John 9:13-34 (Share The Gospel Anyway)

The Shepherd's Church

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Over the last two weeks, we've seen the entire drama of redemption play out before our eyes.

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We've seen Jesus kneeling down into the dirt and crafting through this moment where he makes mud out of his own spit and he wipes that mud on that man's eyes.

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We see him reenacting what he did in the garden when he crafted humanity out of the dust.

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We see him infusing new life into this man's eyes who was born blind and we immediately realize in the passage that we have been born blind too.

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Maybe not physically, but we've been born spiritually blind, incapable of seeing the things of God, incapable of seeing the treasures that are found inside of his word, incapable of having a relationship with him if not for the new creation miracle that only

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Christ can offer. We've seen that the Lord has healed us too and that all who he delights to awaken will be awakened because Christ has all sufficient power to save those who are his.

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And we know that for those who are his, his spirit changes everything about us when the spirit of God comes within us.

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Last week, we talked about again how man is awakened and we saw that through this passage, but we also saw how human beings will respond in joy through baptism, just like the blind man in the passage who receives sight and the first thing that he does is he goes to the pool and the waters and you see that there's this correlation between us who receive new sight and the first thing that we really ought to do if we're adults when we're converted is run to the waters of baptism to be washed as a symbol and as a sign of the covenant that God has worked through us.

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We saw last week that this man was sent out as a missionary into his community, that he went immediately from the water to his neighbors and his people and his friends and his family and he was sharing the message of the gospel with his family and friends.

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And we saw that God does not remove us from the world when he saves us, that he puts us back into the world so that we can share the hope of the gospel with a world that does not yet have hope.

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We saw how the world responds to us when we do share the gospel and it's not always the way that we would hope for.

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We saw how sometimes the world responds to us in confusion and they don't understand what we're talking about. We saw that sometimes they see how changed we are and they're so blown away by that that they sort of distance themselves from us because they don't feel like they even know us anymore.

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We saw that we don't have to be experts in order to share the gospel because this blind man had only known

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Jesus for about 30 minutes when he began sharing the truth of the gospel, so I think all of us have known him longer than that.

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But we saw that we can't stay there, we need discipleship, we need to grow, we need to share the gospel now with what we know, but we also need to share the gospel knowing that we need to grow, we need to understand more of who

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Jesus is over a lifetime so that when we die, we ought to know more about Jesus than we do right now.

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Next year, we ought to know more about Jesus than we do right now. Every year of our life, we ought to know more about Jesus than we do right now.

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But kind of the theme that we saw last week that we'll see this week even with more clarity is that we must share the gospel anyway.

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There's lots of reasons why we would say that we can't share the gospel or we shouldn't share the gospel or we don't want to share the gospel,

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I get it, but the theme that we're gonna be looking at today is in spite of all of that, will we share the gospel anyway?

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Will we be obedient to what Christ has said? Now, it doesn't take long for this man to drum up some attention and ruckus in his community.

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He's no longer begging on the side of the road so everybody sees that this man has been changed. They notice the miracle has happened to his eyes because he's no longer got this sort of film over his eyes where he can't see.

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He's responding. His pupils are dilating and contracting with the light, like a miracle has happened here.

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So that alone would have caused a tremendous amount of consternation maybe in the community.

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It would have caused people to wonder what was going on. But I think the primary reason why this community is so up in arms is because this man had an encounter with Jesus.

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That is the primary reason why pain, persecution, and trouble is gonna come on this man's life because it wasn't just that his eyes were healed.

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His eyes were healed by Christ. And at that particular time period, Jesus was on the most wanted list in Jerusalem.

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You would have, if you were worried about your social status or your score on how well you interact with society, you wouldn't have hung out with Jesus at this time with about four months left in Jesus's life.

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Now, there's two important historical factors that I wanna cover before we read our text this morning that I think will help us understand what's going on.

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The first is that this would have been a normal thing that we'll see today when this blind man is taken to the priest.

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He's taken out of his community and he's taken to the Pharisees, he's taken to the priest, and that would have been entirely normal because when someone was healed from a disease, when someone was healed from blindness, they would have been taken to the priest and the priest would have inspected them according to the

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Levitical law, and the priest would have said those glorious words that that blind man had been waiting his entire life to hear.

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You're clean. In the evening, you can go to the temple. You can walk through the gates and you can go into the court of the men.

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This man would have never seen the temple. He would have never seen the Torah.

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He would have never seen any of this stuff. And he would have been taken to the high priest, or not to the high priest, he would have been taken to the priest and they would have pronounced him clean.

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Everything that this man wanted to hear was about to happen in his life. And yet, this was not a joyful day for this man.

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This should have been a joyful day for this man, but it wasn't, and the reason that it wasn't is because of the second historical factor that I want us to understand in this passage.

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You see, at this time, it was almost illegal, and I think we could even go as far as to say that it was illegal to associate with Jesus.

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There's a historian named Raymond Brown who says that around this time, a public ban had been issued on the worship of Jesus.

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This text is gonna show us evidence of that. And when we do some research on what a public ban meant in the first century of Israel, there were three types of bans that they had issued to people, and they were based on different severities of action.

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So there was what's called the Nesapha. That's the first layer, the first level ban.

