The Preaching of the Word

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

If you would, you can open your Bibles to 1 Timothy 4, which is where we're going to be today. We're going to be in 1 Timothy 4. In the late 80s, there was an organization called TEDD. T-E-D. T-E-D, TEDD stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. And in the late 80s, they began hosting conferences, and they called these conferences TED Talks. TED Talks were simply experts on something that were discussing interesting topics. That was the only thing that they were trying to do with TED Talks. They had done them for almost 20 years. And in June 2006, they began posting their TED Talks online. All their old TED Talks in the last almost 20 years. And within a few weeks, those things were all over the internet. Today, TED Talks have 2.2 billion with a B views. 2.2 billion views for TED Talks. You can find TED talks about a lot of different kinds of things.

TED talks really on anything. Most of them are incredibly interesting. There's a couple of duds. In 2004, there was a man by the name of Sal Khan. Sal Khan. And he began tutoring his cousin in remotely. He was in Boston. His cousin was in New Orleans, his younger cousin. He began to tutor his cousin remotely in math. And as a courtesy to them, like it would be nice to have, he began recording himself and posting those math tutorials onto YouTube in 2006. And within a few months, those videos became extremely popular. Eventually, in 2006, that allowed them to begin a nonprofit called the Khan Academy. And today, the Khan Academy has educational videos on just about anything. and they have 1.8 billion with a B views. And that's just on YouTube. There's actually other video views through their website and so on. And the same goes for Ted. Both of those developments, Khan Academy and Ted Talks,

both of those developments have an expert that is discussing content with willing listeners. It's an expert discussing content with willing listeners. Or as we have called it for centuries, preaching. Call that preaching. Both Ted Talks and the Khan Academy are examples of preaching of a kind. When you think about it, preaching is everywhere. It's not just in church services. It's everywhere. Ted Talks are a form of preaching. YouTube influencers gain influence through preaching. They preach content. People subscribe to that channel so they can listen to someone talk or do something that they are an expert on, whatever the content is, preaching is the vehicle. And preaching in this sense is universal.

You know, we will give lip service to discussion. We love having discussion. We love testimonials. But when an authority wants to speak on something that they are qualified to speak on, people listen, and they are better off for it. We may, as a culture, we may encourage differing voices. We may encourage different opinions, but when a voice speaks truth humbly,

that gains a hearing. It's why we practice, we have the practice of toasts at weddings and eulogies at funerals, because preaching is hardwired into our society. It's not just hardwired into our society, it's hardwired into every society. Preaching is not simply someone's tradition. Preaching is everyone's tradition. It is woven into life itself. People are hardwired for preaching. Hardwired to receive preaching. And so it makes sense that preaching is also hardwired into Scripture. Preaching is all over the Bible. You have Moses and Joshua preaching. You have Old Testament prophets preaching. You have Jesus himself preaching. You have the disciples preaching. You have the disciples telling other people to preach. Romans 10 shows us the central act of preaching through a series of questions. It says, Romans 10, 14 says, How then will they call on him whom they have not believed, in whom they have not believed?

And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?" So if you follow those questions backward, sorry, churches send people to preach so that others will believe. Preaching, hardwired into scripture, hardwired into our culture, it's everywhere. And so if not ironically, today I am preaching about preaching. Preaching the Word. This is a series that we've been in all summer, The Word. We've been talking about the Word and the preaching of the Word is the last sermon in that series. So far, we have talked about the Word of God, how the Word of God is a person. It is the Son of God. It is Jesus Christ Himself. Jesus the word also spoke words. And so through the Holy Spirit, he spoke and inspired more. So the word is also the Bible. In this way, the word then corrects rebukes. Last week, we heard from Tim

Oster, and he showed us how the word indwells people. So the word is living, it's active. The word is something by which we are changed. It is something by which we are made new. And so today, I wanna finish the series on the word with the preaching of the word. And what you might be thinking at this point, after I've said the word preaching way too many times, you might be thinking at this point, hey, isn't that a topic for a pastor's conference? Right? Why, respectfully, Drew, why would I need to know about preaching? I'm not a preacher. Why would I need to know about that? Because most of us are familiar with preaching as an expression of church authority. And in fact, preaching as an expression of church authority is what is happening right now. It's what I'm doing right now. I am an authority in this church and I am preaching and I'm opening the scriptures.

