The Power of Preaching - Mattie Montgomery

Preaching isn’t just a church thing—it’s how God chose to reach people, and it starts long before a platform, in the way we live and speak about Jesus every day. If people can’t believe without hearing and can’t hear without someone speaking up, then following Him means actually opening our mouths and treating His Word like it matters.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Thank you for listening to this message from the Altar Fellowship.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Hey, good morning. You can be seated. This is an adventure for me because this morning I am going to preach to you about preaching to you. Maybe it's a little bit meta, but I have been sort of wrestling for months now with how to communicate the value of preaching. And really, this has been the idea that has been sort of bouncing around in my head. That God, who is infinitely creative, who demonstrates and manifests his creativity in countless, innumerable ways, has chosen preaching to be the primary means by which we come to revelation or to the knowledge of God. It's the way that the gospel is disseminated from one person to another. And that's a profound thing. It could, God could call the elect by dreams. They just have dreams while they're sleeping, and that's how we come to salvation. It could be by race, you know, that you're just born into the right family, into the right lineage. You were born into the right, you know, gene pool, and so you're you're good, you're safe. Like there's a million different ways that God could bring someone to salvation, but he chose preaching. And so I want to just I want to just jump in and see where we end up. I think my hope today is that uh maybe all of us, myself included, can leave here with a clearer understanding of God's will and God's intent and God's mind when it comes to the proclamation of the truth of his word. And uh so this morning I want to invite you to join me as we wrestle with how exactly we ought to engage with the preaching of the word of God. Uh, one of the early church fathers, John Chrysostom, wrote, The soul is healed by the word of God, and preaching is the instrument of that healing. The soul is healed by the word of God, and preaching is the instrument of that healing. You know, how often do we hear from uh uh from people in our modern culture about soul healing, you know? Trauma recovery is what sometimes we call it, right? Counseling, therapy, uh heart work, you know. We we go through these processes, we pay, you know, boatloads of money to people that are licensed by the state to bring healing to our souls. But I think John Chrysostom is is right in his uh prescription here that uh that the soul is healed by the word of God, and preaching is the instrument of that healing. Uh the reformer, uh, years, generations later, William Tyndale would write, the preaching of God's word is the chief and principal work of the church. The preaching of God's word is the chief and principal work of the church. Notice he doesn't say that the preaching of God's word is the chief and principal work of the pastor. It doesn't say the preaching of God's word is the chief and principal work of the church's leadership for the sake of the church. He said the preaching that preaching is the chief and principal work of the church. All of us are called by God to preach. All of us are called by God to receive the the healing of the soul that preaching can produce. But as vitally important as preaching is, not just to the function of the church, but to the sanctification of our souls, the healing of our souls. I see before me today a generation who is overwhelmingly prone to treat preaching like it's a common thing. We neglect to preach the word to ourselves, our families, or our friends. And then when someone does preach, we approach them with either the sort of dismissive patronization we'd give to a child banging clumsily on an instrument, or we approach them with suspicion and criticism, as if their preaching needs our approval to be acceptable to God. So I want you to consider today that the preaching of the Word of God should carry the same weight and honor to us as the Word of God itself. As one of the early church fathers, Origins said, when the scriptures are read and explained, God speaks to his people. What a beautiful statement. When the scriptures are read and explained, God speaks to his people. And I I've got to be honest here. I want to make sure that I don't remove clarity just for the sake of being gentle or, you know, kind or compassionate. And so I want to be really honest here. As the pastor of this church, I feel frequently like people listen to my preaching as a gift to me. You know, it's like when your kids are little and they're like, Dad, look at this, you know, and they're doing like a somersault or something. It's like the lamest thing you've ever seen. They want to show you some picture that's just not a good picture. And uh, you know, but they drew it and it matters to them. And so you go, oh, that's really nice, sweetie. That's how I feel as a pastor, that people are like, oh, sweetie, like he preached a sermon. Good for you, buddy. Um and while I appreciate it, I suppose, I wonder if we might approach preaching differently if we actually agreed with origin that when the scriptures are read and explained, God speaks to his people. Do we show up to preaching, to events, to moments like this where the word is preached and