Honey Or Salt? - [Matthew 5:13-16]

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I'm afraid. I don't know what to say. I may seem bigoted.
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I might be afraid to fail. Maybe they'll think I'm a hypocrite.
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What if they slam the door? I might lose my friends. My family might kick me out.
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They might think I'm narrow -minded. I might not be able to give the proper response biblically.
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When you've been called to evangelize, have you given any response like that? There was a large crusade, and they trained people to preach the gospel, and they were asked this question.
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What is your greatest hindrance in preaching the gospel? 9 % said they were too busy to remember.
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28 % said they don't really have real information to share. Each one
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I could make a comment on, but I'm just trying to refrain. 12 % said their own lives were not speaking as they should.
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But the largest group, why we don't preach the gospel, that Jesus Christ saves sinners more to the dying world, is that they were afraid of how the other person might react.
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Fear of man. That may be true, but as John Stott said, the church is under orders.
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Evangelistic inactivity is disobedience, John Stott says. And if you take your
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Bibles and turn to Matthew chapter 5, I want to again this week, as we did last week, talk about preaching the gospel to others, evangelizing, telling people about the risen
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Savior who saves sins by grace alone through faith alone, and that we can talk about two common domestic metaphors that Jesus uses purposefully in order to help the people, his disciples, and now us, preach the gospel to other people.
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This is a passage that you know very well, Matthew chapter 5, verse 13 through 16, found in the
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Sermon on the Mount, in the gospel of Matthew that proclaims Jesus Christ as a Savior, specifically in a
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Jewish context. The two common metaphors are salt and what's the other one?
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Light. And he is going to use these very common things so people, when they see salt, will think of evangelism, they understand salt so they will know what it does, and light and darkness, great teaching opportunity for Christ Jesus here, and this is kind of in review from last week, but the first metaphor we saw in Matthew chapter 5, verse 13, is salt.
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And if you were looking for a purpose today in my message, if you want to know what I'm driving at, I want you to understand some mindsets for your evangelism, that you might proclaim the gospel more, that you might be a better witness for God, that you might more easily be apt to say,
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Jesus Christ can save you from your sins. Like I said last week, the pastoral staff here and the elders, we don't get to be with unbelievers that often because we're with you.
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You are the ones who have the privilege and the pleasure to go out in the world. Put it another way, we get paid to be good, and you're good for nothing regarding all that.
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I mean, I have neighbors, and I go to the gym, and I do other things, but a small, small amount of my time is spent with unbelievers, and Christ calls
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His disciples to be both salt and light, and as I said last week, I praise
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God for so many things He's done through us as a church, but we have a long way to go when it comes to preaching the gospel.
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Wouldn't you like to see baptisms every single week? And it is not the job of the clergy to go preach the gospel.
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You are the ones who are to proclaim the gospel. I think today's message will help you be more bold.
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I think you'll think about things from a biblical perspective versus your own perspective. And by the way, when people come into the church service and they've never been before, or you think,
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I'm hurting this week, and I hope the message is apropos to me, many times it's not directly relevant, but it is always relevant when you hear
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God's word proclaimed, and you begin to think of things from God's perspective, not man's perspective. And that's what will happen this morning.
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The first metaphor is salt. You see that in verse 13. If you don't have a Bible, I'd encourage you to pick a
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Black Pew Bible up in front of you. You are the salt of the earth. Salt was very, very important back in those days.
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As a matter of fact, early Greeks used to call salt theion. Anybody know what theion is in Greek?
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God. They used to call it God because it was so important. And here, many different uses for salt, but Jesus is after salt being used as a preservative, as something that's like fluoride to teeth.
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At least we used to think it was helpful. Is it still helpful? I don't know if it is anymore. As you get food and you hope green tea is high in antioxidants, so too now the world is decaying, it is putrefying, it is rotting, and so the disciples were to be a preservative agent as they were on the earth.
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Listen to what 2 Timothy 3 says in regards to describing the world in these last days.
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Sounds like the Drudge Report, if you ask me. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self -control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power.
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That is the world in which we live and we are called to be a preserving agent to this kind of world, to prevent that decay.
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Certainly God made the world perfect, yes, and because of the fall of Adam, even creation groans now because it's been affected and everyone in it has been affected as well.
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And Jesus says to the disciples, You alone are the salt of the world, who else is going to do it?
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Someone in the world? No. Then He uses again in review the second metaphor, the disciples were light.
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Look down in verse 14, You are the light of the world. You are the phos of the world.
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You are the phos of the world. You are the light of the world. Now for us, it's not that big a deal.
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You just flick on the lights and on they go. But if you were back in those days, the biblical days, light was very, very important.
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And as salt retards corruption, here light exposes what's in the darkness. It illumines it.
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How many people have read the Screwtape Letters by C .S. Lewis? That was one of the first books I read as a Christian. Wasn't it interesting?
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He does something different. He switches the roles around, so the enemy, when Screwtape is talking about the enemy, who's the enemy?
