The Blind Will See || Victory Church [Book of John #25]

All right, good afternoon, everybody. This is the one o'clock crowd. Y'all are pretty lively this afternoon. I like that. I see a lot of young people here this morning. I like that, or this afternoon. That figures. You're young, you stay out late at night, and that's one o'clock. That makes sense, amen. Hey, if you have a Bible, turn to John chapter nine. We are in a series called the Book of John, and for those of you that are new visiting us, watching us online, we are going through the Book of John for the entire year of 2026. Pastor Johnson's been leading the way, and he is up in Tecula preaching, or actually just preached the last service there at Tecula. They had two services, and this is really kind of a midpoint of John. We are a little bit past the midpoint of the year. We will finish the Book of John by the end of the year, believe me, and we're just gonna cover this chapter, so I want you to, I would love for you to have the Bible in front of you so you can just kind of refer to it a little bit, but in the context of this, when we were preparing this message, the Lord began to speak to all of us about all the pastors of the campuses about this.

This is kind of a hinge point in the Bible. This is a hinge point chapter where something dramatic happens, a healing happens, a miracle. By the way, how many of y'all still believe in miracles? You believe in miracles? If you're new to our church, we believe in miracles. We believe in the supernatural. We believe in the Holy Spirit doing what he did back in the days of Jesus. Jesus said, the works that I did on the earth, you're gonna do also, and greater works shall you do, because I go to the Father. We can't do the works of Jesus without supernatural things. Amen? And so we believe in that, and all of us, at some point or another, have an encounter with Jesus, and a lot of times, after that encounter, it determines what we're gonna do for the rest of our lives. And John chapter nine is this turning point where God does a miracle. He'd been doing miracles up to that point. He'd turned water into wine. He'd multiplied loaves and fishes. He'd healed a lame man that was lame from his birth. He'd done a lot of things, and now he's about to heal a blind man who was born blind, and he's gonna use this as a teaching moment to the church because the church doesn't necessarily see themselves

as blind, but all of us, by the way, in case you didn't know it, everyone in this room, everyone watching us online, everyone in all of our services, every one of us was born blind. I don't know if you know that or not, but we were born blind, not physically blind necessarily, but spiritually blind. We didn't know God. We hadn't really encountered God yet, and many of us lived a portion of our life walking in darkness. Let me see how many of you walked in darkness for a season of your life. How many of you've walked in darkness? Those of you that didn't raise your hand, you're still in the darkness. You haven't seen yet. You're gonna see today, amen? That's okay. We love you. We don't care. What we want you to know is that we were all born blind, and when you come to the conclusion that I was blind, then you know you need a healer. You need Jesus, and so many people never really come out of blindness. They stay blind their whole life, and so as a result, Jesus uses this as a teaching moment,

so we're gonna pick up here in the very first verse of John chapter nine where Jesus starts talking. He says, he went along. He saw a man blind from his birth. His disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? In the religious world of that day, anybody that was sick was associated that they had to be a sinner. Something was wrong in their life or they wouldn't be sick. Neither this man nor his parents sinned, said Jesus, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it's day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming when no one can work. When is that coming? When is that happening? Is that coming yet or is it happening now? No, it's coming. It's not happened yet, but it's coming where no one can do the work anymore, where it's not gonna happen anymore, and so he's saying, as long as it's light, it's time to work. Everybody say work. Work is not a word that we associate

with coming to church on Sunday morning. It's a day we think we're off, but the reality is, if you look at the Bible, you'll see biblically, historically, that Sunday was not the Sabbath day. It was not a day that they worshiped God. In fact, if you go to Israel right now, I've been there many, many times, Sunday is the first day of the work, work week in Israel, in Jewish tradition. Can you imagine Sunday being the first day of work? Like we think of Monday, they think of Sunday, and so Christianity had to have some tremendous influence in that day because they did eventually switch over to. worshiping on Sunday, it would be like us worshiping on Monday. He is saying that the first day, basically you work for the Lord. Here he is saying, we have this time to work and we have to work while I am in the world because I am the light of the world. Now here is the good news, Jesus is still in the earth. He did physically resurrect and ascend into heaven, but here is what you have to understand about Jesus. If you are blind to this, hopefully you will see this today, that Jesus is still in the earth. Where is he? He is living on the inside of people that receive him. Not everybody receives him. A lot of people stay blind their whole life, but those who receive Jesus receive the light of Jesus inside of them. That is why Jesus would say over in Matthew in the great sermon on the mount, he says, you are the light of the world. You are the light because I live inside of you, you are a light. Now let your light shine while you are still in this earth. In other words, we are to live a life as a Christian where our light is shining, where people see Jesus inside of us so that we can be a witness of him. Then in John chapter 9 verse 6 it says, After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with saliva, and put it on the man's eyes. He did something very radical, revolutionary,

