John 9:1-7 (Made New: The Purpose of our Salvation)

The Shepherd's Church

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When we share the gospel, oftentimes, as we're learning how to share the gospel and as we're learning how to be able to communicate what

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Christ has done for us, we begin with creation. We begin with a good world, we begin with a world that was created perfect by God, and we were placed in a garden to live perfect lives to the glory of God, and everything was amazing and wonderful, and we sort of share the story that way and begin that way, but the inevitable turn is because of our sin, because of our failure, because of our brokenness, that world was lost.

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The fall was cast upon this world, and as we talked about last week, that fall has infected every aspect of reality, so that we need a

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Savior, we need Christ. From sin, we do, we turn to Christ, and we say that the perfect man, the

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God -man came, and in the just right time, he came for sinners just like you and I, and on a cross in Rome, or in Jerusalem, but a

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Roman cross, this Savior died for our sins, took away our shame, took away our guilt, took away our brokenness, and because of that, we are now blessed to live lives for him.

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That's the gospel. And yet, as that's exactly right, that answers a couple questions for us about salvation.

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It answers the who, the what, the where, and the when questions. Who can be saved? Anyone who calls on the name of the

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Lord. What is salvation? Salvation is being delivered from sin and being delivered from the tyranny of the devil, transferred into the kingdom of righteousness because of Christ.

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Where does salvation happen? Well, ultimately, it happens in eternity when God calls us to himself, even before the foundations of the world, but it happens in time when we cry out in faith, it happens in our hearts.

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All those questions are right questions to answer, but what we often don't talk about is why we were saved.

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We talk about that we were saved, or how we were saved, or when we were saved, or where we were saved. We do that all of the time, but we don't talk about why.

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What was the purpose for our salvation? What reason were we saved, which is what

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I want us to talk about today. Today we're going to look at, and we're going to see not just that we were saved by Jesus, we are saved for a purpose, and that purpose will change everything about our lives.

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So if you will, turn with me to John 9, 1 through 7, which will answer that question for us.

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The text begins this way. As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth, this is

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Jesus, and his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?

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Jesus answered, it was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents, but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

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We must work the works of God, who sent me as long as it is day.

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Night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world. When he said this, he spat on the ground, and made clay out of the spittle, and applied the clay to his eyes, said to him, go wash in the pool of Siloam, which is translated sint.

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So he went away and washed, and came back seeing. Lord, when we approach a passage like this, that's fairly familiar.

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I pray that you would give us new eyes to see things that are going on in this passage which reveal to us the purpose for which you saved us.

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Lord, this is not just a healing. This is not just a blind man receiving sight.

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This passage has so much meaning for who we are as Christians today. Lord, I pray that we would see it.

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I pray that we would understand it. Lord, in an allegorical sense, I pray that our eyes would be open like this blind man, that we would see the glories of Christ and what it is that you've done.

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In Jesus' name, amen. Now under the surface of this healing is something pretty incredible that's happening, but we need to look a little bit more carefully to see it.

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Why did Jesus spit on the ground? Everything was going really well. He's like,

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I'm the light of the world, and we're like, yeah, that's good. That could go on a Hallmark card. I'm doing the works of God.

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That's good. I'm tracking with you, Jesus. And then he spits on the ground and starts playing in the mud for a second.

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Why did he do that? Why did he get down, kneel down on the ground, make mud out of spit, rub it on this man's eyes?

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This is pre -COVID. If someone were to do this today, that would be crazy. You have people in big suits and face shields coming to arrest you.

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Why did Jesus do this? I think it's because every single element of this passage has to do with new creation.

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Every single element. So what I want us to do is I want us in part one of this passage to look at the larger context of John and see how

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John's gospel, how John 7 -8, and how John 9 are all about new creation.

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This is a new thing for us. We haven't covered this through those chapters yet, so I want us to see how all of this is about new creation.

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Then in the second part of the sermon, I want us to see why does that matter? Why does new creation as a theological point or as what

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Jesus has accomplished for us, why does that matter? What is the point of our salvation? That's what I want us to accomplish.

