Untitled - November 3, 2025

00:00:00 Speaker: Matthew seventeen is where we are this morning, verses fourteen through twenty three. I'm going to read it and then pray and dive into God's Word together. Matthew seventeen, verse fourteen. And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him, kneeling before him being Jesus, and said, Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic, and he suffers terribly. Often he falls into the fire and often into the water. I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him. Jesus answered, O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me. Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, why couldn't we cast it out? And he said to them, because of your little faith. For truly I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it will be moved, and nothing will be impossible for you. As they were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day. And they were greatly distressed. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. God, in the passage we just read, we see a resurrection. we hear Jesus teaching of resurrection. So we pray that the spirit that brings the dead to life would be at work in our hearts. Now give us resurrection, life and hope and energy to understand and apply your word. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. When I was in my early twenties, I spent a summer in Ghana. Africa in Kumasi actually, which is a city a couple of hours north of Accra and doing evangelism and hosting short term mission teams. And there was one day there where we were doing open air ministry in a soccer field in kind of the Muslim quarter of Kumasi. It's got kind of a Christian side and a muslim side, and we were in the Muslim side, and we're doing open air ministry in a soccer field. And the crowd started to grow throughout the day. And by lunchtime there's probably one thousand five hundred people at least, that were there, kind of pressed in, and some of them were spilling out into the street, around the around the, the fields. The fields had houses built in pretty close proximity to it, very narrow. Don't picture like a wide open area, very narrow streets, um, with just a massive amount of people crammed in the soccer field. Well, at some point a taxi came around the corner onto one of these streets and hit a like a six year old kid who had been running out from his house over to the crowd. And I was, you know, I was in the middle of the soccer field. I didn't see this. I heard something happen, and there was a commotion and a lot of yelling. And it wasn't until later I pieced together everything that had happened. But basically the crowd then turned in on the taxi that hit this kid, and they drugged the driver, the taxi out of the car and started beating him. People took the the kid and passed the kid forward through the crowd who made its way up to the front. By the time the kid got to me, he was bleeding bad from his head. His head had already started to swell. He had kind of a big open wound. Right? Right here. I tried to stop the bleeding, um, with part of my shirt. I think I ripped off and tried to stop the bleeding that way. I started praying for the kid. At the time, I had a whole group of American high school students with me also. By the way, I think of this story whenever I hear about kids going on a short term mission trips, too. I was the oldest American in our group. Um, I'm praying for this this kid. And we had the pastor from the church that was there. He was there with us, and we had some people from the church that were there, but we were badly outnumbered. And, uh, something happened in the crowd where I could feel the mood change from. At first, people were somewhat interested in what was going to happen with this kid, and were we able to fix him? I mean, I don't know why they passed him forward to us. Maybe. You know, I'm not a doctor, but I was praying for him. But after a minute or two, and I don't know how long it actually was, but it felt like a minute or two. It became very evident that the crowd was starting to turn against us. It were becoming much more hostile, much more vocal and yelling and louder. And I mean, the kid wasn't just going to school. He was coming to something that our group was doing. And there was a sense in which it seemed like people were holding us responsible for what happened. I begin to be concerned for my own safety, as well as the safety of the Americans that were with me. When people had finally got the parents of the kid, they got him out of the kid's house, which wasn't that far away, and brought the parents over. The crowd kind of parted for the parents to get through to their their son. The dad, on his way forward, stopped the beating of the taxi driver, probably saving his life. And what we settled on was we got everybody together is they took the kid who was still unconscious. They took him. They took the taxi driver, who is now probably also unconscious in the guy's taxi, and they found some other random person with the parents to drive him to the hospital. I went and visited the kid in the hospital a couple days later with the pastor of the church, and he was fine. You know, they'd gotten swelling under control. He'd had a bunch of broken bones and everything, but as I understand it, he was fine. I think of that story whenever I read the narrative that's here in Matthew seventeen, because it's so easy to just glide over what Jesus encounters when he comes down the mountain. But Jesus walks into a buzz saw all that Matthew's gospel says, here is