We turn to the reading of the word from Zechariah chapter 4. Let's stand together. Zechariah chapter 4. The question in the book of Zechariah is how will God rebuild the little band of exiles? How is God working after Israel has been taken into exile and only a tiny shadow of her former glory has come back? How will God use his post-exilic people for his glory? How will God work in history? That is the grand question of the book. And in a sense, this is the great answer. Zerubbabel is God's appointed governor at the time of these people. And here is the answer to the question. So he answered and said to me, this is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit. says the Lord of hosts. And then from 1 Corinthians 2, Paul understood the same power to be necessary to build the new covenant kingdom. And I, brethren, when I came to you did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom, declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with the persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. That your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. This is the word of the living God. And we'll turn our attention to 2 Corinthians chapter 2. And look there at verses 1 through 5. The title on your bulletin is How Preaching Works. I don't know if that's a great title. Titles are always interesting, and I think about them. I actually, weeks before I'm preaching, I lay out series of texts and titles and I don't always follow the series I light out and often after a week of study I get to the end and I say that was a terrible title that I thought it would be and then I put another one on it. Sometimes I'm not sure that's any better. But at least you get the topic this morning. Preaching about preaching. Hopefully with the understanding better of how Christ has chosen to build His kingdom in the present age. We saw some of this theme a few months ago in the preaching of the parable of the sower. Two weeks of preaching on the parable of the sower. You might hear some themes of that. A few months before that in 1 Thessalonians, Paul spends a lot of time teaching about preaching. Preaching is really central to the life of the church of Jesus Christ. Jesus came as teacher, a preacher. He engaged in a prophetic ministry. His forerunner, John the Baptist, was a preacher. The prophets of the Old Testament were preachers. Whether to the people of God in Israel or Jonah to Nineveh, he was a preacher. And the apostles who followed Jesus in the New Covenant were preachers. And Timothy and Titus were the first generation of preachers after the apostles. And Christ still is active in human history with preaching. Paul wanted the Corinthians to understand the nature of preaching and to understand how God was at work in human history and amongst the flock there in Corinth. Being in a Presbyterian church, you need to know that even the flow of our liturgy and the emphasis of the life of the church were so much centers on this right here, what's happening right now. You might ask the question, why? And particularly in a Presbyterian church where this preaching should be, it's not always the case, should be plain in style, simple. You noticed it's really, I don't really use a lot of YouTube clips, actually none. Couldn't if I tried because we don't have any way to even get that on the wall. Would never do it. Why? Why not? Why aren't we doing things to apparently spruce things up a little? Why? Why so old-fashioned? Why so plain? Why this week after week? Why the same thing morning and evening? Why, if you've been a Christian for 10 or 20 or 40 or 50 years, the same thing again? Why? Why are we doing this? What's happening? And how am I to gauge what's happening? How am I to understand what's happening? Paul certainly had preaching on his mind here. He, in the first phrase of chapter 2, in verse 1, he's asking them to remember something. He's saying, I want you to have a scene in your mind as I write these next things to you. He says, brethren, when I came to you, he's calling them to remember something, a moment. their first memories of the very first things that he did when Paul appeared in Corinth. What did he do? Acts chapter 18, after these things, Paul departed from Athens and went to Corinth. What does Acts tell us he did in Corinth? Well, he found Aquila and Priscilla and stayed with them. And then he began preaching. Verse four, and he reasoned in the synagogues every Sabbath and persuaded both Jews and Greeks. When Silas and Timothy had come from Macedonia, Paul was compelled by the Spirit. There was a power in him driving him, a compulsion that the Scriptures tell us was not his own, but the Holy Spirit using him as an instrument in history. To do what? To testify to the Jews that Jesus is the Christ. When he was thrown out of the synagogue, What did the Lord say to Paul? Do not be afraid, but speak and do not keep silent. Again, God compelling him to speak. Keep speaking. He continued there a year and six months teaching the word of God among them. And there were many conversions. Paul in chapter two of Corinthians is saying, remember that. He's not there anymore, but he's saying, I want your mind to go back to the beginning. What happened? What did I do when I showed up? What was your first impression? What was your point of initial contact? I was preaching. Now, we know this is the theme of the section already. We know in chapter 1 and verse 17 that Paul says, Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel. Paul has said that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God. He has said