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So, as we begin, let's first look at how does this passage communicate new creation?

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Now if you remember, the context of John 7 -8 has been the Feast of Tabernacles. And the

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Feast of Tabernacles is a mandatory feast that happened every single year. It was the final feast of the year, and Jesus and every

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Jewish male would have been commanded by the Old Testament Torah to come to Jerusalem to participate in this feast.

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And if you remember, there's seven feasts, just like the seven days of creation. The final feast is the

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Feast of Tabernacles. Now all seven of these feasts, from the very beginning to the very end, communicate to us the entire story of human history.

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The first feast really kind of gives us a glimpse into creation, therefore the final feast should give us a glimpse into heaven.

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And as it is, you see that the Feast of Tabernacles is a picture of heaven.

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You've got people who are gathered around the city of Jerusalem, which is known as the throne of God, or the footstool of God, and they're worshiping

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God. It reminds you of Revelation, where everyone's gathered around the throne and they're worshiping. Holy, holy, holy is the

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Lord. They're worshiping there forever. This feast is picturing what heaven's going to look like when people are gathered around the throne of God, worshiping, dwelling in God's midst.

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That's what the Feast of Tabernacles is about. They left their homes, they built little temporary shelters so that they could live in the presence of God.

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That's what heaven is. You've got this pouring ceremony that happens at the final day of the feast, and Jesus even stands up in the middle of it and he says,

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I'm the living water, which is a picture of heaven. Because if you look in the book of Revelation, there's a river that's flowing out of heaven.

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You've got all of these images, no sun, and in the nighttime they lit these massive torches.

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One of the features of heaven that you see in Revelation 22 is there is no more sun. So you've got light images, you've got water images, you've got all of this stuff that's trying to communicate to the people that they're celebrating what heaven is going to be like.

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Now you can imagine the sadness every single year when they get to the most joyful, exuberant celebration of their year, the sadness when it's over.

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It's like going to see your favorite person in concert and then the final song happens and you're so excited because it's the final song.

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They didn't forget to sing it. Everybody's screaming, yelling encore, encore, encore, and they finally come out and then it's over and you're like, every year this is what they would have went through.

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They're coming to Jerusalem to celebrate heaven, hoping that God himself would come down and establish it as eternal kingdom.

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And then it wouldn't just be a celebration anymore, it would be the real thing. They would enter into the reign of Messiah. They would enter into the kingdom of their

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God. And every year they went back home sad, disappointed, still thankful, but it had to be on their hearts and on their minds.

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When is he coming to set up his kingdom? Every year they would repeat the same drama from creation to restoration all over again, again and again and again.

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You think about the timing of this. This would have been around September, October, the fall time.

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When you get to John 9, it's a couple months later, so it's winter, everything is dead. You and I understand, being in New England when there's a seven month winter, how we long for spring.

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The trees are dead, the grass is, everything is dead and we're like, we need new creation.

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We need new trees, we need new, all of these things. So not only is this feast a picture of heaven, but it's also a reminder that next year they're going to be entering back into new creation themes.

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They're going to be entering into festivals that celebrate creation. The winter season itself would have brought this up in their thinking.

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So you have in the timeframe of this passage, everyone's thinking about we need a new creation, but it doesn't just end there.

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The themes of this passage, seven through eight, really bring this out as well. It's stuff that I was saving for this message, so we haven't talked about it yet.

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For instance, we talked about Jesus being the living water. Jesus says in John 7, 37 through 38, if anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.

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He who believes in me, as the scripture said, from his innermost beings will flow living water. Now we just mentioned in Revelation how there's living water flowing out of the throne room of God, but that actually started all the way back in the garden of Eden, where four rivers are flowing out of the presence of God down to the valleys below.

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I think that the reason that Jesus is saying that he's the fountain of living water is because through him, he wants us to be pictures of Eden.

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He wants us to be people who, not a garden with rivers flowing out of it, he wants us to be people with his living water flowing out of us so that we look like the garden of Eden, so that we bear fruit for God, so that we walk like God.

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We live in the presence of God. All of the Edenic themes are here when Jesus says, I am the living water.