they came to a crowd. But Mark's gospel fills in more of the details here. The crowd was being drummed up and agitated by the scribes. The father had brought his son, who was practically dead, soon to be. For all we know, literally dead. It brought the son to the disciples, to Jesus for help. They wanted healing for the son. We don't know the son's backstory. We know that at this point in Jesus's ministry, he had basically driven sickness out of this part of Israel. He had done multi day, multi-week, really healing journeys around there to the point that there was really no sickness left. We don't know if this kid was Jewish or not. Maybe he lived in a more remote part of Israel and he was overlooked in that endeavor. Maybe he was from the Gentile area, but Jesus also, if you remember, had just gotten back from going to Lebanon and Syria and Jordan doing healings. So maybe he just lives on this northern part of Israel. That's the most likely answer. He just lives in this northern part of Israel. That's right on the border of Lebanon. That's where Jesus went for the Mount of Transfiguration. And because of that, it's too far to get down to Galilee. And he's not in the Gentile territory. He'd never crossed the there's a particular bridge that went to the Gentile territory the Jews didn't cross. So likely that's his story. But at this point, the dad heard that Jesus, the one who heals everybody, is here. And so he brings his Son to Jesus only when he gets there. There's no Jesus, there's no Peter, there's no John, there's no James. They're gone. It's nine disciples that are left. So the dad brings the son to them, but they're not able to heal him. And that's where Mark lets you know. The scribes then begin agitating the crowd, and it gets almost to the point of a riot. That's what Jesus walks in on when he gets off the Mount of Transfiguration. It's very similar to what Moses found when he came down from the mountain, when he went up mount Sinai and received the law. Do you remember he saw the beatific vision. He saw the Lord in his glory. And diminished way, of course. But still. Then he had to descend from the mountain to go back to what people call the real world. And Moses walks back into the real world, and he finds the Israelites worshiping an idol dancing around the fire. And this would happen repeatedly throughout Moses's ministry, when he went up the mountain to hear from the Lord or to see the Lord, he would come back down with his face radiating with the glory of God. So much so, he had to be veiled so people wouldn't see it diminished. And yet the people continually rioted against him. How many times have they tried to overthrow him because they didn't like the manna, or where the water was, or how long they were in the wilderness. They always tried to overthrow him. He saw the Lord's glory and yet had to live among people that wanted to kill him. Elijah, when he went up the mountain to see the Lord's glory. He came back down to the real world, back to the world where Jezebel and Ahab were stirring things up. Back to the Israelites that wanted Elijah dead. That's what he came back to. It's not a coincidence that in the gospels that describe the event we just read, it's always placed right after the Mount of Transfiguration. Jesus, like Moses and Elijah, had brought the disciples up the mountain. He had seen the Lord's glory, unlike Moses and Elijah. Jesus revealed the glory himself. But the disciples here, Peter and James and John, they had seen the glory of the Lord now. But like Moses and Elijah, they had to go on living in the real world. Jesus comes back down to scene of chaos. Provoked by the scribes who are antagonistic towards Jesus, the disciples would have been desperate for help because the disciples wanted help for this child. Of course they did not. So the scribes, the scribes, in a sense, represent all false religion here describes don't care if the child is helped. If anything, the scribes are rooting for the child not to be helped, because if the child were to have the demon cast out of him, then the disciples of Jesus would be authenticated and Jesus's glory would be elevated. And that's what they don't want. The scribes, frankly, don't care how much the boy suffers as long as Jesus doesn't get any glory. But not the disciples. I'm sure they had compassion on the child, and at some point their compassion for the child would turn to fear for their own safety as the crowd became more and more volatile. It was at that moment that Jesus showed up. Mark's gospel uses a fascinating word that when Jesus showed up, the crowd was amazed. And there's lots of if you study the word amazed in Mark's gospel, there's lots of different ways to say amazed. It's a repeated theme through Mark's Gospel, but this is a more interesting one. We don't really have a word for it in English, but I found one commentator that described it this way. It's an emotion we all have. Again, we don't have a word for it in English, but you know the emotion. Have you ever been talking about somebody? And then that person walks into the room. It's a complicated emotion, right? Like part of you is going back to. What did I say last? Was it good or bad? Do I pretend like I knew they were here the whole time and just lean in on it? I mean. This Greek word captures that emotion, and that's the emotion that the the crowd and the disciples had when Jesus shows up. They were fighting over him. In Matthew seventeen verse fourteen, it just says they, meaning Peter, James and John and Jesus show up at the crowd. A man comes up to