John 9:6-12 (What It Means To Be A Christian)

The Shepherd's Church

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When we think about parables in the Bible, we think about modest, humble, salt -of -the -earth kind of stories that are told to blue -collar people.

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We think about simple illustrations that are drawn out of the physical world that are meant to teach us a profound spiritual point.

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When we think about parables, we think of farmers, and soil, and vineyards, and weddings, and fig trees, and mustard seeds, lost coins, and prodigal sons.

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We think of salt. We think of yeast. We think of tares, and wheat, sheep, and goats.

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We think of the common things of life, because God's grace is not common, but it infects and comes down into the basest parts of our life.

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It's not just for Sunday morning. It's for every moment of our life. So it's interesting that the parables describe

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God's kingdom invading every part of life. That's kind of the point. Now, there's parables in the

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Bible that are stories, that are audible stories, that are told by a teacher, and they're teaching people.

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And then there's also non -storied parables in the Bible that are often less common.

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For instance, there's a type of parable in the Bible called a lived -out parable or an acted -out parable, where someone is acting out a truth of the gospel in front of people for a meaning that is supposed to be interpreted by the people.

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For instance, you look at the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel is an interesting character in the Bible. He has multiple of these lived -out parables.

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I'll share with you one in Ezekiel 4. God commanded Ezekiel to act out a parable of judgment against Jerusalem, and this is what

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God told him to do. "'Now you, son of man, get yourself a brick, place it before you and inscribe a city upon it,

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Jerusalem. Then lay siege against it, build a siege wall, ramp, or raise up a ramp, pitch camps and place battering rams all around it.

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Then get yourself an iron plate and set up an iron wall between you and the city and set your face towards it so that it is under siege and besiege it.

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This is the sign of the house of Israel.'" Now when we think of brick, we think of a small brick. This would have been like a large stone or a piece of concrete slab, and he's told to make a model city, which is interesting.

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Like if you are a grown man playing with Legos in the basement, it might not be a good thing, but God commands

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Ezekiel to do this here, right? And even more interesting than that, after he makes this model city, he names it

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Jerusalem, and then after that, he attacks it. He grabs a bat and a sword and everything else, and he goes postal on this city that he just created, and everyone's looking at him like, what is

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Ezekiel doing? This is the same guy that laid on his side for two years and ate bread in a very interesting way that we will not go into today.

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If you know what I'm talking about, then that's why you're laughing. Now the point of this gesture is that judgment was coming to Jerusalem.

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Even though it was a strange thing, it would have stood out to the people who were watching because the people who were watching this come about saw that the sign that Ezekiel put over the city was

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Jerusalem, and they saw that he himself was using Babylonian -style war tactics when he was sieging this model city.

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So the people would have thought to themselves, huh, Ezekiel believes that Jerusalem is going to fall to the

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Babylonians. That's what they would have thought. Now they might not have believed that God said that because they were wicked at this time.

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That's why the city was becoming destroyed, but they would have at least understood that Ezekiel thought that the city is going to be destroyed.

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That's why he's doing this lived -out parable. Now, parables often have to do with judgment, or at least they're given in the context of judgment, but Jesus gives a lived -out parable in John 9, verses 6 through 12.

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So what I want us to do is I want us to look at that lived -out parable, and I want us to see what that parable actually means.

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Instead of Jesus giving a parable of judgment, Jesus is going to give us a parable of the Christian life.

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He's going to show us God's role in our salvation, and he's going to show us our response to God in our salvation, and he's going to do that through a real -life historical event where he heals the eyes of a blind man.

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So the way that I want us to see this passage is that there's a historical event that's going on where Jesus heals the eyes of the blind.

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Under the surface of that, though, there's a metaphor that's being worked out that is really going to showcase to you and I what salvation is all about.

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So that's what we're going to look at this morning. Jesus is going to use dramatic, visible action to be able to show us what our salvation is.

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So each and every one of us, if you think about it like a Broadway, we've been invited to a front seat today to look at this play, this drama of redemption unfolding before our very eyes, and I hope that we see what is happening.

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So in our sermon today, I want us to do this in three parts, but only one part we're going to focus on. Two, we're going to be overarching themes.

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I want us to see Jesus all throughout this sermon. I want us to see what Jesus is doing for us in our salvation.

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I want us to see that God has to do something to rescue us or we would not be saved.

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Then I want us to see ourselves in this parable, that we could not heal our own blind eyes, that we needed

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God to do that work for us. And then finally, we're going to work through seven features in this passage that teach us what salvation is.

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They come right out of the text. So if you will, I want you to turn with me as we get started in John chapter 9, verses 6 through 12, as we look at these seven truths together.

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This is what John 9 says. When he had said this, this is

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Jesus, he spat on the ground and he made clay out of the spittle and he applied the clay to the eyes.

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That's the blind man. And he said, go and wash in the pool of Siloam, which is translated scent.

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And he went away and he washed and he came back seeing. Therefore, the neighbors and those who previously saw him as a beggar were saying, is this not the one who used to sit and beg?