tremble before it? Do we show up with the kind of expectation and hope that God will speak to me today? Or do we show up, like, you know, I get to wear my new outfit, I'm gonna hang out with my friends, check in with them. Good to see you guys, y'all doing good? How was your week? And then we're gonna go eat, you know, chips and salsa afterwards. We're gonna go home and watch football afterwards. When the scriptures are read and explained, God speaks to his people. I I want us to become a community that actually believes that, that actually treats the preaching of the word like it is a holy, sacred thing, like it's an opportunity for us to hear from God. And yet, the truth is far too frequently we do not. We see it as anything but that. I want to go primarily today to Romans chapter 10. And uh I'm just gonna read Romans 10 uh verses 9 through 15, and then we'll sort of go through and we'll break some things down and uh and then we'll see where else we might end up today. Romans 10, starting in verse 9, it says, If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture says, Whoever believes on him will not be put to shame. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon him, for whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? How will anyone ever believe in a God they've not heard about? And how will they ever hear about the goodness, the kindness, the mercy, the compassion, the power, and the love of God without a preacher? There is a world full of people who are lost and without hope unless a preacher shows up. There are people in your workspace that are lost and without hope in this world unless a preacher shows up. There are people in your neighborhood that are lost and without hope in this world unless a preacher shows up. Your kids are lost and without hope in this world unless a preacher shows up. Like there is no access to the gospel if there is not preaching. But I I digress. I want to come come back to the beginning of this passage because I feel like I can't read Romans 10, you know, 9 and 10, without taking at least a minute to talk about the promises that are made here. Romans 10, 9, it says, if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. As we talk about preaching, I want you to hear this very important part. And I would say, James, to any guy that ever wants to be a preacher, and Owen, any guy that ever wants to be a preacher, I, you know, I'd say to you that uh if you want to be good at preaching to others, you should start by preaching to yourself. I have preached thousands of sermons to myself. I there's no preacher that has blessed my life more than I have. Like I'll be like, you got this, buddy, you know? You can do it. Don't be weak. Suck it up. It's just it's just a little pain, you know? Like I'm telling you, I am hard on myself and I and I preach hard to myself all the time. And I do this because I recognize that like the confession of my own mouth is actually one of the means by which I am saved. And that word for saved or salvation, it's it's uh soteria, it's uh a Greek word, soteria, that means to be healed or delivered uh or rescued. And and so it's it's not just about like you know being right with God, it's about uh a sort of holistic deliverance from oppression, from captivity, from deception, or from uh from sickness. And so there's this this beautiful idea that that actually my my confession, the confession of my mouth, it it uh it is the the primary indicator of the position of my heart. And so my my heart and my mouth, Jesus says like that out of the uh abundance of the heart, the the mouth, or scripture says with out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Like you can always tell what someone believes by what they say. And so we've got to make sure that we we don't just confess, gotta make sure that we don't just believe in in Christ, but we confess him as well. And and here's what I think is so beautiful about this passage. It says that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, there's that word Lord, I think is important to understand this, that we can't just confess Christ as a teacher. That's there is a whole society that would be perfectly happy with us confessing Christ as a teacher, one among many. There's Jesus Christ, and there's Buddha, and there's Lao Su and there's Muhammad, and they all teach different things, and there's Richard Dawkins, you know, and they all teach different things, and Plato and Aristotle and Nietzsche, they they all preach different things, but you know, they're all preachers, they're all teachers, but we are not permitted. It is not a path that leads to salvation to confess Christ as teacher or healer or friend or moral leader or example we might want to follow. He is all of those things, but he's not only any one of those things. We must confess Christ as Lord. We must confess Christ as Lord. If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And then Paul, who's writing here, he explains, for with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. So the position of our heart is the thing that makes us right with God. Right, that word for righteousness, it just means rightness. I want to make sure, are you hearing what I'm saying? This is, you have heard that righteousness is moral purity. That is not what that word means. I think God has called us to moral purity, but that word righteousness there in Romans 10, 10, it just means rightness. So with the heart, one believes, and by that belief we are