it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. Preaching is on his mind. But not just generally, specifically and with a specific problem. Because the Corinthians, if you asked them about the importance of preaching, they would have probably been able to say to you something about the importance of preaching. But at the same time, something had gone badly wrong in this church. Because they had received preaching, but very soon they had misunderstood the way God uses it in history. Because what they started doing is reverting to an old way of thinking. They had started what? Lining up behind favorite preachers. Paul, and Paulus, and Cephas, and then there were others who said, well, these probably are mere men, and we're just going to follow Jesus. And there was this division in the church, and really, really very much so about, centered around perhaps the personalities and particular gifting of various men that Christ was using to build his church. And what they were doing was, in this division, was starting to measure the effectiveness and power of certain ministries by unspiritual criteria. And what do I mean by that? Well, how do most people rank public speakers? Well, in our day, there's all kinds of things people think about. Humor. Humor is a big deal. People like a lot of humor. It's not wrong in preaching if you might smile or laugh here and there. Not wrong, but I'll tell you something that if you're going to hear a stand-up comedian, you've got a problem. Just as big of a problem if you picture neurosurgeon, if you had brain cancer by his quality of his jokes. I'm guessing you probably wouldn't do that. because you wouldn't want him to take a knife, cut into your brain on that criteria. And if you want God to do spiritual surgery in your life, which is eminently more urgent, that would be a bad criteria. Whether or not you're entertained by something is not what you're looking for. This is, in the preaching of the word, are the matters of life and death and time and eternity. How about intelligence, just raw intelligence? People love intelligent and successful people and they flock to hear them. You know, if Bill Gates is going to do a seminar in Greenville on how to make a successful business, I'm guessing a lot of people would want to hear it. Probably has a lot of smart things to say, probably knows a lot more about it than I ever will. But that raw worldly success in human intelligence, if you think, if you're looking for that in preaching, you think that's the power of preaching, you don't understand what preaching is. Structure and ability to tell a story and keep attention those natural rhetorical gifts Not Necessary even Now it's not that God doesn't use natural gifts and that they're wrong And that they can't be used by God in the communication of the divine message of the gospel entrusted to the church. That's not what I'm saying. But if you are going to try to understand, measure the success over, understand the power of preaching, and you're looking in all these places, you aren't beginning to understand what's happening. It's the wrong measurement. And if these are the measurements, we're in danger of some serious, profound temptations that'll shipwreck the whole church of the Lord Jesus Christ. How many people, you can turn on TV on Sunday morning, there's people who are getting tens of thousands of people filling stadiums. All kinds of people will follow them. Second Peter, Paul to Timothy warns that people will find teachers that tell them what they want to hear and many will follow them. I mean, the Bible tells us that this will be a phenomenon in church history. There'll be people who can gather a crowd. Nothing new. Super Bowl does the same thing. If that's the way you're measuring success, Paul says you don't have to begin to understand preaching. And there's temptations for the preacher if that's what any man preaching is trying to do. The adulation of the crowd. His ministry will crash and burn and the sadness. You just look at the headlines in the last year. of major public ministries and evangelicalism that you had thought maybe had promised and where a man had become captivated by the thousands that come to hear. Shipwreck. Temptation for the preacher to become a celebrity. Temptation for the hearer to be entertained. You have to understand that if this is how you're trying to measure preaching, it's never going to work. I mean, this is how people measure celebrities. The successful of this age. Have you ever heard the term, the greatest of all time? The GOAT, various sports, people are trying to argue. LeBron James or Michael Jordan in basketball? Is it this hockey player or that hockey player? Is it this singer or that singer? Is it this businessman or that businessman? Who's the greatest? Who's the most successful? It's all worldly, external, unspiritual criteria when applied to the church is going to make shipwreck of what you understand preaching to be. It has no place in the Church of Jesus Christ. Paul describes preaching as something very different. He's saying you cannot understand or measure the power or effectiveness of preaching by worldly categories. If I said to you, if someone said to me, how far is it to Charlotte, and I said 100 pounds, what would you say? He's lost his mind, right? Why? Because you don't measure distance with that unit. You cannot and do not measure preaching by worldly measures of success. Paul makes this clear as he goes on. He says, preaching, the church had a problem with not understanding what preaching, how to measure it, Paul says, let me help you understand preaching. He's