John: Soul Check

Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 12:27-50 about Jesus predicting his death. Discussion points: The Pharisees were living in spiritual darkness and could not recognize who Jesus was, we need God to give us ears to hear and hearts to understand, spiritual blindness is also caused by love for the things of this world over Christ.

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  Scripture reader: [John 12:27-50] Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? Father save me from this hour before this purpose? I have come to this hour. Father glorify your name. Then a voice came from heaven. I have glorified it. I will glorify it again. The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said an angel has spoken to him. Jesus answered, this voice has come for your sake, not mine. Now is the judgment of this world. Now will the ruler of this world be cast out? And I when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all people to myself. He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.

  So the crowd answered him. We have heard from the law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the son of man must be lifted up? Who is the son of man? So Jesus said to them, the light is among you for a little while longer walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in darkness does not know where he is going while you have the light, believe in the light that you may become sons of light. When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him so that the words spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled. Lord, who has believed what he heard from us and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed. Therefore, they could not believe for again, Isaiah said he has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes and understand with their heart and turn and I would heal them.

  Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him. But for fear of the Pharisees, they did not confess it so that they would not be put out of the synagogue for they love the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God. And Jesus cried out and said, whoever believes in me believes not in me, but in Him who sent me and whoever sees him sees me sees him who sent me, I have come into the world as light so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him for, I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge, the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. But I have not spoken on my own authority. But the father who sent me has himself given me a commandment, what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the father has told me.

  This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

  Preacher: All right. This is gonna be a little bit of a different way to start a sermon today. I want to invite us all to have a moment to have a bit of a soul check. OK? What is going on in your soul? So I'll just invite you, you can close your eyes. however you wanna do that wherever you can can consider with me, how is your soul doing? Mm When was the last time you really considered the state of your soul? Usually when I ask someone about their soul, they tell me how many days they've read their Bible recently. I want you to put that aside for just a minute and look at your soul with the eyes of your heart. Biblically speaking, all people are made up of body and soul, physical and spiritual. Your mind is your soul, your brain, is your body, your desires or your soul or your heart. So how are your desires this morning? Where is your heart? If you were to give a, a weather report on the internal state of your being. How's the weather? Is it foggy? Is it cloudy rainy? Maybe the sun shining? I hope it is. What is your soul craving this morning?

  I want to invite you to consider the truth that all of our longings are truly longings for God himself. And that when we find Him, we will truly be satisfied. Hear this church receive this word from Isaiah chapter 55. The Lord speaks, come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters and he who has no money, come buy and eat, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend money for that? Which is not bread and labor for that which does not satisfy, listen diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food and climb your ear and come to me here that your soul may live. All right. You can, you can look up if you're not already.

  I wanted to start with the soul check this morning because this passage is is somewhat heavy. We've been walking with Jesus for months now. So we've been going through the book of John and Jesus has pretty like clearly made himself known as the Messiah through a series of declarations of teachings and of miracles. It is clear to Jesus and to everyone around him that he is the messiah. But yet people still don't understand the people that are following him even do not understand and why do they not understand? But because the status of their souls is darkness that they are spiritually blind, that they don't have ears to hear.

  And so I know even this morning as I declare God's word to you that unless the Lord gives you eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart that is soft, it falls on the hard ground and you won't see a thing. And so I just pray that as we examine the status of our souls, we'll see that our true hunger is for Christ. And as we walk through this passage that the Lord would give us spiritual sight that he would wake us from our slumber that many of us are stuck in. That spiritual blindness is a global pandemic of proportions that we've not experienced. We're all born into it and we live in it unless we're given the gift of sight. But the cure is here throughout his life. Jesus showed that he was a messiah. The people weren't getting it. Now, Jesus knows as we come to this passage, we just passed the passage where his heart where he saw that. We've been going a little out of order. So let me catch you up with what happened because we did the triumphal entry several weeks ago on Palm Sunday and, and that's the passage where Jesus says, my hour has now come. And so we ski, we then went back and did a couple of passages before the triumphal entry. I just didn't want to do triumphal entry like a week after Easter. That didn't make sense. So I just did it the week before Easter.