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That's for minor infractions. That's for things like maybe you jaywalked in Jerusalem.

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I mean, I don't know. I mean, it's not a big deal. Maybe you get a verbal warning. Maybe you get a slap on the wrist, but this was not a major punishment nor a major violation.

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This was the Nesapha ban. But then there was the Nijui. I think I'm pronouncing that right. It sounds smart if I didn't.

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This was a stronger sort of ban. This was a more severe punishment. And the

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Jewish Talmud, which is like a book of the rabbis and their thoughts and their commentaries and their sayings and stuff like this, it actually outlines 21 different kinds of behaviors that could get you banned in the

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Nijui ban, which is the medium -level ban. Essentially what would happen is, let's say one example.

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If you speak poorly about a rabbi, whether he's living or dead, then you could have this sort of ban put on your life.

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This would have carried with it a 30 -day ban from the synagogue. Now, this is not just 30 days banned from going to church.

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This is 30 days banned from social activities, 30 days banned from seeing your children and picking them up at school.

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This was 30 days banned from having fellowship meals. This was 30 days banned from worshiping God in the synagogue.

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All of their social life was bound up in the synagogue, so to ban someone for 30 days was a significant punishment.

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Again, there was 21 different kind of categories of sins that the Jews would put a ban on someone during this time period.

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The final one was called the herem. Now, that's a fun word, herem. The herem was for two reasons.

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If there was no repentance in 30 days from the former ban, then you would get a permanent, indefinite ban.

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The second reason you would get this ban is if you committed a depraved sin, a sin that was so egregious in the sight of Israel that you would have immediately skipped everything, passed, didn't collect your $200, go straight to that.

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Now, again, this is a permanent ban. And not just that.

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No one was permitted to teach you the Bible if you were under this ban. No one was permitted to do work for you or receive work from you.

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No one was allowed to speak to you in public. You were not allowed to benefit from any social engagement of any kind.

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No one could give you any benefit whatsoever of any sort except to save your life if it were in harm's way.

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Essentially, the only thing another person could do for you is keep you alive so that you could prolong your suffering.

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Pretty intense. Now, we don't know what kind of ban the

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Pharisees are going to pronounce on this blind man here in this text. It's not the first one. That would have been almost insignificant.

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John wouldn't have mentioned it. Could be the second, it could be the third. I'm inclined to see that the trajectory of persecution that's happening in Israel, the hatred for Jesus that's been bubbling under the surface,

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I'm inclined to say that when they kicked this man out of the synagogue, as we will see today, it was a permanent ban, and it was a permanent ban for loving

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Jesus. Either way, whether it was 30 days or whether it was a lifetime, what we see in this passage is that following Jesus is costly.

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Not just for him, it's costly for us as well. Maybe we're not gonna be threatened with being banned from a synagogue today, but there's other things that will affect your and my life because we love the name of Jesus Christ.

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So what I want us to do today is I want us to look at John chapter nine, verses 13 through 34, and I want us to see what happens in the life of this man as he continues to proclaim the gospel, even though it's gonna cost him everything.

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So if you will turn with me there to John nine, 13 through 14, so we examine our text this morning. Begins this way.

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They brought to the Pharisees the man who was formerly blind. Now it was a

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Sabbath on the day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees were asking him again how he received his sight.

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And he said to them, he applied clay to my eyes and I washed and I see. Therefore, some of the

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Pharisees were saying, this man is not from God because he does not keep the

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Sabbath. But others were saying, how can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?

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And there was a division among them. So they said to the blind man again, what do you say about him since he has opened your eyes?

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And he said, he is a prophet. And then the Jews did not believe it of him and that he had said that he is a prophet or that he had been born blind and received sight until they called the parents of the very one who had received his sight and questioned them saying, is this your son who you said was born blind?

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Then how does he see? His parents answered them and said, we know that this is our son and that he was born blind.

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But how he now sees, we do not know or who opened his eyes, we do not know.

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Ask him, he is of age and he will speak for himself for his parents said this because they were afraid of the

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Jews. For the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed him to be

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Christ, he would be put out of the synagogue. For this reason, his parents said, he is of age, ask him.

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So a second time they called the man who was born blind and said to him, give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.

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And he answered, whether he is a sinner, I do not know. One thing I do know that though I was blind, now

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I see. So they said to him, what did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?

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He answered them, I've told you already and you didn't listen. Why do you wanna hear it again? Do you wanna become his disciples too, do you?

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They reviled him and said, you are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.

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We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he is from.

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The man answered and said, well, here is an amazing thing that you do not know where he is from and yet he opened my eyes.

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We know that God does not hear sinners, but if anyone is God fearing and does his will, he hears him.

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Since the beginning of time, it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.

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They answered him, you were born entirely in your sins and you are teaching us, so they put him out of the synagogue.

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They enacted the ban that we were just talking about. Let's pray. Lord, through this passage, we see a man who grows in courage.

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We see a man who grows in conviction. We see a man who knows almost nothing about you and then at the end, it seems like he's speaking with a sort of power and authority and conviction that we're not even sure entirely, or I'm sure he's not sure entirely where it came from.

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Lord, we see a man who is challenged, who is questioned, and who continually proclaims the gospel, even if the consequences are severe.

