My Preaching and Your Faith

I read the text again from 1
Corinthians 2, verse 4 and 5. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of
man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that
your faith that your faith should not be
in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Now, before
I come to that text, I want to show you why we can take a text
from the writings of Paul, why we can turn to I Corinthians
2, 4, and 5 and preach it as the infallible unchangeable counsel
of God. Now turn to 1 Timothy chapter
1. Now this is important. 1 Timothy
1, verse 15 and 16. Why is it that we can't take
the books of Luther and Calvin, Zwingli, Whitefield, Huss, Knox,
these men, turn to a text in their writings and preach what
they had to say? Why can't we take our denominational
creed catechisms and take a text from those things? Or why can't
we just decide that we'll invent a text as a revelation from God,
a word of prophecy, and preach that as the infallible, unchangeable
truth of God? Well, now watch I Timothy verse
15. This is a faithful saying, and
worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners of whom I am the greatest, I am the foremost,
I am the chief. Howbeit for this cause I obtained
mercy, Paul speaking here now, I obtained mercy. I didn't deserve
it, I didn't earn it, but like Noah I found grace in the eyes
of the Lord. I obtained mercy. Like Abraham,
Mary Magdalene, Zacchaeus the thief on the cross, God In His
sovereign mercy made me an object of His grace. I obtained mercy. I didn't work for it. I didn't
decide to seek it. I didn't earn it. I didn't merit
it. I obtained it. As the free gift of God, I obtained. I'm the greatest sinner, Paul
said. I'm the foremost sinner. But I obtained mercy. Read on. That in me, first, Jesus Christ
might show forth all long-suffering and patience," watch this line
now, "...for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe
on him to life everlasting." I can't say that. You can't say
that. Spurgeon couldn't say that. Whitefield
couldn't say that. Edwards couldn't say that. The
Wesley brothers couldn't say that. I obtained the grace of
God. We can say that. Obtain mercy
we can say that but we cannot say this That I am a pattern
And that's what Paul is saying here. I'm a special pattern I'm
a pattern to all who will come to Christ. I'm a pattern to all
who will believe to life everlasting I'm a pattern to all who will
preach the gospel From here on anyone who preaches anyone who
believes can look back at Paul because of the divine grace of
God and take that which happened to him, and that which he wrote,
and that which he said, and that which he preached, and can use
it as a pattern. Now, I'm not a carpenter, don't
profess to be one, but I do know a little bit about carpentry.
And I know if a carpenter plans to cut rafters, say he has to
cut fifty rafters for the same route, the first thing he does
is cut a pattern. And he'll write on that rafter,
pattern. He cuts the all the length of
it. He cuts the notch out where it
fits there on the side of the building. He cuts the angle where
it meets the ridge board at the top. He cuts one pattern. He
writes on their pattern. And he cuts all the other rafters
from that one pattern. Now the biggest mistake he can
make is to cut the first one Use it to cut the second one.
Use the second one to cut the third one. Use the third one
to cut the fourth one. Use the fourth one to cut the
fifth one. When he gets to the end, 50% of them won't even fit. Because every time he cuts one,
it changes a little bit. But if he'll use that one pattern
and cut every single rafter from that one pattern, they'll all
be alike. Now, we admire men like Whitfield
and Spurgeon, I quote from them frequently, other preachers do
too. We admire men like Dr. John Gill and others, but they
were not divinely inspired in their writings or in their messages
or in their life, not like Paul. They are not patterns. If we
are going to preach anything, we've got to go back to this
book. If we're going to say, this is it, This is what we believe. This is what God says. This is
what God teaches. Thus saith the Lord. We can't
go back to Spurgeon. We can't go back to Whitfield.
We can't go back to Luther or any of these men who have lived
since the Bible has been complete. We've got to go back to God's
Word. That's the reason that we can turn over here to 1 Corinthians
2 and say, this is it. This is our text. This is what
we pray. And we can borrow from these
other men, but borrow from them in the sense knowing that they
made mistakes, that they failed, that they were wrong on many
occasions, but Paul was never wrong. Not where he wrote the
Word of God. This is God's Word. It's all
given by inspiration of God. It's God breathed. And all Scripture
is profitable for doctrine. Not all the writings of men,
all Scripture. is profitable for doctrine with
proof, for correction, instruction of righteousness. So Paul definitely
states, inspired by God, that he is our pattern. This is why
we can take a text from his epistles. This is why we can preach his
way as the infallible way for all who would have eternal life.