never been done before. Go, he told them, wash in the pool of Siloam. So the man went and washed and came home seeing. His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, Isn't this the same man who used to sit and beg? Some claimed that he was, others said, No, he only looks like him. But then he himself insisted, I am the man. I'm the one who just got healed. How then were your eyes opened, they asked. And he replied, This man they called Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He didn't know any religious jargon. He didn't go praise the Lord, glory to God, hallelujah, I got healed today. He didn't know anything about God. He just knew that there was a man named Jesus. He didn't know he was God in the flesh. He didn't know he was the Lord of lords, the king of kings. All he knew was he was a man. And he said, He just put some mud on my eyes and he told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed and then I could see. Where is this man, they asked him. And he says, I don't know. I don't know where he's at. So first thing he sees is Jesus as a man. Then he says in verse 13, they brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now this is where the encounter starts to take a different direction. This man's been healed of blindness. You would think that everybody would be celebrating his healing because he was supernaturally healed. But there was a group of people in the world called the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the modern day religious people of that day. They were the religious people. How many of you know we still have Pharisees today? We still have people today that are religious, but they don't know Jesus. They talk about Jesus, but they put Jesus in a box, in their religious box. I can't tell you how many seminaries and how many pastors have been taught and trained that Jesus no longer heals people today. They've taught and trained that Jesus no longer does miracles today. They've taught and trained that the Holy Spirit doesn't put his gifts on his people today. There are whole religious institutions made up of pharisaical people who believe in Jesus. They believe in Jesus, but they don't believe that the works of Jesus are still functional today. They've shut them down. I can't tell you how many people are like that in Christianity today. So they brought the man to Jesus. They brought the man to the Pharisees. Now the day of which Jesus had made the mud and opened the eyes was the Sabbath. Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. He put mud on my eyes, the man replied, and I washed and now I see. Some of the Pharisees

said this man that just did this, this miracle, is not from God. Why is he not from God? Because he doesn't keep the Sabbath. He doesn't align with our religious teachings. He doesn't align with the way we think. And they turned again. Others asked, but how can a sinner perform signs? And they were divided and they turned again to the blind man. What have you to say about him? It was your eyes he opened. And then the man made a statement that made the religious people mad. He said, he is a prophet. Now he's elevating it from a man to a religious figure, a prophet, which was really frustrating for the Pharisees because now he's saying this man, this prophet, has come and done something. that you can't do. He just healed somebody and you can't do that. And so these people were getting mad. They got really angry and they started calling them names. They started accusing them of blaspheming God and all this kind of stuff. And here's what the man said. All the man knew, he had never been to Bible school. He'd never been to cemetery. He'd never been to, he'd never learned, I mean seminary. He never learned anything about the Bible. But all he knew was one thing. Here's this one thing he said. All I know is this. I was blind, but now I see. I was blind, but now I see. You can't argue with that. You can't argue with that testimony. That's the one thing that people cannot argue with you about. They can't argue about what God has done in your life. They can argue with theology.

They can argue the Greek and Hebrew. They can argue all the different things that you may not be aligning with their personal philosophy of ministry. But they cannot argue with your testimony. And this man was sharing his testimony in the midst of a lot of people. Now, let me explain something that's happening right here because this is something that happens today. It's always happened down through history. People never put a name on it until recently, but now we're starting to see it talked about quite a bit called cognitive dissonance. I don't know if you've ever looked that word up, cognitive dissonance, but what it basically means is you have a shaped thinking, a form of thinking that's been developed through your personal experiences, the teachers who taught you, the parents who parented you, the friends that you associated with. All these things have formed a certain way of thinking in your mind that you believe is right. All of us have it. We all have it. And then coming in contact sometimes with something that happens in your life that doesn't make sense to you, that doesn't align with what you've been taught, doesn't align with how you've always believed, how you've always thought, and now you have cognitive dissonance.

You have something that goes on psychologically inside your mind where you're upset because now you're being faced with something that seems to be factual, but it doesn't agree with the way you've always believed. And what happens is to people, so many people do this, is you double down on what you believe and you reject the truth. You reject the truth of what you see with your very eyes because it doesn't align with your thinking. That's what was happening with the Pharisees. That's what happens with religious people. Religious people many times have been taught and trained and theologically equipped to believe a certain way, and then Jesus shows up and does things that doesn't make sense to their natural mind, so we take the supernatural and we dumb it down to the natural. And we make theologies around it, saying that, oh, that all passed away in the times of Jesus and the disciples. It's no longer for today. That particular philosophy is called cessationism and there's literally millions of people in the world that believe it. They don't believe in the miracles. And when a miracle happens, they explain it away. They explain it away as somehow that happened, but that's not God doing that. That's not Jesus doing that.

