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[ Silence ] [Music] If it had not been for the Lord on my side, tell me where would I be? Where would I be?

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♪ If it had not been ♪ ♪ For the dawn ♪ ♪ On my side ♪ ♪ Tell me where would I be ♪

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♪ Where would I be ♪ ♪ My inner is aware ♪ ♪ He let the sunshine through the garden in ♪ ♪ He brought me in the cradle of his heart ♪

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♪ When he knew I'd been buried by the snow ♪ ♪ So if he had not been ♪ ♪ On the door on my side ♪ ♪ Tell me where could I be ♪

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♪ Where could I be ♪ ♪ Not here for the Lord on my side ♪ ♪ Tell me where could I be ♪ ♪ Where would I be ♪

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♪ He kept my enemies away ♪ ♪ He let the sun shine through a cloudy day ♪ ♪ He wrapped me in the cradle of his own ♪ ♪ When he knew I had been battered and sworn to ♪

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♪ He had not been born alone ♪ ♪ For the Lord on my side ♪ ♪ Tell me where would I be ♪ ♪ Where would I be ♪

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♪ For the Lord on my side ♪ ♪ Tell me where would I be ♪ Let us all say Amen. I say good morning to all, to my pastor, my father in the ministry, Reverend Griffin,

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to my brothers and sisters in Christ. I say it's indeed a pleasure for us to be here this morning. I had thoughts of opening my sermon with a song like Reverend Renfro usually does, but I on second thought that I wouldn't push it.

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>> [LAUGH] >> Let us go to God in prayer. O gracious Master, we thank you this morning for the beauty of this morning. We ask that you may be with us as we seek to rightly divide thy word of truth, as we

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seek to serve thee, dear Father, in every faction of our lives. Lord, we thank you for your goodness, your mercy, and your grace. And may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.

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Amen. The text is found for this sermon this morning, is found in the gospel according to St. Mark, chapter 8, verses 20 through 22 through 25. We want to look particularly at verse 25.

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And it reads as follows, "After that he put his hands again upon his eyes and made him look up again and he was restored and saw every man clearly." The title of the message, "To See Clearly." In this passage of scripture, we see the master as he enters the town of Bethsaida.

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And no sooner than he is there, a man is brought to him. It's a man who has one request. For you see, the man is blind, and his only request from the master is that he may be able to see.

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He does not ask for money. He does not ask for an improvement in status in his life. He desires neither fame nor fortune. All he wants is that his eyes may be open.

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You know, eyesight, that is physical eyesight, is something that the majority of us who can't see pretty much take for granted. You know, it's just a blessing to be able to see. From the sunrise in the morning to the shining of the moon at night, it's just a blessing

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to be able to see. And many times we fail to garner a certain amount of appreciation for that until something happens which brings it readily to mind. I've expressed many times that I am, what my profession is,

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my, that I'm a welder by trade. And I can remember so, some time ago, it's been quite a while ago, I was welding on a very big job and it was a bunch of other welders around us.

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And I don't know if you all know anything about this, but every now and then a welder gets what they call flash burns. And it just so happened that we were trying to rush and get this job out and everybody was welding and every now and then I would have my hood up and I would catch a flash.

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And we worked until something like one o'clock that morning getting this job out. And by the time I had gotten home, what happens usually when you get a flash burn, it doesn't really hit you until you lay down and go to sleep. And it feels like somebody is pouring sand in your eyes.

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And I can remember so well after laying down to try to get some sleep, after about an hour my eyes began to burn. And I can remember waking my wife up

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and telling her that I needed a cold towel to put over my eyes, and sure enough she went to go get that. It had gotten so severe that she finally had to rush me

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to the doctor. And by the time I had gotten there, I was in a whole lot of pain. Well they had given me some Novocaine to deaden the pain and for three to four hours after that, every time I would open my eyes, all I could do was see, all I could see was just

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a white light. And I know that I had been flash burned before and my father had told me about these things, but do you know that was a scary feeling? For three to four hours without any sight.

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And after my eyesight came back, don't you know I was overjoyed? Jumping around there praising the Lord because I was able to see again. And you can believe that I take precautions right now, wherever I am, to make sure that my eyes are well protected.