  And now we're back to the passage right after Jesus says, my hour has come. So Jesus knows that. Now he's making a, a death march, a march to the cross and he knows that his hour has come. And so he sits down and, and you can see him praying and he starts verse 27. Now, my soul is troubled. Jesus is familiar with the status of his own soul. This word troubled. That is a strong word. It is a strong word. When you look at the word troubled in the original language, it has these implications of revulsion, horror. Anxiety is a very strong word. His soul is troubled and he knows what's going on in his inner life. And he asked himself the question, Father, what shall I say? Am I going to say, father save me from this hour? But as soon as the words get out of his lips, he, he knows he's like, no, that's not right. And he corrects himself. Isn't that an amazing thing that he has a thought? And he doesn't say I'm beholden to that thought, but he's able to correct himself with the next breath.

  How often do we need to do that? Where we think this thing? These people are judging me. These people think this or I'm afraid of this. But then the next thought Jesus has, he's correcting himself and saying no, I'm not going to pray that because it's for this purpose that I've come to this hour, father glorify your name. And so Jesus is able to see the condition of his own soul. But then he also is then able to in turn, be able to trust his father with his soul completely.

  Are you in the place where you can do that where you see the condition of your soul and then trust your father in heaven with the condition of your soul. He doesn't wallow in self despair. He looks heavenward, then a voice from heaven came and it, and it said I have glorified it and I will glorify it again. The Father affirms verbally a voice from heaven speaks to Jesus and declares I will glorify it and I will glorify it again. He affirms everything that Jesus is doing and saying where he's going three times in the New Testament. We see the voice of the Father speak to Jesus, but this is the only time that we see it in the book of John.

  There are two other occasions though that we know that a voice from heaven comes and speaks. All right, a little crowd participation here who's got one baptism. Thank you. And the other one transfiguration. Good job, well done my friends. So, but then we have this one where Jesus is preparing to die and the voice comes to affirm him in his moment of spiritual need.

  The crowd doesn't recognize the voice. They say, what was that? Was that thunder? Maybe it was the voice of an angel. They don't recognize the voice of God. They haven't grown accustomed to, to hearing his voice. And so they give it other other descriptions. Maybe that was just thunder. It was the other day there was a an earthquake. Anybody, anybody feel the earthquake, who else thought it was just a truck driving down the road? That's what I thought Megan came in. I was just like getting dressed or something and she came in and she was like, did you feel that people were talking about it everywhere? There's an earthquake? And I was like, oh yeah, like I think so. California is laughing at us. I don't know.

  Verse 31. Now, now is the judgment of this world. Now, will the ruler of this world be cast out? And I, when I'm lifted up from this world will draw all people to myself. All. Look at what he's saying. OK, this is really clear. Jesus is explaining exactly what's about to happen. He's like, look, here's what's gonna happen. Judgment of the world ruler of this world, it's gonna be cast out and I, when I'm lifted up from the earth, he's talking about being risen up onto a cross will draw all people to myself. Verse 33 he said this to show them by what kind of death he was going to die. It's a poetic way of talking about being lifted to the cross, but the people still don't get it. He's telling them exactly what's about to happen and look at how they respond.

  Verse 34. So spiritually blind, they said the crowd answers him. We've heard from the law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the son of man must be lifted up? Who is the son of man? It's as if they haven't had this conversation before Jesus is predicting his death once again. And the people are just so confused because they understand the Messiah in very different terms than Jesus understands the messiah. They understood the Messiah to be a political representative of the kingdom of God, a political king that will reign forever. They were ready to usher him into the throne of David. But Jesus had a different way that he was going to reign forever.

  Verse 35. So Jesus said to them, the light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light less darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going while you have the light believe in the light that you may become sons of light. Jesus is like, look, time's running up. It's your last chance. Believe in the light. I'm here. I am the light of the world. Trust in me. Listen to what I'm saying, step out of the darkness and you will see you will become people who shine with the light of the world.

  Also, when Jesus said these things, verse 36 2nd half of it, when Jesus said these things, he departed and hid himself from them, which makes sense. I mean, it's gotta be really frustrating to just constantly be misunderstood by people. And he's like, I'm gonna go hide. OK, see you guys later. That's, that's what I usually do after like a whole morning of my Children misunderstanding everything that I tell them to do.

  Verse 37 though he had done so many signs before him, they still did not believe in him. I've heard it said you can lead a horse to water, you can even make it drink, but you cannot change his point of view. And this is what Jesus is experiencing. He's made it very clear, he's shown miracles, he's had his life and his teachings and yet the people will not follow him and why it's because they live in the darkness, they live in a spiritual blindness that has infected the inner parts of their soul, causing it to be impossible and unreceptive to the words that he is teaching them to receive the truth of who Jesus is. You must be given spiritual eyes, to see ears, to hear and heart to understand.