actually made right with God. And then with the mouth, confession is made, and that confession is the thing that leads us to soteria. It's the thing that leads us to uh uh what is it? Deliverance, preservation, rescue, or health. That's that's the thing that with our mouth we confess, and and and confession leads us to salvation, deliverance, preservation, rescue, or health. It is by faith that we believe and we are made right with God. But the promises of God come to life by the words we profess. Understand, our preaching does not start when we set foot on the platform. Our preaching starts when we look in the mirror in the morning. Our preaching starts when we're faced with an obstacle bigger than we can handle on our own. What do we say in that moment? We can say Christ is Lord. We can say, I belong to him. He is faithful to me, and he's gonna walk with me through this day. Our preaching doesn't start when we set foot on the platform. Our preaching starts when we wake up in the morning and we decide, are we going to confess Christ as Lord today, or is he going to be merely an afterthought or an accessory to our otherwise full life? Paul continues in verse 11. He says, For the scripture says, whoever believes on him will not be put to shame. And I just want to make sure that I put my finger on that for you, because here's the reality. In in the I was having a conversation with somebody, and I sort of jokingly said this week, somebody used to write a book called American Shame. Because the truth is, shame is actually the, it's the it's the bait by which the overwhelming amount of deception and division and confusion in our nation has been introduced. Uh, that it's it's like you have people that are doing things that are demonstrably, obviously, not in the best interest of our nation, and they're doing it to try to absolve themselves of the shame that they carry. People are ashamed to be white. Some men are ashamed to be men. People are ashamed to be American with the privileges and the blessings and the responsibilities that it affords. They're ashamed of the privilege that they were born into, and so they spend their life sort of self-flagellating, voting into office, people they know are going to tyrannize and oppress them because they feel like that's uh absolution for the shame that they carry for things they didn't do, things that their grandparents or their great-grandparents did, or things that other people that sort of look like them, maybe they're not even directly related to, may have done. And this is an issue. Like our the fact that we carry shame that is not ours has made our society so backwards and so easy to manipulate. Here's the good news there is no shame for the man or woman of faith. Whoever believes on him will not be put to shame. In this passage, Paul is quoting to the Romans, Isaiah 28, 16. Peter also quotes the same passage in 1 Peter 2.6. This is kind of important, right? We see Isaiah and Paul and Peter all agreeing that there is no shame. Whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. Shame is not your inheritance. Lay it down on the altar today. Shame is not your inheritance. Lay it down on the altar today. Verse 12 says, For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon him. You have all heard me harp on this topic a thousand times. But we must lay down the things that we allow to divide us by culture, by race, by ethnicity or nationality, by language, by economic standing. We so easily say, well, that that's the white church, and that's the black church, and that's the you know, there's a Hispanic church and a Korean church down the street, and it's like, no, there's there's only one church. There has only ever been one church. It's those who come to God through faith. By grace through faith. It's like, it's not, that's not just like the the sacrifice of Christ is the means by which grace is accept uh available to us, that we can be made acceptable before God. But you know, even Abraham came to God by grace through faith. Even Moses came to God, David came to God by grace through faith. Like there's this covenant is the transcendent covenant. This covenant of grace has always been the means by which man approaches God. And you could read all throughout the Old Testament: there are people who are of the Jewish ethnicity who are rejected by God because they're faithless. And there are people who are not of the Jewish ethnicity, who are accepted by God because they came to God by faith. And so what Paul is saying here, what the scriptures say very clearly, is that it doesn't matter what nation or what family or what ethnicity you were born into. What matters is that you come to God by faith. There is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord overall is rich to all who call upon him, for whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And then Paul asks here a series of questions. And this really, everything to this point has been sort of contextual for where I really wanted to go today. He says, How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? How could any, if if all who call on the name of the Lord shall be saved? We know that that is true. Scripture makes that promise repeatedly. We've got to ask the question, how can people call on the Lord if they've never heard about him? How can they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? People cannot call on God for salvation if they do not believe in God. People cannot believe in God unless they hear