That doesn't make sense because that passed away. I was trained to think that way. Can I just tell you something? You're not in one of those churches. You're not in one of those churches. We still believe. We still believe God is still healing people today as much as he did back 2,000 years ago. I don't know about you, but I still need healing from time to time. Do you need healing? I still need God doing miracles in my life. And so this is the big conflict. It's starting to get really frustrating. He said, this one thing I do, I know I was blind, but now I see. Once you start to see, everything changes. Once you start to see God and see what he does and how he operates and how he functions and how he thinks, your whole life is transformed. And this is what was starting to happen. He's sharing his testimony and people were starting to consider whether maybe the religious way that they'd been going was wrong. So this made the religious people angry. So he goes on. They asked him, what did he do to you? How did he open your eyes? This is the religious people.

He answered, I've told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too? He knew the trigger. He knew that how to trigger these Pharisees, They got real mad, then they hurled insults at him. They said, you are this fellow's disciple. Can you imagine, this man was blind his whole life, now he's seen, and now they're hurling insults at him. We are disciples of Moses. We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don't even know where he comes from. The man answered, now this is remarkable. You don't know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. To this they replied, you were steeped in sin at birth. How dare you lecture us? And they threw him out. I can't tell you how many people have been thrown out of churches that didn't agree with their pharisaical belief systems because they believed that God is still the same today as he was yesterday and will be that way forever. I believe that. Do you believe that? God's still doing miracles.

Since that time, religion began to expand in the earth, and we now have 10,000, over 10,000 different religions in the world. In Christianity, we have over 45,000 denominations in the world, 45,000. That means that every denomination has a slightly different belief than the other denomination. The wonderful thing about it, I mean, the amazing thing about it is, you can read the Bible from the cover to cover, especially the New Testament, and you cannot find denominations in the Bible. Yet we've created them. Denominations are different belief systems within the same framework of Christianity. Literally, thousands upon thousands of people claim their theology is right and their denomination and everyone else's is wrong. And what happens is it causes great division in the church, and it causes the church to be arguing theology and philosophy instead of bringing people to Jesus. It creates Pharisees in modern day. And the reality is, in every church, listen to me, including Victory Church, has Pharisees in it. In fact, can I just go a step further and tell you that every one of us has a little Pharisee in us. Every one of us has a little cognitive dissonance. Every one of us has a belief system that we believe is right, and even when faced with facts and truths,

we'll still sometimes deny it because it disagrees with what we've always known. So, this encounter goes on in John 9, 35. Jesus heard that they'd thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, do you believe the Son of Man? Who is he, sir? The man asked, tell me so that I may believe in him. And Jesus said, you've now seen him. In fact, he is the one speaking with you. Then the man said, Lord, I believe. And he worshiped him. Jesus said, for judgment, I've come into this world so that the blind will see, and those who see will become blind. There's a great separation that's took place after that. From this time forward, we're living in that season now where there's a great separation between those who see and those who don't see, those who are blind and those who are able to see. You might be a person that's been healed of blindness, and you didn't even know it. You've been healed of spiritual blindness, and now you can see God in a new fashion because you have a relationship with him. You've moved from religion to relationship. But what we're finding in this scripture is there's some challenges that are taking place that everyone in the church is not aware of at the time, but it would take place for the next 2,000 years.

It would be the battle between relationship with Jesus and a religion with Jesus. It's very possible, it doesn't matter whether you come to victory or not, that we could have a little bit of religion instead of relationship. So let's talk through this a little bit. There's a couple takeaways here. Let me give you the first takeaway of this particular verse. Write this down if you're taking notes. Changed people change people. All right, so I want you to think about the day if you've given your life to Jesus. If you've never given your life to Jesus, today is your day of salvation. Today is your day. If you will allow the Lord to speak to you, he will open up your blind eyes and let you see him. But if you've already seen Jesus and you already know Jesus, listen. He's telling you when you've gotten changed, transformed, transformed. Here's the sign that you've been transformed. Listen to me. You change people. You change the environment. You change people around you. People are affected by the relationship you have with Jesus. You're the light. You're the light in the midst of the darkness. So when you walk in a room, when you go to work, when you go to your neighborhood, when you go into your family, there is a difference between you and those who don't know Jesus. There's a difference between people who see and people who are blind. Change people, change people. I'll give you a little story. So I got saved in 1982. Miraculously, a guide witness to me shared Jesus with me and I was rejecting him. I had the whole thing down. I knew better.

