In thy great name, O Lord, we
come to worship at thy feet. O pour thy Holy Spirit down on
all that thou shalt meet. We come to hear Jehovah speak,
to hear the Savior's voice. Thy face and favor, Lord, we
see. Now make our hearts rejoice. Teach us to pray, and praise,
and hear, and understand thy word, to feel thy gracious presence
dear, and trust our living Lord. This house with grace and glory
filled, this congregation blessed, thy great salvation now revealed,
thy glorious righteousness. Please be seated. Let's open our Bibles together
to the last chapter of Acts, the last verse of the last chapter
of Acts. The older you get, the more time
flies. I didn't realize that we started
our study in the book of Acts in January of 2020. So it's been
almost three years that the Lord has had us looking at the Acts
of God. Our Bibles call it the Acts of
the Apostles, but it's God's Acts. The book of Acts spans
about 30 years from the time that our Lord sent his spirit
in Acts chapter one on the day of Pentecost. Lord, disciples
ask, Lord, is it time now for you to set up your kingdom? So
the very beginning of this book starts with a confusion about
the kingdom of God. They thought it was an earthly
kingdom. And the Lord told them very lovingly, it's not for you
to know the time of the season, but you go back into Jerusalem
and the Holy Ghost will come upon you. And you will be my
witnesses, both in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and unto
the outermost parts of the world. You're going to go and preach
the gospel. And all through this book, we've
been looking at the preaching of the gospel. in so many different
places. And I've titled this message,
Preaching. Preaching. It's been the whole
theme of this book, if you will, the activity of this book has
been preaching. We have on the front of our bulletin.
We preach Christ crucified. And we know we could go back
to Acts chapter 1 next Sunday and begin all the way back through
this book and the Lord would show all of us different things
than we saw the first time. The scripture says, thy word
is exceedingly broad. We're not going to do that, but
it is a little bit of a sad note for me. to be coming to the end
of this wonderful portion of God's word. And it has been all
about the preaching of the gospel. Those who are interested in preaching
have an interest in the salvation of their souls. How can they call upon him in
whom they've not heard and how can they hear? without a preacher? And how can they preach unless
they be sent? This matter of preaching is critically essential
to each and every one of us. When I titled this message preaching,
I wasn't talking about something that I do here behind this pulpit. I'm talking about the declaration
of the gospel, which we must have. Faith comes by hearing,
and hearing comes by the word of God. God is pleased to use
the foolishness of preaching to save them which believe. Notice in this last verse of
the book of Acts, Paul spent two whole years in Rome. He's made it to Rome around 60
AD. People differ on exactly which
year it was, but it was around 60 AD and the Lord ascended,
we know, back into heaven around 32. So He spent two years now in his
own hired house, receiving all that came unto him, preaching
the kingdom of God. So the Lord by the Holy Spirit
has brought this book to an end on the same note that it opened.
Is it time now for you to set up your kingdom? So Paul is preaching
as he has done everywhere he's been. And the other apostles
as well, particularly in the first eight chapters of the book
of Acts, we read of the other apostles preaching. It's been
pretty much exclusively Paul since then, but he's preaching
the kingdom of God and teaching those things which concern the
Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no man forbidding him. If the salvation of our souls
is precious to us, then preaching will be precious to us. I thought
oftentimes, why has the Lord ordained preaching? Well, we've
been talking a lot the last couple of weeks about being passive
and being active. I am actively preaching right
now, and you are passively receiving. The Lord is going to make sure his children
are passive in their faith. They're going to be passive in
their salvation. We don't do here what a lot of
religious organizations do, where men gather together in debating
the Bible, and you know, we just don't do that. The scripture
tells that We preach the gospel, we declare it. God's people are
humbled and passive in their receiving the message of Christ. And so, the Lord's people are very, very
interested, desperately interested, essentially needful. for this
ministry of preaching. Turn to me, we've been looking
at Judges the last several weeks. I think there's a wonderful illustration
of preaching in the book of Judges, chapter 15, if you would like
to turn with me there. We know that the donkey, or as
he's referred to in the Bible, the ass, is a beast of burden. And he's mentioned oftentimes
as a type of preaching. It was an ass that brought the
Lord Jesus Christ into Jerusalem at his triumphal entry. And so
it is the picture of the carrying of the gospel. Notice in verse
15 of Judges chapter 15, and he, Samson, found a new jawbone of
an ass and put forth his hand and took it and slew a thousand
men therewith. What an unlikely weapon to kill
a thousand men. And this The word, he took a new, you
see that new jawbone? That word's the word moist or
fresh. It wasn't even a dried bone.
