Welcome to the Liberty Baptist Sermon Archives.
The message you're about to hear was preached at Liberty Baptist
Church in Easton, MA. You can find out more about us
or contact us at my libertybaptist.org or just look
us up on Facebook. And now we hope that this
message from God's word will be a blessing to you.
So I'm going to have you open your Bibles tonight to John
Chapter 9. John Chapter 9.
I have a couple of things I'll tell you health wise, it's kind
of unique. One is since I've come back from
Hungary. We do not have.
AC like they do in the States and it's just killed my voice.
I can't. Hardly talk.
I feel like I constantly have a cold.
And if you've ever been over that missions department over
there, brother, it's an air conditioner blowing right in
your face the whole time. This is sparkling water.
And it does actually help. So I'm having a little bit hard
time talking. It won't stop me from yelling at
you, but I still have a little bit of hard time with it.
And my nose is running and everything else.
So I apologize for that. And I'll tell you something.
Else kind of interesting Brother Rivero might find this and he
won't. He won't care.
But I mean, some of you might find this interesting.
So when I came back they. Thought I had skin cancer so
they had I had a spot in my head and.
They burned it off. And they gave me these pills,
they gave me 4 pills and I take 1 pill a week for four weeks.
And then they gave me this, this shampoo.
I started taking it and I started growing here and it's
the weirdest. Thing I was as.
Bald as any one of these bald guys.
I would. I would have been the baldest
guy in the room. I'm.
Telling you right now. This was shiny and so in some of
the old pitches, you see any old pitches out there, brother,
you'll see this is and it's so I don't know if it's going to keep
on going. It's not intentional.
It's just what they. Gave me for that they burned the
spot off and they gave him this shampoo and I'm going to enjoy
it while I got I'm thinking about getting a comb.
I might something new, you know. So John Chapter 9, if you're
able, I invite you to stand with me as we read the word of God
and then we'll go before him in prayer.
John Chapter 9 and the Bible says and.
As Jesus passed by. He saw a man which was blind
from his birth, and his disciples asked him, saying,
Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, than he was born
blind. Jesus answered, Neither hath
this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the.
Works of God. Should be made manifest in Him.
I must work the works of him that sent me.
While it is day. Then night cometh when no man
can work. As long as I am in the world, I
am the light of the world. And when he had thus spoken, he
spat on the ground and made. Clay of the Spittle.
And he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and he
said unto him, Go wash in the pool of Siloam, which is by
interpretation sent. And he went his way therefore,
and washed, and came seeing, and the neighbor, the neighbors
therefore, and they which before had seen him, that he was blind,
said, Is not this he that? Sat and begged.
Some said, this is He, others said He is like him, but he
said, I am He. Therefore said they unto him,
how were thine eyes open? He answered and said, A man that
is called Jesus made clay and anointed mine eyes and said unto
me, Go to the pool of Siloam and wash.
And I went and wash and I received my sight.
Then said they unto him, where is he?
He said, I know not. And tonight the title of my
message is spit and dirt, spit and dirt.
Let's pray. Lord God, I just thank you for
this opportunity. We have to come before you this
evening. And I thank you for Liberty
Baptist Church being here. And there was a time when there
was no church in this area that I knew of that preached the
gospel. And it's so happy to see what's
going on here. And I pray God that you just
open our hearts tonight to the word.
Whatever you would speak to our hearts about tonight, I pray and
ask God that you would use me as your servant.
And I pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
You may be seated. So there's a number.
Of things that have. Stuck out to me about this
passage and there are some things that you know, one of the
things I find very interesting sometimes.
I I find a passage and I have a. Particular message on my heart,
but along the road of. Getting to that verse, there's
all. Kinds of little things that
stand out to you and one of the things I.
See here. Is that when Jesus?
Passed by and he saw. A man which was.
Blind from his birth. OK, so this man did not see
Jesus. Jesus saw him, and what I find
interesting about that is if you consider, I believe that the
first church. Was with the Lord.
Jesus Christ, he was the pastor, and that's when the church
began. And if you can imagine as a
pastor, as a church planner, as an itinerant pastor doing the
work of the ministry, you're going into a community, you're
looking at who can I use, who can I get?
Who can we persuade? And sometimes the people with
some of the greatest problems, we don't even really, you know,
we, they're kind of in the background.
We see them, we notice them, but we don't directly.
Take notice of them. And here is a man that saw
Jesus, that could not see Jesus, but Jesus could see him, and
Jesus is looking for him. And he said he saw a man that
was blind from his birth. And here's the thing, Jesus knew
he could fix that problem. He knew he had the answer for
that man. Now, what touches my heart about
this? I enjoy social media.
