Spit and Dirt | August 10, 2025 PM

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The message you're about to hear was preached at Liberty Baptist

Church in Easton, MA. You can find out more about us

or contact us at my libertybaptist.org or just look

us up on Facebook. And now we hope that this

message from God's word will be a blessing to you.

So I'm going to have you open your Bibles tonight to John

John 9 · chapter mention

Chapter 9. John Chapter 9.

John 9 · chapter mention

I have a couple of things I'll tell you health wise, it's kind

of unique. One is since I've come back from

Hungary. We do not have.

AC like they do in the States and it's just killed my voice.

I can't. Hardly talk.

I feel like I constantly have a cold.

And if you've ever been over that missions department over

there, brother, it's an air conditioner blowing right in

your face the whole time. This is sparkling water.

And it does actually help. So I'm having a little bit hard

time talking. It won't stop me from yelling at

you, but I still have a little bit of hard time with it.

And my nose is running and everything else.

So I apologize for that. And I'll tell you something.

Else kind of interesting Brother Rivero might find this and he

won't. He won't care.

But I mean, some of you might find this interesting.

So when I came back they. Thought I had skin cancer so

they had I had a spot in my head and.

They burned it off. And they gave me these pills,

they gave me 4 pills and I take 1 pill a week for four weeks.

And then they gave me this, this shampoo.

I started taking it and I started growing here and it's

the weirdest. Thing I was as.

Bald as any one of these bald guys.

I would. I would have been the baldest

guy in the room. I'm.

Telling you right now. This was shiny and so in some of

the old pitches, you see any old pitches out there, brother,

you'll see this is and it's so I don't know if it's going to keep

on going. It's not intentional.

It's just what they. Gave me for that they burned the

spot off and they gave him this shampoo and I'm going to enjoy

it while I got I'm thinking about getting a comb.

I might something new, you know. So John Chapter 9, if you're

John 9 · chapter mention

able, I invite you to stand with me as we read the word of God

and then we'll go before him in prayer.

John Chapter 9 and the Bible says and.

John 9 · chapter mention

As Jesus passed by. He saw a man which was blind

from his birth, and his disciples asked him, saying,

Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, than he was born

blind. Jesus answered, Neither hath

this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the.

Works of God. Should be made manifest in Him.

I must work the works of him that sent me.

While it is day. Then night cometh when no man

can work. As long as I am in the world, I

am the light of the world. And when he had thus spoken, he

spat on the ground and made. Clay of the Spittle.

And he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and he

said unto him, Go wash in the pool of Siloam, which is by

interpretation sent. And he went his way therefore,

and washed, and came seeing, and the neighbor, the neighbors

therefore, and they which before had seen him, that he was blind,

said, Is not this he that? Sat and begged.

Some said, this is He, others said He is like him, but he

said, I am He. Therefore said they unto him,

how were thine eyes open? He answered and said, A man that

is called Jesus made clay and anointed mine eyes and said unto

me, Go to the pool of Siloam and wash.

And I went and wash and I received my sight.

Then said they unto him, where is he?

He said, I know not. And tonight the title of my

message is spit and dirt, spit and dirt.

Let's pray. Lord God, I just thank you for

this opportunity. We have to come before you this

evening. And I thank you for Liberty

Baptist Church being here. And there was a time when there

was no church in this area that I knew of that preached the

gospel. And it's so happy to see what's

going on here. And I pray God that you just

open our hearts tonight to the word.

Whatever you would speak to our hearts about tonight, I pray and

ask God that you would use me as your servant.

And I pray this in Jesus name, Amen.

You may be seated. So there's a number.

Of things that have. Stuck out to me about this

passage and there are some things that you know, one of the

things I find very interesting sometimes.

I I find a passage and I have a. Particular message on my heart,

but along the road of. Getting to that verse, there's

all. Kinds of little things that

stand out to you and one of the things I.

See here. Is that when Jesus?

Passed by and he saw. A man which was.

Blind from his birth. OK, so this man did not see

Jesus. Jesus saw him, and what I find

interesting about that is if you consider, I believe that the

first church. Was with the Lord.

Jesus Christ, he was the pastor, and that's when the church

began. And if you can imagine as a

pastor, as a church planner, as an itinerant pastor doing the

work of the ministry, you're going into a community, you're

looking at who can I use, who can I get?

Who can we persuade? And sometimes the people with

some of the greatest problems, we don't even really, you know,

we, they're kind of in the background.

We see them, we notice them, but we don't directly.

