Well, I fear that I may immediately discourage you this evening. You would think that by this stage in life I would pay attention carefully to the directives that were given me for coming to an event like this. First of all, that it is an expositors' conference, and I'm going to speak thematically. Secondly, that it is preaching Christ in the Old Testament. and I'm going to preach him from all over the place. So if you're very fastidious about these things, I'd like you to know up front so that you've now got over that and we can proceed accordingly. We're going to talk about preaching Christ, and that ought to be very straightforward, but it isn't. because it is possible, and some of us to our shame have done this, i.e., worked our way through one of the Gospels, the Synoptics or John, and have managed to go all the way through the Gospel and have preached it in a surprisingly non-Christ-centered way. It's quite surprising, isn't it, that you can take a Gospel which is all about Jesus and work your way through it in a way that doesn't actually really present Jesus. systematically and consecutively expound in the Scriptures is not necessarily the same thing as a Christ-centered exposition of the Scriptures. And if it is possible to get it wrong in the New Testament, then think how dangerous it is in attempting it in the Old Testament. It would be tedious for me to work my way through all of the dangerous and difficult ways in which this happens, but some of us are familiar with it. Some of us were brought up on a kind of teaching of the Old Testament that found Jesus in places that, frankly, mystified me even as a boy. that taught me messages that were important theological messages, but I couldn't for the life of me understand how the man got from here to there. But he did it with great alacrity. For example, you know, in Genesis 40, is it, where you have the dreams and you have the baker with three baskets of bread on his head? Have you ever had anybody teach you that that is the doctrine of the Trinity right there? That the three baskets represent the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? That's the kind of allegorical interpretation that we need to stay as far away from as we possibly can. So when we're thinking about it, we're thinking about doing it properly. We're thinking about doing it in a way that the Bible constrains us. And at the end of Luke's gospel, as you know, Jesus provides a master class in Old Testament interpretation. The familiar words there, as Jesus is encountered by the two fellows, or the couple perhaps, on the Emmaus Road, and they're unaware of the fact that it's Jesus. And in that ironic encounter, as he reveals himself to them, and then later on we read that he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and he said to them, Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem You are witnesses of these things, and behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you, but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high." And the phrase that is important, I think, for us to notice is when he says, these are the words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. It's important for us to recognize that the Old Testament was never intended to exist by itself. It's not as if somehow or another God wrote the Old Testament, and they said, oh, I'd better write another testament. The Old Testament finishes like an unfinished symphony, because it is written in such a way that points us forward to the fulfillment, as we've been thinking about so wonderfully from Psalm 2. And when you move from the Old Testament and into the New, when the lights finally go on for the apostles, when the fulfillment of the word of Jesus to them and through them in Pentecost becomes apparent, then Peter is able to write and he's able to say that the prophets were inquiring about this matter of salvation. They were like men standing on their tiptoes, looking down the corridors of time, and they were the ones who were setting forward Christ. Paul does the same thing when, in his confrontation with Agrippa, he's able to say to him, I'm not here with some kind of newfangled message. Everything that I have been saying and everything that I say is entirely in keeping with the law and with the prophets. I am simply, if you like, expounding the Bible. So, it's pretty straightforward, isn't it, that we should expect to see Jesus in the Old Testament, because that is the way the New Testament teaches us to read it. And there's a great encouragement, isn't there, in learning to read our Bibles backwards, because as we recognize the fulfillment of things, then we can go back and we can see it there. And of course, as we read it forward, we recognize, too, the foundation that is laid for us. Now, as I've said, I'm going to address this thematically at least this evening, and I hope you're not put off by that. And I am going to, in the course of these three addresses, use the munis triplics of Calvin, his way of not just Calvin, but he and others, who found in these anointed categories of the Old Testament, of prophet, priest, and king, a wonderful way for providing a Christology and a theology that help not only to navigate through the Old Testament, but also to understand the totality of the Bible. It is, of course, possible for us to deal with these things in a way that is cold and largely ineffectual. as a