00:00Hello everyone, it's William Chambers today. It's good to be here with you all.
00:03It's good to be able to talk about the Word of God with people who love to hear it.
00:07Let us dive in the Word.
00:09If I had a title for today's message, I would call it
00:12When the Gospel Doesn't Work and Why.
00:18Have you ever wondered how someone could hear the gospel their whole life
00:22and still never ever come to salvation?
00:25Jesus is answering that question right now by exposing the human heart in this text.
00:31Let us dive in.
00:32And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which said,
00:36By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand,
00:40and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive.
00:43For this people's heart is wax gross, and their ears are dull of hearing,
00:48and their eyes they have closed, lest at any time they should see with their eyes,
00:53and hear with their ears, and should understand with their hearts,
00:57and should be converted, and I should heal them.
01:00So Jesus is telling us that the reason why people can hear the gospel,
01:05hear the gospel, hear the gospel, and never ever come to it
01:08is because the gospel has a way of putting a demand on your life.
01:15You cannot hear the gospel, receive the gospel, and stay the same.
01:19And people don't want to change.
01:21So the gospel can be heard without being received
01:23because people resist the gospel.
01:26They resist truth.
01:27And the resisting of truth is progressive.
01:30People get strong in resisting the truth.
01:32It's not an instant thing.
01:34Jesus said,
01:35For this people's heart is waxed gross.
01:38This is something that has happened over time.
01:41They have heard the gospel,
01:43and waxed stronger and stronger, and pushing it down,
01:46the stronger and stronger, and ignoring it, and making it of no effect.
01:50There's a danger in hearing the gospel without responding to it.
01:55When you hear the gospel without responding to it,
01:58you build up resistance to the word of God.
02:02Oh, I get better and better.
02:04It's easier and easier for me to shove the word down,
02:07and suppress the word, and not heed it.
02:09Resistance is built up over time,
02:11when there is exposure to the word of God.
02:14I'm being exposed to it, but I'm refusing to surrender.
02:17No, no, no, no, no.
02:19Resistance is building up when you're becoming familiar with scripture,
02:23familiar with truth,
02:24but you don't want to obey none of the truth that you are familiar with.
02:29No, help us, God.
02:30The heart hardens itself.
02:32It waxes gross.
02:34It waxes dull.
02:35When we receive the knowledge of God's word,
02:38and we don't want to repent,
02:40we don't want to change,
02:41the word of God is asking for a change,
02:44and we say,
02:44no, no, no, no, no.
02:46The Bible says,
02:47and their ears are dull of hearing,
02:49and their eyes they have closed.
02:51The human heart has the ability
02:53to self-impose closure of the eyes.
02:57It's a self-imposed spiritual blindness.
03:00I don't want to see.
03:01I don't want to understand,
03:03because it'll put demand on me.
03:06I don't,
03:06so I'm giving myself
03:08a self-imposed spiritual blindness on purpose.
03:11I'm resisting the word so much
03:13that it's becoming a habit.
03:14Every time I hear something
03:15sound like that word,
03:16oh, it's a habit now.
03:17I just resist it,
03:18because accepting the word of God
03:20would cause me to have to surrender,
03:23and no, no, no, no, no.
03:24I don't want none of that.
03:25To see the word of God
03:27would cause me to repent.
03:30No, no, no, no, no.
03:31Don't want to change.
03:32Repent is turning from my ways.
03:33No, no, no, no, no.
03:34And turning unto God,
03:35I don't want to understand that word,
03:37because I don't want to change,
03:39because it's going to show me
03:39the need to change.
03:41Mm-mm.
03:41And I've told myself
03:43that I don't need to change at all.
03:44I've given myself a narrative,
03:46so I want to stick with my narrative.
03:47I'm not going to heed that word.
03:49I'm going to harden myself.
03:50So they shut their own eyes.
03:52They shut their own eyes in ignorance.
03:55I don't want to see.
03:56Their eyes, they have closed.
03:59And they've closed it for a reason,
04:01because they fear conversion.
04:03It says,
04:04lest at any time
04:05they should see with their eyes
04:06and hear with their ears
04:07and should understand with their hearts
04:09and should be converted
04:10and I should heal them.
04:12See, God is thorough.
04:15Before God ever will heal you,
04:17he turns the light on.
04:18You have to recognize
04:19that you are a sinner.
04:21He'll expose your sin,
04:22your wickedness.
04:23He'll expose your corruption.
04:25He'll expose that you're on the wrong way.
04:27And oh, no, no, no.
04:28I don't want that.
04:29He'll expose the false narrative
04:31that you have been living with.
04:34Before he ever heals you,
04:35there's an exposure.
04:36And if I have to go through that exposure
04:39before I get healed,
04:40I don't want any of it.
04:43Before God ever heals a man,
04:45it says that they fear
04:46that they will be converted
04:48and I shall heal them.
04:50God, before he ever heals.
04:52Healing means letting go of control
04:56and letting God take the will of my life.
04:59And I don't want to be,
05:00if I got to let God take the will of my life,
05:02I'd rather not have the healing.
05:03I'd rather learn to live with being broken,
05:06the pain of being broken,
05:07the pain of being messed up,
05:09the pain of being out of the will of God.
05:10I'd rather live with that
05:11than have God heal me
05:13because that means I have to let go of control.
05:16That means I don't have to let God touch me in places
05:18that I don't want God to touch me in.
05:21There's some places that I've justified.
05:23There's some sins that I have justified
05:24I don't want God to speak in those justified areas.
05:28I told myself that it was okay to do this
05:30and the word is saying something different.
05:31No, no, no.
05:32God's trying to touch me
05:33in places I don't want to touch me
05:34because God is the great physician.
05:36The great physician wants to cut out of you
05:39what's going wrong inside of you
05:41and place within you that which heals you.
05:44I don't want to go through spiritual surgery.
05:46That means changing my life
05:48and things will never ever be the same.
05:50There's some areas of my life
05:51that I'm protecting away from God.
05:53I got some protected areas.
05:55There's some places
05:56that there's some things that I bury.
05:57I don't want to hear about it
05:59so therefore I don't want to be healed
06:01because God is thorough
06:02and he's going to look at all my stuff.
06:04Uh-uh, no, no, no.
06:05So I resist healing.
06:06So I resist being converted.
06:08I resist being healed
06:09because of the light coming on
06:12because things will never be the same
06:14when the light comes on.
06:15I would have to admit that I need God.
06:20And I don't want to change things like that.
06:22Therefore, I will stay unhealed.
06:25And this is why the gospel doesn't work on some people.
06:29And this is why it doesn't work
06:31because men know that obeying the gospel
06:34would put a demand on their life
06:36and expose them.
06:37And they would have to change
06:38and things would never ever be the same.
06:40And they, so they don't want to have to go through all that.
06:43Help us, Lord.
06:44Help our hearts not be hardened
06:47and waxed gross to your word
06:49and shut our eyes
06:50because we don't want to see.
06:52Help us.
06:53We ask your help in Jesus' name.
06:59Well, as the word says,
07:01let us not just be hearers of the word,
07:03but let us be doers of this word.
07:06Let us be stewards of this word.
07:09Let us let this word dwell in us richly
07:11and I pray that God helps us to do so.
07:14Until next time, God bless.
07:38Let us
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