The Healer

You stand with me out of respect for the Word of God. If you have your Bibles, turn with me if you would to Mark chapter 1.

We are going to be looking at verses 29 to 39. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her. She began to serve them. That evening at sundown, they brought to Him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. And the whole city was gathered together at the door, and He healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons.

He would not permit the demons to speak because they knew Him. Rising very early in the morning while it was still dark, He departed and went out to a desolate place, and there He prayed. And Simon and those who were with Him searched for Him. They found Him and said to Him, Everyone's looking for You. And He said to them, Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.

And He went throughout all Galilee preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I lift up my brother Randy Presley to You this morning. I thank You, Lord, for the grace that You have given him. I thank You, Lord, for the peace that passes all understanding that You put in his heart. And I pray, Heavenly Father, that You would be with us tomorrow as we celebrate the life of his wife, Joni. I pray, Father, that that service would remind us of the testimony that she left and of the love of Jesus that she had in her heart.

I pray, Heavenly Father, that that service would comfort all of those who loved her and that it would glorify the Christ who we love. I pray for my brother Eugene Oldham as he has surgery coming up this coming Wednesday. And I pray, Heavenly Father, that You would be with his doctors and guide and direct their hands if they may operate successfully.

And, Father, that this operation might do its intended work on his hip and that he might be made well from this problem that he suffered with for all these months. Heavenly Father, we thank You for the Christmas season that we are all still enjoying. We thank You for the time to focus on the miraculous virgin birth, the appearance of the angels, the guiding of the wise men, and the worship of the shepherds. Last week we rejoiced in Your birth and we stand amazed that God became man.

Today we see Jesus as a 30-year-old man. We see his amazing ability to heal the sick. We are wowed over the fact that every disease, disability, and demon had no recourse but to bow before Jesus. Lord, help us not to read this like a fairy tale but to embrace it as absolute truth and full revelation of our God. May what Jesus did 2,000 years ago as a sinless man motivate us to trust Him more as our Savior, Lord and God. For it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray.

Amen. You may be seated. Peter's house was built right beside the synagogue in Capernaum. Over the last century there has been much archaeological work and excavations that have been done there. And they have dug up and they have found what they believe to be, almost without a doubt, Simon Peter's house.

It's one of the larger houses in all Capernaum. And I believe that Peter built that house large because it needed to hold his family and Andrew, probably his family. And also they had a special room for Jesus. Every time Jesus would come to end at Capernaum, that's where he would stay. And they also did ministry there in that house right beside the synagogue.

So what happened here? Jesus had called Peter to be his disciple. At that point in time, Peter was living in Bethsaida, according to John 1.44, and he moved. Just picked up and decided that ministry would be better for him somewhere else. And he moved to Capernaum and he built this larger house.

And it was a house that Jesus had a room, a house where Jesus could live, a house where Jesus could minister, a house that could be used for the glory of God and ministry in Capernaum. So what's going on in Peter's life? Peter is living out the gospel. He's learning how to think biblically. He's learning how to practice godliness.

Peter learned how to do practical things that would further the ministry and bring glory to God. So how does this apply to us? I think it's an endeavor to make us think biblically.

This is what we need to do. So folks, we need to ask ourselves a question, I think. Are we just Sunday Christians? Are we Christians who come to church and when we're around God's people, yeah, we minister to them at church, but that's pretty much it. We need to quit thinking like that and think like Peter. Peter fixed up his house so that Jesus could live there. Peter arranged his home so that he could use it as a place of evangelism, so that people could come into his house and Peter would share the gospel with them, so that Peter could tell them about Jesus. I don't know how many people in Capernaum actually got saved, but I wonder how many of them got saved right there in Peter's house. One commentator said this, Significantly, archaeological investigations have discovered sacred devotional markings written on the stone and scratched into the plaster. The engravings indicate that Peter's house was an early gathering place for Christians and most likely a church, dating back to the late first or early second century.

Let me ask you something. Would your home have a different feel about it if Jesus lived there? Would your television have a different set of channels on it if Jesus lived there? If Jesus lived at your home, would your home be a place where evangelism would take place?