I know I don't need Jesus. I'd been in church. The reason I didn't go to church is because I'd been in church and I didn't like the people I saw in church. It was too religious for me. It just wasn't, I didn't see anything about relationship with Jesus. I wasn't experiencing that. All I was experiencing was religion and I didn't want religion. Do you want religion? I don't want religion. And so I'd left the church and I was pretty convinced I was right about that. And this guy started sharing Jesus with me supernaturally. He had done some things that kind of gotten into my life and as he's sharing Jesus with me, this is what happened. This is a supernatural thing that happened. He's sitting at his dining table. I'm sitting on the sofa and he's sharing Jesus with me and all of a sudden a light comes around him. Just a light, an aura. And I know some of you, you're sitting there, what in the world? That's because you're a Pharisee. That's how Pharisees act about supernatural things. I'm serious. You don't have to be religious to be a Pharisee. You can be a Pharisee in the world. You just don't believe in Jesus. You don't believe in the supernatural. But I saw this. You can't argue with my testimony. I saw it. I experienced it. There was no theology. There was no Bible school that taught me this. No seminary gave me this. I was experiencing that. And as I'm experiencing that, I'm listening to him and it's starting to have an impact on me. And I'm getting a little bit uneasy because it's starting to deal with stuff in my life called sin. At that time I was, what do we call it? The Bible calls it heathen. How many of you have ever been a heathen before? You know what I'm talking about. And I was a chief of heathens. I had lived that life for 22 years. So I reject, I argue with him. I fought with him. Even though I saw a miracle, I still argued with him because I had cognizance. I'd already made up my mind. I knew what I believed and I wasn't about to change what I believed because of a miracle. Just like these people. So I left him the next day and I drove down here to Atlanta where my parents were to visit with him for a couple days. And I visited with a friend of mine who was a stand-up comic. And I went out with him that night to watch his show. And then afterwards we had a night of debauchery. Do y'all know what the word debauchery means? I think you know what it means. You've probably all had a night of debauchery at some point in your life. And I had a night of debauchery and I came back the next morning and I was headed back to New York where I lived just for a couple of days before going back to Richmond. And I'm driving down the interstate on 85

and I get around Charlotte, North Carolina and I have another supernatural experience. I have a visitation in the van I'm driving. A visitation of Jesus. Now I don't see him physically but I feel him. I hear him speaking to me supernaturally and he starts to speak to me about my life. And over a period of about 10 minutes I start to listen and then I just can't resist it anymore. I can't resist it. I knew that without a shadow of doubt God was real and I surrendered my life to Jesus. Driving in a van by myself on interstate 85. I stopped in Richmond, Virginia to talk to the man who had originally witnessed to me to tell him that I had become a Christian. And immediately the very first thing out of his mouth is, I have a word from the Lord for you. A prophecy. I didn't know what a prophecy was. He says, I have a prophecy for you. And he says, the Lord has his hand on you. He says, someday you're going to pastor a great church. Now I'm only 22 years old. I'm a business person. Someday you're going to pastor a great church. He said it's going to be a very unique church. Some very unique things about it. And he says you're going to go through some trials the first few years but God's going to equip you and strengthen you and give you resilience to push through all the obstacles that it takes to plant this kind of church. And you're going to pastor a great church. this church and I you know you would think I would say oh that's awesome you know what I said no way are you kidding me I'm not gonna pastor a church pastors have to speak to people and and I have a fear of speaking to people publicly I had done a speech class at the University of Georgia one time and I almost fainted I was so nervous my whole voice was shaking like this and I got out from that after I spoke and I said I will never do that again don't ever say God I'll never do that again because that's the very first thing that God will make you do so I left there I went back home I didn't know anything about God I just knew I'd received Jesus I didn't have a whole lot of biblical theology in me yet I I didn't know the Bible so all I knew was God had saved me I was blind and now I see and now the first thing I see and this is what I noticed about people who get changed when they really get changed they want to share what happened to them they want to share what happened to them and so I started sharing what happened to me with people strangers people who are Muslims

people who were gay people who were who were of other religions people who were having trouble people who were just people that were highly educated people that weren't that highly educated and I would just share my story with them and I noticed that I would share my story periodically not everyone but some of these people would start listening and they would have a moment like I had with God where God would start to talk to them and they would get saved and I started seeing a lot of people get saved us I wasn't I didn't even know how to pray the prayer of salvation really I just knew that I need to tell them they need to surrender to Jesus and that's what they did and I would pray with them to do just to surrender to Jesus that's all I knew back then and I was leading people to Jesus and then one day I was in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania in a shopping mall and I met this total strange girl she came up to me I was in doing the business up there she came up to me and she started acting like she was interested in what I was selling but she was really just interested in me and she was flirting with me a little bit and she was attractive and so I started flirting back now keep in mind I don't know anything about Christian dating I don't know about it's not right it's not right to be with somebody that's you're not equally yoked with him I knew that was I didn't know anything about that I just I knew this girl she looked pretty and so I started talking to her and I asked her to lunch and we went to lunch and started talking and I took her to a movie that night with another friend of mine and the three of us got talking after this movie because the movie had a Christian theme in it and we were just talking about it and this guy was an atheist and he started dogging the movie and how stupid it was and Christianity this and that and I started defending Christianity in front of this girl who I barely knew she got uncomfortable she said I got to leave and so she got go out and get in her car so I followed her out there thinking to myself well that's good that's it for her she's not interested in me more she's found out that I'm a secret agent Christian we get in the car and she says I I'm a Catholic she says I'm a Catholic and I'm I'm not used to having religious conversations like this and I said well I'm not I

