Sermon: Witnesses through Evangelism & Discipleship

If you have your copy of God's Word, I'd invite you to turn with me to second Timothy and chapter four, second Timothy chapter four. First and foremost, I wanna say thank you. I wanna say thank you for the invitation to come and be here amongst y'all to preach God's word and to have spent time this weekend in your Spanish fellowship. And then with some, uh, students yesterday. Um, I just wanna say thanks for the encouragement.

It is, uh, it is an encouragement, uh, to know that there are churches who pray for us, uh, and pray for us regularly. You don't just give, but you pray for us. I, during the last service finished and walked to the back and there was a little boy, seven years old named Max came up to me and said, we, we've been praying for you like crazy. And in essence for me that as a preacher, there's many times that I rise into the pulpit even

as we speak about in this text, uh, be ready in season and out of season. There are times when I rise into the pulpit and I feel the overwhelming nature of what we're doing and the fact that I don't feel as we just saying, I feel weak for the task, but knowing that there are churches praying, we have a prayer hearing answering God. So thank you for praying for missionaries. Thank you for making it a priority. Not even at, not just at your church during

gathered worship, but also in your homes praying for the work of missions. Also, thank you for being a church that has been such an encouragement to our family. There are people in your church that email us and ask us questions and some of those people I've gotten to meet today and it is, it is fun to get to see a face and put those things together. So thank you for that. And then the last service I mentioned, standing in the front

and just getting to hear people sing. Jesus what a friend for sinners. When we think about missions, that is what we are proclaiming. Jesus is the friend of sinners. Jesus is being proclaimed as one whose burdens, he offers a burden that is not heavy, it is light. And he invites us to come. And that's what we're going to talk about today. That reality of preaching the word, the need for that to go forth. And so with that in mind, I would invite you

to look at your text and hear the word of God. It the word of God is the power unto salvation. This is the most important thing we do is hear the word of the Lord because it is God's speaking to us. So hear God's word from second Timothy, chapter four, verses one to five. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead. And by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word, be ready In season

and out of season, reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you always be sober minded. Endure suffering. Do the work of an evangelist fulfill your ministry.

The grass withers and the flower fades. But the word of our God stands forever. Let us seek the Lord for help. God in heaven, we have not come to hear from a man, but we have come to hear from your word. So we ask a Lord that you would take a crooked stick and strike a straight blow, that you would preach a better sermon through your spirit than the one that sits before me. Oh Lord, we ask that you would change us by your word,

that you would convince us of our need of Christ, of our need, of the word that you would convict us for the ways that we have not loved your word. We also ask that you would call those who are far off, who even might be amongst us this morning and have questions and be wrestling with faith, that they would see that you are a Christ who is the friend of sinners and willing and able to save that you are willing to wash their sins as white as snow.

Oh Lord, we ask that you would use this time that we have together to make us live in light of the glory of our God. We pray it in Christ's name. Amen. As you come to this text, you see the first words that Paul says to Timothy is, I charge you. It's not just calling him to something. He is pressing him to something. He's calling his attention. He's saying, you must do this. You can think back to Paul in one Corinthians

chapter nine and 16. He woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. And so Paul to Timothy in these closing days is saying, Timothy, what you've gotta do, I'm going to charge you to do this very thing. And as I was thinking about this text, I was thinking about being in my third year of seminary and that RTS in Jackson, what would happen is they would have these lunches where missionaries would show up and they would give a a a talk about where they're serving

and the needs and recruiting people to come. And my wife, uh, would sit through me sitting through all of those. 'cause I would go to every one of 'em. And then I would come home and say, Rachel, we're gonna move to Madagascar to plant churches or learn how to plant churches. So then we can move to Honduras and plant churches. And then I'd come back and say, I listened to a guy speak about Japan today. We're gonna move to Japan

and we're gonna learn how to church plant and then we're gonna go to Honduras and plant churches. I did it with Germany. I did it with a bunch of different places and my wife patiently sat there thinking, well, why don't we just move to Honduras? And it wasn't until my last year of seminary that we were in a session meeting and there was a, a man named Dr. Will Thompson, who's now with the Lord. And Dr. Will was asking me about what's after seminary.

