John 9:35-38 (When Jesus Pulls Back)

The Shepherd's Church

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In the midst of everything going on in the life of the blind man that we've been talking about over the last several weeks One of the questions that has not been asked in the text by him by his peers is

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Why was he abandoned? We see that he was abandoned by his community

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He goes to the neighborhood that he was from and he's preaching the gospel to them.

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He's telling them about who Jesus is He's telling them. This is the one who healed my eyes and yet they abandoned him

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They didn't believe him. They were confused by him and they turned him over to the Pharisees We see that he was abandoned by his family

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Now for first of all, he was abandoned by his family in a way that that is not really Implicit in the text or explicit in the text.

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He was a beggar He was a man who lived out on the streets and he begged for coins and you think about to yourself

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Why would his parents have allowed him to live that sort of life? I Mean the law of Moses would have covered him it would have said that if he were in that sort of state then his parents should have taken care of him and brought him

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Into the house and provided for all of his needs the law of Moses is careful all the time to to talk about how do

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We care for the widows and orphans. How do we care for the downtrodden? How do we care for those who are broken and financially distraught and yet here this man sits on the side of the road begging

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Where were his parents? Even if you don't go with the law of Moses and you think about it just from a from a parental standpoint

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How do you let your child spend their day? out on the street begging When you could have brought him into the home you could have brought him into the house

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Maybe they didn't have the resources. Maybe they maybe there was other things going on We don't know but what we do know is that he was abandoned by the people who most cared about him and in front of The Pharisees whenever they're being whenever they're challenging him and they're they're saying, you know, is this true?

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Is this what you believe his parents essentially throw him under the bus and say we don't want to be cast out of the synagogue to Ask him yourself

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They tell the Pharisees to ask him because they're afraid of the Pharisees. They love their religion and they loved their

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Society and they loved their fellowship with their community more than they loved their son And tells us a lot about the state of where this man's life was

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He had national religious abandonment as well He goes to the Pharisees and the people who are supposed to reinstate him into the community

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The people are supposed to inspect him and say you're clean now You can go worship now you can be a part of the

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Jewish community for the first time in his life for the people who say you're entirely in sin and They cast him out of the synagogue

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Casting him out of the synagogue would have ended any chance that the man had of any sort of a social life

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He was under this ban that we talked about last week called the harem ban where No one could talk to him teach him work for him speak to him

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No one could offer him any sort of benefit in public whatsoever Except life -saving measures and what we talked about last week is essentially they were allowed to keep him alive so that he could continue suffering

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That is where this man was at totally abandoned by everyone

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He had just Seen the faces of these people he had never seen a human face before in his life

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He just saw the face of his parents. He just saw the face of his neighbor You even wonder if they if the faces that he's looking at looked like who he imagined because even as a blind person you think

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He he probably has to try to imagine What these people look like you you think that he's imagining their faces looking at him and maybe smiling at him

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Maybe being joyful for him or maybe wanting to celebrate with him as this great miracles happened in his life and yet all he sees the very first faces that he sees bear rejection smugness judgment and disdain

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Those are the first faces that this man sees in his life This man is totally abandoned

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Now you ask yourself, maybe he maybe he had some thoughts about Jesus. He's been sharing the gospel with people that he knows

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But remember he didn't see Jesus It says that Jesus knelt down and made the mud and then spread the mud over his eyes and then commanded this man in his blindness

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To bumble down the street to the pool wash in the pool, and then he would get his sight

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So he didn't see Jesus. He didn't know what Jesus looked like so in one sense you might even consider the fact that Jesus has also

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Abandoned this man not for the same reason But what I want us to talk about today is what does it look like?

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when Jesus pulls back from your life What does it look like when

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Jesus is not right there with you because as we see Jesus didn't follow him to the pool Jesus didn't go back with him to the town

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Jesus wasn't standing there with him when the religious people were accosting him and making fun of him he wasn't there when his family turned his back on him

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Jesus purposefully and Unintentionally faded into the background of this narrative to let this man walk through this situation alone and We ask ourself.

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Why? Why did Jesus leave this man? Why did he let him walk alone?