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And others were saying, this is he. But still others were saying, no, but he is like him. And he kept saying,

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I am the one. So they were saying to him, how then were your eyes opened?

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And he answered, this are the man who is called Jesus, made clay and anointed my eyes.

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And he said to me, go to Siloam and wash. So I went away and I washed and I received sight.

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And they said to him, where is he? And he said, I do not know. Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for this passage.

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Lord, thank you first and foremost for the fact that 2 ,000 years ago you healed a blind man's eyes and that you did that as a dramatic display of your glory.

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You're the author of new creation. You're the one who can kneel down like you did in the garden and make new eyes out of the dust like we said last week.

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But Lord, we also thank you that your word is layered and that sometimes we can read the words on the page and that is where we need to stop.

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And then sometimes we can see things that are under the surface that are foreshadowing and that are types and that are things that can encourage us even today.

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And Lord, I pray that that would be the case for us as we go a layer deeper than the surface of this text today to look at something that's happening under the surface.

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Lord, we thank you so much for your word. We pray that we would see what it has to say to us today. Lord, I pray that we would be encouraged by what it has to say to us today.

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And Lord, I pray that you would get glory in all things, in Christ's name, amen.

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So again, I wanna start by saying that this passage is a historical event that happened.

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But under the surface, there's things that we can learn for you and I about our walk with God, about our salvation.

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It begins with a Christian is the one who is awakened by God. Because without the awakening power of God, we cannot become a

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Christian. Without God coming to us and turning the lights on and healing our blind eyes, we cannot become a

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Christian. Jesus in this passage is performing the role of God the

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Father in the fact that he is coming to the blind man and healing him of his sight or of his lack of sight.

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This is four months before the cross. That means there is no Christians in the world at this point. That means there is no person who's been indwelled by the

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Holy Spirit at this point. That means that Jesus is foreshadowing for you and I what he is intending to accomplish by his coming to planet

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Earth. He's coming to heal the blind, not just physically. He's coming to heal the spiritually blind through salvation.

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He comes to the blind man. Think about you and I, every single one of us before we knew Jesus were blind in our sins, helpless.

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We couldn't see the things of God. We couldn't know the things of God. We could try all that we wanted in our own human strength.

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We could go to as many church services as we wanted to. We could listen to as many sermons on YouTube as we possibly could.

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But until God turned on the lights and gave us sight, we would not be saved. The same

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God who kneels down in the ground and makes mud and creates brand new eyes in this man's dead eye sockets is the same

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God today who reaches down into our dead hearts and gives us hearts of flesh instead of hearts of stone, gives us spiritual eyes that can see instead of the blindness that we had before we knew

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Christ. This is our story of redemption being acted out right in front of us.

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Now we know that at the cross, Jesus pays for this. We know that at the cross, Jesus purchases this.

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We know that after the resurrection, he secures this. We know that by his Holy Spirit, he guarantees this in our lives.

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But what I want us to see is that this is the foreshadow of what's gonna happen to us in Christ. We need

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God to give us new eyes. That's the point. Now, the

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Christian life does not end in the conversion. I know that there's a lot of people in the church today that live this way, that God comes and awakens you and then you've hit the finish line.

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Now you can just do whatever you want for the rest of your life. You're saved and now you can live any way that you want.

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And nobody says that. And nobody actually verbalizes that. But I've met so many Christians who live as though their life with Christ is sort of complete because they made a decision for Jesus and now they're gonna go to heaven even though they don't think of him, they don't pray to him, they don't walk with him, they don't care about him, they don't do anything for him any moment of their life, but yet they made a decision and they're gonna go to heaven.

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That's wrong. The passage itself does not end with Jesus opening the eyes of the blind.

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The passage does not stop there. There's things that happen here.

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When we think that our salvation is the finish line, we've got it wrong. Our salvation is the moment that we just stopped stretching and walked up to the starting line.

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Our salvation is just the beginning. So this passage is gonna go on and it's gonna teach us more about what it means to be a

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Christian. Now under the surface, it's just a blind man and he's going and doing what Jesus says, but I think under the surface of it, this has massive implications for our life on, okay, now you're a

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Christian. What does that mean? What am I supposed to do about it? That's what this passage is gonna teach us.

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And the thing that Jesus tells this man to do right away is to go to a pool and wash.

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I think that that's a fascinating and very interesting thing, that Jesus heals this man and then tells him immediately to go and wash in a pool of water.

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Think about in our own Christian life, what that looks like when our eyes are open to the glory of the gospel of Christ and then we are commanded to be baptized.

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Do you see how the very next thing in this man's life is now tracking with our Christian experience? That we believe and we are baptized.

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It says in verse seven, Jesus said to him, go and wash in the pool of Siloam, which is translated sin.

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Jesus is acting out the drama of this man's life in Christianity, where he has now healed his eyes and sent him to the pool to be washed, which is the very next thing that happens in the

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Christian's life. Now, I wanna say this, that we can look at this passage and we can say, oh,

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Jesus sent this man to the water to wash because he just spit on the ground and put mud on his face. I mean, he could have handed him a wet wipe or something.