Take notice of them. And here is a man that saw

Jesus, that could not see Jesus, but Jesus could see him, and

Jesus is looking for him. And he said he saw a man that

was blind from his birth. And here's the thing, Jesus knew

he could fix that problem. He knew he had the answer for

that man. Now, what touches my heart about

this? I enjoy social media.

I really do. I mean.

I. Imagine years ago there was a

time when the telephone first came out and there was preachers

that probably called it the Devil's Voice Box.

I don't know. And they said people are going

to use that to. Gossip and there's people you

can do evil. With any form of.

Communication, but you can also. Do good.

And so I actually was. Preparing for an article which

I'm not sure is going to be published or not right now, but

I was preparing an article about this Generation Z and who they

are. This is the 13 to 30 years old.

And if I got? It right unless I'm saying it

wrong. If my daughter was here, she'd

correct me right away. But if and I.

Use her for all these important teenage facts.

She's a she's a whiz. And this thing about this

generation is this is the generation that has grown up

without with all. The social media.

And all the telephones, you know, I graduated high school in

1980. We did not have DVD's.

We did not have CDs. No one had a cell phone, no one

had a personal computer. And the only remote control we

had. Was your mom and dad?

Said go over and change. The channel you said they going

dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk.

You know, and that's all we had at the time.

That's the generation I grew up with.

And there's a lot of preachers in America that are from that

generation. And some of the preachers from

even the robust and growing and sturdy works of this country are

men of that generation. And they don't really get these

young people. But think about that age, the 13

to 30 years old. And I was doing some research on

that, and I realized this is the generation of people that a

certain percentage of them do not like to to communicate face

to face. They don't.

And people will walk into the restaurant and they'll see six

of them sitting around the table and they're all on the phone.

You say, what are they doing? What's the matter with them?

Why don't they look at each other?

They're communicating. That is their language.

I didn't walk into Hungary and say, what's the matter with you

people? Why don't you speak English?

That's how they are communicating.

You know, there are 17 million people that they estimate within

that group of people in America who will never communicate to

you unless you send it by text. So this is the future of our

country. And people say, what are we

going to do about the future? We are not going to reach them

if we don't learn their language.

We're going to have to learn. You know, I talked to pastors

out. There.

And they're like, well, I don't do that, let my daughter do

that. I let my son do that.

And my wife takes care of all those things.

Listen. It doesn't really kill you to

learn how to type with your thumbs, you know, and talk to a

young guy and say, hey, really, I'd like to see you come to

church and learn how to communicate to these people.

But we have come where we put ourselves in a box and we say

these are the people we're used to.

We're not looking for the blind. Jesus is looking for the blind

because he can make them to see. And I I see people on social

media. See, I'm losing my voice.

Sorry. I see people on social media and

they talk about how wicked those people are.

That's your target audience. Those are the ones that need the

gospel. God didn't tell us to go into

all the world and tell all the Christians how well they're

doing. He told us to win the lost.

Those are the people you're looking for them.

They have our flag, they're waving, they have an

opportunity. You're saying, how are we going

to reach them with the gospel of Jesus Christ?

We're going to tell them about Christ and how he loves them and

what a difference He can make in their life.

What made you? Who you?

Are is Jesus Christ? We need to look at this lost,

wicked, sinful world and say, what can we do to win them to

Christ? How can we communicate to them?

I don't want to compromise the gospel.

I don't want to compromise my doctrine.

There's a lot of churches out there to say that, oh, we accept

you like you are in sin and bondage, blind, without hope.

Look at all the ways that Jesus describes the lost world.

We don't want to accept that. We want it to be better.

We want them to have life and as Jesus said, and life more

abundantly. We want them to know a better

way, not the old way that we have taken and wrinkled up and

stuffed it into a can we now call a church.

We want them to know that you can live a holy and godly life

and have fellowship with Christ and love every minute of it and

have joy in your heart because of who you know.

So we need to reach out to this world.

We need to stop separating ourselves.

From the group. We're trying to reach, you know,

when I was over in. Hungary, we had such an unusual

ministry there because we had Debertson University and

Debertson University. Had a medical.

Program and this is what they did, they said.

If you can, they had a one year condensed.

Undergraduate program. And if you could pass that

program and it was difficult, they'd let you go right into Med

school and the medical. School.

Was in English and on the international scale of

universities. They're rated in several of the

universities here in Massachusetts, they're rated

higher. They're well above.

University of Massachusetts in Boston, so it's a good school.

And when I was over there I checked their.

Annual tuition and the last time I checked it.

Which was several years. Ago, but I don't think it's

changed that much. It was $6000 for the year.

So if you imagine going and getting a medical degree for

six. $1000 a year. They draw.