And I was kind of given the same thing. I'm gonna go here and learn how to do this and I'm gonna go here and then I'm gonna go to Honduras and then here and then to Honduras and here and then to Honduras. Finally will looked straight at me and said, Aaron, why don't you just go to Honduras? And I looked up, I'm a weepy guy as is. I looked up with tears and I, I said to him, I'm scared of going and failing. And he looked right back across at me

and he said, Aaron, go preach. Jesus builds this church. You'd think in four years of seminary I would've learned that. But as he said it, it was this freeing thing You've gotta go preach. It depends upon who God is, not upon who you are. Go and be faithful. And so, so Paul is saying to Timothy, in the same way, I'm charging you to go and do this thing. And with that in mind, with his charge, I want us to look at this text through four points.

The first is the seriousness of the charge, the seriousness of the charge. It's not a light charge with which he is calling Timothy to go and do this task. The first thing he says is, I charge you not to preach, but I charge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus who is the judge who is to judge living in the dead and by his appearing and his kingdom. The first thing I want you to know, Timothy, is that you stand and fall before the living God.

That your audience to who you are preaching, yes, it will have benefit to the people who listen. But your goal is to preach to the glory of Christ. You are to live before the triune God Coram day in the way that you teach and preach. Because this is a God who we read in the text is taking account that he is going to judge the living and the dead. And I can remember my mentor saying that to me early on when I started preaching in Yazoo City.

And he would say, Aaron, preach to the glory of Christ. Preach to the glory of Christ. Preach to the glory of Christ. Set your eyes on God and let that be your focus. And that's in essence what Paul is trying to get young Timothy to do. Think about what you are doing and think about what the goal is that God is taking account of what you are doing. So as you preach, recognize that you will give answer to how you preach.

And the way that you rightly divide the word of God as you counsel, as you give words, you will be held accountable. That is why this is a solemn and sobering word that he wants Timothy to think about the fact that he is a man under authority, that he is being charged to preach God's word and he must do it correctly in light of who God is. So be faithful to preach God God's word in light of the fact that he takes note.

And he does that in a way of saying that you should do it in light of eternal realities. He brings up Jesus's second coming and the kingdom coming, right? We're, we're taking a long-term view, not just a right now view in light of who God is in light of who Christ is. In light of the fact that you will give answer to this and the fact that Jesus will come back, I want you to preach the word, you see the seriousness of

what he's saying, that you will give an account. And it led to a story. There's a story of, of Spurgeon speaking to one of his students. And his student was complaining to him about only having a hundred people that would listen to his preaching. And Spurgeon, just as they were talking quickly looked back at him and said, are not a hundred souls enough to answer to God for? And the reality that as we preach, as we gather people together, that we will give

as preachers, as those who have been called to announce the word testimony for what we have preached in light of these realities. And so what we see is Paul lays down this serious charge, in essence saying, dear Timothy, in light of who God is, in light of the glory of our God, I want you to do these things. And so he firstly charges him with this serious charge. But secondly, he gives him the content of the charge. In essence, he gives them the what gives him the what, when

and how of how of this charge, right? So if you look at verse two, it says, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season. And then reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching. And so the first thing that Timothy must do is that Timothy must preach the word. And it's interesting 'cause oftentimes we can think, oh, we need somebody to preach, but we don't need somebody to stand up and give Ted talks.

We don't need somebody to come up and talk about the Bible. We might need somebody to come and preach the word that they would rightly divide the word that it's not just what they felt. Like this morning, Alistair Begg said at one point he used to ask, people used to say, I just don't know how you come up with something every week. He said, I don't come up with something every week. The word is there every week. The reality is that we have the word.

And so Timothy's job is not to preach himself, is not to preach his own ideas. It's not to preach his own goals. His job is to preach the word. And the word takes us to Christ. As Spurgeon says, I make a beeline to the cross in my sermons. The the idea is that what we want people to do when they come and preach the word is that they tell us of the glories of Christ, of our adoption, of our justification, of our sanctification,

of our future glorification. The fact that we were dead in our trespasses and sins. And our only hope is the risen Lord Jesus Christ, that we can sing Jesus what a friend for sinners. That he truly is enough to wash our sins as white as snow. That his work, his finished work is good enough and sufficient. Not new ideas, not new things. It's great that most likely every Sunday when you come here, what you're getting is the word.

And maybe sometimes thinking, does Pastor Jason just preach the same thing? Yes, hopefully he does. Not in the same way, but the same thing again and again and again. You can think through the Abraham and Jacob and Joseph and the way that the promises are reminded to them again and again and again. Preach the word. The word is the truth. And the truth is Christ and Christ is sufficient. We don't, you don't, I don't need anything new.

