Good evening. Let's start by
singing out of the Spiral Hymnal, hymn number eight. Number eight. ["Spiral Hymnal"] O Lord, our hearts and souls
aspire To lift up from this earthly mire O may we think of heavenly
things And know the joy Thy presence brings Lord, let us see the Savior's
face, And let us taste of Thy sweet grace. May open ears Thy glories hear,
And may we smell Thy fragrance near. Be pleased to open heaven's
store, And on our heads thy blessings pour, All wretched, poor, and
needy we. Where can we go if O may this day be blessed the
most, That Jesus Christ becomes the host, To feed our souls with
living bread, And with our souls in joy to wed. Thank you, Adam. I've never been
so blessed by that hymn and seeing what a call to worship it is.
Every line in it is, we're asking the Lord to do what we hope and
need for him to do this hour. I want to read a very brief psalm,
Psalm 133. We're going to be looking at
a verse in John chapter 9 relating to the unity that we have with
Christ and with one another in Christ. And I thought of this
psalm, Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to
dwell together in unity. It is like the precious ointment
upon the head that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard,
and went down to the skirts of his garments. This unity can
only come through the anointing of the Holy Spirit on Christ,
our high priest. And as the dew of Hermon and as the dew that descended
upon the mountains of Zion. For there, the Lord commanded
the blessing, even life forevermore. Let's pray together. Our gracious and merciful Heavenly
Father, What hope and comfort and joy and peace we have when
we think of what you've done in sending our dear son, that
we might be made one with him and with thee. Lord, that the
separation that we have by nature as a result of our sin has been
put away Lord, that you've given us a common salvation, not only
with Christ, but with one another. Lord, we ask that you would pour
out the oil of your spirit tonight, that the dew would fall here
upon Mount Zion. Lord, that you would bless us
with your presence, that you would open your word and open
our hearts and reveal to us the glory of Christ and enable us
to worship. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Let's stand together and sing
hymn 124 from the hardback hymnal. I don't think I have this one
in the sound box, so we'll just do it a cappella. King of my life, I crown thee
now, thine shall the glory be. Lest I forget thy thorn-crowned
brow, lead me to Calvary. Lest I forget Gethsemane, Lest
I forget thine agony, Lest I forget thy love for me. ? Lead me to Calvary ? ? Show
me the tomb where thou wast laid ? ? Tenderly mourned and wept
? ? Angels in robes of light arrayed ? ? Guarded thee whilst
thou slept ? Lest I forget Gethsemane, Lest I forget thine agony, Lest
I forget thy love for me, Lead me to Calvary. Lead me like Mary through the
gloom. Come with a gift to thee. Show to me now the empty tomb. Lead me to Calvary. Lest I forget Gethsemane, Lest
I forget thine agony, Lest I forget thy love for me, Lead me to Calvary. May I be willing, Lord, to bear
daily my cross for Thee. Even thy cup of grief to share,
Thou hast borne all for me. Lest I forget Gethsemane, Lest
I forget thine agony, Lest I forget thy love for me. Lead me to Calvary. Be seated. Let's open our Bibles together
to the Gospel of John, Chapter 9. John, Chapter 9. Several Wednesday
nights now we've been looking at this miracle. And I think we'll be here for
a while longer. There's so much in this conversation
that our Lord has with the Pharisees and with his disciples and with
this man that received his sight. Tonight I want us to look at
verses 15 and 16. Verses 15 and 16. Then again, the Pharisees also
ask him, the Pharisees are interrogating the man that had his sight restored. The Pharisees ask him how he
had received his sight. He said unto them, he put clay
upon my eyes and I washed and I do see. Very straightforward,
simple answer, that's all he knew. You know, one of the things
I see in verse 15 is that if we walk in the light that we
have and we believe the revelation that has been given to us, the
Lord will give us more light and reveal more of his glory.
And we see that with this man all the way through. He still
doesn't know who healed him. He doesn't know who the Lord
is. the Lord's gonna reveal himself. But he's not intimidated by these
Pharisees. He just asks them very clearly. And he's gonna gradually testify
more and more of the Lord as he gets more understanding. And that's just, that's what
growth and grace is. And we walk in the revelation that we have and
the Lord reveals more. The other thing I see in verse
15 is that these Pharisees weren't interested in who healed him. They wanted to know how it was
accomplished. And unbelief is always more concerned
with the procedures of religion than it is with the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, the Pharisees are revealing
themselves for what they are and this man is revealing himself
for what he is and what he will be. And verse 16, therefore said some
of the Pharisees, the Pharisees are debating among themselves.