about God. And people cannot hear about God without a preacher. Family, preaching is God's chosen method for the dissemination of the gospel. It is, out of all the countless applications and outlets of Yahweh's indescribable creativity, the sole means by which he has chosen to transmit the good news of Christ from one person to another and from one generation to the next. Now, what does this you know for for years uh we I played music in the hardcore scene, and there were a bunch of other Christian bands in that scene, and many of them would say to us, Why do you guys preach so much? You're so pushy, you're turning people off. You know, not everybody in the room is a Christian, this is uncomfortable for those people. And then I would always respond, why don't you preach at all? Don't you believe the gospel is the power of God to bring salvation to all who believe it? What about Romans chapter 10? People cannot call on the name of the Lord if they haven't believed in him, and they can't believe in him until they hear about him, and they can't hear about him unless somebody is willing to preach. Preach to them. And these guys sort of have this vain philosophy that maybe if I just sit at a bar and drink beers, if I'm cool enough, somebody will want to know what religion I'm a part of. It's never happened. No one has ever thought, dude, you are so much like me, I need to know what faith do you practice? Like it just doesn't work that way, right? Like we've got, we've got to be able to preach. You cannot flatter people into the kingdom. People aren't going to receive the gospel by osmosis. Like you can't just get close enough for long enough that the gospel just seeps into somebody. At some point, you've got to preach. At some point, we've got to preach. Preaching is the sole means by which God has chosen to transmit the good news of Christ from one person to another and from one generation to the next. I am convinced that one of the major weaknesses in my generation is that we do not give adequate weight and honor to preaching. Maybe it's because we've been oversaturated with it. Somebody asked me, you know, what do you think the church needs in this generation, in this hour? What does the church need? And I said, I think what the church needs more than anything is fewer preachers. Because it has become so cheap. It's so easy. You just get your iPhone and turn it on selfie mode, and you can say whatever you want to whoever you want, all over the world. Absolute nonsense, constantly. I couldn't tell you the number of people that have reached out to me, like, but what about the lost books of the Bible, you know, that they, that they, whoever they, that they stole from us so that we wouldn't know the whole truth of the message of Jesus? It's like, gosh, there's so what are you talking about? You saw this on you, get off TikTok. This isn't helpful for you. Um, and if you're wondering, I should say this, if you're wondering about, you know, the Gospel of Thomas or whatever, you should read it. And and I think pretty soon you'll realize this is nonsense that doesn't line up with who Jesus clearly is. Now, there's good reason to think that these overwhelmingly these books are uh forgeries or they're, you know, in some way invalid. They've been pretty well studied from people that are way smarter than than by people that are way smarter than I am. But I would encourage you to not just sort of say, well, I can't trust anything because I heard some guy on TikTok say that some books of the Bible were removed. I'd say, well, read those books. You know, if you think, well, let me say this. You should read the Bible. Don't read those books instead of the Bible. Like you should read the Bible and come to know the God of the Bible. There are 66 books that everybody agrees on. Get real familiar with those, and then find out if these other TikTok books you heard about, if these line up with what is clearly revealed in those 66. Is that my wife? My wife just said they won't. She's right. She's right. She's right. All right. I'm convinced that one of the major weaknesses in my generation is that we do not give adequate weight or honor to preaching. Maybe it's because we've been oversaturated with it, hearing so many hours of sermons about nothing each week that when God's word is actually preached to us, we've been inoculated against it by the steady stream of spiritual white noise. Or maybe it's because in a generation that salivates over scandal, we have become suspicious of everyone. So we come to church on Sundays and we spend the morning judging the preacher instead of joyfully receiving and applying the word that is being preached. I'm sure that's not you, couldn't be. I've got to be honest with you, I've done this. I've thought about I've sat in rooms and thought about how I could have done a better job preaching that sermon than the guy preaching. I've sat in rooms and thought, ugh, this guy's not doing a great job. You know, the singing wasn't that good, and the preacher is he's all over the place, and you know, what's he talking about? And he lost his train of thought and he stuttered there, picking apart the message instead of grabbing a hold of the word of God, clinging to it like a life raft in the middle of an ocean, and saying, God, thank you for your word. Thank you that it's being preached. Thank you, God, that your word is always on time and it's always applicable and it's always relevant to my situation. You know, as I was thinking