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He's looking back to old creation, saying, I'm going to bring a new creation. That's what he's doing. Think about in John 8, 12,

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I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

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If you remember, the original creation began with God speaking into the chaos, let there be light, and it was so.

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And you think about the final creation where there is no more sun because he is the light. Jesus is reminding us that he is the light of the world because he's going to replace old creation and he's going to bring about new creation.

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These themes are all over this passage. He's going to be the one leading human beings to walk in the light.

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Jesus is claiming new creation. You think about John 8, 24, death in sin.

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He says, therefore, I said to you, you will die in your sins for unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins.

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Talk about creation themes, talk about Genesis 1 through 3. You have a people who've just been told that you will die in your sins.

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That reminds us of Adam and Eve who sinned and rebelled against God. And because of their sins, in the day that they ate of that fruit, they will surely die.

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So you have Jesus, just like God, pronouncing a curse over the sons of Adam, saying, in your sin, you will die.

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These are creation themes. You have the serpent showing up in these passages,

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John 8, 44 through 45. You are of your father, the devil, he says, and you want to do the desires of your father.

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He was a murderer from the beginning. He's referencing back to Eden. And he does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.

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Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe me.

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This cannot be happenstance, he says, from the beginning, he's he's causing them to remember the beginning old creation, he says, you are of your father, the devil, just like Adam, who chased after the serpent instead of chasing after God.

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These are creation themes that are happening in this passage or in John 7 through 8.

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You think about the covenant name of God, John 8, Jesus said to them, truly, truly,

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I say to you before Abraham was I am. Now we know that Jesus is claiming to be

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God in this passage. But what we often want to do with that name, I am that I am, is we want to root that at Mount Sinai.

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And we want to say that the covenant name of God first shows up in Mount Sinai, but actually it doesn't.

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That's when Moses is told the name of God, but Moses later wrote the word of God and he puts that word in Genesis 2.

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The first time that the covenant name of God shows up is in creation, in Genesis chapter 2.

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Now you think about this, that this word predates Moses. Why would Moses do that?

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And if you look at the Hebrew, which I had a class that pointed this out to me, thank the Lord, this was a beautiful point because I'm not really good at Hebrew.

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I like Greek, but Hebrew is very, very different for me. Genesis 1 has one name for God.

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The whole chapter of Genesis 1 is Elohim. And God spoke Elohim and it was good.

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Evening and morning. And God said it was good. Elohim. Elohim is all the way through that passage. But not

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Yahweh. Yahweh is the covenant name of God. It's not until you turn the page to Genesis 2 that you have the story of Adam being created repeated.

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It says that God created man and woman and he commanded them to be fruitful and multiply and spread out to the ends of the earth.

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He says that in Genesis 1, but in Genesis 2, you get a zoomed in, intimate, beautiful closeup view and the language switches from Elohim to Yahweh.

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Why does that happen? Well, Elohim was the general word for God. Yahweh was his name.

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It's like I am a father, but my name is Kendall. Similarly, the name switches because the text moves away from the general theological point that one

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God created all of this, not a Pantheon, not polytheism, none of that. One God created everything that we see and exist.

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The language switches to. He's not just a God who sits up in the heavens and does his stuff.

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He is intimate and he is personal and he is our God and he's our covenant God and he's the one who came down to earth.

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He didn't snap his fingers from heaven and just create stuff. He came down and knelt down into the sand and fashioned human beings according to his own image and likeness.

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It is personal in Genesis 2. It's covenantal in Genesis 2. It's intimate in Genesis 2.

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So you have the name Yahweh in Genesis 2. Jesus says in John 8, before Abraham was,

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I am. He's saying, I am that God who knelt down in the ground and fashioned

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Adam in my image. Jesus has on his mind creation and new creation.

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John 7 through 8 is deliberately alluding to the themes of old creation and anticipating the hope of a new one.

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That's exactly what's going on. The gospel of John itself does this.

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Remember, what does Genesis 1 begin with? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. How does

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John begin? In the beginning. The same word Genesis, which means beginning,

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John uses to begin his gospel because he's telling the story of a new beginning. He's telling the story of a new creation.

