John's Witness

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Dear God, our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your son, Jesus, for his coming down and dying for us and being resurrected with power so we can be redeemed by his precious blood.
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And Lord, we thank you for your spirit that is among us today to convict us and to comfort us.
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And even now, Lord, as we open up your word, we just pray that our hearts would be filled with love for you and that our hearts would be convicted by your spirit to do those things that you would have us do.
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In Jesus' name we pray, amen. So all of you should have a copy of the handout that's there by the chair.
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If you don't, you can get one or I have a few copies here. And what we are going to do today is, as you can see in the title, we're going to look at John's witnesses.
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We're going to be looking through certain passages in the Gospel of John. And as you can see the outline here, we're going to ask a few questions to get our hearts and our minds prepared for studying the scriptures that you find in this table.
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We will look at some of these individuals that John speaks about and what they did as they met
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Jesus. And we will ask ourselves the questions, actually that response section that you have there.
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I would like you to write down what you feel is either lacking in your own witnessing for Christ or any other thought that comes to your mind while we go through the study.
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But in case you need the details of what we'll be covering, don't worry about it. I have a cheat sheet here that I can make a copy after class.
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So don't worry about references and stuff. I can give that to you afterwards. And then after we do this initial section on the witnesses, we will spend a little time looking at what we do here at BBC with regards to mission and how you can be a part of the missions here.
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So today's class is going to challenge us in terms of what it means to be a witness for Christ and how we can be involved with missions as it goes on at Bethlehem Bible Church.
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To begin with, some introductory questions. The questions here, the first one, did you get to witness to someone about Jesus this past week?
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This class, I'd like it to be a little more interactive. So why don't we have a show of hands? One, two, three, four.
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Excellent. And would one of you just briefly share your witnessing encounter?
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Yeah. And like you said, the tomb that they found, all those things are just opportunities for us to speak to a world that otherwise may not even be considering a conversation here.
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So that's great to have that opportunity. And for those of us who did not get to witness maybe just this week or maybe in the past few weeks,
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I hope that this time will be a challenge to say, you know, what can I do to be a faithful witness of Christ?
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And the second question leads up into that. I want each of us to ask ourselves this question.
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Do I believe that I am obedient to Jesus in fulfilling the
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Great Commission? All of us here know the preciousness of the gospel that we have received and we know the command from Christ to go out and proclaim it to those who are around us.
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But when we examine ourselves in the light of Scripture and in light of the Holy Spirit, I wonder if all of us would be able to boldly affirm, yes, you know, within the opportunities that were given to me and with the people that I met,
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I did present the gospel when I had the opportunity. We may not have presented it and then the person come to faith in Christ, but that's okay.
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Our responsibility is to share the gospel faithfully. And I want us to ask that question and keep that in the back of our mind when we get started with the study here.
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And again, before we go into the text, I want to look at some definitions that we are going to use here so we are familiar with what we are referring to.
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The first term that is used here is witness. Now before we think of witness in the
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Bible, in just a secular sense, what does the term witness bring to mind?
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What does it mean? Someone who testifies or to testify?
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Could you maybe elaborate that a bit on the person? And that would be an eyewitness,
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I think, right? A witness who has seen something would be an eyewitness, but somebody who is willing to come forth and present his evidence or what he has seen about an event.
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And one thing I want us to remember in mind is, I think there is also a legal term called expert witness.
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Is that right? And what does that expert witness mean? Okay. Oh, absolutely.
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So, I mean, we are not going to go into the legal courts here, but we'll use these definitions and see how they apply with the aspect of witnessing to Christ.
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One thing we need to remember is we are not called to be expert witnesses. We don't have to have a
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MDiv, a PhD, or Greek and Hebrew in order. Dr.
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White is a perfect example of an expert witness. And sometimes we would wish we can aspire to be like him, but you don't have to be an expert witness to be a witness.
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And the witness that we are referring to in the scripture is witnessing to who Jesus is and what he has done for us.
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Because these are firsthand, it's a firsthand testimony of what Christ has done for you.
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And we have the evidence of the scriptures, which we use to present the gospel. And there are two terms that are used here.
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One is testimony, which Daniel already alluded to.
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So we have something precious that we have, which we want to testify to. We are going to testify to Jesus Christ.
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But the next two terms that we have here, evangelism and missionary, the term evangelism,
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I think you might have heard already, comes from the word euangelion, which is good news.
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And apparently the person who used to bring good news in the past used to be rewarded. So the term euangelion used to mean the reward for a good news.
