The following sermon is by John MacArthur, pastor, author, and Bible teacher with Grace to You.

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And now unleashing God's truth one verse at a time.

Here is Grace to you Bible teacher John MacArthur.

Well, I'm going to ask you to turn back to Mark chapter 4.

And there are quite a few things on my heart to say about this, and we'll trust the

Lord to give us direction to cover the things that are most helpful. This is another in our series

of conversations with Jesus. This is a conversation Jesus has with his disciples, including the 12, as is noted in the text

that I read earlier.

And it's a very important conversation because it addresses an issue that had really struck them severely.

The Messiah had come.

They knew Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah.

He had demonstrated his divine nature by daily miracles, power over demons, disease, death, and nature.

And there were just no challenges that his miracles could not overcome. Clearly supernatural. The miracles drew massive crowds,

even in this case such a massive crowd that they forced him off the shore into a boat,

just to put a little distance between himself and the pressing crowd.

He had basically garnered unparalleled popularity. Never anybody in Jewish history so popular as Jesus.

He banished illness from the land of Israel during the years of his ministry.

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