We need something very old. We need something ancient as as as some have said. And so it drives us to the idea that we want preachers who are going to preach Christ more Christ, not less Christ. And so Timothy is told to preach the word and be faithful in preaching the word. John MacArthur tells a story of when he had first was first starting to preach and his mentor, he was in a chapel and had an opportunity to preach

and his mentor was sitting behind him and he was so excited to preach the word in front of his mentor. And he went up and he preached. And then he turned around. And as he turned around, he could see that his mentor's face was ashen. And he said that his mentor looked at him and said, you didn't preach the word, you missed the point. The point that at first he said he was sad. And then they walked to his office. And by the time they got to his office, he said,

my mentor was angry. And he said, John, never, never again miss the point of the text. Because what he was trying to do is Mark John MacArthur's ministry with the idea of you preach what Christ's word says. And what's that lead us to? The the the second part of his, his this part of how he's supposed to preach the word in season and outta season, whether people are ready to hear it, whether you are ready to preach it, it is what is next.

This idea of expository preaching week by week kind of restricts us in the fact of we have to preach the next text. And sometimes it's a thought of, oh wow, this is going to be a hard next text to preach. But the idea is that they're ready in season and out of season to preach the word of God and to do it well. Preaching the very word of God when you want to or when you don't want to. When the people seem receptive or the people don't seem receptive when the people come

to church or don't come to church, when the people are responding to your word, to the word that the Lord is giving you or not responding when there's a bunch of people at church or very little people at church. The idea is all the time. And think about when I first moved to Honduras and, and I would visit churches, and oftentimes when you visit churches, they would ask you, you know, you're a missionary, you're here in Honduras, what are you doing here?

I'm gonna plant churches. Oh, you're a pastor? Yes. And so oftentimes I would say that I'm a pastor and they'd say, do you want to preach for us? And what that meant was, do you want to preach in this service? Right? Like now, like do you want to go ahead and do that now? So what I learned to do is start putting all my notes on my iPad. And I was always ready to preach. I don't know that I was emotionally or mentally or physically ready all the time

or in Spanish ready all the time. But the notes were there, right? The idea that at any moment I'm ready to give testimony to who this God is, even when it is difficult. And he's gonna talk about that in a second. So he says, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, but just keep preaching, Timothy, keep preaching. And the way or the how of how you should do it is that you should reprove, rebuke and exhort that your preaching should be.

As Ligan Duncan says, it should come from a place of a fatherly, tender affection. I think when I see those words, what I see is that it's comes from a pastor who knows his sheep, knows how to reprove, how to rebuke, how to exhort, how to encourage, how to press people towards the gospel, to know the people that are listening to the word. He is encouraging him to know his people and be able to preach in this way, in the right moments

and to know how to apply the word to their hearts, to press them to the Lord Jesus Christ in a tenderly, a tender, fatherly way, and know them in that way. But the part that I struggled with probably the most, uh, being honest, was that last section when it says, after reprove, rebuke, and exhort, oftentimes preachers are ready to note things. Reprove give encouragement, say things, but he says, with complete patience and teaching.

So keep teaching and do it with complete patience. I wish he'd left off the complete part. Maybe just a little bit of patience, right? The idea is that oftentimes ministry is a long haul thing. Not just ministry, but evangelism. Not just ministry, but working with kids in the church or doing other things with youth or, or, or getting evangel family members or speaking the gospel to or speaking the truth of the gospel to those around you

that don't know the gospel. It is a process of patience. You've been praying and praying and praying that someone that you know would come to know the Lord Jesus Christ, and you just want 'em to hear your teaching respond. And let's move on to the next process. But we do it with complete patience. Why? Because the complete patience forces us to depend on the one who causes the effect. It depend, the complete patience doesn't

come produced from us. It comes produced based on the word of God, doesn't return void. So we can preach with complete patience, we can evangelize with complete patience. We can speak about the gospel with complete patience because it is God who causes the word does not return void. It actually frees us to encourage us to do it more freely. But oftentimes what we think is, I've been speaking to my children about these things

