broken pieces and also of the fish. There were 5,000 men who ate the loaves. Immediately, Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he himself was sending the crowd away. After bidding them farewell, he left for the mountain to pray, and when it was evening, the boat was in the middle of the sea, and he was alone on the land. Seeing them straining at the oars, for the wind was against them, at about the fourth watch of the night, he came to them, walking on the sea, and he intended to pass by them. And when they saw him walking on the sea, they supposed that it was a ghost and cried out, for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke with them and said to them, take courage. It is I. Do not be afraid. Then he got into the boat with them and the wind stopped and they were utterly astonished, for they had not gained any insight from the incident of the loaves, but their heart was hardened. There is a problem, I think. In fact, I'm quite convinced there's a problem in our church. It's a problem that every single individual among us is a contributor to. It's a great problem. In fact, it's a problem just like the disciples had. It's a problem that Jesus, in the way he deals with the disciples, addresses and he wants to deal with in our lives and the life of this church also. You say, what problem is that? It's a problem of pride. It's a problem of pride when we lose sight of the greatness of God and the glory of God, because our view of ourselves gets lifted up too high and it obscures our view of the glory of God. These disciples were with Jesus. They had seen him cleansing lepers. They had seen him casting out demons. They had seen him healing the sick. They heard him forgive the man, the paralytic, and they saw him healing a paralytic and forgiving him. They saw him raise a little girl to life. They had seen him take five loaves of bread and two fish and feed 5,000 men. Probably as many as 20,000 people were healed or fed, sorry, that day. And yet, the Bible tells us in verse 52, the disciples had gained no insight from feeding the 5,000. They had learned nothing from that entire scene. The miracle to them had not taught them anything about who Jesus was, something prevented them from realizing who this Jesus really was. Something was blinding them to his identity and the significance of his actions. The disciple's heart, the Bible says in verse 52, their heart was hardened. In fact, that is the strongest, most critical statement that Mark will make about the disciples in the whole length of the book. That one simple statement, their heart was hard and hardened. The verb is a perfect passive participle. I know you don't care about verbs and grammar, but what it means is simply this. It's a past action with consequences that carry themselves all the way through to the present and into the future, possibly. So sometime before, they were sitting in the boat with Jesus, and they're looking at him, and he'd gotten in the boat. After walking across the water, it says their heart was hardened. It had been hardened in the past, and it was still hardened then. And Jesus made an effort to deal with their problem. But sadly, the question remains is, did their hearts become softened and broken by what they saw that day in the water or on the water in the boat? Listen, pride is the problem. A hardened heart comes as a result of pride. It's pride that refuses to listen to God. It's pride that refuses to hear what God is saying. It's pride that blinds us to the things that God is doing around us. It's pride that stands at the bottom of sin. Not God, but me. That's the bottom point of all sin. And these disciples, watching Jesus as He breaks the loaves and takes five little loaves, probably about that size, and feeds up to about 20,000 people, just keeps breaking it off. And the Bible says they gained no insight. They didn't see anything in that. That's a hardened, prideful heart. Well, what does God do about it? Well, first of all, what is pride? Pride is a self-confidence opposed to a God-confidence. In the wisdom literature, the Old Testament wisdom literature, the pride is always described as distinct and separate from the righteous and the humble. Why is it the Bible tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom? The simple reason is this, when we fear God, when we live our lives in fear and in awe with a great view of who God is, it puts everything else into perspective. How is it that we live lives well for God? By seeing ourselves as great in our sight and seeing God poorly to one side? No. The writer says, listen, the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. So what's that mean? That means when we have a great big view of God, everything else fits into place. The more I think about it, the more I wrestle through it, it just buries itself into my mind. Listen, if your view of God is right and correct, if we have a great big view of God, our marriages will begin to work themselves out, our lives begin to work themselves out, our churches begin to function properly, our lives become lived for God and His glory, when our view of God is great and large. But when our view of God is small, Because our view of ourselves is too big. There is a great problem, a huge problem. Well, let's consider a few Old Testament examples. Pharaoh, in pride, refused to listen to Moses and God's word. He