Now I have selected this fourth and fifth verse as our text this
morning, and this is the topic. In verse 4, he says, my speech
and my preaching, my preaching, my preaching. Paul is our pattern
of preaching. Down in verse 5, that your faith,
that your faith, and that's the two divisions, my preaching and
your faith. It'll be very simple, but I hope
we can return to the simplicity of the gospel, to the simplicity
of Christ. First of all, my preaching. Let's
go back to verse 1. He said, and I, brethren, when
I came to you, Now we immediately begin with an important question
here. Brethren, when I came to you, I came to you. Every preacher
can say that. Everyone who occupies the pulpit
can say, I came to you. I came to you. Now the question
is this. Did I come in my own name with my own message and
my own thoughts or was I sent of God? Paul said, I came to
you. I came not as a volunteer. I
came sent of God. He could say that because over
here in Acts 22, listen to what God said to him. After he'd been
converted, after he'd come to the knowledge of Christ, the
Lord God sent a special messenger to him by the name of Ananias. And that special messenger said
to him in verse 14 of Acts 22, Paul, the God of our fathers
hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, that thou shouldest
see the just one, that thou shouldest hear the voice of his mouth,
and thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what you've seen
and what you've heard." He got those orders from God. He said,
I came to you, but I didn't come in my own name. I didn't come
with my own message, my own thoughts. The gospel, which was taught
me, I didn't receive it of men. I received it from the Lord God.
He was pleased to reveal his Son to me. Turn to Acts chapter
13. Look at this scripture here for
just a moment. The church down at Antioch was meeting together
and verse 2 said in Acts 13, As they ministered to the Lord
and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul
for the work whereunto I have called them. And when they had
fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them
away on God's orders. Brethren, when I came to you,
I came divinely sent. When I came to you, I came divinely
appointed. When I came to you, I came divinely
ordained. To be sent of God is to go with
a message. To be sent of God is to go in
the power of the Spirit. God's going to do something.
But to go without being sent is to butcher the gospel, and
to butcher the souls of men, and to speak in the name of Him
who did not send you as an ambassador, and that is to speak with no
power. Our Lord said, lift up your eyes
and look on the fields, they're quite all ready to harvest, and
we've ridden that to death. Look over there in China and
Africa and India and Russia and Mexico and all these countries
and see souls perishing without having heard the gospel. That's
true. But what did Christ say next?
Lift up your eyes and look upon the fields, they're white already
to harvest, and we push young men into the ministry, and young
men and young women into the mission fields, we make volunteers
for the ministry, we send them away to school, they go out and
try to preach, and they fail because they weren't called,
they weren't ordained, they weren't anointed, they weren't sent,
they have no message, they're trying to do a work that's impossible
in the Spirit, let alone out of the Spirit. The Lord Jesus said, you lift
up your eyes and look on the fields, they're white already
to harvest. Pray that the Lord of the harvest, pray that He
will send forth laborers into His field. Ananias came and said,
Saul, God has appointed you to be His witness. The Holy Ghost
came to the church at Antioch and said, the Lord God has appointed
Saul and Barnabas to be His witness. And in Ephesians chapter 4 verse
11, our Lord ascended from the tomb, rose from the tomb, and
before He ascended to heaven, the Scripture says this, the
same One who ascended, and He gave some apostles. Who gave
it? He gave it. He anointed them.
He ordained them. He appointed them. He sent them.
And He gave some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors
and teachers. He has to do it. for the perfecting of the saints,
for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body
of Christ. Now here's the question. Brethren,
he said, I came to you. I can say the same thing, and
every minister who today is standing in some pulpit, whether preaching
to five people or five thousand people, he can say, I came to
you. But here is the awesome and awful
question. Did he come in his own name,
or was he sent of God? Now look at verse 3. And he said,
I came to you. And he said, I was with you.
I was with you. Here I am. I came. I came. Walter Groover went to Mexico.
Did he go in the strength and spirit of God, or is he down
there just on his own? Bill Clark left his home in Ireland
and went to France, 18 years now. Has he been on an 18-year
vacation? Or is he there in the strength
and power of the Holy Spirit? He's there. He's there and I'm
here. He said, I was with you. I came
to you and I'm with you now. You got me on your hands. And
I was with you. Look at it. In weakness and in
fear and in trembling. Now who wants that kind of preaching?