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It's just a blessing to be able to see. And that's all this man wanted to do. That's all this man wanted from the master. All he wanted was to be able to see.

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And can't you imagine the joyful anticipation of this man as he sought the master's touch, that the master may open his eyes once again to see, to see, to be able to come in out of the dark,

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to have our eyes open to a new world of sight, new vision, new color, to be able to see. What joy that brings, what celebration. What elation it is to be able to see physically.

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And what's more to be able to see spiritually. For how many are walking around today in spiritual darkness? Blind, spiritually blind, to the real joys in this life.

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Blind, spiritually blind, to the realization that there's more to life than the things of this world. Blind, spiritually blind, to the truth that you don't have to be a slave to sin. Blind, spiritually blind, that our lives can truly be changed through the power of the

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Holy Spirit. changed by the touch of the master's hand. For just as we see this man being taken by the hand of the master, and as we see him being led out of town, and as we see the master bending down and putting a poultice of healing

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saliva upon this man's eye from the power of his own mouth. And as we see this man, as Jesus asked him, "Can you see anything?" and as we hear him say, "I can see man." Don't you know that Jesus can open our spiritual eyes just like that? All we have to do is ask and God will reach down through the darkness, through our blindness,

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and our lives can truly be changed by the touch of the Holy Spirit. And that's just a miracle of God. But you know there's one particular faction, actually there are many things, but there's There's one particular thing about this, a peculiar thing about this miracle.

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And that is the uncommon event of the Lord leading this man away from the crowd. And the question may be asked, why? And there are a number of reasons that may be given, but you know, I believe that for For two reasons, he led this man away from town.

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Number one, I do believe that he knew, that is, Jesus knew, that the people would somehow misunderstand his method. And the second reason, some may even criticize the man's response.

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For you can rest assured in your life that irregardless of what happens to you in this life, no matter how much you may change in this life, no matter what you say or do in this life,

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it's just a given that we're going to face some criticism and encounters some misunderstanding. It doesn't matter how much your life may change. It doesn't matter how much you may turn around,

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somebody is gonna somehow misunderstand what it is you're trying to do. You know, I've come to terms with that, about a certain small encounter in my life.

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You know, I, some time ago, my wife kept telling me to go get some glasses. Every now and then I'd go buy these reading glasses. She'd say, "Well, I need to go get your eyes checked."

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So I went to go get them checked, and sure enough, the optometrist said I needed glasses, and we, you know, he checked my eyes, and he was gonna fit me for frames.

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And I, um, to come to the conclusion, I've always liked these type of frames. I know a lot of people didn't like them,

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but I loved them, and I picked them out, And sure enough, now when I got home, my wife had been out of town, she had come back, and sure enough she saw them and she said,

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"Well, you know, they kind of make you look older." (audience laughing) And so I said, "Well, I just..." But you know, the more reoccurring remark

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that I've been hearing from her and from others is that I'm trying to look like Malcolm X. (audience laughing) But you know, that's not true.

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But the thing is, there have been some earlier photos that I've seen of the pastor when he was in the earliest part of his ministry. and he said frames just like these

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and i'm not trying to let malcolm x i'm trying to look like my past as a citizen misunderstanding that some people may have and we must uh...

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draw from this that the master had to pull this man away for he knew that this man made face some misunderstanding

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and even some criticism from his response. For you see the man says, "I see men as trees walking." And there may be some,

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there may have been some there who said, "Well look, you need to just go ahead and leave the master alone. At least you can see. At least you can see. For a long time you've been walking around here blind. And the man just stands there, he says, "But you know,

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I see men but there's trees walking." In other words, the man says, I thank God that my eyes have been open. But I do still want to see clearly.

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And as we see the man standing there, and as he waits for the master's response, we see the master touching

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this man again upon his eyes. And the man says, "I can see clearly now." Now, if we're not careful, that could be misunderstood, easily misunderstood. I was reading one commentary that, upon this passage of scripture, and this commentator even had the nerve to say that the master had some deficiency in power that day.

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I think that's blasphemous. And one commentator even said, "Well, when the man first opened his eyes, he was blinded by the sunlight." You know, and that's something that he had to deal with with the second touch of the Master. I don't think it was that way either.