refused to let the people of Israel go. Exodus 5 and verse 2, you know what he says? Who's the Lord that I should obey him? That's a striking statement. And we go, oh, terrible Pharaoh. We shake our heads and clock our tongues and think, wow, how terrible is that? How often have we read a scripture and seen what it calls us to do and said, well, when I've got time? Well, you know, when it suits me best. You know, I'm kind of busy right now. I'll get back to that later. And in reality, when we make those words and that those judgments in our mind, in our heart, consciously, or even sometimes slightly subconsciously, what we are doing is just what Pharaoh did. Who is the Lord that I should obey him? 18 times in the book of Exodus from chapter, I think it's chapter six to chapter 12 and 13, it says he hardened his heart. He built up a wall against God's speaking and God's pointing. The last thing it said about Pharaoh by God is this, I will get my glory from him, and God destroyed him in the sea. That's one example. Example number two is the life of man, Uzziah. And in Uzziah, he's one of the kings of Judah, one of the greatest kings of Judah. He was a young man when he became king, and he was greatly helped and greatly used of God. And the Bible says he was greatly helped of God until he became proud. until pride lifted up his heart. What did he do? He goes into the temple sanctuary, takes a censer full of the hot coals, takes the incense to put on top of the censer to light the fire, make the smoke rise up in prayer. And as he does so, the priests, 80 of them, I think, rushing to the temple after him. And they say, no, Uzziah, it is not for you to do this. And Uzziah, in a rage, he puts out and he stretches out his hand to do them. something to touch them, to grab at them. And as he does it, his hand comes into his own view. And what does he find? Leprosy is breaking out all over his hand. And the priests of him are all looking, and they're looking at him, and all of a sudden he realizes the leprosy all over his face as well. And they all grab onto him, and the Bible says they thrust him out of the temple. Pride lifted up his heart. He became proud. Pride was his downfall. And he was one of the greatest kings of Judah. And you know how he finished his days? Living alone in a house and the epitaph, if you like, over his life. He is a leper. That's how he finished. One other man, Nebuchadnezzar. You remember the story of the great statue he builds and he sees in his dream a head of gold and chest and shoulders of silver and so on all the way down to the feet. And he is the head of gold. He's the greatest of the kings of the Old Testament, greatest empire I think that has ever existed up to this point. He's the head of gold. And he has this dream one night about how he looks like a tree and the tree gets bound up and all the branches get cut off it and so on. And he goes to Daniel, his trusted friend who knows and can understand, interpret dreams. And Daniel says, I hope this happens to all the enemies of the king, but not to you, O King Nebuchadnezzar. And he outlines a dream for him. And what he says is, listen, God will do this to you. God will deal with you unless you humble your heart. And the Bible says about a year later, King Nebuchadnezzar goes up onto the roof of his palace in the cool evening and he walks around and he looks at this great big city called Babylon. He said, isn't this, is not this great city this great empire which I have built for the glory of my name? And the words are still coming out of his mouth. And a voice from heaven speaks, and Nebuchadnezzar loses his sanity. He goes out and lives in the field. His hair grows like feathers, his fingernails grow like claws, and he eats the grass of the field for seven periods of time. What they were, weeks, days, months, years, I don't know. And at the end of that time, you know what happens? God gives him back his sanity. And I'm convinced that Nebuchadnezzar is literally walking around the ground on his hands and feet. He's got his head down. He's eating grass. And all of a sudden, God gives him his sanity back. And he spits the grass out. And he goes back onto his knees. He lifts up his hands and he begins to speak. And he worships the God of heaven. His pride was dealt with. Listen, pride elevates my view of myself far above my view of God. The Bible tells us that pride prevents us from seeking God in Psalm 10 and verse 4. In Proverbs 11 verse 2, pride brings disgrace. Pride brings quarrels in 13 and verse 10 of Proverbs. In Proverbs 16 verse 18, you all know the verse, pride goes before destruction, right? Proverbs 29, 23, pride brings low. It doesn't mean humble. It means it brings our state and our position low and far away from God. In Jeremiah 49, 16, pride deceives us. Pride led to Pharaoh's hardened heart. God greatly humbled him and destroyed him. Pride led to Uzziah's downfall and leprosy, and God humbled him with leprosy. Pride hardened the heart of Nebuchadnezzar, and God humbled him by taking away his sanity. Pride elevates my view of myself far above my view of God. It says I'm sufficient, I'm strong enough, I'm wise enough. Let me put it right down the road for you. Pride within the church says I can sing better. I can lead better. I can preach better. I know better than they do. I am better than they are because I always do