Jesus kneeling before him. Here's where our story gets going. The first part of our story is absent faith in a strong Savior. The story starts to take its shape around this contrast. In the first part of the contrast is that there is a lack of faith. Even though Jesus is there, Jesus shows up. And like Moses and like Elijah, he does not show up to strong. Receptive, Energetic, humble faith. He shows up to recalcitrant hearts. He shows up to people questioning him and to this desperate, desperate man. And father comes and kneels before Jesus and begs for mercy. Have mercy Lord. On my son. The father ties his request to the character of the Lord. He knows the Lord is merciful, and so he ties his request to the very mercy of God. Lord, have mercy on my son. He's an epileptic. That word for epileptic there, it's the Greeks also had multiple words for that. This is what we would render. Grand mal seizures like the big ones. Not the kind of little seizing fits, not the spasms. There's a different Greek word for that. This is a word. Have you know somebody with epilepsy? You know the different kinds of seizures. This is a grand mal seizure. That's what the kid has all the time. Mark adds more information than Matthew gives. Mark tells you that when he had these seizures, he would foam at the mouth and he would grind his teeth, and I'm sure he would bleed from his tongue and face. His body would go rigid and you couldn't move him. Matthew just says he's an epileptic and he suffers terribly. He often falls into the fire and often into the water. In other words, it's not just that he has epilepsy here. Is that there's an actual demonic intent behind this. The intent of the seizure. This isn't just an illness because there's an intent to it. The intent is to harm him in any way possible. The the demon that possesses this boy is sentient and observant and knows when a fire is close and knows where water is close and tries to murder the child. That's why the father is so desperate. And the main point in verse sixteen, I brought him to your disciples, and they couldn't heal him. I came here, I mean, implied in this as we came looking for Jesus. They didn't walk this far to get to the nine. They walked this far to get to the one, and the one wasn't there. Verse seventeen Jesus rebukes the crowd. Jesus answered, O faithless and twisted generation. He's not rebuking the disciples. I've heard some people say that he was rebuking the disciples as if the disciples had done something wrong. The disciples haven't done anything wrong. It's not the disciples fault that demons don't listen to them. Demons don't work for the disciples. The disciples were doing good. They were trying to help the boy. It's not the disciples fault that they were left alone here either. Jesus chose to take three and not twelve. These nine are doing everything that they know how to do. This is a rebuke of the crowd. In fact, that phrase, O faithless and twisted generation is rendered differently in the different gospels, but it's a phrase that is used repeatedly in the New Testament to describe the unbelieving Jews that keep demanding signs from Jesus. When Jesus heals the man in the synagogue, they question if he has authority to do it, and he calls them a faithless and adulterous generation. When he multiplies the fish and the loaves, they follow him around the sea, wanting more signs and more miracles from him, and he calls them. This term, you faithless and adulterous generation, you twisted generation. When he raises the dead, gives sight to the blind, Lines heals the deaf mute. Do you remember? They say we would believe in you if only you gave us another sign. And so he says, there's no more signs you're going to be given to you no more. Only the sign of Jonah. You are a faithless and adulterous generation. The only sign you get is a sign of Jonah. In other words, he's the Son of Man is going to die and be buried and resurrect on the third day. That's the last of the signs they'll get. So he's reminding them of this. So he Jesus is rebuke is at the crowd. Who's there? The crowd doesn't care about the kid. Remember, the crowd is drumming this up to be antagonistic towards Jesus. Jesus has compassion on the father. He has compassion on the son, of course. He didn't stop healing after he told him no more signs. He just left Israel healed in the Gentile world. He's never restrained his compassion. He's never restrained his benevolence. He's never restrained his kindness towards the lost. But he rebukes the crowd. He gives them a rhetorical question. How long am I to be with you? It's an interesting question to answer in retrospect. How long is Jesus going to stay with him? How much longer will he endure the unbelief of these people? And the answer is about five months. He's going to give them another five or six months. And then he's going to the cross. He says, bring him to me. Bring him to me. This becomes the precursor here of all true worship. That when Jesus is strong, we look to him for faith. The point here is that you look to Jesus for faith. This is what the dad is doing. The dad is such a contrast to the crowd. The crowd doesn't like Jesus. The dad is coming to Jesus in faith. Lord, have mercy on my son. The dad is using good biblical words and he's just pleading with the Lord. But to really get the full effect of what's happening here, you do need to turn over to Mark. So I invite you to go over to Mark chapter nine and turn in your Bible if you're in the I was going to say the pew Bible, but every Bible mark is the next book. So. Matthew, just