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Lord, I pray that today as we look at the testimony of this man, that we would adopt the posture of this man and no matter what happens to us, whether good or bad, whether wonderful things or wicked things, that Lord, we would proclaim the gospel anyway.

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In Jesus' name, amen. Today, we're gonna follow along the story of this man as he interacts with several different people.

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We're gonna see how the pressure intensifies in his life and how he is forced to make a decision on whether he will proclaim

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Christ or whether he will be silent. And then what we will do in the end, or what we would do throughout this message, we will see six different challenges that you and I will likely face in our life that will cause us to face the same questions.

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Will we have enough courage to follow Christ? Will we have enough conviction to proclaim him, even when the world is not in agreement with us or offering consequences to us?

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Will we be like the blind man? We'll look at six challenges. We'll examine them one by one. The first that this man faced and that we will also face is that the people that will oppose you are often the religious people.

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Religious people will be the ones who oppose you, but you and I must share the gospel anyway.

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Verse 13, 14, and verse 16 says this. They brought to the Pharisees, the man who was formerly blind, now it was a

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Sabbath on the day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes, and then down to verse 16. Therefore, some of the

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Pharisees were saying, this man is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath. Now, this is not the first time that the

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Jews have accused Jesus of a Sabbath violation. This is the third time that it's happened, and it began in John chapter five.

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If you remember, Jesus goes into the city of Jerusalem. He sees a man who had been in a state of sickness for 38 years, lying on the ground before the pool of water, and there was this urban mythology where if you just saw the water stirred up and you ran to the waters, then you could be healed, but he was paralytic, so he couldn't get up and run.

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So for 38 years, this man had been in a state of sickness and brokenness. Jesus walks into the city and sees him, and he says, pick up your mat and walk, and the man is immediately healed.

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But the Pharisees hated Jesus because of this because he healed a man who was born with this, or he healed a man who has been sick for 38 years.

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They said, you can't do that on the Sabbath. Jesus challenges them and he says, which one of you won't go out into the field and rescue your sheep when it falls into a crack of the earth?

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And yet you're telling me that I can't heal a human being on the Sabbath. That's what Jesus was talking about. But they hated him in John five, and they looked for every reason to kill him.

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John seven, when Jesus comes back into the city of Jerusalem, they accuse him of being a Sabbath breaker and having a demon.

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So now they've intensified their persecution against him, even calling him a child of hell.

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And it says from that moment on, they're looking for opportunities to kill him. John eight, they pick up stones to kill him.

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Now here in John nine, we've got this third Sabbath controversy where they say Jesus has done something good that God would have done.

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He's done it on the Sabbath, and now they hate him and think that he's a lawbreaker. And just for a little bit of background on this, if you weren't here a couple weeks ago,

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Jesus is the author of new creation. He came to do the works of God. The first creation was seven days, and then

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God stopped working on the seventh day and he rested. Jesus is now working and doing the works of God again.

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The works of God have started again. He's not breaking the Sabbath. He's starting a new creation. That's the point that Jesus is making.

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They miss it. They totally miss it. The Pharisees discounted the living

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God because the living God did not agree with their rules and their traditions that weren't even in the

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Bible. These categories of Sabbath observances were not biblical.

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They were added later as a part of their man -made religion. There's many examples that we could share about man -made religion.

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A couple have happened to the church recently. Where we see additions that are treated like biblical canon, even though when you get down to the nitty gritty, they're not, and religious people, when you don't observe these sort of man -made rules, will come after you and will say all men are evil against you.

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Most recently with the COVID -19 lockdowns. I know this is a sensitive topic, but I've seen this play out in the church and it's hard.

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For the churches that say, the Bible says that we're supposed to gather. There will be many

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Christians who look at you and say, you're trying to kill someone. You're trying to hurt someone.

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Why are you not obeying Romans 13? Doesn't Romans 13 tell us that we're supposed to honor the government?

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My question is, what if the government told you not to believe? The government told you not to believe, would you obey that?

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What if you were under a government like China where it said that you can only have a certain amount of kids and then if you got pregnant after that, you'd have to abort them, would you obey that?

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What if the government says eventually that churches can no longer gather at all, will we obey that? You see,

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I think the proper understanding of Romans 13, and this is why I think this has been brought into a sort of man -made tradition, is that the proper understanding of Romans 13 is we do obey the government until the government tells us to disobey

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God. And when the government tells us to disobey God, we no longer obey the government. And in the

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Bible it says that we are supposed to gather. We're a gathering people. Hebrews 10, 24 says do not neglect the gathering.

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How much more clear could that be? So whether there's a pandemic or whether there's a war going on,

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I hope we have the timidity and the courage to say we're gonna gather and we're gonna worship our God. Because God's law in this case is higher than the law of man, but I will tell you that if you take that posture, there will be a long line of people who are ready to criticize you and a lot of them will be religious people.

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A lot of them will be Christians. A lot of them will be pastors. But I think it's more loving to obey

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God than man. It's more loving to show the world that Christ matters so much to us that we're willing to deal with whatever consequences they can give us.

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I mean, think about the example that we're showing the world. If the world looks at us and at a moment's notice we fall over and say, ah, well,

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Christ doesn't matter that much to us. We'll just meet on Zoom. What are we saying about our love for Jesus in that moment?