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And that's a nice way for us to remember what evangelism ought to be. We have something precious to give.
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And the reward is just pleasing our Lord and our Father. And he would reward us ultimately.
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But the purpose of evangelism is to give this good news. And then we have the term missionary.
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Does anybody know the roots of the term or the word missionary, where it comes from? I think
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Sammy Williams said, you know, the word is not there in the
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Bible. And that is true. I'm a missionary, but I don't have my job description here or the title here.
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Apparently missionary comes from the term missio, which means to send. And it's similar to a derivative of apostle, you know, somebody who's sent to proclaim the gospel to a place that doesn't have the gospel yet.
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So in terms of what we are going to use in our study here, we're going to use it interchangeably, evangelism and missions.
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But before we get again, I want us to look at what is this message that we have to share today.
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So if I asked you the question, what is the gospel? I want the one minute definition of what the gospel is.
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Can I have some volunteers here who can say, I can precisely define what the gospel is in a minute or less.
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Any takers? Let's give somebody else an opportunity. Thanks, Bruce.
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I'm going to be counting on Bruce a lot. So it looks like it's back to you.
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Go ahead, Bruce. Right.
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And when you present this gospel to an unbeliever, what does the expected response?
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What is the unbeliever supposed to do? Right, right, right.
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And so, you know, if you had to just break this down into a couple of points, and I think we have some tracks out there that Bruce actually prepared, which are helpful in looking at some of the scriptures that go with this.
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Bruce pointed out all those aspects that need to be in a gospel message. First, we have a holy God, a
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God who created us to whom we are accountable. Second, man is a sinner. He was created good, but he is in a state of sin, separated from God in rebellion and needs to be restored.
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Third, Jesus came and provided that way by dying on that cross and enabling us to have a relationship with him.
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And we accept him as our substitutionary atonement on our behalf. And finally, when the person is confronted with this truth, he has to repent and believe in Jesus as his own personal savior.
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And so those are some elements of the gospel. And I know Pastor Mike had preached on the 12 words in one of the evening services.
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And that's a great message which goes into the theology behind all of this. But the track that we have that Bruce prepared, which has a lot of verses that will help you fix your mind around this, is on the chair.
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And I'd encourage you to pick one up when you leave. Finally, again, as part of the introduction is methods.
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Is there a right way and a wrong way to present the gospel? First of all, is there a wrong way that we can present the gospel?
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Absolutely. We can water down the gospel to the point where it is no longer the gospel anymore.
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We try to lower the bar so far that repentance is lost.
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Even the substitutionary atonement is lost. And there really is no hope in such a method of just trying to seek the people to come in great numbers, but not really have genuine repentance.
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But if you look at the genuine way of... If you look at the true gospel, in presenting the true gospel, is there only one method by which you can present the gospel?
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No. If you look at the Bible, there's numerous examples of different ways in which the gospel was shared with the people who hadn't heard the message before.
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And that's one thing I want us to keep in mind when we go through this text that we have here as we jump right into them.
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These are examples of witnesses that John has recorded for us. John himself was an apostle, an eyewitness, an evangelist, because he was one of the four men who wrote each of the gospels.
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And he's almost like Hebrews 11, where we have the hallmark of faith, where we have these great testimony of people who lived a life of faith.
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He shows for us men who were faithful in being witnesses of Christ. And as we look at this,
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I don't want us to just think, okay, you know, these men did this, so I need to do this. But I want us to look at what
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John is trying to communicate to us. Here were people who were either changed by a certain encounter, that they had to do something, or they were going through a certain situation where they had no choice but to respond in a certain manner.
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And I want us to ask ourselves this question as we examine these lives. You know, what did these men do?
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And what is John trying to tell us in these verses? And how must I, as a believer, respond to this call of witnessing to Christ?
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So with that said, let's jump right into the first witness we have for us, which is John the
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Baptist. We'll look at John 1, verses 6 through 8, and verse 15 to begin with.
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John 1, verses 6 through 8 and 15. Can I have someone read that for me, please?
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We can stop there, Carl. Can you read verse 15, too? In verse 15, we see the actual words, how
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John testified. But if you look at verses 6 through 8 again, we see John was given a purpose to go before him.
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We'll look at it more closely in the next passage, what he was told to do. But we are told very clearly here, he was a witness.
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He knew something and he had to proclaim it to the people to whom he was sent. And he is testifying about this message.
