Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to the chapter that we read,
1 Corinthians chapter 1, and reading from our text, verse
21. For after that, in the wisdom
of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, It pleased God by the
foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. 1 Corinthians
chapter 1 and verse 21. So this evening, may the Lord's
help to speak to you on preaching and God's use of it. To try and put simply what we
have in the word of our text, God has determined in saving
his people, saving sinners, to make that man is not able by
his own wisdom to find out God and to know God. Man has been
permitted to do many wonderful things, many inventions, and
I'm a trained mechanical design engineer, and many things that
the Lord has given help to be able to do over the years when
I was in the trade. A man has done many things, gone
to the moon and able to fly and there are many things that he
has, wisdom in mathematics and physics and all of these things
can be found out by wisdom and applying and just learning and
training one another up and passing from one generation to another
the training and building on the former generation, but God
has determined that that is not how he will save people. Man has been forbidden to find
out God. In God's wisdom, he has made
it that man cannot, by searching, find out God. He cannot do it. And that is what is said before
us here, for after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom
knew not God. So how are they to know God? How is anyone to know God? We have the answer in the latter
part of our text, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe. So God is using preaching and he uses it to save men and
those that he saves are those that believe. Now it is said
that it is the foolishness of preaching Here in this passage, we are
told that with the Jews and the Greeks that we preach Christ crucified, but
the Jews, it was a stumbling block because they didn't receive
Jesus Christ as the true Messiah. So that's where they stopped
short straight away because they couldn't see that he fulfilled
the Old Testament or that he was the true Christ. But the
Greeks or the Gentiles, it was just foolishness that a man called
Jesus of Nazareth, a mean city, that he should die and that he
should rise again from the dead and that through him, was set
forth saving, deliverance from sin, eternal life, is spoken
of as foolishness in one sense, because when we think about it,
God has ordered that men who are in themselves sinners, compassed
with infirmity, many failings, and yet they are to declare the
Word of God, speak to other sinners from the Word of God. But God has said that when they
do that, that he will attend that preaching with power from
heaven, the power of the Holy Spirit to make it effectual and
to save men, to bring them to believe, to bring them to believe. The God has chosen that way. Now, we might do things, and
certainly when I was in engineering, we had to choose out ways that
we were doing something. If it was a processing line,
we'd have to work out where we put a conveyor and where we didn't,
where we put a hoist, and what things were done at certain stages. And we made sure that that was
how it was done. And in our land, there's so many
things that, with our taxation system, There's always the rules
of how we apply for a grant or a rebate or what things have
got to be done at a certain time of year. And all the time we're
used to those in authority over us saying, if you want to do
this or that, this is what you've got to do. If you need a license
to drive a car, this is what you've got to do. If you're going
to buy a house, this is what you've got to do. These are the
regulations. If you want a passport, if you
want to come to this country from another country, these are
the conditions you've got to meet, and this is how you've
got to go about it. And we're used to that. Well,
God has said in this, How He saves people from their sins
and saves them eternally to be forever with Him is not through
man sitting down and trying to work it out themselves. It's
sitting underneath the preaching of the Gospel, the good news
of salvation, and God blessing that. God using that work. It is a spiritual blessing. It is God's power, God's work
to save a sinner. And it's not because of anything
we have done or said. We put ourselves under the preaching
of the word, relying on God's promise that he will speak to
us through preaching. What is preaching? Preaching
really is the authoritative declaration of the Word of God. Authoritative declaration of
the Word of God. When Paul wrote to Timothy, his
charge to him was, preach the Word. Preach the Word, instant,
in season and out of season. And the word is the Holy Bible
from Genesis to Revelation. We're told in Romans 8 of the
order of preaching and how God has ordered it. And we read that in chapter 10, Romans
10, The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart.