Where Bible studies would happen? Would you have there right beside your door a little table where you would keep gospel tracts so every time the Amazon man came to deliver a package, you could hand him one? Would that happen?

Would that happen? Would your living room be an open door for people to hear the gospel? Wow. Never thought about it that way.

Well, let me tell you something, folks. If you're a Christian, Jesus does live at your house, and we need to start living like that. We have this idea that church is the place for evangelism, and if you bring somebody that's unsaved to Grace Church, they're going to hear the gospel, and that's a good thing.

That's good. A lot of people get saved coming to church, but church is not specifically for evangelism. The church is specifically for the people of God who get together and corporately worship the Lord, and it's a place where God's people can be fed and nourished by the Word of God. That's important. So where is evangelism supposed to take place? Evangelism should take place in the marketplace.

What do I mean by that? I mean by the place where unsaved people are. That might be at your workplace. It might be at your school.

It might be at your kids' ball game. Wherever the lost are, we are to take the gospel to them. Jesus said, Peter, follow me and I will make you a fisher of men. Peter jumped right up and followed Jesus, and he said, I will be a fisher of men, and he did. And he used his own home as a tool for evangelism. In this passage, I've got three points that I want to share with you this morning. Number one is the proof of his deity.

Look with me at Mark 1, 29 through 34. And immediately he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John. Now Simon's mother-in-law lay ill with a fever. And immediately they told him about her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her. And she began to serve them. That evening at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons.

And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak because they knew him.

Now the typical synagogue service ended at about 12 o'clock on the Sabbath day. Jesus was preaching that morning. And these people that listened to his sermon were absolutely shocked.

They had never heard such power, such authority, and such wisdom. Jesus finished the message, and about the time he did, this demon-possessed man steps up, and he begins to scream at Jesus, I know who you are. You are the Holy One of God. That's who you are. And you have the power to destroy us. Jesus made him shut up. Then he cast the demon out of that man and set that man absolutely free.

In other words, what we've got here is a very busy morning. But as they were walking out of the synagogue together, Peter walks over to Jesus and gets him off to the side and says, Lord, I need to ask you a favor. I've got a mother-in-law at home, and she is terribly sick. She's running this high fever, and she needs your touch. Jesus, would you minister to her? Would you heal my mother-in-law?

Let me just stop here and throw something in. This passage teaches us emphatically that Peter had a wife. The woman who is sick is Peter's wife's mother. Now, this is not the only time in the Scripture that we're told that Peter had a wife. Over in 1 Corinthians 9, verse 5, Paul was talking to the Corinthian church and kind of jumping on them about some of their attitudes, and Paul said this. He said, Do we not have the right to bring a believing wife with us as the other apostles and the Lord's brothers do and as Peter does? In other words, Peter took his wife with him on his missionary trips.

Very important to see. Folks, the Catholic Church will tell you that Peter was the first pope, and the Catholic Church will tell you that the popes and the cardinals and the bishops and the priests, that they are to never get married and that they are to live a life of celibacy. Well, let me tell you something. The Catholic Church needs to read their Bible. Peter was most definitely married, and the Catholic's command of celibacy for its ministers is not only unbiblical, but it is dangerous. Down through Catholic Church history, there have been massive incidents of sexual misconduct. There has been child molestation. There has been terrible homosexuality.

There has been women who have come for confession and been manipulated and molested by priests, and this has happened over and over and over again. Peter was not a pope. Peter was an apostle, an apostle, and he was married.

He was married, and many church historians believe that he had at least one child and maybe more. Now, why did I bring that up? Because all this mess could have been avoided. It could have been avoided if a commitment to the Word of God had been fulfilled.

Right back to the text. Verse 4 says, Immediately they told Jesus about her. Not only Peter, but his brother Andrew and James and John loved Peter's wife's mother. She must have done all kind of stuff for them and loved them, and was just one of those ladies that you were kind of drawn to, and she'd had this high fever.

They had seen this before, and they knew that this was something that you could die from. And so they said to Jesus, Jesus, could you minister to her? Could you help her?