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Now, I want you to think about this verse for a minute. He is here to testify about the light.
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How many of you think that we need to testify about the light? You know, I want you to know that the sun is shining.
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That's not a great job, is it? It's very obvious that the sun is shining. Why does somebody need to come and testify or let others know that there is a light that they need to look at and to consider?
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That's exactly right. So here we are talking about the light or the illumination that God provides about his son,
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Jesus, and what that means to our individual lives. And if you look at, I think it's Isaiah 40.
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Or actually, if you go to Isaiah 6, when Isaiah has this charge, he is to go and talk about God.
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And God actually tells him that, you know, these people are not going to listen. They're not going to hear, but they're not going to understand.
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Their eyes are going to be closed. And here we have, if you look at Ephesians 2, 1 to 3, a people who are dead, who cannot naturally see this glorious God of this whole universe to whom there needs to be a proclamation of this message.
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To you and me who have our eyes open, it may seem very obvious, you know, yes, there is a God who saved this universe or who created this universe, who is holy, who must be worshipped.
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But this message that is going out is going to a lost and a dying world, a world that is unable to see this
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God who created it. And there is a solemn message that has to be proclaimed.
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And the challenge, I think, for us is, you know, we know that God is sovereign. We know that God has, you know, he's able to save all of those, quicken the lives of those who need to come to faith in him.
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And for the most part, we think, okay, you know, God is this light and he's able to illumine who he wants.
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What do I have to do with this? And that should not be our attitude. Our attitude ought to be that, you know, we are witnesses.
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And our solemn responsibility is to discharge this testimony as effectively as we can to a people who do not see this light.
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And we should never forget that the people we are talking to are unable to see this light. And that is why we are called to proclaim the gospel.
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And when we proclaim it, the spirit of God is able to convict or condemn as he chooses.
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But our responsibility, again, like John, is to testify to this light. And then we have the section here in verses 19 through 36.
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And we won't look at all of it, but I want to look at a couple of verses here, just to point about what
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John did in his witnessing for Jesus Christ. If you begin with 19 onwards, you can just follow along with me.
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I'm not going to read all the verses. But you see here, the Jewish authorities, they're coming here to John.
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John is famous, you know, he's baptizing all of Jerusalem, is going out to be baptized by him, is famous.
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And so they're asking, okay, you know, we as Jewish people have a hope for a Messiah.
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Now, you must be the Messiah. Are you? And John says, no. And then they ask him, okay, are you the prophet?
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Are you Elijah? He looks like Elijah, obviously. He's dressed like him. He has a message like him. And John constantly says, you know,
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I may be famous. I may look great, but I'm not the one. I'm here to point to someone else. And I think that is very important for us.
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When we look at even in the next section, chapter 3, verses 23 to 30. In verse 30,
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John very clearly proclaims. By now, Jesus is starting to come up. And he says, he must increase and I must decrease.
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And for us who are Christians in the world today, I think that's an important aspect for us to remember. You know, most of us among our friends, among our workers, among our social people, many of them know that we are
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Christians. And when they ask us about why, you know, you seem to be going through all these trials very nicely and not as perturbed as I would be.
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Or why things seem to be going well with you, but not with me.
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Most of us, I think, you know, just for decorum and social etiquette would say, well, you know, things went well.
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And that not ought to be the case. I personally, for one, have been challenged by the times that, you know,
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I'm thinking, you know, I want to talk about Christ. But how do I even explain to these people that it is not me, but it is
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Christ that is the reason for my peace in the midst of the storm or for my willingness to obey
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God despite the consequences. And we must have the same attitude as John. John was famous, but that didn't matter to him.
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You know, all the people can think we are fools, but it doesn't matter as long as we know that our standing in the eyes of society has no bearing at all.
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Our responsibility is to elevate Christ. And in the process, if we must decrease, so be it.
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Our goal should be to please our father and to point and to testify to him, to Jesus, rather than to continue right social standing, as it were.
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John, as you can see, was definitely not the socialite of his time. He broke a lot of conventional rules.
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But if you go on to see here, they ask him, who are you? And he points to Isaiah.
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He quotes in verse 23, I'm the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the
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Lord. And yesterday in class, we were looking at this passage in Old Testament.
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If you look at this is a quotation from Isaiah 40, verse 3, clear the way of the
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Lord, make smooth in the desert a highway for our Lord. And it says the gospel here, let every valley be lifted up, every mountain and hill be made low.
