Preach Dependently - Session 5 | 2025 LA Preachers' Conference

I bring you greetings from Community of Faith Bible Church, brothers, and I'm grateful to be here with you all. I want us to think about a real personal question that if you haven't consciously thought of in some way, it's still happening. The question I want us to think about is: What kind of preacher are you striving to be? You are a kind of preacher. We all are some kind of preacher, having this amazing privilege of taking what Nam just preached to us—the inherent, infallible, living Word of God that's breathed out by God.

Every word, every phrase, every clause, every sentence, every paragraph, God takes ownership. That is his word. So when we read the Bible, we are reading, as Nam said, the Word of God. And then we get this amazing privilege to be gifts to God's people. Ephesians talks about us being the gifts, the pastors, the teachers to stand between God and his people and take the word that God has spoken and hurl it in such a way where God's people are being incrementally transformed to be more and more like him, more like his son. We stand in the middle.

As we do that, the question is: What consciously are you trying to do Monday through Saturday as you're preparing a sermon? What are your goals, ambitions, and motives? What's driving you that this Sunday I'll preach like this, or I'll do this, and I'll use these illustrations and these sermons? I'll do this because I'm standing between God with his word and his people. God has stuck me in the middle as a means, as a gift to them, that he is endeavoring to use to incrementally transform them from one level of glory to the next.

We've seen amazing preachers. We've heard amazing preachers. We are grateful, thankful for, deeply grateful for them. This has been a hard month for me. I generally don't have a melancholy personality. I was saved when I was around 20 and I bumped into some guys from Grace Community Church, and ended up being drawn into the ministry there. I'm a brand new Christian, and I'm hearing every week from the pulpit John MacArthur just walking through the book of Romans. I was just changed. The Lord called me to ministry and equipped me to ministry there.

I remember when I left, I had an occasion to tell Pastor John, I just shared with him how I am just different than when I came here. I think differently because I've been here. That there are battles in my mind that I don't have to fight because you won them for me. I'm just grateful for your preaching ministry to me. And then when he died, it's almost like a whole era in Southern California, the movement, the work of it, it's just different without that pulpit being there. It's just different.

And then, I forgot how I got the news when Voddie died. I would consider Voddie a friend. He preached in my pulpit. He's been over my home, he and his son Trey. He told me I was the first person he told that he was going to Africa. My wife and I took him out to lunch one time. I've never seen anybody eat more food than that! We treated him, and I was young in the ministry, so we treated him out to lunch, and he kept ordering more stuff. I thought, "Man, we can't afford this!" He had intended the whole time to pay for it, and I was quite relieved. We've heard preachers preach, even when we don't agree with everything they said, and that's not my point. But we have heard preachers, and the question is: What's your legacy going to be?

You're going to die too. And maybe the world won't satellite your service and everybody watch and 10,000 people will want to come, but you're going to have a service. What are people going to say? "My pastor..." What Paul does in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 is he is highlighting two kinds of preachers. There's a preacher that Paul is highlighting in his text that you shouldn't want to be. But there's tons of pressure and temptation for you to be that kind of preacher, and for that to be your legacy, for that to be your story, and for you to have this privilege being a gift to stand between God and his people, and you'll have a certain kind of legacy because you yielded to temptations to be the wrong kind of preacher.

And then the text highlights the type of preacher that we all should want to be and should be striving to be. But there are equally temptations for you not to want to be that kind of preacher that you'll have to resist. You'll have to yield. So there's a kind of preacher you shouldn't want to be, and there's pressures that pull us in the wrong directions either way. And Paul is highlighting this. And beloved, because it's in the Word of God, and we have been gifted with the Spirit of God, we can be what God has gifted you to be in your church. You can be the kind of preacher. You're there for a reason. God gifted you to your congregation to be that gift for them. And you can be that. That's why he sent you there.

But you've got to know these temptations and, by God's grace, resist these temptations, and by the work of the Spirit, yield to his work so that you can be the preacher that Christ died and sent the Spirit for you to be for that church that you stand before. Let me read the text and then let me pray, and then we'll look at what God reveals. Amen.