result of seeing them simply as categories, almost as a formulaic methodology, without being brought into the warmth and into the endearment of Jesus as the anointed prophet and priest and king. And so it is imperative, if we're going to be brought to it in that way, that we understand their purpose and also that we use them properly. And tonight, this question of the true prophet. The anointing in the Old Testament was there for the prophetic ministry, for the priestly ministry, and for the kingly role. And what I want you to notice is, first of all, that when you read in the Bible, you realize that this role of the prophet is a role that is required, or it is a role that is necessary. It is there for a particular and for an express purpose. God has purposed in this way to provide for his people in the prophetic word. And in essence, God gives us prophets because we need them. We need them. In fact, there is an inherent judgment in the provision of each of these categories. We need a prophet because of our ignorance, we need a priest because of our alienation, and we need a king to subdue us on account of our rebellion. So, when we encounter the Word of God through the established servant of God in the prophetic ministry, it is there because of the nature of humanity, as we again have been helpfully reminded of this evening. So from the very beginning of the Bible, as God passes his judgment on the circumstances following the fall, and into chapter 6, and he says, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Okay? So the heart of man is evil, and the thoughts of man are wrong. You follow through in the Old Testament, the fool has said in his heart there is no God. That's not an indication of the mental capacity of this individual. It is an indication of his moral perversity, of his rejection of the rule and the reign of God. When Paul picks this up in Romans chapter 1, he tells us the exact same thing. that behind a facade of wisdom, they rejected the God who had made them, they began to engage in idolatry, and their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened. So, how is the darkened heart of man—how is the mind of man that is bent away from God—to be reached? through the prophet. Thomas Watson, in his Body of Divinity, comments on how natural darkness scares us. Natural darkness scares us. You say, well, I'm not afraid of the dark. Well, good for you, but I sometimes am. Sometimes when I find myself in a strange place and I can't find the light, I may be a little afraid, especially when my wife's not with me to help me. Because if ever I hear a noise in the night, I always send her downstairs. She's a much braver person than me. Maybe it's just me, but I could be afraid of natural darkness. He then goes on to say, but isn't it interesting that although a man may be afraid of the natural dark and a fear of falling, that man is not afraid of spiritual darkness? That spiritual darkness, it says Watson, is not accompanied with horror. Men tremble not at their condition. Nay, they like their condition well enough. Well, of course, we understand that, don't we? Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. In fact, man—quay man—is so blind to the fact of his blindness that he doesn't even know he's blind until the prophet comes and reveals his blindness before his eyes are ever opened. Now, this is, of course, of fundamental importance as we think about not only our understanding of the Bible, but our dealing with our friends and neighbors in the world in which we live. Because of our sin and our fallenness, the Bible says, there is actually no intellectual road from us to God. There's no intellectual road from us to God. If it were simply a matter of intellect, then the brightest people in the world would all be believers. But it isn't, and it obviously isn't, and it purposefully isn't. Luther talks about how we're turned in upon ourselves, that our view of the world and of ourselves we may think is a neutral view, but the Bible says, no, it's not. It's skewed. It's biased. I don't know if you've ever engaged in crown bowls. If you've seen it traveling in Britain, you have a beautiful flat piece of grass like a putting green, and then they put a little white ball out in front of you, and then you roll a ball at it. It doesn't seem very interesting, until you take up one of the bowls, and you realize that it is impossible to roll the bowl straight. because the ball has an inherent bias in it. You can either make it, you can play it as a cut, or you can play it as a draw, but you can't roll it straight because it is inherently biased. And the Bible says the heart of man is inherently biased, that we create all kinds of idols for ourselves. And as man, every day in a thousand ways, I am tempted to make myself the center of the universe. So what does God do? In his mercy, he sends his prophets. Into our darkness, into our stupidity, into our foolishness, in his grace, he speaks his Word to us. And that's why, when you read the prophetic books of the Old Testament, you have this amazing clarity and striking forcefulness. Isaiah doesn't pull his punches, neither does Jeremiah. Ezekiel certainly doesn't either. And we can go the whole way through. The gods of the idols, he says, are absolute nonsense. They can't do anything for you at all. What a strange thing that you would cut down a tree, and you would chop it in half, and part