That is the word of faith which we preach. He says later, faith
cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. How shall they preach except
they be sent? As it is written, how beautiful
are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring
glad tidings of good things. That is what preaching is. The
question is asked, how then or whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved? How then shall I call on him
in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in
him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without
a preacher? What a line, what a link there
is there. You must believe. But believe
on who? The word that is preached, the
Lord Jesus Christ. And who's going to do that? A
preacher. Our Lord Jesus Christ, before
he was taken up into heaven, he commissioned his disciples
and from them through the Church of God to the end of time, go
ye therefore and teach all nations, that is part of the preaching,
baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever
I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you, all the way even
unto the end of the world." And our Lord commissioned and sent
his disciples. And the Apostle Paul, he sets
this forth. He testifies that this is what
he has done, and he's had this commission in verse 17 of the
chapter where our text is, 1 Corinthians 1, for Christ sent me not to
baptise but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest
the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. So what
he means is, not just man designing words and trying to trap people
or like a salesman to make the word attractive in that way.
The preacher preaches the word of God, but he preaches it in
a way that applies to sinners and how he has experienced it
in his own soul and in his own life. That's why it is not angels
that must preach the word, but sinners who also have been saved
themselves as the Apostle Paul was saved and his eyes were opened
and God had blessed him. And so I want to look this evening
and I thought that in the word of God there's examples of preaching. and I want to look at seven of
them and to just see in those illustrations of the preaching
of the word, what was the subject and what was the effect upon
the hearers? The Apostle Paul here, he says
of his subject that we preach Christ crucified And then he
says in the next chapter in verse two, for I determined not to
know anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified. But I want to look at these seven
illustrations and I just say If there are those of you that
are joining with a Bible box Bible or perhaps a Bible that
has been given to school children, with any of those Bibles, we
always give a Bible reference. And in that Bible reference,
we have a heading, Preaching the Gospel, and the references
are there to many of the occasions. where the gospel was preached. I encourage you to use that Bible
reference to study the Word of God. It's what we give with every
Bible that we give out. We'll want to look then, firstly,
with our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. And this is in the Gospel
according to Luke, and at the end of that Gospel, in chapter
24, we have our Lord joining himself to two that are going
on the way to Emmaus. And this is the day of the resurrection,
They did not know that he had risen from the dead. He was gradually
showing himself to his disciples. And these two were going seven
and a half miles away from Jerusalem to Emmaus, and suddenly this
stranger joins to them. and asked them why they're sad
and what they were talking about, and they didn't know that it
was the Lord Jesus. Their eyes were holed and they
didn't recognise him, didn't know who it was. God had determined
that should be so. And he asked them why they were
sad, and they told him all that had happened at Jerusalem. Our Lord then reproved them and
he said to them, O fools and slow of heart to believe all
that the prophets have spoken. And then he preached to them,
he spoke to them. He says, Now this is his sermon,
a summary of it, if you like. We don't have the actual words
of the sermon, but the summary of it, beginning at Moses, that
is, the Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Moses and
all the prophets, Samuel and the kings and all the prophets
that have gone since, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures,
that's the Old Testament part of our Bibles, which was the
only scriptures that they had at that time, and he expounded
unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself."