So it's what I'm engaging in right now. And when someone is in front at a church and they are preaching, it means that they have, or it should mean that they have authority to do so. Okay. For example, if we're here on a Sunday morning and some Yahoo like comes up and like starts trying to preach, I would hope that you would gang tackle him. Okay. I would hope that you would not let just any person get up here, right? And just preach, right? We want to make sure that the people that are preaching in our church are expressing that authority. This is, again, hardwired. This is a given in Scripture, and particularly in our text for today. And I want to read that. I said 1 Timothy, and I'm a liar. I'm sorry. It's 2 Timothy. Got to turn two pages. It's 1 Timothy 4, I apologize. Sorry about that. 1 Timothy 4, 1 through 2, it says, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus,

who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing and his kingdom. Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching. Now, when you see at the beginning, when you see, I charge you, this is Paul charging Timothy. Paul is Timothy's discipler. He's the one who has discipled Timothy, who has invested in Timothy. And Timothy looks up to Paul. Timothy is receiving instruction from Paul and Paul is telling him, I charge you Timothy to preach the word. Timothy is a pastor in this church. Okay. Second Timothy is a letter from Paul to Timothy and Timothy is the pastor and he is telling him how to pastor. And so it is in this context that we read this verse. He's saying, you, pastor Timothy, you preach authoritatively. You lead your congregation by preaching and in preaching you teach, you rebuke, you exhort, you reprove.

Jesus calls men to lead churches, and part of that is authoritative preaching. And that is what we are seeing here in 1 Timothy 4 and 4 verses 1 and 2. And this context right here is how most of us think about preaching most of the time, if not all the time. When I say preach, you're either thinking pulpit or street corner, but you're not thinking any other place. When we think about preaching, we think about professional ordained preachers. That's exactly what we think about. Yet, the Bible has a lot more to say about preaching than what professional ordained preachers do. The Bible has a lot more to say about that. You can see it actually very clearly in the book of Acts. And you don't have to turn there. I'm just going to be describing the events if you want. You mark it in Acts 7 and 8 is what I'm talking about. But you can see it clearly in a pivotal moment in the book of Acts.

So in Acts 7, you have this newly formed Jerusalem Church. It's the very first church of Jesus Christ. Okay. And they are blowing and going. I mean, they are doing amazing things and the Lord is providing miraculous wonders and signs to establish this is his church. They are demonstrating the gospel. The Holy Spirit is moving among them, authenticating this new movement called Christianity. It wouldn't even call it Christianity then. It's called the Way. They were following the Way. Okay. In that movement, in Acts 7, at that time, the apostles, so the 11 surviving disciples of Jesus Christ, the apostles were clearly the professional ordained preachers in that church, clearly. Nobody was even contending that, okay? Contesting that. Then in Acts 7, something really interesting happens. There's a face-off and not a fun one, a one that ends in death, okay?

Stephen, who's one of the newly appointed leaders in the church, he was appointed a deacon, Stephen is facing off against the local Jewish leaders. And in the end, Stephen has preached a whole sermon, and in Acts seven, the Jewish leaders stone Stephen to death. Okay, they stone him to death. He's the first Christian martyr. And when that happens, when that stoning happens, and everybody in Jerusalem sees it, pretty much everybody freaks out. Everybody who's a Christian scatters. So it says in Acts 8, 4, now those, sorry, it says that everybody was scattered, sorry.

We'll get to Acts 4 in a second, sorry. Everybody scatters except the apostles. So the apostles stay in Jerusalem. Everybody else gets out of Dodge, okay? Whether they just don't wanna be stoned, whether, I don't know, I don't know what's happening, but they all scattered. Now, if this happened today, if this happened today, and you were all scattered, and there were no churches where you were, you'd be calling up some sermon videos like hotcakes, right? You'd be putting those things on the YouTube, you'd be watching them, and say, okay, good, we got preaching. All right, we're solid gold. They didn't have YouTube back in the first century. I know it's crazy that they didn't have that, but they didn't. And really, truly, I want to say this just in all of, that is not how Jesus designed his church to be. He didn't design us to need specific people telling us what to believe.

That's not what preaching is. That's not what pastors do. Okay? That's not how Jesus designed the church. When you look a few verses later in Acts 8:4, it says, now those who were scattered, which again excludes the apostles, those who were scattered went about preaching the Word. And look, Mark it, it's Acts 8:4. From that point on in the entire Bible, the rest of the New Testament, after Acts 8:4, the Bible shifts its point of view away from Peter and John and the rest of the disciples from their point of view. And it begins to move to Stephen and then to Philip and then to Paul and then to Barnabas and then to Timothy and Apaphras and Apollos and Lydia and John Mark and all these different people. The Bible doesn't have this point of view like everything has to happen through the apostles. They are not the linchpin that holds everything together in the first century.

