First Corinthians chapter number one, I'm gonna begin reading in verse number 11. The Bible says, for it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul, and I am of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were ye baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius, lest any should say that I baptized in mine own name. And I baptized also the household of Stephanus. Besides, I know not whether I baptized any other. For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. You may be seated. I want to preach today on this thought, the peril of preacher worship. the peril of preacher worship. Now I know this might stand in a bit of contrast considering it is Pastor Appreciation Month and the kind words that have been said, so I hope in no way offend anyone And I certainly am in great and deep appreciation to the church for your love and care for me and for my family. Not only this month, but since we have been here, the love that has been shown has been overwhelming. It is appreciated and I will say I believe it is right for a church to do that. We taught the church there in Oklahoma to do that and they are continuing that on. I heard that they did that for their pastor now and that was a blessing to see that. They learn that and they're carrying that on. So, this is in no way a rebuke to the church for your kindness or hospitality. Simply, it is the text in which we find ourselves as we go through 1 Corinthians. And I hope that as we lay out this text and bear the burden of our heart, you'll see the difference. there wasn't a problem in honoring their preachers there was a problem in worshipping man and factions had begun to be created because of the worship of men and uh... sadly we live in such a day and I don't see it so much in this church or even in perhaps some of the circles that we might fellowship with but it is certainly alive and well and that is preacher worship And there are men that are elevated to high positions of prestige and honor and distinguish above other men. And that's not right. It's not right when more people go to a meeting because of who is preaching instead of what is being preached. When we all congregate only because of who the personality is instead of what the substance of their message is. There's something wrong with that. And I have known men, personally, men that had very little to say when it came to the Word of God, very little to say about our Savior when it came to preaching the Gospel, but they had a larger-than-life personality. They had a bit of charisma. They're great storytellers. They have a way of keeping people on the edge of their seat and oftentimes telling jokes and giving one-liners that just really seem to fit with the audience they speak to, and people are more sadly DRAWN to that many times than they are a man that just gets up and faithfully preaches the Word of God or the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I remember being in a meeting one time, and perhaps this will serve as an example. It was a camp meeting in the mountains of Western North Carolina, and typically camp meetings there, they can tend to get loud. They shout, and they'll raise their hand, and they'll worship the Lord, and a lot of the men will ag the preacher on as he's preaching, let him know, hey, I'm with you, I agree with what you're saying. Oftentimes when the choir sing, people will weep and they'll worship and just an environment, an atmosphere of praise and adoration unto God. Now there's some times when it's genuine, times when the Spirit of the Lord seems to be moving and folk are truly moved in their heart to worship God. And then there's times when no doubt it's manufactured. People know how to say the right thing at the right time to stir and to work upon the emotions of their audience and thereby they're able to kind of work them into a excitement or even into a frenzy. And I remember being at this one particular meeting. It was an outdoor meeting. It was under an arbor or a shed, you might say. And there were several hundred people there for the meeting. And that particular night, Brother Brandon Harrell, who many of you have met, he preached here some time back, was preaching. And there was another preacher. Brother Brandon was going to be preaching second, the other preacher preaching first. The other preacher was a well-known preacher in that area of the world. He had preached a lot of meetings. He had a name that preceded himself. And when he got up, he just started preaching on things. He read his text, but he never came back to it. And more or less, it was more of a legalistic type message on telling people how they ought to live and what they ought to wear. and all the different things like that. And I'm going to tell you, that place was shouting, and those folks were getting excited, if you will. I don't think excited in the Lord, but they were getting excited, more so in the flesh. And then Brother Brandon Harrell got up, and I think he preached one of the most powerful messages I've probably ever heard him preach on Christ and the Gospel. And all he did was just magnify the Lord from the text he was preaching, clearly preached the Gospel. And I'm not kidding you, you could have heard a pin drop in that place. And I thought, what a sad state of affairs when we're more interested in the do's and don'ts of man-centered religion than we are the simplicity of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I think a lot of that perhaps was due to the