for years and years and years. I still haven't responded, or I've been speaking to my mom or my neighbor, or I've been praying for this person. Or even preachers or pastors can say, I've been saying the same thing. And in essence, what Paul is saying is, Timothy, just keep preaching, keep the main thing there. And so he encourages him to just keep the course. But if, if he tells us firstly that what he needs is this, the seriousness of this charge,

then he tells him the contents of the charge, what he needs to do, he then tells him the need for this charge, the need for this charge is in verse three and four. He says, for the time is coming when people will in not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. You see what he's saying is that there's going

to come a time Timothy while you're ministering, where there will be people who don't want to hear the truth anymore, that don't want to listen anymore. And oftentimes where we want to go is to think, yes, we live in a, in a, in a more and more secularized culture. It's that there are less and less people that want to hear the word, but he's not talking about people outside the church. He's talking about people inside the church.

You see, he's saying that there are those who won't endure sound teaching. And because their ears are itchy, they'll go find other teachers, they'll go find other people, will tell them what they want to hear, and they will get tired of what has been said. And so oftentimes we think it's outside, but it's actually inside the church where there is the biggest problem. As HB Charles says, false teachers don't get into the church if the church

doesn't have itchy ears. So if the church will be careful about what it wants and will want the word of God instead of wanting what they want to hear, this won't happen. But I live in a culture in Honduras that has tons of prosperity, gospel, tons of it, and the churches are growing. And it seems like even people that I thought were believers have these itchy ears to go have something new said to them. And the truth is that as missionaries, as pastors,

we wanna see churches grow. And so Paul recognizes the the temptation. There are going to be those who come to you and say, Hey, pastor, will you, will you say something else? Hey teacher, will you say something else? And what he's saying is, no, don't go for itchy ears. Keep the main thing, the main thing. There's going to be a time when people want something else, but you have to keep preaching even when the people want something else.

Joel Bke tells a story about how he had a member in his church that would come to hi to his office almost every Tuesday just to tell him how bad he was doing at preaching and he could do better. And he did it for seven years. I couldn't imagine doing it for six months to a year. There's a lot of patience, more patience than Jo Joel Beke than than Dr. Beke, than in me. And so he kept waiting, and he said that after a while, the man finally came

after seven years and said, Dr. Bakke, I have been wrong in my assessment. I had wanted something else, but I would ask that you would forgive me for the way that I have responded to the word Timothy. There's gonna be those who come and tell you we want something else. Just keep preaching. And you may say, what, what does this have to do with missions? Why are we talking about preaching? Because the center of missions is the proclamation of the word of God.

We want people to know more of Christ and him crucified. We want more churches to be preaching the truth of the gospel. The whole gospel that comes to us and says, you are unworthy of salvation, but Christ in his great grace came in the form of humanity and took it on and then died in your stead and rose again that you might be received. And then in not only giving you reception, he's willing to call you brother and friend.

He's willing to to name himself with you. He's willing to give you a future and a hope and a glorification and a future with the king of kings as a son or daughter of the king for all of eternity. That's what we want. We want more people preaching that truth. We need it in Moldova. We need it in Malawi. We need it in Honduras, we need it in Argentina. We need it across the United States. We need people who are wanting

to proclaim the good news of the gospel. Even when there are those who don't wanna hear it anymore. We can put our hand to the plow and say, keep preaching. Because the mission of the church is to announce and proclaim the name of Christ that he might be hallowed, and at the same time freed from dealing with the results because it depends upon him to cause the word to do its effect. And so he says, there's gonna come this time

that this is going to happen. And so as we think about missions, in essence, this is what we want missionaries to go and do to preach the truth of the gospel. But it's interesting that as he tells us the need of the charge and that there will be those who want other other things, he also says, he gives us the call of the charge, the specific thing that he says to Timothy in verse five. It says, all these things are true,

but here's the call Timothy, as for you, as for you, all those other things are happening. But as for you always be sober minded, endure suffering, do the work of a ministry, uh, uh, do the work of an evangelist and fulfill your Ministry. So in essence, the first thing he says is that in light of all these things that are going on, Timothy, Keep a steady head. Stay steady, stay stable. Keep your mind upon the things of God.