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Let the rough ground become a plain and the rugged terrain, a broad valley. Then the glory of the
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Lord will be revealed and all flesh will see it together. If you think about John's proclamation, actually, this was a message
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I heard from John MacArthur when I was in the Shepherds Conference three years ago, with a few of you here.
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And he talked about the Baptist message. And John here was proclaiming a message of repentance.
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You know, here are people who are satisfied with their religiosity and what they were doing.
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And here are the hills and John comes out and saying, repent, you know, brood of vipers to the
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Pharisees. You think you are safe in your religious works? Absolutely not.
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And then at the same time, you also have the valleys that are made low. People who think they have no hope.
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You have the Gentiles. You have the message, gospel message that is for everyone.
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And if you think of our world today, can you think of what would be the equivalence of these hills and valleys?
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What are the kinds of people that we are talking about here? That is true.
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People who are still entrenched in their religious systems and thinking that they are right with God.
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Those are the valleys, the people who are hurting. And there are some who are so despondent that they think there is really no hope.
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For them, because they are so far lost. And the gospel message is for everyone, whether it is somebody who thinks he is safe.
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In that case, it is to destroy that fortress that they have built. And if it is for those who think they have no hope at all,
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Christ comes as a friend of sinners. We have a lot more we can look at from John himself, but I'll just point to a few more and then we'll move on to the other examples here.
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And if you look at what John has to say, he, as you know, was the son of a priest, a Zechariah.
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And he has a theological message to declare. Not only is he going to preach a message of repentance, but he is also going to talk about the way that people can be right with God.
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He points to Jesus in a couple of places here as the Lamb of God. If you look at verse 29, he sees
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Jesus and he says, behold the Lamb of God that is coming to save the world. And if you look at verse 36, again, among his disciples, he's saying, you know, this man is greater than I and he's the one who is the
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Lamb of God. The Lamb, as you know, this is the Passover time. The people know exactly what he's talking about. The one who can take away their sins.
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And that should be our message that not only do you need to repent, but here is the one who is able to make you right with God.
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So let's go to the next two together. I've drawn a line between Andrew and Philip because they're very similar.
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And actually the passages are also very close. Andrew, as you can see in verse 35 to 37, is one of the first disciples to follow
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Jesus. You know, I sometimes wonder what it must be like to be the first guy to say, okay, nobody's following him, but I'm the one who's going to go and follow him.
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I mean, sovereignly, we know God had called these men to follow him.
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But when they actually stepped out and said, you know, I know John is pointing to this man as the
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Lamb of God, and I need to follow after him, how it must have been. But as you read this passage, we find, yes,
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Daniel, absolutely.
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And we cannot see all the downstream effects, but our responsibility, whether small or big, is to testify to him.
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And actually, if you look at how quickly Andrew goes about doing this, you know, here he is a disciple of John.
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He hears about the Lamb of God. And we find in this passage that he spends the rest of the day with Jesus. Obviously, a day with Jesus is enough to have my heart and my mind converted.
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But right after that, you know, if you see in verse 41, it says, he found his own brother
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Simon and said to him, we have found the Messiah. I don't think that was what
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John was telling, although I think John did know that this was the Messiah that he was pointing to. But he had one conversation with Jesus, and he knew this was the man that they had been waiting for for centuries.
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And he is here right before them. And the first thing Andrew did, he could have done a lot of things, but he goes right after his brother and tells him the truth.
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And as you rightly pointed out, we know the consequences of that and how Peter is an effective, as an apostle, does so much for the kingdom.
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And the same example goes for Philip later in this passage. Jesus finds Philip, calls him, and he goes off and finds his friend
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Nathanael. And I want to point something here with Nathanael. We started off with this idea of expert witness.
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And Nathanael is, Philip is not an expert witness. He has just been called by Christ.
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He knows Christ is special. And if you look at what he says about Jesus, he says, we have found him of whom
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Moses and the law and also the prophets wrote about, which means that he knew the scriptures.
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What the scriptures were pointing to and how they are fulfilled in Christ. So that was essential.
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You need to know who you're talking about before you go. But if you read further, he says, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
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He was using the same terminology that the people use. You want to identify a person in the old times, you tell which town he's from and whose son he is.
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And obviously, he does not know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. And he does not know that Jesus was miraculously conceived as yet.
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But what he knows, he goes and says, and you look at what Nathanael says, you know, can anything good come from Nazareth?
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He knows the scriptures a little better than our friend Philip. And Philip, so beautifully, I mean, unless you're a
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James White, you could probably go and explain all this. But Jesus, Philip's response is unbelievable. He just says, come and see, you know, our responsibility is.