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Why was everyone abandoning Jesus or abandoning this blind man and Jesus also let this blind man walk through the hardest season of his life

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Why did he do that? I think that question if we're honest with ourselves strikes at our heart a little bit because how many times have you felt like That maybe you were alone

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You felt like maybe you were play you were praying into a black hole Or at the very least your prayers didn't get as high as the ceiling

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Kind of like that balloon from five days after the birthday party that just kind of levitates Where's God in the midst of our pain?

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Where's God in the midst of our crisis when we don't feel like he's near and we don't feel like that He's close when we feel like that.

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We're walking through something by ourself. I Know we felt that way My earliest years as a believer.

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I said I shared a little bit of this last week. I Just came to Jesus like 21 years old 22 years old however many years ago that was

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I'm not even gonna say Not because not because I'm ashamed of it like literally my mind doesn't work like that anymore

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I used to be able to do math now. I can't 16 years ago. I was 22 years old just came to Jesus and My expectation for what it was gonna look like for me to come to Jesus was my life was gonna get better All this time.

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I had been all about myself. I come to Jesus now. Jesus gonna make my life better I'm gonna have joy I'm gonna have all these Christian things that the

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Bible talks about joy and peace and happiness and yet my life fell apart My wife at the time didn't want to be married to a

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Christian she left me divorced me abandoned me Took my daughter in court and gained custody so that now

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Instagram messenger is how I have a relationship with my daughter Where's Jesus in that He was there

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He was there every step of the way and I got to see the purpose behind it later But in the midst of it,

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I didn't see it what I want us to understand in this passage is

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That sometimes God uses silence in our life to teach us some of the most important and powerful lessons that we could ever

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Learn and we wouldn't learn them in blessing And we wouldn't learn them With joy and peace and everything going great in our life.

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Sometimes we have to be forged in the fires of trial In order to be who

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Jesus has called us to be When we ask ourself Where was

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Jesus in the midst of this blind man's? confusion He was there

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Where was Jesus when the Pharisees were beguiling him? He was there. Where was Jesus when his family was turning his back on him?

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He was there But in a different way than what we often expect this man needed to know how to look to Jesus and oftentimes what

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Jesus will do is He will take away the things that we value so that we will see that Jesus is most valuable.

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That's why that's why it happens You think about the man? He's his whole community is turned away from him community is not a bad thing.

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We all love community We want community. We want friends around us We don't want to be alone in this world But Jesus in the earliest moments of this man's life took his community away from him to show him that Jesus is the only

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Person that he can look to the only person that he can hope for the only person that he can trust We think about national stuff.

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We think about religion. We think about the Pharisees Jesus was showing this man. Don't look to them.

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Don't put your hope in them. Hope in me So Jesus took away that element of his life

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You think this man has probably been sitting around blind for his entire life waiting for the day that he could just see the temple

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Waiting for the day that he could worship with his brothers and sisters and now it's cut off from him and in the midst of that Jesus is saying

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I'm still good enough. I am there for you and I am all you need

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You think about his family? Sometimes our family turns their back on us Sometimes our family members abandon us

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And what is Jesus telling us in that that he is all that we need? That we don't need the approval of anyone else because we already have the approval of God Jesus is showing us in the silence and in the pulling back

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That he's everything That he's everything and that all of these things that we're

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Often trying to put our hope and our trust in in fact, you see the point in the hope and the truth

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Is that if you have Jesus and though you have nothing else you have everything and If you have everything that this world could ever offer you, but you don't have

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Christ you actually have nothing Jesus waited to teach this man to hope only in him and Jesus often waits and pulls back in our life to teach us the exact same thing that he

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Does not desire to occupy a place in our heart. He wants all of it And oftentimes he has to pull back to get us to see that, you know the example of absence makes the heart grow fonder

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Hated that example, especially in high school my girlfriend at the time Moved all the way across the country and my grandma said an absence makes the heart grow fonder and I I was like What a mean thing to say

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But it's true, especially in a spiritual sense Those moments where we're crying out dear

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God, where are you? It makes us yearn for him It makes us long to see him. It makes us want to be with him those moments

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Jesus uses The biblical metaphors are all over the place as well. We're put into the fire so that we will be refined, right?