Don't lose your your thoughts, but, but focus on who your God is and keep your head in the midst of these things. And at the same time, I love that Paul is, is so sensible to, to throw in the next statement, be sober minded. This is gonna be happening, but, but, but be steady. But remember Timothy endure suffering. It won't be easy. It's going to be very difficult. It's going to be hard. It's going to bring hardship. This is Paul saying,

I've had this thorn in my flesh all through this season. I've been shipped wrecked, I've been jailed, I've been beaten, I've been hated for the things of the gospel. And he's saying, Timothy, it will not be Easy. What a blessing. Going into ministry to have somebody say, Hey, it's just gonna be hard. I just need you to know that from the get go, you're gonna feel alone. You're gonna have people that, That are harsh With you.

You're going to have failures. You're gonna see your own sin in ways that you've never seen it before. But Timothy, It's gonna be hard. And I can say that. And he can say that openly and honestly, it's going to be hard. But then he says right after that. But even though it's gonna be hard, do the work of an Evangelist. Keep Proclaiming the Gospel. Keep telling people and announcing the good news of Christ. And then lastly, and lastly, fulfill your

Ministry. What's he saying to him? Don't lose Sight Timothy. Timothy. Keep your eyes set on the things above and do the work that you've been called to do. How many men have we seen make shipwreck of their ministry because they've lost focus on God, then lost focus on the world, and then been attracted by sin and then by attraction to the sin they have not fulfilled their ministry. You see what he's trying to say to him?

Fulfill your ministry by being faithful Timothy. Keep your eyes on Christ. Keep your eyes on God. Be faithful in keeping your hand to the plow. Preach the word. That's why this whole idea is I charge you, preach the word. And then in light of all those things, keep doing it. And as I've spent time with Paul this weekend, it's been such an encouragement just finding out that his needs are very similar to my needs. We need more gospel preachers, we need more missionaries.

We need more people who wanna come and faithfully speak about the gospel. And so sometimes what that leads to is us to think, oh, well then that's just a preacher's job. But if you look at Acts chapter eight, eight, when the, the church is spreading out because it's being, it's being persecuted, we see that in essence what they're doing is that as they're scattered about, they're gossiping the gospel, they're speaking the good news of the gospel,

they're doing that in a daily life. So you may think, well, I might not be in missions. I'm not going to. But as you leave this place and you go, you speak about the good news of gospel, uh, the gospel about the good news of Christ. And we need more people who are coming and being faithful members of churches in other places to encourage the church. And so just as way of application, my question for y'all as a church, I know

that you're a praying church, but do you pray for missionaries and your pass, your pastors in light of this church, your pastors and your missionaries would be those who live in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, that they recognize that they stand before God and that he sees it all. Pray that that's how they would live their lives, holy lives in a way that their, their focus, their joy, their their aim is that they live quorum dayo thinking about the

realities of what they are doing. Are we praying that way? Are we praying that we would have men whose who live in the presence of God to those who teach or desire to teach one day? Is this what you think of folks who have a desire to go into ministry? Is this the way you think about ministry, that right now what I should be doing is living before God? And then as I think about ministry, I will never cease to live before God.

That's what we want, those who go into missions to be doing and be thinking about. But are we desirous to speak the gospel? Are tho there are those people in your lives, in your homes, in your neighborhoods, in your jobs with which you are speaking the truth of the gospel. And you're doing it with all patience as you patiently wait that you are giving testimony to who God is and what he has done for you.

And then are we, are you a church that is not itchy for new things? You're not getting tired of the same old, same old, but that you're constantly coming back because you know that you're faithfully going to hear the word that your desire is to come get the pure milk of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, that you want more and more of that word? Is that what drives you and compels you, that you're listening to things

that you might grow in the knowledge of the word of God? Are we being attracted, attracted by the things of the world and having itchy ears for those things? Also, do we long that the word like we see in this text would come to us and reprove us and rebuke us and exhort us? It's not just encourage us. And that was a good word, but also challenges us and pushes us towards Christ. And what taking our cross and following him means.

Do we want that to be true of the churches that we attend? Is that what we wanna see happening around the world? Is that what we're praying for? And I was reading something from, uh, Jeff Thomas, and he made a mention about Alistair Begg. And Alistair Begg said that in, in, in something he had written, that he had increasingly depended more and more in his ministry. On verse five, he actually said, I increasingly find

that verse, that verse five to be an anchor point of all my days. I wake up on Mondays and say, well, what do I do now? Then I say, well, I think I'll try to keep my head endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist and discharge all the duties of my ministry. And then when I'm lifted up by a little encouragement, which sometimes comes, I say to myself, well, what shall I do? The answer is to keep my head endure hardship and,

and evangelize and do the work of the ministry, in essence, do the same thing. That what I mentioned in the last service is the same here. That if the Lord allows Paul and I or convex in Malawi to be pastoring for the next 30 years, 40 years, what you will find us doing is this and nothing new that it's the same old, same old, because we want that to be the truth. And so you may say, so Aaron, what you're saying is that we need more preachers.