about this over the last few weeks, I thought about something you heard uh Elder Kashef say uh recently when he was preparing for communion in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, uh we're being taught about the sacrament of the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper. And uh one of the things that Paul says to the church in Corinth is he says that if we eat and drink in an unworthy manner, we drink judgment upon ourselves. And he says, we do that because we're not discerning the Lord's body. Like we're not discerning that that Christ is with us as we engage in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. And then Paul actually explains in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 30, he says, for this reason, many of you are weak and sick. Uh there are many, oh, look at you, you guys are quick. For this reason, many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. That's like Bible language for, and many have died. Like he's he's saying, you guys have been eating and drinking the Lord's Supper in a manner that is not uh that does not carry the adequate degree of honor and humility and responsibility, and because of that, your bodies are breaking down. You are not discerning the body of the Lord. And I want to take this same principle and say, if that's what the physical elements of Christ, who is the word that became flesh, if that's what not discerning the physical elements of the body and the blood of Christ will do to your body, then I've got to ask, what if we don't discern the word of God that is the eternal nature of Christ? Then maybe it won't just be our bodies that are weak and sick and dying. Maybe it'll be our souls that are weak and sick and dying if we neglect to discern the word of God when it's dropped in our lap. The truth is, preaching is prophetic. That is to say, if it's done well, then every single message you hear ought to unravel God's word and reveal God's will to you in a way that is vital to the journey He's called you on. Also, good preaching is it's not just prophetic, it's also personal. That is, it is not a performance for a crowd. It is a message written prayerfully, with love and urgency, and aimed directly at your heart, your family, and your current situation. I need you to hear me when I say this. It would be in your best interest to receive preaching like it's a message from God for you. And maybe instead of asking, does God have anything for me in this message, we should begin to ask, what does God have for me in this message? We should maybe begin to presume, like uh uh like Origen said, that when the scriptures are read and explained, God speaks to his people. If we presuppose that that is true, then we can show up here not saying, I wonder if God might do something in my life today, but rather we can show up here saying, God will do something in my life today, I better not miss it. God brought me here, he sustained me in this moment of all the multitude of places I could be and the things that I could be doing. God has me here today, doing this, hearing this message preached. And I've got to believe that if God brought me here, if the steps of a righteous man are ordered of the Lord and God brought me here to hear this message, it's because this message is a vital part of what God is building. This is a peace that I cannot live without. So, Lord, reveal to me how I can rightly grab a hold of this message and begin to build my life upon it. Now, this is a little bit uncomfortable for me to preach. Because normally I'm the one preaching to you. But I want to make sure that I explain this very important distinction. The message I came to share with you today, though, is not that preachers are holy, it's that preaching is holy. This is important. We need to die to the to the to the idolatrous way that we have allowed uh preachers to engage with those to whom they preach. I'm not asking you to worship me. I'm not asking you to have fear and trembling before me. It is crucial that you hear and understand uh this distinction. That my argument today is that preaching is holy, not that preachers are holy. 1 Timothy 5.17, uh Paul gives this instruction to Timothy. He says, Let the elders who rule well, there's that caveat. This is this has been the position of much of the church throughout much of the church's history. Let the elders who rule be counted worthy of double honor. That's not right. Paul puts a caveat here. The only elders who are worthy of double honor are those who rule well. I want to make, are you hearing this? Y'all should be very excited about this. This is important. This is how we avoid spiritual abuse. We read the scriptures carefully. Let elders who rule well, those who rule well with humility, with integrity, with honor, those who who who lead in truth, who are biblical leaders, who are godly men, who lead their households well. Let those elders, the ones who rule well, let them be counted worthy of double honor, especially, everybody say especially, those who labor, everybody say labor. And it's labor. Especially those who labor in the word and doctrine. Especially those who labor in the word and doctrine. Another translation says, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. The labor of preaching is honorable and praiseworthy. Those who engage in it for our sake, we should be grateful for those people, those who do it well. We really should. Those who do it well, not just those who do it, but those who do it well. We