personality, to the man himself. They wanted to ag him on. They wanted him to know we're with you. And Brother Brandon wasn't as well known, and so when he got up, there wasn't the same excitement. But there certainly is preacher worship. And there was a meeting not long ago, in fact, and I'm not trying to be critical and point out, and I won't give you these names, not that you would know them anyway. They're from back East. But they have a big conference every year and by big conference. I mean, it's a big youth rally They have it in Pigeon Fords, North Carolina, Tennessee, excuse me and every year they'll have about four or five thousand people register for this conference and They ran out a big big Event center and it's always a big thing. Well this year the theme was like the Avengers y'all seen Marvel Avengers anybody seen that so And all these preachers dressed up in red, white, and blue, and they busted through this banner, and they had a smoke machine. Now these are independent Baptists. And they came walking out on the stage, and they were representing different members of the Marvel's Avenger team, but these were the marvelous preachers. And all the excitement, they had all kinds of technology and media that was there documenting and promoting this. And I thought, what a sad example to our young people of where we shouldn't put the emphasis. The emphasis was put on the big-name preachers that they brought in, not upon the Christ that they should have been preaching. And that is a dilemma that we find ourselves in in America. It's hero worship. It's man worship. It's preacher worship. And a man is more likely to gain a crowd if he's well-known because of who he is and not because of the message that he preaches. And I just want to acknowledge this morning what I believe is our congregation's heart for Christ. But I also want to warn us of the temptation to transfer that devotion from Christ to a person. It can happen very easily and it can happen very subtly that we began to think so highly of a man. And you know, I really thought about this. I know sometimes for some people it happens and it's not on purpose. I have great admiration for the men God used in my life to preach Christ to me. When I think about the one who preached the night the Lord saved me, I don't thank Him for saving me, I thank God for saving me, but I thank God for His servant that faithfully preached the Word, and there is an admonition in my heart. I admonish Him, and I love Him. There's a love there. I think of other men throughout my life who have taught me the Word of God and who have invested in my life so that I can understand how to study and prepare and pray and live a holy and do my best to live a righteous life. practically speaking, to honor the Lord and serve Him. Men have been used to do that. But I don't worship those men. I don't put those men on a pedestal and say they are the supreme example of what it is to be a Christian. Because the moment you put a man on a pedestal, you know what happens? He falls off, doesn't he? And many, many, many are defiled thereby by that man falling. I think of a very well-known name, a preacher in the Reformed Baptist circles who just about a year or so ago was caught in adultery and the effect it had upon many who had placed that gentleman upon a pedestal. I'm just simply saying this morning there is a peril to preacher worship. And my desire is to expose this danger, as we find it in our text this morning, to diagnose its cause and to call the church back to Christ, to faithfully and always faithfully look to Christ and Him alone. So as we begin this, I want to state first of all, my first point this morning is the saints' concern. We ought to be concerned when we see division beginning to rise up within the congregation as a result of preacher worship. Well, I'm of this person. Well, I'm of that person. Well, this guy's better than that guy. Well, my preacher can out-preach your preacher. We ought to be concerned. And thankfully there were those who were concerned in the church at Corinth. There were those who had enough discernment to see the danger, the peril that this caused the church at Corinth and their ability to have an effective testimony to the lost and dying world that was around them. And we see that in verse number 11. For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, I love how Paul, again, he's not just beating them over the head with truth, but he's associating with them. He says, My brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there be contentions among you. So it had been brought to his attention by some in the church that there were divisions. And he uses this term brethren. Phileo, that Philadelphia love, that brotherly love, that brethren, that term of endearment to identify HIM being on equal footing with the saints of God that were there at Corinth. And let me just say, if you are ever going to come between two factioning parties, two quarreling parties, to people that are at odds with one another. If you're going to try to mediate, if you're going to try to come between and find common ground, you better have a love for them and they better KNOW you have a love for THEM or they're not going to listen to anything you have to say. It's very important that we have a love one for another. That we don't, in an effort to maintain purity, in an effort to squash any kind of contention that may be in the church, that we alienate and separate our brethren one from another