She desperately needs your help. Verse 4 starts off with the word immediately. In other words, they didn't waste a second. They went right to Jesus to tell him about the problem. Folks, what we see here is a picture of prayer.

Prayer was their absolute priority. Have you ever heard somebody complaining about a problem that they've had? And they say, man, I have tried everything. I've done this, I've done that, I've done all this, and finally it got to the point where I realized that my only recourse was to pray. What? Folks, prayer should be a priority.

And it should be detailed, and it should be specific. People say, no, no, you don't need to be specific when you're confessing your sin, because our God is an all-knowing God. He knows exactly what your sins are. So you just need to say, oh, Lord, forgive me for my many sins and let it go.

No, no, no. Listen, you will never truly repent without getting specific about your sin. You need to get detailed. You need to share with the Lord about exactly what you're doing that was wrong. If you don't do that, the conviction will not be deep enough.

The Holy Spirit guilt that comes on that's a good thing, not a bad thing, will bring you to the point where you need to genuinely repent, turn from that sin, and if it's not specific, you just won't care enough to do anything about it. Well, can I pray in generalities about inaccessory prayer? Can I just pray like this? Lord, save the lost, feed the hungry, and heal the sick? Well, if you pray that prayer, how do you know when it's answered if it's your prayer that was answered or not? How do you know if it's that?

Well, you don't know, do you? Because every day, some lost person's going to get saved, some hungry person's going to get fed, and some sick person is going to get healed. You need to pray specifically. Lord, I'm praying for my unsaved spouse. I'm praying, Lord, bring conviction to his or her heart.

Deal with them, help them, Lord, to see the reality of heaven and hell, and help them, Lord, to come to know and love you with everything that's in them. Lord, I'm praying for my son, who's a Christian, but he's not walking with you like he should. Put a hunger in his heart for Jesus. Lord, I'm praying for a missionary. I'm praying for young Om. I'm praying for him, Lord. He's in Madagascar. He needs resources.

He needs energy. He needs to be able to get these bibles out to the people there and get food to them, for they're starving to death. And when God answers those prayers, let me tell you something, you know it. And you know that it was your prayer that he answered, and what happens?

It builds your faith, and you start growing, and you start living in appreciation and thanksgiving for what God has done. Peter, Andrew, and James and John begged Jesus to minister to Peter's sick mom. And what do you think happened when Jesus healed her? Man, when Jesus healed her, immediately there was no recuperation period with her. She immediately got well.

The fever left. She's got energy. She jumps up. Guess what she's doing?

She's running around serving food to everybody. And I guarantee you, it meant a lot to her. She was very happy about all this.

Let me tell you something. It meant a lot to Peter, Andrew, James, and John, too, because this built their faith. It built their trust. It built their dependence on the Lord in a very powerful and just a very powerful way. I can imagine them saying, man, from now on, prayer is a priority.

From now on, we're taking our problems straight to Jesus. Now, how are we to look at this idea of divine healing? I have seen God heal in some miraculous ways. I shared with you several weeks ago about my friend Tony Harper. Tony was just a dear friend of mine.

We played football together in high school. He went on to Vietnam. He got saved when he was in Vietnam. I got saved when I was in college. We came back, and we weren't just friends anymore.

We were Christian friends. But when I went off to seminary, he started having bad headaches. He went to the doctor, found out that he had a brain tumor about the size of an orange. We started praying for Tony.

I mean, everybody that I knew, I'd tell them, Christians, to pray for Tony. Tony went to the hospital. He was laying on a gurney, and he was waiting for more x-rays to be done. They had done the x-rays from yesterday. And as he was laying on that gurney, all of a sudden he felt something warm that just came across the top of his head, and the pain stopped just like that.

They went in. They did an x-ray. They came back and said, we'll have to do another x-ray. They did another x-ray and ended up doing three x-rays. They said, Mr. Harper, we don't know what happened, but this is crazy. He said, the tumor's gone. He said, look at this. Here's the x-ray of yesterday.

That tumor was as big as an orange, and now that tumor is absolutely gone. Now, how did that happen? Did a TV evangelist come and shout over Tony? No. Did a faith healer come and lay his hands on him?