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God. So every time you're reading about the enemy, you're thinking, what's going on here? As one demon talks to another demon about how
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Christians can be trapped. So I'm going to kind of use something like that this morning.
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I'm going to give you several lies. So you'll have to think about what the truth is when it comes to mindsets for you to evangelize deriving from the whole salt and light motif.
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So I'm going to give you a series of lies. They are not true, but the inverse is. And I think it'll help you remember some of these, so they will help you in your evangelism.
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Evangelistic mindsets couched in the form of lies, so you'll do the opposite.
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Okay? Don't want any letters or anything. I'm speaking lies from the pulpit. I am speaking lies from the pulpit for a reason.
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You have to keep listening and keep going. Lie number one.
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At the first sign of persecution, you should retreat when it comes to evangelism. The first sign of persecution, somebody gets mad or upset, you should go retreat.
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Kind of the fight or flight reflex. Is that what we should do? Do you notice the context in Matthew chapter 5?
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Every one of these points, if you will, I'm trying to bring right from Scripture because that's the job of the pastor, is the sermon preaches from the text.
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Look at Matthew chapter 5, verses 10, 11, and 12. Remember that? That describes how unbelievers will treat us.
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Back in those days, how unbelieving people treated the disciples. It certainly carries on to us.
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And now, verses 13, 14, 15, and 16 describes how Christians should treat these people that do the opposite.
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That is to say, verses 10, 11, and 12 are talking about those who persecute people because of their faith in Christ Jesus.
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Verse 11, they insult, they persecute, they falsely say things. And even though these people persecute, our response is, run like mad to Montana.
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I wonder if Montana has a root word for monastery. They're both the same. I don't know, but as Montana might be a monastery, we don't run away.
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We're the salt and light. We don't run in the midst of persecution. It's a tragic error of somehow getting away from the world.
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You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. We are the preserving, illuminating agent.
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You say, well, I want to run. I know we want to run, but we go past our feelings and say, we are here for a reason.
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We are here to be open, bright, conspicuous, true or false.
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There is such thing as a secret Christian. Well, maybe there is, but there shouldn't be.
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Kind of covert operations. Nobody knows. Do your neighbors know you're all Christians?
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Do your neighbors know you were whacked out, fundamentalist, born again,
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Jesus freak Christians? All right, well, it's a little hyperbole. Do people know that you're a
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Christian? And you stand up for right? And you believe that only God alone saves? By the way, why else would you be in your neighborhood?
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Sovereignly planted there with those exact neighbors? Jesus said, with similar strategy about his disciples in John 17,
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I do not ask you to take them out of the world, Father, but to keep them from the evil one.
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They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in truth. Your word is truth.
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You sent me into the world. I have also sent them into the world. We have to live in the world.
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We can't run. We can't say Lancaster, Pennsylvania, here we come. We just got to be around with all the other
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Christians. We got to move to the Christian conference center. We are here because the world is rotting.
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Certainly, as a church, we gather to be edified, and then we scatter to go what? To be salt and light, purposefully.
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Great old Scottish preacher who died at 29 years old said this, There cannot be a secret
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Christian. Grace is like ointment hid in the hand. It betrayeth itself.
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If you truly feel the sweetness of the cross of Christ, you will be constrained to confess
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Christ before men. Robert Murray McShane. If you're really a Christian, you'll want to tell others.
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And if you're in some monastery someplace or some kind of enclave where no one else is an unbeliever, you're going to start to go crazy.
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Remember D .L. Moody? Moody would say to himself, I'm not going to go to sleep tonight until I go out and preach the gospel to someone in Chicago.
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And he'd be laying in bed at night, and he'd go, oops, I forgot to preach the gospel, and just go downstairs, go outside of the building, and the first person he'd run into, he would begin to preach the gospel.
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We go out. And Jesus uses two further pictures to talk about how light shouldn't be hidden.
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Light should expose. You see that in verse 14? You are the light of the world.
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And here's the other picture. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. That wouldn't make any sense.
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If a city's on a hill, it's going to shine forth. True or false?
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We are still in the dark ages today. Not the technical capital D, capital
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A dark ages, but in terms of Ephesians 2, 1, 2, and 3, the world is dark, and we're called to be lights.
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We live in the dark ages spiritually. Nor, the second little word picture he uses, does anyone in verse 15 light a lamp,
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Matthew 5, 15, and put it under a basket? Hide it under a bushel? No.
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It's not probably even a bushel. It was probably a little clay container that they'd measure grain with, and they'd put that over.
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We wouldn't do that. Houses back in those days, scholars say, were very small, and they had super small windows that are maybe about 18 inches wide max, and they'd have one window.
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It'd be very dark in there even during the day. And there'd be a little ledge sticking out of the wall, and you'd put your little candle in there with a little olive oil, and you'd put it up high for a reason, because you want to see what's in the house.
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You don't put it under the cot or the bed or futon. Not in those days. Light shines by nature.
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Jesus picked this on purpose, openly, candidly. Light can't help itself.