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That's what Jesus is doing. He's doing that to give us everything and this is a great example from this text of Why Jesus is doing it?

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so let's pray and Let's look at this topic together Lord Jesus.

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Thank you For the fact that we know that even though sometimes we feel like we're alone. We're not

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Even though sometimes it feels like That we're walking by ourselves we're not and that Lord in those moments you're teaching us

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How to rest and trust only in you you're showing us the futility of the world and how it makes awful gods for us

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When we put all of our hope in our family or that fails when we put all of our hope in our Resources that fails when we put all of our hope in our health that fails

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So Lord you graciously pull these things away from us at times to show us that you are the only one who can be fully trusted with our hearts

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Lord I pray that we would grow to be people who have given all of our hearts to you

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In Christ's name. Amen In today's passage, we're going to talk about five gifts that Jesus gives this man after he pulls back from him

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After he allows him to walk through the hardest thing that he's ever walked through five Gifts that Jesus is going to give this man and the overarching theme

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Underneath all of them is that Jesus is worth it and that he wants us to have a heart that is fully given over to him

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He may take things away from us in this life. He may take the world's treasures away from us He may remove people from us.

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He may take away friendships and spouses and communities even churches He may take away your standing in the community.

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He may take away your reputation your resources your material possessions He may take everything away from you in this life much like that He did to the blind man, but again, like we said if you have

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Jesus you have everything and that is what he is teaching us So let's read our passage today and let's look at the first gift that Jesus gives

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It says in verse 35 through 38 Jesus heard that they had put him out that's out of the synagogue and Finding him that's the blind man.

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He said do you believe in the Son of Man and He answered who is he Lord that I may believe in him and Jesus said to him you have both seen him

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And he is the one who is talking to you And he said Lord, I believe and he worshipped him

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The first gift that Jesus gives this man is that he understands the problem that this man is facing Although he's let him walk through the problem without him ostensibly

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He understands the problem and the real problem is not that his city is turned away from him The real problem is not that his family has spurned him

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The real problem is not he's been there's not that he's even been kicked out of the synagogue The real problem is that as humans we often look to the wrong things to satisfy our hearts

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That's the real problem that Jesus is going to be addressing here Jesus Understands that this man's brand new vision that he's been given brand new eyes are going to be tempted to look at community to look at country to look at everything else other than Jesus and decisively in the earliest parts of this man's

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Christian life he's cutting that out so that this man will only look to Jesus and The reason that Jesus understands this so well is because the gospel of John has already told us that he has divine perfect supernatural knowledge

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It's not a coincidence that Jesus understands these things about this man and it's not a coincidence that Jesus let this man walk through these things alone

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When John says that Jesus heard that they had put him out of the synagogue It's not like Jesus was standing on the corner and heard someone come up talking about it saying.

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Oh my goodness. What have I done? I Should have stayed with him. I should have walked with him to his community

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I should have went with him in front of Jesus doesn't do that it's not like he just picked up a copy of the

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Jerusalem Times and said ah What a thing. I guess maybe

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I probably should have helped him out It's not like he watched the Canaanite News Network, you know, the Old Testament version of CNN What a thing.

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How did I do this? Jesus wasn't depending on breaking news headlines

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He knew exactly what he was doing. He understand the problem because he's God look at what John 1 1 tells us

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I'll repeat this verse for us because we want to have a high Christology of who Jesus is Jesus has infinite divine knowledge.

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The knowledge that he has is the same as what the father has. Jesus is God Look at what it says in chapter 1 verse 1 in the beginning was the word

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That's a word that's used for Jesus and the word was with God and the word was

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God Throughout all of eternity. This Jesus has been God never for a moment

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Has he ceased being God that means that all that God knows Jesus knows because Jesus is fully

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God Now we do understand that Jesus took on a human nature and Jesus submitted himself to that human nature

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So that in the Gospel of John it tells us that he only does what the father tells him to do He only speaks what the father tells him to speak

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We know that Jesus purposely allowed himself to be limited in that way But let us not make the mistake to say that Jesus set aside entirely his divine nature.

