Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody today. We are going to be back in Mark chapter six this morning. And we're going to be in verses 30 through 44. And the title of the message this morning is The Good Shepherd Feeds His Sheep. The Good Shepherd Feeds His Sheep. Two weeks ago, in verses seven through 13 of Mark 6, we looked at Mark's account of a time when Jesus sent his 12 apostles, these 12 that he had chosen to speak and to act as his representatives, he sent them out on a training mission. And this seems to be the first time that he sent them out to minister without him. Jesus had been going around the country preaching and teaching and healing people for a while. And he had this group of disciples following him as he traveled around. Could have been anywhere from 80 to 100 people or even more. But there was this group of disciples that was following him. And out of the larger group, he chose 12 to be with him all the time. And he chose them with the purpose of sending them out to preach, to speak his words to the world. He didn't just take them to seminary for three and a half years until they graduated and then send them out to preach the gospel after he ascended into heaven. He taught them for a while and then he let them watch and he let them listen to him. And then he divided them up into pairs and he sent them out on a trial run. Not so that he could see how they would perform, but so that they could experience what their lives were gonna be like and how things were going to happen when they were actually ministering the gospel and preaching the gospel. And so they could learn from that experience. So they went out in pairs with no provisions. They were commissioned to proclaim the coming of God's kingdom and to exhort people to change their thinking and believe the good news that they were proclaiming. And the Lord gave them authority to heal people and to cast out unclean spirits. And that's what they did. They went from town to town preaching, casting out demons, and healing people by the authority of Christ through the operation of the Holy Spirit. They were laying the foundation for Christian ministry because that's how it works. That's really a picture of how it works. We proclaim the gospel, we preach the word of God, and people are set free from their captivity to Satan, and they're healed from their bondage to sin and death, and it all happens by the power of the Holy Spirit working through the word, through the message. So, that was what was going on, but then, Mark left that in verse 14. He took a rabbit trail. As the apostles were going about through the towns and villages, ministering and healing people in the name of Jesus, they began to receive a lot of publicity. Everybody in Galilee was talking about this, and people were hearing about Jesus, and they were hearing about all the miraculous things that were happening in his name. So they began to speculate about who he was and where his power came from. King Herod heard about him as well. And Herod was convinced that Jesus must somehow be John the Baptist sent back from the dead as a minister of God's justice toward him because he had beheaded John the Baptist. So, in verses 14 through 29 that we looked at last week, Mark detailed for us how and why it came about that Herod had beheaded John. And it was a case study in human depravity. Herod had divorced his first wife and he had married Herodias, who was the wife of his brother Philip. I mean, if you've ever watched a soap opera, this would make a pretty good one. This would make a pretty good movie, probably. that he had divorced his first wife, and then he married the wife of his brother Philip, and John called him out on it. It's even possible that Herod brought John's criticism on himself by asking what he should do in light of John's preaching. We looked at from Luke how different groups of people asked John, well, what should we do? John's preaching the kingdom of God. And so the crowds asked him, what should we do? And he told them. And the soldiers asked him, what should we do? And he told them, tax collectors asked him, what should we do? And he told them, and all of them, he told them, love your neighbors yourself. Well, it's very possible that Herod asked the same question. We don't know whether he did or not, but whether he did or not, John told him. Whether Herod had asked John, Herod understood that John was a servant of God. He liked to listen to his preach. He loved to listen to him preach, and he thought that John might even be a prophet, and so he would go out and he would hear John preach. But whether Herod told John, or asked John what he should do, or whether John just told him, hey, the way you're living is not right. You're in sin. You know, you haven't loved your brother. You didn't love your first wife, and now you didn't love your brother, and now look what you've done, and look what you've done. Well, Herodias, who had been Herod's brother's wife and was now his wife, did not appreciate John's message. She didn't appreciate John's criticism of Herod's marriage to her, and she wanted him put to death. Well, Herod tried to avoid that by putting John in prison. But a day came when his lust and foolishness and pride and fear of what people might think, it all backed him into a corner. And it backed him into a corner where he felt like he was honor-bound to execute John, and he did. It's interesting, there was a time in Jesus' ministry when he was talking to his apostles, and