When I came to you, brothers and sisters, announcing the mystery of God to you, I did not come with brilliance of speech or wisdom. I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not be based on human wisdom but on God’s power. — 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 (CSB)

Father, you are altogether glorious and good. Your loving kindness is sweet; it satisfies our soul. We love you because you have so wonderfully loved us and gave us your son. And not only have you given us your son, but you have filled us with your Spirit, and we therefore are different. And I pray that as you have filled us with your Spirit and given us your very Word, that you would make us faithful to herald it, proclaim it, preach it, faithfully depending on no one else in place of you and resting confidently that you can do for your people what you've ordained to do through the means that you've chosen, even through broken, weak vessels like us. Help us, Lord, in Christ's name I pray. Amen.

Don't Preach Depending on Human Eloquence or Wisdom

The first four verses point out four ways that we shouldn't be this kind of preacher. I'll just walk through them. Verse 1: Don't preach depending on your eloquence or your wisdom. Paul here, he just says it pretty frankly: "When I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God." You hear the point? Paul intentionally did not preach a certain way. He knew their cultural expectations. He knew how they wanted their ears tickled. He knew the type of ways he could preach, and they would tell their friends and they would tell their friends, "You got to come hear this preacher. This preacher preaches like everything that we love to hear. So come hear this preacher."

Paul clearly has in mind, and I'll highlight it in a moment, yeah, let me go there already. In 2 Corinthians chapter 10, there is a kind of preacher that had infected this congregation, and Paul is battling against them and their influence in this congregation. And these preachers are battling back, and they're discrediting the ministry of Paul because they are arguing how much better they were than he, and he's not like them. What they say in 2 Corinthians 10:10, and Paul quotes them:

For it is said, “His letters are weighty and powerful, but his physical presence is weak and his public speaking amounts to nothing.” — 2 Corinthians 10:10 (CSB)

He doesn't use a lofty rhetoric like we do. He can't bring it home like we can. He can't stir your emotions and make you cry like we can. He can't make you jump up in your pews and get all animated. Paul can't preach like that. He doesn't even know our style. Paul's not like us. He's inferior to us. He's just not as good as we are. Yeah, he's strong in his letters, but when he stands in the pulpit, he is absolutely unimpressive because he's not like us. Paul said, "I didn't try to be like them."

Whatever pressure and temptation we feel to try to be like these super apostles—the TD Jakes of the world, the Steven Furticks of the world, the Michael Todds of the world—where they entertain you and they dazzle you, and you're amazed at their rhetorical skills, Paul said, "I am not, I did not even try. I'm not enamored. I'm not impressed. I'm not trying to be like them." But we feel that pressure, brothers, because you preach, and there's 50 people, and you think, "Well, maybe if I threw more sugar in my sermons, or maybe if I had more words or bigger words..." Paul says, "They call me unimpressive. I know what they say, but I'm not intimidated, and I'm not compromising, and I'm not changing. I'm just going to stand and open up the book and preach the Word." He has a reason for that; we'll see it in verses 4 and 5.

And in 2 Corinthians 11:5, Paul goes on. He says:

Now I consider myself in no way inferior to those “super-apostles.” — 2 Corinthians 11:5 (CSB)

They call themselves super apostles. In the context I preach in, you can be a pastor, but then that's just not enough to be a pastor. Then you have to be a bishop, and then that's not enough. Although a pastor and a bishop are the same things, but you have to be a bishop, and then that's not enough, you have to be an apostle. I have a cousin who just died, and he was an apostle. I'm like, "How is he an apostle?" So here Paul says, "I am an apostle, but there are these super apostles."

And he said in 2 Corinthians 11:6:

Even if I am untrained in public speaking, I am certainly not untrained in knowledge. Indeed, we have in every way made that clear to you in everything. — 2 Corinthians 11:6 (CSB)

I've preached at places where I didn't—it's I'll just share my cultural context with you all—I preached at a couple revivals, and I'm always amazed at how churches can schedule God to do a revival on September the 18th or whatever, but they'll schedule a revival and then they'll schedule the preacher who's going to bring the revival. So I'm coming on September, and I'm going to bring a revival. I will go and preach the Word of God.