No. What happened? His church prayed for him. His Christian friends prayed for him, and God answered. I go to James chapter 5, and James chapter 5, James is given instruction to the elders of the church, and he says, when there's someone sick, lay your hands on them and pray the prayer of faith over them, and it's never just a one-man show in the church.

It is always a corporate body prayer. Sometimes we are to pray specifically in healing, but privately. I do this when I go to the hospital. Somebody's in the hospital.

They're sick. I go up to the hospital. I read scripture to them. I pray with them. I pray a prayer of faith. I pray in hope, but I have no ideas that I'm going to do like Jesus did, that something just miraculous is going to come from me. I know better than that. All I can do is ask Jesus, the Jesus who has the power to heal.

John MacArthur said the following. He said, the healing miracles of Jesus, like this one, stand in stark contrast to the alleged healings of contemporary faith healers and charismatic televangelists. The world has always been plagued by false healers who prey on the physical suffering of desperate people in order to extort money from them. In spite of their brash claims, modern healers are nothing more than spiritual con artists.

They may have the ability to manipulate crowds of susceptible people, but they do not possess the power to genuinely heal anyone. The healings of Jesus could not be more different than the contemporary counterfeits. Unlike faith healers who supposedly cure invisible ailments, Jesus healed people with undeniable organic diseases and physical disabilities, such as deafness, blindness, leprosy, and paralysis.

On one occasion, Jesus reattached a missing ear, such that it was perfectly restored. He did the most extreme form of healing whenever he raised someone from the dead. Jesus also healed instantly and completely. Those who experienced his healing power needed no time for recovery or recuperation. Peter's mother-in-law is a prime example of the immediacy of Jesus' healings. She did not need to wait to feel better. The Lord did not instruct her to take it easy for a few weeks in order for her body to recover.

She went from languishing in bed to functioning in full strength. Modern faith healers, to control the illusion, carefully pre-screen the people they allow on stage. But Jesus healed indiscriminately. He healed everyone who came to him, no matter the nature of their illness or infirmity.

All right, let me read verse 32 through 34 once again. That evening at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons, and the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak because they knew him. Literally hundreds of people were healed on that day.

I mean hundreds of people. And this was only one day in the life of our Lord. The ministry of our Lord was a time period of over a thousand days.

Over three years his ministry was. And this happened, these kind of healings, over and over and over again. In the Scriptures, in the Gospel, we have 90 different times where the healings of Jesus are mentioned.

I mean it was absolutely amazing. Now I want you to think for just a minute about what this meant for Israel. Thousands of people, literally thousands of people, were made well. Many of them had been on their deathbed. Many of them were blind and now they were seeing, they were deaf and they were hearing.

They were lame and now they were walking. These miracles of Jesus were unique and they were undeniable. And the people who were actually healed or who saw the healing, experienced it, they were shocked. Go over in Mark chapter 2 verses 12. And after Jesus healed a paralyzed man, the people backed off and they said, we have never seen anything like that.

And that was true. Because in all those centuries before Jesus came, nothing like this has ever happened. In all the centuries after Jesus, nothing like this has happened. Folks, Jesus was wiping out disease, deformities and injuries. He had set hundreds of people free from demon possession. Why all this in just these three short years of Jesus' ministry? Why? This was absolute proof of the deity of Christ.

That's why. You remember when Jesus was baptized? As he was coming out of the water, God the Father spoke from heaven and said, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. All the healings that Jesus did proved that what God the Father said from heaven was absolute truth. He is the Son of God.

But what happened? Did Israel rejoice? Did Israel praise God and proclaim the lordship of Christ?

No. They cried out for Jesus to be crucified. Folks, if you ever put human beings on a pedestal, if you ever have the idea that the sin nature of man is not really all that ugly, you need to think again. You need to go back to this day and remember what Jesus did. He was healing the sick.

He was casting out demons. He was loving people and being compassionate with people who were not loving compassionate people themselves. He was living absolutely sinless. Everything he did was perfect and was right. And what did they do with perfect love and perfect holiness?