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John chapter 1 lays out the first seven days of Jesus's earthly ministry.

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Is that coincidental that Genesis 1 lays out the first seven days of God's work in the cosmos?

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And at the end of day seven, Jesus has a little community gathered around him, worshiping him. Is that coincidental?

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Where at the end of day seven in Genesis 1, he has a little community of people who are worshiping him in the garden.

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All of these themes are showing up. Think about baptism. Jesus at the end of his first week of ministry in Matthew, it says it's in chapter four, he goes and he's baptized.

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And when he's baptized, he goes into the water. The spirit hovers over the water like the spirit hovered over the waters of creation.

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God spoke. This is my beloved son. Just like God spoke in the original creation, all of these themes are showing us that Jesus has come to replace that old broken, sinful, worn out creation.

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And he's come to bring us into a new creation. And I think the reason that all of these evidences are littered throughout the text is because Jesus leaves no stone unturned.

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Like Christmas lights that inevitably during the summer months find their way into an impossible knot, humans have found their way into an impossible, entangled mess and Jesus comes and he does what we have to do if we're going to untangle

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Christmas lights. We have to go through every knot, we have to check every bulb, we have to go through it one by one by one until the whole mess is untangled.

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This is what Jesus is doing. Every creation theme that you can possibly imagine in the old creation shows up redemptively in the gospels as Jesus, this is the new creation.

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I find this absolutely fascinating. So when we get to John chapter nine, we're going to see more of these themes and it's kind of like, it's kind of like a paleontologist who has their brushes out and they found a few fragments that have made them excited, like, oh look, here's a piece of a dinosaur.

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Well, John nine we find a bone. John nine we find, I think, the most beautiful evidence in the gospel of who

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Jesus is and what he calls us to be. So let that be a preface, John one, John seven, John eight of this new creation theme.

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Now let's get to John nine and let's see what Jesus is talking about. John nine begins this way.

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And he passed by, which is John's way of introducing a new scene. And he passed by and he saw a man blind from birth.

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And his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?

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Jesus answered, it was neither that this man sinned nor his parents. The first bone that we're going to find in this text, if we take our paleontology reference, is the idea of a theodicy.

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This is what scholars call the problem of evil. Theodicy literally means the vindication of God.

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And the question that the disciples are asking is, why do bad things happen to good people?

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This question is often rooted in the earliest chapters of the

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Bible. Why does evil exist in the world? Why was sin made? Why does this man have to suffer?

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Now if you talk to any theologian worth his salt, I'm going to explain theodicy just for a moment, they will say that the problem is an arbitrary problem.

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When you ask the question, why does suffering happen to good people? It doesn't, because the

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Bible says there is no one good. There's no one righteous, not even one. So why do bad things happen to good people?

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They don't. It happened one time 2 ,000 years ago on a cross, and you're not him. So why do bad things happen to good people?

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It doesn't. Bad things happen to sinful, wretched, wicked people who constantly rebel against their

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God and constantly hate him, and God in his grace does not allow them to suffer as they deserve.

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When we think about hell, hell is just, the just punishment for our hatred of God. But if you think about this life, we have many joys.

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We have vacations. We have meals. We have breath that we breathe in our lungs. We have relationships that we live.

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We're not living in hell right now as our sins deserve. We're being blessed by God even in a general sense.

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So why do bad things happen to good people? They don't. That happened to Jesus. The real question, the better question that we should ask in a passage like this is why does so much good happen to such wicked people like us?

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That's the real question. Now Jesus is going to answer this in just a moment, but I want us to see some of the themes that are involved in here.

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You've got a man who's born under the curse. That reminds us of Genesis 1, or Genesis 3. We've got a curse that's originating supposedly because of sin.

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That's in Genesis 3 as well. You've got sin that is possibly inherited from his parents.

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That's Genesis 4, Cain, the first murderer who inherited his sin nature from Adam. So Genesis 1 through 4 is causing us to see all of these different themes, and the disciples are asking two questions.

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Is it his sin or is it his parents' sin? Is it that his parents sinned and God punished them by giving them a blind child, or is it that this blind child sinned in his mother's womb?