What a beautiful affirmation that right through the Old Testament
are things concerning Jesus Christ. His name is not there. The nearest
you'll come to it is Joshua, meaning the same as Jesus, who
led them into the Promised Land. But here he opens up these things
to them. So we have a sermon, a sermon
that is based upon the Old Testament, a sermon that is bringing out
of the Old Testament where the Lord Jesus Christ is seen, and
especially where he suffered, where his sufferings were told. And of course, we have all of
the sacrifices, the blood sacrifices, we have the Passover, the passing
through the Red Sea, we have the smitten rock, we have those
things that point to a suffering Christ, Abraham, in Genesis how
it is recorded that he was to offer up Isaac and then Isaac
was taken off the altar and ram put in his place that God had
provided, caught in a thicket, and is a beautiful type of the
Lord Jesus Christ put in the place of man to be offered up
as sacrifice for sin instead of us. And so this was the sum
of this preaching, and it is a preacher's delight to do the
same, to open up in the scriptures where the Lord Jesus Christ is,
to show the Lord Jesus Christ to show that it's not just a
coming that suddenly happened 2,000 years ago, but was foretold
6,000 years ago and right through. The prophecies in Isaiah, that's
700 years before Christ, wonderfully set forth Christ's sufferings. 1,000 years before Christ in
Psalm 22, we have David speaking of the exact things that happened
and what the Lord said upon the cross, the, my God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me, is the opening words of Psalm 22, penned
a thousand years before Christ uttered those words upon the
cross. And so what effect did this have
on these two, these two hearers, his audience here? Sometimes
we are very discouraged when we have so few to join and to
hear the Word, where our Lord wasn't discouraged to preach
to two and he preached to them and their heart burned within
them. Later on, that's what they said
one to another, did not our heart burn within us? What an effect
to have their attention so on the Word and it so touched them
and they really felt it. What did it lead to? At the end
of that journey, they constrained him to come and eat bread with
them, and as he break the bread, they saw who he was, and he vanished
out of their sight. It led to having Christ revealed. And those are blessed sermons
that lead to us having Christ revealed to us. Now, I want to look at several
examples in the Acts of the Apostles. Now, if you've got a Bible box
Bible, the Acts of the Apostles, it starts on page 1007. And I want to look at several
of the passages, several of the sermons that are preached and
remembering that this is the very early church. It is where
the word was first beginning to be preached. And so this is
the example to us of the preaching of the Word. So the first one
we have is in chapter 2, which is Peter preaching at Pentecost. Pentecost was 10 days after our
Lord ascended up into heaven, and he had promised that the
Holy Spirit would be given. And the disciples, they had to
tarry at Jerusalem, Until they were endued with power from on
high, they needed the power attending the preaching, and that is so
vital. And when we look for whether
a man truly is sent to preach, does power attend the word? Does the Lord reveal himself
through the word, through that preaching, and is there a real
effect? The Lord has said, my word shall
not return unto me void or empty, it shall accomplish the thing
whereto I sent it. Well, in this chapter with Pentecost,
they were all gathered together at the festival of Pentecost,
and suddenly the Holy Spirit came upon them in cloven tongues
of fire, and those that were there, they began speaking in
the language of the many nations that were coming to that feast. And so these people from all
other nations found these Jews, miraculously, without having
learned, suddenly speaking their language, and they could understand
it. And many just, they dismissed
it and said they were drunken with wine, but there were those
that really recognised these languages that were being spoken.
But Peter, he was able to set before them that this was fulfilling
what had been foretold by the prophet Joel in verse 16 of chapter
two. And also he says it is fulfilled
that which was said of our Lord in Psalm 16, because in Psalm
16 we read, Therefore did my heart rejoice, my tongue was
glad. This is in verse 26 of Acts 2. Moreover also my flesh shall
rest in hope, because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither
wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. It goes on
further from there. The Apostle clearly shows that
David in the Psalms was speaking of the Lord, that he would die,
he would be buried, but he wouldn't see corruption, and he would
rise again from the dead. And so then he says in verse
32, this Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Peter and the other apostles
were witnesses of Christ being raised from the dead. So having
said this before them, and he then charges to them that they
have crucified and slain him. In fact, he'd already said this
before. He says in verse 23, him, that
is the Lord Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, a man of God, approved among
you by miracles and wonders and signs. Him being delivered by
the determinate counsel and full knowledge of God, it was appointed
that Christ should die, ye have taken, and by wicked hands crucified
and slain. Just because it was God's appointment
didn't exonerate them, make what they did as being not sinful
and wrong. Well, when the Jews, when they
heard this, when they heard what had been written of the Lord
and what they'd done to Him and how they'd crucified Him and