They nailed him to a cross. I tell you, I'm shocked when I hear about what happened on Epstein Island, where all these movie stars went down to Epstein Island and all these politicians and they sexually molested and abused little children, some of them even to death. I tell you, I'm just sick when I see our politicians that are telling us that abortion is a positive thing that we ought to embrace and love. I am shocked when I hear that one of the largest industries in America today is the pornography industry. Some friends of mine were telling me the other day about a Christmas skit that came on Saturday Night Live and they began to share with me what it was and it was one of the most blasphemous things that I have ever heard of and it made me want to vomit. I'm shocked when I hear these things.

I should not be shocked. That's the fruit of the sin nature. The sin nature is so evil that it laughs at perfect love and perfect holiness that was nailed to a cross.

They can laugh at that. Israel should have been ashamed of their rejection of Christ and America should be ashamed as well. Verse 34 tells us that as Jesus is delivering many of these people from demons, that the demons spoke out expressing their knowledge of him. And what did Jesus do? Jesus told them to shut up.

He would not let them speak. Now they were saying the right thing about Jesus. They were saying, Jesus, you are the Holy One of God. They were saying, Jesus, you have the power to destroy us. What they were saying was true, but Jesus would not let them speak.

Why not? Jesus did not want nor need the affirmation of demons. Their testimony would only confuse people. Jesus was actually angered at their positive confession.

You know why? Because he is that holy. Folks, that takes us back to point one, the proof of his deity. Why did Jesus heal the sick? Why did he cast out demons?

Primarily, I'm saying primarily here, primarily to affirm the gospel and to validate his claim to be the Messiah. Remember John the Baptist? He got thrown in prison.

Herod was going to execute him. He was in prison and he started thinking about his life and his ministry. And all these doubts came into his mind.

He wondered, did I make a mistake? I pointed the world to Jesus. I said, behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.

And he's wondering, you know, here I am in prison. I was the forerunner of Christ. If he was the Messiah, why didn't he get me out of prison? So he's got all these doubts, so he gets two of his disciples and says, guys, I want you to go and find Jesus.

When you find him, I want you to ask him this question. Are you the Messiah or should we look for another? And so they ran to find Jesus and they found him. He's out ministering. And they go up to Jesus and they say, Jesus, we have come from John. He sent us here. John is in prison.

They're getting ready to execute him. He's got all these doubts in his mind and he's got to know, are you the Messiah or should we look for another? Should we look for another?

And we would need a yes or we need a no. Jesus knew that giving them a yes or no would just not be enough for John. So he said, this is what I want you to do.

I want you to go back. I want you to tell John what you see and what you hear. And so they looked out at his ministry to see what was going on and what did they see. The blind were seeing. The deaf were hearing.

The lame were walking. The dead were rising. And so they ran back to John and they got back to the prison and they went right to his prison window. And they said, John, we saw Jesus. And he said, well, what did Jesus say? Did he say yes or did he say no? And they said, well, he didn't say yes or didn't say no. He said that we're to come back and tell you what we saw and what we heard. He said, well, what did you see? And he said, John, the blind are seeing. The lame are walking.

The deaf are hearing. The dead are being raised from the dead. And the poor have the gospel preached unto them. John, what does that mean? And I can see John in that prison. And tears are rolling down his cheeks.

Joy is about to pop his heart. And he says, praise God, that's the word of God. That's the messianic prophecy of Isaiah chapter 35 being fulfilled.

What does that tell us? It tells us that Jesus is exactly who he said he was. He is the Messiah.

I can hear him screaming out to Herod, Herod, come get me. Execute me if you want to. Take my life because now I know that Jesus is the Son of God. That Jesus is the King of Kings. That Jesus is the Lord of Lords. And I am ready to go to heaven. Brothers and sisters, that's what it's all about.

That's what it's all about. Jesus healed out of love. He healed out of compassion. He healed out of demons from people because he hated to see them in bondage.

That was part of it. But primarily, when those healings and that casting out of demons took place, it was for a purpose. To affirm his deity. To let the world know Jesus Christ is Lord.