I really do. I mean.
I. Imagine years ago there was a
time when the telephone first came out and there was preachers
that probably called it the Devil's Voice Box.
I don't know. And they said people are going
to use that to. Gossip and there's people you
can do evil. With any form of.
Communication, but you can also. Do good.
And so I actually was. Preparing for an article which
I'm not sure is going to be published or not right now, but
I was preparing an article about this Generation Z and who they
are. This is the 13 to 30 years old.
And if I got? It right unless I'm saying it
wrong. If my daughter was here, she'd
correct me right away. But if and I.
Use her for all these important teenage facts.
She's a she's a whiz. And this thing about this
generation is this is the generation that has grown up
without with all. The social media.
And all the telephones, you know, I graduated high school in
1980. We did not have DVD's.
We did not have CDs. No one had a cell phone, no one
had a personal computer. And the only remote control we
had. Was your mom and dad?
Said go over and change. The channel you said they going
dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk.
You know, and that's all we had at the time.
That's the generation I grew up with.
And there's a lot of preachers in America that are from that
generation. And some of the preachers from
even the robust and growing and sturdy works of this country are
men of that generation. And they don't really get these
young people. But think about that age, the 13
to 30 years old. And I was doing some research on
that, and I realized this is the generation of people that a
certain percentage of them do not like to to communicate face
to face. They don't.
And people will walk into the restaurant and they'll see six
of them sitting around the table and they're all on the phone.
You say, what are they doing? What's the matter with them?
Why don't they look at each other?
They're communicating. That is their language.
I didn't walk into Hungary and say, what's the matter with you
people? Why don't you speak English?
That's how they are communicating.
You know, there are 17 million people that they estimate within
that group of people in America who will never communicate to
you unless you send it by text. So this is the future of our
country. And people say, what are we
going to do about the future? We are not going to reach them
if we don't learn their language.
We're going to have to learn. You know, I talked to pastors
out. There.
And they're like, well, I don't do that, let my daughter do
that. I let my son do that.
And my wife takes care of all those things.
Listen. It doesn't really kill you to
learn how to type with your thumbs, you know, and talk to a
young guy and say, hey, really, I'd like to see you come to
church and learn how to communicate to these people.
But we have come where we put ourselves in a box and we say
these are the people we're used to.
We're not looking for the blind. Jesus is looking for the blind
because he can make them to see. And I I see people on social
media. See, I'm losing my voice.
Sorry. I see people on social media and
they talk about how wicked those people are.
That's your target audience. Those are the ones that need the
gospel. God didn't tell us to go into
all the world and tell all the Christians how well they're
doing. He told us to win the lost.
Those are the people you're looking for them.
They have our flag, they're waving, they have an
opportunity. You're saying, how are we going
to reach them with the gospel of Jesus Christ?
We're going to tell them about Christ and how he loves them and
what a difference He can make in their life.
What made you? Who you?
Are is Jesus Christ? We need to look at this lost,
wicked, sinful world and say, what can we do to win them to
Christ? How can we communicate to them?
I don't want to compromise the gospel.
I don't want to compromise my doctrine.
There's a lot of churches out there to say that, oh, we accept
you like you are in sin and bondage, blind, without hope.
Look at all the ways that Jesus describes the lost world.
We don't want to accept that. We want it to be better.
We want them to have life and as Jesus said, and life more
abundantly. We want them to know a better
way, not the old way that we have taken and wrinkled up and
stuffed it into a can we now call a church.
We want them to know that you can live a holy and godly life
and have fellowship with Christ and love every minute of it and
have joy in your heart because of who you know.
So we need to reach out to this world.
We need to stop separating ourselves.
From the group. We're trying to reach, you know,
when I was over in. Hungary, we had such an unusual
ministry there because we had Debertson University and
Debertson University. Had a medical.
Program and this is what they did, they said.
If you can, they had a one year condensed.
Undergraduate program. And if you could pass that
program and it was difficult, they'd let you go right into Med
school and the medical. School.
Was in English and on the international scale of
universities. They're rated in several of the
universities here in Massachusetts, they're rated
higher. They're well above.
University of Massachusetts in Boston, so it's a good school.
And when I was over there I checked their.
Annual tuition and the last time I checked it.
Which was several years. Ago, but I don't think it's
changed that much. It was $6000 for the year.
So if you imagine going and getting a medical degree for
six. $1000 a year. They draw.
Them from all over Asia and Africa.