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Right? He could have handed him a towel, a towel net, a warm towel if he's in first class, but he didn't.

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He commanded him to go to a pool. Why did he do that? It's not just because his face is dirty.

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He commanded him to go to a pool first and foremost, because in the Old Testament, that is exactly what would have happened to you after you were healed.

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This is called ceremonial washings. In the law, when you were healed of a disease, you would go to a pool to wash, and that would be a declaration of your healing.

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So for instance, in the Torah, if you had a disease of just some general type, then you would go wash in the pool with your clothes on.

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This is not a bath. Who would do that if you had your clothes on? But you go and wash with your clothes on. You get out of the pool.

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In the afternoon or evening, you're pronounced clean by the priest. So you're pronounced unclean because of this disease and this uncleanliness won't allow you to go to the temple, won't allow you to worship, won't allow you to participate in the things of God.

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So you go and you're washed, and then after that in the afternoon, you were pronounced clean. So this is a

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Old Testament rite. If you had leprosy, and the priest inspects your leprosy and he finds that your leprosy is healed, then the first thing you would do is shave all the hair from head to toe off your body.

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You would go and wash in a pool, and then by evening, you would be pronounced clean. So you've been healed of a disease and now you wash ritually, and now you're pronounced clean.

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Blindness was a disease in the Old Testament that would make you and render you permanently unclean.

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If you were blind, you could not go into the temple. If you were blind, you couldn't offer sacrifices in the temple.

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You would have to have someone in your family do that for you because the Old Testament cleanliness and uncleanliness laws dictated that you would be outside of temple worship.

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So that uncleanliness there, when Jesus heals this man of his blindness, he's sending him to the pool to wash because Jesus is a true and faithful high priest.

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And he's saying to this man that there is now nothing that is keeping you from God because you've been healed of this thing.

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That's the first thing that's going on here as far as the washings go. Hebrews 9, though, tells us a second layer to these washings because the

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Old Testament system was fading away. Jesus had come to abolish the sacrificial system.

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Jesus had come to fulfill the washings and the ceremonial cleansing. So there's another layer that's deeper under here on why

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Jesus sends him to the pool and tells him to wash. Hebrews 9 says it this way. Since they, that's all of the

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Old Testament stuff, relate only to food and drink and various washings. That's what he's talking about here.

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Regulations for the body imposed until a time of reformation. But when

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Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, he entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands.

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That is to say, not of his creation or not of this creation. And not through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, he entered the holy place once and for all having obtained an eternal redemption.

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For if the blood of goats and bulls and their ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ who through the eternal son was offered himself without blemish to God cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living

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God. Hebrews is a tough book for us as Christians because there's so much Old Testament stuff in there. But what I want us to see is that all of the

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Old Testament washings that were to cleanse us and purify us from all of our sin have been accomplished in Jesus Christ.

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His blood has made us whole so that we're not unclean anymore. So that we're purified before God.

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We're perfectly clean in the blood of Christ. So when Jesus sends this man after he's been healed to the pool to wash, he's showing him an act of redemption that redemption is coming.

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My blood is coming. That's going to be better than the water of this pool that you're being sent to. He's forecasting and foreshadowing his gospel.

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Now there's two kinds of ceremonial washings in the New Testament that we need to be aware of in order to understand more of what

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Jesus is doing here. Ceremonial washings are not just a feature of the

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Old Testament. They are a feature of the New Testament as well. So there's two in the

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New Testament. There's the spiritual washing that happens to us when we're baptized in the

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Holy Spirit. And then there's the physical washing that happens to us when we're baptized in water.

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There's two baptisms in the New Testament. The first is the baptism of the Holy Spirit that happens to us when we become a

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Christian. Matthew 3 .11 talks about this. This is John the Baptist saying, I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals

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I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. If you remember in the upper room in Jerusalem, the disciples were sitting there.

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They believed in Jesus, but they had not yet received the Holy Spirit. Then all of a sudden the Spirit of God comes upon them from on high and dwells on top of them and washes them and sanctifies them with the

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Holy Spirit's power. That's the baptism of the Holy Spirit that comes to believers when they're saved.

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Jesus alludes to this in John 3 .5. He said, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water in the

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Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. The water that he's talking about there is the water of your old birth.

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The Spirit there he's talking about is that spiritual new birth that he's talking about. You must be born again so that this first kind of cleansing is a baptism of the

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Holy Spirit that happens to all believers when the Spirit of God comes in and makes His residence in you.

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Paul says this in Romans 6, verse three through four. He said, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into His death?

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You and I, when we were baptized here on earth, weren't baptized into His death. That happened 2 ,000 years ago.

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So what Paul is essentially saying in verse four, therefore, we've been buried with Him through baptism into death so that as Christ was raised from the dead through glory of the

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Father, so we might walk in newness of life. 2 ,000 years ago, this is so incredibly important.

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2 ,000 years ago, we, although we were not yet living, were baptized into the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ if we're a

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Christian. So therefore, there's nothing you can do to make

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God not love you because He already decided to baptize you 2 ,000 years ago in Christ. And because He loves

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Christ, you are secure. That's the spiritual baptism.