turn over one book to Mark. Mark chapter nine. Way more detail here. Mark is the one that describes how antagonistic and hostile the crowd is. We'll skip all that, but we'll get down to verse twenty. At the end of verse nineteen, Jesus says, Bring the son to me. In verse twenty, they brought the boy to him. So you get the picture of the boy being passed up through the crowd. And when the spirit or the demon that's in the boy saw Jesus, immediately it convulsed the boy. He falls on the ground. So this demon recognizes Jesus and attacks the boy immediately. The boy falls on the ground, rolls about, foaming at the mouth. Jesus asked the father. How long has this been happening to him? That's that's just like a standard doctor question, isn't it? Sometimes that question is so annoying. You go to the E.R. and you have, like, a nail right through your arm. You're like, how long has it been this way? What a worthless question. I don't know. Is that going to affect how you deal with this? Jesus knows how long the boy. I can see the doctors actually rolling their eyes. Apparently it will. Okay. Who knew? Jesus is asking the boy not because he doesn't know the answer to the question. Jesus knows how long the boy has been like this. He's asking the question for the benefit of the crowd. Jesus knows the answer to his question. He's not a nurse practitioner here. He's asking the question so the crowd understands. This boy has been afflicted like this his whole life. This is all the dad has ever known is caring for this child. That's what the dad says to his whole life. His dad, in verse twenty two, has cast him into the fire and into the water. It's tried to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. So again, there's a lot of good in what the father says. He's tying his request to the nature of God, the right person. Right. He's gone to the right person. Jesus. He's asking for the right thing. Help for his son. He's asking in the right way by tying it to the compassion of God. God is a compassionate God. So God help a lot of good that's in this. The father is such a contrast with the crowd that is hostile towards Jesus and to the Lord. But not everything good is in the father here, because notice what he also says if you're able to, if you can, he says, if you can do anything. I mean, don't pray like that. Don't preface your prayers with God if you're able to. Can you answer this? Because then if your prayer request is an answer, it makes it sound like God is impotent. Like God can't do anything. So it's not good to pray like that. Like there's a reason we pray when we pray for healing for someone we don't pray God, if you're able to heal this person, heal him. We pray, God, heal this person. If it's according to your will. We pray it that way. So often it can sound like just christianese like just a phrase Christians say if it's your will, God, would you heal this person? But there's a lot of theological significance to that. We recognize that God is able to do anything. He's able to heal whomever he wants whenever, however whyever he wants to. This reminds me of the the leper who asked Jesus in Matthew eight are are you willing to heal me? And then the centurion who asked Jesus, if you are able to heal my servant, would you do so? They questioned the willingness of the Lord and the ability of the Lord. But Jesus is always willing and he's always able. The question is, does it correspond to the will of God? And that's what Jesus gets at here. First of all, he rebukes that part of the dad's answer. Again, the dad is such a wonderful picture of the dad represents every parent whose child is wayward. Every parent. I'm sure there's many of you in here who have a wayward child, or a child afflicted with an illness or debilitating disease, or just as is rebelling spiritually and is cut off, ties with you and has gone away, this dad kind of represents you in here. He's just begging the Lord for help. So there's a lot good in him. But don't ever. If you're that parent, don't ever fall into the trap of thinking the Lord doesn't have the ability to get your child. And Jesus rebukes the father for that part, if you can. He says in verse twenty three, I love that the ESV puts an exclamation mark there. The Na gives you a question mark, but it's definitely meant as a rebuke if you can. What are you saying? He just fed twenty thousand people from a few fish. He's walked on the water if you can. All things are possible for him who believes? And that's the key phrase here. Jesus is letting the man and the crowd know that God can do anything, all things he can do. The father gets the message immediately. He cries out and says, I believe. Help my unbelief. What a wonderful expression, Fathers. Look at Jesus in the face. I believe man, help me, I need help. So much help. Even though I believe the crowd is growing thicker. Verse twenty five says the crowd is running together, pressing in on them. Jesus rebukes the spirit, saying to it, you mute and deaf spirit, I command you to come out of him and never enter him again. And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, the spirit came out and the boy was like a corpse. And so the crowd thinks he's dead. So now put yourself in the dad's shoes. Is this is this better or worse? Do you regret coming to Jesus? I mean, a second ago you had a living son. Then you come to Jesus. Now you have a dead son. Was it better to bring him to Jesus? Jesus had authority over the demon. But now the boy is dead. Now, I don't know if he's technically dead if Jesus checked his vital