They don't even make it to Acts 9. They're not there. And you can see it because whenever Philip, who's a deacon, goes to this other country, goes to Samaria, he goes to a different place, he preaches, you see Peter and John come later. But all these people, deacons and non-deacons alike, all these people that were just part of this church, which is thousands of people, a couple of thousand probably, believe by this point, they're scattered and they all preached.

That's astounding. And you kind of get the idea that this was the plan all along because back in Acts 1 8, sorry, at the very beginning of Acts, it says, Jesus is talking to his disciples and he says, you're going to receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Do you think that whatever Jesus was telling this to the apostles in Acts 1:8 that those 11 guys were gonna go to the ends of the earth? Those 11 guys were gonna cover every square mile of the earth? No! Jesus intends for other people to bring the gospel out beside these apostles. It's supposed to start here and move outward into all nations. Jesus is still today appointing leaders in churches who preach the word authoritatively. That is good, that is right, that is in Scripture, yes and amen. But even as early as Acts 8,

Jesus shows us that his intention is for all Christians to preach, just not on a on a stage. Jesus intends for all Christians to preach just not on a stage, not a part of authoritative teaching on behalf of a local church. That's not everybody's call, right? You're not, you haven't made it to Christianity when you get up here and are able to give a sermon. That's not, this is just me working out my gifting and calling. This is no apex. This is me doing what I'm called to do, period. Jesus intends for all Christians to preach, just not on a stage. It even happens in Jesus' ministry, whenever he heals the demon-possessed man, this is in Mark five and Luke eight, the demon-possessed man wants to follow me, wants to get in a boat and wants Jesus to tell him, no, no, no, don't follow me. Go home to your friends and tell them what the Lord has done. And verse 20 it says, Mark five,

it says, and he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis. That's the same word for preaching. It began to preach in his hometown, how much Jesus had done for him and everyone marveled. It wasn't just Jesus who was preaching. It wasn't even just Jesus' disciples who was preaching. And that's in Mark five. That's relatively early in Jesus' ministry. Jesus equips all of us. He equips you to preach the gospel. However, if we only understand preaching in the context of a TED Talk, then we will never preach the gospel. If we only understand preaching as it is set aside for professionally ordained preachers, then we will never, ever assume that we should be preaching. We will actually think it sacrilegious to do so. We need to understand this well to understand what Jesus is calling us to do, because if If we just understand that as a TED Talk, our confidence is shot because we are not professionals.

But we would also have the opposite problem because as soon as we start believing that we can preach, we begin to worry that we don't know how. So even if we had the confidence, like, hey, I think I can preach. I think the Lord's calling me to just to preach to my coworker here. And this, well, then you start, oh, I don't, I don't know how I don't know what I should do. To put it a different way, we're all called to preach, but we don't know how to preach as a school teacher. We're all called to preach, we don't know how to preach as a manager. We don't know how to preach as a store clerk, as a lifeguard. We don't know how to preach as a friend, as a parent. We don't know how to preach as a roommate or a co-worker. We don't know. We don't know how to do that. We need to understand how it's different than what I'm doing right now, and yet the same. So, because there's so much here,

I'm not even going to switch scriptures. I'm going to stay in 2 Timothy 4, 1 and 2, those same verses. And what I want to encourage you with is that when Paul tells Timothy to preach, he's not limiting it to what professional ordained preachers do on a stage. That really, whenever Paul is saying to Timothy, preach the Word, That's really a call that goes out to all of us. And we can see it when we look at the scripture a little bit more closely. There's something for us in there, not just for professional preachers on a stage. Second Timothy 4, 2, we'll just start with, we'll just leave it at verse 2. First Timothy 4, 2 says, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with complete patience and teaching. I want to just break that down. I want to say what it is not, and then I want to say what it is. says, be ready in season and out of season. What it is not, when Paul tells Timothy to

be ready to preach in season and out of season, what he was not thinking, if I can be so bold as to say this, was that a church service would pop up at any point. Right? Oh, hey, hey, you got to be ready to preach because you never know when you're just going to like waltz into a church service and they need a preacher. Oh, it's out of season, but I'm totally ready. No, that's not what we're talking about. Okay. Um, when Paul is talking about this to Timothy, he's not talking about, Hey, be ready just in case they do a church service. He's not saying, okay, Hey, be ready to speak authoritatively. Uh, you know, maybe you don't, you don't always need to, it means this, it means that preaching is conversational and it is fluid. And it is fluid. It is conversational and it is fluid. It means that you're not always going to feel like preaching. Paul tells this to Timothy and he can say it right to us.