And we have a lot of young people who come up from Africa
and they come to our church because we were the English
speaking church in town and I had young people come from.
From South Africa. And from Kenya, I had a young
man in my church. Joshua, wonderful young man.
Super. Smart.
Studying and. He got a degree.
In computers, and he's working for IBM over there in.
Budapest and super fine young man.
Wants to stay there in Hungary. Because it's a lot safer and
nicer than where he lives in Kenya.
He loves it, but he wants to go back to Kenya and, as he says,
find a good Kenyan woman. But still, he's got family there
and. He sends his money.
Back home and he. Tries to help out his family.
And he's doing very well. I had a young man from Uganda.
I led him to Christ, and I had a girl that came from.
Vietnam I. Had a boy that came from North
Korea. Came to our church.
How is he ever going to hear the gospel?
I had two girls that came to our church from China and the
Chinese would have. Names like Z, ving or some weird
name we couldn't didn't sound. Normal it was.
Hard for to say that. And so they would take names,
and one of them called themselves Joy and the other one
called themselves Grace. And I had them come over for
Thanksgiving and I had meals with them, stuff like that.
And and my family. Kind of try to take in these
students and we try to help them out.
And I remember one of these girls, Grace, you know, she got
saved and as soon as she got saved, they pulled her right out
of there. Took a break back home to
Communist China. I guess her family didn't like
it. The young girl I had coming from
South Africa, her she spoke 9 languages really.
Super smart girl. Her dad was some kind of wild.
Like charismatic preacher, that was.
Even on TV and stuff down there. And she came to me and said,
Pastor Kearney, I know we're not following the Bible.
I'm reading the Bible. My dad's teaching is not what
the Bible says. And so she got.
Saved and. And but you couldn't stay in our
church. Family pressure pooled around
the church. So we had all those problems.
But you know, at least we get the opportunity when people to
Christ and do all the work we can.
I had a group of about 6 Muslims came to our church.
And we invited some people. We heard through the Grapevine
they might be coming out and I don't know why.
But for some reason they have a tradition, Hungary, that on New
Year's Eve, everybody eats hot dogs.
I don't know why you go into the store and there will be bins of
hot dogs. You can go in there and buy the
hot dogs and it's just a thing I don't really get.
It and I make my own. Beans.
I make American style BBQ beans. You can't buy it over there and
I'd make them myself. It'd take me a couple hours to
cook them and they were always very impressed with that.
They all wanted to know how to do it.
And so. I get hot dogs and beans and.
Stuff. But I knew these Muslim people
were coming. So you know what I did?
I got Turkey. Dogs because they won't eat
pork. So they came in.
And they said, oh, we can't eat that.
I said they're Turkey. Dogs and.
So we can eat. That so they had hot dogs, they
had fellowship, they heard the gospel, we talked to him about
Jesus and how he's the Messiah and they came in.
One of the young men came to me afterwards.
He said This is the First Christian Church I've ever.
Been to my. Into my life.
And he said, And I like it. Listen.
I didn't get them back. They came through, as many of
them do in the university thing. They came, they left, but boy
did we make an impression on that young guy.
I want to do that. I don't want to turn the world
away. I want to find a way into their
heart. So they.
Can meet Jesus. Because that's what somebody did
for me. Jesus is still the way.
The thing that would answer this guy's life is the Lord Jesus
Christ. The thing that would make
everything good for him is the Lord Jesus Christ.
The thing that would make him. Be what he needed to be.
Was the Lord Jesus Christ and I want.
You to notice here he goes on. He says.
Interesting, they said. They asked him.
Who did? Sin, you know, that's not an
unusual question. It sounds kind of like
judgmental or something people might think.
But really even in our society today, some people are blind
because of sin. And if such was the case back
then. But this guy?
From the time he was born was in darkness to glorify Christ.
Neither have this man sin nor his parents, but the works of
God should be made manifest in him.
But you say what a horrible thing he had to go through his
whole life being blind. But imagine being born blind and
then you see. Could there be any?
Better gift from God. To open your eyes one day and be
able to see what a blessed thing.
And he says I must work the works of him that sent me.
While it is day, the night cometh when no man can work.
So here's the thing that's interesting.
Jesus gives this illustration. Let's work our way through this
a little bit. I must work the works of Him.
While it is day, the night cometh when no man shall work.
What's the night he's talking about?
You think he was talking about that night coming?
I don't think so. I think he's talking about the
end of this age. See, the Bible teaches us that
if you're saved, according to First Thessalonians chapter 4,
verses 16 through 18, the trump of God will sound.
Jesus Christ is going to meet us in the air.