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It just shines. It's visible. It's radiant. So when you get persecuted and you want to run away, the first thing
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Jesus is going to tell you, no, you're there for a reason. And even though 10, 11, and 12 people will persecute you, our response is to shine forth.
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Lie number two. If you're not paying attention for the first one, I think this one will make you sit up and take notice.
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When it comes to evangelism, not only should you not run, but how about this?
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You should be like honey to the world. You should be like honey to the world.
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True or false? Should you be like honey to the world? Well, maybe we'll get to honey a little bit later, but Jesus used something not honey.
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He uses something that's called what? Salt. He didn't say you should be the honey of the world.
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It's salt. Salt's kind of, you can go home and have a little experiment, dads, for lunch. You just get a little salt container and put some salt in your palm of your hand, and then have your kids come over in alphabetical order, and then just rub that salt into their eyes real hard.
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Like that, real hard and rub it in. Then I want you to take about two tablespoons of salt and put it in their mouths and just make them chew it up.
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Now, you say, well, that's the lie part. Certainly you don't want to do that, but you might take a little bit of salt.
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Matter of fact, when I used to teach the kids about Lot's wife who looked back and she got turned into a pillar of salt, first thing
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I did was got the salt out of the cabinet. We put just a couple specks, okay? DSS doesn't need to be involved or anything like that.
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Just a couple little specks and put it on their mouth so they could taste what it was like. Salt bites.
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And some people think, okay, when it comes to unbelievers, we've got to make our lives so fun.
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You know, we evangelize like this. You come to Christ and you don't have to give anything up.
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Everything that you used to do, you can still do. And, you know, when people... If you don't want to do it, if you're at a restaurant,
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I was taught this once. If you're at a restaurant and somebody comes by the maitre d' and says, would you like some wine? Do you drink wine?
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You're a Christian now. Do you drink? Oh, I can drink all I want was my pat answer that I was taught.
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I can drink all I want, but I just don't want any. And I go, what am I being taught?
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Come to Jesus and you can have great success. You can have fun. It's cool.
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You know, the ultimate rebel was Jesus. And Jesus is saying, you know what?
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When you take some salt and you rub it in, it burns. In the old days, the church...
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Talk to Bradip about church history if you'd like. It was never this group of people called the world who said, oh yeah, those
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Christians, I want to be one of them. It was the exact opposite. I don't want to be one of those.
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Sinclair Ferguson, the Scottish Presbyterian, is very insightful when he says this about the church.
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How slow we often are to learn this lesson. At times we fall into the trap of being blackmailed by a world that says, unless I find your life attractive on my own terms,
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I will not respond to the message of the gospel. So we get in this big vicious cycle of trying to make the gospel attractive when, to the unbeliever, it's a scandal.
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Here's a crucified messiah. Oh, come to Christ.
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You can have all the fun you want. How would you spin these words of Jesus if you wanted to make Christianity fun and exciting like honey?
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If anyone comes to me, Jesus said, and does not hate his own mother, father, wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
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How do you put sugar around that? Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
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And then Luke 14, 28, he says, for which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it?
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You can't sugarcoat that. Here is the gospel. We are like modern day
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Marcionites. Marcion was a guy who said, you know all that Old Testament stuff with the God of wrath, get rid of that.
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And by the way, there is a lot of stuff in the New Testament we don't want either. So he got 10 Bible books instead of 66.
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Only 10 are from God. And Christian churches do the same thing now, except they don't know about Marcion.
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But they say, you know, we are going to just sell God as this God who gives you everything. He loves you no matter what.
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He is like a big, huge George Burd's grandpa God. And there is nothing in the Bible that would make you think, wow,
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I got to count the cost. Are you sure? It's over. I was taught when I first became a Christian, that when
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I preach the gospel, I should talk people out of it, because it's going to be such a high cost. It's everything.
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It's your life. Tozer used to say the old Christian gospel would slay people.
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You're done. You as you know yourself are over. But the new Christian gospel says, oh, hot fudge sundaes.
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I mean, not that hot fudge sundaes are gone, but that's just typifying your life. It's just all extra. It's all cream.
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An unbeliever's idea of fun and goodness is never the test for truth, is it?
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I find this very, very fascinating. When you study the passage in Matthew 5 where it says, you could lose your saltiness.
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It's a figure of speech, but it also could be translated, because it's got the root word moron in it.
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Losing its saltiness. And it could also be translated, becomes foolish. And that's exactly what happens.
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When we turn the gospel from salt into honey, we just become foolish. God disapproves.
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The world doesn't believe anyway. We are preaching salt and not sugar candy.
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And when you preach the gospel, people will be more inclined to spit salt out of their mouth, the gospel, than they will to suck on it and savor it.
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And I think it's just good for us to be reminded of that. That when you're preaching to your friends and family and relatives and neighbors, they're not all going to love you.
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But even though chapter 5, verses 10, 11, and 12 says people will persecute you, your job is still to love them by being salt and light.