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Not necessarily to clear all the hurdles and the questions that we don't have answers for. You don't have to study all the thing, become an expert witness before you can go and tell everybody about Jesus.
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You proclaim the gospel that you have before you and bring them to the scriptures that point to Christ, bring them to Jesus.
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And he and the spirit of God can do the rest of the work. Our responsibility is to just be faithful witnesses to the truth that is entrusted to us.
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Moving on, I want to just briefly contrast Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman.
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We're not going to look at this two stories in detail. But if any of you have the red letter edition of the
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Bible, this would be very simple to follow along. If you look at Nicodemus, especially in the chapter three, he comes to Jesus as a reputed
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Pharisee, a rabbi. He is coming here. Actually, he's seen what
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Jesus has done. If you look at the end of chapter two, Jesus has done a lot of miracles. Everybody's believing in him. And he has just cleared the temple.
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And Nicodemus is actually impressed with Jesus. And he comes and says, oh, let's just read the verse. He says, he says,
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Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.
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And then if you start looking at the red and the black lines, the black lines start to become smaller and smaller.
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And the red lines start to grow bigger and bigger. Nicodemus starts to show his ignorance. And then he realizes that he has no idea what he came to talk to Jesus about at all.
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And whether Nicodemus was saved or not, we have a few other passages that point to his continued interest in Jesus.
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And I'm not going to go down that path now. There are some scholars who think he wasn't. I personally think that he does show some signs of faith, at least, whether he was a believer or not.
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John doesn't clearly delineate for us. And I think we'll find out in heaven when we get there. But in this passage, at least in chapter three, you see how
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Nicodemus, a reputed Jewish Pharisee, comes here willing to listen to Jesus.
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And in the end of the passage, he is kind of shattered. He's like that mountain that is destroyed.
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He thought he was safe. And he's now finding very, very unsafe. He has no idea what it means to be saved. But the person
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I want to look for as a witness is in chapter four, the Samaritan woman. And we'll contrast her briefly with Nicodemus.
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You know the story of the Samaritan woman. Can somebody just point out the differences that you can think of?
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What are the differences between the Samaritan woman and Nicodemus? That's exactly right.
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Absolutely. And I mean, if you want to think of the mountain and the valley, there it is right there.
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And the valley has been lifted up. The mountain has been brought low by Jesus. And here is a woman, a woman, firstly.
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In those times, they were not esteemed. A Samaritan despised by the Jews. And especially a woman of ill repute, as we find out in this passage.
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And a woman who probably doesn't want to talk too much, not looking for Jesus. And here,
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Jesus goes after her. And in fact, if you look through the book of John, I think this is the only place where he says, in the end of the encounter with the
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Samaritan woman, he says, I am he when she asked the question about the Messiah.
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You can see not only the
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Samaritan woman and Nicodemus, but you can see the difference. Absolutely.
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And I think that's one of the things Lewis was pointing out, as far as the differences. And actually, this is a good time to tell the word of caution
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I have. I was actually nervous preparing this Sunday school, because when you preach from the
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Gospels, you have to be very careful. You know, what are those places where you are to use as examples?
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And what are those places where maybe there are some principles, but those are not direct commands to you? We've heard it before, you know, that statement, what would
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Jesus do? It's better to ask the question, what did Jesus do, rather than what would
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Jesus do and try to follow them all the time? Because we'll see later, you know, the way in which Jesus actually proclaims himself is different than the way we can proclaim him.
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And in one sense, we do not know the hearts and minds of the people. So we cannot, you know, speak like Jesus did with each of them.
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But our responsibility is still the same, you know, repentance and then believe. And our message does not change.
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And when we don't change the message, it meets everybody where it should be in the spirit of God applies it to bring the mountains low and to raise the valleys up.
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And that's exactly what happens here with a Samaritan woman. And here is a woman not coming looking for Jesus.
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And Jesus points out her need for salvation. He talks to this living water.
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She's drawing water. He talks about the living water. And she thinks here is a water that will not die. No supply will end.
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I don't have to walk in this hot sun. And then Jesus tells her, you know, well, you have an issue in your life.
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And she tells her about her moral issues. And then she realizes he's a prophet because she knows who, you know, he knows things he shouldn't be knowing.
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And then and then when she goes into this religious theme of, OK, Samaritans do this,
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Jews do this. And then Jesus gets to the heart of the matter. And he says, you know, the time has come when people have to worship in spirit and in truth.