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That's the baptism into the death, the burial, the resurrection of Christ. That's the baptism where the Spirit of God is poured out on you, and that happens 2 ,000 years ago through God's election, and that happens when you became a

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Christian in space and time when the Spirit comes upon you and makes you new. But what

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I love about this, now we're gonna come back and kinda tie these knots together. What I love about this is that this man's experience is exactly like what a

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Christian's experience is. We talk about the baptism of the Holy Spirit is when our eyes are opened. This man's eyes were opened.

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And then after that follows the water baptism where Jesus sends him to the pool to be washed as a believer, as someone who sees.

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So therefore, he's washed in the fact that his eyes are open. He's being sent to the pool and being washed physically.

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This is the exact experience that a Christian who's an adult when they're converted goes through in following Christ.

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The Spirit comes upon them and they're baptized. That's the second kind of baptism that the

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Bible's talking about. And what I find so fascinating about it is you can't find a single example in the

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New Testament. Now, there's a debate on infant baptism that we will cover at the baptism seminar that we highlighted earlier.

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We're not getting into that today. We're talking about adults who convert to Christ. We're talking about people who are of age to understand who convert to Jesus Christ.

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They're baptized by the Spirit of God. They're baptized in the water. Again, there's a debate.

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We'll talk about that later. But this physical baptism that we undergo is a sign of the covenant of God.

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Just like the rainbow that hangs in the sky is a sign of God's covenant with us that he will never flood the earth again. When we are baptized, it's a sign of God's promise to us that he is the one who saved us.

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Our baptism is not about our profession. Our baptism is not about our obedience. Our baptism is not about what we can do for God.

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It's what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. And I read all the passages on baptism this week.

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Again, I've been doing that a lot lately, actually. And there's not a single instance in the entire

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New Testament of an adult that's converted to Jesus Christ who waits to be baptized.

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They're baptized immediately. Every single one of them. This man is baptized immediately by Jesus.

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We have Jerusalem after Jesus rises from the dead and he preaches that incredible sermon with 3 ,000 people get saved.

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And in that moment, it says in Acts 2 .41, so then those who had received his word, that means they were saved, they believed the gospel, they were baptized.

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And that day there were added about 3 ,000 souls. So they were spiritually baptized when they received the word.

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They were physically baptized as a sign of the covenant of God. Can you imagine how long that service must have taken?

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I think we're gonna have like 12 or 13 people baptized on October the 10th, as far as I know right now.

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Can you imagine baptizing 3 ,000 people? That would have been incredible. It happens again when the gospel moves outside of the walls of Jerusalem.

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The book of Acts says that the gospel's gonna go from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth. Well, as soon as the gospel goes outside of Judea and into Samaria, we see this happening again.

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Look at Acts 8 .12. But when they, that's the Samaritans, believed

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Philip's preaching, they were baptized in the Spirit. Spirit fell upon them. They believed the good news about the kingdom in the name of Jesus Christ.

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They were being baptized, men and women alike. It was instantaneous. There was no delay, there was no waiting.

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It was, I believe, now let me get baptized. It happens again when the gospel moves out to Gentiles and foreigners, like when you see the

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Ethiopian eunuch. In Acts 8 .25, it says, or sorry, yeah,

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Acts 8 .25 -38. So, when they had solemnly testified and spoken the word of the

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Lord, that's to the Samaritans, they started back to Jerusalem. And they were preaching the gospel to many villages of the

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Samaritans. But an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip and said, get up and go south to the road that descends from Jerusalem to Gaza.

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This is a desert road. So he got up and went and there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the

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Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. And he had come to Jerusalem to worship.

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And he was returning and sitting in his chariot and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the

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Spirit said to Philip, get up and join this chariot. And Philip ran up and heard him reading

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Isaiah the prophet and said, do you understand what you are reading? And the Ethiopian eunuch said, well, how could

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I? Unless someone guides me. How many of you have honestly said that when you've read the book of Isaiah?

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It's okay. Isaiah is a tough book. And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

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Then Philip opened his mouth and beginning from this scripture, he preached Jesus to him. And as they went along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, look, water, what prevents me from being baptized?

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And he ordered his chariot to stop and they both went down into the water, Philip as well as the eunuch and he baptized him.

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This man was baptized in the Holy Spirit when he understood the gospel of Jesus Christ and he saw water and nothing stopped him from getting down into the water and being baptized that very day as a sign and seal of the covenant that God had just worked in his life.

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They didn't spend years mulling over this decision. They didn't wonder whether they should get baptized.

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They didn't wonder what am I going to look like when my hair is all wet and everybody's staring at me. They didn't wonder that stuff. They didn't wonder, do

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I need a change of clothes? They didn't wonder any of that. They said, Jesus Christ has saved me and I need to get into the water now as a sign of the covenant that He has worked upon me.

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This is a modern phenomenon where we wait years and years and years to be baptized if we're converted to Christ as an adult or if we're converted to Christ as a teenager.

