Dealing with Rejection in Evangelism

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Acts.
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And we're going to be in the 7th chapter.
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Now we started this message last week, so for those of you who were not here, I'm going to just, as I know we have so many visitors today, many of you were not here, I just sort of want to give you a little bit of a context of bringing us to where we are.
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We've been studying this year in the church, focusing on the topic beyond our borders, the goal of the gospel is that it be taken outside of the walls of the church.
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We gather to worship, we scatter to evangelize.
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We go out into the world to bring and go and make worshipers.
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As John Piper said, the reason why evangelism exists is because worship doesn't.
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There are people who aren't worshiping, we go to seek that they would.
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And we seek to make worshipers.
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So, as we're studying this, we've been looking through the book of Acts.
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And what we've noticed is from the very foundation of the church, the very establishment of the church, there started to be obstacles that the church had to face.
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The first obstacle was that of persecution in the form of sanction.
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The government, the Sanhedrin, came and said, okay, don't preach in Jesus' name.
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You can do whatever you want, but don't preach Jesus.
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And of course, the disciples said, are we going to listen to you rather than God? No, we're going to listen to God.
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We're going to do what God says.
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And we're going to preach in Jesus' name, even though we've been told not to.
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So, the first wave of attack failed that sanction, if you will.
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The second wave was that of corruption.
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Ananias and Sapphira tried to bring sin into the church by hiding back for themselves a part of a field that they had sold.
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And we preached on that weeks ago.
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I don't want to spend too much time on it.
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But as we noted in that, the sin for which they were punished was their lying.
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It wasn't that they held back a portion of the money.
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It was that they lied about it.
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And God would not allow sin.
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He wouldn't allow impurity in this body that He had created, this thing called the church.
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And so, there was a great instant of judgment, where they died as a result of having sinned.
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And then, we see division started to form in the church as the Hellenists and the Hebrews began to butt heads over whether or not who was getting treated the best, and whether or not the widows were being treated properly in the daily distribution.
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So, we see at every turn the church was dealing with something, whether it was persecution, or sanction, or corruption, or division.
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There was always something.
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But when we come to Acts 6 and 7, we come to a watershed moment in the history of the church.
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Because for the first time since the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, a man will die for his faith.
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And that man's name was Stephen.
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And so, we're going to read, to introduce today, verses 54 through 60 of Acts 7.
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Now, it is our custom to stand for God's word, so let us stand as we read Acts chapter 7, verses 54 to 60.
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It says, Now when they heard these things, that is the sermon of Stephen, they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him.
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But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
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And he said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.
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But they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and rushed together at him.
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Then they cast him out of the city, and stoned him.
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And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.
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And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.
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And falling to his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin against them.
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And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you that it is perfect.
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And that you tell us through your word that it is sufficient, that the man of God may be equipped for every good work.
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So I pray, O Lord, that I would be committed to the word of God today.
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That you would keep me from error, as I am certainly fallible and capable of preaching error.
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I pray that you would keep me from error.
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And I pray that you would open the hearts of your people to hear the truth.
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And Lord God, also if there are those among us who know not the gospel, that they would be confronted with that truth today, and by your Holy Spirit convicted, and by your sovereign will converted.
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In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.
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Last week, my goal was to bring an exposition of this text.
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And I did that.
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We looked at how this situation worked itself out.
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Stephen was one of the first men called as a minister in the church, or what might also be called a deacon.
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He was called to minister in the church to widows, to ensure that they got the daily distribution of food and money that was given out within the church.
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But Stephen was not just a minister in the sense of the fact that he was not just one who went about the administrative duties of the church, but Stephen was also a man who was committed to proclaiming his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Stephen was an evangelist.
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And sometimes people get confused about that.
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People often think, I think, that evangelist is a title given to an elite group within the church.
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You know, Billy Graham is an evangelist, or this man over here is an evangelist, or that person is an evangelist.
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What we don't often realize is that the office of evangelist is not known in Scripture.
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It's not an office that one person gets as opposed to someone else.
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Evangelist is something that everyone is supposed to be, because an evangelist is simply a person who goes in proclamation of the gospel.
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So, whether or not you are an evangelist is this.
