Whenever I start to study a passage in the Bible, there's a couple of things that I ask myself as I look at the passage to help me study and to help me to formulate what it is that's in God's Word that I need to understand, whether it's for my own Bible study, whether it's for preparing for a sermon or whatever. And many of those questions that I ask myself are questions that you would ask yourself as well when you go to a passage. And one, of course, is context or location. Where is this passage located? What are the verses that come immediately before it? What are the verses that come out of it? What's the context of the passage that I'm studying here that's so important? because some of the worst errors that come in Bible teaching come by taking Scripture out of context. So I always ask myself, well, what is the context in the Scripture that I'm studying? And I also look at not only the context within the Scripture itself, but the context in history. What's going on at this point in history? Who is in charge? What kings are in charge? Or what governments are in charge? Or what's happening on world events? What's happening in the political realm? What's happening in the realm of the church? And that helps us to also understand the meaning of the passage that we're looking at. Other questions I ask myself is, okay, who wrote this? Now, we all know that the Bible is God-breathed. It's the Word of God, but He used men, and He wrote through men as He put these words down on paper. And so, who is it that wrote this? What is their background? Are they a scholar? Are they a Pharisee? Or are they a teacher? Or are they a fisherman? Or are they a king? Are they a warrior? Are they a prophet? So who is it that wrote this passage and where are they coming from as they wrote this down? And then of course, who are they writing to? Who is the audience of the passage? And what is it that they're going through at this time that necessitated being written to, right? Whether it's a narrative of history, whether it's an example of teaching like we might see in the New Testament. So these are all questions that I ask myself as I look at a passage. And we come to a passage this morning in the New Testament. in chapter 17 of Matthew, and I believe that it's at this point of Matthew that we're seeing a pivot in Jesus' actions and His focus to those around Him. I actually think this pivot started back in chapter 16, where Jesus is pivoting away from the crowds and away from the mass of those that are following Him, and focusing now His attention on His disciples. on those men who will be responsible for leading and growing His church when He's gone. And if you'll look through passages as we go through the next several weeks, Lord willing, looking at Matthew, you'll see in 16 and 17 and 18 and 19 and 20, Jesus laser-focused on the disciples as He's teaching them and exhorting them and bringing them along in the truth of who He is and what He is here for. And he's focused on that because by the time we get to chapter 21, Jesus is entering Jerusalem for the last week of his life before his crucifixion. So when we come to chapter 17, the time now is short. It could be a matter of months, maybe even weeks before Jesus enters Jerusalem for that last time as we read these words in chapter 17 this morning. And so we go through this passage, and we ask the question, as we look at this passage, we see it's a story that is probably not unlike many stories that have happened over the last several months, and years even, to the crowds that follow Jesus. We see a story of Jesus coming and healing a young boy who is demon-possessed. Is that a miracle? Absolutely it's a miracle. Is it something to write home about? Absolutely it's something to write home about. But we are here now in the third year of Jesus's ministry, and no doubt he's performing a miracle that he's performed dozens, maybe hundreds of times in the last two and a half to three years. We see over and over in Scripture that the passages say that wherever Jesus went, all of the people came to Him, and He met all of them, and He healed all of their diseases. We can't know how many thousands of people He may have touched. Kent has mentioned before that there are scholars who believe that really for this time of period in that region of Galilee it is quite possible, any medical people here, it is quite possible the medical people were out of business for a few years because disease and sickness was eradicated because of the work of Jesus Christ. It's amazing. So why then is it that we have this story about a young boy who is cured by having a demon cast out from him. The question I ask, beyond those others that I ask, is why is this story in the Bible? And we'll see this morning, it's not just in Matthew's account. It's in Mark's account, and it's in Luke's account as well. And the three accounts are very, very similar. So as we look at this passage this morning, we have to ask that question. Why is it that this passage is in Scripture? Why is it that God needed us to understand? And what we're going to find out is this is not necessarily a story this morning about a boy who is demon-possessed who is healed. This is a story about faith. And that's why we need to hear it this morning. Join me in prayer, if you would. Father God, we thank You for this time. We thank You for the privilege of gathering together with this body of saints to study Your Word, Father, to hear from You, As you move amongst our midst, Father, speak through these words in the next few minutes that we have together. Speak through your Word and open our hearts and teach us about the faith that you require of those who call you God. Father, may we leave here this morning changed because