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Now if you will, turn with me in your Bibles to Mark chapter 4 verse 21 through 34 as

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we look at three parables that the Lord has given to His disciples and to us.

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And as we look at these disciples, we need to take into account the world that we live

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in.

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And as we look up here, I can tell you what they mean.

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I think what's really important is we look at these parables, then we look at the world

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around us and what's in our hearts about the Kingdom of God.

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And I dare say that there's a lot of people who, well, they're either suspicious about

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what goes on in the Kingdom of God or they don't trust what's going to happen.

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First reasons, current events, personal experiences, but let's look and see what Jesus says about

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His Kingdom.

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He said to them, do not bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or bed.

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Instead, don't you put it on the stand for whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed

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and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.

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If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.

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Consider carefully what you hear, He continued, with the measure used, it will be measured

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to you and even more.

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Whoever has will be given more.

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Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.

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He also said, this is what the Kingdom of God is like, a man scatters seed on the ground.

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Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does

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not know how.

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All by itself, the soil produces grain, first the stalk, then the head, and then the full

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kernel in the head.

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As soon as the grain is right, he puts the sickle to it because the harvest has come.

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Again he said, what shall we say the Kingdom of God is like or what parables shall we use

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to describe it?

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It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all the seeds on earth.

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That when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big

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branches that the birds can perch in its shade.

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And with many similar parables, Jesus spoke the words to them as much as they could understand.

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He did not say anything to them without using a parable, and when he was alone with his

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own disciples, he explained everything.

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Let's pray and ask God to bless the reading of his word.

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Our Heavenly Father, we ask now that you inform our minds, move our hearts, so that

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we will be your followers.

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Help us to see your grace in all of this and your mercy.

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I make this prayer in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

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Amen.

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Now back in the glory years of the FSU Miami rivalry, national championships were often

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determined by that game.

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And for years, Florida State had a little bit of a problem, wide, wide, wide left.

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And here's what one of the football players said from the FSU.

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When we play Miami, we think we can win.

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They know they can win.

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Now what's he saying there?

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He's saying the difference is not about physical ability, it's what's inside of us, the confidence

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that we have in what we can do.

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Now that is true in a lot of fields of endeavor.

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It's true for the Olympians that we see.

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It may be true for the businessmen as well or the teacher.

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But it is also true in the kingdom of God.

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It's what's going on inside of us.

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And let me tell you, what is it that retards the growth of the kingdom of God?

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It's often our own dispositions, the way we think and feel about what's going on in the

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kingdom of God.

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And you have people today who go to church, but they're just not concerned about the kingdom

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of God.

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It's something that is done out of repetition.

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They do it because their parents did it.

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They have come to put on a show so that they look like good people.

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And this is true of people who say they're Christians, but they're really nominal Christians

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because there is no desire for the kingdom of God.

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It's like in education.

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You can do all the fancy tricks of learning on computers, but yet if a child doesn't have

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a heart to learn, he's not going to learn and truly love to learn.

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Well, today, we want to look at three parables, three parables which expose what is going

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on in our hearts and the reason we do not want to see the kingdom of God grow.

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We're going to look at the problem and then what we need to think about.

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So let's begin here with enemy number one that retards the growth of the church.

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Apathy.

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Apathy.

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That's one big enemy that we have that can be within sight of us.

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I remember growing up in high school.

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We had pep rallies.

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And you know, after about the third or fourth pep rally of the season, everybody's just

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doing the same thing, rah, rah, all that stuff.

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And what was the complaint?

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You guys are apathetic.

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Apathy can be true of the Christian too.

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And that word apathy means lack of emotion, lack of interest, lack of a passion for something.

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And one of the darknesses of our life can be a lack of passion.

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This is what Helen Keller said.

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Science may have found it cure for most evils, but it has found no remedy for the worst of

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them all.

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The apathy of human beings.

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There's an inscription on a Roman tombstone like this.

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I was not.

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I was.

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I was not.

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I don't care.

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See that I don't care?

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That's apathy for you.

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And we think about why bad things happen.

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It is often because people don't care enough to do anything about it.

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You hear it with such words as these.

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It's not my job.

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Let somebody else do it.

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I can't get involved.

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I have other priorities.

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Those are really other ways of saying you're really apathetic.

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And when it comes to the church world, do you think we can have those attitudes too?

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The church needs to get bigger, but it's not my job.