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But if we stand strong in who Christ has told us to be, no matter what happens, we're saying to the world that that's how much he means to us.

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I think that's a better message. I think that's a more loving message. That's one example. I grew up in the

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South. This is another example of legalism and how man -made rules can be elevated up to the point of biblical canon.

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There's a lot of faithful churches down South and there's also a lot of legalistic churches down South as well.

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I'm sure it's the same everywhere. But there was a church less than a mile away from my home where if you were a woman and you wore a dress that came up even an inch above your ankle, then you and your father were both entirely in sin, just like this blind man.

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Totally vulnerable to be cast out of the church, shunned by members. This is true. And it's that sort of man -made religion that I think is offensive to God.

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Now let's ask the question, all right? Is it right for a woman in today's society or in any society to dress in such a way as not to lead her brothers to stumble?

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Yes. That's good. Is it also right to raise up men to view women as their sisters in Christ and not as objects?

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Yes. Yes. Those are true. But when we get out the ruler and we start measuring things and codifying things and making issues that you're not even a

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Christian if you wear a skirt that goes up to your calf, for goodness sakes, then what we have is not a discipleship issue at that point.

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Discipleship can teach all of us to love one another and sacrifice with one another, care for one another, serve one another.

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This is not a discipleship issue. This is a legalism issue. Where you start making arbitrary rules and if you violate them, then you're not a

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Christian. This is exactly what the Pharisees were doing. And this is why religious people will often be the ones who will come after you if you obey

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Christ. Because when you obey Christ, you're obeying this gracious Lord who has fulfilled all of the

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Old Testament promises. He's fulfilled all of the commands and you don't have to earn your way to God anymore through obedience, through rigid obedience.

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Yes, you obey because you've been accepted by Christ, but you're not a legalist. You don't get your identity from the law.

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You don't get your identity from your obedience and people will look at you and they will say, you're not even a Christian. That happens far more than I would even like to even say.

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If we truly know Christ, we will long to declare the gospel and we will understand that people will say all men are evil against us.

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A lot of times that will come from religious people, but we will share the gospel anyway because Christ is worth it.

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That's the first obstacle that we will often face. The second is that the gospel itself will bring division.

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It will bring division. That is what the gospel does, but we must share the gospel anyway.

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It says in verse 15 through 16, then the Pharisees also were asking him again how he received his sight.

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And then he said to them, he applied clay to my eyes and I washed and I see. Therefore, some of the Pharisees were saying, this man's not from God because he does not keep the

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Sabbath. But others were saying, how can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?

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And there was a division among them. That word again means that they were asking him again and again and again and again and again.

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They've been questioning him. They put him on the witness stand. They've been challenging him. They've been hurling all kinds of questions at him and they're divided over this

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Jesus. Some of them say that this man must be a sinner. Some of them are curious and they're wondering how can anyone like this heal the eyes of the blind?

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They're divided. The gospel's being preached and the audience is divided. That is what the gospel does when you proclaim it.

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You'll never become popular if you proclaim the true gospel of Jesus Christ. You will never become, maybe not never, but you won't have your best life now.

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You won't be healthy, wealthy, successful, and rich. You'll be faithful, but it will divide.

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Now there's ways to bring division that are not faithful. I wanna cover a couple of those.

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The first is that you become the offense instead of the gospel. How often does this happen? You look at churches like Westboro Baptist.

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You look at churches that the pastor has made it his mission in life that he is the one who offends.

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He's the one who brings the hammer. And that sort of offensiveness is totally inappropriate because we're supposed to share the truth of God and love.

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Because we love the people that we're speaking to, we're supposed to share the gospel with them out of a heart and out of a concern that we don't want them to be lost.

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But you can actually become the offense where you say offensive things on purpose, where you say all sorts of things that will just rile people up and you will be provocative for no reason.

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That's not the kind of offensiveness that the gospel brings. That's you being an agent of offense, and that's wrong.

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The second way that I've seen the offense of the gospel be perverted in our society is not by becoming the offense, but by muting the offense.

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Seen churches all throughout this country, and I bring it up a lot, and I know that it might sound like I'm beating this drum really hard, but the church in America is sick because we've muted the gospel.

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We've watered down the only thing that has the power of God to save humanity. We've watered that down and we've given them tropes and anecdotes and stories and self -help and psychology and anthropology and everything else, and we've not given them

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Christ. And when you mute the gospel like that, when you water down the gospel like that, you've taken the offense out of that and you've made the offense into something else.

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Your ministry, mainly. Think about the men and women who listen to those messages every single week and who are convinced that they're a

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Christian because they listened to those messages or they sent $1 ,000 to this ministry or because they made a decision on a podcast or something like that.

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They're going to hell, misled and abused by people who tickled their ears with their silver -tongued shenanigans.

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It's wrong. There is a right way to proclaim the gospel, and it's not difficult.

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Christ is the offense. He is the wisdom of God. His gospel is the one who brings us to stumble.

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His gospel is the one who, like a scalpel, cuts at our heart and breaks away the brokenness of us.

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His gospel, his death, burial, and resurrection for our brokenness and sin is sufficient. And that gospel will bring offense.