But one year I went, and there was a preacher that at this particular church, they always had the same preacher, and his name was Scott, too. And they got a new pastor, and the new pastor wanted to move away from him and have someone who would just exposit the text or invited me. And the congregation wanted the other guy, so they boycotted, and most people didn't come because the other guy, he—I didn't grow up in the black church, and so I don't know all the, you know, "Turn to your neighbor and turn to your neighbor and say this" and "Repeat after me" and then get the organ going. So in some of my churches, they get the organ going, and the pastor will start singing his sermon. I don't know how to do that. You all would be glad I don't know how to do that. So I'm not going to try to sing.

But anyway, he does all that, and then he just works the people up into a frenzy. And so I am completely unskilled in any of that. But I didn't feel inferior that I needed to do that to get a response. I said, "What I'm going to do, I'm going to stand up and I'm going to read the Bible, and I'm going to preach what the text means." And a saint came up to me afterwards, and she was tempted to be one of the boycotters, and she said, "I'm so glad, Pastor, that I came because now I understand what God is saying in Psalm 23. I'm so glad that I came."

Brothers, there are all kinds of people who get drawn into the pulpit like Balaams to make money. And what they want to do is draw a crowd. And they're good at it. They're real good at it. And you can be so intimidated to want to take some of what they do to fill up more seats in a pew. And in doing so, you'll become a certain kind of preacher that's depending more on man and man's methods than God. And I'm not suggesting to you, "Don't be eloquent if you're eloquent." If you can tell stories and jokes as part of your personality, by all means, God has called you to be the pastor in that pulpit. Be you. But don't depend on any of that. Don't substitute your reliance upon, "Oh, I got to stick another funny story in here, or else the Holy Spirit won't move and convict and confirm and transform people because I don't have enough stories."

"Am I not funny enough this Sunday?" If God has just made you hardwired, be who you are. But brothers, we're not to be depending on human eloquence or just the wisdom of men, and I'm going to highlight that in verse 2. So, first, there's a kind of preacher who just depends on eloquence. Don't be that. And wisdom.

Don't Preach Depending on Your Knowledge to be Relevant

And then Paul adds in verse 2, I'll summarize it this way: Don't preach depending on your knowledge to be relevant. Paul says, "For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." And the Corinthians were just absolutely enamored by Mars Hill and the Athenian philosophers, and they loved hearing just the inside scoop on this or whatever new conspiracy background to that in our context. Our people, they want to hear, like, "So why did COVID really happen?"

And they want someone to rustle through all these conspiracy theories and, "Oh, because of this, and because of Fauci did that." And you can stand in your pulpit being fed by all the wisdom from Fox News or some YouTuber, some influencer, and you can fill all your people with some inside information that they otherwise would not know if you weren't the one, the guru, telling them all this. And you can give them all this relevant detail, and you could even be right, and your people have all this knowledge, not know Jesus, and go straight to hell.

And we're tempted to, we want to, we want, they want to be informed. I get people, whenever something happens, "But Pastor Bobby, what do you think about this?" And Pastor Bobby, if it's all these news events, I'm getting texts on my phone. I'm like, "I am not an epidemiologist." I can't even pronounce that word. So these pastors can't pronounce stuff. It's a word that talks about studying viruses, whatever that word is. I'm not that guy. My people were calling me. I didn't know when COVID was. I didn't know what to tell people. I prayed and I prayed. I'm asking God for wisdom how to lead. And I felt no pressure to be an expert in all of this.

But brothers, the Corinthians were enamored by the philosophers, and Paul just says, "I am going to preach to you the answer that is the answer to your deepest needs and the one that alone can give you the remedy that you long for. And I'm going to preach Christ, and I'm going to preach him crucified." And I'm just going to say footnote, John's sermon last night was amazing, all the reasons why we preach Christ. And I'm just going to skip right past those because you heard it so well last night. We need to preach Christ.