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But you know, I do believe within my soul that the Master had healed this man in stages as a tremendous lesson, not only for him, but for us in our lives. You know, I can remember almost to the day, the hour and the minute,

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when the Lord touched my life and turned me around. And I've been walking with Jesus ever since then in full joy. But you know, I must admit, and I don't know about you,

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but every now and then, there are days when I do see clearly, but some days get mighty fuzzy down here. Sometimes it gets mighty cloudy down here.

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Sometimes my spiritual vision is blurred. Sometimes circumstances and hard times gives me fuzzy, give me fuzzy perceptions. There are times when I go out and try to do the best I can

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and try to please everybody, and people seem like they want to go out of their way to mistreat me. And that messes up my view of the other man's life. Sometimes I'm disgusted with my own self, my own feelings, my own fears. And that destroys a healthy sense of self-awareness on my part.

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And even Paul talks about this when he writes that letter to the Corinthians. He says, "Now, even now, we look through a glass darkly." - Yes, that's it. - You know, I was listening to the radio Friday at work, and Brother Grattan,

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I heard you on the radio. And I heard you confront the chief of police, and I was listening to the chief, and I was listening to Brother Grattan and, you know, out of all of this, the chief was saying,

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"I believe you're a fine man, but I think these things must stand as they are," and all of this, and Brother Danny Grattan was trying to get his point across,

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and I thought he did it wonderfully. And then after all of this, you know, after all of this, when the announcer said, "Well, we're gonna have to go now,"

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Brother Grattan ended up and said, "Well, may God bless you all." Well, you know, only a man who has been touched by the power of Jesus Christ can make that statement.

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And you have to have the power of Jesus Christ touch you more than once to be able to make that statement, when somebody's messing your life around like that. And do you know that's what Jesus does

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for each of us in our lives? We come to him, we come to him just as we are. And the master can reach out through the darkness and he can touch our spiritual lives.

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And we thank God for our spiritual sight. But each and every day as we walk down here, as we talk with him, as we walk with him along life's way, there are gonna be times when our eyes may cover over

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with the film of this world and we can't see too clearly. But do you know some days there are days when the Lord will reveal things to me that I didn't even know that were there? That's the goodness that Jesus Christ expresses in all of our lives.

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But do you know that one day, one day when we leave this world, one day when we leave the film and the fog of this world, one day we're gonna understand it better by and by. When we look back on this life and we're gonna wonder,

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why is it that I had to go through that trial? Why is it I had to experience that tribulation? One day, God is gonna touch our eyes for the final time and we're just gonna say, thank you Jesus,

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that you opened my eyes now that I may see my life, that I've seen you as you walked through my life. Thank you, Jesus. We're going to stand that better by and by.

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Well, John Newton was a slave trader back in the 18th century. And one day on a stormy sea, he came to an acknowledgment that Jesus Christ is Lord. And that what he was doing was a sin.

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And he prayed to the master, Lord, if you would just get me through this storm, I will give over my life to you. And sure enough, he did.

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And you know, he wrote a song about that. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.

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I once was lost, but now I'm found. Was blind, but now I see. The doors of the church are now open. For anyone who wants to have his or her eyes open

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to this new life, this new awareness of what it really means to walk with the masters. Will you come? ♪ Amazing grace ♪

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♪ How sweet the sound ♪ - The opportunity is extended at this moment. ♪ That saved a wretch like me ♪ ♪ I think ♪

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♪ I once was lost ♪ ♪ But now I'm found ♪ ♪ Was blind ♪ ♪ But now I see ♪

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♪ 'Cause grace can touch ♪ ♪ The heart to fear ♪ ♪ And grace like tears ♪ ♪ Relieve ♪

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♪ The precious dear ♪ ♪ The praise of Him ♪ ♪ Be all I once believed ♪ ♪ Through heaven and earth ♪

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♪ Hell's walls and stairs ♪ I have already grown. With grace and love, he saved us all. And grace will lift me up.

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♪ In the endless night ♪ ♪ The stars will shine ♪ ♪ And the heavens will sing ♪ ♪ Glory to the newborn King ♪

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♪ Glory to the newborn King ♪ ♪ To see God's grace ♪ ♪ The man ♪ ♪ He first ♪

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♪ Begot ♪ (music) [ Music ]