he told them, there's gonna come a day when the people that kill you are gonna think they're doing service to God. And so that's exactly what happened with John the Baptist. Herod thought that he made oaths, and so he's honor-bound to keep those oaths. So to uphold his honor, he has John executed. Well, now when he hears about everything that's happening in association with Jesus' ministry, his guilty conscience makes him think that John has come back to haunt him, and that brings us to our text today. So, let's read it. We're gonna start reading in verse 30. The apostles gathered together with Jesus and they reported to him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest awhile. For there were many people coming and going and they did not even have time to eat. They went away in the boat to a secluded place by themselves. The people saw them going and many recognized them and ran there together on foot from all the cities and got there ahead of them. When Jesus went ashore, he saw a large crowd and he felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. When it was already quite late, his disciples came to him and said, this place is desolate and it is already quite late. Send them away so that they may go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat. But he answered them, you give them something to eat. And they said to him, shall we go and spend 200 denarii on bread and give them something to eat? And he said to them, how many loaves do you have? Go look. And when they found out, they said, five and two fish. And he commanded them all to sit down by groups on the green grass. They sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. And he took the five loaves and the two fish. And looking up toward heaven, he blessed the food and broke the loaves. And he kept giving them to the disciples to sit before them. And he divided up the two fish among them all. They all ate and were satisfied. And they picked up 12 full baskets of the broken pieces and also of the fish. There were 5,000 men who ate the loaves." Father, we thank you for this word. And we just ask that as we look into this today, that you open it up to us, that you teach us things that we haven't seen before. Lord, that you help us to grow, that you help us to be encouraged. and help us to draw near to you and come to trust you more through this word. Lord, we thank you for these things in Jesus' name, amen. Well, let's get right into it. Verses 30 and 31, the apostles gathered together with Jesus and they reported to him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest awhile. For there were many people coming and going and they did not even have time to eat. So last week we took that side track and we looked at the events surrounding the death of John the Baptist and the big banquet that Harry had put on in his own honor and how that all worked out and it came about in the death of John. And then this week, At this point, Mark takes us back to Jesus. And the disciples have completed their mission. And they've met back up with Jesus to report all that they've done and taught. And when they gather around Jesus, immediately there's a crowd. People have probably gotten used to seeing them traveling around the country together. And whenever they see Jesus and his disciples, immediately there's a crowd that begins to gather around them. And that happens a lot. When you get 15 or 20 people gathered up, then pretty soon you've got 15 or 20 more. And the next thing you know, there's a big crowd because people are curious. They come to see what's going on. And so there were so many people coming and going that the disciples didn't even have time to stop for a meal. And this is pretty reminiscent of chapter three, verse 20. I don't know if y'all remember, but Jesus had been up on the mountain choosing his 12 apostles, and they came home to Peter's house in Capernaum, and such a crowd gathered around the house that they didn't even have time for a meal. And now the disciples have come home from their trial run mission trip, that the Lord sent them out on, and immediately they're faced with the same situation. I don't think they're in Capernaum here, but they come back to Jesus, and they all gather up, and suddenly there's all these people around them, and they don't have time for anything besides just dealing with the commotion. And they can't even stop for a meal. And Jesus has a word for his disciples at this moment, this moment when life is at its craziest. He has a word for them and it's really an encouraging word if we catch it. It's the same word that he has for everyone. It's the same word that he has for the lost. He has this word for his disciples and he has this word for his ministers. And here's what the word is. Come away by yourselves to a secluded place. and rest a while. How about in Matthew 11, 28, he puts it this way. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. You see what he's saying to them? He's saying, you guys have been busy preaching the gospel and working hard for the kingdom. Now you're all stressed out and you're thinking it's up to you. You're thinking there's all this to be done and you've been out working and doing these things and so now you're just, you're in production mode. I understand this mindset because this is me and my wife can testify. I get in production mode and I just forget about everything else. Let's just get it done, you know, and we just go. And so they come back in and they've been doing these things and so now they're stressed and they can't rest. They can't stop. And he said, you've got this idea that this is up to you and you need to get along with me for a while and rest. And remember that I'm actually the one doing all this, not you. And so in verse 32, it says, they went away in the boat to a secluded place by themselves. So Jesus and his apostles, they got in the boat and left. So evidently, whatever city they're in, they're by the shore of the Sea of Galilee. And so they just go down, they get in the boat, and they leave. And Mark's account doesn't tell us where they left from or where they went, except that it was to a secluded place. However, Luke's account of this same event tells us in Luke chapter nine, verse 10, that they went to Bethsaida. And so that's why we have it here on the map. You can see Bethsaida up there where the dot is. It's kind of up at the northeast corner of the map, kind of the northeast corner of the Sea of Galilee. And so that's where they went to according to Luke's gospel. So let's go ahead and read verse 33. The people saw them going and many recognized them and ran there together on foot from all the cities and got there ahead of them. So Jesus told them, hey, let's go. Let's go away to a secluded place. And so they get in the boat and they pull out on the shore and they leave. The problem was the crowd saw them get in the boat and leave and they saw which direction they went. And since we know that they ended up in Bethsaida, this verse gives us a clue as to where they got in the boat. Because it says that many recognized them and ran there together on foot from all the cities and got their head of them. So whenever they met back up, if you look over here to the left, all of Galilee is over here to the left. Wish I'd have found a better map, but this one, I wanted it big enough where y'all could see Bethsaida good. But anyway, over here to the left, this is Galilee, and there's lots of little towns and villages. And so the picture seems to be that the disciples and Jesus probably got in the boat somewhere around Tiberias, and they went up here to Bethsaida. Because it says that people ran there from all of the towns, from all the cities. And so what the picture we have is that they entered the boat somewhere around Tiberias and they stayed close enough to the shore that as they were sailing north that the people in the cities recognized them as they went by. And the crowd just continued to grow as they passed by each city. And the people were already there waiting on them when they got out of the boat. So we need to see the picture that Mark is showing us here as we move forward. Now, keep in mind that the last thing that he told us about last week was this banquet, this party, this meal that King Herod had thrown in his own honor. The food was likely very plentiful and the best available. And the entertainment was sensuous dancing. And the attendees of this banquet were the elite, the most important and powerful and wealthy people in Galilee. And everyone was there to serve Herod the King. It's interesting that the Holy Spirit painted that picture for us and held it up as a contrast to what we're about to see that takes place in the verses that we're fixing to read. Verse 34 says, when Jesus went ashore, he saw a large crowd and he felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. So when Jesus walks out of the boat onto the shore, there's this huge crowd waiting for him. And of course, he could have turned them away. He could have turned them away. He could have just turned around and got back in the boat and went somewhere else. But why would he do that? Because he planned for them to be there. Our text says that he felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. The word translated compassion is Splagchnizomai. Splagchnizomai. Say that six times fast. It means to be moved inwardly. This word is most frequently used about Jesus. Every place this word is used in the New Testament except for two, it's about Jesus and it's about the compassion that he feels either toward the multitudes or toward individual sufferers, individual people. The only two other places that this particular word is used are actually in parables that Jesus told. and he used it in reference to the master who forgave the slave the unpayable debt. Remember, the slave that owed his master an exorbitant amount of money that could never be paid back, and the master had compassion for him and forgave him. Of course, that slave didn't have compassion on his fellow slave that owed him money. But it's used there, and then it's used of the father of the prodigal son in Luke 15, 20. And both of those, the master of the slave represents the Lord, and the father of the prodigal son represents God, represents the Lord. So I'm sure you can see the pattern here. The word, this Black Chisholmite, is only used in the New Testament to describe divine compassion. This is not human compassion. Jesus looks at the crowd and he's moved with divine compassion for them. So what did Jesus do as a result of his compassion for the crowd? He fed them. You know, Christians feed people. Most of the, I realized that it just dawned on me years ago. I grew up in a Christian family, and my grandparents were always feeding people, always. I mean, anybody that came to their house, you were gonna leave with food, period. That's just what they did, they fed people. They say that, you know, Baptists, we always eat, we're eating all the