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And there's many reasons that we would not want to get baptized, but the Bible gives us nothing that would stop us or prohibit us from being baptized.

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Cornelius in Acts 10, immediately he and his household are baptized. Lydia in Acts 16, immediately her and her house are baptized.

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Philippian Jailer, also Acts 16, he and his household is baptized. The Corinthian converts in Acts 18, they are baptized immediately.

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Because when Christ has saved you and brought you out of darkness to life, it's so significant that what should stop you from being baptized in that moment?

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And the answer from the Bible is nothing. There's not a single New Testament verse of any

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New Testament convert who was an adult when they were converted who waited to be baptized. Not a single one.

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That is the biblical pattern for us today. Now, I don't say that as a way of if you haven't been baptized yet as a way of shaming you by no means.

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I just share with you the Scriptures because we're getting ready to have a baptism service. And what is stopping you from getting baptized?

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We're gonna have everything there for you. What is stopping you who believe in Jesus Christ from doing what all of your brothers and sisters in the

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New Testament did? Which was immediately respond in faith and repentance and be baptized. So if that's you, come on October the 10th.

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It'll be ready. So, so far what we've seen is we've seen that, that Jesus in this blind man are reenacting for us what the life of a

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Christian is. That our eyes are spiritually opened by the Holy Spirit. That we are drawn to, moved to, and immediately respond to the grace of God by being baptized.

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The third thing, immediately respond. I don't have the water ready yet, buddy.

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That's on me. I should have been ready. The third thing in this passage that tracks immediately and right along with the

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Christian life is a Christian is one who is sent by God. A Christian is one who's sent. Verse seven says, you said to him, go.

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And I said to him, go and wash in the pool, which is translated sent. And he went away and was washed and he came back seeing.

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What I want you to notice is that Jesus tells this man to go in the imperative. And there's very few times that Jesus commands someone to go, but the other time that he does it is in Matthew 28, 18 through 20, where he says, all authority in heaven and earth has now been given to me.

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Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

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And lo, I am with you always. In Matthew 28, he says, go and be baptized. Here in John 9, he says, go and wash.

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Do we think that that's a coincidence? And just to add a little bit of depth to this, the pool is translated sent.

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Isn't that interesting? Do you think the sovereign God from heaven overlooked that detail? Oh gosh, I don't want them to get the wrong idea in Chelmsford 2 ,000 years from now.

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The pool's translated sent. He's commanded to go. Christians are people who are not only commanded to be washed in baptism, but we're commanded to go.

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Like the blind man, we've been commanded to go. Out of our darkness into light, baptized by the

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Spirit of God, baptized in a pool and then sent to the communities that we came from with the gospel now that we believe and that we cherish and we hold with all of our hearts.

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We've been sent to declare the gospel of God to our neighbors and to our coworkers and to the people who sit next to us on a plane and to the people that we're eating with and the people that we live with and walk with and love and do life with.

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We've been sent with the gospel of God. If you're a Christian, you're a going kind of person.

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I know there's difficulty in this as well. Every act of obedience to Jesus is difficult, so let's not make excuses for ourself, but let's say, yes, that it's difficult to obey

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Christ. We can agree with that, but we must obey Christ. We must obey Christ. You and I have grown up, and I'm not talking about this church, but you and I have grown up in a

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Christian culture in America that is lazy and sick and weak and apathetic to the things of God, and we wonder why culture has fallen apart.

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We're not a going church anymore. There was a time in this country where missionaries were sent all over the world.

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There was a time in this country where the gospel was being proclaimed in our seminaries in a faithful way.

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Now there's seminaries in New York called Union Theological Seminary where they worship houseplants, and I'm not kidding. Harvard University founded to raise up men who would go and preach the gospel within a single generation had fallen into error, and they had to plant

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Yale University just to have a faithful seminary on this continent because Harvard was so corrupt, and now look at both of them.

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Princeton's the same way. All of these places were raised up to send out people for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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It's central to who we are. We're sent people. We're missionary people, but we've not grown up that way.

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We've grown up in a lukewarm, half -hearted culture that is slothful and lazy and cares very little about the things of God.

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We've grown up in a culture where many Christians, this is not just the people who live out in the world.

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Many Christians will say, oh my gosh, my grass is too high today. I need to mow my grass instead of go to church.

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We've grown up in a church culture where if an important football game is on, then we'll stay home and we'll get the grill ready instead of going and worship the living

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God. We've grown up in a culture where we say I'm too stressed and I'm too tired and I've done

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X, Y, and Z this week, and I just can't make it this week. We don't know and we don't appreciate how holy our

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God truly is. We don't know and we don't appreciate that God doesn't just invite us into his presence.

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God commands us into his presence. God deserves our praise in his presence because he's glorious.

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We've forgotten who God is and we've overemphasized who we are.

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And that's just the smallest sacrifice of just attending a worship service once a week. What about Monday? What about Tuesday?

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What about our Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays? God died not to have some of you.

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He died to purchase all of you. All of your time and all of your life and every moment of your existence is his.