of it you would use to light a fire so you could cook your food, and the other half you would prop up outside your house, and you would come and worship it. How strange that humanity would do such a thing. How would you know which end to use for the fire and which end to worship? Oh, don't put that in the fire, that's my God. No, no, that wasn't the God, that was for making the bacon. It's a pathetic picture, isn't it? Yet it's the picture of 21st century America. What do people need? They need the word of God. Now, you don't have to look hard for the condition and for the necessity of it. Just my local newspapers are replete with the evidences of man's need, the requirement of the prophetic word. For example, this is a quote from the local newspaper talking about the spirit of religion and so on. It is the celebration of the belief in the existence of an eternal energy. An energy—call it grace or love or God—that sits out there waiting for us to channel it into our being. That achieved, we can release the genuine humanity that exists in all of us. What does that even mean? Don't you think that there's a need for a prophet to stand up and say, this is what God says? A prophet to come and deal with our ignorance, if ever we're to know God. In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, and in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. The promise that God had given to Moses of the one who would come here in Deuteronomy 18 points us all the way forward to the arrival of the Lord Jesus. So, from a prophet required or necessary to a prophet revealed. Moses is the first major prophet, and as God identifies him and gives him that role, he says to him, I'm going to raise up for the people a prophet like you from among their brothers, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. Isn't it interesting, that notion? I will put my words in his mouth. And as we were thinking again, the word that Jesus spoke was the word that the Father gave him to speak. He spoke the words that the Father told him. He says, I'm not making this stuff up. This is the word. The very terminology in Deuteronomy 18 is there on the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew 17. Well, because what does the voice from heaven say? Exactly what is said in Deuteronomy 18 here. This is my beloved son. Listen to him. Listen to him. Why? Because he is the prophet. He's the one I told Moses about. He is the very embodiment of us all. Now Calvin says that the minds of the pious had always been imbued with the conviction that they were to hope for the full light of understanding only at the coming of the Messiah. And when you read the New Testament in light of that, you realize the extent to which that had actually taken hold in the minds of people. For example, an unlikely indication of it, perhaps, Jesus sends his disciples off to go into town and get something to eat. He sits down by the well, and along comes the lady who sits down beside him. She's had five husbands, and she's got a live-in lover. And she's there to get her water. Jesus doesn't immediately address the issue of her morality. He doesn't actually get onto the issue very quickly. He simply says, you know, I would be very grateful for a drink of water if you would be good enough to give it to me. And in the course of that conversation, where does she begin? I can see that you are a prophet." Oh, really? How did you see that? I can see that you're a prophet. And he continues the conversation. And then she moves from there, and she says, you know, when Messiah comes, he'll explain it all. You see the connection? There's a prophet that's going to come. She knows. She's a Samaritan. She knows enough of that to say, the way you're talking sounds like a prophet. When the Messiah comes, he will explain it. And then the great penny drops when he says to her, Ego, I am he. I, who speak to you, am he. Now, it was as a prophet that Jesus was first acclaimed by his contemporaries. At the feeding of the 5,000 in John chapter 6—and we don't need to turn to all these passages, you can do it for your homework, but you can also check and see if it's actually there—but at the feeding of the 5,000, what is the response? Surely this is the prophet who is to come into the world. At the raising of the son of the widow of Nain, when he stops the funeral procession—who stops a funeral procession? Who speaks to a corpse? He speaks, and listening to his voice, new life the dead receive. Why? Because he is the prophet of God. And as the boy is raised, and the crowd responds by saying, a great prophet has appeared among us. When Nicodemus comes in John 3 under the cover of darkness at night, he leads in much the same way. He doesn't use the word prophet, he uses the word teacher, but the inference is the same, isn't it? I know that you are a teacher come from God. Well, and Jesus turns to his friends and he says, by the way, he says, what's the word on the street about me? I'm interested to know what are people saying in the markets and in the bazaars? And of course, they immediately said, well, some of them say you're a prophet. Really? Yeah. Now why would they say that? Because the entire Old Testament, in one line, is looking constantly for the prophet who will out-profit all the prophets. For the one who will not simply speak the Word, but for the one who will actually be the Word. For the one who will not simply inform, but will be the one who transforms. And Jesus actually accepted the designation of prophet to a certain extent. after he goes into the synagogue where he had been brought up—in Nazareth, remember?