I read several authors concerning this third verse. Some of them,
to my surprise, Some of them stressed his physical weakness. And I was with you in weakness. I had bad eyesight. I had an
ugly figure. He was a small, bald-headed,
ugly man, according to all the reports. He had a thorn in the
flesh. He had body frailty. And they
stressed that. He was there with weakness. People
didn't like his voice. He had a voice that was hard
to listen to, they say. And he said, I came in fear and
trembling, and they said that was because of persecution and
violence that were always against his person. I don't believe that
at all. I'll tell you what Paul is saying
here. And it's applicable, what he's saying is applicable to
every ordained messenger servant of God. I came to you. God sent me. And I was with you
in weakness. Now Paul was not a weak man,
he was a strong man. He was a bold man. He could stand
in front of Agrippa, in front of the emperor, in front of the
governor, he could stand in front of Felix, he could stand toe
to toe with the powers of the religious world and not tremble
one bit. But Paul was a weak man in the
presence of the Lord God with such a vast and grand theme as
the purpose of God in Christ Jesus, he felt weak. He said,
but when I'm weak, I'm strong. He felt insufficient. He cried,
who is sufficient to handle these things? I know today men feel
quite sufficient. They can open the curtain and
they can come rolling out to the roll of the snare drum and
the blare of the trumpet and stand before the spotlight on
color TV and crack a few jokes and tell where they've been and
who they saw and what they did. But the Apostle Paul stood in
the presence of the Lord God with an awesome, vast, great,
tremendous steam. The glorious gospel of redeeming
grace. And he said, I stand there in
weakness And in fear, he didn't fear men, he feared God. And I'll tell
you, when we read of the failures of men like Abraham, we have
every reason to fear. When we read of the failures
of men like Noah, the failures of men like David, the failures
of men like Peter, when we read of the failures of these men
in the flesh, we have every reason to fear. Not men, but fear God. And he said, I was with you in
weakness, in fear, and in trembling, much trembling. He magnified
his office and humbled himself. And that's where we need to do
a little bit of studying. If the great apostle, the man
called of God, supernaturally called of God, sent of God, The
man who wrote the scriptures, the man who could heal bodies
and raise dead people, if he trembled in view of the work
of the ministry, does it become any of us, does it become us
at all, any of us, to have any self-confidence at all? We're powerless to convert any
sinner. We need to be self-emptied and
self-distrustful and consciously weak and to tremble before the
Lord God. Our Savior said, He that exalteth
himself shall be put to shame. Humble. And he that humbleth
himself shall be exalted. How to learn that? I don't have
the faintest idea. I just know it needs to be learned. I came to you, God sent me, and
I was with you. I was with you in weakness. I'm
not sufficient to handle this vast and powerful thing in fear,
not fear of you, fear of God, fear of the flesh, fear of satanic
power, and in much trembling, in much trembling. If the Apostle
Paul described himself in that fashion, And as our Lord said,
he that exalteth himself, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow,
but he will be humble. And he that humbleth himself,
like John who said, I'm nobody, I'm just a voice. Like James who said, Elijah was
a man of like passions as we are. Peter said, get up, I'm
just a man, that's all in the world I am. And look at the next verse, verse
4. He says, what my preaching was not. My preaching was not. First of all, He said it was
not with excellency of speech. Verse 1, I came not to you with
excellency of speech. Now could He have... Now a lot
of us, we say my speech and preaching not with excellency of speech.
No wonder, we couldn't do it if we wanted to. But Paul could
have. He was not only versed in Jewish
learning, having been brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, the
leading teacher of his day, but he was also well learned in all
fields. But it was not his purpose to
impress anybody. It was not his purpose to impress
anyone with his knowledge. Are we guilty of that? Are we
preachers and Bible teachers? Are we guilty of trying to impress
someone with our speaking ability or our wisdom or our knowledge
or our talents or our gifts? Paul said, I didn't come that
way. I didn't come to you. My speech and my preaching among
you was not with excellency of speech or wisdom declaring unto
you the testimony of God, nor was it, verse 4, with persuasive
words of man's wisdom and logic. How prone we are. Oh, this is
a real sore spot right here. How prone we are to try to persuade
men to repent and persuade men to believe and to persuade men
to reform and to persuade men of our doctrinal position and
to persuade men with our logic, our arguments and our wisdom
to come to God. Paul said, I didn't come that
way at all. My preaching was not with excellency of speech.
show off my wisdom and show off my knowledge and show off my
oratorical ability, nor was my preaching in this vein or this
method persuading you with human wisdom to do what you ought to
do. Well, what was his preaching?