You're not always going to feel like you're in the mood or you feel holy enough to preach. You're going to feel disqualified and not just because you don't have reverend in front of your name. You're going to feel disqualified because of whatever sin you can't kick. You're going to feel disqualified because you didn't read your Bible that morning. You're going to feel disqualified because your prayers feel like they're hitting the ceiling. You're going to feel disqualified. And when you feel disqualified, that is out of season.

You are called to preach out of season when you don't feel like it. And I don't mean bad day. I mean, like, after you've been in prison. I mean, after you've done the worst thing imaginable, in the aftermath of wreckage, of poor decisions, Jesus Christ is still calling you to preach. You might say, it's not my season. Paul says, preach out of season. Be ready to preach in season and out of season. My cousin, Amanda, has a great story that she tells. It happened recently to her. And their life has been one frustration after the other for the past probably two or three years from battling cancer to one of their children breaking a femur, which is actually a really big deal. And when a child breaks a femur, CPS has to get involved. They were dealing with CPS. They were doing just crazy. And they love the Lord and they are godly people. I respect them greatly.

Cousin Amanda was this past 4th of July, we were talking. And cousin Amanda tells me, she said, you know, I was praying for an opportunity to share the gospel with somebody. And then my son broke his femur and I'm chosen to go into the ambulance ride. And the EMT across from me starts talking about his life. And the Holy Spirit says to me, hey, why don't you preach the gospel to him? Out of season.

You feel like preaching the gospel? When your child could die, that's out of season. That's out of season. The Holy Spirit said to preach out of season. If you're a school teacher, preaching might mean that it's not during class. Preaching might mean that it happens after class time. If you're a coworker, and your coworker needs gospel encouragement, you might have to invite them into your life. You might have to go to lunch with them. not while they're in the middle of doing whatever they're going to be doing. If they're trying to make a sale and you say, hey, listen, if you died right now, like they're like, I'm busy. I'm doing right. This is not the right time. Let's do it a different time. It might not be as convenient for you, but it will be more convenient for them. Whenever cousin Amanda was in the ambulance riding, it was not a convenient time for her,

but it was a really convenient time for that EMT who heard the gospel. Be ready to preach in season and out of season. It means that you are praying for opportunities to preach wherever you are. You're in line at the grocery store. You're, I mean, all kinds of things. And look, I know some of you are, are introverts, like painfully. So okay. I've met you. It's painful for both of us.

I'm only kidding a little. I am not introverted at all. I don't even know what that's like. People have to tell me, and it's mysterious and wonderful to me. Preaching isn't something that extroverts do because they just can't shut up. Preaching is something that we are all called to do, using words in ways that are appropriate in season and out of season. What else does it mean to preach? You ready in season, out of season? It says, reprove, rebuke, and exhort. Excuse me. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort. Preaching then is not simply a monologue, which if, that's what this is. I'm monologuing right now. This is not dialogue, okay? I mean a little bit. Every once in a while, somebody will say, amen. I wish I'd say it more. Amen. Good, I hope you made it. So it's not dialogue, mostly. It's mostly monologue. Reproving, rebuking, and exhorting is, you could make that monologue that there's nothing

wrong with that. However, it is not simply kind of posing questions and laying out information and then answering all of them convincingly. It's not like the guys trying to sell you cable at Sam's Club. I know those guys are trying to make a living, but I do not enjoy them. I don't enjoy walking into a Sam's Club and somebody barking at me and just waiting. Just, give me a good reason why you're not going to buy cable. I'm like, I don't want to, but I don't want to buy cable either. Can I just ignore you? Then I feel bad for ignoring them. It's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. Preaching is not like that. You're not selling something to them. That's not what preaching is. When it says reprove, rebuke, and exhort, we're going to take each one, but it means that preaching involves intentional relationships. It is a mixture of hard and soft. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort is not all harsh, but it ain't all soft either.