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We need to do evangelism.

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That's a pastor's job.

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But notice what it says here.

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It talks about being the salt and the light.

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That doesn't seem very apathetic to me.

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There's a Baptist evangelist named Bailey Smith.

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He said, this is the last commandment of the church.

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You heard of the 10 commandments.

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He said, I guess this is the 11th commandment.

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Thou shalt be seated because you're just sitting there.

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And there's no desire to do anything.

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And let me tell you the great darkness this can bring about.

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Martin E. Mahler, he was a German Protestant during World War II in Nazi Germany.

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And here's what he said.

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In Germany, they first came for the communists.

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And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist.

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Then they came for the Jews.

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But I wasn't a Jew, so I didn't speak up.

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Next they came for the trade unionists.

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But I wasn't a trade unionist.

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So I didn't speak up.

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Then they came for the Catholics.

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But I wasn't a Catholic, so I didn't speak up.

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Then they came for me.

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But by that time, there was no one left to speak up.

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There you see what apathy can do.

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It's like being the frog who gets caught in the water and the heat is turned up after

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a while.

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You can't do anything apathy.

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It's all around us.

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And when you think of the church and the culture we find ourselves in, there's a lot of apathetic

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people out there.

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The great danger is that it creeps into our midst.

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And when we think of what this parable says, I want you to notice what verses 21 through

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23 says.

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It talks about brightness.

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It says, don't bring in a lamp and put it under a bowl or a bed.

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Instead, don't you put it on a stand for whatever is hidden, is meant to be disclosed, and whatever

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is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.

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If anyone has ears, let them hear.

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Now there's a debate here.

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What is this brightness, this light referring to?

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Some say it's referring to Jesus.

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But if you look at other passages in the New Testament, it's referring to the Christian.

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You are the light.

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You are the one who's not to hide your beliefs, your actions, your attitudes.

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You are the one who is to be out in the world, showing the world the way to Christ.

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And here's the point.

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Here's what he's getting at.

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If you really are the light, and that light has some heat to it, you cannot be apathetic.

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And listen to what Paul says in Ephesians.

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For you were once darkness, but now you are light.

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In the Lord live as children of light, for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness,

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righteousness, and truth.

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And what is this world need today?

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People who are wholeheartedly committed to the Word of God and to the kingdom of God.

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There was a survey done of business majors and colleges.

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By a two to one ratio, they said business is corrupt.

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But for a Christian, there shouldn't be corruption.

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We should fight against that sort of thing.

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He's got to be passionate, not apathetic.

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Nominal Christians are the ones who just don't care, but the Christian, they're the ones

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who do care.

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Think of it this way.

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Years and years ago in New Orleans, all the lifeguards got together.

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Why?

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Because they had their first summer in quite a while in which there were no drownings in

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public pools.

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So there was like a hundred plus lifeguards and officials there and they were eating and

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they were having a good time.

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And as the party was breaking up, guess what they found in the deep end of one of the pools?

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Someone had drowned.

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Our passion should not be just about parties, but is what God has called us to.

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As Whitfield, the famous evangelist from a different century said, I don't want to

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get our rust out.

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I'd rather burn out.

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And that is a good motto for those of us at the Christian church.

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Enemy number one, it's apathy.

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But here's another enemy that we can find here.

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It is impatience.

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Patience is the mark of the world.

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We don't have any patience.

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That's what the world is like and I want you to think about all that we like.

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There is now a minute right.

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You've got minute oats, minute made.

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You can have fast food, fast cars.

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Fast.

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Quickly.

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Get everything in a minute and in the church it can be the exact same thing.

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Do you realize at one time there was a church in Pensacola and it was considered the fast

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church.

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My 20 minute worship services.

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The newspaper did an interview and here's what people said.

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That I can go and I can get to the golf course quickly.

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Hmm.

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20 minute worship services.

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We want it quick.

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We want it over with.

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We're impatient.

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Sort of like the person who said in his prayer, dear God, I pray for you.

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Pray for patience and I want it now.

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That is not how the kingdom of God works.

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It takes time and patience on the other hand is the mark of the kingdom.

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And how do we see that in this parables here?

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Well, look at verse 27.

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It's talking about a farmer and it says night and day whether he sleeps or gets up, the

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seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how all by itself the soil produces grain.

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And what's he talking about here?

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Well, a farmer does do certain things.