Brothers, our greatest problems, we have problems. I try to tell my context, I try to tell our folks that our greatest problems aren't just, even if I went back to slavery days. My family comes from both sides of my family out of slavery, and being a slave would have been awful. It's just been terrible, and oppression is really real. But when I read my Bible, and I read the book of Exodus, that the Israelites were slaves, and God liberated them, but their greatest problem wasn't their cultural oppression and their cultural status that they needed to be liberated from.

When the angel of death came, he would have stopped at the door of every single Israelite home if it wasn't the blood on the lamb, because their greatest problem was their sin. And they had the answer for their sin. And the wages of sin is death. And so the only way they were spared is that the angel of death passed over and didn't give them what they justly deserved, even as being oppressed slaves. And then when they were liberated, they all perished in the wilderness because the root of that problem was their heart, and their hearts weren't changed, and they rebelled against God. And so they got out of slavery, but their greatest problem wasn't cured, and they all perished.

And brothers, there's all kinds of, you know, economic problems going on with the government shutdown. There's all kinds of things you can stand in your pulpit and talk about and try to alleviate people's horizontal or temporary sufferings and pains. But what people need is Jesus. And so we have to preach Jesus. But we could be tempted to be the relevant preacher and preach about everything else. But Paul says, "I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified."

Don't Preach Depending on Your Strength or Being Fearless

And then here, there's a third kind of preacher you don't want to be: Don't preach depending on your strength and being fearless. Paul says that he was with them in weakness. Paul says he was with them "in fear and in much trembling." And here you read the text of 2 Corinthians and what the super apostles were condemning Paul over. He was a kind of preacher, they would say, who's weak, that he was, he was a kind of preacher that, and Paul even embraces this when he says in 2 Corinthians 12:12, he embraced his weaknesses.

And they're pointing that out, that Paul wasn't like us, that he can't come and demand a $10,000 honorarium because he's so weak. "Look at him. He's..." whatever the physical ailment was, whatever his lack of oral skills. They thought that Paul, in his weakness, "He's not like us. He can't demand the attention and the audience and even deserving of the money that we can deserve or earn because of our power. And we're powerful speakers." And Paul just said, "I came to you in weakness."

And some of you brothers don't like your weaknesses. Moses didn't like his weakness. He said, "You got to use somebody else because I'm not eloquent" (Exodus 4:10-11). I don't know what if he stuttered, I don't know what Moses' speaking impediment was, but anyway, he wasn't an impressive speaker. And so he thought, "God, you can't use me." And God told Moses, "I'll be with your mouth." What you need is not a silver tongue, brothers. What you need is God with you when you preach. It's not eloquence that saves souls, that transforms sinners, that makes us more like Christ. It's not that.

And some of us don't want our weaknesses. Why? Knowing that if we are preaching in weakness, and anything happens, then God gets all the glory. Then be okay with that. Be okay that you're not the best this or that, you're not the best storyteller or the best, you know, I don't know, jokester, or whatever, that you're just you. God saved you, calls you to be you, to be that gift. So God here takes Moses, he can use Balaam's donkey, so he can use you. Amen. I brought my own amen for that. If he can use Balaam's donkey, he can use you just as you are in all your weaknesses. There's one hero in the story, and it's not you. And we pray, we preach that he'd be magnified. Not our platforms, not that people hear one of your sermons and it goes viral, and that we just want to preach Jesus and let him do with it whatever he's pleased to do.

So we have weaknesses, and Paul preached in fear. When he preached in Corinth, the text is in Acts chapter 18, and turn there with me. In Acts chapter 18:1, he's there in Corinth for like 18 months, and it says in verses 9 and 10:

The Lord said to Paul in a night vision, “Don’t be afraid, but keep on speaking and don’t be silent. For I am with you, and no one will lay a hand on you to hurt you, because I have many people in this city.” — Acts 18:9-10 (CSB)

You'll be afraid sometimes, and we're not trying to be fearless preachers. We want courage, which is really facing your fears and preaching anyway. There's something really wrong if a preacher can always stand up and not feel any fear, not feel any sense of trepidation, like you are telling people, "God said this." You're saying, "Thus said the Lord," when you're preaching, and you ought to feel some accountability for that. It's one thing if you all go out here and say, "Well, Pastor Bobby said X, Y, and Z." And you misquote me. I'd be offended. And there are people who have done that. They've done like YouTube posts, "Pastor Bobby is a social gospel preacher." I'm like, "Where'd you get that from?" So anyway, so it's out there. So I totally misrepresented me. I didn't feel like I... So but they're misrepresenting God.