this. I'm better than they are because I always do that. It's pride. And I say all those things. Do you know why I pick those things? Because most of them are things that I've said. And there's a piece of me that needs to walk over there and sit down beside Heather and hang my head in shame because I struggle with it no less than anybody else in this room. And listen, brothers and sisters, pride will tear this church apart, limb from limb. It will bring division and backbiting and fighting and argument and contention and dissension and struggle, and it will tear us apart. The moment pride gets a foothold, there's a problem. Pride blinds us to seeing and savoring God's greatness and God's glory and God's grace and God's mercy. Pride hinders us from worshiping God and living for His glory because we're too concerned about our own glory, our own reputation and our own name being great. That's a problem. I'm not standing here because I'm pointing the finger this way. I'm pointing the fingers this way. And you get to listen in. And maybe God will speak to your heart. Pride hinders us. A hardened heart must be broken and humbled by observing how small it is and how great it is. Listen to the scriptures. Isaiah 2 verse 17 says this, The pride of man will be humbled, and the loftiness of man will be abased, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day. Pride is humbled and broken when God is exalted. That's the only way it is. Why is that? Because when God is lifted up and our vision of Him fills our view, and our vision of ourselves is pushed down so all that we can see is God, that's when pride is broken. And in this passage, it's exactly what Mark does as he unfolds and displays Jesus to view, and he shows him as glorious. And Jesus, in coming to the disciples across the sea, he is showing himself as the glorious God. I want us to see this. I want us to go away marveling and exalting God in our hearts as we see him in the person of Jesus Christ walking across the water. Pride is humbled when God is exalted. First of all, Jesus sees, sorry, this morning I want us to see Jesus in all the glory in this solution. He knew their problem. He knew what they needed to do, what he needed to do with them to resolve the issue. Notice in this verse 45, it says, immediately Jesus made his disciples get in the boat. That word made is probably better rendered, he compelled them. I was sitting in my office this week thinking about this and going, wow, what does God do? I think he's like a mother with a little child. Get in the car, literally. And disciples, they're experienced fishermen on the Lake of Galilee, Sea of Galilee. You know what they know about? A thing called a sharqiyah. What's a sharqiyah, you wonder? It's a violent storm that often happens around the evening time on the Sea of Galilee. What time is it when they get in the boat? It's about evening. And Jesus says, get in the boat. Go across. And he turns around, he goes up, and he dismisses all the crowd. And he sends them away by themselves. And then in his sovereign wisdom, his omniscience and omnipotence is gone. What's he do? He brings that storm down the Sea of Galilee. And these experienced fishermen who are rowing and sailing the boat, it would take normally about six to eight hours to cross the sea under normal conditions. We know from about evening to the middle, sorry, early evening to mid-evening, they got to the center of the sea. That's what it says. They were in the middle of the sea. From that time until six in the morning, how far did they get? Nowhere. They basically sat there and rode and strained and struggled against the oars. The Bible uses the word in straining for a word like torment, like a person in hell is in torment. That's the struggle and the strain. A woman giving birth to a child is in torment or straining and working and fighting and laboring. It's the same word. But what does Jesus do? You know what he does? He goes up onto the mountain and he prays for them. And I want you to see the glory of Jesus interceding for his disciples. I sent most of you this week, if you have a mobile phone, a text or something about, know this, that Jesus is praying for you. Why'd I send that out this week? Because I sat in my office on Wednesday morning, I think is when I sent the thing out, and I was reading this, studying this, and reading Romans 8, 34 about how he ever lives to intercede for us, and all of a sudden hit me like a ton of bricks. You know what? Jesus sends text messages. He does. He gave us a text with a great message, and the great message is simply this. I'm praying for you. I'm praying for you. When nobody else is praying for you, you can know for an absolute certainty that Jesus is praying for you. I tell you, no joke, I sat there with tears in my eyes as I wrote that text to know. I know how encouraging it is to when I get a text that someone says to me, hey, I'm praying for you today. You wouldn't believe the number of texts I got back, literally from around the world saying, you have no idea how timely that text message was. Dozens sent back saying that was so timely. Listen, people of God, you might be on the middle of a lake in a storm like the disciples. You can know for an absolute certainty, be encouraged. God is praying for you. The Lord Jesus Christ went up to heaven to intercede and pray for you. The Bible says there's