And I can't help but to think that the ones that objected to
the opinion of those Pharisees who thought that the Lord could
not be sent from God was none less than Nicodemus. For Nicodemus
says the same thing in chapter three that this Pharisee says
here. What did Nicodemus say to the
Lord when he came to him by night? He called him rabbi, he said,
we know that no man that you've been son of God for no man can
do the great things that you do except God be with him. So,
Nicodemus was looking at the evidence of the Lord's works
and concluding that he had been son of God. But now, and then
later, you remember Nicodemus is the one who, with Joseph of
Arimathea, take the body of the Lord from the cross and prepare
it for burial. And he, Nicodemus, risk everything
as far as his relationship with the other Pharisees in doing
that. But he's beginning to do it here.
He's beginning to risk his position in the religion of his day by
defending the Lord. Now the reason I want to bring
these points out is because the message I want to try to try
to preach is, Christ unifies and Christ divides. And the gospel
always has one effect of the other. You can't be neutral when
it comes to the gospel. And so some of the Pharisees
said, This man is not of God because he keepeth not the Sabbath
day. Another said, how can a man that is a sinner do such miracles?
You see this, these other Pharisees saying exactly what I just, maybe
it wasn't Nicodemus, the Lord hasn't really told us, but he's
saying the same thing Nicodemus said. And there's a division
among the Pharisees. And there, the last phrase is
really what I want to try to bring out tonight. There was
a division among them. I hate listening to preaching
that causes me to try to find assurance
of my salvation by looking to myself. And the last thing I want to
do is put you under that burden. When I do, when I am tempted
and I do try to find hope of my salvation by fruit inspecting,
I can't see anything in myself but my sin. I do hope that for the gospel's
sake and for your sake that there is some evidence of grace that
the Lord gets the glory for but I can't see it in myself. I see
it in you. But you see the point is that
when we try to look to self to get assurance of salvation we're
doomed to come to one of two conclusions, either we're going
to be very discouraged with what we find or we're going to be
brought into a spirit of self-righteousness and take comfort where we ought
not to be taking comfort. Now, that having been said, there
is something that shows the evidence of salvation and And that has
to do with what the gospel does in me in terms of uniting me
to something and dividing me from something. The gospel, you
see, the gospel has that effect. The gospel unites believers to
certain things and certain ones. And at the same time, the gospel
divides us. It always has that effect. As
I said, you can't be neutral about the gospel. The Lord Jesus
said, he that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth
not with me is scattered abroad. So the gospel either gathers
us or it scatters us. We must Always remember who makes
us to differ. Why would we believe the gospel?
Why would we suffer the division among men in this world and in
our own flesh? Why would we suffer those things?
And why would we be blessed with such unity in Christ and with
one another and with God's word? Why would that be? Only because
the Lord makes us to differ. Otherwise, we would scatter abroad. The Lord said, think not that
I have come to send peace on the earth. I came not to send
peace, but a sword. I am come to set a man at variance
with his father, and a mother with her daughter, and mother-in-law
against her daughter-in-law. I don't like division in my own
life. I don't like conflict. I try
to avoid it at all costs. I guess some people feed off
of that sort of drama, but for me it's very stressful. I like
I like people to like me. I don't like to be anybody's
enemy. I want to be at peace with all
men whenever possible. But by God's grace, he does not
make it possible for me to be at peace with someone when it
comes to compromise in the gospel. If I have to suffer the criticisms
or the harsh attitudes or the division among men or whatever
it might be, for the gospel's sake, I have no choice. So what is it that the gospel
unites us to? And I probably should rephrase
that question and say, who is it that the gospel unites us
to? We have some assurance of salvation
and that we've been shut up to Christ. We've got no place else
to go. The Lord has, has united us to
the Lord Jesus Christ. And we didn't have anything to
do with that. But we don't have a choice about it. We love it
that way. We rejoice in having no place
else to go. We know that the Lord gave us
an option we would choose otherwise. What a blessing it is. We have no righteousness apart
from the Lord Jesus Christ as our righteousness. And notice
how I said that. We could say we have no righteousness
apart from the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, but
we have no righteousness apart from the Lord Jesus Christ as
our righteousness. Let us be careful not to reduce
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ like these Pharisees did.
How did this happen? We want to know the doctrine.
We want to know the procedure. We want to know the principles,
not who did it. I have no payment for my sin
apart from the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Apart from his
sacrifice on Calvary's cross, I cannot be justified before
God. I've been shut up to Christ.