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And it won't be about us, it will be about him. The Bible, the gospel is

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God's means of offense. Look at how Jesus shows up to planet Earth in Luke 2, verse 34.

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He announces that he's going to bring division to a man named Simeon. Now, Jesus didn't say it, the

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Bible says it, but you know what I mean. And Simeon blessed them, that's Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and he said to Mary, his mother, behold, this child is appointed for the fall and the rise of many in Israel and for a sign to be opposed.

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This Jesus came to bring opposition. This Jesus came to bring some up and to tear some down.

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This Jesus came to bring division to the world, to divide his sheep from the goats and his wheat from the tares.

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This Jesus came to bring division. The gospel divides father and mother, he says.

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If you're not willing to walk away from your father and mother, maybe you're not worthy of me. That's what Jesus says. Those are hard words, but that's who

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Jesus is. 1 Corinthians 1 .23 says, but we preach Christ crucified, and to the

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Jews that's a stumbling block, and to the Gentiles that's foolishness. So for everybody on earth, this is a offensive gospel.

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The Jews stumble and the Gentiles crumble and the ones who are elect of God will be raised to life in Christ because of this gospel.

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The same gospel has the power to raise some, has the power to crush others, and that is a glory to God.

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It's not about us. When we preach the gospel and someone hates us for it, we give glory to God.

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If we preach the gospel and someone loves the message of the gospel, we give glory to God. It's God's gospel for God's mission, for God's purposes.

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And it will accomplish what God set out for it to accomplish. The Bible is an offense, it will divide.

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There will be some who hear, there will be some who won't. And we can't make any assumptions or pretenses on who's gonna hear it and who's not.

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We really need to just focus on the fact that we need to share the gospel. The Bible is gonna divide, but we must share it anyway.

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We must share it out of obedience to the risen Christ because he told us to. We must share it out of love for a dying world because the world around us is sick, it's confused, it's broken.

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We have the cure and it's not up to us how the cure is efficacious or it works in other people.

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We share it liberally with everyone and we trust God with the results. But to withhold it is the most unloving thing that we could ever do.

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Even though the gospel will divide, we must share it anyway, we must.

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Which leads us to our third point, that the people that we share the gospel with will not give glory to God, but we must share it anyway.

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Verse 24 says, so a second time they called the man who had been born blind and said, give glory to God.

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We know that this man is a sinner. Some people that you share the gospel with will be just like these Pharisees.

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And look at the irony of what they're saying. They're saying, give glory to God as if they're in the position of the ones who are giving glory to God and they're looking at the sinner and saying, you need to repent and give glory to God.

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But think about the irony of that. They're the ones who are calling Jesus a sinner. And they're sitting up in their high and lofty chair saying, you give glory to God.

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And yet they're not. They're not giving glory to God. And the one who is giving glory to God is this blind man who's known

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Jesus for 30 minutes. We will share the gospel of Christ and some will end up thinking that they're glorifying

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God, but they're not. Now, I hinted at this just a moment ago, but I wanna hit this point right now.

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It is tempting for us as Christians to look at the way that people respond to the gospel and to think that that is what gives glory to God or doesn't give glory to God.

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I've seen churches that when they grow, when more people show up, when the giving is better, when more baptisms are happening, they think this church is really glorifying

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God. And the little tiny community church that's preaching the gospel faithfully that has six old people in it who are just preparing for heaven, they're not glorifying

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God because clearly they don't know what it means to grow a church. That's wrong. That's wrong.

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We haven't done anything wrong if we've shared the gospel and we're rejected. We haven't. And we haven't done anything inherently right if we share the gospel and in our ignorance, the

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Lord just decides to use us. It's his gospel. It's his message.

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It's his glory. I think this teaches me that if you'll just share it, you're glorifying

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God. If you'll just tell someone about the hope that you have in Christ, you might

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Monday morning quarterback yourself to death the next day. You might say, I wish I would have shared that.

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I wish I would have shared this. I wish I would have done that. But if you will just share the gospel of Jesus Christ, he will be glorified.

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And he will use the words that you share and he will use more words that you didn't share and he will use those to bring to life those that he wants to bring to life and convict those that he wants to convict.

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It's his gospel. It's for his glory. And when you and I share the gospel, we glorify God. The world may not glorify

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God, but we can glorify God by sharing it and we must share it anyway. That's the third.

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The fourth is that you will never be ready. You will never be ready, but you must share the gospel anyway.

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Verse 17 and verse 25 says it like this. So they said to the blind man again, what do you say about him since he has opened your eyes?

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And he said, he's a prophet. Then in verse 25, which says, he then said, whether he is a sinner,

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I do not know. One thing I do know is I was blind and now I see. They were giving this man a barrage of questions trying to exhaust the limits of his knowledge, which was 30 minutes deep.

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He didn't have a lot of Christology, which is the theology of Jesus Christ. They asked him a question and he said,

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I think he's a prophet. And you're like, okay, well, that's a start.

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Yes, he was the final prophet of Israel, but that's not all he was. He was not just man. He wasn't just a prophet and the priest and the king of Israel.

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He was God in the flesh. So he has a very limited understanding at this point. He says truthfully that this man was a prophet, but he doesn't share the entirety of who

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Christ is. He doesn't fully understand. The second thing he says, I'm not sure if this man is a sinner.