instead of pushing away and further causing division. We need to bring together as brothers in Christ and say, look, we are a family. Let's sit down at the family table and let's discuss this matter and let's do everything we can to make it right. And so we find here, those of the house of Chloe. You know what I find interesting about this verse? I've seen this so many times, and I'm sure you have too. How many times have you had somebody come to you and say, can I talk to you about something? And they pull you aside and they say, somebody told me, and I want to talk to you about it. maybe you've heard it this way before the whole church is saying you ever heard that? well I'd like to know who is the names of those whole church members that are saying this I remember one time I had a man come to me when I was pastoring in Oklahoma and he brought up a few concerns evidently that he had and he said several people have said this to me I said, well, if you don't mind me asking, who are the several people? Well, now I don't want to betray their trust. I said, I tell you what, if they have a problem, you tell them to come talk to me one-on-one, and I will be glad to sit down and talk with them. Or, you can share with me who they are and their concern, and I'd be glad to go talk to them. But until we identify who is saying what is being said, this conversation is not going any further. And I say that to say this. I think sometimes the disguise of anonymity is used for people to sow discord and strive instead of the true and what should be genuine desire of seeing division done away. You know, when anonymity is involved, you cause more division than you do peace. You drive people further away than you do in bringing them together. Because now you've got somebody has said something about something and nobody knows who it is. And so everybody's looking over their shawl. I wonder if it was old so and so. He didn't shake my hand today. I bet he's the one spreading these rumors about me. when in fact he's been coughing and he just didn't want to pass that cold along but in your mind now he's become public enemy number one. And that's how the devil will sow discord and do all that he can to bring about division and we need to be aware of his devices. We need to be concerned citizens of heaven, saints and members of the Lord's church. And when there's a problem, we should be willing to confront that problem and do so in a spirit of humility, desiring to see peace and unity brought to this and not further division made and be glad to say, Hey, I, Brandon White, I have a concern about this. Can we sit down and have a discussion? There were the saints concerned, and Chloe was not ashamed to share that she was the one concerned, and so Paul was not ashamed to say, Chloe and her household have declared this unto me. Now let me just say, if you're willing to do that, if you're willing to be spiritual, because that's what Galatians calls this kind of activity, you which are spiritual, do your best to restore. And I know that's talking about one person falling into sin, but I think it has an application to every aspect of church life. Those that are spiritual seek to and desire to keep the church in that bond of unity that the Spirit has given. See, we don't make unity. The Spirit of God produces unity, but we have to keep it. We have to safeguard it. We can do all that we can to destroy it, or we can do all that we can to maintain it, but the Spirit of God is the one that gives unity, and so we need to be willing rather than to see it fall apart, protect it with all that we have. We see the saints' concern. And their concern was over people saying, I follow Paul, and I follow Apollos, and I'm more akin to Peter's teaching, and another group saying that I am of Christ. And in this way there was division rather than unity. There was contention rather than peace among the brethren. Let me just say, saints are meant to be devoted to Christ. Amen. Not devoted to a man, not devoted to a movement, but devoted to Christ. Christ and His message. It shouldn't be, and as far as I know it hasn't been here, but it shouldn't be that when one man is called to leave a work and another man is called to come to a work, that there are groups or factions of people that say, well that's not my preacher, I'm going to find somewhere else to go. It's not about the preacher, it's about Christ and the people of God united around the gospel of Jesus Christ, marked by humility and mutual submission to Jesus Christ. And when affection for Christ is rerouted to a gifted preacher, it's centered upon a movement, a personality, or someone's charisma. It shifts the church's center from the cross to carnality. And that's what's happening at Corinth. And Paul alludes to the result of this is an ineffective gospel witness. That's what he says in verse 17, that the preaching of the cross is made of none effect when we are focused more on MEN than we are on the message of Jesus Christ. I thought about just kind of a simple illustration. We've got the lighthouse here in our picture window. And I thought about, imagine a lighthouse keeper who became more infamous or more famous, I should say, than the lighthouse itself. People gathering to praise the keeper of the lighthouse instead of looking to the light that it was shining. Forgetting the purpose of the lighthouse, pointing others to safety. And the keeper's applause distracting the ships, and the light ignored instead of hearkened unto. Let me just