The unity that the gospel gives us is union with the Lord Jesus
Christ. We have no wisdom outside of
Christ. We have no righteousness. We
have no justification. We have no sanctification. We
have no holiness apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. He that sanctifyeth and they
that are sanctified are all as one. He is our sanctification
before God. We have no redemption. Turn with
me to 1 Corinthians 1. 1 Corinthians 1. Look at verse 30. But of him, and that first him
is God the Father. Of God the Father. not of me,
not of a decision I made or a choice I can't, you know, of God the
Father, are you in Christ Jesus? It is God that puts us in Christ.
Who of God is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption. that according it is written,
he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. We glory in Christ. God the Father has united us
to him. He has put us in Christ and he's
put Christ in us so that as he is, so are we. We stand before
God in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and he gets all
the glory. We didn't, we didn't do, there's
a unity. The gospel unifies and the gospel
divides. And the first thing that we must
rejoice in is the unity that God has given us in Christ through
faith. We have a unity with God's word. We can't We can't go anywhere else for
a final determination as to what the truth is. We can listen to
the opinions of men. We can read commentators. Billy Argaropoulos over in St. Pete, they had a bad leak in
the room of his house that had his office in it. And he called
me the other day, the hurricane, and he called me the other day
and said, I've lost all my library. I said, well, Billy, come over
here. You can have mine. You can have mine. I've got a
pretty good library, and it's got some good stuff in it that
I used to read. I don't read it anymore. I told
him, I said, you can have it all. I appreciate what I heard one
preacher say when he said, the word of God sure does shed a
lot of light on the commentaries. And it's so true. It's so true. Well, I occasionally will look
at something if I want to know what a word means or something
like that. But we compare scripture to scripture.
And the longer I preach, the more I realize You know, God's
Word is our final authority. What sayeth the scriptures? That's
the only thing that matters. And whatever God says is what
we believe. And the Bible's not complicated.
It's really not. You know, we don't... We don't
need creeds and confessions. We don't need the opinions of
dead theologians. We have the living word of God
and we have a unity with God's word that gives us great hope
and comfort when God says it. We just respond with amen, amen. Only the gospel does that. These Pharisees were looking
for something to do. They were looking, they knew who the
Lord, they knew who had performed this miracle. And they were trying
to find a way to prove that he wasn't sent of God by how he
performed this miracle. And as far as they were concerned,
the means by which he used to perform the miracles was a violation
of the Sabbath. And so their logical reasoning
was that anyone sent of God would keep the Sabbath. This man doesn't
keep the Sabbath, therefore he must not be of God. That was
their logical reasoning. But they, the thing they'd never
considered was, what is it to really keep the Sabbath? Have
we made the Sabbath, as we saw last, two Wednesday nights ago,
I guess it was now, have we made the Sabbath a work? And they
had made the Sabbath a work. So they didn't consider, you
see, they had a faulty premise For their line of reasoning,
they thought wrong of the Sabbath and so they came to the wrong
conclusion from a bad premise. And men still do that today.
They'll hear us preach and they'll say, well, we know. that God
loves everybody. We know that Christ died for
everybody. We know that man has a free will. So if what he's
preaching is contrary to those presuppositions that we know
are true then he must not be of God. That's exactly what these
men did and that's exactly what people do today and they justify
their rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ based on that That type
of reasoning. Truth is the Lord used many means
to accomplish his miracles. Sometimes he just spoke the word.
I will be thou made whole and they were cleansed. Sometimes
he made mud and sent the man to the pool of Bethesda. I mean,
the Pool of Siloam. Sometimes he went to the Pool
of Bethesda and dealt with people there. He used a lot of different
means. Sometimes he used the means of
a touch. Sometimes he used the means of a fishing net or a fish. Sometimes he took fish and loaves
and and blessed them and multiplied them to feed thousands. You see, it's not the means that
we need to be. God has two means that he uses
to accomplish his saving grace, and that's his Holy Spirit and
his Word. And if we go back and look at
each one of these miracles, we'll find that there's There's something
in each one of them that illustrate those two things. God is spirit
and they that worship God must worship him in spirit, in the
power of the Holy Spirit, according to the revelation of God's word
and the truth of the gospel in the fulfillment that the Lord
Jesus has made by his life and his death. So, those are the
means. Now the circumstances surrounding
those means would change for each one of us. Every one of
us has an experience and a testimony that would differ from one another
but we're in unity. You see, we don't argue over
the circumstances that God ordained for us to have to go through
in order to bring us to Christ because our question to one another
is not how it was done, but who did it. Who did it? You see, the focus is on the
person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul said, I know whom I have
believed and I'm persuaded that he is able to keep that which
I've committed unto him against that day. Those who want to divide
over the gospel always always are looking to the how
rather than the who. And those that are united in
the gospel are rejoicing in the who. Who do men say that I am? Well,
some say that thou art Elijah or John the Baptist or one of
the prophets? Whom do you say that I am? And
Peter's gonna be the spokesman for the whole group of disciples.