don't know about Catholics I don't really know what you believe but here's what I know this is what happened and so she shared my testimony with her and about an hour later after talking through this I said all I know is it I was blind and now I see and I gave her an opportunity I said do you think you should receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior this is our first date and she said yes yes I do and she got saved she got saved yada yada yada 45 years later I'm still married to that woman that's the same woman that I'm married to I led her to the Lord on our first date so I moved to back to Richmond the Lord told me to sell my business go help this little church so I moved to Richmond she decided to come down visit me and we started going to church together and I noticed something happened to me after after I got down to Richmond I stopped leading people to Jesus there was a season where it went dry where I wasn't getting anybody saved and and I didn't know why do you know why do you know why I stopped leading people to Jesus that's gonna shock you coming from a pastor I joined a church I joined a church and when I got into the church I started getting so involved and engaged in the church small groups Bible studies going to service we went several times Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. All my friends became Christians, and before long, I lost touch with lost people. Do you know that can happen to anybody? That can happen to you. You can get so consumed with church, you begin to adopt church-anity instead of Christianity. And that's what happens. That's what happens to so many people. They come to church. Now, church is not designed to do that, but the reality is there's a tension when we go to church.

There's a tension that begins to happen between the inside ministry of the church and the outside mission of the church. This is a tension every pastor carries, everyone that understands the call of God on their life carries that we have to make sure that the church is balanced between inside ministry and outside mission. Otherwise, if you make it all about inside ministry, listen to me, mostly what you will get is other church people leaving their churches coming to your church, and you'll be recycling Christians. Do you know some of you are recycled? You left another church, you came to Victory because it was a better church in your mind. And as soon as another better church comes along, you'll leave Victory and go to that church. We church hop, church shop, and that's how Christianity functions. And so many churches are built on recycled Christians instead of lost people coming to Christ. When you build a church on recycled Christians, eventually you stop winning people to Jesus and you start paying all the attention to the inside of the church, and you completely forget about the outside of the church. Y'all all right with me? It's you forget God changed you. Remember we were singing that song, I'm So Grateful,

remember that grateful song? Isn't that a great song? I mean, when you sing it, you resonate, man, you give me chance after chance, I'm just so grateful. How do you demonstrate your gratefulness? See, we think our demonstration is by going to church. Church is our demonstration, but the real demonstration of your gratefulness is you share what God has done for you with those who have not had that experience. Now, while you're clapping, while you're clapping, let me ask you a question. When was the last time you shared your faith with somebody who was not a Christian? When was the last time you shared your faith with somebody that you work with, or your neighbor, or your family member, or somebody that God just put into your life? When was the last time you shared your faith? You know, they've done a study on this in America that less than 2% of the church ever shares their faith. Less than 1% has ever led one person to Christ. You say, how do we get a church this big? Mostly recycled. Now, we determined a long time ago, okay, we can't be a church of recycled Christians. We have to be a church that's an army that's out there rendering people to Christ, amen? So therefore, every once in a while, we have to purge the religion out of us.

We can't be a church that's out there rendering people to Christ, amen? We have to purge the religion out of us. We can't let ourselves become religious. We don't want to be Pharisees, and sometimes it just slowly happens to us when we get into the church, and especially big churches like Victory. You can come in a big church and you go, well, look, they got plenty of folks. We don't need to bring anybody here. They got a lot of people. This is the least attended service of all of them. So, you have to go back and remember what God did in your life, and start sharing it with other people. Changed people change people. The second thing, religious people repel people. Religious people repel people. The Pharisees of that day were the religious people, and they didn't attract, they repelled. And as soon as Jesus, the real Jesus, the life-giving Jesus comes on the scene, and he heals a blind man, instead of celebrating what God was doing, they rejected it because it didn't align with their cognitive dissonance of religion. They had become so religious, they couldn't see what God was doing right before their very eyes.

Religious people repel people instead of attract people. Now, this is what happens a lot of times when we go to church too long and not share our faith. We start becoming religious. And how many of you have ever heard of the comedian Jeff Foxworthy? Let me see your hands. You've heard of him. All the white people raised their hands. He's a white redneck, I've heard of him. Black people, who? Jeff Foxworthy, who's that? Anyway, he's a white redneck comedian. He's famous in Atlanta, he grew up here. I know him personally, he's a good guy. He came up with the theme of comedy one time, maybe you'll remember this, you might be a redneck if. And then he makes all these jokes about rednecks. And I love it because I was a redneck, I grew up a redneck, so I know what that is. And so I started thinking, for some reason, when I'm preparing this message, the Lord reminded me of that, and he said, why don't you do a thing on, you might be a religious person if, or a Pharisee. You might be a Pharisee if. All right, so let me give you a few thoughts. And then I'm gonna mess with you a little bit because some of you do this stuff. But that's all right,