Them from all over Asia and Africa.

And we have a lot of young people who come up from Africa

and they come to our church because we were the English

speaking church in town and I had young people come from.

From South Africa. And from Kenya, I had a young

man in my church. Joshua, wonderful young man.

Super. Smart.

Studying and. He got a degree.

In computers, and he's working for IBM over there in.

Budapest and super fine young man.

Wants to stay there in Hungary. Because it's a lot safer and

nicer than where he lives in Kenya.

He loves it, but he wants to go back to Kenya and, as he says,

find a good Kenyan woman. But still, he's got family there

and. He sends his money.

Back home and he. Tries to help out his family.

And he's doing very well. I had a young man from Uganda.

I led him to Christ, and I had a girl that came from.

Vietnam I. Had a boy that came from North

Korea. Came to our church.

How is he ever going to hear the gospel?

I had two girls that came to our church from China and the

Chinese would have. Names like Z, ving or some weird

name we couldn't didn't sound. Normal it was.

Hard for to say that. And so they would take names,

and one of them called themselves Joy and the other one

called themselves Grace. And I had them come over for

Thanksgiving and I had meals with them, stuff like that.

And and my family. Kind of try to take in these

students and we try to help them out.

And I remember one of these girls, Grace, you know, she got

saved and as soon as she got saved, they pulled her right out

of there. Took a break back home to

Communist China. I guess her family didn't like

it. The young girl I had coming from

South Africa, her she spoke 9 languages really.

Super smart girl. Her dad was some kind of wild.

Like charismatic preacher, that was.

Even on TV and stuff down there. And she came to me and said,

Pastor Kearney, I know we're not following the Bible.

I'm reading the Bible. My dad's teaching is not what

the Bible says. And so she got.

Saved and. And but you couldn't stay in our

church. Family pressure pooled around

the church. So we had all those problems.

But you know, at least we get the opportunity when people to

Christ and do all the work we can.

I had a group of about 6 Muslims came to our church.

And we invited some people. We heard through the Grapevine

they might be coming out and I don't know why.

But for some reason they have a tradition, Hungary, that on New

Year's Eve, everybody eats hot dogs.

I don't know why you go into the store and there will be bins of

hot dogs. You can go in there and buy the

hot dogs and it's just a thing I don't really get.

It and I make my own. Beans.

I make American style BBQ beans. You can't buy it over there and

I'd make them myself. It'd take me a couple hours to

cook them and they were always very impressed with that.

They all wanted to know how to do it.

And so. I get hot dogs and beans and.

Stuff. But I knew these Muslim people

were coming. So you know what I did?

I got Turkey. Dogs because they won't eat

pork. So they came in.

And they said, oh, we can't eat that.

I said they're Turkey. Dogs and.

So we can eat. That so they had hot dogs, they

had fellowship, they heard the gospel, we talked to him about

Jesus and how he's the Messiah and they came in.

One of the young men came to me afterwards.

He said This is the First Christian Church I've ever.

Been to my. Into my life.

And he said, And I like it. Listen.

I didn't get them back. They came through, as many of

them do in the university thing. They came, they left, but boy

did we make an impression on that young guy.

I want to do that. I don't want to turn the world

away. I want to find a way into their

heart. So they.

Can meet Jesus. Because that's what somebody did

for me. Jesus is still the way.

The thing that would answer this guy's life is the Lord Jesus

Christ. The thing that would make

everything good for him is the Lord Jesus Christ.

The thing that would make him. Be what he needed to be.

Was the Lord Jesus Christ and I want.

You to notice here he goes on. He says.

Interesting, they said. They asked him.

Who did? Sin, you know, that's not an

unusual question. It sounds kind of like

judgmental or something people might think.

But really even in our society today, some people are blind

because of sin. And if such was the case back

then. But this guy?

From the time he was born was in darkness to glorify Christ.

Neither have this man sin nor his parents, but the works of

God should be made manifest in him.

But you say what a horrible thing he had to go through his

whole life being blind. But imagine being born blind and

then you see. Could there be any?

Better gift from God. To open your eyes one day and be

able to see what a blessed thing.

And he says I must work the works of him that sent me.

While it is day, the night cometh when no man can work.

So here's the thing that's interesting.

Jesus gives this illustration. Let's work our way through this

a little bit. I must work the works of Him.

While it is day, the night cometh when no man shall work.

What's the night he's talking about?

You think he was talking about that night coming?

I don't think so. I think he's talking about the

end of this age. See, the Bible teaches us that

if you're saved, according to First Thessalonians chapter 4,

1 Thessalonians 4:16–18

verses 16 through 18, the trump of God will sound.