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Because remember it says he was born blind. So if he was going to be punished by God for his sin, then he would have had to sin in his mother's womb before he was born, and in fact the

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Jews actually believed that you could do this. They had such a high value of the dignity of the human person that they didn't consider it a clob of cells.

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They didn't consider it just a fetus. They considered it a human being with sentient actions and thoughts that could sin in the womb and could endure the curse of God.

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That is a fascinating thing. Now whether we agree with that or not, they believed that this man or his parents had sinned and as a result he was enduring the curse.

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These are all creation themes. Now Jesus dismisses that because Jesus is not going to be bound by old creation standards.

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Jesus is coming to bring a new creation. So he's saying it's not this man's sin. It's not his parents' sin that's binding him up.

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Jesus is going to show us a better way, a new way, a way that is going to bring about new creation.

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Jesus answered, it is neither that this man sinned nor his parents, but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

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We must work with the works of him who sent me. Jesus is admitting here that every single human being sins.

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So how is it possible that this man is somehow different, that he sinned in such a way that it so grievously affected the holiness of God and that his eyes were born blind?

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All of us sin. All of us deserve God's wrath. Jesus is elevating our perspective above sin and he's saying that these things happen to showcase the work of God.

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Now you ask yourself, why did he say that? When do we find God working in the

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Bible? In the first chapter of Genesis. He works for six days and on the seventh day he rests.

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So you've got another parallel here with God working in the beginning and Jesus is saying God is no longer at rest.

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God is back in the flesh and he is beginning work. That should remind us that Jesus is saying subtly that he's going to be the author of a new creation.

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He's doing the works of God so that the world can see the works of God.

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Again, every element of this passage is pointing back to this theme. Look at verse four.

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We must work the works of him who sent me as long as it is day, because night is coming where no one can work.

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Don't miss this. You've got all of these themes that we've already described, night and water and dwelling with God.

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And now you have God who's working and you have day and night. Remember the first creation was day one.

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It was evening and it was morning. The first day, day two, evening and morning. The second day here, Jesus is introducing the exact same things.

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God working and then you have night and you have day. God is working while it is day. Don't be caught in the night.

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The same theme is establishing a paradigm here of new creation.

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That former creation was limited. We need a new creation. Verse five, while I am in the world,

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I am the light of the world. I don't want us to overlook this detail. The very first thing that God does in creation is he creates light.

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And here Jesus says, I am the light. I am the one who lights up the world. I am the one who leads people out of darkness.

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John one says that the light has dawned, the light has come, and he's going to be the one who leads his people out of darkness.

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Jesus is saying he is that new creation light that is going to bring about new creation where you and I will no longer be blind like this man in this passage, but we will follow him.

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This passage is about new creation. The best example though, all of it is crescendoing to this one point in verses five through eight, five through seven.

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Let's read it. Maybe the Lord will open our eyes, no pun intended. While I'm in the world,

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I am the light of the world. And when he had said this, he spat on the ground and he made clay out of the spittle and he applied the clay to his eyes and he said to him, go wash in the pool of Siloam, which is translated sin.

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So he went away and he washed and he came back. Do you see what Christ is doing here?

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The light is the first act of creation. The final act of creation, which ends it all is when

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God comes to the garden and kneels down and fashions a human being out of the dust. And here Jesus in the gospels looks at this son of Adam, this man who is enduring the curse, this man who is lost in his sin, this man who needs healing like every other child of Adam and Jesus kneels down into the dust like he did in the garden of Eden.

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And he starts fashioning new eyes for this man and he applies the mud on his eyes and out of nothing, which means ex nihilo, out of no material other than this dirt, he creates new eyes for this man.

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That's the miracle. The miracle is that the same God who knelt down in the garden and who made a human being and breathed life into their nostrils is the same

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God in John nine who kneels down and makes new eyes. This is not a flippant miracle for Jesus.

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This is not just a let me show you how powerful I am. This is an intentional miracle. This is a miracle that points back to something and it points back to the fact that he is the one who fashions human beings in his image and he's come to make new people a new creation.