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And when she says the Messiah will show us all these things, Jesus says, I am he.
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And that's a powerful witnessing. And if you look, compared with everything else Jesus reveals in the Gospel of John, that's unbelievable that he would tell a
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Samaritan woman that and not and even not even Nicodemus about his identity.
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But and again, with our theme of witnessing, if you look at what the Samaritan woman does, that's incredible.
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Here is a woman who's hiding from the public coming in the noontime to draw water, but she drops her vessel.
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And let's just look at that verse. It's I'm sorry, what?
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Yeah, verse 28. She leaves the water pot and goes to the city and tells the man, come and see a man who told me all things
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I have done. This is not the Christ, is it? I mean, he has told her this and she's going and telling everybody.
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And then if you look further down in chapter four, verse 39, many Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman.
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And then she brings them over, they meet Christ and they put their faith in him. And a powerful difference.
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You know, we have no idea what Nicodemus did. But when you compare these two people, the testimony of the
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Samaritan woman is it should be something that catches our hearts and our minds. We may not be thinking that we are big in the eyes of the world.
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But when the Lord has touched our hearts, we have a precious message that we have to share. And whether the people are big or small, or they don't care about us, you know, that's a good question.
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The Samaritans had a slightly different understanding of the Messiah himself than what the scriptures had pointed out.
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One of the problems with the Jewish people in the first century was we had these, we had several pointers to who the
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Messiah would be, you know, that he would be a king of the line of David, he would be a suffering servant. And so the
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Jewish thought in the first century was extremely conflicting. And one of the reasons
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I believe Jesus doesn't talk about himself being the Messiah to the Jews is if they knew that, like they do in, they start to get a hint of in John 6, they want to make him a king, you know, let's overthrow
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Rome because that's the king of David. But the Samaritans understanding of the
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Messiah was slightly different. There was more religious, I believe, I don't know, Lewis, if you have. Had and they would have seen, and it's significant that he said to the
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Samaritan woman outside of the geographical.
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The Samaritans basically had a,
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I guess you could say, a corrupted form of union. But they still, you know, they do
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Yahweh and they worship. But like the lady said, we worship here and you say you worship over there.
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Even the Pentateuch, they had modified it wherever it pointed to reference in Israel, they struck it out and wrote
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Mount Gerizim. And but they did have a understanding of who the Messiah would be.
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It was, if I remember right, a little more religious than political as the Jewish people had. For the interest of time, let's quickly go through the rest of the examples.
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We won't look at them in detail. Again, if you look at the contrast in John 5 with the paralyzed man and John 9, the blind man.
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I mean, that's an incredible witness for Christ. Paralyzed man, here he is, 38 years, hasn't walked.
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And Jesus comes, makes him able to walk and tells him to carry his mat. He carries his mat, gets into trouble with the
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Jewish authorities. And they ask him, who told you to do this? He doesn't know. Jesus comes back again and tells him, stop sinning.
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And aha, our paralyzed man who can walk knows where his allegiance is.
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He goes back to the religious authorities and says, hey, this is the guy who told me to do this thing.
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And you don't get an example of a man who has a gratitude for what Jesus has done for him.
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You know, God has just healed him. But here his allegiance still is with the old system. But if you look at John 9 and the blind man, here is a man born blind from his birth.
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Jesus does an amazing miracle of healing him never heard of. And and here the opposition to Jesus is much higher.
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If you remember, John 6 is a dividing shed. All the people who are believing in him fall away. They don't like him anymore.
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The authorities are out to get him. And so anybody who stands up for Christ now is in trouble. Actually, we read here that they would be put out of the synagogue.
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His parents don't want to talk about their son because they're afraid of being kicked out. And here is a guy who, if you just see the way he challenges the
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Jewish authorities, that's the that's the essence of faith. When you have had your life turned around, you know, you haven't seen anything ever since you were born.
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And now you can see I don't have time to draw the parallelism here. But if you think of your own life before you were saved, and here you have a life that is so rich and abundant.
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And what does it matter if the whole world would reject you? It doesn't.
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And here this man boldly proclaims Christ. He is kicked out of the synagogue. And then Jesus finds him and again proclaims himself as as the
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Messiah. And he believes and worships in him. Then we have a few more examples here.
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We have Lazarus, who is, I think the title would be a life witness, a guy who died.
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And now all he has to do is just walk around and everybody can see. And I mean, most of us talk about this, the aspect of our life being a testimony to Christ.