  Now what John does is and he doesn't do this a lot when you read through the the New Testament account, John's obviously very conscious of the Old Testament. He's writing and looping in themes from the Old Testament all the time, but he doesn't quote The Old Testament very often. And so when he quotes the Old Testament, it's actually a really good practice to stop and be like, OK, why is he doing that? And here we get two quotes from Isaiah. So the author of this story wants us to connect what Isaiah was saying to what Jesus is doing. And when you look at those two quotes, it makes a lot of sense. What he's trying to teach us is that spiritual blindness is nothing new. Spiritual blindness has been going on since the beginning that almost every single major prophet was rejected in their time that the word of God is not a popular word to preach.

  And so it goes with Jesus as well. The people have always struggled with spiritual blindness. Isaiah. OK. So this first quote that we have here is from Isaiah 53. It's probably the greatest prediction of Jesus in the Old Testament. And it says this verse 38 so that the words spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled. Lord, who has believed what he heard from us and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed. It's basically just emphasizing you don't believe unless God draws you verse 39. Therefore, they could not believe for again, Isaiah said, and this is from Isaiah six. Ok. This is a very, very well known verse. He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts lest they see with their eyes and understand with their heart and turn and I would heal them.

  So Isaiah six, if you're familiar with that, it is this grand depiction of the throne room of God, Isaiah is drawn into the throne room of God and he sees God in all of his glory and there's angels flying around him. It's one of the most magnificent passages in the entire Bible. I've preached it several times. If you've been here for a while, you've heard a sermon on Isaiah six, the angels are flying around. They're saying holy, holy, holy with two hands, they're covering their face with two hands, they're flying and with two hands, they're covering their feet because it's holy ground. And Isaiah stands there and he looks at them and he says, woe is me! I am a man of unclean lips living among a people of unclean lips.

  Basically, what he says is when I see now what I have never seen before, I see your full glory. I recognize my spiritual blindness and my Brokenness and I am not a sinless person yet I stand before you and he sent, and he says, God says, who will go for me and who will, who will, who will speak for us? This Trinitarian idea of who God is in that throne room. And Isaiah says, I will go send me, I will be your messenger. And this is how God responds. Isaiah signs up to be a prophet for the word of God. And God says, people aren't gonna listen to you. They're blind spiritually, they're deaf spiritually. They're not going to listen to you. But because you've seen who I am, you still have to go.

  One of the things that I've never seen in that passage is what the next verse reveals to us. Verse 41. John chapter 12, Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. I'm just gonna keep reading for just a second. So you see this nevertheless, many of the authorities believed in Him, who is the hymn here? This is Jesus. So many of the authorities believed in Jesus which reveals what's going on in verse 41 Isaiah said these things because he saw the glory of Jesus and spoke of Jesus. What does that mean? I had never seen, like I said, I've preached this passage probably a dozen times in my life. So many times, I've never seen this verse and it's never dawned on me quite like this. That when Isaiah is drawn into the throne room of God, whose glory does he experience? But Jesus' glory himself, Jesus is present in that throne room and he is experiencing the glory of Christ.

  Verse 42. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him. But for fear of the Pharisees, they did not confess it so that they would not be put out of the synagogue. This reminds me so much of I'm reading a book right now. Jonathan Heights, written a lot of great books he wrote. He, he's one of the book I'm reading right now is called The Coddling of the American Mind. And it's, it's really well written research. He's a social psychologist, but he talks about the university professors that would get canceled or disinvited from things for having were having, opinions that might not be in the majority. And sometimes many of the other professors would say, oh, they really, it's really like we can listen to ideas here. It's OK. Like we, we maybe they're being treated unfairly but the other professors would not speak up for the professors that were being so ostracized and protested against and why for fear that they themselves would have the mob come after them also.

  Sometimes we know the right thing to say, but yet we will not say it out of fear of what the mob might do to us. And I'm not just talking about these Facebook crusades. OK. No one's looking for your opinion on Facebook. All right. That's just, it'd be better if we all deleted it. That's my personal opinion. OK. This say the fletcher, not the Lord. Ok. But I think that there are times when we need to speak up, when we know the right thing to say. And here the, the, the passage is telling us that there are people in authority, leaders, well trained, leaders, educated people who want to believe who Jesus is. But they're afraid that they'd get cast out of the synagogue if they do like the blind man earlier in this passage in, in this book to be cast out of the synagogue.