going to say two things. He's going to teach what preaching is under these two headings. If you're going to take notes, these are the two headings. He's going to say, first, I want you to understand what the content of true preaching is. What's in it? What's it about? The second thing he wants to impress on the hearers is what is the power of true preaching? If they got it wrong and were measuring it wrong, Paul's saying, this is how you get it right. This is what it should be. This is how you understand how God is working in history and the power of the word preached. Understand its content. and understand the source of its power. Well, first of all, the content. Pulfers says what it wasn't. When I came to you, I didn't come with excellence of speech or of wisdom. He's saying, listen, you could have found a better order, more theatrical, more engaging than me. I didn't have. the top drawer of excellence of speech, not the most refined, not the most polished speaker. Neither did I come to you with worldly wisdom, nuggets for success in this life, your best life now. None of this was in my preaching. I did not come this way. I did not come to declare myself, my own wisdom, or to try to impress you with my own gifts. The content, rather, was this. I came to you, the positive here, declaring to you the testimony of God. Here we have the content of preaching. The activity here in preaching was to declare the testimony of God, not this world's wisdom, but rather Paul had received a deposit. And in Paul's theology of preaching, as you run through the Pauline epistles, not just Paul, but Peter, the other apostles as well, they understand what they were doing. Peter says, we didn't receive cunningly devised fables. What we declared to you was. The Word of God. What we saw in the ministry of Jesus Christ. That they had received a deposit of truth which came from God. And that their task was simply to communicate that truth. You know, if I was an ambassador in the State Department and I had been giving marching orders from the administration to go to a country with a message Let's say the ayatollah of Iran and I say, okay, here's what the United States of America would like to communicate to you. And you know, you walk in and reading your papers on the way in and you realize, you know, I don't actually agree with this. I think that if I took out paragraph three and I added a nice paragraph at the end, that would make this better. Let me ask you a question. How long would your career be? Well, not very long. Probably start a world war or do something horrible. The ambassador's task is very simple. He's a water carrier. He receives a fixed message. On him, he is granted the authority to speak on the behalf of another, but not to communicate his own message. Matter of fact, if you were creative as an ambassador, it's over. Paul says, we are ambassadors of Jesus Christ, as if God himself were speaking through us, that there's an authority, but we're declaring the testimony, the message from God. The content of preaching is not of human invention, it is from God. There's another word in the New Testament for preachers. John the Baptist was a messenger of God. Same thing, if you take a message, you deliver it. A lot of messengers in the New Testament period just took a letter, and they walked or ran with it, and then they delivered the letter. It's that simple of a picture. Titus was a messenger. Epaphroditus was a messenger. Philippians 2, 2 Corinthians chapter 8. Paul, another description, jars of clay, earthen vessels, into which God sovereignly, divinely deposited the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Weak. Fallible human beings given an infallible powerful message of the cross Human recipients of a divine message to be transmitted that message itself found in the scriptures the testimony of God Paul to Timothy devote yourself to what the public reading of Scripture to exhortation to teaching I charge you preach the word of Now more precisely emphatic, Paul says in verse two, he now narrows with laser focus what this preaching is about, centrally the topic of that preaching. For I determined to know nothing, not to know anything or to know nothing among you except one thing. So unpack those phrases for a moment. His purposeful determination was not to talk about anything else. You get the idea. It's a bounded communication. You're not going to talk to him about climate change. You're not going to talk to him about politics. He's not going to talk to him about economics. He's not going to talk to him about how to run a business. Nothing, except one thing. I spoke of Jesus Christ and him crucified. the person and the work of Jesus Christ, the testimony of God. I determined, I was intentional to talk to you about one thing, about one person, about Jesus, God incarnate, God in the flesh, Emmanuel God with us. The One, the Word who became flesh and we beheld His glory. The glory is of the only begotten Son of the Father. Of Jesus Christ, the only mediator between God and man. Of Jesus Christ, not only a teacher and a preacher, but uniquely the eternal Son of God through whom the world was made. His eternal divine nature joined to a human nature. And from there, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And for an apostle, that's shorthand for The fullness of the work of redemption that Jesus came to accomplish. He's not just saying, I preached about a man who died on a cross. On a hill called Calvary outside Jerusalem, and I've only ever preached that four minutes of Jesus' life and existence. No, he's saying, I'm preaching the