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Got on a website yesterday, very, very interesting one. I try not to promote too many websites. I don't know if it's a commercial one.
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I guess it is because it's .com. Deathcount .com. Deathcount .com.
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Pulls it up and you type in your age, your body weight index and height and all these other things.
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And then you click on it and up here in the corner, it tells you, here's what mine was. The estimated date of your death is
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February 14, 2034. And then it shows those years between now and then.
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That would put me at 73 years old. Then it shows that time difference in seconds and it starts flipping backwards.
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877 million seconds, 994 ,000 and all this is counting backwards. So I just left that pop -up there yesterday.
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You already know I'm weird, so what do I care? You come to my house and there it is, deathclock .com. And I just thought it's so good to be reminded.
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We are dying. Solomon said our life is like a what? And if you don't preach the gospel to your friends and family and loved ones, you don't love
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God because Jesus said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. And friends, you don't love them either because one day a
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Christless eternity will be waiting for them. So we want to preach the gospel. The great news of this,
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I failed in evangelism, you failed in evangelism, but we look to the one who's never failed in evangelism.
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We look to the perfect one, Christ Jesus. Do you know he evangelized all the time whenever he should have with the proper motives?
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And so we look to the great Christ Jesus to say, you are the one who has covered my sins, even my sins of lack of evangelism.
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And you've covered those and so much more. I want to tell people the truth. I want to tell them the truth.
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And they might not accept it. They might not think it's popular. But salt needs to bite into the depravity of the culture.
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The best way to do this, by the way, is when you preach the gospel to your friends. And when you do, how about things like this?
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The Bible says... The Bible says... Here's what the Bible says. Lie number three.
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The first lie is when there's persecution, you should run. The second lie is you should be like honey instead of salt.
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The third lie, playing off on the light motif, we did the salt and honey, we'll do the light one now, is you should be like camouflage in the world.
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You should be like camouflage. Blend right in. Secret service Christianity, we'll call it.
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Undercover. You should stick out rather like a sore thumb.
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How many people here hunt? Where's Huber? He's not here. You should be one of those big, huge, orange jacket things.
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Think about salt. One of the most interesting things about salt is it's different from the medium that it's placed into.
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It's not the same. You put salt on your popcorn. Salt's not popcorn. It's on popcorn. One man said, cease to be different and we cease to be
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Christians. We are different. We're distinct. But it's theologically fashionable these days to just blur everything.
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Everything's just fine. Blur the distinction. How could we not be different?
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We used to love things and now we hate those things. Sin and self and pride.
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We used to love these things and now we hate them. There's also things that we used to hate, God, righteousness, church,
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Bible, and now we what? Now we love them. We are new creatures in Christ Jesus. Everything's new.
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New affections, new friends, new longings, new everything. I know it's just a small test, but for me,
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I pay people to go hear them preach. That doesn't sound right.
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That's not right. I go to Bible conferences where I pay a registration fee to sit there for hours to hear somebody preach the
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Bible. How did I act before I was saved? How did you act? Well, if I have to hear the
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Bible three or four minutes in a nice story, that's fine. But I want to know the Word, and we are people that have new desires and affections and longings and motivations and friends.
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We are different, and our job is not to take the sharp edges of the Gospel and to say, you know what, that kind of there, that wrath, that judgment,
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God kind of never changes in His holiness. We just need to kind of cut that off and make it smooth, because people will take that smooth thing a little bit better, contour that out.
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No. Jesus said you don't cover up the lamp. You expose it.
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It's not our Gospel to change, is it? We are heralds. Don't change the Gospel. Lie number four.
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We've seen retreat as not an option. Honey is not an option. Camouflage not an option.
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I don't know the best way to phrase this, so I'll just use what I've got in my notes. Lie number four.
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The world can never decrease your effectiveness as an evangelist. The world can never influence you negatively.
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That would be a lie. Can the world influence you? Can the world turn down the lumens of your life?
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Yes. If you go back to Matthew 5, verse 13, it says you are the salt of the earth, and then
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Jesus does something interesting. But if salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again?
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It's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. Now, real salt can't be contaminated, but they didn't have real salt back then.
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They'd either get it where it would evaporate it, or they'd go to the Dead Sea, and there's a bunch of other compounds around it. And so, if you got some water in that, the
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NaCl, the real salt, could just be diluted out, and you'd be stuck with nothing, and it wouldn't be good for anything except to throw on the roof of your house.
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Maybe it'll stop some leaks or throw down on the path. And Jesus is saying, you are the salt, and don't be influenced by the world, because then you're no good for anything.
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You'd be thrown out. A few other scholars had a different opinion. I'll just give it to you, but I don't think it's right.
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Rabbi Hanaina alludes to this proverb. Can salt lose its flavor?
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The context of the saying implies that it's impossible for salt to lose its flavor. And this rabbi parallels it by asking, does the mule that's sterile bear young?
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End quote. So, sterile mules can't have children. Salt can't be tasteless, and it'll lose its salt flavor.