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Are you a Christian? If you are a Christian, you are an evangelist by nature.
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In fact, I believe it was Spurgeon who said that if you are not a missionary, then your statement of faith was a fraud.
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And by missionary, he doesn't mean that you have to go to, you know, overseas somewhere in Africa.
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What he meant was if we're not being gospel proclaimers, then our claim to being faithful to Christ is really not true.
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Now you might say, well, that's kind of harsh, Pastor.
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You're challenging me.
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Well, you know, that's fine, because that's the role that I fill today, is I want you to think about yourself.
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I want you to think about your conversion.
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And here's the reality.
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If our conversion doesn't cause us to want to convert others, we haven't been converted.
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If the change that Christ has wrought within us has not caused us to want to see that same change wrought in others, then we have not been changed.
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So that's who Stephen was.
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By title, he was a servant, a diakonia, a deacon in the church.
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But by the grace of God, he was an evangelist.
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And so he went out evangelizing, and it didn't take long before everybody around got tired of hearing him talk about Jesus, and so they trumped up charges against him.
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And they decided that it would be better to have this man put to death than to have to hear anymore about Jesus.
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So they had people come out and call him a blasphemer.
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They had people come out and say that he had spoken against God, and against the temple, and against all these things.
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And so they bring him before the Sanhedrin, which was the group of leaders among the Jews, the same group that Jesus had been brought in front of.
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In fact, it would have been the same guys, because this is only a few months after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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This would have been the same group of people that Jesus was brought before.
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And he's put down in front of them, and he preaches an eloquent gospel message to them, telling them that they were stiff-necked, hard-hearted men, which is just what you want to hear, right? That sounds really groovy.
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It's the kind of thing that modern preachers just love to hear.
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You know what? Soft preaching, which is what most people get today.
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Soft preaching produces hard hearts.
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And he didn't preach soft.
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Stephen preached hard.
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If you look back with me at verse 51, this is the end of his sermon.
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He says, You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised and hard in ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit.
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As your fathers did, so do you.
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Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered.
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I don't think he read the book How to Win Friends and Influence People.
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I think he was a little bit more concerned about telling the truth than he was about getting on anyone's Christmas card list.
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And so he proclaimed the truth to them.
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And what was their response? They were enraged.
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Verse 54, in the King James Version, it says they were cut to the heart.
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And rightfully so.
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He had just slammed them in the face with the truth and it cut them to the heart.
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They hated it.
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And so they ground their teeth at him in anger.
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But he looked up into heaven and he saw Christ.
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I talked about this last week, about how Christ was standing at the right hand of the Father.
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Not sitting as He said to in other passages, but at this moment He's standing to receive His servant home who is now about to be killed for his faith, about to be stoned to death.
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Rocks will be pelted at him.
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He will be pelted with rocks rather until he is dead.
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And he knows it's coming.
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He knows that the fever pitch is coming.
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And he knows he's about to die and he sees Christ.
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So he's at peace.
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He knows it's coming.
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And so they drag him out.
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They stone him to death.
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And the passage says he fell asleep.
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And that's where we ended last week.
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I said the fact that he fell asleep is a euphemism for Christian death.
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Because Christians are never said to have died.
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It always says that they fall asleep.
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Because in Christ we do not die.
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We go from life to life.
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We go from life here to life hereafter.
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We don't die.
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We never cease to be.
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So it indicates he fell asleep.
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Not as to say his body was simply unconscious, but as to say his body was now at rest and his spirit was with the Lord.
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So bringing all that out, I want to now move to an application.
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As I said, we gave more exposition last week.
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But now I want to move to an application because I have three things from this text that I want to share with you.
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And you have in your hand, maybe, a worship folder that has some blanks.
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And I know so many of you whom I love, you hate the blanks.
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You've got to know what goes in those holes.
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And I didn't give them to you last week.
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And I know you've been waiting all week with bated breath to know what goes on those blanks.
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So here's our application of this story.
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Number one.
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The message of the gospel is offensive to the natural mind.
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The message of the gospel is offensive to the natural mind.
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The men in this story did not come after Stephen because he was a criminal.
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At least not in the sense that we think of criminality.