Redeemer, the mediator, the propitiation for our sins and the sins of the world. I'm preaching the God-man who lived a sinless life, died a substitutionary death, rose again, ascended, and by virtue of the completion of his work of mediation, is now declaring His glory and is saving mercy to the world. I preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. If I ever, any preacher ever enters this pulpit and you hear any other message, let me tell you something, it's not preaching. It's the empty, worthless wisdom of this world. And it should be stopped. Go somewhere else. It has no life, it has no power. Paul, one thing. Determined. Jesus Christ and Him crucified. What does that mean? The Lord willing from this pulpit next week? What are you going to hear about? Jesus Christ and Him crucified, two weeks, four weeks, two months, four months, two years, 10 years, 40 years. Long after I'm gone and you're gone, what do we pray for? Same thing, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Preachers rise and fall. We rise and fall like the grass which fades away. The word of the Lord endures forever. And we want and pray for the preaching of one thing, Jesus Christ and Him crucified forever. That's the content of preaching. That's what it's all about. Now, Paul says more about this activity. He says not only there is a certain content to preaching which is from God, but he says it's powerful. He's already said that it's powerful here. He's intimated it in verse 18 of chapter one for the message of the cross is to us who are being saved the power of God. Verse 21, chapter 1, it pleased God. That is a phrase, it pleased God. God delights not only in the content of that message, but He has designed according to His good pleasure how He's going to communicate the power of the cross of Jesus Christ in human history. It's all pleasing to Him. the message and the means of communicating the message. You can't divorce the two. And you'll see at the end in verse five why that's so important. God has ordained and it pleased him through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. There's a power here. Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. To the Romans, it's the power of God unto salvation. He was awed that as he, this undignified, poor, persecuted no hands on any of the levers of this world's power was walking through the world preaching the message of the cross and what was happening they were turning the world upside down and Jews and Greeks were gathering together in fellowship together the middle wall of separation torn down the church of the Lord Jesus Christ being built up sinners being placed on the road to eternal life formerly being in everlasting condemnation he was preaching this word and the kingdom of heaven was rolling across the kingdom of this world how in the world was that But Paul says that that also wasn't in me. Look at verse three. I was among you, I was with you. Weakness, fear, trembling, my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom. He couldn't be more emphatic in communicating this, that the message of the cross which was the power of God, that its power had no origin in Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or any other mere human creature. That's not where the power came from. He says, I was weak. And it's hard to know what he's referring to. In Galatians, Paul uses the same sort of phrase, talking about what appears to be a physical ailment. Maybe he's just testifying to the fact that he knew that he had no inherent power to do anything to change any human heart. But he's saying, I was weak. I was with you in much fear and trembling. Surely with a deep sense of his own inadequacy before God to communicate the message of Jesus Christ and whom he crucified, with the reality of that he was being persecuted every day, and he would see when people were converted, led like sheep to the slaughter, that they were under assault every day just for lifting up the name of Jesus Christ. No power in this world, no dignity in the power structures of this age. Many people walking by and thinking, this guy's out of his mind. What is he doing standing on a street corner in Corinth talking about Jesus of Nazareth, who died? Ridiculed, persecuted, driven out of cities, leaving behind the word. But yet, power. Not in Paul. Obviously not in him. Then where did it come from? Wasn't in his methods. Wasn't in his theatrics. Wasn't even in persuasive words of human wisdom. Paul says, not me. I had a plain style, no gimmicks, no manipulation. So how does this weakness become power? Answer, verse four. But in the demonstration of the spirit and of power. Now first we need to understand that phrase. Paul is not saying here that when he says in the demonstration of the spirit and of power, he's not saying that there are two separate things, the work of the Holy Spirit and then some nebulous power. But it is a Greek construction which emphasizes this reality. And some of your translators put it this way because of that. That God was pleased in the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe by the power of the Holy Spirit of God alone. Now you see how he's addressing the foolishness of lining up, I'm a Paul, I'm a Paulus, I'm a Cephas. Paul's saying, you are out of your mind. It's not our message. It's not our power. It's God's message. It's divine power. It's the Holy Spirit of God who is pleased to take and apply the powerful mediatorial work of Jesus Christ in human history by a means and a method that without the Holy Spirit's help you would think is foolishness. Nothing. No power. Paul's