He's going to rapture us out of here.
And the work that we have in this ministry right now in
churches like that across the world.
Is going to be done and we know what happens at night time I.
Don't know about you, I know some people work third shift.
I tried working third shift, it was awful but.
What we do we rest, we get some sleep and we.
Love it. There's going to be a time when
we won't. Have to open the church doors
and go outdoor knocking and and and talk to others and tithe and
clean the building and put together John and Romans and
whatever it is you do in this local.
Church. There's going to be a time when
that's because it's going to be. The time of rest.
So that is the night in this day of his illustration, in this
metaphor that Jesus is using here.
You have the daytime, you have the night the.
Night is when nothing else happens to do.
So what does that make this now? The day.
This is the day, and the day is when you're supposed to do the
work. So for us.
In this world. Right now, this is the time we
work. And serve the Lord.
We are in. The daytime of our eternal
existence with Christ. And I like to think to myself
that, you know, God doesn't make us.
Do everything he could. Make us to do if he wanted to.
He. Allows you to have free will.
And so I would imagine if you would ask the pastor, pastor,
which days would you like us to skip church, what do you think
he'd say? What do you think?
None of them let. Me tell you something.
When you're a pastor, you're sitting back there in your
little office or in at your desk in your cubicle and you're
studying that book of Hosea and you get that second point and
that sub point and you know this is a killer.
This is the one man. Wait till everybody hears this.
This is so good and like you're. Coming in and.
You're like, I can't wait to tell him this and you're getting
up there and then no one comes. When I was on the mission field,
I have Priestsha, my wife, but she got it whether she liked it.
And it's hard, you know, encourage your pastor, encourage
your workers, take care of them as much as you can, but also be
faithful. You should be faithful for the
people that are here at church cuz it always encourages them
here when there's people here. That's what Hebrews chapter 10
and verse 25 is teaching. That's not forsaking these semi
yourselves together, but more as you see the day approaching, as
you see the same thing, the same thing this day approaching of
the end times. There is still being spelled out
a little bit different way, but so much more as you see the day
approaching, not forsaking, exhorting one another, building
up one another, helping one another, teaching others to be
godly. So these are some reasons, but
also when you're serving here and you have to make a choice.
You know, there have been times in my life when we were in
desperate times and I let my kids have that last piece of
dessert or something like that because I wanted to be happy.
And once and twice I remember a few times they caught me giving
me that and they knew their dad loved them because I was
sacrificing for them on my level, sacrificing for them.
Right now in this world, you're going to have some little time
period in your life. If you are unusual person, you
might live well past 100 years old, but most of us will be gone
long before that. But during this little period of
time, this is the only time you have to make a sacrifice for the
Lord to demonstrate your love for him.
Love God, love Christ, love your fellow believers, love your
pastor, you know, encourage the man of God.
And if he's you know, what's really hard is when your
preacher has to go and someone else feels the pulpit and
they're like, this is my one shot this month.
You know this is. They're like, hey, I did.
I got. This message and they're all up
there and they show up and there's like nobody there.
And it's like, you know, so defeat, love the guy that puts
his heart to bring in you a message from his heart and love
this world by doing what you can while you can, because each one
of us has our own way. You know, we had a guy came to
the house the other day to fix our boiler at the Parsonage.
I went over there, Barbara said. There's a.
Guy over here fixing the boiler. He'd.
Come over here. So I said sure.
So I went over there. His name was Richard.
He said he had found Christ. From his testimony, it sounded
like he had, but he hadn't gone to church anywhere.
He came to our church this morning.
All I did was tell him some things about what we believed
about the Bible. He was so excited.
He hadn't gone to church. He was looking for a church.
He was reading his Bible. Anybody can do that.
You go to church. It could have been.
You just talking to people about Christ and letting people know
that you're a believer. You know, here's the thing.
I like history and I read a lot of things about history and
there's something here about history I want to share with
you. This is about the Battle of
Gettysburg. After the Battle of Gettysburg,
the discarded rifles were collected and sent to Washington
to be inspected and reissued. Of the 37,574 rifles recovered,
approximately 24,000 of them were still loaded. 6000 had one
rounds in the barrel. 12,000 had two rounds in the battle. 6000
had three rounds in the barrel. 1 rifle, the most remarkable of
all, had been stuffed to the top with 23 rounds.
Guy was scared, he was panicking and he was stuffing bullets in
his gun. He got 23 rounds in there and I
can tell you right now you are living in a country.
Where you can go on the Internet?
You can hear some of the best preachers, even preachers that
you have. You can hear Brother Davis.