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And and it is for the most part that those who believe in Christ show the fruits bearing the signs of repentance and of the grace of God.
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And those draw people to ask the questions, you know, what happened? And you say,
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I was dead and now I am alive. We have Peter and I have two references here just talking about something,
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I think, which is important for us when we think of witnessing. Peter denies Christ three times. And then we see the second passage where Jesus reinstitutes him to head his ministry.
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And and that's and that's important for us. You know, there are many opportunities that we goof up.
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You know, I can think of a couple of examples this past week. I've been thinking, praying, and then the opportunity comes and my mouth is tight.
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I'm thinking the words are not coming. And then I'm thinking of the words and then the opportunity is no longer there.
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And, you know, those are the times when you have to think of one John one nine, go back home, confess your sin and you can receive forgiveness, but be willing to be used again and go back and and testify to Christ.
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There are a few references to Jesus himself pointing to his ministry. And then the last one
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I want to just touch upon and I won't actually turn to is in the witness of John the
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Baptist in writing this in this gospel in John 20 was. Thank you,
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John, the apostle, not John the Baptist. I wish
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I could have come up with that. So John 20 verses 30 to 31. Therefore, many other signs
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Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book. But these have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the
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Christ, the son of God, that believing you may have life in his name. You know, we started out with John the
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Baptist. He came as a testimony to Christ, a forerunner. And here we have John the apostle who is writing these things down.
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And that's how we have the gospel for us to read today. And he's writing in order that we may believe. And our responsibility is no less.
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We have the precious gospel given to us and we pass it on to those whom we meet. We do not know who will listen to it, who won't.
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But we provided that the Lord graciously would save. And what means do you use like the
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Baptist go out and tell the whole world, like the apostle write it down? And I'm looking for some of my
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Internet friends here, you know, evangelize on the web. The forums are many.
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And we talked about methods, you know, on the streets, wherever you can in your offices, in your homes. Our responsibility is to be faithful witnesses.
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With this, I want to stop and quickly spend a few more minutes on missions at BBC. Any questions so far on what we've covered?
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We have just seen what it means to be a personal witness to Christ. We've seen a few examples, men who have been faithful in discharging this testimony that they had of Christ.
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And I pray that actually we can look at that last question. You know, will you seek to witness to someone about Jesus this coming week?
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We know who how precious this salvation is we have received. Our hearts are burning with this love that we have for God and for Jesus.
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And the natural response should be obedience to go and share this with those around us. Now, let's look at the section on missions.
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Very quickly, can somebody tell me what are all the missions work that BBC is involved with? I'll exclude those who already are involved in missions right now.
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Anybody can tell me what, what does, how does missions, how does BBC do missions? PTI, that's
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Sammy Williams and Jeremy Smith. They are doing, they're teaching young pastors so they can go out and plant churches in India.
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Master's Seminary, we support Master's Seminary so they can continue to raise men of God who are able to teach others to disciple them.
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Preaching in Worcester, downtown evangelism on the streets, preaching and handing out tracts.
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The nursing home, that's a good one. I'm looking for Steve Nelson. Okay, yes.
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And so every once a month, Steve and Kirsten and someone else goes out to present the gospel.
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The website is a good means of communicating, yes. Bob Bowman from New Tribe Missions, his responsibility is, he used to be in the
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South Americas, now he's in state, is that what he calls it? Yes, in South Carolina, North Carolina.
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And there he is raising up men who would go out and, and serve with new tribes and translating the
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Bible and presenting the gospel. And we have the Hofmeyers with the Awanas, and a very important ministry, as we know, among the young children.
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And we have Steve Plodnik, who is our new missionary from South Africa.
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And he does this very similar to PTI. And I guess it's under the big umbrella of PTI, except in South Africa.
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And they do the same thing. He's involved with the church and raises up young men who can go and plant churches.
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So very quickly, there are two sections here that I have here. One is called the goer, and the other one is called the sender.
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I wish Bob Dunn was here. He's the one who took this from William Carey's example of how some will go and some will have to stay, but all of us have this part in missions.
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I just put in, it's not exhaustive, just a couple of examples here. One is the Worcester Common Outreach, a very simple way for us to present the gospel to the world who does not know
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Christ. Bruce has been doing this for a long time now. And especially last year, we've had several new people who have been involved in this and faithfully gone out and proclaimed the gospel.
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This year, again, I think in mid -April, we are going to start. And we probably will have some training session for people like me who are nervous.