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He did not He did not forfeit his divine nature he didn't leave it on the

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Jerusalem tea He did not he had full access to it. Even though it was veiled in his incarnation in Chapter 1 we see an example of this verses 43 through 49 the next day

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Jesus Proposed to go into Galilee and he found Philip and Jesus said to him follow me

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Now Philip was from Bethsaida the city of Andrew and Peter Philip found

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Nathanael and said to him we have found him whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote Jesus of Nazareth the son of Joseph Nathanael said to him can any good come out of Nazareth?

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Philip said to him come and see Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him and said behold an

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Israelite in whom there is no deceit and Nathanael said how do you know me?

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Jesus answered and said before Philip called you when you were under the fig tree. I saw you and Nathanael answered him rabbi

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You are the Son of God the King of Israel The Gospel of John begins with a declaration of the deity of Jesus Christ.

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What a declaration You are the Son of God. You're a king of Israel How in the world could Jesus have seen where Nathanael was sitting even down to the most mundane?

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Details of our life Jesus notices and he cares about us and he sees those things

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Jesus is God not just in the high and mighty God stuff, but also in the small micro cops microcosmic stuff of our life

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Even though his physical body was not present there Jesus saw what was going on in the life of Nathanael and Nathanael when he saw how powerful

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Jesus was he instantly declared praise and worship This happens again in John 16 near the end of Jesus's life

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Verses 28 through 30. It says I came forth from the father This is Jesus speaking and I have come into the world.

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I am leaving the world again and going to the father and His disciples said lo now you're speaking plainly and not using a figure of speech

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Now we know that you know all things and have no need for anyone to question you by this

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We believe that you came from God at the very beginning of Jesus's ministry and at the very end of Jesus's ministry

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He has disciples seeing that he is all Powerful and all -knowing and it's causing them to declare his praise

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And what we'll see in this blind man today is that when he sees fully and truly who Jesus is it causes him to declare the praises of God and Part of the things that we have to see about who

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Jesus is is that he's infinite. He's God. He's all -knowing He knows every aspect of our lives

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So he knows when this blind man is walking through all of this pain and suffering and sorrow

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He knows what he's going through because he's already proved that in John 1 He sees every step of the journey that this man walks through as his city is denying him as his family is denying him as His nation is denying him

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He's there with him and the fact that he knows all of this stuff and he allows him to go through it anyway, because there was a greater purpose in this man's life and That purpose was

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Jesus did not come to make us comfortable. Jesus came to make us worshipers and in this season of this man's life

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To be a worshiper of Jesus Christ meant being meant things being taken from him things being stripped away from him

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Like I said earlier in my earliest years of being a Christian later I reflected upon the fact that it was a grace from God that these things had happened to me.

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I Was damaged goods because I was divorced as a Christian. I had people telling me that I didn't have enough faith that I wasn't praying hard enough

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While my wife was cheating on me I had people telling me that I could never serve the

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Lord because I had this stain this this scarlet letter and Yet in all of that.

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I was looking to Jesus. I Was asking him to help me in tears It didn't feel good

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But it caused me to trust him it caused me to look to him it caused me to cling to him and Later what

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I realized is like a good surgeon Jesus the great physician was cutting out things in my life that didn't need to be there so that I could worship him more fully

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That was painful But it was necessary and I believe the same is true for each and every single one of us

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Jesus is doing things in our life Because he knows exactly what it is that needs to stay there and be cultivated and be

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Challenged so that it can grow and he knows what needs to be cut out of our life because it's cancer Oftentimes we resist right

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We say no. No Jesus. I know better than you This thing is mine. This thing is good for me.

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This thing is there to bless me and We can't see like God sees The author and perfecter of our faith the creator of the universe is looking at that Stinking mass of sin and he's saying that needs to go from you and we look at it and we say no no

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No, that's beautiful We have to get God's perspective on these things so that we can see how

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God views them instead of how we view them Because if we saw them from God's perspective, we would say take it.

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I Don't want it. All I want is you this man

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Wasn't alone when he walked through his greatest rejection Jesus was with him and Jesus waited until every single moment of these events happened before he pursued him.