—in that dramatic encounter where the scroll is given to him, and he reads from the scroll, "'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, the recovery of sight to the blind,' and so on. And when he had finished reading, he handed the scroll back to the attendant, Luke tells us, and he took his seat. He sat. Kind of like Psalm 2. He sat. And they knew that the teacher sat, the teacher didn't stand in the synagogue, he sat in the synagogue. And he sat down, and the eyes in all of the synagogue were fastened on him. And they wondered, what in the world will he say now? I wonder what he has to say about this amazing passage. There's not a person in the room could ever have imagined what he was going to say. Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. I am the embodiment of all that is written of me there. I am the prophet. Let me give you a third word. I have three R's in my notes, but you don't need to be unsettled by that. But the requirement or the necessity of the prophet, the revealing of the prophet, which runs all the way through. And we could have put this under the same word, but just the word, the recognition of it. The recognition of it. Because as the ministry of Christ unfolds, And this is why all of these words, the prophet, priest, and king, always have to be considered together. It's almost wrong to deal with them apart from one another because they all bleed into each other. But as the ministry of Jesus unfolds, the designation prophet can actually contain all that Christ is. You know, he's more than this. Of course he is. Because as we will see, he's the priest who's going to offer himself as a sacrifice for sin. He is the king who will sit on a throne that will never come to an end. So prophet can't contain him. It helps us, and it's a good designation, and it fits. But eventually, the whole thing collapses under the weight of its fulfillment in the Lord Jesus himself. Because ultimately, he must be recognized not simply as a messenger of revelation from God, but as the very source of the revelation from God. He is both the source of it and the fulfillment of it in himself. That's the significance of, today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Now, think about that in relationship to these disciples. Don't you feel sorry for the disciples in part? I vacillate between feeling sorry for them and thinking, what a bunch of duds they really were. I know that's not very nice to say, but since none of them are here and they can't hear me, it doesn't really matter. But they were not a good group. I would have got rid of them pretty early on. And definitely by the time of the crucifixion, I would have just said, hey, thanks, guys. I'm going with girls from this point out. They are the only ones that are still with me. You're a bunch of deadbeats. I am coming back again. I told you I would. When I come back, I'm starting with an entirely new group, because frankly, you have just not got it at all. Incidentally, for all of you who are pastors, there ought to be a great sort of sidebar word of encouragement in that, in that here is the greatest teacher who ever lived, who is a very incarnate God himself, who spends three years of intensified ministry with these guys to whom he gives himself, performs miracles, teaches them, has little sleepovers with them, and everything else, and at the end of the day, they have no clue what's going on. When the women come back with the tale of the resurrection, it seemed like foolishness to them. They said, what a bunch of nonsense. Who ever thought of such a thing? They weren't all sitting somewhere going, hey, it's going to be Easter tomorrow. This is fantastic. No, they were all buried in despair because it was over. The prophet had said his word, but it had all come to nothing. The salvation history was buried in a Palestinian tomb. We're done and we're finished with. and the two on the Emmaus Road were now rehearsing it in past tense terms, weren't they? They were talking about all the things that had happened in Jerusalem when the stranger drew alongside them. "'Why are you troubled?' he said. "'Why do doubts rise?'' That's actually later on. Sorry, I misquoted that. What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk? And they stood still looking sad, and then one of them named Cleopas answered him. And here's the irony. Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days? It's fantastic, isn't it? He's the epicenter of what's been happening. You must have been away visiting somebody or something, you know? And he doesn't go, hey, wait a minute. He goes, what things? I love this of Jesus. You know, he's teasing it out of them. It's beautiful. And they said to him, well, we're actually talking about Jesus of Nazareth. Oh yeah? A man who was a prophet, mighty, in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hope," past tense, that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it's now the third day since these things happened. A bunch of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb, they came back, they'd seen a vision, and so on. But frankly, it didn't amount to a thing. And Jesus says, Oh, you foolish