one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. It's not just a salvation thing, it's an everyday, all day sanctification thing. He's praying for you and he's praying for me. Listen, we would not make it one single step in this world if it wasn't for the fact that Jesus prays for us. You think you make it on your own strength? Trust me, you might hear the words one day, get in the boat, go out in the lake and struggle for a while. Now this may sound a little, might rock your world a little bit, but listen. I believe there are times, even though God does never ever abandon us, I believe there are times when God withdraws himself a little from us to leave us to our own devices, to struggle and strain by ourselves, to show us the true nature of our own hearts before him, to humble us and break our pride, to show us the failings and the areas that need working on our life. And I believe that Jesus did exactly that with these disciples. The Bible describes three times that Jesus goes up on a high top place, to pray by himself. Every time he leaves the disciples by himself and goes and prays for them. I'm also convinced of this. He prayed for them the whole time that they were struggling and straining with the oars. I believe it's about, if I did my math correct, about seven to eight hours they struggled and strained and worked at those oars. And every single hour that they're doing that, what's Jesus doing? He's laboring in prayer for them. Listen, be encouraged and see the glory of Jesus interceding for his disciples. See also the glory of Jesus in his humility. You say, where's that? He is the Son of God, King of kings, Lord of lords. He is the image of the invisible God. He's the brightness of the glory of God. These are all descriptions the Bible makes about Jesus. And you know what he needed to do? He needed to pray. That hits me every time I think about that. My Savior needed to pray. He couldn't get by without prayer. Often it describes Jesus rising early, going off to a lonely place and praying by himself. It often describes Him using the whole night in prayer, praying for His disciples and praying for His own needs, praying for wisdom, praying for grace, all those things. He needed to pray. It's Jesus in His humility. Listen, you know what else He's doing for us? Mark's showing us. It shows us what they should have been doing. It also shows us what we should be doing to fight against a proud and hardened heart So let me ask you the hard question. You knew it was coming. How is your prayer life doing? How are you doing with your prayer life? I said it before, I'll say it again. Jesus never taught His disciples to preach, but He taught them several times how to pray. The early church, you look at them. They got together as a church, often in those early chapters, to pray together for different things. Our prayer life is a sure sign of how we're doing in our proud and hardened hearts. He needed to pray. I want you to see the glory of Jesus in his humility on his knees, his hands lifted up as they did in the Jewish culture and praying to his God all those hours. They're wrestling with yours, but he's wrestling with God. I want you to see also the glory of Jesus as the shepherd keeping watch over his sheep. I want you to notice in verse 48 it says, seeing them, he saw them. Now, pardon if this sounds a little humorous, but as I was working on this week, I was in my office, and it just hit me, I wonder if Jesus kind of, as he was praying, every once in a while he'd kind of look up, look over, oh, there they are, yep, still there, and he'd get back to pray again. He never lost sight of them. He saw them all through that night. He kept his eyes and his focus on those disciples. He saw them, did everything they did. And you know what else? He sees us in everything we do. Everything? Yeah, everything. Nothing escapes his view. Not one little thing that we do, and that's both a great warning and a great encouragement for us. Listen, you never are by yourself, no matter where you are, no matter what you're doing, no matter who you think you're with or not with. You are always in the presence of the living God. And some of you need to think about your activities and your habits and what you're doing in your life when you think nobody is watching. Listen, let me assure you from the context of scripture, the page of scripture, that God sees you in every single detail. But it's a great encouragement too. When you're on your own in the closet and you're praying, you're pouring out your heart before God on behalf of your brothers and your sister and your family and your kids and your parents, God sees. when you're serving the Lord and you think that nobody notices and your ministry is going completely unnoticed by everybody else in the church. You know what? The most important person in this world sees. He knows what you're doing. Mom, with the kids, patiently teaching them little verses of scripture, God sees. Dad, as you get the kids around the table at nighttime and you read and you pray with them and you teach them the scriptures, God sees. He knows what you're doing. Listen. Don't go seeking the praise and adoration of men for your service for God. God sees all and that is all that matters. He saw them straining at the oars. He saw them as they labored and wrestled against the wind and the waves. And you know what