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He was not a thief.
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He was not a murderer.
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In fact, his primary obligation, his primary occupation was taking care of widows.
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That's who this guy was.
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He was a guy who cared for the weakest among the group.
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At that particular time in history, to be a widow, and if you didn't have children to take care of you, often meant that you were destitute, very poor, and the church or ministries would come and help because you had to have it or you would starve to death.
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That was his job.
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He wasn't a zealot.
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He wasn't a killer.
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He wasn't a thief.
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He was just a man whose ministry was that to widows who told people about Jesus.
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So here's the thing.
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They didn't kill him for his works.
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They killed him for his words.
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That's an important reality.
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Because they didn't hate what he did.
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They hated what he said.
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Because the message of Christ is offensive.
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A couple weeks ago, I was listening to a preacher preach, and I was very disappointed in his message.
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I'm not going to throw names out.
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I'm not in the business of that.
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But this is what he said.
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He said there's nothing about what Jesus said that was offensive.
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He said what's offensive is us.
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We have to tear down all offenses to get people the pure message of Jesus because if they'll just get the pure message of Jesus, they won't be offended.
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He said what we have to do is we've got to remove the stained glass.
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We've got to remove the pulpit.
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We've got to remove the tie.
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And I'm literally telling you what this guy said.
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I'm not making this up.
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It's not a caricature.
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This is what he said.
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He said what's wrong is we've got stained glass, which we don't, but some churches do.
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He said you've got to get rid of the stained glass.
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You've got to get rid of the pulpit.
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You've got to get rid of the tie.
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You've got to get rid of the candle.
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You've got to get rid of all of these things.
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And you've got to make church like a concert because what offends people is these operating things.
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And if we could just tear down all these operational things and just purely give them Jesus, then they won't be offended because Jesus is not offensive.
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If we could just, and this is a direct quote, if we could just make our nurseries like Disneyland, we'll win the world.
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I think I know what sent me to the hospital.
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Because that's pure nonsense.
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Because here's the reality, folks.
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There is nothing more offensive than the gospel to the natural mind.
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Because here's what the gospel said.
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Here's what he said.
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I want to go on to what he said.
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He said the only thing Jesus taught was love God and love others and that's not offensive.
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That's not what Jesus taught.
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It's not what Jesus taught.
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If you came here thinking it is, let me refresh what Jesus actually taught.
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He taught that to love God and to love others is the fullness of the law.
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You have not kept the law.
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By virtue of that, you are a sinner and you deserve God's wrath.
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That's what he taught.
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I don't like that.
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I don't care.
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Because that's what he taught.
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He said the fullness of God's law is that you love your neighbors yourself.
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And what story did he give us to expound that? The Good Samaritan.
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He said that's what loving your neighbor like yourself does and you guys don't do that.
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You don't love your neighbor as yourself.
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You don't love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength.
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And so you stand before God guilty of not having held his two great commandments to love him and to love others.
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But that's offensive.
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Well, duh! Because that's the point.
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Jesus came with a very offensive message.
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People say, but I like my Jesus with the nice looking knobless door.
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He's very kind of...
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Can we get rid of the pansy Jesus? Can we? Can we get rid of the hipster Jesus? And get down to the brass tacks and say what Jesus really taught was that we are so wretched and vile that we have to have a Savior? That you cannot save yourself, that you cannot bring yourself to a level of goodness that would at all meet God's standard and thus you need a substitute righteousness, one that comes from without, not from within? Boy, that's a gospel worth preaching, but it's also a gospel that will get people to hate you.
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And that's the gospel that Stephen taught.
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That was the gospel that the apostles taught.
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It was an offensive gospel.
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It was an offensive message.
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The message of Christ is offensive and it gets even more offensive the deeper you go.
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Because it starts out by saying you're a sinner and you deserve God's wrath.
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That's offensive.
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If you don't believe me, when you go to the college this week, some of you guys who are going out to college, tell somebody that and see how long it takes for them to be mad at you.
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You're a sinner.
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You deserve God's wrath.
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You're judging me.
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I didn't judge you at all.
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I told you the truth.
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This whole thing about Matthew 7, oh, judge not lest ye be judged, twist not scripture, lest you be like the devil.