  That's a big deal. The synagogue is like where a lot of your business deals went on. It basically said, hey, you're not a good person whatsoever. And a lot of people won't even deal with you anymore. And so that's, it's not a small thing to get cast out of the synagogue. It's a big deal. And so their, their fear is understandable. But the next verse really cuts like a knife and it explains why. Verse 43 for they love the glory that comes from man. More than the glory that comes from God. How many of us love the glory that comes from man? More than the glory that comes from God. How many of us would trade in the joys of the Gospel for just a few minutes of praise from our fellow man.

  And it's because we're spiritually blind because we don't see what's truly available to us with the good news of Jesus. Because if you see the glory that comes from God, you're gonna choose the glory that comes from God every single time, every single time. There's no doubt about it. If you see the glory that comes from God, you will choose it. It's interesting. There's another passage in scripture that quotes this exact same passage from Isaiah six. There's another pa passage in the, in the gospels. And it also is talking about spiritual blindness. And I think that it gives us more of a description of the ways the spiritual blindness has infected us.

  And so I think that we should look at it also with our time here this morning, Matthew 13, Jesus teaches the disciples. You don't have to turn there. I'll, I'll explain it and, and you're familiar with the passage, most of you, Jesus teaches the disciples the parable of the sower. And it essentially tells the story of a farmer who goes out to spread seed on different soils and some soil falls on the, on the path, some on thorny ground, some on rocky ground and some on good ground. And after he tells the story, his disciples pull him aside and they're like, hey Jesus, why are you so confusing? They, they like, we don't get your stories man. Like, can you please explain what this means to, to us.

  And Jesus responds to them by saying, the people's heart has grown dull and with their ears, they can barely hear and with their eyes, they have closed lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn. And I would heal them the same passage from Isaiah X that he's quoting from. And so he goes on to explain the causes, the underlying causes of the spiritual blindness that we live in. If spiritual blindness is a disease, here's what's causing the disease. And you're gonna see some similarities to what he's describing in John, the first form of spiritual blindness is a misunderstanding of who Jesus is and a biblical illiteracy because the seed that fell on the path is described as those who hear the word, but they don't understand it.

  How many people do we know that have walked away from Christianity? Because all they've heard are the false teachings of Christianity. Most people do not walk away from the message of Christ because they've truly examined it and found it lacking. But because they found a cheap imitation and it did not fit the longings of their soul. And so our spiritual blindness often times is just because we don't know the Bible, we haven't actually learned what Jesus has to teach and we sit under teachers who give us whatever our itching ears want to hear. And mistake Christianity for the cheap imitations.

  The second form of spiritual blindness and it's caused by suffering, the seed fell on the rocky ground and at first it sprung up, but then the sun came and scorched it and it withered and died. This represents those who receive the word of Christ. But when hardship comes, when suffering, when real death to self or mortification, the killing of sin happens in their life, it is hard or they fear being canceled by their friends or family or culture. Those authorities who initially wanted to believe Jesus but wouldn't due to fear of what would happen to them by the other leaders were like the seed that fell on the rocky soil. They wanted to believe it. But due to fear, there's spiritual blindness won over, they were spiritually blind, unable to see due to fear and hurt.

  And look, Jesus is compassionate. He sees you in your heart. Many people have been hurt by the church and the the church needs to own up to that as a whole. And like on behalf of church leaders everywhere like I'm sorry, but you can't blame your lack of belief on the hurt that you've experienced. You have to go back to Christ just because you've experienced hurt. It doesn't mean that you run away from Jesus. That is the seed that fell on the rocky path that you, that you feel the hurt and so you run away and it's a it's a tool used by Satan to blind you. And so just go back to Jesus. You know, I think that Jesus is in his church, but I think go back to Jesus. He's the one who loves you and cares for you.

  Third form of spiritual blindness is caused by a love for this world is the seed that falls in the thorns and it grows up at first, but then the thorns come and choke out the seed and kill it. And that represents the love for the things of this world. Choking out a love for Christ, a love for material possessions. And the praise that comes from men, choking out a love for Jesus himself. The the riches of the world. How many have been deceived by this lie and live in this spiritual blindness that today is the only day they get to live. And so they have to enjoy it, deceived by the riches of the world, distracted away from true riches that are offered to them in Christ. And so these are the three great tools for spiritual blindness.