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Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch theologian, looked out and wrote this beautiful line. He says that Christ looks out into all the known universe and he says to every single atom in the cosmos, mine.

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Everything belongs to him. Everything. Everything. We need to recapture a vision of what it means to be a going people.

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Yes, going to church on Sunday, but going to the world on Monday and going to our jobs on Tuesday and going to our friends and family on Wednesday, sharing the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.

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He opened up our eyes. He made us alive. We were dead and now we're living.

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How much better of a message can we possibly share than that? We have a world that's watching

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CNN and Fox. I think our message is better. You and I were not made for meager things.

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We were made for glorious things. We were dead and now we're alive. We are not made for comfort, health, wealth, and happiness and all of those things that the world is craving after.

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Those things are common and base. Anybody can be rich. Listen to Bernie Sanders.

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There's all these millionaires and billionaires. They're everywhere. All over the world. Sorry, that just popped in my head.

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But it's not uncommon in America to be rich. We're the richest country in human history. Any of us in this room rival anyone of any country of any nation as far as wealth.

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We are grossly opulent. And yet we're not called to those things.

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Those things are easy. Those things are meager. Those things are base. We're called to preach the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.

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We're called as ambassadors of him. If you're a

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Christian, then you're a sent one. If you're a Christian, then God expects for you to be going and we're not gonna be going all to the same places.

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That doesn't mean today you need to go home and pack up your bags and move to Malawi. That's not what that means. It means though that you are always ready and willing to give an answer for the hope that you have in Christ.

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It means that you're praying for the people that you know are lost and you're asking the Holy Spirit of God, will you give me an opportunity to share?

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How often do we pray like that? My neighbor, I pray, Lord, give me an opportunity to share the gospel when he and I are outside doing our yards.

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Lord, help me with my coworker, help me with my boss who I know hates God. Help me to have an opportunity to share the gospel even if I get fired.

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What gain is it for us to gain the whole world and get promotions and everything else, but for someone who is around us to lose their soul?

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We know that faith comes by hearing the word of God. We know that faith comes by the gospel being preached and we know that God is the author of salvation, yes, but we've been commanded to be obedient to this.

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We've been commanded to share the glorious gospel of Christ. And if that's not currently a part of our life or if there's hesitancy in that or fear in that or discomfort in that, the throne of grace is open to all of us to repent for the ways that we have neglected to be ones who are sent.

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Ones who go, ones who are declaring the gospel. This is what Jesus told this man to do.

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He said, go. And we know where he goes because he goes in verse eight to his neighbors who immediately, this is the fourth aspect of this, they see that he's been changed by God.

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So if you're tracking, a Christian is one who is awakened by God, a Christian is one who is washed, a

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Christian is one who is sent, and a Christian is one who is changed. It says in verse eight, therefore the neighbors and those who previously saw him as a beggar were saying, is this not the one who used to sit and beg?

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Again, what I find so fascinating about this passage is how the Lord has allowed this man's life to mirror our life in Christ.

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After we're sent, people are gonna notice that you're changed. After you become a Christian, people are gonna notice that you're changed.

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If they don't notice that you're changed, maybe you've not been changed. What Christ did to this man was so significant that the people who knew him, the people who saw him on a daily basis, the people who watched him sit in the street and beg could not even recognize him.

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His face was the same. His skeletal structure was still the same. His skin hung on his face the same way.

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And yet there was something so profoundly different about this man that he was unrecognizable to the people who met him.

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They said, who is this man? When Christ comes into you, there is something so different that happens to you that you're unrecognizable to the people who have always known you.

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Our character changes. Our loves change. Our passions and desires change. Our consciences change.

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The things that we believe change. The things that we want to do, we don't wanna do anymore. And the people who knew us and the people that we went to the bar with or the people that we talked a certain way with and now our speech is being cleaned up by the

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Holy Spirit of God and now our actions are being purified by the Holy Spirit of God, they don't know us anymore. How many

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Christians in this room have heard a family member say, you're just not the same anymore. You're just not like who you used to be.

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You're right. You're not. Because you have Jesus now. How many people here have had a wife say,

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I don't even know you anymore because of Jesus and leave you and divorce you because of Jesus.

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And you're right, they don't know you anymore because Jesus Christ meant when you were dead and now you're alive.

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What has happened to you as a resurrection? Of course, the world doesn't understand who you are anymore because you're different.

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You've now been called under the Lordship and the authority of Jesus Christ. And that leads to our fifth point in verse nine and 10.

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They're not only gonna see the change in you, they're gonna be confused by you.

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Verse nine and 10 says, others were saying this is he, still others were saying no, but it's one like him.

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And he kept saying, that word saying there, the I -N -G means that it was on and on and on.

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He kept telling them, guys, listen to me, John's sparing us the details here by shortening this.

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This was a long going sort of, it's me. They don't believe him. They're confused by him.

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And then they ask him, so how then were your eyes opened? The reason that they're confused by this man is not because of his doctrine, not yet.

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He's a day old in the Lord. He's just been given new eyes. He's just washed and he's just walked back to his town and they see something different on him.