saying here, the power of preaching is divine power. The source material already is powerful. Jesus Christ in him crucified. The declaration of Jesus Christ in him crucified, now if we zero again for a moment on the cross, on the power of the cross, we have there the God-man rejected by the world, judged by the Father as the sin-bearer, bearing in the space of three hours the infinite wrath of God against sin, crying in the mystery of this moment, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And there, heaven and earth, heaven darkened, the earth trembling, and the God-man bearing with infinite power, shining forth in the darkness for splendid glory. The penalty for all our sins, past, present, and future, which is an infinite penalty quenching an infinite wrath, a display of unparalleled power in all of human history. All for the purpose of what? Redeeming a people. Now that on its own is the declaration of power. But what Paul's saying is that that declaration is not on its own because that same power is then extended through human history by the purposeful and almighty activity of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, who is pleased to exalt the Son and the Father in the declaration of the cross across human history and to save those who believe. Now, at this point, you understand what Paul's saying. He's disappeared. It's not His message. It's not His power. He's weak. He's trembling. He has no natural human wisdom. He has nothing to offer. Being used as an instrument in the hand of Almighty God, the Father to glorify the Son by the power of the Spirit. In Ezekiel 37, which we'll read next week as we continue to look at the ministry of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit's work of illumination, regeneration and illumination. You remember that picture where there's a valley of dry bones? And in that valley of dry bones, there is no apparent hope of life. Ezekiel's sent to preach. Now, this is the task of the preacher. And the paradox is, by nature, the preacher, apart from the saving mercy and grace of God and power of the Holy Spirit, Apart from the sovereign intervening mercy of God is also in the same condition. The picture of the Valley of Dry Bones is a picture of the utter hopelessness and helplessness of the human condition. What is Ezekiel called to do? Prophesy. Preach to the dry bones. Seems not that useful. And then much like Adam was formed out of the dust of the ground. by the divine creative genius and power of God. What happens? Flesh and sinews come on those bones. Something happens. But when he's done, what does he say? But there was no breath in them. Still not alive. Something happening, objective and real. The Lord says to him, prophesy again. To the Spirit, the Ruach, the breath of God. Thus says the Lord, come from the four winds, O breath, and make them live. And He did. And breath came into them and they lived. You have to understand, there's a unity here in that image. Not that. You can divide these two things, but the illustration is a picture of this reality that there's the life-giving power of the Gospel which must necessarily be accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit together which God uses in human history. The testimony of God and the demonstration of the Holy Spirit's power to make dead sinners come alive. Dead sinners come alive. What was needed in Ezekiel's day? Resurrection, new creation, the Word to be accompanied by the Spirit with power to bring new life. And that's preaching. And it's not dependent on the man. Anyone who preaches here? We have no power. As I said earlier, the preacher is in need of the same life-giving message to no lesser degree than anyone else. I say it to my children sometimes. When we're dealing with hard things, I say, listen, you need the cross and the blood of Christ. I need the cross and the blood of Christ. As a preacher, same thing. There's a difference in office. There's a calling. There's a setting apart as an ambassador. There's an entrustment with a message. But there's no essential power to make the difference that needs to be made. That belongs to the Spirit of God alone. Paul says, understand this about preaching. This is how God works in history. Some things to learn. So you do come week after week. morning and evening. By the way, this alone should make you want to come morning and evening. I mean, without any arguments from the Lord's Day or anything else, God through the foolishness of preaching is pleased to save those who believe. The testimony of God is being declared the Holy Spirit's active power in human history. Where else would you want to be? I've said it to you before, Find me something better. There isn't. It's not there. The Holy Spirit speaking through the Scriptures of Jesus Christ and Him crucified in everlasting life, calling sinners from darkness to life, building you up in faith and holiness. There's nothing. There's nothing that you can hold a candle to this. There's nothing. There's nothing. There's power, divine power at work. And it pleased God to use preaching. He delights in this method. And he wants to use it in your life. He doesn't just use it at the beginning of your Christian life. He uses you to keep you in Christ, to build you in Christ, to carry you all the way home. Same spirit, same power, same word, same new creation. The same spirit who raised Jesus Christ from the dead, now at work in you. All happening right now as you hear preaching. It's kind of ordinary, isn't it? 52 weeks a year, morning and evening. Depending how long-winded your preacher is, it's either 100 or 