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Either one, we arrive at the same conclusion. Option number one, don't be contaminated by the world.
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They had salt that could be contaminated, so don't be contaminated by the world. Option number two, you're a
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Christian, and you are salty no matter what you do, so act like it. Neither one, we're at the same option.
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We want to make sure, listen, that we are not so earthly minded that we're no heavenly good. It's the opposite there.
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Turn to Ephesians chapter 5, if you would, and I want to show you a Bible verse that it says you are under divine mandate to expose sin.
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How about that for a ministry? We have the street ministry, witnessing ministry, we have the nursery ministry, we have all these ministries.
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Here's the new ministry, you are to expose sin. Commanded, present tense, imperative, you need to expose sin.
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This is amazing in Ephesians. We were there some time ago, some long time ago, Ephesians chapter 5.
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Same kind of talk, certainly Paul, inspired by the
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Holy Spirit, says in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 7,
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Therefore do not be partakers with them, who are the thems, who might they be?
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Verse 5, immoral, sexually immoral, impure, covetous, those people who are like that, they're idolaters.
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Don't let them deceive you, verse 6, because the wrath of God comes on those kind of people who are personified as sons of disobedience.
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Don't be partakers with them. Why? Verse 8, For you were formerly darkness, but now you are light, and the
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Lord walk as children of light. It doesn't say you shouldn't have any close contact, but you don't have any close relationships with these people.
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And you say, you know, I used to be that way, and I have to be careful, because I'm light, and light exposes, light doesn't get absorbed into.
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I was thinking of Komodo dragons. How do Komodo dragons kill people? Kill animals. They bite them, but then what do they do?
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They run up and they bite them a few times, and then they just back off, and they've got 5 ,000 different bacteria in their mouth.
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They bite them, let the bacteria start doing its job of decaying and death, and all of a sudden, within a couple hours, the thing just falls over dead, and you just go, as a
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Komodo would do, and just go eat the thing. We aren't partakers with these kind of people, not the way we used to be, because we were formerly that way.
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Emphatic in the Greek, you used to be, but not anymore. Double emphasis. You were that way.
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You used to live for today. You used to have no purpose. You used to not worship God, but you're not that way anymore. Walk as children of light, verse 8.
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Same word, phos, phos. Phosphorus means light bearing. Photo means paper that's light sensitive.
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You are light now. You walk as light. You say, what's about this, what's all this exposing thing?
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Well, let's just keep going and find out, verse 9. For the fruit of the light consists in all goodness.
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We want what's best for other people. And righteousness, we want to do what God requires, what's right.
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And truth, we want to tell people what the truth is. Boy, that's a big difference compared to idolatry, and immorality, and impurity.
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And of course, on the way we, verse 10, are trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. We want to discern and discover and put to the test what's right and hold fast to what's good.
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And then, amazingly, for those of us that don't want to rock the boat, who want to kind of remain neutral, who don't want to kind of put our finger in the middle of the whole thing, let sleeping dogs lie, for those kind of folks here, me and you, do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, verse 11.
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But even what? Expose them. I don't really care to do that. Well, God knows
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I don't care to do that. That's why He's given me a command to do it. What are the options besides expose people's sin?
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I have a list here. Compromise. Live and let live. Ignore.
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Join in. Don't be judgmental. Have this attitude.
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We at this church, we're not going to be known for what we're against. We're known for what we're for. And here, we're to expose it.
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I've had loved ones die of cancer, and you probably have too. What do you want to do with that cancer? You want to locate it, and find it, and expose it, and get rid of it.
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And here, we're to expose sin and darkness with our lives and with our words.
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In the church and out of the church, a good translation of expose would be convince or reprove. We're to expose it, not enjoy it or join ourselves to it, verse 12.
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For it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. We won't even dignify what they do by mentioning it, but we will reprove them for it.
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No couch potato Christianity here when it comes to this. I don't think we have time for many more lies, but let's just do a couple more.
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Boy, that sounds funny, doesn't it? Just take that little snippet out. That's that lie preaching pastor. Test a lie up here today.
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Lie number five. You should retard decay in this world by only using social changes and politics.
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You should use humanistic means to get divine result. And I didn't say you could never do it.
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There are some social changes that are good, but I said by only using those, that wouldn't be good.
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If you'll turn your Bibles to Acts chapter 13, I want to show you that besides doing good things in society, like William Wilberforce and abolishing slavery, there is something to the element of preaching that must be included when we want to change society.
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It's not pragmatics and what works and voting blocks and moral majority.
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No, that's not God's way. It never has been. But Acts chapter 13, I want to show you that much of our proclamation to the world will have us be solved.
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So take a look at Acts 13 .46. Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and said,
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It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first, since you repudiate it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life.
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Behold, we're turning to the Gentiles. We have a commission. We preach to the Jews first. You have said no.
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Now we're going to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, right from Isaiah 49 .6.
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This was originally to Israel. I have placed you as a light for the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the end of the earth.