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His Christology has not been worked out at all. He doesn't know if Jesus is a sinner or not. He's saying, all I know is that I was blind and now

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I see. And nothing was gonna stop this man from sharing the gospel. So if you know more than that, what is stopping us from sharing the gospel?

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What is stopping us from being a missionary organization that meets here once a week to worship our

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God, to be trained up and to go out for six days a week and share the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ? What is stopping us if this man could not be stopped?

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He doesn't know. But he answers anyway. He's not prepared, but he answers anyway.

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He's not ready, but he answers anyway. He's not been to seminary or Bible college, and he's not even read the book of John.

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Hadn't been written yet, but that doesn't matter. He's gonna share the gospel anyway.

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And that we must consider that we will never be ready either. If we're waiting on some sort of moment where we're comparing ourselves to others and we say, if I just knew what they knew, or if I just had read this book, or if I just went to this class, or if I had just done this,

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I will tell you that the enemy and your flesh will continue to move that goalpost for the rest of your life.

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Because after you've read that book, then you'll say, oh, I just need to read this, or I just need to do that, and it will be an ever -moving goalpost and you'll never share the gospel.

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The best way to share the gospel is like my dad did to me when I was a kid. He threw me in the deep end of the swimming pool and I survived.

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That's about what it is. You throw yourself into it, you do it, you just obey him and do it.

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It's not gonna be perfect, but you're gonna learn. You know, they say, like, if you're the one teaching, like in a small group setting, if you're the one preparing the

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Bible study, then you get the most out of it. That's 100 % true, and it teaches us a lesson about leadership.

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If you wanna be someone who shares the gospel, then you have to share the gospel. And as you share the gospel, you're gonna learn things that you could have never learned from a book.

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One of the things that I was blessed and cursed to be able to do in seminary is read a ton of books, and most of them were useless.

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Most of them would be really helpful on a cold night if our fireplace goes out. Seriously.

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Most of what I've learned in ministry is by doing ministry. Most of what I've learned in sharing the gospel is by sharing the gospel.

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You're never going to be ready to share the gospel anyway. That's the fourth point.

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The fifth is that you will endure disappointments in your relationships, but share the gospel anyway.

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Jesus says, or John says in 18 through 23, the Jews did not believe it of him that he had said that he had been blind and had received sight, so they, until they called his parents to the very one who had received his sight.

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And they questioned him, saying, is this your son who was born blind? Then how does he now see?

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And his parents answered and said to them, we know that this is our son and that he was born blind.

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How he now sees, we do not know. Or who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him, he is of age, he will speak for himself.

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His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews. For the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed him to be the

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Christ, he was to be cut out of the synagogue. For this reason, his parents said, he is of age, ask him.

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There's two relational disappointments in this passage that you and I will probably face in this life.

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The first is that we will see our countrymen around us, our people of our nation, the people of our nationality and the people of our geography opposing

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Christ and dying and going to hell. And that is a disappointment, and that is a hurt, and that is a trial, and that is a pain that we will feel.

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The second is that we will see our family cower under pressure. We will see the people that we love cower under pressure.

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We will see the people that we care about who are not able to stand for Christ when it gets hard.

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And that hurts, and that's a trial. When you think about our countrymen, you think about this man who woke up basically.

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He'd been in the darkness his whole life. He opens his eyes and he sees the priest. He had heard passages from the

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Old Testament about the priest and how they would serve and how they would work in the temple. You can imagine the joy that he felt on his eyes when he finally got to see the office of the temple standing before him, facing him face -to -face.

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You can imagine the joy that he felt knowing that these men had been the guardians of sacred scripture, that they were the ones who were teaching and they were the ones who were preaching and they were the ones who were gonna care for him.

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And in that moment, he saw antagonism towards him. He saw antagonism towards Jesus.

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And you can imagine the disappointment of this child who grew up being bounced on his mother and father's knee, being told about, we're the people of God.

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We're the people who have the sacred scriptures. We're the people who are gonna tell the world about God and the knowledge of God. And he looks right in their face and he says, they don't know

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Him. He looks at them and he sees that his own countrymen, the leaders of the temple, do not know

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God. Imagine the disappointment that he would have felt. Imagine how palpable that would have been to him.

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We experience the same sort of thing today in a different way, but similar. Like the blind man who opened up his eyes to see the coldness of the people around him, we look around at our country today and it's cold to the things of God.

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Like Paul who says that he would be willing to give up his own salvation if his own country could believe.

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Sometimes I think we feel that way. Sometimes we feel, gosh, if our people, if our people could just know

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Jesus, what would it take? It's okay to mourn for our nation.

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It's okay. It's okay to be heartbroken over the state of this country.

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It's okay to look at all of the despair that's in our country and say that this is not good.

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It's okay to get down on our knees and in tears in our eyes to pray that God would bring revival to this nation. That's okay.

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But it's not okay for us to despair. It's not okay for us to throw our hands up and give up and say, they're lost, what's the point?

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That pain that we feel for our people, the American people who are broken and who are lost and who are chasing after idolatry, that pain that we feel ought to propel us to the cross and ought to propel us to prayer and ought to propel our lips and our tongues to declare the gospel of Jesus Christ, not to despair.