signs or anything. But Mark is giving you enough information to recognize that everybody deduces the boy is dead. Except for Jesus. Verse twenty seven, Jesus takes him by the hand, lifts him up, and he arose. That word lifted up and arose. It's a word that's used elsewhere in the New Testament for resurrection. For Jesus rising from the grave. Remember what the disciples were talking about on the way down the mountain? Jesus said he was going. Don't tell anyone about John the Baptist until he dies and resurrection from the grave. And the disciples are arguing about what that means. What does it mean that he's going to resurrect from the grave? And now Jesus gives him a wonderful word picture. He acts out a resurrection in front of them, basically. And the boy is resurrected. You can flip back to Matthew's gospel. Matthew's gospel has all of that in one verse, verse eighteen. Jesus rebuked the demon and it came out Matthew seventeen, verse eighteen. Jesus rebuked the demon and came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly. So you get one verse in Matthew's gospel. And I was asked earlier today, why does Mark give you so much more information than Matthew, who just boils this down to one verse? And I have a very good answer to that question. Mark is getting his information from Peter, and Peter was with Jesus on the mountain and came down with Jesus. Matthew was one of the nine disciples who was left. So Matthew was on the receiving end of this. It was Matthew who was unable to cast the demon out and all that. Not Peter. Parents might understand. If you've come home from the store and there's like a broken lamp, you might ask what happened to the lamp? And one child will say, it got broke. And the other child will say, no, that child was riding the dog. The dog like a bucking bronco while swinging a sheet around and knock the lamp over. Both are true. So I think I think Peter and Mark were happy to go into more information, and Matthew is like, hey, get off my case. The boy lives. All right, let's move on. This leads to the second part of our story. Strong faith in an absent Savior. Strong faith in an absent Savior. The disciples have a question for Jesus. Verse nineteen. Why couldn't we cast it out? What gives, Jesus? What gives? Why couldn't we cast it out? Now, recall previously Jesus had given the disciples authority over demons. He'd sent the seventy into the world with authority over demons. They They'd gone on their their journey, their apostolic mission. They came back rejoicing in all the Lord accomplished them rejoicing in the fact that even demons were subject to their commands. And now, a year or so later, the demons are saying, new phone. Who dis? You're not in charge of me. And the disciples are confused. And this really gets to the main point of this story. Jesus is preparing the disciples for life without him. When he is gone, when he is on earth, he gave the seventy, the twelve, and then the seventy. Authority over demons and their ability to command demons validated the authority of the seventy, which validated the authority of the twelve, which validated Jesus. But now the crowd has turned against him, and Jesus has said, no more signs. We are well past the day where Jesus is giving the apostles the authority to vindicate and authenticate who Jesus is like. That horse has left the barn. There's no more time for signs anymore. They're only going to get the resurrection. That's it. So the disciples here are still coming to terms with the fact that when Jesus is not here, the authority does not reside in us. We have to pray to God. It's like the flowchart is flipped around. When God gives the twelve authority, they can exercise it over demons, which validates the twelve, which validates God. But when that authority is gone, the twelve and by extension us, have to pray to God for God to have authority over demons. And when God answers prayer, it's not us who are validated, it's God. We're not authenticating ourselves anymore. That's why in Mark's gospel and we won't we won't flip back there. But in Mark's gospel, Jesus answers the question by saying, this kind only comes out by prayer. And I've heard people say that means there's different kinds of demons, and you have to categorize the demon you're dealing with. Is this the praying kind or the rebuking kind of demon? No, you don't need to categorize demons. My goodness. The point is, when Jesus is not on the world anymore, when he's not here, you have to pray. And God answers prayer requests according to his word. When you look at Jesus in the eye, you recognize he's the source and the object of faith. But when he's gone, he's still the source and object of faith. But you experience and express that faith through prayer. Pray. Pray. That's why they couldn't cast it out. Pray. In the book of acts, the twelve are going to have unusual authority again for a moment of time to validate the resurrection and authenticate their ministry. And that time goes by so fast. By the end of the book of acts, that time is gone. They had the ability to speak in languages and to raise the dead and all of that in the book of acts. They had that. Those are the signs of the super apostles that Paul calls them, the super apostolic signs. But those ceased when the Word of God begins circulating. Now the Word of God is the standard and not somebody's ability to speak in languages or to raise the dead. That's what Jesus says in verse twenty, because of your little faith. And he doesn't even mean that as a rebuke. And I know he doesn't mean that as