To stand in front of God, there is a moral failing, to stand up in front of people that has no parallel to stand up in front of people and say, "God said X, Y, and Z," and he didn't say it. So we ought to be trembling when we're doing our exegesis. We ought to be afraid. We ought to be asking over and over and over again, "God, is this right? God, is this clear? God, is this what you're saying?" And we should do that with humble trembling and fear. Here Paul is really just afraid to go and to preach, and here the text says that God again, he would be with him.

The answer, brother, in our preaching isn't to be fearless and not weak. The answer is for God to be with us. I have a friend, we got saved the same time. We both got pulled into college ministry the same time. And he's a missionary, and he goes to Pakistan, and he's white, and he kind of stands out like a Western looking American, and I'm not going to mention his name. I don't want to say much more about this. And on several occasions, he almost lost his life. He was sitting with this contact that brought him there, and this area he was in, they just burned a couple dozen churches, and the guy who was leading it drives by and sees him and gets out of his truck and comes and sits down in a conversation and is telling his host pastor, looking at him, and just my friend is just saying, "Um..."

And he keeps going back. In fact, he went back last year to the area where Osama bin Laden was killed. And I'm like, "And then he brought his wife!" I'm like, "Dude, this is dangerous. Why are you bringing your wife? Why are you going?" And he is going because the gospel is the power of God to salvation. And God sends preachers. And if they don't go, how can people hear? And the question, the wrong question we can always ask when we want to preach, "Well, what'll happen?" And the question we ought to ask, "What'll happen to them? What'll happen if you don't go? What'll happen if you don't preach? What happens if we're not courageous and say what the text says?" Instead of compromising when it's LGBTQ issues and we just want to be sensitive, and we want to say the truth, and when we compromise and brothers in fear, that's the sin. But to be fearful and weak, join the club. Then we need to lean into God with us and preach like that.

So don't be the preachers who are depending on your eloquence and your wisdom and your knowledge to be relevant or your strength as if you're fearless. Don't do that.

Don't Preach Depending on Your Ability to Persuade

And then he adds in verse 4: Don't preach depending on your ability to persuade. He says, "My message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom." John 16 makes it clear, and over and over again in other places, that the work of the Holy Spirit convicts. He convicts us of sin. The Spirit has to... Jesus is telling Nicodemus that the Spirit of God, he moves as he desires, as the wind. He comes and he goes, and that's how people are born again. It is a work of the Spirit that convicts people of their sins and convinces them Jesus is the Christ and compels them to repent and believe. The Spirit of God does that.

He does it through means, the means of preaching the Word of God. So we preach, and the Holy Spirit moves through his Word that he gave us by way of this revelation, this supernaturally intended process to give us God's very own words. The Holy Spirit moves through that, moves through the preaching of his Word to convict people and to compel them to trust Jesus. The Holy Spirit does all that. So Paul says, "I'm not trying to be the one who somehow persuades people who are literally dead to come alive." It's God. God's Word does that.

But we have preachers. I sat in a service one time, and I was amazed, and this guy was trained just like I was in expository preaching and had earned doctorates. And he was trying to hire me, so before I said yes, I wanted to go and see what the service is like. So I came and I sat, and he called what he was doing "Bapticostalism." He wanted to be faithful to his training, but he also wanted to be faithful to his cultural ethnic tradition. And so he merged together Pentecostalism and Baptist. And if you're Pentecostal, just hear what I'm saying, I don't want to lose nobody on my point here. So anyway, so he's doing this Bapticostal thing.