Look at verse 2. I determined not to know anything
among you, and it was a determination. I'm determined. It doesn't just
fall out that way. I am determined not to know anything
among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified, his person and
his work. That was his message. That was
his gospel. Jesus Christ and him crucified,
his person and his work. Paul left no doubt what he believed
about Jesus Christ. And you can't ride this theme
too much. Jesus Christ, in whom dwelleth
all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Jesus Christ, who said,
I and my Father are one. Jesus Christ, who said, he that
hath seen me hath seen the Father. Jesus Christ, who in whom we
are complete, Jesus Christ in you, who is the hope of glory,
feed the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood." I'm determined, Paul said. I'm
determined. I like what that old fellow playing
the bass fiddle said. He was plucking one of these
old-fashioned bass fiddles, you know, has the long neck, not
one of those electric things, one of these big ones, you know.
hear it all over the building. He'd just hold his left hand
in one place, just pulling those strings, you know. And after
the song was over, the orchestra leader came up and said, uh,
you don't play that thing too well. He said, why? What do you
mean? Well, he said, he said, you just
play the same note. Said, did you ever watch other
fellas play one of those things? Yeah, I've seen them play. Well,
have you ever watched their left hand? They keep moving their
left hand. Aw, he said, they're looking for the note. I found
it. And he kept plunking that thing. Paul had found the note. Paul
had found the note. He dabbled in everything else
before God met him on the road to Damascus. But on the road
to Damascus, he saw the note. He found the note. The note was
revealed to his heart, and he went out determined to know nothing
but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. God forbid, he said, that I should
glory save in the cross of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,
by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world.
Peter said it. He found the note. He said, we
are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, and to you who
believe, He is precious. At the cross, at the cross where
I first saw the light, And the burden of my heart rolled away.
It was there by faith I received my sight. And now I'm happy all
the day. There's a fountain filled with
blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that
flood lose all their guilty stains. The dying thief rejoiced to see
that fountain in his day. There may I, though vile as he,
wash all my sins away. Dear dying Lamb, thy precious
blood shall never lose its power till all the ransomed Church
of God be saved to sin no more. For since by faith I saw that
stream, thy flowing womb supply, redeeming love, redeeming grace
has been my thing, and by God's grace it will be till I die. Everything is in Christ. Everything
is fulfilled in Christ. Everything is received in Christ.
Everything I am is in Christ. Why should I seek another theme?
There is no nobler theme than Christ. What my preaching was, it was
a person. It wasn't a plan, it was a person.
All right, notice something else he said about his preaching.
He said it was in the demonstration and power of the Holy Spirit.
You see it there? My speech and my preaching was
not with enticing. Persuasive is the word there.
Enticing, persuasive words of man's wisdom. That's the way
much preaching is, I regret to say in this day. Persuading. Don't you want to go to heaven?
You don't want to go to hell. How many of you got a mother
in heaven? Everybody's got a mother in heaven. The Bible is a book
that tells you how to go to heaven. I beg your pardon. The Bible
is the Word of God regarding His purpose and His grace in
Christ Jesus, our Redeemer. The Bible may tell you how to
go to hell. The Bible may be to you a book
of nothing but judgment and wrath and condemnation. It's a book
of redemption in Christ to the believer. My preaching was not with enticing
words of man's wisdom, watch this now, but in demonstration
of the Spirit and power. What's Paul saying there? Here's
what he's saying. I waited on the Holy Spirit to give me a
message. I waited on the Holy Spirit to give me a message,
and I know a little bit about that. Timothy, he said, preached
the Word. Preached the Word. Thus saith
the Lord. God said, My Word will not return
unto me void. My Word. When we sit down and
study to preach, do we seek something that that we can handle, or something
about which we are knowledgeable, or something that may impress
those who come to hear us, or something that is deeply theological. Now, let's see, the church needs
this, the church needs that, or do we cry out to God as we
wait on the Holy Spirit, Lord, give me a word for thy people. Five words in the power of the
Holy Spirit is worth 10,000 well planned. words from our empty heads and
empty mouths. That's what Paul says. I didn't
come to you with enticing words of man's wisdom. I didn't sit
down trying to figure out something that I could handle real good
and impress you with my wisdom or something. Watch this now.
I didn't seek to preach a message that would persuade you to make
a decision. God just may give us a message
of wrath. God just may lay on His servant
a message of judgment. God just may lay on His messenger's
heart a stripping message. And He may lay on His servant's
heart a comforting message. We can never improve on His Word.