else he did? He came to them. I want you to see this morning the glory of Jesus Christ as he came to rescue his sheep. He knew where they were, he knew the situation they were in, and he came to them. He came to them exactly the right moment. He comes to us when we think we cannot go on another minute. He comes to us because he knows we are weak, we are small, we are frail, and we're failing. He is the great and awesome God, but he's also a compassionate, caring shepherd for the sheep of his people. What an amazing God we have, amen? How great is our God! He cares for His sheep. Remember Jacob talking to Laban about how he lost the sleep of the night time and he suffered the dew and the cold and the heat and watching over Laban's sheep? It's a little glimpse into the shepherd's life of the Lord Jesus. He labored and cared and loved his father's sheep. He ministered to them and he came to them when they needed to see him. See the glory of the shepherd and humble yourself this morning. He comes to them walking on the water. Behold the glory of Jesus doing only that which God can do. I read the most ridiculous commentary this week in this. A guy actually tried to say that what it was was a sandbar just below the surface of the water. And Jesus kind of walked out on this sandbar and he just got the ankles and maybe the lower part of his legs wet. Ridiculous. And you can laugh, it's okay. Are you joking? Throw that away. Listen, he came out walking on the waves. It's a beautiful picture of him displaying himself as God. You say, how is that? The Bible tells us in the book of Job, verse 8 to 11, that he stretched out the heavens and he treads on the waves of the sea. It's almost exactly the same language that Mark uses here. The Lord Jesus Christ showed himself to his people as the living God in glory as he walked out on the water. Read Psalm 18. I love Psalm 18. It just describes God in this great, beautiful language about bowing the heavens and coming down, riding on the wings of the wind, on the back of a cherub, and the darkness under his feet, and all of that. It shows the glory of God in a realm far beyond and far above ours. And here Jesus is, he steps down, he walks across the water. I was trying to find a picture for the website that kind of go with this. And all I could find was this, you know, a little bit of wave like this and Jesus is sort of walking along fairly calmly. I think the wind and the waves had boiled up the sea and he was walking along. The wind is blowing back his hair and it's a glorious sight as he walks across the waves. He comes treading the waves. And you know what? The Bible says that the image of him coming was so powerful and so great that the disciples were terrified at what they saw. Whether Jesus transformed himself to the point that like the mountaintop, his appearance is great and shining and bright and transformation, or whether it was a simple earthly physical appearance, Jesus coming across the water terrified his disciples. Notice something else here, it's really important. Look what it says in verse number 48, the very end there. It says, he intended to pass them by. And everybody trips over that. What does that mean and why? Why did the writer include and leave that in there? It's kind of a cryptic statement. What does it mean? Oh, it's incredible when you see what it relates to the Old Testament. Take your Bibles, put your finger in Mark for a second, and turn back in your Bible to the book of Exodus. I love big dramatic scenes in the Bible. And this is one of those ones that just, it stands out in its greatness all through the pages of scripture. Exodus chapter 33. Some of you remember the story, the people of Israel have sinned and Moses has made intercession for them. And he goes back up on the mountain and God is pleased with him. And Moses makes the most incredible request. He says in Exodus, verse 33 and verse 17, listen to this. The Lord said to Moses, I will also do this thing of which you have spoken, for you have found favor in my sight, and I have known you by name. Then Moses said, I pray you, show me your glory. That's a request, isn't it? Let me see your glory, Lord. And he said, I myself will make all my goodness pass before you and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and I will show compassion on whom I will show compassion. Skip down to verse five of 34. Listen to what it says. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of the Lord. Then the Lord passed by. Sound familiar? He passed by in front of him and proclaimed, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin. Yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, and so on. He came down there, and he put Moses, the Bible describes, in a cleft of a rock, and he passed by in front of him. And as he did so, he allowed Moses to see all the glory of God in his back part. And as he passes by, he states the name of God for Moses to hear. And the Bible describes a little later on how Moses made haste to bow with his face to the ground. God in all his glory passing by in front of Moses and speaking the name of God. It terrified Moses. Remember Isaiah standing in the temple? and he sees the glory of a living God, and what's he cry out? Woe is me, for I am ruined, or I am unraveled, is the word. Listen. The sight of Jesus walking across the waves is so awe-inspiring and so