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So he doesn't have all the answers yet. So they're not confused by him saying, I believe in penal substitutionary atonement and I believe in verbal plenary inspiration and I believe in this doctrine and that.

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No. He doesn't know any of that yet. He just knows that I was blind and now that I see and they're thoroughly confused by him.

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He's not even in an excitable phase that we affectionately call the cage stage. If you come to know what the doctrines of grace are and you become so passionate about the doctrines of grace, they call this the cage stage because you're so excited that the only good thing that people can do with you is put you in a cage and put you away from humanity for a little while until you calm down because probably you're up at two o 'clock in the morning with your keyboard sword on Facebook debating about verbal plenary inspiration.

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This man is not there yet, but yet they're confused by him. The only thing that he knew without a scintilla of sanctification, that just means a little bit, is that he was blind and now he sees.

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That's all he knows. That's all he knows and that's all that he shares. A Christian will be confusing to the world because God says that he chose the foolish things of this world to shame the wise.

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A Christian will be confusing to the world because the world doesn't understand what it means to have living thoughts when they have dead thoughts because the

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Holy Spirit's not coming to them. The world will be confused by us because they don't understand what the Bible means because the

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Spirit is the one who gives the keys to interpretation. The world will be confused by us because they do not have the

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Spirit of God. This man used to sit and beg out on the street corner for a lifetime, which is what you and I did.

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We weren't sitting on a literal street, but we were in the world's systems and structures and thinking and we were begging for the world to give us whatever it could give us to satisfy us.

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We had our cup out waiting for the world to just give us a coin and nothing satisfied us. Nothing brought our eyes back to life, but when we were raised, we left that sorry state.

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We got up and we walked away and we declared the gospel of Christ and that's confusing to the world because they don't have a category for it.

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That leads us to our sixth thing. Not only have you been raised by Christ, baptized in the water, sent by God, changed, the world sees that, you're confusing to the world, but you've been called to share the message.

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You're not just sent with no purpose, you're sent with the purpose of the message of the gospel and this is what it says in verse 11.

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He answered, the man who is called Jesus, that is a great way to start a gospel presentation is to point away from yourself and point to Christ.

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The man who is called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, go to Siloam and wash.

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So I went away and I washed and I received sight. This man is doing what each and every single one of us is commanded to do in that when someone asks us for the hope that we have, we don't say, well, you know,

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I go to church now and I pray, read my Bible, I'm very religious. I even have a

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Bible reading plan, 365 days a week. I have a Christian book that I read as well.

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That's religious stuff, like I was dead and now I'm alive. That's what the gospel is, that I'm gonna point to Jesus.

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I'm not pointing to my life. My life's still not perfectly conformed to Christ. I'm not pointing to me,

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I'm pointing to him and that's what this man does. He says, this Jesus is the one who did this to me.

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That's the gospel and that's the message that we share. He's the one who opened up our eyes. He's the one who caused us to be baptized into the community of God.

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He's the one who made us into a new creation. Christians are not just going people, we're telling people and we get a chance to tell them about the most glorious gospel that's ever existed.

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That's through Jesus Christ. You don't have to be scholars to do that. You don't have to be theologians to do that.

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Some of us are gonna be called to preach the gospel on Sunday mornings from a pulpit. There are people in this room, I hope and pray, that will one day plant churches here and will preach the gospel here and if they're not here now,

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I hope they come. There's people in this room who are gonna preach the gospel in the streets and they're gonna preach the gospel to men and women who are walking by.

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There's people in this room who are gonna preach Christ in a foreign nation. You're gonna accept the call to go from here to a foreign nation and you're gonna preach the gospel of Christ.

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There's some people here who are gonna proclaim the gospel of Christ on a phone call with a telemarketer. There's some people here who are gonna proclaim the gospel of Christ at Thanksgiving dinner when they ask you for the hope that you have in Jesus.

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There's some people here who's gonna proclaim the gospel of Christ to a friend who is broken and who can't see which way that they're supposed to go but they know that they need something.

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You say, here it is. It's Jesus. All of us have been called to share that gospel.

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Not just some of us. All of us have been called to share what we know with who we know.

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That's it. And again, we don't have to be theologians to do this. Theologians might know a little bit more about the

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Bible. This man is one day in, not even a full day, a couple hours, he knows one thing.

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I was dead, now I'm alive. I was blind, now I see. That is all he knew and it didn't stop him from sharing the gospel.

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You know more than him. 2 ,000 years later, you know more than him. You are more equipped than him.

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You've been poured into more fully than him. You can walk out of this space today proclaiming the gospel of Christ with courage, conviction, passion, and authority because of what he's done for you.

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Gospel proclamation is just sharing what you know with who you know. That's all it is. And all of us have been called to that.

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Which leads to our seventh point. Our final point. We must be discipled.

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Because while there is no requirement of knowledge before you can share the gospel, there is no expectation in the

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Bible that Jesus is gonna leave you where you're at because he wants you to grow. Verse 11 through 12 finishes out the section like this.