I know you have Brother Davis in here.
I don't know who else you've had it.
Once in a while I see stuff like that.
You can hear these beats. You can go out there and listen
to them. You can Great, great teaching.
You have Bible studies and we are loading our gun.
Loading our gun. Loading our gun, take a shot.
Emptying your gun don't get to heaven and said well my gut is
full. Empty it out while you have a
chance. So let me get to the point of
this passage that really stood out to me.
It's a spitting dirt. I find that amusing and
interesting. I know.
Then another passage, Jesus just spoke to people.
He spoke to a man about his daughter and said she's healed,
go home, she's healed. Spoke to other people and healed
them with Just tell him you're healed, they're healed.
Another one he touched. His eyes touched his eyes.
He was healed. This one, he did something very
unusual. He spit on the ground.
Now he had to have some serious spit to make clay.
And let me tell you something. Think about that, OK?
Think about 30 something AD city of Jerusalem.
Animals. All over the place, people
trudging back and forth. We won't even get into the the
water problems and the sewage problems and everything else,
but just a disgusting place from our perception.
I think we think you'd be interested to go back to one
time until we smelt it. We probably run back to The Time
Machine if we had an opportunity.
It's sitting there. This has got to be a very
disgusting thing. Jesus reaches down within the
reach of Christ. I can't imagine anything worse
than he could have. And you can look on.
You can. You're not going to find any
scientific journal. That's going to say clay, when
properly applied to eyes, will bring back blindness and it's
not going to happen. And if it was?
Anything that was more disgusting than that dirt at his
feet, I can't imagine what it was.
And he picked it up. And he grabbed that dirt and if.
That wasn't bad enough. He spit in it and he spit enough
to make clean. I can tell you right now if my
mom. Was in the air.
It would have been trouble. She would have knocked that
right out of his hand and said don't put that in my kids eye.
I can tell you that right now. Jesus made spit and dirt.
And he used it to make a blind man to see.
And I think I look at that illustration and I.
Think to myself. If Jesus can take spit and dirt
and make a blind man to see. What could he do with us?
Can you imagine? What could he do with your life?
What could he do with your testimony?
How could he? Use you.
You know, the one unique thing about the properties of that
spitting dirt in that clay was it was moldable and Jesus had
complete control over it. And I have to think to myself,
maybe we may not think of ourselves as anything more than
spitting dirt. Your pastor likes one of my
illustrations When I was a kid and I went to the lighthouse at
that time was Baptist Temple. And I came in and let me tell
you something, when I came into that church, I had nothing to
offer that church. I didn't walk through the door
and they didn't say, oh, that guy's going to be the pastor one
day. I was the pastor of that day.
But as a 15 year old kid, I was involved with every worldly
cardinal thing a 15 year old kid could do when his parents
couldn't see him. And I walked into that church
and they treated me like a special person.
And I, I tell people, I came in, I was so lost.
I never been to a Baptist Church.
I was confused about what was going on.
I walked around and, and Brother Turner was preaching and I'd
come in on the bus ministry and he was talking about his wife
Riva and all those kind of stuff.
And I ran home and I said to him, I'm not, you're not going
to believe it. The priest is married.
I mean I was like this these. Guys are so weird.
And I walked down the aisle and when I went to sit down I
genuflected before I sat down and and when I left I went over
to Brother Turner and said thank you Father Turner for the lovely
mass. I mean, I was. 100% and I was as
carnal as I could be. I was 100% and for in this in
the eyes of some churches and some church.
People, they might have looked at me.
And saw me nothing more than like one step above St.
Urchin. And they might have thought,
what are we going to do with that guy?
And you may not see yourself as anything more than spit and
dirt. And Jesus says, I'll take it,
I'll take it. And if you're moldable and you
don't let them have your life, he says, I can take that and I
can make the blind to see. And Jesus didn't look at the
blind people and say, why are they so blind?
Anybody can find a problem. Jesus was in the business of
fixing problems, and we can fix the problems around us.
We can't change the whole world, but we can help our neighbor.
We can help our children. We can help the people of our
community and share Christ with them.
We can help the people we know that really just want to know
the truth, even though they'll never admit it.
And we could say, God, do what you will with me and I'll let
you have it. God will use it.
He can use spit and dirt. He can use me.
Thank you for listening to the sermon from the pulpit of
Liberty Baptist Church. If this message was a blessing
to you, or if there's any way we can serve you, please let us
know by contacting us at info@mylibertybaptist.org.
Or you can visit us this Sunday at 800 Washington St. in Easton,
MA. May the Lord bless you as you
grow in His Word.