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Jesus knew how to make new eyes because he had already done that when he fashioned them in the, in the skull of Adam.

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When he made his face, when he made his nose, when he made his ears and when he breathed life into him, he knew how to do this already.

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He'd already done it before and here for this blind man, he does it again. Jesus is forcefully purposely and intentionally identifying himself as the author of new creation.

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John one, 10 cells that tells us Jesus who made the original creation, he says he was in the world and the world was made through him and yet the world did not know him.

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Now the author of creation is back and he's back to begin the new creation where he's going to make men in his own image perfectly this time and he's going to save them from their curse and from their fallenness and he's going to deliver them safely into God where they're going to live with God forever in a new

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Eden. All of this is talking about new creation and the question that we have to ask ourself is why, why is all of this language here about new creation?

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Because this passage is not prescriptive. This passage is not about if you have eye vision problems, don't go to the doctor,

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Derek and I will spit on the dirt after service and we'll rub it in your eyes. That's not what this passage is saying. This passage is not just a flippant miracle where we're just supposed to say, well,

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Jesus had faith and he did great things, so we have to have faith and we can do great things. That is not what it's talking about.

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It's saying that the old creation is passing away and through Jesus Christ, a new creation has come.

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Jesus came to an, a people who could not save themselves, irredeemably fallen, could not rescue themselves, locked in their own blindness and death.

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They could not stop the bleeding. They could not cure the cancer. He came to a people who had no ability and no power and he came to make them free.

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He came to begin a new creation. Every week in American evangelicalism, we talk about what it means to be saved.

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Where do we go to get saved? When should we go down front to the altar and get saved? I don't ascribe to that sort of theology.

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When should we raise our hand and get saved? I don't ascribe to that either. Reformed evangelicalism.

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Good healthy reformed churches every single week tell the gospel accurately and rightly. Most of it, I hope. And they say that it's about sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, sola

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Christus, sola Deo gloria. Do you know what those words mean? It means that by scripture alone, we learn about who

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Christ is so that by faith alone, we can be saved through his grace alone, by Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

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That's right. That's it. That's the gospel. And yet we've forgotten often, what does it mean?

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Why are we saved? We talked a lot about new creation, but why does that matter?

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What point am I trying to drive home here? The question is that he wants to make us new.

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Oftentimes we get saved and we're passionate and we're fiery and we're hungry for the word of God and we act like we're new creatures and then all of a sudden at some point we get tired and we get bored and we start yawning and we start just going through the motions.

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He didn't come to make us into that. He came to make us new. The one who perfectly and always dwelled with God is the one who was forsaken on our behalf.

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The one who crushed the serpent was killed in the process. The one who knew no sin became sin for you.

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The light of the world by darkness slain, we sing that almost every week.

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The living water cried out in thirst on the cross. The one who came to do the work was imprisoned by a tomb and the one who knelt down in the sand was nailed to a wooden cross.

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What is he doing in that moment for you? He's making you new.

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Think about it. The Bible talks about the fact that we have old minds that are bound up in our sin, that are conformed to the image of this world.

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So what does he do? He comes and he frees your mind so that it can be conformed to the image of Christ, so that you can have the mind of Christ, so that your thoughts can be more and more increasingly defined by him.

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He didn't save you to leave you in your sinful patterns of thinking. He saved you to give you a new mind. He saved you to remake your thoughts.

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He saved you to redeem you out of your sinful ponderings. He saved you to sanctify you out of the sin of worrying.

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He saved you to cure you of your fear and your anxieties and all of those things.

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Now, I'm not saying that those things can't be medical. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying that he came to give you a new mind with new thoughts.

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He came to make your mind new. It says in Philippians 4, 8, this is a command. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute.

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There's anything excellent, anything worthy of praise dwell on these things. What do we often do, though? We look at the news.

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We look at everything else, and we say that, gosh, this world is awful. I want to live in my negativity. It's easier to be depressed than to be encouraged.

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We do that, and yet he came to give us a new mind. He came to set us free of all of that. The point of new creation is not that we would continue living in the curse.