Just preach the Word. I had a preacher come here one
time. He'd only been here about three or four months, and he
wanted to preach. He wanted to preach so bad. And
I made the mistake of calling on him, and he preached. I mean, he got up and talked.
And he's going to straighten out this church and what we call
the Sovereign Grace Movement and Ever Grace Church in America. And he even came to the point
of almost calling people's names from the pulpit. How he learned
all the problems in three months and the solution for them, I
don't know. I've been 25 years looking at them, don't know the
problem nor the solution. But he knew it in three months.
I had another preacher say to me one time, when you going to
have me over preaching a conference? I got a real message for those
fellows. I got a message for them. I don't have a message. God's got a message. And when
we stand to preach or teach, if we're not preaching or teaching
his message, we ought not be preaching. Isn't that right?
Paul waited on God. Secondly, he waited on the Spirit
not only to give him a message, but he waited, now watch this,
on the Holy Spirit to open the heart of the hearer. And this
is our greatest error. In our anxiety, and it's understandable,
we want to see that person saved and that person saved. We want
to see this person theologically straightened out. We want to
see that one theologically accurate or theologically true. We want
to see the church grow. We want to see people come in.
We want to see folks born again. And in our anxiety, every time
I think of this, I think of Abraham. God said, Abraham, you'll have
a son. Lord, I'm 100 years old. He was 90 at that time, or 80
some odd, you'll have a son. Well, the days went by, no son
came. And the months went by, no son came. And the years went
by, no son came. And the Savior slipped up to
him one day and said, well, it looks like that God means for
you to act on your initiative. You know, the Lord uses means. I can see this understanding
now. I can see this is what I hear preachers use this same Tommy
Rock. Well, you know, God wants us to go, and God wants us to
witness, and men aren't dead logs, and God uses means, and
let's go out in the highways and the hedges, and let's make
them come in. So the Savior said, why don't you just go in to Hagar,
she's a young woman, she's my handmaid, and have your son,
he'll be your heir. That's what God means for you
to do. See, God says he's going to have a son, so he meant for
you to get one. So Abraham did, and so Hagar
did, and so they had a son. And for 4,000 years, he's gummed
up the Jewish nation, that son has. He's Ishmael. He's the father of the Arabs.
He's been a troublemaker since he came into this world. Religious,
but a troublemaker. And finally, God, after 10, 12,
14 years, Ishmael was a big boy. And God came to Abraham and said,
Now Abraham, you're going to have a son. I'm going to give
you a son. Thy seed shall not be in Ishmael,
but in Isaac. In Isaac. And that's what he's
saying here. He's saying, I waited on God.
I waited on God. Matthew 23. Turn to Matthew 23.
And look at Matthew 23 and listen to what our Lord says here. Brethren,
I know what I'm talking about now. I'm right on the sore spot.
I'm right here where it's going on right now. I'm right here
where evangelism has its weakest point. I'm right here where it's
awful. Church wrecking, home wrecking,
soul wrecking, work is going on. Soul wreckers, not winners,
soul wreckers. Matthew 23, verse 15. Woe unto
you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You compass sea and
land to make one proselyte, to make a convert. And after you've
made him, you've made him twofold more the child of hell than you
are. Only God can raise the dead. Only God can open blind eyes. Only God can break the heart.
Only God can convince men of sin. Only God can reveal Christ
as the only Savior. The people we have in our churches,
are they our converts or are they like Lydia, whose heart
God opened? I know I get some criticism for
not singing several verses of invitation at the end of each
message and persuading people to walk down the aisle, but I'm
scared to death of that. I've seen so many people butchered. I've seen them given false hope.
