I am at this whole thing. That's the leaven of the Pharisees. And when you put it like that, hopefully you're not listening to this and going, Man, I have a friend that needs to listen to this sermon, alright?

Do you judge others by their weakest point? That's the leaven of the Pharisees. The solution, Philippians four verse eight, if anything is noble, praiseworthy, dwell on that, even in other people. Well, that is the halfway point of my sermon, but not the halfway point of our time, somehow. Don't judge me, Pharisees.

Secondly, you don't just have the leaven of the Pharisees, but also that of the Sadducees. The leaven of the Pharisees produces spiritual blindness. The leaven of the Sadducees produces spiritual death. The Pharisees look down, not in. The Sadducees look around and not up.

The Sadducees were anti supernatural. They rejected the idea that God was at work in the world. I know this has existed under a 100 different labels since the Sadducees. Again, you're not gonna find a Sadducee walking around today, but you will find that Amideism kinda falls in this category that God exists, I'm sure, and has wound the world up, and here we go. There's other forms of this throughout the ages that just deny the necessity of the new birth.

They say that saving faith is something you do for yourself. That's a form of the Sadducees. Like I said, you won't find a Sadducee today, and if somebody said I'm a Sadducee, I would say Uh-huh, that's why you're always sad, you see? There's no joke like a pastor joke. The Sadducees reject the afterlife, they reject the miracles of the Bible, they reject angels, which for us is a weird thing, but understand the implication of rejecting angels.

In the Jewish world, angels brought the law. So the law is authored by God, of course, but angels delivered it to Moses on the mountain. By rejecting the angels, you'd say that's a strange argument, rejecting angels. No. By rejecting angels, they're allowed to reject the binding nature of the law.

Yes, they would say the law exists, not the miracles that are in the Torah, but the law itself is fine. You know, it's a good measure of how to live, but they reject the supernatural origin of it, and so the binding nature of it. They have lateral or horizontal explanations for everything. Everything exists on the plane of this world. Yes.

There's spiritual truth in the world, but that's not what matters for the Sadducees. What matters for the Sadducees is philosophy. That matters. Psychology, the elementary thinkings of the world. You can explain everything at this level.

Yes. There's spiritual problems, but they can explain everything by the, like I said, the horizontal. The elementary teachings of this world. It's interesting. The Galatians fell into the leaven of the Pharisees.

The Colossians fell into the leaven of the Sadducees. By using the elementary teachings of this world, worldly philosophy, worldly thinking to explain spiritual matters, that's the leaven of the Sadducees, which is also lethal. It rejects the new birth. And it says your relationship with God is something you determine. It rejects the the essential nature of God's work in your heart, which produces, by the way, people who are self reliant.

The Pharisees and Sadducees had nothing in common, but they hated Jesus. That's why they're pitched together here. It's not like somebody was half Pharisee, half Sadducee. No, there were two different camps, two different approaches to the word of God. And the Sadducees, they were all about the human explanations for everything.

Both end up in self reliance. Like I said, they reject the new birth. The modern day version of this, the closest thing in today's world to to this might be what's often called no lordship salvation, which is the way the proponents of it actually describe it, which blows my mind that they would describe their own view as no lordship salvation as if that were a good name. But this idea that that that God casts one vote for your salvation, the devil casts the other vote, you cast the tie breaking vote. Well, if that's true, who's responsible for your salvation?

You. It's a form of undercutting reliance on regeneration, reliance on the new birth, reliance on the Holy Spirit. Now, that grows, of course, due to denial of the law, and so it's not a coincidence that people who often teach that view of salvation deny the need for holiness in the Christian life. Of course they do. It's a more refined version of saying angels don't exist so the law can't have been delivered by them.

They just say, oh, because the gospel is the gospel of grace, you don't need to obey the word of God. Simple. The Pharisees, in a sense, mastered revelation without application, but the Sadducees mastered religion without regeneration. You deny the supernatural, and you are left with yourself. Ultimately, it's about you.

Do you know the antidote to both of these? There is a vaccination for both of these leavens. They're different leavens, they're kept in different fridges. They don't want to cross contaminate. That's a Jewish kosher joke, by the way.

The same vaccine works on both. Prayer. Prayer slays the leaven of the Pharisees by expressing a thorough dependence upon God. It makes you be introspective. And of course, you can pray a a Pharisee prayer like, Lord, I'm so thankful.

I'm not like the other person. But you're not gonna have a consistent prayer life with that kind of prayer. Sadducees. You know what slays the leaven of the Sadducees? Making yourself pray.

Because that's gonna reinforce to you the supernatural nature of God's word. So do a little bit of self diagnosis. Are your relationships about you? Do you turn everything back to yourself? That's the leaven of the Pharisees.

Are people on edge because they don't live up to your expectations? That's the leaven of the Pharisees. Do conversations revolve around you and work their way back to you and your opinions? That's the leaven of the Pharisees. Do you talk more about yourself than you talk about God?

That's the leaven of the Sadducees. Does everything get explained by natural terms in your mind? That's the leaven of the Sadducees. Do you focus more on other people's wrongs than on their sainthood? That's the leaven of the Pharisees.

Are you just frankly pretty pleased with yourself? That's the leaven of the Pharisees. That's the plank eyed Christian. I know there's a sense in which Christians are supposed to be joyful and we're so content in the Lord. Of course we are.

We should have joy. I'm not advocating for a morbid introspection here. You should have joy. But your joy ultimately is rooted in the fact that the Lord is near to the brokenhearted. That's where your joy comes from.

Like I said, the solution to both is prayer. Jesus, earlier, when you warned about the leaven of the Pharisees in the Sermon on the Mount, followed it with, don't be anxious about what you're gonna eat. What a good reminder for the disciples on the boat. Remember this whole conversation started with them going, what's for lunch? Don't be anxious about what you're gonna eat because the Lord knows your needs.

The Gentiles seek after those things. Your heavenly father knows what you need. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. All of those other things will be added to you. Fix your eyes on Jesus, and you won't grow spiritually blind.

Lord, we're grateful for your word. It offers rescue, it offers focus. We know that our ways are prone to wander. We know we often look at others with a judgmental heart. We know we often look to the world for explanations.

Lord, wrestle our eyes off of others and onto ourselves. Use the word of God to convict us, and then rescue our eyes from looking at the world and wrestle them up to you. Help our eyes look to you. We're so thankful for the freeness of the gospel, that that you died on the cross bearing the penalty for our sin. We deserve hell and you gave your son.

We deserve wrath and judgment. We get Jesus in an empty grave instead. Where do we even start, Lord? We are such desperate sinners in need of such profoundly free grace and yet you give it. Lord, put your cross and your empty grave in the center of our eyes, the center of our mind.

Help us focus on you. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. And now for a parting word for pastor Jesse Johnson. If you have any questions about what you heard today or if you wanna learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.

If you want more information about the Master's Seminary or our location here in Washington, DC, please go to tms.edu. Now if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington DC area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel. I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service. But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church. Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.