It was just a jawbone of an ass that the Lord used to slay a
thousand men. And Samson said, with the jawbone
of an ass, heaps upon ease with the jaw of an ass have I slain
a thousand men. And it came to pass when he had
made an end of speaking that he cast away the jawbone out
of his hand and called that place Ramoth Lehi." Translated, the lifting up and
the casting away of the jawbone. When God's finished with a jawbone,
he's just gonna cast it away. The weapon being used here is
not what's important. It's the one who holds the weapon
in his hands. Samson's the one that got the
glory, not the jawbone. He throws the jawbone away when
he's finished with it. The weapons of our warfare are
not carnal. They are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds,
bringing into captivity every thought and imagination of the
heart to the obedience of Christ. This matter of preaching, if
it gives glory to the weapon that's been to the preacher,
then it's not preaching. It exalts Christ. gives him all
the glory and all the praise, then God's finished slaying his
children with the jawbone of that ass, he's going to just
throw it away. He's going to lift it up and he's going to
cast it away. I remember, I have to tell this
story. There were five preachers in
an airplane flying down to Mexico, gospel preachers flying down
to Mexico. And one of the preachers foolishly
said, well, we know this plane's not going to crash because there's
five gospel preachers in it. And Todd Nybert said, oh man,
he said, I knew right then that God was going to take that plane
down. I knew right then, you know, we were all going to die.
God don't need five preachers. He'd raise up another one. He's
going to cast that jawbone away when he's finished with it. He'd
raise up another one. The power of the gospel is not
in the jawbone. It's in the one that's wielding
the jawbone. This is what preaching is. And any preacher that thinks
that he's got the power to influence men, he'd be called a God. In verse 18, and he was sore
of thirst and called on the Lord and said, thou has given this
great deliverance into the hand of thy servant. And now shall
I die for thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised,
but God clave a hollow place that was in the jaw. I actually
have a jawbone of an ass hanging in my study over here in the
other building and just remind me what I am. And it has a hole
in the side of it that was, nobody put it there, it's part of the
jawbone. And I could just see that, you know, this, the Lord
taking that same jawbone and filling it with water and assuaging
Samson's thirst with the water from that. So that's what we
do. God slays his people, kills them, makes them see their spiritual
deadness, and then he gives them water to drink and brings them
alive. This is what preaching is. It's exactly what Paul was doing.
It's what we're to do every time we come together. Preaching is not valued in this
world. That's why the Lord calls it
the foolishness of preaching. There's nothing foolish about
preaching when it comes to God or God's people, but the world
thinks it's foolishness. You know, we want to be able
to debate and discuss. And in that same passage of scripture,
the Lord says, where's the wise? Where's the prudent? Where's
the disputer of this world? Has God not made foolish the
things of this world? So to us, the means that men
use in the world to try to know God is foolishness. And to them,
the means that God uses in the gospel church is foolishness.
And the two can never come together. I want to ask a few questions
in light of this one verse that wraps up, concludes the book
of Acts. The first question is, who does
the preaching? And the answer to that question
is a man, just a man, just the voice of one crying in the wilderness
saying, behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of
the world. I was with a lady this week who is from Malta. We spent several weeks looking
at the shipwreck in Malta and what happened there. And she's
from Malta. And she says that where that
shipwreck, there's a place called St. Paul's Bay. And at the head
of St. Paul's Bay, there's a large statue
that's supposed to represent the apostle Paul. And recently
they've had to put a fence around this statue because the feet
of the statue have worn away from people kissing it. This is so contrary to the things
of God, aren't they? Glorifying the jawbone. Don't
you know Apostle Paul was just a jawbone? And then when God
was finished with him, which happened soon after this verse
that we're reading, the Lord tossed him up. Now, God has called certain men
to be the audible voice from the pulpit to preach the gospel. And the scripture does say that
we are to esteem them highly for their work's sake. That's
it. Not because they're any different
from anyone else. In every form of religion in
this world, priestcraft is practiced. Clergy laity is practiced in
every religion of the world. Even in reformed religion. where
the elders are exalted above the congregation. And there's
a man closer to God than you can ever be. That is so contrary. That is the doctrine of the Nicolaitans,
which the Lord identified in the book of Revelation. And he
said, I hate it. And you know that anything practiced
in religion is contrary to what God has chosen. This idea of
a man, being holier or having a position with God above other
men is contrary to preaching. And any man that presents himself
that way is setting up a clergy laity mentality in the hearts
and minds of people that will only harm them spiritually, if
not keep them completely from the gospel. man. Just a man. And man in his
very best state is altogether vanity. The other thing I want
to say about preaching is that preaching is not an activity
that's practiced by one. You've heard me say this before.