But at the end of the service, he's doing this Bapticostalism. He literally said that God is going to save every young man in the congregation today. "God told me this." So I don't know how many times you can play "Just As I Am," but anyway, so he's just playing this, and he's just playing this. We sat there for like 20, 30 minutes, and every mother crying, "My baby gonna get saved today!" Just dragging her son down the aisle, and somehow they all got saved today because the music moved them in a certain way, and they got emotionalized in a certain way, and because of his salesman-like persuasive words, today was the day my son is going to get saved. So they dragged him down the aisle, and somehow that accomplished the work of God. Brothers, preach the Word. Trust God that it is critically important that you believe, and I, since we are quoting Peter, let me quote Peter.

In 1 Peter, it tells us a truth that we have to really believe to be effective preachers. And what Peter says, and I'm trying to find my text, in 1 Peter chapter 2, in verses 4 and 5, it says:

As you come to him, a living stone—rejected by people but chosen and honored by God— you yourselves, as living stones, a spiritual house, are being built to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. — 1 Peter 2:4-5 (CSB)

And when your congregation gathers, what have they gathered to? They didn't gather to a building that's the church. They didn't gather at a place that's the church. That as living stones, they are, they are the tabernacle and the temple that God inhabits. Brothers, that we gather together, God literally is here with us when we're preaching on Sunday mornings. It's God that God you can't see with your eyes, but by faith you have to know that he is there, and you're leaning into him, trusting, pleading, praying while you're preaching for God to do what you can't do, for God to do what he's ordained to do through his Word, that is to transform sinners.

And so 1 John, he says it like this, and I'll read you the text in 1 John chapter 1. And we can't forget, brothers, that John says that we've seen him and we are testifying to him. And it says in 1 John 1:3:

what we have seen and heard we also declare to you, so that you may also have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. — 1 John 1:3 (CSB)

So here John says our fellowship, our koinonia, our sharing, is not chicken. We're not just fellowshipping because we have chicken. We're fellowshipping in the intimate presence of God when we gather together. And John wants those believers to have fellowship with him because their corporate fellowship is a fellowship with God. When we gather together to preach the Word of God, God is there, brothers. He is working. He's moving. Jesus walks through the pews. He sees what's in your church (Revelation 2 and 3).

And we're preaching and praying that the Spirit of God that's there would take his Word and move on all the hearts of those who are with us. If that is not happening at your church, then nothing is happening. I don't care how much time you spend on your sermon. I don't care how persuasive you try to be, nothing eternal, nothing that glorifies God will happen. If God is not there, the one bringing about the persuasive conviction and compelling people to turn to Christ, God is there, brothers. He is there. Jesus sent the Helper. He is there. He helps us. He helps you when you're preaching. He helps your congregation when they're listening.

And we need to be praying and trusting and believing. Even if they don't believe, you have to believe while you're preaching. "God, are you speaking through your word?" If he is not, then shut up and sit down. Your persuasive words, brothers, mean nothing. Satan laughs at them. What we need when we preach is not to be eloquent. If you're eloquent like Apollos, I'm not saying don't be eloquent if you're eloquent. We don't need to be wise in everything in the world. We don't need to be relevant in all the stuff that happens in the world. They can read blogs better than you can, and they got more time to do it. So if they want to learn all the stuff, they got ChatGPT and they can use it.

You have a calling, and it's not to be relevant in everything in the whole world. And then you don't—we, we, we—you're not that strong. I don't care how much you can bench press, that Satan is real. I saw what he did to Job, and we need supernatural power. That's what Paul preached in Ephesians 6:10, that we're not wrestling against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities. And so, we need the sword of God and the Spirit of God wielding it. And then don't be afraid that you're afraid. Some things are wrong when we preach and we're not afraid. Just but tell yourself, trust God. Trust God. Trust God.