ones, how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in the Scriptures all the things concerning himself. Have you ever thought about why it was that in the opening gambit they said, are you the only person in the whole of Jerusalem that doesn't really know what's going on? Why Jesus didn't just go, hey, it's me. What are you talking about? Look at me, I'm Jesus. Shazam, I'm here, look. He doesn't do that. Why not? Because the confidence of heaven. is in the Scriptures. He didn't give them a Bible study just for the good of their health. He was the prophet of God. And it was imperative, if these fellows were ever going to get it right, to understand that the entire book was about him. The entire story finds its fulfillment in him. That every prophetic word that has ever been spoken and all of the pointers that have been given all the way through the line find their embodiment in Jesus. And then it says their eyes were opened and they recognized him. And then, of course, their response when they were talking with one another, they said, you know, he opened the scriptures to us and our hearts burned. He opened the Scriptures to us. He didn't do a performance. He didn't do a miracle. He just taught them the Bible. That's what prophets do. That's what pastors and teachers do. That's what we do. Don't we? And the one who teaches is the one who transforms. He opened their minds, it says, so that they could understand the Scriptures. And that was in order that their preaching should then bear testimony to this same truth. So I think I can finish there with this thought, which is that the anointing of God on Christ the Son in his prophetic ministry is, if you like, not simply there in order that Christ might carry out the office of teaching, but in order that the whole body of Christ might then in turn continue in the power of the Spirit to preach the same prophetic word, which is Christ in the Old Testament, Christ the fulfillment of prophecy, Christ the embodiment of God in everything that is capable in humanity. In other words, and track with me on this, in other words, in our preaching, In our preaching, we are called to participate in the ongoing office of Christ. In other words, our preaching is to be prophetic. not pathetic, prophetic, and not prophetic in terms of extra biblical words because you had pizza the night before and you got some bizarre thing to say, but prophetic in the way in which it says, this is the Bible, this is what it says, this is who it introduces us to, and I'd love to tell you about the one who is prophet and who is priest and who is king, the one who has come and his word is utterly reliable. His word is utterly true. He speaks into the darkness of our age. He shines as a light and so on. That is the responsibility that is then entrusted to us. So the prophetic dimension, it comes in our exposition of the scriptures. He expounded the scriptures, their minds were illuminated, and their hearts were stirred. That's good. Exposition. Minds illuminated and hearts transformed. And that's the privilege we're given. Calvin again writes, and I guess that's for the thought that was in my mind. I forgot it was in my notes. He received anointing, not only for himself that he might carry out the office of teaching, but for the whole body of Christ that the power of the Spirit of God might be present in the continuing preaching of the gospel. In other words, we then have the privilege and responsibility of taking up, if you like, the mantle of bringing the Word of God to bear upon the context and culture of our day and our time in such a way that identifies the fact that we are simply bearing testimony to this person and to this work. And Jesus, before he leaves his disciples, tells them, "'All authority in heaven and earth has been given unto me.'" There is no place in the entire universe where Jesus Christ is not Lord. Your office, if you go to work in an office and a bunch of pagans in there, they're driving you nuts, and you're frightened to speak up for Jesus, you shouldn't really be too frightened. Jesus is Lord over the whole shooting match. He's the Lord of the universe, you know. Now, that makes such a difference, doesn't it? So, in our preaching, we are then participating in this ongoing ministry. And he promises us his presence, and he promises us his power. And in the apostolic ministry of Paul and the rest, what is it that they are actually saying? We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. I think it's Calvin who says, isn't it a mystery that the salvation of one depends upon the voice of another? He's talking about the ministry of the word of God from the prophet of God in the pulpit, so that our mouths become the very mouthpiece of God. One day in heaven, one day in heaven, people in our congregation will be asked, did you listen to your pastor? and they'll say no. And God will say, you didn't simply reject your pastor, you rejected me. Because he was my word to you from the scriptures in that moment and in that day. That's why when we say to our congregation, today if you hear his voice, Do not harden your hearts. How can they hear his voice, an audible voice from God? What are you talking about? No, if you hear his voice. And what a mystery that God deigns voices like ours, squeaky voices like ours, funny voices like ours, in order that he might point to the reality of what it is. Murray, Professor Murray, was driving in the