You made the effort to come here today. You hopefully spent some
time thinking about what you're going to do today and asking
the Lord to bless this service. Right now, you are listening
and asking the Lord to apply the preaching of the gospel to
your heart. I've said this before, if I came
up here yesterday when there was no one in this building and
I stood up here and preached this same message that I'm preaching
now, would I be preaching? No. Wouldn't be. The old adage, you know, if a
tree falls in the woods and no one's there to hear it, does
it make a sound? Well, you know the point of that. Sound has
to be received in order for it to be sound. It can't just be
delivered. It has to be. So this matter
of preaching is something we do together. So when we speak
of preaching, not speaking of one man's activity, we preach
together. Not only do we preach right now
together, but the word preach means to declare. It means to
herald. It means to reveal. And in a certain sense, every
time that you have an opportunity, to speak to someone about the
gospel, in a sense, you're preaching. You're heralding, you're revealing,
you're speaking of the things of God. And so, who preaches? Men do. Men do, and that's one
of the reasons why God humbles his people. He takes a sinner.
just another center and gives them a message to declare to
another center. Jeff, you brought this up this
past Wednesday night when you were talking about sharing the
gospel with loved ones and they looked at you and said, who are
you to talk to me? You know, that's the way the world looks
at it. But we are. God uses frail, fallen, sinful
men to preach. And any thought that that man's
closer to God or he's got some holiness that you can't have
is a total denial of the gospel of God's free grace. But when
he makes a man whole, they're whole. They're whole. whether
they are called to stand and preach or whether they're called
to sit and listen. God's people are whole. There's
no degrees of holiness. There's no degrees of righteousness. There's no degrees of salvation. Second question I want to ask
is, what do we preach? This matter of preaching is essential,
isn't it? It really is. It's the center of everything
we do here. And I forgot to mention, even after we conclude this service,
we're going to spend some time talking about what we've heard
and rejoicing in what we've heard and sharing with one another
things that the Lord has showed us. So this matter of preaching
continues on even after the actual event is over. What do we preach? Well, what
did Paul preach? Preaching Paul. Oh, by the way,
you know what the name Paul means, don't you? Little. Little. That's what it means. It means little. Saul means one to be revered and one to be desired after. That's what Saul means. And God
took Saul of Tarsus. who he says himself exceeded
above his peers in religion. He was one that was esteemed
highly and one that was sought after. And the Lord said, your
name's gonna be Paul now. Little insignificant person.
That what we are. We're all that. So he's preaching what? He's
preaching the kingdom of God. This is a spiritual kingdom.
It's an eternal kingdom. It's the rule and reign of the
Lord Jesus Christ, not only over his church, but over armies of
heaven and all the inhabitants of the earth. No man can stay
his hand. No man can say unto him, what
doest thou? It's the reign of Christ. And
for men to say that they're gonna make Jesus Lord of their life
is a complete denial of the kingdom of God. God made him both Christ
and Lord. You can't do something God's
already done. And if you don't want him to be Lord of your life,
sorry, he is. He is. He reigns sovereign over
you and will do with each and every man whatsoever he wills,
whether you want it or not. He's Lord. He's King of Kings
and Lord of Lords. And God's people love it that
way. And we say to people, come. His kingdom is an everlasting
kingdom. Listen to what Nebuchadnezzar
said in Daniel chapter four. He lifted up his eyes unto heaven,
his understanding returned unto him, he blessed the Most High,
and he said his dominion is an everlasting dominion and his
kingdom is from generation to generation. The kingdom of God
never had a beginning and never has an end. And we are declaring,
it's like the song that we sang, Tom, at the beginning of the
service, Lord of lords. That's what we're doing. We're
acknowledging that he's king. And he's not a harsh king. His subjects are his children. And he loves his children. How
much do you love your children? And if you being evil know how
to give good things unto your children, how much more will
your heavenly father give good things? to you. Love him, call upon him. He's a benevolent king and what
we call on men to do is come. Come and bow before the reigning
king. Believe on him. Rest in his accomplished
work of redemption. He's king Don't stand in opposition to
him. Psalm 2, why do the kings of
this earth, those who think that they have authority, they've
set themselves up on the throne of God and they stand in opposition
to God. And God holds them in derision.