Alright, point two, the power of prayer. Look with me at verse 35. Rising very early in the morning while it was still dark, Trinity went out to a desolate place and there he prayed. Jesus was fully human, so after an excruciating and exhausting day, he decided to go to sleep. Went to sleep for several hours and he got up before any of the disciples got up and he left before sunrise, way before sunrise. The scripture says he went to a desolate place.

The word desolate place is the same word that's used for wilderness that we were looking at a few weeks ago when the Holy Spirit of God drove Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil for 40 days and 40 nights. And he was there and you remember, I shared with you that the Bible teaches us that the wilderness is a place where God speaks. So that's where he is again and he's praying to his Heavenly Father. You see, he realizes that he doesn't have enough in his own human nature to do the things that he needs to do to minister. So he goes and he prays to his Heavenly Father for help, for strength, for encouragement. He prays to his Heavenly Father for insight. Philippians chapter 2, the apostle Paul said this, Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptying himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, but emptying himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God hath highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. So we are told that for those 33 years where Jesus ministered here on earth, that Jesus laid aside his powers of deity. Notice I didn't say his deity, he never ceased to be God, but his powers of deity laid them aside and in that time he had to trust his Heavenly Father to give him everything that he needed to do the work that his Father had called him to do.

So what does he do? Before anybody else gets up, before sunrise, he goes to the wilderness to pray. His heart to pray showed his total dependence on his Father.

All right, point three, the priority of his calling. Look at verse 36 through 39. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, Everyone is looking for you. And he said to them, Let us go to the next town that I may preach there also.

That's why I came out. And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons. Peter woke up the next morning.

Jesus was nowhere around. He thought, Uh-oh, where is he? And he starts looking around, and all of a sudden, he remembers what happened the day before.

Jesus healed every single person that came to him for healing. And now that news has spread, and there's all these other people that are sick, and now they have come, and there's this huge crowd, and they're wanting to be healed as well. So Peter takes off with a look of panic in his eyes, looking for Jesus. He finally sees Jesus coming out of the wilderness, and he runs up to him and says, Oh, I'm glad I found you. He said, There's this huge crowd there back there. They're lined up a mile long, waiting for you to come so that you can heal them. Come on, hurry up, Jesus.

You gotta get this done. That's very interesting what happens here. I don't think Peter understood it. I think Peter was shocked by what Jesus said. Verse 38 and 39. And he said to them, Let us go onto the next town that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.

And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons. Jesus tells Peter that he must be about his primary calling, which is not healing, but it's preaching the gospel. Healing the sick was loving and it was compassionate, but it was temporary. It was essentially a signpost pointing to Jesus, the Jesus who would go to the cross and die as our substitutionary atonement and pay our sin debt, the Jesus who would rise from the dead and break the power of death. Jesus was telling Peter that physical healing is temporary.

It's temporary. It's just a signpost pointing to the gospel. And in the gospel, there is eternal healing. Our church is grieving right now over Joni Presley's passing away. It hurts our heart. But the gospel shouts to us, This world is not our home. We're just passing through. This life is like a little vapor.

It's like a little puff of steam. It's here and then before we realize it, it's gone. We prayed for Joni's physical healing. It was not the Lord's sovereign will for that to happen, but that's okay because her spiritual healing is forever. Lift up your heads, Grace Church.

Rejoice, Randy Presley. Joni is with Jesus Christ. And the day is coming when we are going to worship with her side by side and we're going to see Jesus face to face and that joy, that worship is never going to end. Praise God. Praise God.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, after Jesus healed literally thousands of people from sickness and infirmities, he then up and left saying, Physical healing is not my primary calling. Jesus came to this earth to die, to take our sins and give us his righteousness, to take our hell and give us his heaven. When we get sick or friends or loved ones get sick, we tend to get sidetracked from your primary purpose. We tend to focus too much on the physical and not enough on the spiritual. We tend to emphasize the temporary neglect, the eternal. I thank you, Jesus, for being a miracle working God. But help me and help Grace Church to focus most of all on your shed blood that washed away our sins and gave us eternal life. For it is in the holy and precious name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.