how He'd risen from the dead, they were pricked in their hearts. They fell under it. They were
convinced as sinners that they'd done this. You know, it's hard
for us to put ourselves into their shoes, if you like, but
you imagine if you were in their place and you were told, that
actually the Messiah that had been waited for from generations
had come in your lifetime, and your part had been to reject
Him and to kill Him. Wouldn't you want to retrace
your steps? Wouldn't you want to be able
to speak to Him, to hear Him, and yet never be able to do that
again? and less brought to glory, what
they must have felt in their hearts. You know, to read that
they are pricked in their hearts, it hardly would describe what
they would feel. And yet the apostle, he says,
let all the house of Israel assuredly know that God hath made that
same Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." And the
people, they asked, men and brethren, what shall we do? Aren't we guilty? We've done this, now what shall
we do? And this is Peter's answer, repent and be baptized every
one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. and ye shall receive the gift
of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is done to you
and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as
many as the Lord our God shall call." So they were to turn from
their unbelief, that is what repentance is, a complete change
of mind. Instead of being an unbeliever
to be a believer, instead of being a hater of the Lord Jesus,
a lover of the Lord Jesus, and a lover of his people, to really
be sorry for those things that we've done and to show that we
are by not doing them again. And the Lord Jesus Christ is
exalted to give remission, repentance and remission of sins. That is
to be preached, that he gives that, he gives us repentance,
he gives us forgiveness of sins. And so this is the first sermon. Again, it's setting forth Christ
crucified, his resurrection, and that through him is to be
preached the forgiveness of sins. And that the way to receiving
that is repentance, believing, falling under the word as a sinner
and receiving. and believing that the Lord Jesus
Christ has put away our sin. Conviction of sin is very important. Natural man hates to be called
a sinner. He likes to think there's something
good in him and hates to receive salvation, eternal life as a
free gift that is not being earned in any way at all. Well the third one is in the
next chapter, chapter 3 of Acts, where Peter had been used to
bring a man that was lame from his mother's womb, from his birth,
to be healed instantly. And it was done in the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ, Peter not ascribing it to himself,
but to the Lord. And that gave opportunity for
him then to speak to the people and to preach to the people. So again he preaches to them
and when all the people came together, he can read it from
verse 12, how that he clearly shows that the Lord Jesus Christ
was the one that was foretold by Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the
God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, that He had brought forth
His Son, He glorified His Son, Pilate has determined to let
Him go, but you denied the Holy One, desired a murderer, Barabbas
instead, killed the Prince of Life, and yet it's through His
name, through faith in His name, that has made this man that was
lame to walk again. And he applies this to them. Again he says, repent ye therefore
and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out when the times
of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. And
he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you. The Lord shall come again at
the last day, at the end of the world, with power and great glory. But Peter is preaching the Lord
Jesus Christ, and that men who had hated him, not believed in
him, had crucified him, that they would be turned from that,
that they would be humbled and sorry for what they had done,
and that they would believe that through what the Lord had done,
that they would be saved, and that they would trust in that
sacrifice, that in Christ's sacrifice, that he had paid the debt for
their sin, he had endured the wrath of God for their sin, and
he had put their sins away, and then he'd risen again from the
dead, an empty tomb, to show that those sins were put away. And so that was Peter's sermon again. And then in the
fourth one, we have a sermon by Philip. Philip, who was one of the chosen
deacons, and this is in Acts chapter eight. And we have an
Ethiopian eunuch that had been up to Jerusalem and he was returning
and he's in his chariot, he's in the desert, And Philip was
told by God to go and join himself to that chariot. And when he
came to the chariot, he found the eunuch that was a very important
man, but he was reading the word of God. He was reading the scriptures
and he was reading Isaiah 53. And Philip asked him, did he
understand what he was reading. And the eunuch answered and said,
how can I except some man guide me? And so he asked Philip to
come up into the chariot and to guide him and to show him. So the place that he was reading,
we're told in verse 32 of chapter eight, was he was led as a sheep
to the slaughter, And like a lamb done before his shearers, so
opened he not his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment
was taken away, and who shall declare his generation? For his
life is taken from the earth. Now this is Isaiah 53, written
700 years before Christ. The eunuch asked Philip, who
is the prophet speaking, of himself or some other man? And we read
this beautiful word, then, Philip opened his mouth and began at
the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus. Again, he's preaching