car with Willie McKenzie of Christian Focus. That's before Professor Murray died, obviously. Otherwise, it would be a really macabre journey. But knowing Willie, you know, from Christian Focus, nothing would surprise me. Anyway, they were driving. I hope that's streaming right into the Hill of Fern. Anyway, they were driving in the car, and Professor Murray says to Willie McKenzie, he says, hey, Willie, he says, I got a teaser for you. What's the difference between a lecture and preaching? So Mackenzie tried a few things, this, that. No, Murray said, no, no, no, no, no. Eventually he said, I give up. Murray said, preaching is a personal, passionate plea. It's not a lecture. It's a personal, passionate plea. Mackenzie said to him, In what way do you mean that? He said, in the Pauline way. We beseech you, on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. Some of our preaching is informational, but it's not life-shaping, and it's not life-changing. some of our congregations have decided that the reason they come to church is to get a little bit more information about whatever section of the Bible we're in, and hopefully two or three practical tips as to how they might be able to introduce that to their lives. So we have big swathes of information, information, information, and then, oh, by the way, here's the takeaway or whatever it might be. But you couldn't possibly call that really expositional preaching or with a prophetic edge to it. There's no passionate plea in that, is there? No, we beseech you, we implore you, on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. And not just in the pulpit, but in our everyday events. Some of us are not in pulpits, that's all right. But still, we speak to our friends and our neighbors in that way. And instead of patching other bits and pieces into it, we'd be better just to stay with the straightforward statements of these things, so that everybody would understand that our confidence is in God. Listen to Luther. He said, it is a right, excellent thing that every honest pastor and preacher's mouth is Christ's mouth. It's the right, excellent thing that every honest pastor and preacher's mouth is Christ's mouth. You see, that's what makes it so striking. When Isaiah says, I saw the Lord high and lifted up, and I said to myself, Man, I'm a great preacher. No, he didn't. He said, I'm a man of unclean lips. That's why in James it says, you better not try becoming teachers if God doesn't call you to be teachers. After all, he says, are you really going to tell me that out of the same mouth comes salt water and spring water and fresh water and out of your same mouth comes the things you say when you're driving your car and the things you say when you're standing in your pulpit? the very mouth of God, that God would deign to use such a mouth. James S. Stewart, who was a wonderful preacher in Scotland a long time ago, when he was giving the lectures in 1952 to Yale Divinity School, he spoke about how when the apostles hit the streets of Jerusalem, their preaching ministry had with it, he said, a waft of the supernatural. A waft of the supernatural. And what was it? Well, it was actually just a straight, wonderful exposition of the Old Testament. Once Peter got his head on straight, how else could you come up with that amazing sermon that he preaches on Pentecost? He's got it all buttoned down. Why? Because just what Jesus said. I'm gonna go away, it'll be better for you boys, because the Holy Spirit will come, and when he comes, he'll fix this stuff. You will finally get this. That's why he's stuck with them. And if I can quote Tillich here, without causing trouble, in his book The Trivialization of God, he says, when the word of the gospel is preached, Christ walks among his people. It's the miracle of Christmas all over again. Christ clothes himself in humanity, spurning the language of angels to speak with the tongues of mortals. when the word of God, when the prophetic word of God embodied in Christ, inscripturated for us and put in our mouths, is then heard. Let me draw it to a close by saying this, and finishing in a similar way to our earlier if, then, we're going to engage in this kind of ministry and follow in the pattern of Jesus and do as he has directed us. Three things, and just I'll point them to you, and we're done. What is required? Well, first of all, courage. Courage. You know, This is not an easy environment that we minister in anymore here. At least, I don't find it so. The only people to be afraid of in our society are people who think they know something. The cluelessness is the best, you know. You can have an opinion, You know, it's like the Cleveland Orchestra is one of the best orchestras in the country, and they make beautiful music. They're world-class musicians. But if you went there some Thursday night and you found that everybody in the orchestra was just playing any tune they wanted, all simultaneously, you would say you'd want your money back for your ticket. And how would they get to that? Well, just by deposing the conductor. They just depose the conductor. We don't want a conductor. We don't want a conductor, and we don't want a score. We just want to play whatever we want to play. After all, it's true for me. It might not be true for you. I want to play my music. You play your music. That's where we are. The world in which we live, we've deposed God, the Creator. So now we