200 hours a year. It's not a whole lot of your year. And what a privilege. Divine power at work in human history. Why do people miss it? Why do people look for everything else? Because they're trying to measure spiritual realities with worldly measurements. And you'll always come up with a zero. But as you understand what God says He's doing, you will see the power and glory of Jesus Christ. And you'll be under the ministry of the Holy Spirit. So prepare. Pray all week long. for the weak and feeble men to get up in this pulpit. In the last weeks, I think, we've had four or five different men. Paul, Paulus, one's called Peter, interestingly. Power's not in us. It's not our message, it's not our power. It really isn't. But it is Jesus Christ at work in human history, exalting Himself. Pray. That God would bless it to your heart and life. Listen carefully. Submit to it. Look beyond the ordinariness to the extraordinary mercy of God. And receive it with faith and love. Lay it up in your hearts. Practice it in your life. Pray for God to use preaching in human history beyond the walls of this church. You know, it has a timeless simplicity. I don't understand, and I want to be careful here, because there are a lot of churches where there is true preaching, where people are doing the things I'm about to list. But you don't need to spend a million dollars on a sound system and a video system. God has ordained a way of communicating in human history that is so simple and so plain, it can go anywhere, spread anywhere. He calls men, sets them apart, gives them the task of taking His testimony by the power of the Spirit and proclaiming it to others. That's it. Portable, simple, plain, easily overlooked. Again, it's pleasing to God, filled with spiritual power. I was talking to a friend who was discouraged about the support of missionaries. He said, our church is engaged in supporting hundreds of missionaries. We did a review, and only 10 are actually preaching. No, no, no, no. Paul, remember when I came to you what I did? Remember what turned the world upside down? Preaching. Jesus Christ and him crucified in the demonstration of the Spirit's power. We need a commitment to this. We need to believe that God will use it. Why did He design it this way? Look at verse 5. So that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Simple, easily overlooked means. By men who in weakness, fear, and trembling, who themselves are sinners, God has ordained to declare the message of the cross, call sinners from death to life, put to shame the kingdom of darkness, and lift up the name and glory of Jesus Christ. When that's all done, your faith is not in the wisdom of men, but you understand that you've been witness to the power of God. It makes me think of a short phrase uttered by John the Baptist, he must increase, but I must decrease. God has chosen this method so that at the end of the age, all the glory will belong to Him. That He will have seemed to have done what appeared to be impossible in the eyes of the world, not only to send His Son to die, but to be sure that everyone who He had ordained from all eternity would be gathered in, even while the world didn't notice. And at the end of the day, It'll be a staggering testament to the power of God. One more thing. The gospel God has ordained to be preached in a simple and plain presentation. And I would really be remiss if I didn't finish by declaring to you the gospel. Jesus Christ is the God man. He was crucified on a hill outside of Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago. There is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The Father laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He died bearing the full wrath of God, quenching, drinking the cup to its last drink. But he's not dead. It was not possible that death should hold him. And the Spirit of God raised him from the dead. He was declared there to be the Son of God with power through the ages in human history. And he's not on the earth anymore. He's ascended in heaven. And he's led captivity captive. He gives gifts to men. And he's given his Holy Spirit. The day he gave his Spirit, he raised up a preacher who said to the ones who nailed him to the tree, repent and believe. Come to the Christ, who alone is your hope for salvation and life. It was the day that he also sent his Spirit from heaven with power. And he gave a man, an apostle, boldness. And thousands were saved. A man simply stood up and spoke of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And thousands entered the Kingdom of Heaven. Some 2,000 years later, this morning here, the same thing is happening. The same Jesus speaking in history. The same Spirit. The same plain message. The same testimony of God. You need to hear. You need to listen. You need to believe. You need to understand again that your only hope for life and eternal life and salvation and forgiveness and mercy is found not in yourself but in another and his name is Jesus. And you need to hear and listen to the plainness of the message of the gospel and hear and live forever. Let's pray. Lord our God, We come believing that You are communicating with us according to the means You've appointed by the power of the Spirit. And we pray for grace to receive Your Word. Lord, we pray that not one here would go away looking for some other distraction. But instead that the simple message of the cross which is Your power for salvation to those who are being saved The means that please you, Lord, we pray that you would use them to gather the lost and to build up your people. So we ask in Jesus' name.