He laughs. He said, kiss the son. That's what we're saying about
the kingdom of God. Kiss the son less than his day
of anger. He'd destroy you. That's it. Rejoice in Him. Believe on Him. Submit to Him. His subjects are
His children and He gives them all things. All things He gives
to His children. No place better to be than under
the sovereign reign of the King of all kings. Truly, salvation
is of the Lord. It's His kingdom. So who preaches? A man preaches, a little man
by the name of Paul. Not a man that's, oh, don't you
know that, yeah, I was just thinking about that statue in Malta. You
know, Paul wouldn't have had that. He wouldn't have had anything
to do with that. He preached the kingdom of God.
I'm but a subject in his kingdom, just like you, just a child.
He's the king. The second question, the third
question is, who do we preach? Who do we preach? Notice, preaching
the kingdom of God and teaching those things which concern the
Lord Jesus Christ. preaching all things concerning
the Lord Jesus Christ. The person of the Lord Jesus
Christ was the subject of his preaching. And he makes it clear,
look how the book of Romans starts, if you have your Bible still
open there. Paul says, I'm just a servant
of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the
gospel of God. which he had promised to for
by his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his son, Jesus Christ,
our Lord, which was made of the seed of David, according to the
flesh. Behold, a child is given. Behold, a son is born. He was made according to the
flesh, born of a woman, born under the law. He had to be flesh
and blood. He's God's perfect man. He could
not have died unless he was made after the seed of David, according
to the flesh. Made a little lower than the
angels, the book of Hebrews tells us, in order that he could bear
in his body the sins of his people. and suffer the wrath of God in
order to put those sins away. He's a man, a man. We do not, you know, what's happened
over the centuries is religious organizations have either emphasized
the deity of Christ to the denial of his humanity, or they've emphasized
the humanity of Christ to the denial of his deity. And either
way, it's gonna lead you into one heresy or the other. Jesus
Christ is the God-man. He's God's perfect man and man's
perfect God. He's the fullness of the Godhead
bodily, born of a woman, made in the likeness of sinful flesh,
tempted and tried in every way that we are, yet without sin,
so that he's able to sympathize with our afflictions and with
our affirmaties. He suffered, he died, he was
buried according to the scriptures. Behold the man, Pilate said. You remember after they scourged
him and they brought him out, look at this, look at this man,
behold him. And we say the same thing. Pilate
didn't know, he was speaking prophetically when he said that,
but our God, became a man. God required a blood sacrifice.
Only a man could bleed. God required death. Only a man
could die. God required one that would be
forsaken of God. Only the Lord Jesus Christ, the
man. to be forsaken of God. David said in Psalm 80 verse
17, let thy hand be upon the man that is at thy right hand,
upon the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself. David's praying, what he's saying
is look to Christ. He's praying to the father and
he's saying to the father, you made the man strong and he's
at your right hand. Look to him for me. Don't look
at me. Accept me for his sake. Lord,
if you take notice of my sin, Lord, find me in Christ. You
made him strong. The Lord Jesus Christ confessed
that so many times in his ministry. The words that I speak unto you,
they're not my words, they're the Father's words. It was the
anointing of the Spirit of God and the blessings of God the
Father. That's why we find him in prayer to his Father, depending
upon his Father as the man, as the God-man, as the seed of David. And David goes on to say in Psalm
65, verse four, blessed is the man whom thou choosest. Behold,
my servant, mine elect, Isaiah tells us. Here's who we preach. We preach Jesus Christ, the man. Blessed is the man, David says
in Psalm 1.1. Blessed is the man who walketh
not after the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the
way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. Who
is that? That's Christ. He never walked
in the way of sinners. He never stood in the, never
sat in the seat of the scornful. Never took his counsel from this
world. Isaiah calls him the man of war.