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And he answered, the man who called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, go to Siloam and wash.

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So I went away and I washed and I received sight. That's the extent of his Christian knowledge. That's it. That's all he knows.

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So then they say, well, where is he? I don't know. He doesn't know the answer to anything other than what he just shared.

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So there's this idea here that yes, we don't have to wait to share the gospel, but there is no reason that we should be stuck where we're at.

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God did not give us new life to keep us where we're at. He wants us to grow. He wants us to ask questions.

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He wants us to understand more about the gospel over decades of our life. So that if I look at you 10 years from now, you wanna know the gospel in a deeper way, in a better way, in a fuller way, in a richer way.

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It's okay to start, but it's not okay to stay where you're at right now. So if you're an infant

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Christian today, if that's what you would call yourself, that's great. You're in good company. This man here is an infant Christian.

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He's an infant follower of Christ. That's okay. Share the gospel where you're at.

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But don't make excuses for yourself that this is too high for you, too hard for you, too deep for you, whatever.

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Don't make excuses like that. The Lord himself has put his Holy Spirit inside of you and he will equip you to grow.

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Oftentimes we psych ourselves out by saying, gosh, I could never learn all of these things. Yes, you can.

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Get your face off of Facebook and get it in the real book and start reading. That's how we learn and how we grow in discipleship.

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That's how we learn who Jesus is. And also come alongside of older people in the faith who can answer your questions and help you and then take the answers that you learn to those questions and share them with someone else who doesn't know the answers to those questions.

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Yes, we share the gospel, but we must grow so that we become like this living, breathing, rolling the decks of answers to questions so that when people come up to us and they ask us for the hope that we have in Christ, one day we're not gonna have one answer like this man.

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One day we're gonna have an answer to all of the various questions that he has and we're still gonna be growing. I'm still growing in this season.

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When we planted Shepherd's Church two years ago, I was, I didn't really say this, but I was just like, wow, praise the

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Lord. There's a lot of things that I'm learning in the scriptures. And I'm like, I look back now and I'm like, I didn't know anything. What the

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Lord's doing in my life the last two years and the way he's growing me, I'm not even the same person that I was two years ago.

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And that's true for all of us if we just get into the word of God and study the word of God and learn the word of God because that is what

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God has made for us to do. So in conclusion, I just wanna say do not be content with where you are.

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Don't be content with what you currently have. You serve an infinite God who can give you infinite treasures of his grace if you will get in his word and pray and worship him.

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Don't treat Jesus just like an addition to your life. He's all of your life.

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And look at this passage, which really does describe all of the Christian life. If you're not a

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Christian today and your eyes have not been opened, I don't want you to hear this sermon and say, well, if I can just go do this, I can get baptized on the 10th and I can start going out and telling my neighbors and I can start doing all these things, then

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Jesus will love me and save me. That's not how the gospel works. If you're not a Christian here today, cry out to Jesus.

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Cry out that Jesus will save you. He's the only one who can open the eyes of the blind. Cry out to him.

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If you are a Christian today and you've never been baptized, I challenge you and encourage you to think about that decision and repent where repentance is needed.

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If you're a Christian who doesn't feel like that you're equipped to be sent, you have the Holy Spirit of God, repent of that thought that Satan has put in your mind.

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If you're a Christian who doesn't confuse the world by the way that you live, pray that the Holy Spirit of God would do a work in you so that they would see the fruit of Christ inside of you.

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If you're a Christian who doesn't have a gospel message to share, be discipled.

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Read the Bible. Come to me, come to Derek, come to anybody. We will teach you. We will pour into you. That's what this church is all about.

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To equip the saints for the work of ministry. The church is not about the pastor doing the ministry. The Bible says the church is for equipping the saints for the work of ministry.

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And you are the saints. And the world is the ministry. So if you are in Christ, do not settle for where you're at.

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Just know that because of the gospel of Christ, you can grow. And for a lifetime, we can grow until we meet him when he returns to call us home.

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Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for this blind man in your scriptures who didn't even know that he was gonna be given sight that day.

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Jesus comes and finds him. Just like you, Lord, have come and you have found many of us, most of us.

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Lord, I pray all of us in this room. Lord, if there's someone here who has still lost sheep, who has not been found,

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God, I pray that you would use the preaching of the gospel of Christ to awaken them and to give light to their eyes so that they can see.

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Lord, I pray that conviction would come into their hearts so that they would see that their life is not going in the right direction and that they are living a life that is an offense to you,

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God, and that they would cry out to you for salvation. Lord, I pray that you would pray that this church would be a church that sees lost people found.

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Lord, I pray that this church would be a church that sends people out with the glorious message of the gospel and equips men and women on how to share that glorious gospel.

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Lord, I pray that this church would be a church that confuses the world. Lord, I pray that this church would be a church that not just evangelizes but disciples and pours into men and women so that they can grow and so that they can be equipped for the mission.

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Lord, we live in a precarious time, but we do not have a precarious gospel. And Lord, I pray that you would equip us deeply in that so that we can go out into the world clinging to that, in Christ's name, amen.