I've seen them given a false refuge. I've seen them come down
to the front and pronounce saved. They get baptized, and then they
drift, and they get indifferent, and they get careless, and they're
not interested in the gospel, and they don't love God, and
they're not saved, and they go to hell resting on that false
foundation. This is what Paul is saying,
my preaching, when I came to you, I preached Christ, but I
didn't preach him with enticing words of man's wisdom and logic,
but I preached him in the demonstration of the Spirit, the same Holy
Spirit that gave me the message. and gave Paul the message, that
same Holy Spirit will have to give it to you. That same Holy
Spirit will have to break your heart. That same Holy Spirit
will have to strip your self-righteous rags from off you. That same
Holy Spirit will have to bring you to hate sin and to love Christ. That same Holy Spirit will have
to give to you a relationship with Christ. Men can't do it. You can't do it. We're born not
of the will of man, not of the will of the flesh, we're born
of God. Wait on the Lord. It may be a year, it may be two
years, it may be ten years, in the case of Isaac it may be fifteen
years. But I'd rather have one Isaac
than a hundred thousand Ishmaels. I'd rather have one heir in whom
thy seed shall be called, born of God, sent of God, than to
have a hundred thousand of our own converts, your faith, that
your faith. Brethren, God sent me to you,
and I was with you in weakness, fear, and trembling. And my speech
and my preaching was not to show off, to let you know how smart
I am or what I've learned. or to wrestle and argue with
you over points of theology and points of doctrine and points
of church history and points of church practice and points
of prophecy. Fully on that stuff, Paul said,
I'm determined to know nothing but Christ, a person. And that person crucified for
our sins, buried and risen for our justification, seated as
our great High Priest and Mediator, coming again as our Lord and
Redeemer. And I didn't bring that message
to you with persuasive words to get some decision out of you,
but I left it in the hands of the Holy Spirit. Why? Look at verse 5, that your faith should not stand, should not
be, in the wisdom of men." Now, there are two foundations
of faith given here, and I'll close with this statement. Two
foundations of faith given here. Your faith should not stand in
the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Now, you better
examine your faith. Paul tells us to do that. Examine
yourselves whether you be in the faith. Have I adopted traditions handed
down? however true. If there's somebody
else's, however true they are, they won't do me any good, they
got to be mine. What I'm saying is that the church to which I
belong and the doctrine to which I hold, the doctrine which I
hold, and the creed to which I give agreement may be true.
But if I've adopted it only because somebody taught it to me, I'm
in a mess. It's not mine, it's theirs. It's
not my faith, it's their faith. You see what I'm saying? Am I
following a denominational pattern because that was what my parents
taught me? Or some silver tongue orator taught me? Am I following
denominational philosophy because our family has been whatever
we are for years? Have I followed a man or a group
of men? Is my faith a system of logical
doctrine, or is my faith in a revelation
of God to my heart by the Holy Spirit? I turn to John 4. Let me show you something here.
This is important. You remember, our Lord was talking to that
woman at the well. And he astounded and amazed her
with a revelation of himself, the Messiah. And she ran down
into Samaria and she told all those people. And they came out
to hear him. And there was a revival. God
revealed himself to some folks. And John 4, verse 41, look at
it. And many more believed because
of his own word. And they said to the woman, watch
this now, now we believe. not because of thy saying, we've
heard him ourselves. And we know that he is the Christ,
the Savior of the world. Now, you listen to me a minute,
carefully, right here. Now we believe, not on the basis
of your word. This is what I want My dear family,
and your dear family, and these precious young people that have
grown up, they've never known but one pastor, and that's me.
They've never known but one church, and that's this one. One father
and mother, they know what you believe, and they know in whom
you believe. And they know the doctrine you hold. But that won't
make it. I want them to be able to say
someday, now we believe, not because of your saying, not because
you believe it, though we respect you and we admire you and we
thank God for you, but Cecil, I don't believe it because you
do. I've heard him myself. You see what I'm saying? I've
heard him myself. He's revealed himself to me.
His word has come here and done for me what he's done for you.
His Word has convicted me of sin and revealed my inability.
His Word has revealed Him. I know who He is now. He's the
Savior of the world. He's indeed the Christ. And I
believe that not because your doctrine's more logical than
that doctrine. Just, if that's your trouble,
don't hold any doctrine. Just erase the whole thing. If that's all you're doing, if
you're trying to sit down and take the Methodist handbook and
the Baptist handbook and some other handbook and see who's
right, just wash the whole thing out and forget it. Because there's
enough error in every one of them to send them all to hell.
That's right. See what he says. Ask the Holy
Spirit to speak to you. That's what I'm saying here as
I close the message. I'm saying to you, seek the Lord. It may be that he will reveal
himself to you, and then one service, you can come down this
aisle and say to this congregation, I believe, not because the pastor
says it, not because you have experienced it, but because I
have heard him myself, and I know that he's the Savior. I've heard
him myself. Nobody can take that away from
you. And you'll never grow tired of it, and you'll never grow
weary of him, because he becomes sweeter every day, and his word
becomes more precious, and his people become more wonderful,
and you're able to do inwardly what you've tried to do for years
on your own strength, because you've hurt him yourself. And
you never get weary. I want us to sing in closing,
Don, number 118. when I survey the wondrous cross
on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain I count
but loss, our poor contempt on all my pride.

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