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When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as have been appointed to eternal life, believed.
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And the word of the Lord was being spread through the whole region. And so what
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Paul and Barnabas would do is they would say, Israel's job is to illumine not only herself, but all the nations.
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Israel has dropped the ball, and Paul and Barnabas say, I will not, but we will preach. You notice the light there in verse 37?
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I have placed you as a light for the Gentiles, not just social good, but redemptive good, salvation good.
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You can abolish slavery and then have those slaves die and go to hell. I always remember my old pastor used to say, you can be a prostitute or a policeman, and if you're without Christ Jesus, you're not going to heaven.
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And so we were after redemptive areas. Can you do something good? Yes, but here's how I try to do it.
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I always try to think of some kind of redemptive area that I could bring in. For instance, when I got here in 97, we had a soup kitchen ministry, and I was told by the people of the soup kitchen ministry that we were not allowed to pass out tracts or preach the gospel in any way, shape, or form.
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If you were a pastor, and you had as a ministry soup kitchen, and you weren't allowed to preach the gospel ever, now
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I'm all for, you know, we'll feed you first, and then we'll preach the gospel. You just don't say to people, be warm, be fed, be filled, have a good day.
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We give you the gospel, and I know you're starving. See you later. But we as Christians nourish them, and then we want to tell them the most essential truth, a truth that they can't find out on their own.
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That's why it has to be revealed from God to men through Christ and His apostolic messengers about Jesus the sin bearer.
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I said, are you kidding me? We can't preach the gospel? We can't go over and sit next to a guy and say after we fed him, hey, how you doing?
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Is there any way we could help you and turn the conversation into the
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Savior? Nope, can't do that. So I got in a little bit of trouble, but I stopped promoting that ministry.
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Why? Because there has to be a redemptive element. You have to be able to say, we're going to preach the gospel to these folks.
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Soup kitchens are fine, but the church does redemptive soup kitchens. Yes? Soup kitchens are all good.
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I'm glad the United Way does soup kitchens, but we are different than United Way. We are the redemptive way.
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So I'm always looking for the angle where we can preach the gospel, something distinctively Christian. We do that preaching the gospel.
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All right, I can't resist. Lie number six. These all kind of go together, but I've broken them apart so we can think about the passage a little bit better.
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Lie number six, you must give unbelievers what they want. You must give unbelievers what they want.
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I could have this lie. Unbelievers are attracted to the light. Remember that book a while ago,
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Embraced by the Light? That's a lie too, but it's a different sermon.
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Bugs are attracted to the light. Yes? To their death, if it's one of those kind of certain lamps.
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Here's what Jesus said. This is the judgment, that light has come into the world, John 3, and men love the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil.
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I'll never forget as long as I live. I moved to college, University of Nebraska. It's 50 miles away from home, far enough to get away from mom and dad so you can do what you want at night and not be accountable, but close enough you can go home and mom will do your laundry.
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Had it all figured out. And I'd lay there at night, and all of a sudden, I'd feel something on my face.
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Ooh, that's weird. Harper Dorm Room 305 was the room number.
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Something's... I had a roommate named Wayne. He's my best friend. I'm thinking, Wayne, do you ever just kind of, ooh, you have that feeling?
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You know, is that you? I wanted to make sure it wasn't him trying to do something stupid. I felt this thing on my face.
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A feather? I don't know what it is. I'm Rip Van Winkle, and it's my beard coming up.
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I have no idea what's going on. Okay, I'm going to get a flashlight, so if that happens again,
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I'll just check it out. Got the flashlight. Shine the light over the corner of my bed. Roach.
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I've never had a roach crawl across my face before. I know it. I got up the flashlight. It is death to all roaches.
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I'm going to crack down these roaches no matter what. Shining a light in the corner, and when you see them, what do they do? They just run right up to the light and they kiss it with a roach -like kiss.
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No, they run. Because when somebody shines the spotlight of God's omniscience on your life, you want to be like Fig Leaf Pose, and you want to run because you are undone.
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Isaiah stands before God, the mouthperson of God. Isaiah, redeemed. He was not a
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Christian, but he was in favor of God. And when God shows Himself to Isaiah in His thrice display of holiness, what did
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Isaiah do? Isaiah, in a sense, like the angels just did, covered himself and said,
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I'm undone. I should be cursed. I should be damned because of the laser -like gaze of God.
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And so as we are reflected light, as light is refracted off of Christ, the light of the world, the second
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I Am in John 8, and it goes out to others, it exposes their deeds and they want to either hide and or they want to get rid of you.
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You cannot just live your life as a Christian friendship evangelism and leave it there. They might say that's good for you, that's good for society, but everything else,
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I'm not too sure about. You've got to live a good life and you've got to proclaim the truth. Faith comes by hearing a message about Christ preached.
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Jesus went on to say in John 3, For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be what?
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Exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the light so that his deeds may be manifest as having been wrought by God.
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These people run from the light and so what our job is as we're light and salt is to go to them, every nook, every cranny, every place.