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I think that's really important Jesus knew the real problem in the solution the real problem

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Like we said a moment ago is that we long for approval acceptance and affirmation from all the wrong places

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We look for acceptance in our families We look for acceptance with our spouses and with our children we look for acceptance and approval from our community

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We look for acceptance and approval from our nation We look for them to give us safety and comfort.

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We look to them to give us leadership. We look to them to give us safety we look to everyone except the one that we're supposed to look to and There's so much in our life that needs to be removed so that we can

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Have clear sight with Christ You see all of these things are good things relationships are good things community is a good thing, but it won't save you

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It's not a it's not a God thing Jesus said

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Man gains the whole world before if it's a soul, is that good? If you have all the community that accepts you, but yet Jesus rejects you.

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Is that a win? You have a family that adores you but Jesus spews you out of his mouth.

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You have a nation a People that will affirm you but Jesus looks at you and says in eternity depart from me.

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I never knew you these things in comparison to Christ Are such little value they're good things, but Jesus is an infinite thing

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Jesus is great The point that Jesus is pointing us to is that he is better than all of this infinitely better and If we'll cling to him those other things will be in our life and they'll come in and out of our life from time to Time sometimes we'll have relationships.

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Sometimes we won't sometimes we'll have resources Sometimes you won't like Paul says in the book of Philippians He's learned how to how to be content in all circumstances because he understood the point.

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The point is cling to Christ in all circumstances Jesus has to allow us to experience rejection.

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Sometimes he allows these things to happen in intense seasons of your life What I want you to understand what

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I want you to believe is that Jesus knows what you're going through And he's allowing you to go through that for a purpose

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Jesus isn't in heaven out of control over your life He is thoroughly in control over your life and he knows what you're going through he knows what you're walking through and he's allowing you to go through what you're going through because he wants to heal you and bless you and and cultivate

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Someone who's in the image of Christ through you It's easy for us to get bitter and it's easier for us to get frustrated at God and say where are you

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God? He's right there he's right there just like he was for this blind man

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Jesus will never abandon us and His gospel is all satisfying every time this nation disappoints you say to yourself.

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My God is all satisfying Whenever the world lets you down remember that Jesus never will

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Whenever your kids won't listen whenever you lose your job Whenever you fight with your spouse and you are like, how can

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I deal with this wretched person another second and Then you remember that you're just as wretched

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When everything goes wrong in your life when all things happen to you in ways that you can't even imagine I want you to remember that even though you walk through the valley the shadow of death your

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God will not abandon you and he Is using the pain and he is using the trial and he is using it for your good

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He says that he's doing all things for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose He says in the book of Jeremiah that he knows the plans he has for you plans to prosper you

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We often read that verse and we say that sounds great That I he knows the plans he has for me the plans.

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He wants to prosper me. That sounds like a trip to the mountains That sounds like I'm gonna have a nice car.

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That sounds like that. I'm gonna have a new house That's just across the border in New Hampshire. I'm just kidding

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I'm just kidding It sounds like he has all these great plans for me and we don't realize that sometimes the great plans for us is to destroy

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Us sometimes the great plans for us is to cut things out of us that don't need to be there in the context of that verse

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In Jeremiah, he knows the plans he has for us. He's talking to them right before he crushes them for the

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Babylonians He's gonna send the Babylonian army to their nation to destroy them and burn their temple to the ground and he's saying do not lose

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Heart, I know the plans I have for you. They're good plans to prosper you sometimes the car accident and sometimes the cancer and sometimes all of that is for the glory of God in your life so that so he

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Can prosper you and not wound you and not afflict you and not hurt you He's not there to do this to to break you.

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He's there to build it to build you up in Christ He's not abandoning you.