rebuke, because look at the rest of the verse, because of your little faith. For truly I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed. So if you have little faith, he's not rebuking their little faith. He's saying, because of your little faith. And even if you have a little faith, like a mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds, you can say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you. When you go to God through prayer, you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. Let's say it that way. In the charismatic world. They say, hey, if you have enough prayer, your prayer requests will be answered. It's not true. You know, if there's somebody sick and you're praying for them and they're not healed, they would say, oh, that's a lack of faith in you or a lack of faith in the sick person, but somebody lack of faith is messing this up. That's not true. It's not. If you have faith, a tiny amount of faith, your prayers can be answered if they're according to the will of God. So you don't go around casting mountains this way and that way. Do you remember the one time in the book of acts, by the way, the disciples, because of their faith, moved mountains? No, it didn't happen. Acts twenty nine. That's where it took place. Now, the people who heard this message, they never went around casting out mountains this way. In that way. Of course not. They got the point. You pray to the Lord, and the Lord answers prayer according to his Word, and it is in fact better for us if Jesus is gone from this world. That's what the disciples couldn't understand. He says it over and over again in John's gospel. He says, I'm going away from you. It's better if I go away from you. He's hinted at it in Matthew's gospel. Remember, he fed the five thousand and left with twelve baskets to give them a point. Like, I'm going to go away and you're going to have to feed people. You don't invent a message, you feed them what I give you. He tells Peter, I'm going to build my church on your confession, Peter. But first I have to die and be resurrected, and then he's going to go to the nations coming down from the mountain. Don't tell anybody about John the Baptist being Elijah until I've risen from the dead and then go everywhere. The same point is here. You do not have authority over demons. Now you don't quit bossing around demons. They don't listen to you. And if a demon did listen to you, that is bad news about you. By the way, if the demons feel like they work for you, I wouldn't want to be on your side. So Jesus says, listen. Have faith in Christ. God's will is the source of all things and nothing is impossible to God. I quoted Philippians four earlier. Let me put on the screen this is the New Testament paraphrase of this, the New Testament paraphrase. Simply this I know how to get along with humble means. I know how to live in prosperity in every circumstance. I've learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. This is more than a Tim Tebow verse. Amen. This means you can live in any circumstance according to the will of God, rich and healthy or poor and sick. You can trust the Lord. And this all gets clarified by the power of the resurrection. Look at verse twenty two. Jesus gathers them all together and says, listen, the Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him and he will be raised on the third day. He has said this staccato style throughout this last six months of ministry. He keeps telling them, I'm going to go die I and then I'll resurrect their distressed. But I mean, there is a clarifying effect of the empty grave, isn't there? Suddenly epilepsy comes into focus when you're looking at it through the the cross and the empty grave. Suddenly your biggest burden isn't your health. When the grave is empty, that's what he's telling the twelve. Everything comes into focus when you look at the empty grave. Lord, we're grateful for the cross. It's on that cross that Jesus died and took away our sin. We're grateful for the empty grave and see the power of the resurrection that we have hope. As Paul says, some of us are sick and will die and yet will be raised. Some of us have gone before, have already fallen asleep in Jesus, and they will be raised, and we will be with them. In previous times you testified to Christ, the outpouring of signs and wonders and various gifts distributed according to your will to your apostles. But now, in this era, Lord, you have testified to us through your son. We're thankful for the Word of God which directs our lives. Thankful for the will of God which conforms our lives. Thankful for the work of God which is going even through us through the instruments of the church. We pray for more faith. I pray for the people in this congregation who are dealing with wayward children or suffering children. The heartache that goes with that. We're thankful for the example of the father who continually brings His Son before Jesus. If it's your will, Lord, heal those children. If it's your will, bring those wandering sons back. We trust your will above our own. We have confidence because of the empty grave, that you are working all things for your good and your glory. We give you thanks for this in Jesus name. Amen. And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson. If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website. If you want more information about the Master's Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to TMZ.com. Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C. 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.