Jesus Christ is going to meet us in the air.

He's going to rapture us out of here.

And the work that we have in this ministry right now in

churches like that across the world.

Is going to be done and we know what happens at night time I.

Don't know about you, I know some people work third shift.

I tried working third shift, it was awful but.

What we do we rest, we get some sleep and we.

Love it. There's going to be a time when

we won't. Have to open the church doors

and go outdoor knocking and and and talk to others and tithe and

clean the building and put together John and Romans and

whatever it is you do in this local.

Church. There's going to be a time when

that's because it's going to be. The time of rest.

So that is the night in this day of his illustration, in this

metaphor that Jesus is using here.

You have the daytime, you have the night the.

Night is when nothing else happens to do.

So what does that make this now? The day.

This is the day, and the day is when you're supposed to do the

work. So for us.

In this world. Right now, this is the time we

work. And serve the Lord.

We are in. The daytime of our eternal

existence with Christ. And I like to think to myself

that, you know, God doesn't make us.

Do everything he could. Make us to do if he wanted to.

He. Allows you to have free will.

And so I would imagine if you would ask the pastor, pastor,

which days would you like us to skip church, what do you think

he'd say? What do you think?

None of them let. Me tell you something.

When you're a pastor, you're sitting back there in your

little office or in at your desk in your cubicle and you're

studying that book of Hosea and you get that second point and

that sub point and you know this is a killer.

This is the one man. Wait till everybody hears this.

This is so good and like you're. Coming in and.

You're like, I can't wait to tell him this and you're getting

up there and then no one comes. When I was on the mission field,

I have Priestsha, my wife, but she got it whether she liked it.

And it's hard, you know, encourage your pastor, encourage

your workers, take care of them as much as you can, but also be

faithful. You should be faithful for the

people that are here at church cuz it always encourages them

here when there's people here. That's what Hebrews chapter 10

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

and verse 25 is teaching. That's not forsaking these semi

yourselves together, but more as you see the day approaching, as

you see the same thing, the same thing this day approaching of

the end times. There is still being spelled out

a little bit different way, but so much more as you see the day

approaching, not forsaking, exhorting one another, building

up one another, helping one another, teaching others to be

godly. So these are some reasons, but

also when you're serving here and you have to make a choice.

You know, there have been times in my life when we were in

desperate times and I let my kids have that last piece of

dessert or something like that because I wanted to be happy.

And once and twice I remember a few times they caught me giving

me that and they knew their dad loved them because I was

sacrificing for them on my level, sacrificing for them.

Right now in this world, you're going to have some little time

period in your life. If you are unusual person, you

might live well past 100 years old, but most of us will be gone

long before that. But during this little period of

time, this is the only time you have to make a sacrifice for the

Lord to demonstrate your love for him.

Love God, love Christ, love your fellow believers, love your

pastor, you know, encourage the man of God.

And if he's you know, what's really hard is when your

preacher has to go and someone else feels the pulpit and

they're like, this is my one shot this month.

You know this is. They're like, hey, I did.

I got. This message and they're all up

there and they show up and there's like nobody there.

And it's like, you know, so defeat, love the guy that puts

his heart to bring in you a message from his heart and love

this world by doing what you can while you can, because each one

of us has our own way. You know, we had a guy came to

the house the other day to fix our boiler at the Parsonage.

I went over there, Barbara said. There's a.

Guy over here fixing the boiler. He'd.

Come over here. So I said sure.

So I went over there. His name was Richard.

He said he had found Christ. From his testimony, it sounded

like he had, but he hadn't gone to church anywhere.

He came to our church this morning.

All I did was tell him some things about what we believed

about the Bible. He was so excited.

He hadn't gone to church. He was looking for a church.

He was reading his Bible. Anybody can do that.

You go to church. It could have been.

You just talking to people about Christ and letting people know

that you're a believer. You know, here's the thing.

I like history and I read a lot of things about history and

there's something here about history I want to share with

you. This is about the Battle of

Gettysburg. After the Battle of Gettysburg,

the discarded rifles were collected and sent to Washington

to be inspected and reissued. Of the 37,574 rifles recovered,

approximately 24,000 of them were still loaded. 6000 had one

rounds in the barrel. 12,000 had two rounds in the battle. 6000

had three rounds in the barrel. 1 rifle, the most remarkable of

all, had been stuffed to the top with 23 rounds.

Guy was scared, he was panicking and he was stuffing bullets in

his gun. He got 23 rounds in there and I

can tell you right now you are living in a country.

Where you can go on the Internet?

You can hear some of the best preachers, even preachers that

you have. You can hear Brother Davis.