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The second relational hurt that he feels in this passage is his family. You see his family essentially not joining in with him, not excited for him, not defending him.

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You see his family saying, here you go, Pharisees, he's old enough, he can talk for himself, he's of age because they didn't wanna be kicked out of the synagogue.

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They were looking at the pressure that their country was bringing on top of them and they didn't want any part of it.

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They were afraid that they were gonna get banned from the synagogue just like him. And they said what they needed to say, they moved on and they cowered under the pressure.

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You can imagine how that must have felt for the blind man. This is the first time he's ever seen his mother and father's face.

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This is the first time he's ever seen them look at him and be happy with him and then all of a sudden, moving and distancing themselves away from him.

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What a moment to have your first moments with your parents. And I know that this is painful.

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Maybe someone in this room has experienced that pain of being abandoned by your parents.

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If you truly know Christ, you're gonna care about sharing his gospel and you're gonna feel that pain too.

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At some point in your life, someone that you care about, someone that you love, someone that you are in a relationship with is going to distance themselves away from you because of Jesus.

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And it may be because of fear. It may be because they don't wanna get canceled. It may be because their faith is not worth suffering for and they have a faith kind of like the seed that falls on the shallow ground that sprouts up and then it withers because it has no root.

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Maybe they're ashamed of Jesus Christ or maybe they're ashamed of you. I remember when

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I first became a Christian, a member of my family looked at me. I was maybe two months into being a

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Christian. I was excited. I was joyful. I was reading my Bible. I just had this newfound love and zeal for Jesus.

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And a member of my family looked at me and they said, you know, you kind of need to settle down a little bit. You're starting to take this too far.

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And I said, what do you mean? That doesn't make any sense to me. If he rose from the dead, then

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I can't take it far enough. Like, I don't understand, what does that mean? And they said, well, you know, all things in moderation.

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I said, all things in moderation. Jesus didn't do all things in moderation when he went to the cross and he died for me.

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Like, that doesn't make any sense. And that relationship was strained for a couple years because they were embarrassed of me.

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They didn't like seeing me love Jesus because whatever reason, maybe it offended them. Maybe it convicted them.

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Maybe they realized that they didn't love Jesus like in those moments that I was trying to love Jesus imperfectly for sure, but they didn't.

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There's something about my life offended them and they distanced themselves from them. And this was a close relationship in my family.

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All I'm saying is that if you love Christ and if you proclaim his gospel, this is gonna happen. Because people are gonna look at you and they're gonna say you're too much, you need more moderation, you're too radical.

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You just need to calm down. And I say that those kinds of statements are entirely wrong.

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Because if Jesus Christ did everything for us, it would still not be enough if we spent all our days doing everything for him.

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It'd still not be enough. There's no such thing as moderation when it comes to Jesus. I get the moderation argument when you're talking about hamburgers.

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If you eat too many of those, you'll have a heart attack and die. I get it. I understand the argument if you're talking about drinking water even.

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You can drink too much water and you can die. You can hyperventilate by having too much oxygen and you can die. How in the world can you have too much

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Jesus? How in the world can you have too much of his gospel? How in the world can you have too much of his word pouring in through you?

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You can't. But I do realize that the relational pain and the hurt that we feel from these broken relationships are gonna cause us to feel broken.

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They're gonna cause us pain that sears us down to the core of our bones and it's gonna make us wanna quit. It's gonna make us wanna give up.

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I know there's people in this room who their spouse left them because of Jesus. I know because that's me.

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When I was a brand new Christian, this is in the exact same moment when another family member left me, I told you about that story.

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I was a brand new Christian. I was loving Jesus. I was reading my Bible and my wife of one year at that point said she didn't wanna be married to a

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Christian. And she began cheating and doing all kinds of other things and eventually she divorced me and she left me.

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Because I would not put down Jesus. Because I would not lay down Jesus.

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By the Lord's grace, you know my wife, my wife Shannon, I have been blessed. I have been blessed.

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But I will tell you that those first two years of being a Christian when I was abandoned and I was divorced and I was broken, it was really hard.

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And there were times where I thought maybe I should quit. Maybe I should give up. Maybe I should tone it down.

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But you can't, you shouldn't. Jesus is worth it. Some will lose their father and mother for the sake of Christ but Jesus is worth it.

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Some will end up totally abandoned in this lifetime for the sake of Christ but Jesus is worth it.

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None of us are eager for that. None of us are masochistic in that. The question that we have to wrestle with though is is

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Jesus worth it? Is He worth it? Would you be willing if religious people came after you to still proclaim the gospel anyway?

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If people are divided over you, would you proclaim the gospel anyway? When many will refuse to listen to you and give

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God glory, will you proclaim the gospel anyway? If they pummel you with questions and make you feel small so that you don't have the answers to all of their questions, will you proclaim the gospel of Jesus anyway?

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If your countrymen all fall away and you're the only one left, will you proclaim the gospel anyway? If your family turns away from you, will you proclaim the gospel anyway?

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And the question is, is Jesus worth it? And if you say yes to that question, then you will. Which leads to our final consideration.

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Which is the punishment that this man endured for proclaiming the gospel of Christ.

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Paul says in Timothy, all who desire to live a godly life will be persecuted. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when.