  There might be more but I think most of them all fit in these three categories. Why are the people rejecting the message of Jesus? It's either because they misunderstood what was being taught, they were hurt or they love the things of the world more all three of these signs of this illness live within our hearts. These are things that creep up and cause spiritual blindness in each of us. And we have to be on guard. We had to be on guard against these things. The the fourth type of soil, soil. Sorry, I hate that soul and soil are so similar and my accent is so southern and like it just doesn't work for me. I'm sorry. The sermon's hard. It's a tongue twister.

  The good soil is the one who hears and understands the word. He's like a plant that yields 160 or 30 fold filled with the fruit and light and glory. And I think that a lot of us would like to say, hey, I'm that good soil and I believe you are, I've seen the fruit in your life. I think you are. But I also know that spiritual blindness is a universal condition and that we revert back to these areas of spiritual blindness. We have to be on guard against spiritual blindness and going back to who Christ is to be receptive to it. The message of the gospel over and over again, yielding more and more fruit.

  So here is my challenge for you. Look at your soul or look at your soil. Where do you see blindness in there? Is there a misunderstanding? Is there a hurt that you need to give to Jesus? Is there a love for the things of this world that you need to hand over to him? We have to be constantly evaluating this because God wants us to see and enjoy His glory. He has glory for us. But the question is, are you receptive to it?

  Personally, I've been working through this and couple of weeks ago, if I was to give you the weather report of my soul, it would be mostly cloudy with a, a few glimmers of light. And I would like to say that that's because you know, I have three Children. I don't sleep as much as I would like and everything that goes with it. But, but I looked at my soul and I was just kind of frustrated with where I was. And I for the first time in like months, at least I listened to a sermon just, just to listen to one for me not to get ready for a sermon that I was going to present. OK? Because it's hard for pastors to do that. And so I found one that was a little bit outside of my normal stream and ju just enough to where I didn't feel like I was gonna copy everything that the guy was doing. And that type of thing that is the temptation. And the sermon was used by the Lord to wake me up from a slumber that I had not been in and not realize that I was in. because I was convinced after listening to it that this thing that I had been fighting, it felt like a spiritual slumber in my heart where every time I had not that I was just being lazy, but every time I had an opportunity to do something important, like really feel like I could encourage someone with a word from the Lord or really like dig into prayer. I get to, I get to my seat that I have prepared to open my Bible. And I just feel tired and distracted and I felt this every single time I would feel the need to go and go to prayer meeting or go to, to speak to someone and encourage them. And every time I would feel like, oh, I just don't got it today. It's just not there and it gave a word for it and the word for it was sloth.

  And I'd never seen myself as a lazy person. OK, I've, I've lived in Boston for 12 years. We're not lazy people. I, but that's, that's the spirit that I was struggling with was a spirit of sloth, that my soul was in a slumber and that God was inviting me to receive the light, but I wasn't ready to do that. And once I realized it though, once I gave a name to it, I said, I'm gonna fight this and I started fighting it with everything that I have and friends. I, I'll tell you it's been rich and good. It's like I'm awake again. for example, the prayer meeting, I was really, a couple weeks ago, I was really in a lull, you know, we announce this prayer meeting every week and the same, you know, six or seven people come every week and it's great. I love seeing you six or seven and you two or three who oscillate in every once in a while, you know, who you are. and, it, it's really great. I was, but I showed up one morning, I was ready to kill the thing. Like I was just like, you know, I know how to read the, the dashboard. If it's not working, let's just kill it. I, I'm not against that type of thing. I'm not one of these that like wants to keep it going just for, to keep it going. And I kinda brought up the idea. I was like, what, what do you guys think? How's this going? And everybody was like, yeah, I mean, I think it's OK, it's good.

  And then I just felt this like strong urge from the Lord, like, no, this is divine resistance to a spiritual slumber that we're all in. That. What we're doing in the prayer meeting is actually super important that we're pushing back against the spiritual slumber that most of us live in this darkness that we live in, that our world is in. And we, it's intentionally early and that's symbolic to help us to, to push back. So I know that not all of you can be there. And I don't want you to feel guilty, but I do want you to feel thankful to those who are able to be there because it's a, it's a wonderful opportunity that we're getting to, to pray to seek God. And really, I, I feel like we're all benefiting from it. And my prayer is that God would wake us up from our spiritual slumber, that He would give us eyes to see and ears to hear that we may be people who would abound in love and light and the glory of God church turned to the light.