I know you have Brother Davis in here.

I don't know who else you've had it.

Once in a while I see stuff like that.

You can hear these beats. You can go out there and listen

to them. You can Great, great teaching.

You have Bible studies and we are loading our gun.

Loading our gun. Loading our gun, take a shot.

Emptying your gun don't get to heaven and said well my gut is

full. Empty it out while you have a

chance. So let me get to the point of

this passage that really stood out to me.

It's a spitting dirt. I find that amusing and

interesting. I know.

Then another passage, Jesus just spoke to people.

He spoke to a man about his daughter and said she's healed,

go home, she's healed. Spoke to other people and healed

them with Just tell him you're healed, they're healed.

Another one he touched. His eyes touched his eyes.

He was healed. This one, he did something very

unusual. He spit on the ground.

Now he had to have some serious spit to make clay.

And let me tell you something. Think about that, OK?

Think about 30 something AD city of Jerusalem.

Animals. All over the place, people

trudging back and forth. We won't even get into the the

water problems and the sewage problems and everything else,

but just a disgusting place from our perception.

I think we think you'd be interested to go back to one

time until we smelt it. We probably run back to The Time

Machine if we had an opportunity.

It's sitting there. This has got to be a very

disgusting thing. Jesus reaches down within the

reach of Christ. I can't imagine anything worse

than he could have. And you can look on.

You can. You're not going to find any

scientific journal. That's going to say clay, when

properly applied to eyes, will bring back blindness and it's

not going to happen. And if it was?

Anything that was more disgusting than that dirt at his

feet, I can't imagine what it was.

And he picked it up. And he grabbed that dirt and if.

That wasn't bad enough. He spit in it and he spit enough

to make clean. I can tell you right now if my

mom. Was in the air.

It would have been trouble. She would have knocked that

right out of his hand and said don't put that in my kids eye.

I can tell you that right now. Jesus made spit and dirt.

And he used it to make a blind man to see.

And I think I look at that illustration and I.

Think to myself. If Jesus can take spit and dirt

and make a blind man to see. What could he do with us?

Can you imagine? What could he do with your life?

What could he do with your testimony?

How could he? Use you.

You know, the one unique thing about the properties of that

spitting dirt in that clay was it was moldable and Jesus had

complete control over it. And I have to think to myself,

maybe we may not think of ourselves as anything more than

spitting dirt. Your pastor likes one of my

illustrations When I was a kid and I went to the lighthouse at

that time was Baptist Temple. And I came in and let me tell

you something, when I came into that church, I had nothing to

offer that church. I didn't walk through the door

and they didn't say, oh, that guy's going to be the pastor one

day. I was the pastor of that day.

But as a 15 year old kid, I was involved with every worldly

cardinal thing a 15 year old kid could do when his parents

couldn't see him. And I walked into that church

and they treated me like a special person.

And I, I tell people, I came in, I was so lost.

I never been to a Baptist Church.

I was confused about what was going on.

I walked around and, and Brother Turner was preaching and I'd

come in on the bus ministry and he was talking about his wife

Riva and all those kind of stuff.

And I ran home and I said to him, I'm not, you're not going

to believe it. The priest is married.

I mean I was like this these. Guys are so weird.

And I walked down the aisle and when I went to sit down I

genuflected before I sat down and and when I left I went over

to Brother Turner and said thank you Father Turner for the lovely

mass. I mean, I was. 100% and I was as

carnal as I could be. I was 100% and for in this in

the eyes of some churches and some church.

People, they might have looked at me.

And saw me nothing more than like one step above St.

Urchin. And they might have thought,

what are we going to do with that guy?

And you may not see yourself as anything more than spit and

dirt. And Jesus says, I'll take it,

I'll take it. And if you're moldable and you

don't let them have your life, he says, I can take that and I

can make the blind to see. And Jesus didn't look at the

blind people and say, why are they so blind?

Anybody can find a problem. Jesus was in the business of

fixing problems, and we can fix the problems around us.

We can't change the whole world, but we can help our neighbor.

We can help our children. We can help the people of our

community and share Christ with them.

We can help the people we know that really just want to know

the truth, even though they'll never admit it.

And we could say, God, do what you will with me and I'll let

you have it. God will use it.

He can use spit and dirt. He can use me.

Thank you for listening to the sermon from the pulpit of

Liberty Baptist Church. If this message was a blessing

to you, or if there's any way we can serve you, please let us

know by contacting us at [email protected].

Or you can visit us this Sunday at 800 Washington St. in Easton,

MA. May the Lord bless you as you

grow in His Word.