He went up against death and hell, the wrath of God, the requirements
of the law, and he got the victory all by himself as the seed of
David, the God-man. We preach a Savior who is fully
God and fully man. Lamentation. Adam, you read from
this earlier. Lamentation chapter three, verse
one. I am the man that hath seen affliction
by the rod of his wrath. And Jeremiah, the weeping prophet,
wrote the book of Lamentations. And he's lamenting, but he's
speaking prophetically. And he said, I am the man. I
am the man. which hath seen affliction. And
no man has seen the affliction that the Lord Jesus Christ saw
when the rod of God's wrath fell on him at Calvary's cross. We preach the seed of David,
who is himself also the Son of God. The fullness of the Godhead
bodily, Everything, all the attributes of a sovereign, omnipotent God
are possessed by the Lord Jesus Christ. How could he be anything
other than successful in what he came to do? This idea that
Jesus died for people who are going to end up in hell, That's
not the God-man. That's not our God. You know,
when your friends and family members, you tell them about
the gospel, you tell them about a particular redemption or election
or irresistible grace, and they say, my God's not like that. You can just simply say, yeah,
I know. Your God's not my God. That's the way God is. He's God. He's God. He's the holy, harmless, undefiled,
separate from sinners that is now higher than the heavens. He has the perfect approval of
his father who said, sit down here at my right hand until I
make all thine enemies thy footstool. He's the priest forever after
the order of Melchizedek. He's God. Fully man. fully God. We preach the kingdom
of God and all those things concerning, concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the son of God and he's God, the son. He is the surety of his people,
which means that he provides everything that God requires.
Everything God requires. We say with David, look at the
man at thy right hand. Don't look at me. We're gonna
be accepted in God's sight. We're gonna be found accepted
in the beloved, in the beloved, no other place. What a glorious
savior we have. What love. Behold, what manner
of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called
the sons of God. Here it is love, not that we
loved him, but that he loved us and gave himself to be the
propitiation for our sins. God required a perfect sacrifice. The only reason why the Lord
Jesus Christ, the man, was able to satisfy the justice of God
is because he was God. The Bible says that he's able
to save to the uttermost, to the uttermost. He's not dependent
upon us for us to do our part in order for him to be able to
save. He's successful. What do we say in preaching?
Come. How does this book conclude? Come, come. Come into the water
of life and drink freely. And the Spirit of God says, come,
bow to the King. Rejoice in Him, believe on Him. This is what preaching is. When
you talk to your friends and family members, you want them
to come. In their hearts, you want them
to come. We call on men to come. We stir the waters that they
might come. And we pray that the Lord would
stir their hearts that they would come. They would come. All you that labor and are heavy
laden, come unto me. Come unto me. The fourth question I want to
ask from this passage of scripture is how do we preach? How do I
preach? How do we preach? How do you
preach? Look with me at our text. Preaching
the kingdom of God and teaching those things which concern the
Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence. With all confidence. Now, any man that gets up here
behind this pulpit and has got confidence in himself, God hadn't
called to preach. The longer I preach, the less
confidence I have. Todd and I were talking about
this last week. He said, you know, I'm more afraid of preaching
now than I've ever been in my life. And I can say that's true
of me. So afraid that I'm going to say
something that's not true. So afraid that I'm just going
to get myself in the way of preaching. Our confidence is not in ourselves. But the less confidence we have
in ourselves, the more confidence we have in Christ. His strength is made perfect
in our weakness. And the more confident I am,
I've never been more confident that Jesus is the Christ, the
son of the living God than I am right now. Never been more confident
that this book is the inspired word of God. Never been more
confident in his ability to save. never been more confident in
the truth of the gospel. Our confidence comes from the
authority that God has given us in his word. Paul said, when
the Sanhedrin brought the Peter in the early chapters of Acts,
when they brought them in to interrogate them and threatened
them not to preach this gospel, they said, you've turned the
whole city upside down with this doctrine of yours. And that's
when Peter said, well, you decide for yourself what you think we
should do. But as far as we're concerned, we can do nothing
but obey God. And they left. And the Bible
says that they were ignorant and unlearned men. Those were
the apostles. To the Pharisees, they had not
been to the proper schools. They didn't have the right documents. They weren't trained properly. but they took notice that they
had been with Jesus. That's their confidence. Our
confidence is in Christ. And that's how we preach. We
preach without apology. We preach without ambiguity.
This word confidence means to speak with clarity. And we live
in a world that loves political speech. Why? Politically correct
speech. Because politically correct speech
gives all the hearers the opportunity to define it the way they want
to define it. That's not preaching confidently.
That's not preaching boldly. That's not preaching with clarity.
We want there to be no confusion about what we're saying. We don't want to speak in such
a way as that men, well, I wonder what he really meant by that.