all play our own music. Now, we have the responsibility prophetically to go into that world and say these things that are here to say as the word of the prophet. There's no problem. You can put a t-shirt together that says, I am the way, the truth, and the life on it. Put that on, walk around. No one will have a problem with it. But you better not complete the verse. It's the rest of the verse that'll get you hung. No one comes to the Father except through me. That's what Jesus was saying. And we have to have courage to stick with the non-negotiables, the truth of the incarnation, the reality of what it means that Jesus made a substitutionary sacrifice for our sins, the truth of the resurrection, the reality of his ascension, the promise of his return. Courage. Let me encourage you to be courageous. Not bombastic, not rude. Courageous. Secondly, compassionate. Compassionate. Winsome. recognizing the people to whom we speak. The congregations to whom we speak come from all kinds of backgrounds, don't they? I mean, some of us, if we had gone to—and I was preaching from Second Timothy yesterday, trying to at least, and the section that says, these are the kind of fellows who worm their way into the homes of silly women, King James Version, or weak women, ESV, or weak-willed women, NIV, anyway, there's a bunch of women like that. And I said, you know, I don't suggest that you go tomorrow back into your community and say, oh, hey, you look like one of these silly women I was learning about yesterday. And I said, I don't think that's a good way to go at it. Some of us, if we'd gone to the woman at the well, we'd have torn strips off her. We would have gone at her hammer and tongs. Hey, what are you doing out here? You're notorious. Jesus said, could I have a drink of water? Why? So that he could give to her the living water so that she would never thirst again. People that are in our congregation, some of them have sordid lives. Many of them are sexually messed up and horribly confused. A lot of them are just totally skeptical. And the prophetic ministry of Jesus was as direct and unerring as could ever be discovered, and yet was as winsome and as endearing as you could ever find. His most stinging rebukes were reserved for religious hypocrites. But he was condemned by the same religious hypocrites for going to a party at Levi's And they marveled that he talked with the woman. What are you doing here? Why are you doing this? I'm the prophet of God. Courage, compassion, and confidence. Confidence. Confidence in Christ and confidence in Christ's word. You know, there's a tremendous temptation to a sort of unjustifiable diffidence. You've got polar extremes, I think, in the pulpits of America. You've got people who are just giving it big licks over here, and then you've got people who are over here who don't want to offend or say anything or do anything at all. So, if the prophetic ministry of Jesus is the ministry entrusted to us, not as the apostles were receiving it, but as we receive it as inscripturated, then let me encourage you to be confident in your opening up of the scriptures. Confident not in yourself. Be yourself, forget yourself. But confident in the word that we speak. and say to people, now come on, follow me to Bethlehem and let me introduce you to this child who is born to be king. Climb up the hill of Calvary with me and see him there, the one who has come as the priest who will deal with our sins and deal with our alienation. There's nothing like this story to compare in the entire world, nothing. And we have been entrusted with it. Isaac Watts, in his amazing hymn, which begins, join all the glorious names of wisdom, love, and power, and it runs to probably nine verses, has penultimately the verse, great prophet of my God, my tongue shall bless thy name. By thee, the joyful news of our salvation came, the joyful news of sins forgiven, of hell subdued, and peace with heaven. Jesus was the prophet of God. Father, thank you that you sent Jesus. Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you came. Holy Spirit, won't you teach us more and more about who he is and all that he has done. We pray, gracious God, for one another tonight as we think about the awesome responsibility of being called into pastoral ministry. of realizing the cultural environment in which we work. the loss of any real realistic sense of a God who stands outside of time and who is separate from his creation. In the midst of all the incipient pantheism of our day, help us, Lord, to be confident enough to upturn the thinking of our world, a world that says, the problem, if there is a problem, must be outside of me. And the answer, if there's going to be an answer, must be inside of me. Help us, Lord, to be confident enough in the truth of your word to upend that thinking and to say, no, what the Bible says is that the problem is inside of you and the answer is outside of you. Outside of you in one who came to speak with such clarity that he would penetrate the walls of your own rebellious heart. and woo you and win you to himself. Lord, help us with these things, we pray. Thank you for the privilege of sitting in the consideration of the truth of your word. Banish from our recollection anything that is untrue or unhelpful or unkind, and grant that that which is of yourself may find a resting place in our hearts and minds. For we humbly pray in Christ's name, amen.