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The point is that our mind would be increasingly conformed to the image of Christ so that we would think his thoughts.

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He also came to give us a new heart. We know from Scripture that the heart is deceptively wicked.

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Who can even know it? It says that our best righteousness is but filthy rags. That's what our heart is, full of evil and pollution, and yet he came.

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He didn't come to leave us in our heart. He didn't come to leave us in our fears. He didn't come to leave us in our emotional turmoil.

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He came to free us. That's the good news of new creation, that he came to set us free. Ezekiel 36, 26 says,

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And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit that I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone, and I will give you a heart of flesh.

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Jesus didn't die to leave us in toxic emotions. He didn't die to leave us in jealousy, envy, and pride so that all of these things would poison our countenance and our constitution.

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He came to set us free. And again, this is not immediate. You and I are going to go through a process of sanctification over a lifetime, but are you in the process?

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Are you growing? Is your heart more alive to Jesus this year than it was last year? Is your worship a little bit more passionate this year than last year?

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It's not about performance. It's not about setting a bar. It's about has God made your heart new?

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He came to give us a new will. Our will before Christ was that we wanted nothing but sin.

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Even if we were going to church as a lost person, we were doing religion as a way to make ourselves feel better.

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We were trying to obey in order to become accepted by God. We were gritting our teeth a little tighter.

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We were working a little harder. We were trying to keep up with everyone else so that we could make ourselves feel better in our own religion, our own morality.

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But he died to kill that. He died to kill the will in our life that longs for sin and the will that longs for religion because they're the exact same broken will.

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He came to set us free so that we would worship him in spirit and in truth, so we would no longer be defined by our standards of perfection, so that we would be defined by him.

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Philippians 2, 12 through 13 says, Therefore, my beloved, as you've always obeyed, so now not only is in my present, but much more in my absent.

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Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you. It is

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God who works in you. That's the difference of new creation. Old creation is I'm going to try my best.

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I'm going to work hard. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. Salvation comes. New creation comes when

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God is now working in you, that you can't explain what's going on in your life because it's

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God who's at work in your life. He's the one who's working and willing for his good pleasure in you. Ephesians 2, 8 through 10 says it beautifully.

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For by grace, you have been saved through faith, and that is not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not as a result of works, your work so that no one can boast.

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For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he prepared beforehand for us to walk in.

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You get the idea of of a master sculptor sitting in a shop just like he did in the Garden of Eden, where he fashioned

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Adam. He is fashioning you according to his image. He is working on you. He is shaping you.

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He is crafting you. He is making your life in conformity with the good works that God already called you to do in eternity, not so you could boast, but so he could get the glory.

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Everything about what the Bible is saying, why we were saved, we were saved for the glory of God to be made in the new creations.

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We've been given new hopes. We no longer look to the world to satisfy us or our jobs to satisfy us or houses to satisfy us or bank accounts to satisfy us.

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We look to Christ and Christ alone. Paul says in Romans 15, 13, now may the

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God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing so that you may abound in hope by the power of God.

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He gave us new courage. To the pastor, Paul says in second

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Timothy, one seven, for God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but a power and of love and of discipline. This is such a challenging verse, because as a pastor,

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I'm not to be given over to the spirit of fear, I'm to preach the gospel with passion to everyone who's here, everyone who comes because God has made us into new creations and we should not shy back from proclaiming the message of the gospel because it's not about us, it's about him.

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To the elders in the church of Corinth, Paul says, be on alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men.

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What a verse for today. Be strong. We're not supposed to be afraid.

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We're not supposed to look at the world and and cower in fear. We have the son of God who died on our behalf and we have the spirit of God who raised

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Jesus from the dead and living inside of us. What place has fear? To the church, Jesus says in John 16, 33, these things have

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I spoken to you so that in me you may have peace because in the world you will have tribulations, but take courage because I have overcome the world.

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We are a people who can live with the greatest courage because we get to represent

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Christ and we don't have to shy back in fear when we read verses that cause us to proclaim the name of Christ to all the nations, because we can do that in the boldness of Christ.