of your Word and your presence and your work among us. To you be all the glory and praise and honor. Amen. As we go into chapter 17, let's look and see what the setting is. As I mentioned earlier, this story comes right on the heels of what Kent covered last week, and that's the transfiguration of Jesus, where He was there transfigured along with three other disciples who witnessed this, Peter, James, and John. He was transfigured with Elijah and Moses. And what a majestic scene that must have been. What a truly, literally, a mountaintop experience that must have been for them. For Jesus to be held in all of His glory there before three of His disciples and be honored from eternity for who He is. And so, the disciples and Jesus come down from that mountaintop and are met with real life immediately. As we look in verse 14 of chapter 17, we read, and a man came up to him and knelt before him. As Jesus, you see the scene here, so Jesus and the disciples come down from the mountain, and immediately they're met with a crowd again. And we see who is in this crowd. It's the crowd that usually follows Jesus, looking for miracles, looking for signs, looking for teachings. But there's also a man that's part of this crowd that will be part of the story. And there's a young boy that is part of this crowd that'll be part of the story. And we'll also learn that the other nine disciples were part of the crowd. And we learn from Mark's account that the scribes, oh you love the scribes, the scribes were there as well because Mark says they were arguing with the nine disciples. And so this is the presence, this is the setting that Jesus and the disciples find themselves as they come down from this mountaintop experience. And so he comes down and we read from scripture, as he came up to the crowd, a man broke free from the crowd and came up to Jesus and knelt before him and said, Lord have mercy. We find a man here in great humility as he comes before God, before the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Scripture says here that he knelt before Him. For those of you that are wondering, the word is not there like he had just scored a touchdown and he dropped to a knee. This is a full prostrate falling before the Lord Jesus Christ on the ground. And so in an ultimate act of humility he throws himself down on the ground before Jesus. And he calls him Lord. Now we don't know what the man believed or what he didn't believe. But we know from his actions that he was desperate. He was in despair and he came before Jesus Christ and he humbled himself before God. And this is what he said, Lord have mercy on my son for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly. We know a little bit about epilepsy. It's a medical condition that causes the muscles to tighten. It causes seizures often in bodies. It can be a minor case of epilepsy. It can be a major case of epilepsy. Sometimes it's so severe that the person would lose consciousness, but they'll fall to the ground in a rigid seizure-like state. And the man says, have mercy on my son, because he is an epileptic, and he goes on further to say, he suffers terribly. We get a little bit more detail from this when we look at Mark and Luke as well, because they add some things to this. Mark says that the young boy suffered violently, and the word picture there is not that just he tenses up and falls to the ground, but we know that the boy is demon-possessed, and it's as if the demon picks him up and throws him to the ground violently. What a picture there of suffering. We go on in Matthew's gospel and we see that the Father goes on to say, and often He falls into the fire and into the water. We don't know exactly where this is located, where this scene is taking place, but my guess is a lot of the ministry is there along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and oftentimes there were fires there in the midst on the beaches, on the side of the sea, where people would be warming themselves, or they would be cooking fish, or they would be drying fish. And you see the scene here, the boy is thrown violently into epileptic seizures, often, scripture says, and he will fall into these fires or he'll fall into the water uncontrollably. Mark gives us even additional details if it could get worse. Mark says that the boy would foam at the mouth and he would grind his teeth from the effects of the epileptic seizure. What a terrible situation to be in. And we learn more from the other two Gospels as well. Because the Father tells the crowd and He tells Jesus that the boy has been this way since childhood. We don't know how old the boy is. He's referred to as a boy, but he could be anywhere from his early teens to his early twenties. We know he's not a child, and that he has suffered this from childhood, no doubt for many, many years. And then finally, one piece of information that you need to know comes from Luke, as he says that the boy was the man's only child. Let me speak to parents for just a moment now. Can you even imagine what this father went through? To always be on alert for a seizure that may come at any time. To know that you would have to pull your son from the fire, pull him from the water, wrestle with him, hold him, try to protect him 24-7 for years and years and years. Now do you see the despair of the father? No doubt over all these years, he's been to doctors, he's had the medicines that they prescribed, he's taken the herbs, he's done whatever it took to try to heal his boy, and nothing worked. And so no doubt someone said, take the boy to the teacher and his disciples. He has been going around healing people, he has been going around Casting out demons from folks. Take your boy to Jesus and his disciples. They will heal