And I'm sure there were several times when the disciples hung
their heads when Peter started talking and thought, oh, Peter.
But you know what, I'm sure that this time, this time they were
all shaking their heads. Yes, yes, that's what we believe. What Peter just said, thou art
the Christ, the son of the living God. And we know and are sure
that you have the word of eternal life. We've got no place else
to go. And they were in total agreement about who the Lord
Jesus was. and he is the one that unites
us. We're united together in Christ so that whatever differences
we might have, see religion focuses its attention on ceremonies and
formal rituals and emotional experiences and something as simple as walking
an aisle. You know, we've got to see how
this is done. We've got to be able to observe
something with our eyes and experience it in order to know that it's
real. When God does a work of grace, he does it by the power
of his Holy Spirit in the person of the Lord Jesus in our hearts. And to the contrary, everything
that we might want to attach to that in order to have an experience
only takes away, it only takes away from the power that the Lord would get the glory for. This healing was contrary to what
these men thought was true. What they thought was true is
that everyone that is from God keeps the Sabbath. This man doesn't
keep the Sabbath, therefore he's not from God. The truth is that everything
that we think by nature about God, about ourselves and about
salvation is wrong. We come into this world thinking
far too low of God, far too high of ourselves. We come into this
world believing The salvation is by works. And everything we think by nature
has to be changed. And that's what repentance is.
Repentance is a work of grace. The word repentance means to
change your mind. And that's what the Lord does
when he reveals Christ in us. He changes our mind. He changes
our mind about who God is. God is holy. We thought we knew
something about him and now we know that he's beyond, he's unsearchable,
he's beyond finding out, he's glorious. He's other than we
are. He's completely holy and sovereign
and omnipotent. The Holy Spirit changes our mind
about who we are. We thought that there was something
good in us, there was something we could do to show some work
of grace and we could make a decision, we could perform something and
now we realize everything I put my hand to is sinful. Only he
can do it. We thought, well, there's a decision
we can make, there's a prayer we can pray, there's something
we can do. And then the Holy Spirit gives us repentance and
he causes us to see that salvation's of the Lord. It's of the Lord. From my election, it's all of
God. In my redemption, it's all of
God. In the revelation that God makes
to me, it's all Him. In my regeneration, that's all of
God. I'm seeking after God. He arrested me. Just like he
did Saul of Tarsus on the road to self-destruction. He arrested
me, knocked me off my high horse. That's all of God. My sanctification. We used to think, well, it's
something I can do to improve my holiness before God and make
myself more sanctified. And now we know that all of our
sanctification is a work of grace done by God. My glorification,
my entering into glory. He's going to have to do all
of that. We thought we knew something.
Now we realize that we don't know anything as we ought. We
don't know God as we ought. We don't know ourselves as we
ought. What do we really know about sin? What do we really know about
salvation? What do we really know about what happened at Calvary's
cross when God made Him who knew no sin to be made sin for us
that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him? When God poured
out the fullness of His wrath on His Son and satisfied His
divine justice, what do we really know about that? We can't understand
it. We can believe it. We believe
it. We have unity with the scriptures
and whatever God says, we believe and we rejoice in it. Whatever
it all means, whatever it all means, we believe it. We believe
it as God has revealed it. We have, this is the evidence
of our unity with Christ. They thought, you remember Naaman
when he came down from Syria to be healed by the prophet and
the prophet told him to go to the river Jordan and wash seven
times and Naaman, the scripture says, was wroth and he turned
and he looked to his servant because Elijah wouldn't even
come out. He sent his servant out and Naaman
said to his servant, he said, I thought that he would come
out. He was offended. He was the commander
of the greatest army in the world and he was offended that this
little prophet living in a cabin out in Dothan wouldn't come out
and meet with him. I thought, well, that's our problem,
isn't it? It's our problem. These Pharisees,
they said, we know his father and his mother. This is Jesus,
the carpenter. We know who he is. Well, they
didn't. We know his father, Joseph and
his mother, Mary. They named the father and mother.