from the Old Testament, and it's speaking of the sufferings of
Christ, and he preaches unto him Jesus. At the end of that
sermon, the eunuch was very clear, the
prophet wasn't speaking about himself. He was speaking about
Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, the Christ, the Saviour. And
Philip, no doubt, had preached unto him the commission that
the Lord had given them to go into all the world, preach the
gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptised
shall be saved, so the eunuch he wants to be baptised. And
Philip asked him, He says, if thou believest with all thine
heart, thou mayest. You can be baptised if you believe
with all your heart. And this was his testimony. And
he answered, that is, the eunuch answered Philip and said, I believe
that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And on that profession,
he was baptised. This is what in the words of
our text where the apostle says, and if I can actually bring to
you the words of our text, for after that in the wisdom of God,
the world by wisdom knew not God, It pleased God by the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe. The eunuch believed. He believed in Christ. He believed what Philip had preached
and opened up to him from Isaiah 53. And because he believed, he was saved, and because he
believed, he was baptized. These examples, they are simple,
they're straightforward examples of the preaching of the word,
what was preached, and the effect of that preaching on those that
heard it. Then we have the preaching of
Peter to Cornelius. This is 10 years after Pentecost
or 10 years after Christ had ascended back into heaven. And
with Cornelius, this is the Gentiles. So it is equivalent to Pentecost. It's when the Holy Spirit fell
on the Gentiles. And we read of that in Acts chapter
10. and Peter was prepared by God
to go and preach to those that were not Jews to the Gentiles. So in this case, he is not going
to charge them directly with the death of the Lord. They were
not like those that had actually had him crucified and slain. But all men are sinners. Everyone, everyone, in this world. Everyone that's born into this
world is under the wrath of God, is under the sentence of death.
We all must die. We all must stand before the
judgment seat of Christ. And the gospel is to be preached
in all the world. It's not just for some people,
and some people can have their own religion. Yes, we have freedom
of religion in our land. But there is only one way. Our
Lord was very clear, if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall perish
in your sins. And you may call it narrow, but
the privilege is that there is a way. There is a way that God
has made of being saved and saved everlastingly. And if men say,
well, we don't want that way, we're going to design a different
way and another religion and another faith. Well, if they
do that, at the last, they shall be terribly disappointed and
most solemnly deluded and destroyed at last, because God has clearly
shown the one way that he has determined that man should be
saved by the preaching of the gospel by preaching Christ and
through repentance and forgiveness of sins. And so Peter, he speaks
to them. in verse 38 in the 10th chapter. And again, he really rehearses
what had been done at Jerusalem. How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth
with the Holy Ghost and with power. He went about doing good
and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with
him. We are witnesses of all things which he did, both in
the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem, whom they slew and hanged on
a tree." So now he's speaking what the Jews did. "...Him God
raised up the third day and showed him openly, not to all the people,
but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat
and drink with him after he rose from the dead." And then we have
this, "...and he commanded us to preach unto the people, and
to testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the
judge of quick and dead. to him give all the prophets
witness that through his name, whosoever believeth in him should
have remission of sins." A real summary of the preaching of the
gospel, setting forth the Lord Jesus Christ as the forgiveness
of sins, to believe on him. And when Peter spoke those words,
we read, the Holy Ghost fell on them, they had the same evidence
of the speaking in tongues and I just say it's very important
to realize this is only two instances in the word of God that this
is so highlighted and yes there was preaching there was speaking
in tongues in the early church But it was a sign, a sign given
in the days of the apostles, a sign given in the first preaching
of the Word to give the authority to that Word. But with the Scriptures
that are closed, the effect upon the hearers, the effect of the
Spirit is to make a believer. The Holy Spirit reveals Christ
through the preaching. Paul, when he speaks to the Thessalonians,
when he preached to them, he said that they received the word
as it is in truth, the word preached, the word of God and not the word
of man. And to this day, when the word
is preached, where the Holy Spirit is present and where the blessing
is, there will be those that believe in the Lord Jesus Christ
and they will follow him, obey him and obey him in his word
right through their lives. So that was the sermon to Cornelius. Then we have another sermon that
was preached by Paul at Antioch in Pisidia. Again, this is the Gentiles that he was preaching
to. I won't go into these particularly
now as we're running out of the time, but just to think of the
seventh one, which is Paul again preaching to the Gentiles at
Athens, and this is in Acts chapter 17. And Paul was delayed, he
was waiting for Timotheus and while he was waiting for them.