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It's not a question of how, or it is a question of how sometimes, because in our country, we experience persecution differently than other cultures do, that's for sure.

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But if we live a godly life and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, the world will hate us.

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You need to go in with that expectation. That Christ is worth it, and we've been counted worthy to suffer like him.

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This is what it says in verses 26 through 34, that you will likely be punished, but we will share the gospel anyway.

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So they said to him, what did he do to you? How did he open your eyes? The blind man answered him,

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I told you already, and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too, do you?

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And they reviled him and said, you are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he is from.

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And then the man answered and said to them, well, here is an amazing thing, that you do not know where he is from, and yet he opened up my eyes.

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We know that God does not hear sinners, but if anyone is God -fearing and does his will, he hears him.

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Since the beginning of time, it has never been heard that anyone has opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.

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And they answered him, you were born entirely in sin and you were teaching us, so they put him out.

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What I want us to see here is that the man who knew Jesus for 30 minutes all of a sudden knows quite a bit.

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The man who just had enough courage to open up his mouth and share just a little bit about Jesus now is bold, and he's sharing the gospel boldly in front of these men.

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This lion, or this lamb -like little man was turned into a lion, bold proclaimer of the gospel in a moment, and we have to ask ourself the question, what power came over him in this last moment?

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What power came over him that caused him to have this conviction? What in the world happened to him that he went from one -sentence answers to this magnificent declaration of who

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Christ is in the very end? And he says it with such boldness and authority that he knows he's gonna be put out of the synagogue.

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He's not ignorant of that, but he stands up and he declares it with passion. What came over that man?

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And I will tell you, it's the same thing that comes over you and I today. It's the Holy Spirit of God. Luke 12, 11 through 12 says it like this.

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When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not worry about how you're gonna speak in your defense or what you're gonna say for the

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Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say. Verse 22 through 23 of the same chapter.

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Jesus said to the disciples, for this reason I say to you, do not worry about your life and what you will eat or your body and what you're gonna put on it, for life is more than food and your body is more than clothing.

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And the culminating verse in this section is verse 31 through 32, which says, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all things will be added to you.

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Do not be afraid, little flock, for your father has chosen to gladly give you the kingdom. Don't worry about your life.

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Don't worry about what you're gonna put on your body. Don't worry about what you're gonna eat. Don't worry about what you're gonna drink. Proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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And if they revile you and if they reject you and if they're confused by you and if they hate you and if they lie about you and if they cheat about or they cheat on you, if they do all manner of evil against you, proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and the

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Holy Spirit will be with you. Stand up with courage and he will provide the strength. Stand up in righteousness and he will provide the words.

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You don't have to know everything in order to proclaim the gospel. The one who knows everything and created everything by the breath of his mouth is with you, in you, and he will help you as you share the gospel.

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The point of today's passage is share the gospel anyway. Now we covered six different reasons why we would not wanna share the gospel.

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There's six million, there's six billion that you could come up with. The point is not in the number. The point is if you have a reason why you don't wanna share the gospel, share the gospel anyway.

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People are gonna oppose us. They're gonna give us scars and pains and wounds and they're gonna reject us.

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But the gospel of Jesus Christ is the gospel of a man who did not quit. When all the powers of hell were weighing down on Jesus Christ, it says, for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross and despised its shame.

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He despised the shame of the cross. He took the shame of the cross, which was our shame, and he took that shame and he crucified it and he buried it and he gave us new life.

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This Jesus did not quit when life got hard for him. This Jesus, when he was pinned down to the mat, did not tap out when it was in relationship to you.

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So how much more should we not give up whenever things get hard for us?

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We have an example of Jesus Christ who did not tap out when life was hard, infinitely harder than what you and I have ever been through when he endured the cross.

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This same Jesus now lives in us. Now how could we ever quit? How could we ever tap out?

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The gospel's gonna bring division. We must share the gospel anyway. They're not gonna give God glory.

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We must share the gospel anyway. They're gonna question us and challenge us. We must share the gospel anyway. Our countrymen are gonna turn against us.

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We must share the gospel anyway. Our family's gonna turn against us at times. We must share the gospel anyway. And sometimes the gospel's gonna bring consequences and punishment, and we must share the gospel anyway.

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Lord Jesus, you are worth it. You are holy and righteous and good, and we only exist here today because of you.

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You've done everything for us. Lord, let us joyfully give our lives for you.

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Lord, let us not cower under the pressure or cave under the disappointments.

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Or live in the excuses or struggle with all manner of different struggles that we have.

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Lord, let us lay aside every weight, everything that tangles us up.

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And let us capture a vision for what it means to proclaim the gospel to the nations. Lord, let us not withhold the antidote because the mission is too hard.

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Lord, let us as a church stand up with the confidence of Christ and proclaim the gospel.

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Lord, let this region experience revival because of the gospel. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine, New York.

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Lord, let all of these states, Connecticut, let all of these states come to know who you are through the declaration of the gospel and let that,

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Lord, redound out into the rest of the country. And let that echo out into the, as far as the east is to the west in this planet.

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Lord, we pray with faith and with courage that your gospel would win the world to Jesus Christ.

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And Lord, we pray that we would not be afraid to join in that mission.