Preach in Full Dependence on the Spirit and God's Power

And then lastly, if we're not to be preachers like that, what kind of preachers ought we to be? And that's verse 5. Turn there with me if you're still in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. In 1 Corinthians chapter 2, in the end of verse 4 and verse 5, Paul writes, "I didn't come to preach in all those other ways. I didn't want to be that kind of preacher. I'm not, I don't want to be the kind of preacher who everybody, 'Oh, he's so persuasive. Oh, he's so eloquent. Oh, he's so this, and oh, he's so powerful, and oh, he's so this.' I didn't want to be that kind of preacher. But I do want to be this kind of preacher. I want to preach in demonstration of the Spirit and of power so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men but on the power of God."

That's the kind of preacher that I want to be. So do preach in full dependence on the Spirit and, and, and almost explaining that depending upon the Spirit and the power of God. That's, that's the power of God is going to move as we're depending on the Spirit, and the Spirit of God is moving through the sermon that way. I want us to meditate on this for a couple of minutes. I got six minutes. I want us to think about what Paul here is saying. What is God doing when you're trying to preach? I think it's important to think about that question that Paul wanted to magnify Christ. He says in Philippians chapter 1, he wants Christ to be magnified.

And if you're preaching concerned about your reputation, what do people think about my sermon? If you're more concerned about, "Well, I, you know, I preached one time..." My parents live in Virginia. I got flown back to preach in Virginia at a men's conference, and my parents' pastor heard I was in town. He asked me to preach that Sunday. So I had been preparing for this men's conference, and so for that Saturday I just grabbed some notes for Sunday then. And so I'm preaching at the men's conference Saturday, and then Sunday I go with, pull my notes that I had for my parents' church. And so I'm preaching my notes from at my parents' church, and it needed a little help, you know, in the moment.

So as I'm preaching, I'm like, "Okay, I can tell this story." It was the best of Bobby's stories, best of Bobby's jokes, best of Bobby's... I was just filling in my sermon outline with the best of, you know? And then I was done, and one of the elders came up to me, and he was, I could just see him thinking, and he just said, "And you're really, like, you're a really good communicator." Yeah. You feel it, the stab and the heart rate and the twist. Stab and twist. So I was like, "Ouch." And he wasn't trying to, I think, say anything to convict me, but the Spirit of God convicted me because as I was preaching, I wasn't, I hadn't been bathed with the text through the work of the Spirit in my time of preparation.

You can't help your congregation know God if you don't. And the new covenant ministry of the Holy Spirit is that we wouldn't know God. We really can know God. We can't see him. We can't apprehend him and hear him the way we can our spouses and our families and friends. But if there's anybody in the church who knows God, it has to be you. The new covenant is inaugurated, brothers. We know God through the work of the Spirit. And what John 16:14-15 tells us is, the Holy Spirit is glorifying Christ. And if you aren't experiencing knowing Christ deeper and being amazed at the brilliance of his glory when you have the privilege every week of being in his Word, you're not going to shine with any *shekinah* glory when you preach.

You can't help your people know God if you're not, in your time in the Word of God through the work of the Spirit, through the Word that he's giving us, transforming you to know God. I'm not going to ask anybody to tell me about President So-and-So if they don't know him. If you want an intimate intake on someone, you've got to ask someone who intimately knows them. And your job, beloved, is to stand in front of people [and] say, "I know Jesus. He was with me all week. The Spirit of God moved in my heart, opened up my eyes, transformed my heart, inspired, encouraged me. Bobby, I love you, Bobby. This is what I am telling you. This is wise. This is where I want you to stand." And then you go into the pulpit, brothers. And you take that word that God, through the work of the Spirit, transformed your heart with.

And you are praying, "God, give it to them, too. God, open up their eyes, too." You can. And God can do that. No matter how weak you are, no matter how ineloquent you are, if God has gifted you to be the preacher, teacher in that church, then what he promises at the heart of the new covenant is, "I will be with you." He told Moses, "I will be with your mouth." That God is with us when we praise brothers and when we sit down with ordinary Joes, but when we're using our gift that the Holy Spirit gave us, the Holy Spirit empowers us. Look with me at 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verses 4-7. That God loves his church. He is building his church. He is blessing his church, and he's doing it through the ordained means he's chosen people, that through the gifts he's given them.