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He's not leaving you He's pursuing you and That's the second gift that Jesus gives this man in the passage

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Jesus heard that they had put this man out of the synagogue and finding him He said do you believe in the

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Son of Man? Jesus is pursuing this man He waits until the moment of his of his trial is over But he's pursuing this man just like he does for each and every single one of us

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We sometimes think that Jesus pursues us in our salvation, but then he leaves us to our sanctification

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We sometimes think that Jesus is there for us when he wins us to himself and he calls us into his family

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But yet the rest of our life is on us. That's not true. He is always pursuing us always

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Chasing after us and and causing us to become more conformed to the image of him This man learns a formidable lesson and then

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Jesus pursues him So that he can be healed and so that he can have greater sight and it's the same in our life as well

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In those seasons that we talked about that are dark for you. I Know you've also had seasons where afterwards you you have an especially close and near sense of Christ those moments where After all this pain and all this trial you see

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Jesus coming through for you in a different way in a special way and and you cling to those moments when Derek and I were praying about the

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Shepherd's Church and Planting the Shepherd's Church There was all kinds of trials that were going on in the background

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There was all kinds of things that were that were causing me pain and hurting me All kinds of things that were stressing me out and then all of a sudden in one day

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He opens up a building. He opens up a conference He opens up all these things and we're like, okay This church is actually gonna happen and we were on we were in the car together riding

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We said we've got to hold on to this day Because this day won't last forever. This day is a special season of God's blessing and God's grace and he's doing this to Encourage us right now

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We've got to hold on to this day and remember this day for the day that we walk in the wilderness again because the wilderness

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Will come He gives us those moments so that we can hold to them and cling to them and so that we can praise him

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You see life with Christ It's sort of an ebb and flow at times

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We kind of think that it should look like worldly success Where it just keeps going up.

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It never goes down There's times of our life where we don't We don't feel like we're that Faithful there's times in our life where we feel like we're struggling with a particular sin.

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It looks like a seesaw at times God Is using the ups and the downs

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God is using the ebbs and the flows God is using the seesaw of your life To sanctify you according to the image of his

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Son It's not purposeless So what he wants you to do right? He want in the good times.

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He wants you to praise him and in the trials He wants you to praise him

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He wants you to cling to him He wants you to hold fast to him Because he's still there with you

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And he's teaching you something for your good. He's pursuing you He's pursuing you when you're weak

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He's pursuing you when you're blessed He's pursuing you when you're broken He's pursuing you when you're well fed or when you're hungry he's pursuing you when you're spiritually famished and he's pursuing you when you've got your hands held high and Praise saying that this is this is the greatest day of my life.

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He's pursuing you Continually strengthening us And he proved that by giving you the

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Holy Spirit of God who lives inside of you with a down payment of your redemption That's the second gift

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He has not abandoned you. He's pursuing you The third gift that Jesus gives to this blind man and also gives to us as that he's gonna give us better sight

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He says in verse 36 and 37 He answered who is he Lord that I may believe in him

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Jesus said to him You have both seen him and he is the one who is talking with you

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Now I want you to imagine the scene where Jesus finds him Jesus pursues him.

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Here's the way I imagine it. The Bible doesn't say this. So this is just me thinking He's been abandoned by family.

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He's been abandoned by community. He's been abandoned by nation. He's been abandoned by the temple He's been abandoned by everyone. Where does he go?

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I Think he goes back to the street corner where he was begging. I Think he sits down in the dirt with his head in his hands

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Feeling like this is my lot in life. I think if I were in his situation,

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I would have regretted even having sight because now You get to see where it was that you were sitting you get to see the broken people around you who are also begging for money with you

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You get to see how alone you truly are at least in the darkness You can imagine something that's hopeful. I think he goes back to that street corner

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That's where I would have went if I felt like every single person had abandoned me I would go back to the place that spent most of my time

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Even if it was dysfunction Imagine that he felt defeated in that place

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You can imagine with his brand new eyes that he's just staring off into space He just had

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This ban published against him where no one was allowed to talk to him No one was allowed to make eye contact with him.

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No one was allowed to even help him You can imagine him staring off into the distance

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Whatever the horizon looked like in his day not expecting to see a human being for miles especially not coming towards him and yet here he sees

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Jesus break through his field of vision coming right towards him and The man probably is thinking this guy's not from Jerusalem This guy hasn't heard the news that I'm now damaged goods.

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You can't talk to me. You can't help me You can't make eye contact with me. He's probably surprised That this guy's continuing to move past him.