magnificent, so glorious, that they are terrified. And when he speaks, when he walks right, and he goes to pass by them, they're seeing something that's absolutely incredible. They're seeing the glory of God incarnate on the earth as he stands on the waves. He's showing himself. Listen, this is me. Remember the Old Testament, and I was with Moses? Same one, standing here right in front of you. But notice something else, in verse 50, he speaks to them. So he comes to them, he intends to pass by, they see the glory of him walking on the water, and he speaks to them, he opens his mouth. What's he say? Take notice of the words, take courage, it is I. You say, what's so significant about that? It is I, in Greek, is ego eimi. Probably said it wrong, but that's what it says, ego eimi. It can be translated a different way. I am. Why is that so significant, you wonder? That's one of the names of God. Just as surely as Moses is up on the mountain and God passes by Moses and he proclaims and intones the name of God to Moses as he passes by, so as Jesus is passing by his disciples, walking on the water, doing only that which God can do, he also states the name of God. Take courage, I am. No wonder they're terrified. You know, I read Count after count of people saying about Jesus coming to us when we're in the storms of life and all of that. He came to them to show the glory of who He was, to break the hardness of their heart. To change their perspective and change their view. To see God as soul. I love the phrase, they were utterly astonished. Literally, they stood there with their mouth open and just kind of went, who is this? In fact, they said that last time, he's still the storm. Who is this? Now they don't say anything, they just look at him. And listen, the problem they had is the problem we have. It's a problem with pride. And pride, if it's left to take root, will harden the heart against hearing and seeing and understanding what God is doing in our lives. And pride and a hardened heart must be broken. We must see the glory of God like they needed to see the glory of God, and humble ourselves before Him. I keep coming back to this simple statement. I've said it, I don't know how many times in the last year. I'm going to say it again. Our problem is our view of God is just too small. It's true. And the reality is you go back to that same statement of Proverbs chapter one, the fear of the Lord's the beginning of wisdom. If you put that in the right perspective, if our view of God is the way it should be, everything else works itself out. That's a promise of scripture. Our view of God is too small in our lives, in our marriages, in our churches, our leadership, wherever our view of God is too small. We need to see the glory of God like they saw him walking across the ocean that morning, the sea that morning. Pharaoh refused to humble himself and God got his glory from him in destruction in the sea. Amazing little pick up there. Moses saw the glory of God and hastened to bow himself to the earth with his face to the ground in worship. Job saw the glory of God in the whirlwind and he put his hand over his mouth to remain silent before God. Isaiah saw the glory of the living God in the temple and cried out, woe is me. The disciples saw the glory of God in the face of Christ and were terrified. The disciples also heard the gracious words of Jesus and they were comforted. How is your view of God? He's struggling and wrestling with all kinds of issues and problems. We all are. And I would hazard a guess, on fairly good grounds, that if you looked at those that were involved and you changed perspective to see God in all of his glory, And like Isaiah, like Moses, like these disciples, in terror of who he is, humble yourself before him. Didn't do that on purpose, but it's sort of timely. If we were to humble ourselves before him, how much different would it be? One of my favorite little passages of scripture is in the book of Isaiah. It's Isaiah chapter 12. I want to read it for you, and we're going to have communion in just a moment. Isaiah 12. Take your Bibles and turn there with me. Listen to this. Isaiah writes this shortly after he's been out in the temple and seen the glory of God face to face. He says, Then you will say on that day, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for although you were angry with me, your anger is turned away and you comfort me. Isn't that incredible? The anger of God is turned away and God comforts them. Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and song. He has become my salvation. Therefore, you will joyously draw water from the springs of salvation. And in that day, you will say, give thanks to the Lord, call on his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, make them remember that his name is exalted. Praise the Lord in song, for he has done excellent things. Let this be known throughout all the earth. Cry aloud and shout for joy. O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel." That's the song of a man who has seen the glory of God and been humbled by it. As we come before the table, we were chatting outside, Richard and I, just before the service began, and he said, you know the phrase that Jesus uses in communion, do this in remembrance of me? He said, why is it we always go back to the cross? Well, it is a good thing to go to the cross, absolutely, don't