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So says Paul Washer.
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So don't come tell me judge not lest ye be judged unless you understand the context of that phrase and how Jesus used it because most of you don't who say it that way.
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The point of the matter is very simple.
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We call men to repentance, but the only way to call men to repentance is to first let them understand that they are sinners.
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If a man doesn't know that he's a sinner, he won't need repentance.
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People say, well, I don't want to go around calling people a sinner.
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You don't have to.
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Ask a person.
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You say, ask them if they're a sinner? No.
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Let them figure it out on their own.
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Most basic question you can ask any person in the world.
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Are you a good person? I don't know you.
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I don't mean to point at you.
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Are you a good person? The Bible says almost every man will claim his own goodness.
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Are you a good person? They'll say yes.
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By what standard are you good? By what standard? Are you good by God's standard? What's God's standard? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
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Love your neighbors as yourself.
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Do you do that? No.
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When the rich young ruler ran to Jesus and he said, good master, he was looking at the creator of the world, by the way, and he said, good master, Jesus said, why do you call me good? Why did Jesus do that? Was Jesus denying his own goodness? No, he was saying, why would you call anyone good? Haven't you figured it out yet that there is none good, no not one, there is none who understands, there is none who seeks after God? Paul didn't write that.
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He quoted it from the Old Testament.
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We have to understand that the message of the gospel is offensive.
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And it may cost us our life at some point.
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Cost even his life.
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We stand for the truth, come what may.
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So that's the first thing.
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The gospel is offensive to the natural mind.
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Number two.
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Apart from a supernatural work of grace, all men will reject the gospel.
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Apart from a supernatural work of grace, all men will reject the gospel.
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Turn with me to Romans.
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Chapter 8.
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Look at verse 7.
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I'm sorry, verse 7.
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Romans 8 verse 7.
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For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.
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Let's just for a minute kind of think about who that is.
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Whose mind is set on the flesh? Everyone who is not born of the Spirit.
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The Bible is clear that if we're not born of the Spirit, we're in the flesh.
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So the person that's in the flesh can't have his mind anywhere else.
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So right now we know that we're talking about all unsaved people.
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Right away.
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It's not a doubt.
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For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God for it does not submit to God's law.
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That being the mind that's set on the flesh doesn't submit to God's law.
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Indeed what? It cannot.
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Why can't the natural mind submit to the law of God? Why? Well, turn with me to Ephesians chapter 2.
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Do a little quick Bible study here.
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We'll do our sword drills.
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Go to Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 1.
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Some of you can quote this probably.
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And you were what? Dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the Spirit that is now at work and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and of the mind, and were by nature, by nature, children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
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So right here in chapter 8 of Romans it tells us we cannot submit to God in the natural mind.
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Why? Because if we move a couple of books over to Ephesians it tells us why.
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Because we're dead in trespasses and sins.
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And it's a natural state.
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We are by nature children of wrath.
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This is how we come into the world.
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Dead in sin.
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We read that in our catechism earlier that we're born in sin.
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We're actually sinners from birth.
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And this thing called sin has not only infected us, it hasn't made us sick, it's made us dead.
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And dead men don't bring themselves to life.
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And that's why in John 6, when Jesus Christ is talking about the Gospel, He says, No one can come to Me unless the Father who is in Heaven grants it to him.
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It takes a supernatural work of grace for a person to go from dead to alive.
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Think about the story of Lazarus in the tomb.
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Jesus commands the dead man come forth, and he comes forth.
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He didn't do it on his own.
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He wasn't sitting there going, well, I guess I'm going to get up today from being dead.
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Because dead men don't make themselves alive.
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God, by supernatural work, raised Lazarus from the dead.
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So too does He raise every person who is dead in their sins to life.
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So the reason why I mention this in accord with this passage is we see this passage in juxtaposition with Acts chapter 2.
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In Acts chapter 2, Peter preached, they were cut to the heart, 3,000 people were saved.
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In Acts chapter 7, Stephen preached, they were cut to the heart, and they stoned them dead.
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So what do we see? We see an administration of the grace of God.
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We saw the grace of God to 3,000 souls in Acts 2.