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He's probably looking around him saying is there like a jug of water or something around? Like what's this guy coming to get?

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It's not me. It can't be me because I'm broken and yet here

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Jesus Comes up right beside of him And Jesus looks him in the eyes now what

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I find so fascinating about this passage is that this man had never seen the face of Jesus So he doesn't know who

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Jesus is. Jesus is looking right in his eyes and and the man's never seen this man before in his life And he says

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Jesus says Do you believe in the Son of Man and this means like I? Don't know.

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It's a great Bible question Ezekiel talks about the Son of Man Daniel talks about the Son of Man. Yeah Yeah, I believe in the

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Son of Man, but I don't know who he is. I don't know where he's at I've never seen him before As soon as Jesus's voice though As soon as he says do you believe in the

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Son of Man? This man understood who it was that he was talking to he might not have understood it in full

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But if you remember Jesus told him go to the pool, he heard Jesus's voice. He never seen Jesus's face

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He's like the little sheep in the verse that we'll talk about in a couple weeks Who hears his voice and knows him and follows him and calls him by name

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Even though he was blind. He knew the voice of Christ He hears Jesus speaking to him and he instantly remembers.

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This is the man This is the man who healed me This is the man.

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I Never thought I'd see again the text continues he says who is he

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Lord that I may believe in him and Jesus said you have both seen him and he is the one who is talking to you

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This man needed better sight He heard the voice of Jesus. He heard Jesus talking to him and Jesus says it's me.

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I'm the Son of Man I'm the one that Ezekiel was talking about. I'm the one that Daniel prophesied

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He was gonna bring a kingdom that would never end. I'm the one that you've been looking for your entire life and Although you felt abandoned and although you felt forsaken and although you walked through all this stuff without anybody besides you

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I'm the one that you've been looking for. I'm the one who's gonna give you sight I'm the one who's going to build you into the the man that I created you to be

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He saw in that moment The beauty and the splendor of a

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Savior who loved him He saw in that moment the pearl of great price that he'd be willing to give up everything to abandon

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He saw in that moment the living word that knew everything about him he saw in that moment the living water that was going to refresh him and Build into him and and keep him safe for the rest of his life

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He saw the one who brought him out of darkness and gave him light. He saw the one

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That his soul had always been looking for He may have lost everything on earth, but in Christ he had gained

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Everything right then and there in that moment Right then in there the fourth

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Gift that Jesus gives to this man as he gives him sincere faith We often have this discussion in this debate in Christianity, is that is it

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Calvinism or is it Arminianism? Do we believe and then Jesus responds to us or does

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Jesus give us belief and then we respond to him? All throughout the gospel of John that question has been answered here.

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It's answered again. This man has no belief if Jesus doesn't pursue him Jesus pursues him

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Jesus teaches him and then his eyes are open and I'm not talking about his physical eyes. I'm talking about his

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Spiritual eyes of faith. He saw who Christ was and he believed and it was because of Christ pursuing him

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So in our life when we think about our faith our walk, we didn't come to Jesus without Jesus first pursuing us

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Jesus pursued us. He found us. He awakened us He opened up our eyes and when we opened up our eyes and we saw the beloved king of glory

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Standing in front of us and when our hearts became excited and when we cried out dear Lord saved me All of that was because of all the work that God had already done getting you to that point so that you could see

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This man has been given faith by Christ And he responds to Jesus in verse 30 and he said

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Lord I believe In simple words, you don't have to be a scholar you don't have to know everything that Dr.

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Sunshine yesterday knows who does If you were if you weren't here, I'm posted the audio man is brilliant.

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He did the entire lecture from memory It was amazing, but you don't have to know as much as he knows You don't have to know as much as RC Sproul You don't have to know as much as John McArthur You don't have to know as much as a seminary professor.

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You just have to know who Christ is And you have to believe Christ is the one who pursued you and won you over just like Nathanael who said you are the

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Son of God the King of Israel Simple phrases Yet they declare such profound spiritual truths

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One of the things I want you to see in this passage before we go to the fifth is what belief actually means This is one of the things that really changed my life when

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I heard it Belief is a word in the New Testament called pistou Pistou, oh, it's uh,

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I think all Greek words are fun to say. So there you go Now you can practice it in front of the mirror Pistou Oh doesn't mean faith like we think about faith when we think about faith we think about I Believe a fact and now

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I'm going to respond to the fact That's the way we think about it. Jesus rose from the dead. Okay check.