time. Well, yes, it's true, but that's just what we do. We feed people. Most of the ministries in the world, the soup kitchens, the food distribution networks, and most of those things, somehow they originated with Christians. Of course, there's hospitals and universities that are the same way. Christians feed people and care for people and take care of them. Why? Because we're imitating Christ. The shepherd feeds his sheep. And he starts out by feeding them what they need most. He had compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. See, they were perishing for lack of knowledge. Listen to Amos chapter eight. I'm gonna read verses 11 and 12. The Lord speaking through the prophets says, Behold, days are coming, declares the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but rather for hearing the words of the Lord. People will stagger from sea to sea and from the north even to the east. They will go to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, but they will not find it. Jesus looks at this crowd and he has compassion on them because they're like sheep without a shepherd. They're perishing for lack of knowledge. They're lost and they're starving and they don't even know it, just like everybody else in the world until they're found by Christ. They're lost and they're perishing and they don't even know it. So he began to teach them many things. Later on in our text, Jesus is gonna feed their bodies physical food, but right now he's giving them the most important food of all, spiritual food. In John 6, the day after this event happens, in John's account of this event, the day after it happens, Jesus went back across the lake, And the crowds went back around, followed him back around. And he's been having a conversation with the Jewish religious leadership about, they took offense because he proclaimed that God, not Moses, was the source of the true bread from heaven. And he went on to tell them that he himself was in fact that true bread from heaven sent down to give life to the world. Some of his disciples at that point were having a hard time understanding that physical bread was just a metaphor. And it was a metaphor for spiritual sustenance. So in John 6, 63, Jesus spelled it out for them. He said, listen guys, it's the spirit who gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. And so that's what he's doing here. The first thing that he feeds them is the words of eternal life. When Jesus was moved by compassion toward the crowd, the first thing he fed them was what they needed most. He began to speak to them the words of eternal life. Listen to what it says in Deuteronomy chapter eight, verses two and three. You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these 40 years, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart whether you would keep his commandments or not. He humbled you and let you be hungry and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. In John 21, After the resurrection, when Jesus was reinstating and confirming Peter as the leader of the apostles, he basically gave Peter one assignment and he repeated it three times. He told him, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Yes. Then shepherd, tend, and feed my sheep. And he's talking about feeding them his word. That's the apostolic example that we are to follow as well. That doesn't mean that we don't take care of people's physical needs, but the spiritual is always preeminent. Let's look at verses 35 and 36. When it was already quite late, his disciples came to him and said, this place is desolate and it's already quite late. Send them away so that they may go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat. So the apostles, they're gonna have some compassion on the crowd for their physical needs. Jesus taught the people for a long time. He was a long-winded preacher. It's getting late. It's past dinnertime. It's about to get dark. And the disciples realize how late it's getting, and truth be told, they're probably getting hungry themselves, because they still hadn't had that meal. You know the reason why Jesus said, let's go get away from everybody and go to a desolate place is because they didn't even have time to stop and eat. So they asked the Lord to stop teaching. Stop teaching, dismiss the crowd, so they can go find something to eat before it gets dark. There's this huge crowd of people. They're out in the middle of nowhere and it's late in the evening. Now listen, this is in the Galilean countryside 2,000 years ago. They're not in restaurants. There's no convenience stores and there's no grocery stores. Not much is known about the size of Bethsaida except that it was a small fishing village that was located in a desolate place. The population wouldn't have been larger than a few hundred people. So the disciples were being very compassionate toward the crowd, and they're being very practical when they ask Jesus to send the people away. Verse 37 says, but he answered them, you give them something to eat. Well, they were not expecting that. They didn't even have food to feed themselves, much less the crowd. And so then they turned around and immediately said to him, shall we go and spend 200 denarii on bread and give them something to eat? That question was probably sarcasm. It's likely that 200 denarii was all the money that they had in their collective money bag. In John's account of this, in John six, verse seven, when Jesus is talking to Philip about how they're gonna come up with enough bread to feed