him. And so that's where the man is. He finds Jesus and the disciples. But his despair is even greater as we go into verse 16. As the man continues, so I brought my son to your disciples and they could not heal him. My last hope, my last chance for seeing my boy be healed was to bring him to you and your disciples. I've done that, and your disciples could not heal him." You know, one of the questions I asked myself as I looked at this is, well, first of all, what made the disciples think they could heal him, right? There's a reason they thought they could heal him. If you would, turn back over to Matthew chapter 10 for just a minute. Matthew chapter 10, we find when Jesus called the disciples among himself, called them to him to follow him and to be his disciples. When we go to chapter 12 of Matthew, the first verse, and he called to him his 12 disciples and he gave them authority over certain unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every disease and every affliction. Go on down now to verse 7, as Jesus is now commissioning his disciples to go out and to preach the word, and in verse 7 we read this, and proclaim as you go, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Verse 8, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. So the disciples, when Jesus called them to himself, were commissioned to heal. They were commissioned to cast out demons, and they were given the authority to do so. Well, that's good to know. Had they ever done it? Well, I'm glad you asked that question. Let's slip over now to Mark's version of the gospel, and in chapter 6 we read these words. It's Mark's account of what we just read in Matthew 10, of the calling and the sending out of the Twelve. Mark 6, beginning in verse 7. And so He, being Jesus, called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and He gave them authority over unclean spirits. We just saw that drop down to verse 12. So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. Verse 13, And they cast out many demons, and anointed many with oil, who were sick, and they healed them. Why did the disciples think they could have healed this boy at all? Because they had been doing it. They were commissioned by Jesus to do this. They were given the authority by Jesus to do this. And they had been doing this. So why not this time? Why did it not work this time? It's not that they didn't try. We're going to read later that the disciples asked Jesus, why couldn't we do this? And He'll give them an answer. So why couldn't they do it this time? Reading along in our passage, we'll come to that in a minute. And so the man comes and says, I brought my son to your disciples and they could not heal him. And so Jesus answered, O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring the boy to me. You sense the frustration in Jesus's heart and in his words, right? Because I think Jesus understood where he was in the course of history. He understood that a city called Jerusalem and a hill called Golgotha were just down the road, both literally and figuratively. His time on earth was short. His time with his disciples were short, and they were not ready for him to go. How long am I gonna be with you? How long are you gonna have me to come along behind you and fix what you could not do? In a sense is what Jesus is saying. And so he says, bring the boy to me here. Verse 18, and Jesus rebuked the demon and it came out of him and the boy was healed instantly. No fanfare, no parades, nothing miraculous other than the healing itself. Jesus simply rebuked the demon and he came out of him and the boy was healed instantly. Mark adds a little bit of detail to this and that he says that when the boy saw Jesus, that the demon inside the boy recognized Jesus And when Jesus cast him out, the demon threw the boy into one last violent fit, violent seizure of epilepsy. So much so that the people around him thought the boy was dead. But still the demon was gone and the boy was healed instantly and permanently. Now parents, what do you think? What would the father think at that point? What rejoicing there had to be! What a relief that suddenly came upon him to know that years of anguish, years of turmoil, years of watching his son go through this horrible, horrible experience were gone in an instant and forever. You know, if the story ended right there, I don't think we would know about it. Because honestly, it's just another healing, if I can say that. It's just another healing that Jesus had been doing for the last three years. It's just another demon that was cast out from someone, just like He had done for the last three years. And if the story had ended there, I don't think we would know about it. But the story moves on. And we now see the question that the disciples had of Jesus. Verse 19, then the disciples came to Jesus privately and pulled Him to the side and said, why could we not cast Him out? We've done it before. You've given us the authority. You've commissioned us to do it. We have done it. Why could we not cast out this demon?" And Jesus gives them these words. He said to them, because of your little faith. It's a phrase we've seen from Jesus before in Scripture. In fact, this phrase, little faith, is a term, it's a phrase that Jesus uses that's only recorded in Matthew and it's recorded five times. And each time it's used, it's directed towards the disciples. Not the scribes and Pharisees. Not the crowds. Towards the disciples. We see the first usage of it back in the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 6. were these disciples that left their homes, that left their places of business. Many of them were fishermen, there was a tax collector, they had jobs, they had careers, and they left all that behind to follow