Now, we want all men to know exactly what we mean. And that's
what it means to speak confidently. It means to speak openly, without
reservation, without ambiguity. There can be no doubt about what's
being said. We don't leave it up for interpretation. That's why men get offended,
don't they? When they say, well, that's your interpretation. When
you tell something clearly from the scriptures, what do they
say? Well, that's your interpretation. No, that's what it says. Yeah,
but you didn't give me an opportunity to have my interpretation. That's
not speaking confidently. We don't give room for men to
interpret it the way they want to interpret it. We just declare
it simply and clearly the way it is. So that's how we preach. And don't you like it that way?
Don't you like it? Preacher, I don't care what you
think. I don't care what anybody else thinks. Just tell me what
the Lord says. That's why preaching is always,
thus saith the Lord. Your opinions and my opinions
are just that, opinions. You know the word heresy in the
Bible means to make a choice or to have an opinion? That's
what the word heresy means. And that's what everybody wants,
to make a choice and to have an opinion. And it's, God says,
that's heresy. Preaching the gospel confidently
doesn't leave any room for opinions or choice. It just tells clearly
what God has said. And God's people love it that
way. Don't shut me up to the word of God, pastor. Don't leave
any part of it up to my interpretation or up to my opinion. Don't leave
any part of my salvation. Tell me exactly what God says. Tell me clearly, tell me plainly. How's that song go? We sing it
a lot. Lord, that's the way I wanna
hear it. I'm but a little child. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3,
verse 12, seeing then that we have such hope, we speak with
great plainness of speech. Great plainness of speech. We're
not trying to muddy the waters or impress men with theological concepts, we are
declaring the things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, how he
came according to the seat of David as a man who suffered and
died on a cross, and how in his nature was the fullness of the
Godhead bodily. and how God looked at him and
saw the travail of his soul in the man and was satisfied that
the perfect sacrifice had been made because the Lord Jesus Christ
is God. We preach those things concerning
the Lord Jesus Christ. How that he has ascended back
into glory and that he's seated at the right hand of God and
that he ever lives to make intercession for us until all his enemies
be made his footstool. And we do it with confidence. Not confidence in ourselves,
but confident. Confident. of who he is, what
he's done, and what God's word says. And I want to close with this
last question. What is the promise of preaching? Look at the verse. No man forbidding him. Paul in another place says, they've
got me bound in these chains. He's writing to Timothy. He said, they've got me bound
in these chains, but the word of God is not bound. The word
of God is not bound. In another place, he said, pray
that the word of God may have free course. that it may go out
in power. No man forbidding him. Men have
tried to shut the gospel up. They've tried to shut preachers
up. They've killed them. But God's word cannot be bound. No man can pluck you out of his
hand. You can't pluck yourself out
of his hand. The word of God is not bound
by man. grieving, heart sick parents
over children that have left the gospel. Keep praying for them. The word
of God is not bound. They may have been taken away
by this world. They belong to the Lord, they'll be back. Pray
for them. Pray that the effects of preaching
will be no man forbidding him. God puts his hand on you, makes
you come. It's irresistible, isn't it?
No man can forbid him. The word of God is not found. When God's ready to apply his
word to the heart, no man can stop him. No man can forbid him. In one sense, And I hate it when
preachers say, well, in one sense and another sense, but hopefully
you understand what I mean by this. In one sense, every time
we preach and every time you share, Scott, you and I were
talking this week, he was talking to someone at work and he said,
I know this is more for me than for them. And it always is that
way. And we say things that we wish
we wouldn't have said. We wanted to say things we didn't
say. In one sense, every time we preach
and every time we try to share the gospel, we fail in expressing
it the way it ought to be expressed. Any man that walks out of this
pulpit feeling successful in what he just did hasn't been
called of God. Never can you feel that way. You know, like, Lord, I got in
my way so much. I couldn't. There were so many
things I wanted to say. Or in another sense, no man can
forbid the Word of God. And so I know that in all my
shortcomings and all my failures as a little Paul trying to preach
the gospel, that no man can forbid the Word of God. When he gets
ready to apply it to your heart and my heart, no man's going
to stop him. So in that sense, preaching's
going to be successful. It's gonna be successful. God
will not allow his word to return unto him void. It will accomplish
the purpose for which he sends it. That's preaching. Aren't
you glad it's so? Our Heavenly Father, thank you
for preaching. Bless it to our souls, we ask
it in Christ's name, amen. 229, let's stand together, 229.