don't you want the religion delivered out of you? All right, we don't wanna come in here with religion, we want it purged out of us. All right, you might be, you might be religious if, when you talk to people, you say things like, glory to God, hallelujah, bless the Lord. Ha! I'm highly favored, blessed and highly favored. Where'd you get that? You didn't get that from the Bible. You got that from some religious preacher that you used to sit under, who pranced around the stage saying stuff like that. Every other word was glory to God, hallelujah, amen. Wait, amen! Hey, come on, amen! Amen! You know what I'm talking about, right? The only problem with that, that goes good in church, it doesn't go so good out there in the lost world. And if you can't understand that, you might think you're actually witnessing when you do that. Ha, you might be religious if your neighbors only know you when they see you walking through the neighborhood, stretching your hand towards their house, halabakashakadabodabasete, speaking in tongues. Some of you are laughing at yourself. You just did that yesterday. You might be religious if you, now this is gonna get a little personal.

You might be religious if you think that talking about politics is more important than talking about Jesus. That somehow you have to defend your political stance because it aligns with your Christian belief system, and you don't recognize that when you start to do that and espouse it as dogmatic, you begin to divide yourself from lost people. Lost people are quite frustrated with Christians right now because they've become so political. Politics have become their religion. There's two basic religions that are circulating in the world right now that keep people in bondage. One is social justice, and one is politics. Now, it's not to say that we don't believe a certain way about politicians, but when you get all political and then you sit to the point where I saw preachers doing this, especially during the last election cycles, if you don't say this about that and you don't say this about that from your pulpit, you should leave that church and go to another one that says this. Defining a church by whether they're Republican-based or Democrat-based. The Bible says that he builds the throne on righteousness and justice. That's the throne of God's built on those two principles. The democratic principles are usually more focused

on justice and ignore righteousness, and the Republicans are more focused on righteousness and many times ignore justice. And the devil has taken the two pillars that God builds his throne on and made them political parties opposing each other, dividing people across our nation. Because he knows a house divided, a nation divided against itself cannot stand. What if you lived your life with both righteousness and justice? What if both were important to you? Instead of being political, be biblical. Amen. I know, I know, I know. I know, I know what some of you are thinking. I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like. That's because you're a Pharisee. And you don't even know it. You don't even know it. See, some people think that politics is the way we're gonna change our nation. You don't change a nation through politics and government. You change the nation through bringing people to Christ. We, instead of praying for the politics to change, for God to send his fire onto the earth and revive America, awaken America to Christ, and that the church awaken to rend people to Christ. If the church did its job, if it mobilized itself, it is a sleeping giant, but it spends most of its time arguing about politics or social justice instead of preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost and dying world. Y'all all right out there?

Religious people repel people. And then finally, godly people share with people. If you're godly, everything that God's done in your life, listen, everything, you share it. He did it so you'd share it. He did it so you would share it. Every gospel ends with one statement of Jesus. Go. Everybody say go. Go. Get out of the church. Go. Go into the world and preach the gospel, the good news of Jesus. Preach to people. Now, don't preach like a preacher, but live a life that preaches the gospel before them. Live like Jesus. Look like Jesus. Touch people like Jesus. Engage in people's lives. Share the gospel. People ask me all the time, they've asked me after each service, well, how do you share the gospel? And I say, well, it's not really that complicated, but whenever I come across somebody that's not saved in my life, and I have to work at it because I'm a pastor and I'm spending way too much time with you folks and not enough time with lost people, so I have to forcefully and intentionally get out there and meet lost people. So whenever I do, one of the first things I do is instead of trying to preach to them, I ask them questions. I'm trying to discover where they are, what their needs are, what they believe in. So they say, well, I'm a Muslim. Well, I don't go, wow, you're just a believer. You're the devil. You're a Muslim. You're trying to bring those people into our country and change our country. No, I say, well, what do Muslims believe? What do you believe? And they'll start telling me what they believe. And I'll just keep asking questions. What do you believe about eternal life? What do you believe? Who's the savior? How do you go to heaven? All these kinds of things. What do you believe about all these things? And they love telling me. I'm giving them free reign. Evangelize me. I'm pretty confident in what I believe, but you go ahead, evangelize me. And after they've said everything they've said, they realize this is not a typical Christian. Most Christians are trying to convince me to not believe what I believe. And then I just say, well, you want to know what I believe? Half the time they'll say, yes. Half the time they'll just kind of be silent. And if they're silent, I don't try to force it. But if they say yes, I'll tell them what I believe. And I just get into conversation with them. It's not always that way, but it's most of the time I'm showing interest in them. I'm trying to add value to them. I'm trying to do something to open their heart before I try to put something in their heart. So many Christians try to put things in people's heart that's not open. You open the heart by loving people, by serving people, by just being a servant to the