the multitude, Philip uses that same figure, 200 denarii, when he says that 200 denarii wouldn't buy enough bread even to give everybody in the crowd a little, much less feed them. And the truth is that as small as Bethsaida was, late in the evening, they probably wouldn't have been able to find 200 denarii worth of bread to buy. There wouldn't have been enough bread in the whole town to feed the crowd, even if they had enough money. And the disciples knew it. But Jesus is getting ready to teach them something. In verse 38, it says, and he said to them, how many loaves do you have? Go look. And when they found out, they said five and two fish. So Jesus asked them how much bread they have and he sends them to look. He wasn't asking them how much bread they personally had. They didn't have any. He was sending them to search in the crowd and see what might be available. And we know from John's account that Andrew found this boy, basically, it says young man or lad, but they found this, John found this boy who had a lunch. He had five barley loaves. which is probably just a little bit bigger than a tortilla. He had five barley loaves and two fish. And that's it. That's what they found. Well, the apostles didn't realize it yet, but the Lord is teaching them. He's showing them that they don't have anything, but what they do have is sufficient when they give it to him. That's what he's teaching them. He's teaching them to rest. It's where it started. He's teaching them to rest. Let's look at verses 39 through 42. And commanded them all to sit down by groups on the green grass. They sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. And he took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up toward heaven, he blessed the food and broke the loaves, and he kept giving them to the disciples to set before them. And he divided up the two fish among them all. They all ate and were satisfied. So the Lord has the people separated into groups that are small enough that the disciples could easily walk around and through them to distribute the food. And then the Lord blessed the food. The text doesn't tell us the exact words that Jesus spoke, but there actually was a Jewish prayer for meals. There was a common Jewish prayer that they would pray before meals, and it went like this. Praise be to you, O Lord our God, King of the world, who makes bread to come forth from the earth and who provides for all that you have created. See, it was a prayer of praise for the providence of God, that providence that we were reading about in Psalm 104 this morning before we began the service. That psalm that we read from was all about God's provision for His creation. And that was the Jewish prayer before meals was a summary of that psalm. Praise be to you, O Lord our God, King of the world, who makes bread to come forth from the earth and who provides for all that you've created. That's probably what Jesus said. And then he broke the loaves and he divided up the fish and he gave them to the disciples who distributed them to all the people and everyone ate and was satisfied. They didn't just get something to eat. They got plenty to eat. They were all full. And verse 43 says, and they picked up 12 baskets, 12 full baskets of the broken pieces and also of the fish. Not only did Jesus feed the crowd, he provided that meal for his apostles as well. All they had to do was trust him and do what he said. That's what it means to rest. And he served him, he provided everything. And you know, really, that's what the Christian life is all about, right there. It's learning to trust the Lord and do what he says. You know why we don't do what he says? Because we don't trust him. If we trust him, we do what he says. So he tells us that he loves us and he knows what's best for us. If we ever sin, the only reason why we don't is we don't believe that. Every time we sin, it's because we don't believe that the Lord knows what's best for us. We believe we're like Eve. Whenever Satan tempted her, you will be like God, knowing good and evil. You'll know what's best. You'll make those decisions. Restoration to God just means that we realize, you know what? He knows what's best. He's God and I'm not. And I begin to trust him and look to him and look to his provision instead of my own. Just like those apostles. You guys aren't the one doing this. You need to trust me. I'm the one that provides. Matter of fact, I am the provision. And that's what this is a picture of. Verse 44 says, there were 5,000 men who ate the loaves. The word that is most commonly translated man or men in the New Testament is anthropos. Anthropos. And it's gender neutral. It means a human being and it can be male and it can be female. It's like when we say mankind. However, the word that Mark uses here in verse 44 is not that word. It's not anthropos. The word that is translated man, here in verse 44, is aner, aner. And aner means man, period. It's never used to describe a woman. And it's actually used to mean distinctively male. Because of this, most scholars are convinced that Mark is just recording the amount of men that are there. And it wasn't just men that were there. It was a crowd of people. If you include women and children, scholars believe that there were probably anywhere from 15 to 20,000 people there that were fed. Not that that really matters. When you're creating food ex nihilo, right out of the air, What's a few thousand here or there? The point is, you got enough food to feed maybe two people. If the Lord used it to feed 5,000 or 15 or 20,000, what difference does it make? What is the point? Well, what's the point of all this? There's obvious things like, well, Jesus is God. Jesus is the source of all things. Every good thing comes from him. Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is the King. This is one of those signs that we're gonna represent the coming of the Messiah. Jesus is showing, he's identifying with the Lord fed the nation of Israel when it's wandering through the wilderness. He fed them bread. He fed them manna. It came down from heaven. It wasn't actually bread. They didn't really know what it was. That's why they called it manna. Manna means what is it? They didn't know what it was. They made bread out of it. But the Lord fed them and now Jesus is feeding them. He's showing them who he is. He's the true bread from heaven. But how about the contrast that the Holy Spirit has given us here of the difference between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man, and it's pictured in these two banquets that we've looked at over the last two weeks. Back to back. In the kingdom of man, fleshly desires run the show. Power and status are held in high esteem, and the highest are served by those lower than them, with the highest, the king, contributing nothing. He's just the one that is getting served. He's a consumer. The poor and the weak are despised, and the godly are marginalized or even killed. That's in the kingdom of man. Of course, the kingdom of God is just the opposite. The word of God, instead of sensual entertainment, what is of first importance? The word of God, eternal spiritual life, communing with God in Christ is the primary focus, it's first. And divine compassion runs the show. The common people sit while the king provides everything. The Lord is serving and his ministers are serving it to the people. It's exactly the opposite. The kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. Can you see the difference? See, God provides for his creation. That's the way it works. It can't work any other way. In Acts chapter 17, whenever Paul was preaching on Mars Hill, he's saying, he basically tells them, what do you think you can bring to God? He doesn't dwell in temples made with human hands, as if he needed anything, or we could serve him anything. In the Psalms, the Lord says, if I was hungry, I wouldn't tell you. What could you do for me? God is the creator and the sustainer of everything. The shepherd feeds his sheep. The shepherd, the creator, sustains his creation. Humanity fell into sin because our first parents failed to believe God and trust in his provision. They believe this lie that somehow there's something better for them than what their creator would give them. Jesus is the bread from heaven. He's God's perfect provision for his people and he reconciles us to God in his kingdom. Have you ever considered the two ordinances that the Lord left the church? There's two symbolic rituals that we perform regularly as Christians, and we're supposed to, and they're baptism and the Lord's Supper. They're metaphors. They're visual metaphors for spiritual reality, but have you considered what they represent? The word baptizo that our word for baptism comes from literally means to immerse, to make fully wet. So as Christians, we are immersed in Christ. And in the Lord's Supper, we are fed by Christ. We're sustained by Christ. He's our great shepherd, and he feeds us. What does he feed us? Well, scripture, yes. But there's more to it than that. There's more to it than that. You know, in John chapter five, he's arguing with some of those Jewish religious leaders, and he's pointing something out to them. These guys know the scriptures. He's telling them, you search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life. But it's these that speak of me, and you won't come to me so that you might have life. See, it's not just the Scriptures. It's not just dead words that He feeds us. It's living words. It's His words coming out of His mouth and recorded in all of the Scriptures that call us to Him and cause us to look to Him and rest in Him for everything. If the Scriptures don't bring you to Christ, then you don't understand Him yet. You're not reading them right. You're not hearing His voice. The words of eternal life are the words that bring us to Christ. That's what we feed on. That's the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. And then as Christians, as Christians, just like those apostles did, the Lord gave the food to them and then they turn around and they distribute it to the crowd. And that's the way it works with us in the kingdom of God. The Lord gives the bread to us, and then we turn around and give it to others. That's what evangelism is. I don't think he originated it, but R.C. Sproul said Christian evangelism is just one beggar telling another one where to find bread. That's what we do. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this word. We thank you for this picture. This contrast. Of the kingdom of God. Up against the kingdom of man. How you? Oh Lord, you. Didn't come to be served, but you came to serve and to give yourself as a ransom for many. And Lord, we just ask that you help us to see this glorious picture today as we enter into a time of communion and we take the Lord's Supper. And Lord, we just pray that you impress this vision and this truth upon our hearts. And we thank you for these things in Jesus name, Amen. So at this time, we are going to