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I agree with that But it says the demons in hell believe that and yet they shudder So that certainly is not what faith is

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Just believing that Jesus rose from the dead It's not enough just believing a mental fact just saying that you assent to a cognitive function that that's not enough

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Belief in the New Testament means allegiance and loyalty It means

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I've understood all of this data that has come to me and now my life is different because of it now

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I can no longer walk in this direction because I'm gonna be following Jesus. That's what pistou means That's what belief in the

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New Testament means. It's not hey great sermon Let me raise my hand and now I'm gonna write this down in my

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Bible on the day that I was saved and and I'm Always gonna remember that That's the day I was no, that's not what that means

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That means that I've heard the gospel and the gospel has come into me and it's changed me and now

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I'm walking in a different Direction, that's what biblical belief is That's what happened to this man when Jesus pursued him it changed everything about him

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And he was no longer the same person, even though the entire world had abandoned him, even though when Jesus walks away

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Jesus not gonna stay with him Jesus gonna go on and continue his ministry for the next four months before they kill him when

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Jesus walks away This man is different for the rest of his life Because he believes It's not just about a fact

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It's about something that has so utterly changed his entire constitution that he is a different person.

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That's what belief means That's what belief means and that's what Jesus Has given this man.

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That's the fourth gift He's given him a world -changing person changing belief

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The final thing is that Jesus propels him into authentic worship It says this this is the end of the passage

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Jesus said to him you have both seen him and he is the one who is talking with you and he said Lord I believe and he

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Worshipped him. I Want you to see how those two thoughts are completely tied together

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This is the very first time in the Gospel of John that someone worships Jesus And this is the very first time in the

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Gospel of John that Jesus accepts worship This is a this is one of the ways

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Jesus is declaring himself to be God. He accepts worship Only God does that But I want you to see that belief flows into worship our theology flows into our doxology

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That just means worship if we believe rightly in Jesus, we will worship Jesus True belief in Christ does not produce half -hearted

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Lackluster and lukewarm affections for Jesus true belief in Jesus produces fiery passionate worship of Jesus it throws you in the morning out of your bed to the

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Bible where you look at the word and you say I'm tired, but God is good It brings you here on Sunday morning where you look at the words of this these songs that that are up on the screen and you

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Say that is who my God is and that is who I'm gonna celebrate today Faith does not produce lackluster worship faith produces worship

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Jesus believes that there's no more appropriate action That this man can do once he believes then to worship

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All of life is all about worship if you're a Christian Because worship flows out of belief.

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That's the heart of this passage It's a Christ is everything and sometimes he's gonna use broken situations in your life to cause you to stop loving the world

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Stop loving your relationship stop loving your bank account Stop loving the news and everything that you're stop loving that and start loving

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Christ and when you get that When you really get that it flows into worship

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How could you stop from worshiping when you've seen Christ for who he truly is?

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That's the heart of this passage This great God and Savior has rescued us for no reason other than his goodness.

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It's not about us and As we see that together, let's pray and as we see that together, let's worship

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Lord It is a tremendous thing That you have saved anyone in this room

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We are not good The secret thoughts of our mind that we would never share with anyone

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Demonstrate the kind of people we are the ways that we hide and the ways that we pretend and the ways that we think that if we just If we just put on a show then people will believe that we're good

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Lord you see through it And yet you saved us anyway, and the only thing we can say is that you saved us because you are good

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So Lord between the tension of those two points that we are not but you are good Would you help us believe

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Would you help our hearts be filled with the kind of New Testament belief that changes us that shapes us that breaks us that molds us that builds us and Lord, would you

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Allow us as we grow in our belief to also grow in our worship

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Because Lord you're worth it You're worthy Lord let us take every moment of our lives not just in song

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But whether we eat or whether we drink whatever we do Let us take every opportunity is an opportunity to worship you