It's a mixture. It requires a relationship where you trust people. It's something that takes time. And yes, as your pastor, we have time together. I can then reprove and rebuke and exhort. And that is true. It still works in this context. Very true. It actually works better. It goes further when you have an intentional relationship with somebody. They trust you, you trust them, and you begin to reprove them. Let me tell you what reproving means. Reproving is to express strong

disapproval of someone's action with the idea that you are refuting their thinking. That sounds like nobody's idea of fun, okay? Okay? When somebody tells you, and sometimes they tell you, you know, like, hey, I'm thinking about shaving a mohawk into my head. Then if they're doing that, and they're not a biker, if they're, you know, if they're doing that and they should not be shaving a mohawk into their head, then you're going to be expressing strong disapproval, but you're going to be saying, hey, why do you think that's a good idea? Here's probably why that's not a good idea to, like, shave the mohawk. It's kind of permanent, you know? You look bad with a straight line coming out of your head. You don't pull off the whole Roman centurion thing very well. That's reproof, right? That's not fun. That's difficult. It's hard to do to reprove someone. Rebuke is similar to reproving, but just as much fun.

It's expressing strong disapproval of someone's action with the idea of warning them. So if you're going to reprove and rebuke, you're going to tell them, look, don't do this. It's a bad idea. That's the reprove. And then the rebuke is, and you're going to regret it. I'm warning you, you're going to regret it. Exhorting is different. It's this like an encouragement. It is urging somebody strongly. It is impressing upon someone that something is either possible or something is good. You are exhorting someone. Okay, let me put these three in terms of an actual situation. When someone that you love becomes addicted to drugs, okay?

When someone that you love becomes addicted to drugs, you would find ways to talk to them. You would find ways to convince them, to reach out to them. You would find things like flaws in their thinking. You would try to get them, by hook or by crook, to stop doing drugs. Why? Because you got an ax to grind? No, because you love them. What would you say to them? You would say, doing drugs is really bad for your health. You would say to them, doing drugs might cost you a lot of money. Doing drugs might cost you your job. Doing drugs might put you in jail. It might cost you your family. It might cost you your life. You would not stop at any point and say, oh, you know what? Drugs are fine. You wouldn't because you care about that person and you're gonna help them understand that what they are doing is killing themselves slowly. How much more sin than drugs? How much more sin than drugs?

How much more should we improve, rebuke and exhort? Because no matter how you slice it, all of us, all of us are sitting on a cure to the disease, a disease that is ravaging people's lives and futures and families. It is killing people slowly, it eats their hope, it creates delusions, it invites fear, it chokes out trust. It is terrible. It's drugs, but so much worse. There's no way out, there's no reprieve. At least if you're addicted to drugs, there's actual times you're not high on something, even if it's for 15 minutes. The disease that we are talking about with sin never lets up. It always plagues, it always kills, it always eats your joy, It always tells you something is going to go wrong. It always does that. It never stops. People are suffering with that. People are trying to make sense of the world, the crazy world that we're in right now, trying to make sense of the world with that going on.

No matter how you slice it, we have that cure. Now, how do we handle this cure? Do we handle this cure like a fire, like a building's on fire? Have we go and yell at people to get out? No, it says here that we handle it with complete patience and teaching, that we reprove, easy for you to say, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. Why teaching is needed? Because teaching is needed because when you receive a warning, it is not very common in today's world. I don't know when the last time you were warned was by like an actual person, not a sticker. It feels like condemnation, right? It feels bad. It's generally frowned upon. However, when you do that, what you need to do in teaching is that you need to help people understand Christianity is a whole tapestry. And there are certain parts of Christianity that you will find offensive. They will hurt your heart. They will hurt your sensibilities.

Christianity is a whole tapestry. And when people are convinced that the whole tapestry is this one little strip, they'll say things like, well, you know, Christianity, it's just about what you can't do. Oh, sure, yes, there are things you can't do as a Christian. Fine, you got me. However, when you look at the whole tapestry of Christianity, it is boundless freedom. It is unlimited hope. It is joy without cap. It is beautiful. It is something that anybody with a sane mind would want to absolutely run to and jump on if they saw it for what it was