say, the keeper of the lighthouse may be gifted, but what saves the ship is not his gifts, it's the light that's coming from the lighthouse. Who do we applaud most in our gatherings? Is it Christ? Christ whom we preach? His sufferings? His resurrection, His glorious ascension, His soon coming? Or is it the preacher that we admire? And may it always be Christ. I think a lot of church media, and there's nothing wrong with church media, and there's nothing wrong with trying to get the gospel out, but I find a lot of times what churches, especially modern churches, are doing more than getting the gospel out is getting an image out. their preacher, or their community, or their social groups, and the things that they offer, they push THAT more than they do Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And that ought to cause concern among the saints of God. Notice number two though, there in the text, we see the serious contention I've already read it and we've alluded to it, but now in verse 12 he goes on to say, Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul, and I am of Paulus, and I am of Cephas, and I of Christ. Here Paul calls their attention to the problem of contention. Factions formed around men. I'm of Paul. Paul wanted nothing to do with it. He didn't want to be at the center of their focus. He didn't want people to go around saying, I'm a Pauline. He wanted them to go around saying, I'm a Christian. Paul had some that followed him. He was that apostle born out of season. He was an apostle to the Gentiles. But he didn't want to follow him. He came not with words of wisdom, he says in verse 17, but to preach the cross of Christ. That's where his burden was. Was that all men might see Christ living in him, living through him. That he would be hid behind the cross and that when people looked at his life, all they would see was the glory of Jesus Christ. As some of you say, I'm of Apollos. Paul started the church at Corinth, was there for a year and a half. No doubt there were many that loved and admired him, whom he had had a direct impact upon their life. Apollos came after Paul. He came in as the second pastor and he was there for some time pastoring this church and Apollos evidently was an eloquent man. In fact, some historians have said that Apollos was one of the greatest orators of history. They say at least of the early church age that he probably was a better orator, better at laying out the Word of God in an eloquent and in a sensible fashion than anybody, even than Paul. You know what Apollos thought about the division at Corinth? Look over in 1 Corinthians chapter 16. This is what Apollos thought about it. He didn't want to be at the center of it. He didn't want to have nothing to do with it. He knew it wasn't right. Verse 12, As touching our brother Apollos, I greatly desired him to come unto you with the brethren. He said there's such a recognition and an admiration for Him, I wanted Him to come, because I figured you might LISTEN to Him! But His will was not at all to come at this time, but He will come when He shall have convenient time. He didn't want to get in the middle of that mess! He didn't want it to be about Him! As eloquent, as great as an orator as he was, as how God had mightily used Apollos, even there in the church life at Corinth, he said, I don't want to get in the middle of this. Y'all need to figure this out. Y'all need to work out these divisions. Y'all need to fix these factions and y'all need to put your focus back on the cross. And then there's Cephas, brother Peter. Perhaps there were some Judaizers there in that Roman province of Corinth that had come to faith in Christ, and they were thinking about the great example and all the wonderful stories they had heard of the first and greatest of the apostles, Peter, who had, on the day of Pentecost, stood and preached and saw so many souls saved and saw all that God did, and God MIGHTILY EMPOWERED HIM when He restored him. No doubt they wanted to associate with Peter. They loved him. They thought highly of him. But I think about what Peter had to say about it. He talks about it in one of his epistles. He talks about those things that are hard to be understood that Paul talks about. And he talks about how he does it in every one of his epistles. and how people were they they rest with the truth and the rest their W R E S T that wrestle they wrestle with it to their own destruction Peter didn't want nothing to do with man worship Peter realized that he was nothing And that he himself had denied the Lord, had it not been for God's grace to restore him, he wouldn't have been what he was. And he was what he was, even as Paul would have said, by the grace of God. These men did not desire the attention, the recognition, the love and admiration that was being bestowed upon them. They desired that all of those affections be placed upon Christ. upon Christ. He goes on to say in this problem, this contention, that He begins to investigate, He begins to interrogate, He begins to ask questions in verse 13. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? And He begins to lay out these truths that Christ is NOT divided. And we should not be divided as His body. If the head is not divided, then the body should not be divided. But the church should be unified following the leadership and guidance of her head, the Lord Jesus Christ. And Paul lays out another thing. He wasn't crucified for them. He didn't die for them, nor were they baptized under the Apostle Paul. We baptize in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Not in the name of Brandon White, or the name of Landmark Missionary Baptist Church, or the name of any other preacher, or any other congregation. We baptize in the name of our Lord and Savior, who is the head of His church. He alone is worthy of preeminence, and glory, and honor. Paul, here, he nips this right in the bud. The serious contention. Thought about how division under the guise of preference can oftentimes be a very serious spiritual disease. Because it fragments the testimony of the church to the watching world. The world's watching us this morning. And when they see fragments, they see fractions, they see contention developing in the church, it causes them to question what we really preach and what we really believe. This division is so serious because it misplaces spiritual dependence from an unseen savior to a visible servant. I'm going to depend upon a man. Well, let me say, if you're dependent on a man, the man's going to let you down, isn't he? Y'all seen that. And I'm going to just go ahead and tell you, and I hate it. I hate it. I hate it because I don't ever want to bring any harm, but I'm going to let you down. Not willfully, not on purpose, but you're going to find shortcomings in this preacher. But you never will in Christ. Keep your eyes on Him. This serious contention is so dangerous because it corrupts the gospel when people equate a preacher's style or a preacher's personality or even a preacher's manner of living with salvation or spirituality or maturity instead of Christ with those things. So Paul corrects them on this. And he tells them the gospel is not about eloquence. It's not about philosophy. It's not about personality. It's about Christ crucified. Preachers are merely servants. Jesus Christ is the message. And he is at the center of it all. I thought about how you got the Kings basketball team. Anybody a Sacramento Kings fan? Most of you, some of you don't want to admit it, they must not be winning right now. You know, I've seen it before, and I'm sure you have too, not just on that team, but on many teams, and not just basketball. When you've got a couple of all-stars and their primary focus, all that consumes them is their personal stats. They want to outshine the rest of the team. They want to get that bonus. They want to get more money in their next contract. And so instead of doing what's best for the team, they do what's best for them, for me. Isn't that how it can be sometimes in churches? We're all about building our own kingdom, doing our own thing, putting the focus on ourselves and what we think's important. All the while, we're not helping ourselves, we're not furthering the cause of Christ, but we're doing more harm to the church and to the work of the church. A lot of times leaders will measure their success by how many people they can get to follow them. Well, if that's a measure of success, I'm a failure. And there's a lot of heretics out there that are very successful. It's not what it's about, is it? We should measure our ministry by how often we give glory to Christ. by how often we point others to Christ. See, our ministry and our ministry gifts, that's not what people should be coming to see. But who we preach, who we testify of, who we exclaim, who we proclaim, should be Jesus Christ, and that should be why people come to serious contention. Then lastly and finally, let me give you this. We see a very simple conclusion, don't we? Paul lays out the concern the saints had and even names those who were the ones who had shared with him this information. He points out the serious contention that was going on, this man worship, preacher worship, and then he gives a very simple conclusion to it. And verse 14, he says, I thank God I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius, lest any should say that I had been baptized, or that I baptized in my own name. He said, I baptized only but a handful. Comes back, he says, the house of Stephanas. He said, otherwise I can't think of anybody else among you that I baptize and I wanted it to be that way on purpose because I didn't want people to say I came baptizing in my own name to build my own kingdom so that people would remember who I am. But I wanted people to remember that when Paul came, he came preaching the cross of Jesus Christ. He preached Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He didn't rely upon philosophy. He didn't rely upon man's wisdom. He didn't rely upon any oratory skills that he may or may not have had. He relied upon the power of the gospel. He came to a people who were looking for signs and they were looking for wisdom. And he said, I came and preached to them the simplicity of the cross. I did that foolish thing of preaching, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I relied solely upon the power of the gospel to lay hold upon sinners and transform their life. No man came to Corinth and said, I came because my ears were tickled and my intellect was appeased. But I came because I saw myself a sinner on my way to hell and Jesus Christ saved me by his grace. That's what Paul wanted to be remembered for. Very simple conclusion. Christ didn't send him to baptize, but to preach the gospel. Not with words of wisdom, but by the preaching of the cross. And the answer to the peril of preacher worship is simplicity. Preach and follow the cross. Preach Christ and Him crucified and live that out in your day-to-day life. The