In 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verses 4-6, it says:

Now there are different gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different ministries, but the same Lord. And there are different activities, but the same God works all of them in each person. — 1 Corinthians 12:4-6 (CSB)

And what is that saying, brothers? That we all have some combination of gift in this shepherding, teaching, leading, preaching. We all have some, and it's from the Holy Spirit so that we can benefit a spiritual body. We have a spiritual gift to serve a spiritual body. And then verse 5: "And now there are varieties of ministries in the same Lord." The triune God, the Holy Spirit's given us some gift for his spiritual body. And the Lord Jesus given us a place in it, a hand, an eye, a foot. He's placed us in the body for you as a mouthpiece, as a preacher. He's placed you there. The Lord Jesus does that.

And then what happens when saints are using their gifts and the ministry that Jesus has ordained for them? Verse 6 says, "And there are varieties of effects. And the same God who works all things in all persons," God the Father produces an effect in the church when we are using our gifts that the Holy Spirit has given us in the ministries that Jesus has laid out for us. God does that. And when you're just doing whatever, you're just an average Joe. But when you're using your gift in the ministry that God has called you to, you have to believe and trust. You have to be depending upon God to bring the effect.

And so, beloved, I just pray we believe that, or else we need to, we just have to believe the new covenant is inaugurated. And so 1 John chapter 2:20 says:

But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. — 1 John 2:20 (CSB)

And so our people know, and they need someone who knows more than they know, who can lead them into deeper knowledge of Jesus. That's the phenomenon of preaching, that's, that's what we have to do. We have to believe that. My oldest daughter is a cancer survivor. She had a terminal form of cancer. God miraculously healed her. It's a long story, but she had to go through hell and back. And one of the treatments she had to go through was total body radiation. And so she's eight years old, skin and bones from all the chemotherapy.

And she, I'm taking her to this total body radiation because she had bone cancer, bone marrow cancer. And so I take her, and there's this door, this bolted door, thick metal door, signs flashing everywhere, "Don't enter, dangerous levels of radiation." And I have to send my daughter in there by herself. And as a dad, all your protective instincts are like, "No, what did he do to my daughter?" And I can't, I can't send her in there. And I'm like, "Honey, I just don't want you to be alone." And she looks up at me and says, "Well, Daddy, I'm not alone. Jesus will be with me. I'm not alone."

Are you alone in the pulpit? Are you alone when you're studying, preparing sermons? I pray that you're praying, "Holy Spirit, help me. Holy Spirit, help me." I pray that you're praying while you're preaching, "Holy Spirit, help me. Holy Spirit, help me. Don't leave me alone. Holy Spirit, help me. I'm weak. I can't do this. That you've given me this calling. You've given me this gift. You've given me this book. You've given me this congregation. If you don't do it, it can't get done. So, move, please, Holy Spirit." And you're not alone, brothers.

And it's not up to how skilled and eloquent you are or how loud you get. It's the Spirit of God, brothers. And we've got to rest in the Spirit of God while we're preaching so that the faith that is produced, the faith that is strengthened, the faith that is progressively setting your members free of whatever besetting sins, that their faith is growing, all of that. Then they know God did this. It wasn't my pastor because he's not that wise. It wasn't my pastor. He's not that strong. God did something. God did something.

I pray that's the kind of preachers we want to be. And if God does something for the congregation of 30, praise God, there are 30 people who are dead in some cemetery spiritually somewhere who are alive and growing in Christ because God did it, and God gets all the glory. Or it's a thousand. Can't be, "Oh, come hear my pastor because he's so funny." That they come because they want to, as the Gentiles said in the Gospels, "We want to see Jesus in this church." He lifts up Jesus. And the Spirit of God wants to do that because he wants to glorify Jesus and not you. I want you to bow your head for a second and just spend some time praying. The next verse you'll hear is John. Just pray, "God, help me be the kind of preacher that doesn't trust in me, that knows you, delights to make you known, as I humbly, as you humbly depend upon him as you preach."