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And it shouldn't surprise us that these unbelievers don't want what we have to offer. Oh, we could say, I've got a purpose for you and I want your life to be full of purpose.
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And we're going to drive your life with purpose -driven life. Unbelievers like that. Especially when there's no talk of sin and no talk of resurrection in the book.
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25 million people will buy that book and most probably unbelievers. But if you get another book and you say, you know, here are just the sayings of Jesus about deny yourself, pick up your cross, it might cost you everything.
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Jesus said you need to be sick of yourself and your own sin and self -righteousness.
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Those books don't sell too many copies. 1
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Corinthians 1, verse 18 says, For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing what?
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Foolishness. If you preach the gospel and people love it, only two things could be happening. One, God is drawing them and He could save them.
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Option two, you're cutting the corners so they like what you preach. Because the unbeliever by nature does not like the light.
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The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 18, the word of the cross is moronic, nonsensical.
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It is stupid to the unbeliever. Here's God's wisdom, unbelieving world.
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Jesus Christ the Messiah, He's on the cross. If Jesus just died as a martyr, everybody would go, oh, nice martyr's death.
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But somehow that Jesus died not as a martyr's death necessarily, but as a substitutionary atonement for all those who would look to see
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Him. He would be the one that they would have as a satisfaction for their sins, that He would die for their sins.
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He would die for their sins in their place. That doesn't make sense.
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That doesn't compute. One man said that one man could die on a piece of wood on a nondescript hill in a nondescript part of the world and thereby determine the destiny of every person who has ever lived seems stupid.
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Behold your King. It doesn't make any sense. That's why the
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Passion of the Christ movie, when I saw that, it made me appreciate certain aspects of His suffering.
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But 30 ,000 other Jews were crucified during that time period. What's the difference between Jesus and 29 ,999 other
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Jews who were crucified? Nobody says about the 29 ,999, oh, that's moronic.
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That's stupid. You know what we say about them? Too bad the Romans did it to them, but they probably deserved it anyway.
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A bunch of insurrectionists, a bunch of people like Barabbas, they deserve that. Why is this
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Jesus on this cross so foolish to people? Answer, because He's the only one who can grant salvation and you have the wrath of God.
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What makes it different between these 29 ,000 and this one is because the wrath of Holy God against sin was poured out only on this perfect substitute in the place of sinners.
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And if you deny yourself, repent of sins, look to Christ, believe in Him, follow
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Him, you'll truly be saved. People say, you know what? I'm good. I want to contribute. I've got some kind of, you know, for me growing up, it was me and my baptism.
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It was me and my confirmation. It was me and my catechism. I want to somehow give something to God. Here, look at what
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I've done. But what I didn't know is my hands were bloody and my heart was idolatrous and everything
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I gave had that on it. There was blood on my hands. And I was the
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Barabbas. It is
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Christ alone who saves. Paul goes on in 1 Corinthians 1, where's the wise man?
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Where's the scribe? Where's the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? Four rhetorical questions make that point.
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For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not come to know God. Testimony today,
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Timothy was studying Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, whoever he wanted to pick, from Foucault back to Descartes.
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How can I get my sins off of me? There's no way. It's a foolish message to preach.
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And so that's why even in this marketing society, how do you package the cross?
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Do you sell a tire that can't inflate? Do you sell seats that are too hard?
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Do you sell milk that you can't drink? It's stupid to do that, but that's exactly what
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Jesus did at Calvary, and that's the proclamation of the gospel. Because Jews ask for signs and the
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Greeks want wisdom. The Jews want a miracle. The Jews want some kind of prodigy. The Jews want something wonderful.
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The Jews want some manna from heaven. Nope, Jesus said, you get one sign,
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Jews, sign of Jonah. So what do we do? We have unbelievers that want something good, and we think they're attracted to the light, and we give them what they don't want.
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How's that? Here's your job this week, church. You give unbelievers what they don't want this week. And when they don't want that, you give them a little bit more.
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Isn't it counterintuitive? It so much is. We preach 1 Corinthians 1 .23,
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Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness. And do you know what it's going to be like?
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They're either going to think it's stupid, and you're stupid, or they're going to, have you ever stubbed your toe? One time I was running as a kid, and I ran, and it was by the rocks at the lake, and I ran so hard,
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I hit this rock and split my toe open, and there was blood all over. And what do you think you do in a situation like that?
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Mommy, is what I did pretty much. You yell something. Here's something to stub your toe over, world.
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They're not going to say, oh, I love this. That's why, by the way, it's better to worship angels, because they're not too holy, and they just kind of touch you, touch by an angel, and they're just kind of nice, and hang out, and oh, it's good, and it's given to the
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Jews a stumbling block, something that will irritate them, excite them, exasperate them.
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They will fall over it. It will be offensive. And if you hear the text again, it doesn't say, we discuss this
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Messiah. We debate this Messiah. We argue about the Messiah. We talk about Him and share a little bit.