No, you don't know his father. If you knew his father, you'd
know him. John chapter eight, the Lord
Jesus said, if any man keep my sayings, he shall never die. And they responded by saying,
he's got a devil. Does he think he's better than
our father Abraham? He's dead. Not in the way the
Lord was talking about it, he wasn't. No man can be greater than our
father Abraham. We know that you're of the devil.
We know that you're not of God. Men come to conclusions about
things they think they know. But apart from the revelation
of the Holy Spirit given to us in the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ, according to the revelation that's been given in the scriptures,
we don't know. We don't know anything. And we
can't know unless we're taught of God. The gospel scatters those who will not come
to Christ. And the Lord tells us why they
won't. He tells us in John chapter three, he said, light has come
into the world, speaking of himself. But men loved darkness rather
than light because their deeds are evil. The irreligious living an immoral
life won't come to Christ because their deeds are evil. They'd
have changed the way they live. The religious living an outwardly
moral life won't come to Christ because their deeds are evil.
And in coming to Christ, they would be exposed for what they
are. but they that do come to Christ confess that their deeds
were wrought by God. They were performed by God. What
is the deed? He said, by deed of faith. My
trusting Christ was a work of grace. My repentance, the change
of my mind that God gave me, it was all a work of grace. The
Lord has united me to Christ. He's united me to his word. He's
united me to the truth. And he's united me to God's people. We began this service from Psalm
133. Behold how good and how pleasant
it is when brethren gather together in unity. It's a precious thing. The very thing that divides unbelievers from the gospel unites
believers not only to Christ but to one another. And what
a blessed unity that is. Turn with me to Ephesians chapter
4. Ephesians chapter 4. Verse 1, I therefore the prisoner
of the Lord beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation
wherewith you are called with all lowliness and meekness and
long-suffering, bearing, forbearing. That word forbearing means put
up with one another. We got some things to put up
with, with ourselves and we got some things to put up with one
another, don't we? Those fleshly differences that
we might have, just put them aside. You've got a unity in
Christ that overshadows, not only makes those things insignificant,
it makes them irrelevant. It makes them irrelevant. Endeavoring, endeavoring to keep
the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace For there's one
body and one spirit even as you are called in one hope of your
calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father
of us all who is above all and through all and in you all. You read the New Testament and
the Lord tells us that the bond and the free Now that's the slave and the
slave owner. What do they have in common? What did Philemon, the slave
owner, have in common with Onesimus, the slave? And Onesimus ran away
and when Paul sends him back, he tells him, receive him as
a brother. Philemon still owned Onesimus as a slave, but now
he's a brother in Christ. What did they have in common?
Nothing. What did the Jew and the Gentile
have in common? Nothing. And yet the New Testament
churches were made up of Jews and Gentiles alike. And they
had to go through their fleshly conflicts, but that's the reason
that the Lord's giving us these words. You know, put those things
aside. You have a unity in Christ that's precious. and that the
world knows nothing about and that you can't have with anybody
else in the world. So just put those things aside,
they don't mean anything. The Greeks were proud of their
philosophy and their education. The barbarians were just that,
they were barbarians. And yet, they met together in
unity and worshiped the Lord Jesus together in the same churches. It's the reason why the Lord
tells us Greek, Gentile, bond-free, Greek barbarian, Jew, Gentile,
bond-free, male, female. These groups had nothing in common.
We think sometimes, you know, we might be a different culture
and a different mindset about, you know, with one another. All
these groups were completely opposites. They never would have
had anything to do with one another until the Lord gave them unity
in Christ. And now their hearts are knit
together in the gospel and they love one another and they forbear
one another. They put up with each other and
whatever differences they might have otherwise, they have a unity
in Christ that overshadows everything. That's what the Lord's telling
us here. This is the evidence of our salvation, is it not?
Child of God, you meet a believer you've never met before from
another fellowship. And you talk to them for five
minutes, all of a sudden, you're closer to them than you are to
your own blood family that you've known all your life. You see, we're not looking to
our works. to get assurance of our salvation
but there is evidence of salvation and the evidence of salvation
is what does the gospel unite you to and what does the gospel
divide you from? Because it has that effect. These
Pharisees were divided. Nicodemus, a leader of the Jew,
an outwardly extremely moral man in the same church with that
immoral woman at the well and worshiping Christ together. Blind Bartimaeus, a poor, dirty
beggar in the same church with Zacchaeus. And they were in the
same church. Both those men lived in Jericho
in the same church. with a rich publican by the name
of Zacchaeus, and they worshiped God together. You see, this is
the effect of the gospel. You wouldn't find any other setting
anywhere else in the world that would draw together, not just
in toleration for one another, but in love with one another.