cross exposes human glory and it reveals God's power. And it shows man for what he truly is, lost, helpless, and without any hope aside from the cross. but it exemplifies the power that Christ and He alone has to reach down and to save the worst of the worst and redeem them unto Himself. May the Christian life we live center upon Christ's finished work, the centrality of the cross and the priority of the message over the messenger. I like how one man said it. He said, he may preach Jesus better than me, but he'll never preach a better Jesus than me. They may preach a better sermon than me, or have the ability of laying it out more eloquently than I do, and I will confess I'm not the greatest preacher, but they'll never preach a better subject than I preach, and that's Jesus Christ. I thought about this. When people go to see maybe a beautiful piece of art, they're not there to see the frame that it's held in, are they? You ever went to an art show? Somebody's standing there looking at art, and they say, man, ain't that just a beautiful frame? Man, just see the intricate design and the wood and the detail. No, their focus is upon the piece of art that's in front of them. That's what's caught their attention. That's what's captivated them. It's not just the framework which is holding it up, which is holding it forth, which is raising it up. But the frame is lost in the backdrop of the beauty and grandeur of the artwork itself. And that's how the Christian life ought to be. We ought to go about our lives every day lifting up Christ, making much of Him so that people are lost in the grandeur and the beauty and the glory and the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we just fade into the backdrop. It's all about Him. Seeing Christ. That's how our services ought to be structured. Prayer, it's to Christ, not one to another. We're not to pray eloquent prayers to impress the brethren or the sisters that we have in Christ. It is to speak to our Heavenly Father and to call out to Him. Our songs ought to be centered upon Christ. I'm glad we have Christ-centered music and worship in our church, and we ever should desire and seek to have such music in our worship. That which exalts Christ, it puts Him forth, front and forward before all of us. Preaching that exalts Christ, elevates Him, I remember growing up and hearing mountain preachers every time just about any one of them would pray, they'd say, hide me behind the cross. And you used to think, what does that even mean? But I understand it now. Don't let people see me, but let them see Christ in Him, high and lifted up, Him exalted, Him crucified, risen and coming again. You see, a very simple conclusion. I didn't come to baptize. That's a pretty interesting statement. I'm wanting to dig a little deeper into that just for my own sake. I didn't come to baptize. That's part of the Great Commission, isn't it? Paul said, I didn't come to baptize. He's not under emphasizing, I don't believe the importance of baptism. I think he's just emphasizing the importance of the gospel. See, baptism's nothing without the gospel. What's most important is that you know Christ as your Lord and Savior. Baptism will follow. He said, I didn't come to baptize, but I came to preach the gospel. Verse 17, but to preach the gospel. I didn't use wisdom words, words of wisdom. I didn't bring about any philosophies. That's what the Greeks, they always wanted to hear was some new philosophy to tickle their intellect. The Jews, they wanted a sign, and we'll see that later. They needed a sign from heaven. God, give us a sign. Well, God gave them the greatest sign that they could have ever had. That was his son, robed in human flesh, walking among men. He didn't use any of that. He just preached the gospel. And he didn't use any of that, and he didn't put emphasis on himself, and he didn't put emphasis on baptism, because he didn't want the cross of Christ to be made of none effect. He didn't want it to lose its effectiveness. He didn't want the gospel to be watered down, thereby rendered ineffective. So he just preached the cross. Or as I know, there is no contention this morning surrounding preacher worship. But let's pray and ask God to keep us from ever going there. And if it is there, pray and ask God to show us where it is. That Christ be elevated above men, above women, above all. When we worship preachers, we fracture the body. We silence the gospel. We mislead the lost. May God help us to just be faithful, to have unity in the body, to keep preaching Jesus Christ, and to let the lost and dying world see who is the only one that can transform their life. And it's not the preacher, it's not the church, it's Jesus Christ. Let's return to the cross. Let's preach Christ crucified. Let's make the message, not the message or our glory. Let's lift up him and make much of him. And we always make sure we keep the focus on Christ and not the preacher. Thought about how you go to a play and they always have the big spotlight. Of course, they'll move that spotlight around throughout the play to focus on whoever may be speaking at that moment or the main character of the play, keeping the eyes upon the main thing. Well, may we never shine a spotlight upon me or even upon you, but let's keep the light shining upon Christ. That all who look our way might see him and him alone. May God keep us humble, help us to be guarded, guard ourselves from the idolatry of preacher worship, and to make Christ alone our boast and our hope.