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Every single one of us here, we can speak even when no one's listening. We can stand even when no one else is standing.

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We can live when it doesn't seem popular and we can die like the Christians in Afghanistan if God calls us to such a thing.

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And we can do it because for the joy set before him, he endured the cross and because he now lives in us, we can live like him.

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We're not building our little castles. We can have new dreams, dreams to see his kingdom advance in this nation.

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For far too long, the church has been completely absent. We've we've huddled together on Sundays waiting for a rapture to take us home.

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And I'm not getting into the theology of rapture here. I'm saying we must live for Christ and stop looking at the clouds.

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We must live as citizens of the kingdom of God. We must, with faith and courage, declare the gospel of God.

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Society is not going to get easier for us to share the gospel. We've had a hundred years of that. It's time for us now to stand up, to stand in faith and to preach the gospel of Christ to the nations.

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He's given us a new status. We're no longer orphans. We're children. We're no longer slaves of the world. We're slaves of Christ.

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We're no longer blind, but now we see. We're no longer lost, but now we found. We're no longer cursed and now we're blessed.

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We're no longer dead because we're alive. We're no longer adulterers. We are the bride of Jesus Christ.

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We're no longer rejected by God. We are accepted by God because of what he's done. Sit in that identity and you can't help but get excited.

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You think of the fact that you're no longer an orphan, but you're a child of God. It's beautiful.

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We could go through so many more areas, so much more. The point is you've been made new.

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You're not old anymore. You're not to live out your old dysfunctions anymore. You've been made new in Jesus Christ.

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The things that you're clinging to in your life that are old, that are sinful, that are from the fall, that are from the curse, let them go.

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If you're struggling with anger today, let the new creation power of the Holy Spirit of God give you peace.

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Lay it down at the foot of the cross. If you're struggling with fear right now and this world looks awful to you and dangerous to you, lay that down at the foot of the cross and accept the new creation power of the

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Spirit of God that will give you courage and confidence and boldness and conviction. If you're struggling with lust, lay it down and accept his new creation power that will give you purity in your thinking.

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If you're struggling with jealousy, pray that God would give you contentment. Do not accept the things about you that are broken.

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Do not cling to the things about you that are broken. Cling to the gospel of Jesus Christ that he's not only saved you, he saved you for a purpose.

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Pray to the one who knelt down on the ground and made new eyes. Pray to that one who knelt down, was hammered to a

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Roman cross to make you and I new. Not just our eyes, not just our minds, not just our heart, all of us. Some of those new things will happen this side of eternity, where our thoughts will become new, our heart will become new.

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Some of them will have to wait until eternity, where we get new bodies, where we live in perfection with Christ.

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Do not accept brokenness, that's my plea to you. Do not accept sin. Don't become used to it.

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Like David says in the word of God, seek me oh Lord, search me so that you may find anything that's offensive in me, so that I may repent and turn to you.

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Let that be who we are as new creation people. Lord, as you knelt down in the sand outside of Jerusalem and you healed this man's eyes, you are signaling that you are the one who makes all things new.

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You started there. You continued that work on the cross, Lord.

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You continue that work through the spirit who's alive and here with us this morning, dwelling in our hearts, ushering us up into the presence of God, as Ephesians says, and Lord, you will consummate and finish that work in eternity.

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Lord, I pray that the world, the flesh, and the devil would not lull us into sleep, that Lord, we would be awake, that we would be hungry and passionate people.

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Lord, I pray that every day as the bride of Christ would be like a honeymoon, that we would never grow bored, never grow relaxed.

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And Lord, we can't manufacture those thoughts, so if there's anyone here today who's thinking that sounds like a lot of work,

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Lord, I pray that you would do the work so that only you could get the glory. I would pray that we don't work harder, that we don't think harder, try harder, pray harder, do more.

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Lord, I pray that this would happen in us as a result of your spirit and that Lord, all we could possibly do is praise you and give glory to you.

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Lord, if there's anyone here who does not know Christ and who's still bound in their sin, Lord, I pray that they would have the courage to talk to someone in this room so they could hear the good news of Christ, they could understand what it means to be a new creation.