people in your neighborhood, people in your job. What if you went to work tomorrow and instead of having a Bible study with your friends, instead of looking at your latest Christian podcast, you invited a lost person to lunch and you paid for it. Paid for it. I have a friend of mine who's very, very wealthy, so he can do this. He has every day, he gets his assistant to give him five $100 bills every day, every single day of his life. And every day he looks for people that are lost to give them to, to give $100 bills to. And he gives them to them just to bless them. Like if they helped him do something or they, just whatever they might've done. And it's in addition to any tip he might be giving, he just likes to give it to them because he finds it's just more blessed to give than it is to receive. And he told me, he says, I'm trying to become the richest person in heaven, not in earth. And you don't become the richest person in heaven by hoarding things and holding onto things and letting other people pay the bills. You become the richest person by constantly being generous, giving people things. And the more generous you are, you'd be surprised the more open people's hearts are when you do something for them versus asking something from them. All right. So the Lord gave me an illustration and we're going to kind of wrap it up with this illustration. Here, here, here's where the Lord told me that, told us, all of us pastors to do this. And so I brought something that I want to share. Y'all see this? Can y'all see this? Y'all like Krispy Kreme? Who wants some Krispy Kreme? Come on, who wants a Krispy Kreme donut? I know it's afternoon, it's going to spoil your lunch. All right, so let me just come down here and share a little bit with the congregation. This is just an illustration, so bear with me because it's going to take just a minute to do it. But let's just share with them. I want to use this Krispy Kreme to start my small group. All right, let's see here. One, two, three, four, five, six. Would you slide over here just for a moment so I can have my, this is my small group right here. Y'all young, man. Y'all eat Krispy Kreme, don't you? All right, all right, let me see. All right, everybody take one, just take one. This is my small group. Take a Krispy Kreme, it's all right. You can take it and you can eat it if you want to. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead. See, my other services, I had older people up here, they didn't want to take it. They don't want to, oh, I can't, that's not in my diet. You guys can get away with this, eat this all day long, won't put a pound on you.

All right, so now I have a few left. I have a few left. Y'all go ahead and start eating. Let me go share this with somebody else. No, I changed my mind. I only have room for six people in my life. Actually, I only have one, two, three, four, I only have five left. Somebody snitched a donut out of here. Sorry. And I'm going to start with you. Let the last be first. You take another one. Let me give my small group, I just want to keep you in my little group right here. And so, you can't take it, all right, here, you take it. There, that's a good boy, thank you for doing that. So everybody gets two, so two in my small group. All right, so this is my group. I have no more room for anybody else. But wait a minute, is there something over here? Oh my goodness, what's this? What is this? Oh my goodness. One, two, three, four, five, six. Oh, y'all want some Krispy Kreme? I'm sorry. I only have room for these six people in my life. Here you go, take a whole box, just take the box by yourself. Box for you, box for you, come on, come on, box. Yeah, man, yeah, yeah, there you go. I'm blessing my small group. We're going to have meetings, we're going to have Bible studies, we're going to have podcasts. I'm going to mentor you, we're going to get close. Forget these people over here, all these other people that are lost and going to hell. We're going to go to heaven with these Krispy Kreme donuts. But what would happen if you suddenly got the revelation of what I've been talking about today? What would you do with those Krispy Kreme donuts? Who wants a Krispy Kreme donut? Come on, get out there and share them. Share them with everybody else. Raise your hand if you want a donut. Now all you people sitting in the back, I'm sorry.

That's what you get for sitting in the back. It pays to be up close, amen? You see what's happening right here? Listen, you see what's happening right here? Listen, this is what I want you to do. This is what God wants us to do. God has blessed you with something that's changed your life. Why would you just hold it inside with just a few people? Wouldn't you share it with everybody you could share it with until you ran out and you didn't have any more left? What would happen if God's people shared the gospel like that? What would happen if we spent our lives sharing the gospel instead of microcosm of the gospel with just a few? The church, the people that go to church, our Bible study, our small group, things like that. There's nothing wrong with having a small group, nothing wrong. But don't be a small group that stays small. I remember I was talking to this pastor one time and I was trying to help him grow his church. He had a church of about 700 or 800 people. And we're sitting there having dinner and his wife looks at me and she goes, Why would we want to grow our church? And I'm like, whoa. He says, we have such community, we have such closeness, everybody knows everybody. That's what the Pharisees did. We don't wanna reach people. We wanna expel people. We wanna keep it to ourselves. What would happen if the church really shared the gospel outside the four walls? What would happen tomorrow if you went to work and you invited somebody to lunch, or you just started getting to know them? What would happen if you went up to a neighbor