Jesus, and they're hearing Him preach saying, don't worry about what you're gonna eat, don't worry about what you're gonna wear, and they had to be thinking, what do you mean don't worry about it? We left our careers, we left everything for you, how are we gonna provide for ourselves? And Jesus says to them that first time, oh ye of little faith. You're faced with the situation where you're saying, there seems to be no humanly possible solution here. We don't have jobs. How are we going to provide for ourselves and in some cases provide for our families? And Jesus says, oh ye of little faith, you're looking for the human solution. And there's one beyond that. The second time Jesus uses this phrase, it's when the disciples are in a boat, and there's a great storm. You know this story. Jesus is asleep in the boat, and the great storm has come up. And it always amazes me because that boat held career fishermen who had fished on this lake all of their lives, who had grown up on this lake all of their lives, and they're here in this boat, and the storm is so great that they're saying, we're going to die. This is it. We have no humanly possible solution out of this. And so they wake up Jesus and he says, oh you of little faith. And you know what he does, he calms the seas. The storm goes away. That's the second time it was used. The third time the disciples are in a boat again. on the Sea of Galilee. But this time, Peter gets out of the boat, and astonishingly, he has enough faith to walk towards Jesus on the water. But again, the waves come up, and the wind comes up, and Peter starts to doubt, and he starts to sink, and he looks at how far away the boat is, he looks at how far away Jesus is, and he sees no humanly possible solution, and he says, woe is me, save me, I'm going to drown, and Jesus looks at him and says, oh you of little faith. Again, you're looking for the human solution The fourth time it happens, the disciples had gotten out of a boat this time, across to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, to a land where nobody was there yet. There weren't the crowds, there weren't everybody around them. And Jesus starts to teach them and one of the disciples says, whoa, we didn't bring anything to eat. And they start grumbling amongst themselves. What are we going to eat? And amazingly, the story comes just on the heels of Jesus feeding the 5,000, and then a chapter later, Jesus feeding the 4,000, and now he's got just 12 disciples, and they're like, we're doomed. We have nothing to eat. And Jesus says, oh ye of little faith. You're looking for the humanly possible solution Yet I am the solution." The fifth and final time is the passage we see today, where we have the disciples who had been healing, who had been ministering, who had been casting out demons, and now they came to one that they could not cast out. I almost chuckle when I think of what would that scene have been like before Jesus and the three disciples come. Have you ever thought about that? Can you imagine those nine guys? Okay, Andrew, you try, I can't do it. I don't know what, well, Thaddeus, did you do it? What did we say last time that worked, right? They attempted to cast out the demons, and it didn't work. And Jesus said, because of your little faith. But then he goes on to explain himself a little bit more. For truly I say to you, if you have the faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you. Okay, now I'm confused. Jesus, you just criticized the disciples for having little faith. And now what is it that you tell them they need? They need little faith. They need the faith that's the size of a mustard seed. Well, which is it, Jesus? This mustard seed analogy is not the first time that the disciples heard this. If you will turn back to Matthew chapter 13, we'll see where Jesus introduces this concept of mustard seed faith. So in Matthew 13, beginning in verse 31, Jesus has been teaching the disciples a series of parables, and then 31 says, and he put another parable before them saying, the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it is grown, it is larger than all the garden plants, and it becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. The analogy, the picture of the mustard seed is not that it's a small seed. The picture of the mustard seed is that it's a small seed that becomes something mighty, that becomes something strong, that becomes something foundational, that can move mountains. Jesus says, that's the kind of faith that you need. A faith that starts small but grows into something mighty and useful in the kingdom. Well, I have a question. How do we get that kind of faith? Where does that kind of faith come from? Well, unfortunately, Matthew ends the story there, unless you have the King James Bible. And then you get verse 21 as a bonus. If you're paying attention with your ESV, you see we go from verse 20 to verse 22. You didn't get ripped off, I'm sorry. There is a verse 21 in the King James Bible. And we also see the solution alluded to from Mark's version of it. And he says, it's because of your lack of prayer. Specifically in the King James, Jesus says, this kind does not come out except through prayer and fasting. Mark says, this kind only comes out through prayer. What was it that they were missing that caused their little faith? It was a life of prayer. So how do I get this prayer? You know, I think in this day and time, we're a very blessed people. And I think you would agree with me. Let me give you a couple of examples. We are sitting this morning, it's like a gazillion degrees below zero outside it feels like, and we're in this nice warm building here, fellowshipping together and worshipping together because of the conveniences that we enjoy