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He's got to plant the seed, but the actual growth of the crop, well, that's not his control.

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He may go days and nights waiting and waiting and waiting.

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The farmer must be patient so that the earth takes its course.

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And I guess it's the same with fishing too.

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Hope you're patient if you go fishing.

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Sometimes you may be in that boat or buy that pier for quite a while.

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Here though, we have to wait on the word of God in the church of Jesus Christ.

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We have to wait on God's timing.

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I want you to think for example of a saint from the past, Augustine.

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His mother prayed for him for years and years and years.

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And Augustine had a sinful lifestyle, but one day those prayers were answered.

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Why do we have to be patient because of God's grace?

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What does it say?

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In the Bible in 2 Peter it says God is patient, not wishing anyone to perish.

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Patience.

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Patience is a virtue of the kingdom of God.

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So if I encourage you today, it would be this.

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Be patient with what God is doing here.

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Don't be apathetic.

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We don't know what God is up to.

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We do know what we are called to do and that is to labor for his kingdom.

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And there is one more enemy that this passage exposes.

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Skepticism.

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Skepticism is also a mark of the non-believer.

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Look at what's going on in the world.

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What are we skeptical about?

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For years the UN was supposed to wrote peace.

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Has it done it?

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No.

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People today are skeptical about all of our institutions, whether it is the Supreme Court,

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government, business, skepticism, skepticism, skepticism.

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And why are we skeptical?

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Because we can all see the failures, can't we?

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We can see the people who promise to be good and righteous and upright and then what happens?

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We see them fail and not live up to their promises.

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And even in the Christian church there are ministers who will say, oh I'm for the people,

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but yet they're ripping off the church or they're a bunch of philanders.

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Right now in Dallas you've had about five or six mega churches where the head pastors

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had to step down.

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Why?

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Because of infidelity.

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And it would be easy for us to get skeptical over all of this.

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And maybe at Warren DeCourts of the Church you could get skeptical too.

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Little resources.

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People don't change like we want them to.

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When we look at our church in comparison to other churches we may say what's the use?

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Notice what Jesus compares the kingdom of God to, a mustard seed in one of his parables

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here.

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A mustard seed which is so small.

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It seems weak.

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You could put 180,000 seeds in a pillow box.

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But yet what happens to that mustard seed after a while?

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It grows and grows and grows and becomes a very large plant.

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And when you think of the way that God works, that's how he works.

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I want you to think of the people of God for instance, it started out with Father Abraham

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who couldn't have children so that he has one child and after years and years there's

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more of the people of God.

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They become a small nation.

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Then there's the exile.

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And then we get to the New Testament where there's just a handful of disciples but what

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happens?

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Christianity spreads out and now it's all over the world.

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And in the United States you may say, oh, it's not growing but around the world it's

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growing alright.

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And we who have now become a tune to cross-cultural events and what's going on in the world, you

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need to be looking at what the Christian church is doing all over the place.

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Oh, it's growing alright because it's like a mustard seed.

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And we think of our own church.

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We don't know what God's sovereign plan is but we do know he uses smallness and he increases

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the weak and the small.

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In 1947 there was a professor of astrophysics.

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He lived in Milwaukee but he was going to commute to Chicago to teach a graduate level

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course on astrophysics.

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You know how many people signed up for the course?

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Two.

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He was discouraged.

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Yet those two students went on to win Nobel prizes.

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Was it worth it?

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I'd say so.

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I should have been skeptical about it and we should not be skeptical about the kingdom

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of God because here's what you don't understand.

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God's sovereignty and wisdom is greater than our understanding and if we look at his track

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record in history it shows his kingdom is growing and it's coming and it is here in

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the midst of us.

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So let me ask you, are you apathetic?

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Be apathetic because you don't trust God and his grace.

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Are you skeptical?

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It could be because you don't trust God and his grace.

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God wants his people to trust him and to labor for his kingdom and the key to doing that is

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to never ever forget who our God is.

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And that's exactly the reason you're here today.

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To hear it over and over again, to pound it into our minds and our souls.

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This is our God and we serve him wholeheartedly.

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Let's pray.

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Our Heavenly Father, we ask now our Lord and our God that you will be with your people

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to invigorate us, to labor for your kingdom, to not be skeptical of the local church, but

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to love the people of God and to labor for it.

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I make this prayer in his name.

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Amen.