And so that's, that's the point of missions. Yes, it is. But we need more people to go. And as I was thinking about how to press this home to us, I wanna press you to think about missions. I wanna press you to think about the church that is bigger than just East Lansing or bigger than Michigan or bigger than the United States. The fact that, that we should want to press our kids towards missions. Our kids, kids, I'm speaking directly to you,

we, I pray, and maybe your parents would be upset that I pray this way. I pray they aren't. I pray that you'll go into missions, that you will leave home and go to another land, maybe to Honduras, maybe to Moldova or maybe somewhere else. But parents, you should be encouraging your kids to think about missions. Yes, pray for missions, but also think about going into missions and serving in this way. And you may say, but Aaron, that might be hard.

Well, Paul said, endure suffering. Part of that suffering might be separation from family. It might be the fact that you might not grow up right down the road from your grandkids, but they will have, as a friend of mine calls them, bonus grandparents in other lands that serve them. Maybe your bonus grandparents for people even here. But the reality is that we should be wanting to have our kids go into missions. And you may think, how do we do that?

Well, you may think, I don't know how to do that. Well send your 15, 16, 17-year-old kids to Honduras or to Moldova for a week or two weeks. Paul has two young kids. What a blessing it would probably be to him if a young girl from this church went and spent two weeks just helping with the kids, with his wife for, for a season. And then that young lady comes to have a desire for missions. And through that desire for mission, she becomes a help me

to a man who goes and proclaims the gospel. And as a family, they testify to the glory of God. You wanna know why that brings tears? It's because my wife went to Haiti And she was looking for a missionary. She came back from Haiti and said, mom, I'm marrying a missionary. She said, what happens if you don't find a missionary? She said, I won't marry you. And the only way I she was gonna marry me was through a blind date.

'cause if she'd saw me, we we wouldn't have had a chance. So the idea was that, that, that she went on a mission trip and on a mission trip and serving with a local pastor, she came convinced of the need of the gospel Worldwide. Send your kids, send your college students, college students. If you're here, think about using part of your summer. I know you need to do internships, but think about using your summer, spending it

with missionaries, learning what they do. It's not that different. It may not mean that you go into missions full time, but it may mean that you become a beacon for missions back home and serve in that way. So think about how you can go and serve in those ways. Pray that you're, that, that your interns and your, your people would go out from here to preach the gospel in other lands. But To what purpose? I'll close with this. John Piper said that one

of his greatest things is that what he wants to preach is so that people's affections would be awakened by God And then fulfilled by God. Isn't that what we want in missions? We want the people of the world's affections to be awakened by the word of God and then not us to fill them with all, uh, all who we are, but them to be filled, those affections to be filled and captivated with King Jesus. So my pressing to us is we want that for the world,

But we do. We want that for ourselves. Do we want our affections to be captivated with king Jesus, awakened by the word of God? And so if you are a believer, are your affections captivated by King Jesus? Are you delighting in his worth? Are you overwhelmed day by day at the beauty of the gospel and the cross and your salvation? If you're an unbeliever, come to this Jesus. He's willing and ready to save you. Recognize that there is more grace in him than there is sin

in you run to him. Or maybe you're a backslidden Christian and you're here this morning, You're struggling And you're walking through This, Christ has a word that is sufficient for you. Run to him, depend upon him. Oh, That our Hearts would be captivated, that our affections would be captivated With King Jesus. And that we would want it to happen here all through Michigan, all through the United States, all Through the Americas, All through the

World. Because we long, We long that Christ would receive the glory That is due His name. Let's pray together. God in heaven, we thank you that your word is sufficient. We thank you that you preach A better sermon than the one that is has been preached through the work of your spirit in our hearts, oh Lord, we pray to the things that were not of you would've fallen on deaf ears, but the things that are of your word would've fallen on hearts

and minds that were ready to receive them, that it would cause us to be captivated by king Jesus. It would cause us to look in faith to you to depend upon you. Oh Lord, we pray that your name would be magnified amongst us. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.