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And we see an administration of the hardening of God in Acts chapter 7.
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As the Romans 9 tells us, that God has mercy on whom He wills and whom He wills He hardens.
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I didn't invent that.
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I didn't write that.
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It's not to me to create that.
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It's what the text says.
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But I want to finish this with a third point.
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And this point, I think, will hopefully give you some encouragement as to why I've pointed all this out.
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Why did I focus on the offense of the natural mind? Why did I focus on the supernatural work of grace? Because, number three, we must not allow rejection to keep us from preaching Christ.
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Outside of the Sermon on the Mount and Peter's sermon at Pentecost, Stephen's sermon is one of the longest and most flushed out sermons we have in the New Testament.
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It's one of the most eloquently preached and beautiful expressions of the Gospel that we have from the early church.
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Peter preached it.
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I'm sorry, Stephen preached it with power and unction to the people that were listening to him under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God.
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And yet, they rejected him.
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How does that apply to me? Or you? Beloved, if you are a Christian, you are an evangelist.
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We said this already.
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If you are an evangelist, you are going to be rejected a lot.
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If you are sharing your faith with any amount of consistency and repetition that people know when you come, that the Gospel is coming with you, you will experience a lot of rejection.
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I mean, it comes with what we do.
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Because the natural mind naturally rejects it.
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And we can give the clearest, most compelling, most articulate expression of the Gospel and still have men with their thumbs in their ears closing themselves off to what we're saying.
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Now, why am I stressing this? Because far too many people see evangelism as a sales pitch.
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And if I'm not seeing people pray the sinner's prayer, I'm not closing the sale.
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I'm not an evangelist.
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That is garbage.
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Your job is not to close the sale.
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Your job is to preach the Gospel.
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You are never responsible for the outcome.
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You are responsible for the proclamation.
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You cannot convert a sinner.
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That is God's work alone.
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You proclaim the truth and let God be God.
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That's all we can do.
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I have so many people come to me when I tell them we should be evangelizing, we should be telling people about Jesus.
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And they say, I'm afraid! And I say, what are you afraid of? And they say, I'm afraid to be rejected.
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That's what this message is about.
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You're going to get rejected.
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Get over it.
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Because ultimately, when that rejection comes, you know this, you've been the herald.
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You've been the watchman on the tower.
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You've told them judgment is coming.
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You've told them the only way to be saved.
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And you've pointed them to the only one who can save them.
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And at that point, if they say, I don't want Him, I don't need Him, their blood is not on you.
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But here's what we do.
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We allow ourselves to be consumed with the fear of rejection to the point that we don't say anything.
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And beloved, when we say nothing, we're not only being disobedient to Christ, but we're being unloving to them.
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We're the only thing in the world that can save them.
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And we hold it back because we're afraid they won't take it.
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We are never failures when we faithfully proclaim the gospel.
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I pray that we would see Stephen as an example.
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That the gospel should be proclaimed and not hidden.
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That we know that the world will reject our message even when we articulate it clearly.
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But also know that God can save and God will save through the preaching of His gospel.
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So we go with confidence that none will be lost.
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No, not one.
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We proclaim the truth to all.
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We know that no one will be lost that God has called to Himself.
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So we just tell everybody without fear.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You.
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I thank You for the promise of the gospel.
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I thank You for the truth.
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I thank You that You've told us to be heralds of this gospel.
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I thank You that You've told us that we don't have to fear rejection.
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That we can look forward to God knowing that we won't always see rejection.
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Because You will be saving those precious souls through the ministry of our preaching.
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So I pray, O Lord, I pray for these young people as they look at their life of ministry and whatever ministry they're going into, whatever they're doing in life.
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I pray that they wouldn't allow rejection to keep them from going and continuing to go.
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I pray that the members of Sovereign Grace would not allow rejection to keep them from giving people the gospel and giving people tracts and telling people about Jesus and being known for being heralds of the gospel.
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May it be that we never fear to trust in Your message and always willing to proclaim it wherever You give the opportunities.
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In Jesus' name we pray.
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Amen.
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Beloved, now is the time where we stand and we sing.
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If you have a need for prayer, we encourage you to come.