should understand that that's an honorable and a praiseworthy thing. But look at Mark 16, 15. This is what Jesus says to his followers. He says to them, Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Understand that preaching is not something reserved only for preachers. The labor of preaching, just as it is honorable and praiseworthy, the labor of preaching is not exclusive to professional preachers. Every one of us has been called by God to preach the gospel to every living creature. Go home and preach the gospel to your dog. You know that house plant that you just can't keep alive, you forget to water it. Go preach the gospel to it this afternoon. It's a living creature. Go preach the gospel. And get confident in preaching the gospel to your dog and your plant until you can preach the gospel to your neighbor when you guys meet, taking the trash out next week. Preach the gospel to your coworker, to your family member. The labor of preaching is not exclusive to preachers. And uh and I want to end here. We're getting close to the end in Galatians chapter 1. This is uh Paul writing to the church in Galatia who was messing up big time. And he says to them, in Galatians 1, starting in verse 6, he says, I marvel that you are turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel. Which is not another, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. This is an interesting thing. He says, You're turning away in verse 6 to a uh, if we can go back to Galatians 1, 6, there it is. He says, The marvel that you're turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel, and then he he says this, which is not another. There's some people who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. So he describes a different gospel as the same gospel that's been perverted. He says it's not another gospel entirely. It's not that someone is preaching, you know, salvation through whatever, Jim Jones. Like they're still preaching salvation through Christ, but they're perverting the gospel of grace, and they're trying to use the name of Christ to say that there have to be works added onto it. That it's not about with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. It's not that we're saved by grace through faith in Christ. It's that, you know, Christ died for us or whatever, but you also need to do this and do this and check this box and go through this class and be confirmed in this way. In their day it was to be circumcised. In our day it's baptism, it's baptismal regeneration. It's these heresies that add to the gospel. It's not another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. In verse 8, he says, but even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be anathema. That's the Greek word, accursed. It means damned eternally. Now, I have preached this before in opposition of Mormonism and Islam. Both of those religions claim to be divine revelations given to a man by an angel. Paul actually subverts this in Galatians 1.8, where he says, even if it was an angel that came to Muhammad, even if it was an angel that came to uh Joseph Smith, that still let the angel be condemned. Like I don't care what it is that preached another gospel to you, it's another gospel, and it is therefore unacceptable entirely. We understand that the gospel is a gospel of grace. And uh so I've talked about the angel part a lot, but there's something that stuck out to me recently, and I think this is so profound. Paul says, even if we preach any other gospel to you, Paul says, if I show up in five years and I'm preaching something different than this gospel of salvation by faith, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, let me be eternally condemned. Paul says, even if I, the apostle Paul, show up, preaching a different gospel, don't listen to me. Have nothing to do with me. This is, I think, so profound that Paul would say it doesn't matter who it is, it could be an angel from heaven, or it could be the apostle Paul. If I preach a gospel that doesn't line up with the truth of God's word, allow me to be eternally condemned. And I love that Paul says this because in his using the word we, he's asserting here, Paul's asserting here that he reserves no authority and he demands no loyalty to himself. He's declaring to the Galatian church that the apostle Paul is only to be trusted to the degree that he continues to faithfully deliver the unchanging gospel of God's grace. And so we wrestle as a church with how to, you know, how to honor leaders. People write books on how to honor leaders, and you hear words like submit, spiritual authority, covenant, spiritual father, loyalty. And uh Mr. Rich, Elder Rich, is going to be teaching a class on this very soon, and I'm really excited about that. But I want you to hear this, and I have talked about this a lot, not necessarily from the pulpit, but I've talked about this a lot over these last months as there have been a bunch of well-known leaders that are getting exposed pretty publicly, and their ministries are falling apart, and uh, you know, their their lack of integrity has been their downfall. Um here's the the reality that people have to ask themselves is this person who is preaching and uh preaching to me, are they are they ruling well? Are they leading well? And if they are, that person deserves my trust. But only to the degree, according to Galatians 1.8, only to the degree that they continue to faithfully deliver the unchanging gospel of God's grace. I may not always agree