We need to teach and Demonstrate the gospel so that people can see there's so much more than what they see on Facebook There's so much more than that video. They watched on YouTube that somehow convinced them that Christianity was terrible There's so much more than that and that's so much more. It's in it's demonstrated in your life Yeah, you're not perfect, but you're a lot better than what is being depicted on YouTube and Facebook about Christianity. That's why teaching is needed, why patience is needed. Patience is needed because when people experience shame, they typically fight against it. You do it, I do it. No one likes hearing that they have sinned. No one likes getting caught. It's not fun. immediate reaction to someone telling you that you've sinned, your whole life is wrong-headed, and that you are in opposition to your Creator. If somebody smiles and be like,

that's great, then they probably aren't listening to what you're saying. The beginning of Christianity is incredibly disquieting. It's not fun. It wouldn't make make a really good speech, okay? Immediate reactions to that are likely going to be volatile, and at least they're going to be ungracious. No one likes hearing that. The Spirit needs time. Your part is being patient. Patiently displaying the gospel, patiently loving people. In time, as the Spirit works in their heart, they may be able to see. And when they are able to see, that's the Holy Spirit working in them. That's how people explore the gospel. That's our hope. Hope isn't in how convincing somebody is. Our hope is the spirit working in someone's life. That's why we need patience. People are hardwired for preaching.

Scripture is hardwired with preaching. Jesus did it. Equips us to do it. The vast majority of us will not do it from a stage. Preaching is, though, fluid and conversational. Preaching does involve intentional relationships. So where do we go from here? How do you preach? Listen, if you don't have a plan, if you don't have a plan to gently and lovingly show people a better way forward with your life, then you are not being realistic and you aren't really looking around and loving other people. Let me just encourage you two things. First, let's pursue people who don't know Jesus. We need to adjust our schedules and not just surround ourselves with Christians. That's a really bad thing to do. It really is hard. We need to adjust our schedules to be around people who don't know Jesus. This is what we call connect groups. You're gonna hear a little bit more about this

in the fall and in the following spring. But we wanna create, as a church, we wanna create opportunities for people who don't know Jesus to meet other people who know Jesus. Make time in your life for other people. Really, you can just begin by asking that co-worker to go to lunch with you. I mean, that's a super simple, straightforward way to do it. The second thing I want you to encourage, just think about doing this, look, sacrifice your pride. We should acknowledge that we will run the risk of looking dumb. You might look dumb following Jesus. Actually, your chances are really, really high of looking dumb for following Jesus. Super high. In fact, I would call it inevitable. You're going to look dumb. And you need to acknowledge that you will do that and that you run the risk of that not just for the sake of counting the cost But for the sake of your own soul readying it for action look everybody everybody is nervous

I get nervous before I preach on a stage I get nervous when I share the gospel with people I get anxious About when to jump into the spiritual discussion or not. I mean it's it's it's not always an easy thing to do I'm scared of rejection. Just like you are like I'm not I'm not super human I I just have gotten over my own preoccupations with looking dumb. I don't know if you know me very well, but I don't mind looking dumb. I look dumb often. Ask my family. Like daily, hourly even. I get things wrong. I say things I shouldn't say. I look dumb. But even people that are like super gifted and can totally preach like super easy, they get nervous, they feel dumb, they get anxious, they don't know what to do when to do.

Look, just sacrifice your pride now. It's not easier for some people. It's hard for everybody. And Jesus calls everybody who follows Him to preach. Let me leave you with this urgency. We're going to move forward into our time invitation. Isaiah 55 10 and 11 says this, It says, talking about the Word of God, this is the Lord God speaking through Isaiah. He says, for as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there, but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and the bread and the eater. So he's saying, just like water goes this way

and stays and waters the earth, In the same way shall my word be that it goes out from my mouth and it shall not return to me empty. It shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. Your preaching has much less to do with you and way more to do with God's word accomplishing its purpose in other people. That is the ultimate encouragement that God is doing it all and that we're just along for the ride, just being obedient. I encourage you sacrifice your pride, get around people that don't know the Jesus and open your mouth. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for your call to preach the word.

I pray that you would help us to preach the word in ways that may look different than how we would would do it on a stage or may feel awkward in the middle of just a conversation, but you are calling us to do that. I hope us to do that. It's in your name that we pray. Amen. During our time of invitation, I'm going to be right here. If you want to receive prayer, if you want to talk about anything that we talk about in the sermon, if you are interested in becoming a Christian, or if you want to know a little bit more about it, I'm going to be right here waiting. We're gonna be singing one song and then I'm gonna come up in dismisses but during that time if you want to pray just come over I'll be right there. Would you stand? Let's sing.