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It says what? We preach Christ. That's what we do. We're preachers, and when people don't want to listen anymore, then that's okay.
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We stop preaching. But when they do listen to us, we preach. My father used to have this saying.
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If I would say, well, Dad, that's not really fair. He'd always say this with typical Nebraska wisdom.
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Better than a poke in the eye with a, what, dirty stick. I guess that's an old -time deal.
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Better than a poke in the eye with a dirty stick. That's exactly what
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Paul was talking about as he preached the Gospel. You are going to take the Gospel and you are going to jam it in their eye and they're going to go, ow,
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I don't like that. It's like salt in the eye. It's like light in the eye. Go to the doctor. And a while ago,
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I was all stressed out a few years ago and I couldn't see as well, and I go to the doctor and he's going to test my eyes.
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So how do you test people for eyesight? I used to have 20 -10 vision. They put these big things and they jam them right into your eye and make you blind.
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No wonder I couldn't get that thing fixed. You squint. You don't like it. Light in the eye. Salt in the eye.
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That wasn't in the sermon, by the way. That was just added extra. Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.
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That's our Messiah that we preach. Raised from the dead. Friends, if you want everybody in this world to like you, they will, if you don't preach the
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Gospel. They'll really like you a lot. And you can justify it by saying it's friendship evangelism.
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It's kind of covert. I just kind of blend in a little bit. They think I'm a good person.
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I work real hard. And I'm kind of an honest person. Love my family. And then at the right moment,
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I kind of behind the back pass and give them a little Mickey. Slip one in.
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It just sounds stupid, doesn't it? It's okay to have friends.
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It's okay to be moral and upright and a good family man. But it's not okay to only be that.
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And if you need any other proof, who do you admire? John the Baptist?
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Aquila and Priscilla? Paul? Peter? Abraham? Jeremiah?
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Isaiah? Ezekiel? Jesus Christ? They're all preachers.
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And as I said last week, we get to preach the Gospel. The Gospel that Jesus saves by a
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Messiah hanging on the tree. And everyone's destiny will be determined by what they believe in Him.
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What they believe about Him. And I'll personally give you one last story.
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When I preach to people, I get nervous. And I get scared. Because I want to be liked. I don't like it when people don't like me.
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But when God gives me the boldness, and then I share with someone about this Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and if they'll turn from their sins and look to Him as a risen
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Savior, He will surely save them. When I walk away, I think I've just gone to heaven.
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Doesn't it feel good to preach the Gospel? You think I've told somebody the words of life, and I am an absolute no one, and God has let me preach the
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Gospel to them, and He might in just fact save them. I wonder, Sean's not here today, but I wonder how excited
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Sean was to hear Timothy's testimony. And I know something about Sean, and Sean is a nobody.
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He's just like us. And God takes a bunch of nobodies, and He uses them for His glory. When I play basketball,
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I pick the best guys on my team, because if you lose at the University of Nebraska pickup games, you will sit for three more hours the first time you lose.
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So when it's my game, I pick the four best guys. And I pick them big, and I pick them strong, and I know exactly, we just stay on the court that whole time.
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And then when it comes to changing the world and being salt and light, God says, I'm going to pick a bunch of absolute nobodies, so at the end of the day, no one will boast in God, they'll boast in you.
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They'll boast in you, God, not you. You have to get the right pointing right. And I love that. You say,
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I don't evangelize very well. That's why you're probably a Christian. Because God uses people like you.
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Well, you know, I'm not that influential, and people don't listen to me, and all these other things. That's why you're a
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Christian. I love it. If anybody ever thought I could be a preacher of the gospel, of the good news to anyone, let alone a congregation, when they first met me, or even as they meet me now, you would be flabbergasted.
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But I praise God, because He is the one that enables. He is the one who says to Moses, you know what?
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I'm going to talk. Don't give me any of this lip service,
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Moses. I can't do it. Because God is the one who enables. Oh, I'm starting to feel like a
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Southern Baptist up here. Woo! All right. How many people got to preach the gospel in the last week?
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Would you raise your hand? Good for you. How many people want to preach the gospel this week, if God enables them?
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It is the aroma of life to life, to those who are saved, and death to death to those that are perishing.
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And we get to preach the gospel. Sin, Savior, resurrected, and confirmed.
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Let's pray. Thank you, Lord, for the day. Thank you that we started off with the baptism, and then we have ended on your word, and now a response to that word by singing.
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And Lord, we would ask that anyone who is here today, who is trusting in somehow their own righteousness, they've got some kind of formula in their mind, some
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Albraic equation, that they can have a little bit of their salvation because of themselves.
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And not only by your grace, I would pray that you would smash that tower of logic in their mind.
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And Lord, that you would grant them newness of life. Father, I would pray that those that are here, that are trusting in their baptism, trusting in their goodness, trusting in their church attendance, trusting in their ministries, that you would help them shed all of that and trust in Jesus Christ alone.
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And may we not boast in wisdom, in brawn, in gold, but may we boast in you, the risen