with every choice they make, I may not always agree with every point of every sermon. I I may not like something that they do, it might hurt my feelings or turn me off. I may be genuinely offended or upset or even horrified at things, but if they're preaching faithfully the unchanging gospel of God's grace, then uh then I ought to continue to celebrate the fact that I have the chance to come and to receive the preaching of the word of God, which is the word of God itself. We must honor and esteem preaching appropriately. And we do this not by idolizing the preacher, but by recognizing the authority of the word of God when it is preached to us and then trembling in humble submission before it. We don't esteem preaching appropriately by idolizing or worshiping the person preaching. We do this by recognizing the authority of the Word of God when it is preached to us and then trembling in humble submission before it. Today is the day to humbly repent for our casual disposition toward preaching. Sam Nava came to me. It's interesting, he didn't know what I was talking about, but he came to me at uh today, but he came to me at men's prayer and he said, you know, I had this dream, and uh and he said, I felt like the Lord spoke to me through the dream that um we approach preaching too casually. We come into the presence of God too casually. He said, you know, we go and get pizza in our you know sweatpants and and we're like dressed down, and but when we go to get steak, we dress up when we go to a steakhouse, you know, we wear our nice clothes, we're clean, and we're put together, and you know, we want to make sure that we look our best when we're getting a meal that we really value, you know, a meal that cost us something. And he said, we need to have that when we come into the church. And um, you you should know this is not my style. This isn't like you're gonna you're not gonna catch me around town dressing like this, but I I dress like this every Sunday. I wear a collared shirt and I, you know, I get myself together, I try to look like I'm not still a hardcore kid at heart. And uh and I and I do this because I I want to be an example of how to esteem the word of God. We came here to wrestle with God's word. We came into God's presence, and Sam is right. We we treat the word of God like it's uh fast food that gets thrown through the window of our car as we drive by. But it's not. It's it's the it's the steak dinner that cost us a month's salary, you know. It's it's the uh the thing of it's the greatest treasure, it's the pearl of great price, it's the glorious uh the glorious riches of eternal wisdom that are laid before us, and to treat God's word as anything less is heresy of the highest kind. Today is the day to humbly repent for our casual disposition toward the preaching of God's word. How many answered prayers have we ignored or disregarded? How many words of wisdom or encouragement have we missed? How many moments of profound revelation have passed us by because God was speaking, but we were thinking about lunch or scrolling on our phone or asleep in a pew? How many times have we prayed all week long? God, give me wisdom. Help me understand how to handle this situation, Lord. I'm I'm drowning here, I'm struggling here. I feel like I'm surrounded by my enemy. God, give me hope, give me guidance, give me revelation, give me wisdom, and then it comes from From the preaching of his word, and we miss it because we've we viewed the preaching of his word as a casual or common thing. If origin is right, that when the scriptures are read and explained, God speaks to his people, and I'm convinced he is. Then let me, as your pastor, desperately beg you this morning: listen when God speaks. Bring a notebook and write it down and make sure six months from now you can remember that God answered your prayer. You heard his voice when you sat in this room. Listen when God speaks, because man does not live by bread alone, but by the word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Every day of the week, Lord, thank you that there are faithful, godly leaders in the church that rightly divide the word of truth and who proclaim the way of salvation to us. Lord, thank you for faithful leaders, for good pastors, uh, for uh people that that with great fear and trembling exposit your word and deliver it to the body of believers faithfully. God, I pray that you would give me grace to uh to be one of those. God, I pray that you'd raise up more preachers in this house. God, I pray that those that preach from this platform, that the number of those who preach from this platform would grow. But God, I pray that every one of us would say yes to the call to preach, to preach the gospel to every living creature, to preach to our neighbors, to our friends, to our family members, to our children. God, I just pray that you would uh give us grace to be bold with the truth of your word, to never hold back for the sake of uh self-preservation or personal comfort. God, would you make us voices that thunder with the truth that can bring salvation to a world that desperately needs to meet Him. God, we love you and we honor you, we commit to you today, our mouths and our ears. And we say, Father, let us rightly esteem the preaching of your word as we do it and as we hear it done. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Family, God bless you. Thank you so much for being here. We will see you next week.

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