  Look at your life, look at the things in your life, look at the spiritual blindness, look at your soul name, the blindness, name the ground that is there. What are you struggling with and give that over to Jesus so that you might step out of the darkness and into the light. My prayer is that your heart would be the same as what Paul prays in Philippians chapter one. And this is, and it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more. Does your love abound more and more. My prayer is that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and all discernment that you won't be behooven to false doctrines or false teachings and everything that this that is taught wrongly or your misunderstandings about who God is because you haven't sought him fully in his scriptures.

  But that your knowledge might abound and more and more your love with knowledge so that you might approve what is excellent that you might not live in the fear of the glory of people. But see that the glory of God is better and be so pure and blameless for the day of Jesus Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. Is that your prayer also?

  So just to, to end with a little bit of application here just to, to hammer home what I've been saying? Just a couple of things. One take a, a soil test. All right. This time, I mean, soil and I mean that because during the pandemic, I went full dad mode and got really into yard care. Ok? Not garden care that I don't touch that stuff. I just care about the grass. Just the, just the green stuff. All right. And I have a yard in Somerville that is huge for Somerville standards, but it is a postage stamp compared to the rest of the country. It is not very large. But, you know, I can mow the whole thing in less than 10 minutes. We'll just put it that way.

  But the first step that everyone tells you when you're gonna start getting into lawn care. So I found out if anybody needs tips, you know, I got the dad tips for you. Is you need to take a sample of the soil to see what type of nutrients your soil needs because you take a sample and you send it in, they, they mail it back to you or something and, and tell you, yeah, you need nitrogen or you know one of those other things to spray in your yard. What is the condition of your soil? Let's let's look at it and acknowledge what's happening there. Be honest with yourself. How are you doing the old business school phrase? Your system is perfectly designed for the results that you're getting.

  If your soul is withering, maybe it's time that you change things up. And then how do you create good soil in you? So for me, with my yard, we had to go out there, me and Michael, my, my neighbor went out there and ripped up all of the grass by hand. We just ripped it all up because like I said, it's small and we had a couple of rakes and then we threw 4000 pounds of cow manure on the ground. And then we were able to see grass start to grow only after we had done all of that work. And so this morning, maybe you need to think through what you need to hand over that old those old growth weeds that are in your heart and you can hand those over to the Lord and then you can be receptive to the seed that He has for you, which is the glory of God.

  Matthew 13. The parable of the sower, Jesus says, but blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear. For truly, I say to you many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see and did not and to hear what you hear and did not hear it. Friends. You have a privilege that is far more than what Isaiah had or Moses had these prophets of old. They longed to see what you see.

  First Peter tells us that the angels are on tippy toes, wishing that they could see the glories that we have in Christ yet we take it so for granted. So let us return to him. Time in and time out.

  Jesus cried out verse 44. Whoever believes in me believes not in me, but in him who sent me and whoever sees him, who sent me, I have come into the world as light so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. And so that's your invitation this morning to step into your step into the light, to leave behind the weeds and the and the bad soil and to follow after Christ in spiritual sight, to take joy in what has been given to you as a child of light. And we really have an opportunity for you to do that.

  We're gonna invite you to pray. There's one form of spiritual blindness that just has your soul, confess it, name it, whatever it is, name it, speak it, confess it to the Lord. He will hear and give you life. And so as we take communion, what we're doing is we're saying my life is hidden with Christ is no longer I li who live but Christ who lives within me. And so his body on the night that he was betrayed, he took a loaf of bread and he, and he broke it and he said, this is my body broken for you. And then he took a cup and he said, this is my blood shed for you. And so whenever we receive the elements of the bread and of the, the wine or the juice, we're being reminded in a physical way of what Christ has done for us, of his sacrifice for us. And we're saying you are enough for me, Jesus. May I be good ground that you might plant the seed of Christ in my heart that I might shine as old son of light here. So that being said, church, let me invite you to stand as we respond to God.

  Father. We pray that your word would very deep in our hearts and that we might be fruitful, 30 60 100 fold. And we pray for more a hundredfold than anything God. We want to experience your glories, the glories that even Isaiah long to experience that he was writing about in Christ, may we have those in our life. Would you wake us from our spiritual slumber and shine light upon us and help us to fight the battles that you have for us to fight against sin and spiritual darkness and, and the spiritual blindness that we walk in. Would you give us eyes to see ears, to hear, and a heart to love and to comprehend the height, depth, width and length of the love of Christ. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.