get that wrong. But it's also, as Richard was pointing out, it's also really good to remember God in all of his glory as who he is as the living God. So this morning as we sit here with the elements in front of us, I wanna invite you to close your Bibles and maybe bow your head, and I want you to listen and consider what we've been talking about. And I want you to remember this morning, not just God on a cross. As thoroughly important as that is, but I want you to see and I want you to remember God in the person of Christ in some different ways. Behold, listen, the glory of Jesus interceding for his disciples. When you take that bread and that little cup of juice in a few moments, remember him who is praying for you, who is interceding for you, and be in hope this morning. Behold the glory of Jesus in humility. Jesus in humility who needed to pray. Jesus who humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross. Behold the glory of the shepherd keeping watch over his sheep. How does the Bible describe Jesus? He is the good shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep. Remember me, he said. When you take that little piece of bread and a little cup of juice, remember the shepherd who cared for the sheep, who kept watch over the sheep. Behold the glory of Jesus Christ coming to rescue his sheep. Remember him. As he walked on the waves. God incarnate, God in the flesh. Walking across the water to be with his people. As interesting picture in the Old Testament, the ocean often is used by agent nearest and people to describe chaos and disruption. And Jesus walks across the top of it all to rescue his disciples. Remember me, he said. Remember Jesus, the glory of Jesus, doing only that which God can do. Only one could go to a cross and suffer and die, and only one could do that for the sins of others and be raised again from the dead. Remember him. Remember the glory of the incarnate God. revealing himself to his people. And remember that moment in your life when God opened the doors, the eyes of your heart, if you like, and revealed himself to you, that you could see him in all of his glory and you could know him and have a relationship with him. Remember him in that. I'm going to read that part of Isaiah again, and then I'm going to be quiet for a while and let you have a chance to just enjoy and reflect on the Lord Jesus for yourself. It says, Behold, though you were angry with me, your anger is turned away, and you comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid. Loving Father, we come before you again, and we give you thanks, O God, for the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we thank you for the shepherd of our souls who loved us, loves us, intercedes for us. Father, the one that went to the cross for us. But Father, we thank you for the glory of our Savior, the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ in coming across the waves and speaking the name of God and the gentleness of the shepherd, speaking to them of words of comfort. Father, we thank you for the salvation that we have enjoyed. Father, we give thanks this morning. We rejoice before you as a company of your people that though you were angry with us, your anger is turned away and you comfort us. Oh God, to know that we are welcomed into your family, that to know, Father, that we are indeed your sons and your daughters. Father, help us as a church to humble ourselves, to pull down pride. Father, to get a great and awesome view of you again. Father, help us to fill our sights with a view of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh God, we plead with you for help. And Father, as we come now to take the bread and to break it and to pass it from hand to hand, Father, we pray that our memory of you would be sweet today, that we would see Jesus in all his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Father, we ask you these things. We give you thanks for this bread. We thank you for the reminder it brings to us of Jesus in his glory and his humility. Father, we give thanks in Jesus name. Amen. The night in which he was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Let's remember the Lord together, shall we? In the same way, he took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is a new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Let's remember the Lord together. Father in heaven, again, we give you thanks this morning. Thank you, oh God, for your grace. Thank you for your mercy. Thank you for your love for us. And Father, we pray this morning that you would take us each and deal with us, deal with us in grace. And Father, I pray that you would work on hard hearts. Father, work on my heart. Father, as long as there is pride amongst a church, it cannot flourish and it cannot prosper. Father, I pray that you would do a great work in KC Bible Church. But Father, it needs to start in each one's heart. A start that will take pride and break it and humble each of us. Father, that we might see ourselves the right way before you. Father, I plead with you that you would remove the hindrances. Father, if I'm hindering their growth, remove me. Father, I plead with you that your way would be had, your will would be done in this church, that it would be a powerful testimony to the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, I ask you these things in Jesus' name, amen.