and you took them a pie, or you cut their grass, or you did something to serve them? What would happen if you called a family member that used to be mad at your whole life, and you just said, listen, I don't have time to be mad at you. I don't have time to stay offended at you. I forgive you, or you forgive me, please, and let's move on in life inside your thinking, because you need Jesus. How many of you got family members that need Jesus? They're in your family because they're waiting on you. How many of you got neighbors that need Jesus? You got neighbors in your apartment complex, in your neighborhood that need Jesus. They don't need another bumper sticker on your car and another sign in your yard about Jesus. They need to know you. They need to know you. Now here's where the rubber meets the road, and we'll kind of wrap it up with this thought. Here's where the rubber meets the road. If you're here today and you're hearing this message, and then you go home, and you just kind of put it on the shelf, and you don't do anything with it, listen to me, you're slowly becoming a Pharisee, and you don't even know it. God wants to deliver our church from a pharisaical religious spirit.

We have to purge it from time to time. We have to keep it this way, because so many times when we get in church, we just become about the church, and the speaker, and the message, and the music, and all that kind of stuff, and we forget that the primary purpose of our life is not going to church, it's being the church. That's the primary purpose. Jesus spent very little time in the church. He spent most of his time out there with lost people who criticized him, the religious people. He said, listen, guys. He says, I don't have time to minister to you. You're already saved. I'm trying to be out here with those who are sick, those who are hurting, those who are broken, those who need me. That's who Jesus is, and by the way, when you receive Jesus, he lives inside of you. He wants to do that through you. You have to break that religious spirit off of you. You have to break it. You have to break that self-serving selfishness all about me, and my little four, and my six, and my eight, and get into this place where whoever you are, wherever you go, you are representing Jesus. You are the light of the world. You're the light. So I wanna pray for you.

I wanna pray for you. Would you just bow your heads for just a moment? Let this sink into us. Let this really sink deep inside of our hearts because these are the kinds of teachings that when you come across them, you rarely see them in church anymore today. Most people are just trying to build the church, get it bigger, get it more powerful. The power of the church is not how many people come to the church. The power of the church is how many people go from the church and preach Jesus to a lost world. That's the strength of a church. Thank you, Lord, for delivering us from religion and pharisaical thoughts. Deliver us from things that we've elevated above the true gospel of Jesus Christ. Break that spirit off of us, God, and show us how to be bolder in our faith, how to be more open to share the gospel. Give us more courage than we've had in the past. Break the spirit of fear and intimidation off of us. Deliver us from the fear of man and help us to be the witnesses of Jesus to the people, the world that we live in and we operate in every day. Bring us an anointing on our lives, Lord, to share the gospel, even today and tomorrow, every day. Lord, just think of opportunities to share the gospel.

Lord, I'm praying that, and I'm also praying for those of us who are here. We're listening to this message, but we can't quite connect to it because we're still blind. We haven't seen Jesus like we need. We haven't experienced Jesus. Maybe you're here and you recognize, today my life is not surrender to Jesus. I have never fully given my heart to Jesus. And here God is speaking to you right now. He's talking to you. You can reject Him or you can accept Him. And when God speaks to us, we have a choice to choose to follow Him, to live for Him, or to choose to go our own way. That's your choice. We can't make that choice for you. But I just wanna tell you that if God's ministering to you this afternoon and you say, God, He's talking to me right now. He's talking to me about changing my life, changing the direction of my life, repenting of my sins and the things I've done in the past and letting God forgive me. If that's you today, all across this building, and even those of you watching online, I wanna pray for you. What I'd like you to do is just acknowledge it by raising your hand, saying, that's me, Jesus.

That's me, thank you. Lots of you, okay. You can put your hands down. Let's pray this prayer. This is a prayer that everybody prays. It's a starting point, it's not the end, but let's say it together. Jesus, right now, I repent of my sins. Everything in my life where I've chosen to go my own way, I ask you to forgive me. I believe that you are Jesus, the Son of God, who died on a cross for my sins and rose from the dead. And today, Jesus, I make a conscious decision to surrender my life to you. Would you come now, come into my heart, change me from the inside out into a new person from this day forward, in Jesus' name. Now, let's take our hands and lift them above our heads. Lord, we just, we surrender to you. This is an act of surrender. We surrender to you, Lord. Lord, I thank you that as we surrender, you now put your hand on us and anoint us to go about doing good and healing all who've been oppressed by the enemy. Anointing us as soul winners, people who win people to Christ, who bring people out of the darkness into the light. Thank you for changing us and helping us to change others, in Jesus' name.

And everybody said amen and amen. Come on, let's celebrate with all the people that gave their hearts to Christ. Thanks for being a part of Victory Church on the Pando app. We hope this content was a blessing to you, but we want you to know that you're not done yet because we want to hear from you. So send us a letter and tell us things like what God is doing in your life, how we can pray for you, or even content that you would like to see us create in the future. We just want you to know that we see you, you're important to us, and we'd love to continue to create some things in the future that will bless you. So send us a letter and we hope to hear from you soon.