Then he, waiting for Simotheus and Silas, his spirit was stirred
because he saw in that city it was given to idolatry. And they had all sorts of altars. And just in case they left someone
out, they had an altar that was to the unknown god. And the apostle
Paul, he took occasion on that to speak to them about that God
that they didn't know of. And he says, as I passed by and
beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription,
to the unknown God, whom therefore you ignorantly worship, him declare
I unto you. And so he preaches to him of
the true and of the living God, of the judgment that is to come,
He says before them that in Him we live and move and have our
being, that this God is the God that created us, is not an idol,
is not made by man, but man is made by Him. But though He says
these things before them, yet We read that when they heard
the resurrection of the dead, some mocked and others said that
they would hear again of this matter. And so you find that
when they're preaching of the gospel, sometimes there were
those that believed. Other times they just mocked.
And yet the preaching is still the same. Sometimes we read that
some believe the word spoken and some believe not. Another
time we read, as many as were ordained unto eternal life believed. And that is God's work. God is choosing how he will use
the ministry to save some. Some are left hardened. Some
are brought to believe. Some do not believe. But the
message is the same. And so the apostle, he says to
them here at at Mars Hill, that there was a time that God just
ignored that all nations went their own way, but now he commandeth
all men everywhere to repent. The message of salvation, the
message of repenting and turning to the true and living God is
sent to every nation, kindred and tongue. And the reason is
given in verse 31 of this 17th of Acts, because he hath appointed
a day in which he would judge the world in righteousness by
that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance
unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead." And
it is the empty tomb, the raising from the dead, that stands unique
in Christianity above any other religion. There is an empty tomb,
there's none other that has willingly gone into death and being brought
up from death again. Only God could do that. The Lord
Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man. He said, I have power
to lay down my life, I have power to take it again. This commandment
have I received from my Father. And so Paul and Peter, Philip,
all the apostles, they preached Jesus Christ. They preached his
life, his death, his resurrection. They preached that men should
turn from idols, from unbelief, and that they should believe
him, follow him, obey him, that they should trust in him, and
that those that believe in him, that they are saved and God has
ordained that way, he's made that way, and it is God's way
of doing it through the preaching of the word. It is not by study,
not by man deciding he's going to be a Christian or deciding
he's going to understand these things. God, through the preaching,
opens the understanding He touches the heart, he makes a believer,
he makes one sorry for their sins and hates their sins and
want to walk in the ways of the Lord. And God does this through
preaching. So we have in the words of our
text, for after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew
not God, it pleased God. by the foolishness of preaching
to save them that belief. And may the word tonight be encouragement
to us that preach, may be an encouragement to all that hear,
is that it is the chosen method of God. And whenever we come
to hear the word preached, we may really pray and expect that
the Lord will bless that, the Lord will own that, that the
Lord will open hearts to receive that word and to love the Lord
Jesus Christ and his people and to follow him and to believe
in him, to trust in him and all souls that do so, they have the
gift, the blessing of eternal life. That is what God has given
them. Every believer is a miracle of
God's grace. It is God that has done it. It's
very important we have that assurance and that comfort of that, that
we have been brought to believe God has done that. He will not
forsake the work of his own hands. He which hath begun a good work
in you will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ. Man's work
will not stand. Man's work will not be accepted
in heaven. It was God that provided a saviour
in Jesus Christ. It is God that blesses, that
is proclaimed to sinners' hearts in every generation. And may
we be amongst them that are blessed through the Word, through the
preaching of the Word, to the honour and glory of God, to the
exalting of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is crucified into heaven. The Lord bless the
world tonight. Amen.