In love with one another, such diverse groups of people. This
is the effects of the gospel, is it not? We love the brethren. We get aggravated with one another. You know, when Peter was brought
before the Sanhedrin, they said that they were ignorant and unlearned
men, a common fisherman. but they took notice that they
had been with Jesus. Saul of Tarsus, on the other
hand, was a Pharisee, extremely well-educated. He was a Greek,
a Roman, I'm sorry. He was taught by Gamaliel, the
leading scholar of the day. And here we have Peter and Paul. two extremes united together
in Christ. What does the gospel unite me
to? And what does it divide me from?
It divides me from all false gospels. It divides me from any
message of salvation, any message of salvation that adds anything
to or takes anything away from the Lord Jesus Christ. It divides
me from anyone who hangs the hopes of their salvation on anything
other than the revelation made in God's Word. They're trusting
a tradition. They're trusting a creed. They're
trusting the opinions of dead theologians. They're trusting
something other than what's... You see, we're united to God's
Word. We're divided from anything else. We're united to God's people. And we have. We have no interest
in trying to find common ground as far as our salvation is concerned
with unbelievers. particularly with religious unbelievers.
You know what I'm saying. Your religious friends and family
members will say, well, let's just agree to disagree and let's
find some common ground that we can agree on. No, there is
no common ground. And we can't even agree to disagree.
The Lord has made me to differ. He has divided me. And I can't
make that compromise. I'd love to be at peace with
you on any other subject. And I'll make concessions and
compromises in any other subject that we might be at peace. But it's not possible when it
comes to the gospel. The Lord has divided me and he
has united me. And these Pharisees used fear
and intimidation to try to get this blind man to compromise. They had made it clear that if
you believe that Jesus is the Christ, you're gonna be excommunicated.
You're gonna be, and that was in Judaism, that was being sent
to hell. You're gonna be put out of the
temple and you have no hope of salvation. Now what men do, Why is that
such a strong motivator? Because by nature,
we love the praise of men more than the praise of God. By nature. And men will sacrifice their
union with Christ to be at peace with other men. I can't do it. Can't do it. This blind man said no. I have to confess what's been
revealed to me. And the Lord Jesus said, if you
confess me before men, I'll confess you before my Father which is
in heaven. And if you deny me before men. Now, all of us have had opportunities
to speak the truth when we've remained silent. Perhaps there
was a part of us that just didn't want the conflict or We didn't
know what to say. And I suppose that we could say
that in those cases, silence is denial. But I don't think
that's what the Lord was talking about here. I think he was talking
about that when the Pharisees do to you what they did to this
blind man, how did he do it? And who was it that did it? and
we change what we know to be true in order to be at peace
with another man. And God says, you do that, I
deny you before my Father which is in heaven. No, the Lord won't let us do
that, Willie. You know, I was thinking about
even the thief on the cross, the two thieves and the one the
Lord had mercy on and gave him grace to cry out, Lord, remember
me when I come into thy kingdom. And the other one continued to
cast aspersions against the Lord Jesus with the crowd. And that thief who died in his
sins was more willing to forsake the hope of his salvation. What
did the other thief say to him? Do you not fear God? Do you not
fear God? Now the man didn't answer, but
here's the answer. No, I'm more afraid of these
people down here than I am of God. And they're all casting,
they're all railing on Christ and I'm just gonna join my voice
with them because I love the praise of men more. He was dying
and he would not go against the crowd. to confess faith in Christ. He was being influenced. That's just how sinful and how
blind and how spiritually dead we are if the Lord doesn't show
mercy upon us. We will go to our grave rejecting
Christ in order to be at peace with men. What a blessing it is when the
Lord makes us to differ, not only to differ from the unbeliever,
but to differ with the unbeliever by making us one with Christ. Our heavenly father, thank you
for your word. Pray that you'd bless it to our
hearts. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Adam. 186. Let's stand together. 186 in the heart back. The Church's one foundation is
Jesus Christ her Lord. She is His new creation by water
and the Word. From heaven he came and sought
her to be his holy bride. With his own blood he fought
her and for her life he died.