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And so if you don't know what it is, how do you need to be presenting it? Like we just saw, there is really no method.
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All you need is the gospel. But we will probably have a training session where we can just show you what it's like and take some of the fear out of it.
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So I would exhort everyone here to come and be involved in this, this summer, when we, spring and summer, when we go out and share the gospel in Worcester.
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Then we have Compassion Walkathon. Again, Lou is involved with compassion here. And actually, we missed this when we looked at missions.
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This is an area where we support this ministry, which reaches out to women who are in crisis pregnancy.
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And they give counseling and help them to make the right decision with regards to abortion versus carrying through with the pregnancy.
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And in the process, providing them the gospel. And I think Pastor Mike has gone and preached to them sometimes.
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And we will probably do this, I think, in September, the walkathon where rain.
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So we will have a little fundraising that goes with it to be actively involved with this work that goes on there.
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And I don't think all the churches that work with compassion are probably evangelical or strongly.
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Most of them are. That's good. But in either case, you know, our responsibility is to share the gospel and support this ministry.
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And we can go or support those who go. And then the big one we have is
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Mozambique. And 2008, the leaders here have a great vision to send men out there and families out there to both preach and to serve.
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And it's a big challenge. But we believe the Lord can do great things with the money or time.
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And we need to be praying. And again, we will have more training and information coming out in the next few weeks and months ahead.
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And so in each of these areas, I would ask us to consider, you know, is this the place where I should be?
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If not, why? Why am I not being involved in this aspect of missions at our local church?
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And then the next section here is the senders. An extremely important portion of missions is prayer, you know, whether those who are actively involved in it or those who are not.
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The way that we as a church can be involved is by praying. And I would encourage all of us here to remember these men whom we are supporting and the men who are participating, that the
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Lord would do his work and spread the gospel. And then I have two sections here.
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One is correspondence. The way we support these men who are in the field, whether it's PTI, Bob Bowman, is by staying in touch with them, praying for them, finding out what their needs are, and communicating with them.
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And we have a few men here who are already doing that, a few people here. And those of you who want to be interested in doing this,
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I'd like you to let me know. Actually, I'm going to have a sign up that's going to be left outside. So in any way that you want to be involved in missions, you can just put your name, we'll contact you, or you can contact any of the missions people or the elders with regards to that.
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And then finally, we have education. And as you can see behind you, we have the bulletin board that Bob put together and we've been updating.
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And that has information about the missionaries that you can know and pray for. We have the newsletter, which will have some missions information.
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Actually, this coming newsletter, Bob Dunn has written a biography of Borden. And it's a very powerful testimony of this missionary that would challenge and exhort us about how we are faithful in the
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Great Commission. And as somebody pointed out, we have the website. And it's a great place of information to know what's going on with the missionaries so we can pray for them and support them.
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And then we have these conferences where we bring the missionaries over so you can meet them. And then we try to teach about evangelism and missions, whether it is an
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Awana Council time or like here today in Sunday School. And we will resurrect our quarterly
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CD of missions. We had run out of people who had spoken about missions, but I think we have a few pastors like Piper who are starting up again.
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So we'll send out some CDs. And then we have books on the book table that have a focus on evangelism and missions.
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And the goal is as a church, we understand the importance of missions, of personal evangelism, that we support what we have already on the ground and find means and ways in which we can be actively involved with the church in doing missions, whether we are going physically on the ground or supporting it behind the scenes, because both are needed in order for missions to happen.
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Okay, I think I'm out of time. So any questions on missions or evangelism or any just final questions before we close?
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So how many missionaries do we have here that the Lord would have us go?
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I can see some nodding heads. So yeah, let's pray that the Lord would indeed raise us among us, men and women who would go out and serve.
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And for the rest of us, that we will be faithful where we are. Let's pray. Dear God, our heavenly father, we thank you for your precious son.
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We thank you that our lives are different. In fact, we have a life because of him.
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And Lord, we just thank you for your Holy Spirit that is teaching us these truths and for convicting us of areas where we need to repent and obey and follow after you.
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Lord, give us this great boldness that you gave the New Testament church in the book of Acts.
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Help us to always fix our eyes on you, the author and finisher of our faith, that we would do what pleases you, whether it be at our own expense in front of the world.
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We pray a lot, especially for this morning service, prepare our hearts and we prepare the words of the speaker,
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Lord, that you would continue to minister to us through your word. And we bring all praise, honor, and glory to your name.