today. Many of us, if we were to lose our job or need a different job, with just the click of a mouse, we can find jobs that are out there. Not just jobs that are in Wichita, but jobs that might be in Kansas City, or Oklahoma, or Singapore, or anywhere else. We have access to that in a moment. Many of us might get sick from something, a disease or an illness, and we have access to trained, knowledgeable doctors that have access to medicines that can help us, that can provide surgeries that can cure us. And we find these solutions to everything. Some of us may be struggling with a family relationship or a relationship with a friend, and there's trained counselors that we can go to that will help walk us through that and help counsel us through that. We're very blessed people. Because any time it feels like that we reach a problem that comes in our lives, there is a human solution out there, isn't there? Are you sick? Go see a doctor, they can help you. Do you need counseling? We've got counselors that can help you. Are you needing a job? There's a way to go find a job and be provided for that. And I think while we're blessed, that's a wonderful thing, but having the blessings that show us human answers to our problems all the time, I think can lead to little faith. Because we don't have situations where there is no humanly possible solution that we face very much. What about the people that had this sort of faith? What did they do? Well, we have an example of that. We have a whole chapter in Hebrews chapter 11 of people who faced these impossible solutions yet trusted in God." And you can just go through and tick them off from Hebrews chapter 11. By faith, Abel offered God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain. And through it, he was commended as righteous. Verse 8, by faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called and he left the place where he lived to go to a place that he did not know, to a land that God was giving his heirs. Further on down, by faith, Abraham, when he was tested, lifted up Isaac, his only son, as a sacrifice. No human solution there, but Abraham trusted in God to provide. We go on, by faith, Moses, when he had grown up, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. And instead, the scripture says, he chose to be mistreated with the people of God, rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of this life. We go on, by faith, the people of Egypt, when they were faced with an impossible situation, crossed the Red Sea on dry land, but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned. And it goes on and on and on. What more shall I say of Gideon, of Barak, of Samson, of Jephthah, of David, of Samuel? I think of Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego, who stood in the face of an evil king and say, though you throw us into a fiery furnace, our God will save us. There's no human solution there. But they had the faith to trust in God to provide when there was no human solution. And that's the faith that God is looking for in us as well. How does this faith come about? It comes about through prayer, as Jesus said. This kind of demon only leaves through prayer and fasting. It comes from a lifetime of prayer, of being committed to a prayer life. Jesus gives an interesting story, an interesting parable, if you will, about what our prayer life ought to look like. He does this over in Luke chapter 18. And he says this, and so he told them the parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not to lose heart. And he said, in a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. For there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, give me justice against my adversary. And for a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, though I neither fear God nor respect man, Yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice so that she will not beat me down by coming continually." What is an effective prayer life look like? It's one that is persistent. It's one where the widow is knocking at the door, give me my justice. Give me what I'm asking for over and over and over again. Knocking at the door. It's interesting the scripture doesn't even say that the woman's request was justified or that it was right. It simply said that the judge got tired of her because she kept knocking at the door. I thought of this, you know, oftentimes in scripture, we see a comparison that's made between our physical health and our spiritual health. And we see analogies of things that we would do for our physical health that can be then translated over to analogies that we might do for our spiritual health as well. And the one that often comes up to me is exercise. We all know that if I want to become strong physically, then I need to exercise, I need to go to the gym. You know this, I know this. And I've taken this to heart. And I went to the gym. And it was Monday, like four weeks ago, okay? What do you think? I'm actually surprised nobody said anything. That, hey, Rusty, have you been to the gym? Why, yes, I have. I have been to the gym. It was Monday, four weeks ago. Now, why do we laugh? Because that's absurd, Rusty. You can't go to the gym once and work out and think, wow, now you're strong. It has to be a persistent working out that occurs. And someone may come and say, I've got this situation in my life that's very difficult. And it doesn't have a humanly possible solution to it. It's an illness in a family. It's a relationship with someone else. It's a neighbor that's going through something. It's a financial struggle, and I don't have a humanly possible solution for that. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Tell me, have you prayed? Yeah. Last Wednesday night at prayer meeting. Hmm. Let me ask the question in a different way. Have you worn out God with your persistent prayers? Have you come to Him so often that He is tired of you, if I can say that, and will grant you your request? Have you come to God so often that He will honor your request? When we pray like that, then we are living a life that is committed to finding a God solution to our situation as opposed to a human solution to our situation. A prayer life that is constantly on our knees before God forces us to look to Him for the answers to our situations, to our problems, to our needs. I would submit to you that the demon was not cast out by the disciples because they did not have that sort of reliance upon the power and majesty of God. So to get this kind of faith, I would say that you need two things. One, you need a persistent prayer life before God. I think we all understand that and know that. But the second thing you need, I believe, is not one that you're gonna like. We read the answer to this one in James. When he says, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith produces faithfulness, steadfastness. And let this steadfastness have its full effect in you, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. What is it that creates this type of faith in my life? It's a persistent prayer life, and then unfortunately, it's going through trials. It's being tested. It's being put into situations where there is no possible human solution. And knowing that I have nowhere else to turn but to God. We can see these often times. Maybe you're at the kitchen table and there's a pile of bills on one side and there's a checkbook on the other and they don't match up. Maybe you're the one that needs to provide for your family, but you've lost your job and there are no prospects out there. There are no human solutions for how you're going to do this. What do I do? Maybe you've been to the doctor and you've been given some information and you've been given a prognosis and none of it's good. And they don't have a solution. Maybe you have a relationship in your life or a family or a friend that is broken and you've tried, but there's no way to restore that relationship. There's no humanly possible solution here. And that's where the persistent prayer comes as we knock before the throne of God and say, Father, have mercy upon me. Have mercy upon my situation. Some of you may be sitting here this morning saying, you know, I get that Rusty, and I understand what you're saying. But if I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, I'm not really facing any situations like that. Most of the problems I run into have human solutions to them. And so I don't find myself on my knees. I'm not forced to be on my knees before God because honestly things work out. Does that mean I'm never going to have this great faith that you're calling for? Well, I would say if nothing else, that's the beauty of a church body. Because you may not be facing those situations, but there are people in this room that are. And we have the privilege to kneel beside them before the throne of God and to persistently pray on their behalf. We have the privilege of planting that mustard seed of faith and waiting and watching God grow that into something mighty, something foundational, something that moves mountains, something that casts out demons. The faith that God requires of us is a faith that requires a persistent prayer life from us. And often it will require us to go through a trial that has no human solution. Forcing us to trust in God to do what He has promised. Whether you're facing that situation or not, I need to end with this. Whether you're facing that situation or not right now, everyone in this room, everyone in all of the earth has faced a situation that does not have a possible human solution to it. And that situation is my sin being brought before a holy and righteous God. There is no human solution that will pay the price that is necessary to block out my sin from a holy and righteous God. The only, the only solution is through the death and resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ. And so I close with this this morning. Today is the time. Today is the time to put that mustard seed of faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ for the salvation of your soul. for the cleansing of your sin, for a life changed for all of eternity. Today, place that mustard seed of faith in Him and watch Him grow that into something that is amazing and eternal, the salvation of your soul. Let's pray. Father God, we thank You for Your Word this morning. Father, I know my words were inadequate, but I would ask that You would work through them and in spite of them to touch our hearts, Father. Help us to understand that You are at work around us at all times. Help us to understand that You are working out Your will and Your way in our lives every day. And our role in that, Father, is to persistently come to Your throne like the Father, And to place ourselves before you and say, Father, have mercy upon me. Have mercy upon my situation. Have mercy upon my neighbor, on my family member, on my co-worker, Father. Give us your grace, Lord. And drive me to your throne in an act of humility as I recognize that you are the sovereign God of all things, Father. We thank you for this time. We thank you for the opportunity to gather together, to encourage one another, to read your word, to sing praises, to offer up prayers, Father. And we do it all in an act of offering to you. May you receive it, Father, in that way. May you be blessed and glorified in it, Father. And as I said earlier, may we leave today changed because of your presence here today, Father. Now to you be all the glory and honor and praise. Amen.