Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Crema Chaj podcast.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you.
Anyway, I think I suggest today, how do we choose some of the titles for what we do at these gatherings? And the honest truth, it's what we're going through.
And so we're trying to figure it out. And all we're doing is we're inviting you into our journey.
And if there's something that you see around here and you think that could really help our church or it could help our ministry, it's yours, you know, take it. So we're simply walking with Jesus as a church. We're trying to follow where he's taking us. And we've had the privilege of seeing a lot of salvation.
And I about, I think I said 2022 at this conference in 2022 on the Saturday morning, the spirit of God blew through and it was a precious moment. And I don't think there was as many here as there are today.
And something changed.
Now, I know something changed for some of you because you went back to your churches and the Lord started to move and you tell me your stories of salvation and healing.
But something changed here as well because he stayed. He blew through, but he stayed.
We just started to experience salvation in a way that I've never, I've not seen in the local church.
I've always seen people get saved, but I've not seen, seen it sustained. And that's been for four years now. And I mean, there, I think, Juliet, there's probably between 1,000 to 1,500 people now that have walked forward over the last four years. It has been incredible.
But.
It's always a but, right? But once you've caught the fish, someone needs to clean them up.
And not everybody is up for it.
All right, remember what I said. You know, you start on this journey following the Lord and you think, well, everyone's going to be really excited. Not everyone's really excited. Do you know, people leave the church because their needs are not getting met.
Acts, chapter six.
People are getting cross with the apostles. You know, the Greek speaking widows weren't getting their food. But there is this incredible move of God. The Holy Spirit is being poured out, the church is being birthed, but I'm not getting my needs met.
Do you know, staff leave the church because it's too much of a strain on my family.
We've always said God a family church. And I still believe that God always comes first and then it's important that we take care of our families. Paul talks about in the pastoral epistles and Then we take care of the church.
But what about the bit where we pick up our cross and follow him?
The bit where actually this is hard work.
You know, ministry is hard work. It's a lot of hours.
And you know, family do sometimes pay a price for the long hours. But I thought, I think there's also an incredible blessing on the family. If you were a CEO of a company, your family would pay a price.
When you lead God's people, your family pay a price.
The difference when we do it for the Lord is he blesses our family.
There is a blessing upon our children.
You know, we're trying to teach God's ways because to come to Jesus, he'll forgive all your sin and give you abundant life.
Comes with a but, a condition.
If you love me, you obey my commands. That's what Ben was so brilliantly talking about last night.
Let me comment. I want you to notice something because Ben was saying some hard things, but it didn't come across cross. Right?
Didn't come across mean. Why? Because he was talking to his story.
He was explaining to you how a loving God had worked and transformed his life.
And that's how we communicate the story of the Scriptures. I want to talk a little bit about that in the next 45 minutes because as we tell our stories that have come in line with the story of the Holy Spirit and the leading of Jesus people, it's like a hook. And they go, now I can go there. I can move that. That makes sense to me. Jesus was the great storyteller, you see.
And all those people that have come to faith, lots of them are living together.
So we talk about being, we talk about marriage in church.
Do you know how many marriages we've had to do in the last year? I'm sick of them.
Weird. Weird. Because they go prayer on Tuesday. Lovely.
They came to me and said, you know, we gave our lives to Jesus a month ago and we're living together and we're having a few temptations. Well, of course you are. You're in the same house. That just means everything's working well.
Okay, now what are you going to do?
What are you going to do?
Are you going to stay together the rest of your lives and walk Jesus or are you going to apart? I think there's a decision now, but what are you going to do? And lots of them are going, well, we need to get married. Will you marry us? I go, yeah, of course. They said tomorrow.
I mean serious. I mean, sometimes it is like that. Next week, can you do it next Week. So before Christmas. The week before Christmas, we had three weddings.
And then, you know, they're just in there, you know. Will you. Will you? Yes. Good. You're blessed.
It wasn't. No, I was very reverent. All right, but.
But it's like we want to put things right now. We've seen the light now we've come and we want to walk in his ways. But there's another. But then you've got some of the young people in your church who are single, who are doing everything right, but haven't found someone yet.
And there's pain because they're like, lord, I've walked with you and I've followed you. Why haven't you done that for me? And they've done all this and you're just so merciful and kind and good and there's pain. So we have to walk them through.
Come to Jesus and all your debts will be cleared.
Last year we saw seven people get debt free.
Now, that might not sound like very many, but it's hard work because now they've come to Christ.
Now it's time to bring all their finances in place and we're to honor Jesus with your money and all the credit cards that are maxed out and the loans and the crazy spending, all now starts has to come under the lordship of Jesus.
And it's hard work and people working with them and phoning up some of the debtors and arranging for consolidation loans so that they can start to get out of the hole that they're in.
Why is it so important that God blesses you?
It's really hard to follow Jesus in lack, because if he calls you and he says, I want you to go here and your credit card's maxed out and you can't buy a train ticket or drive or anything, you're just gonna have to walk.
But if we're under the blessing, we can respond. Debt holds you back.
Jesus wants to release you. So there is this process of starting to get some things in place and then people just start telling you about the situations they're in. So we had to build a pastoral center with people that would sit and listen and as people explain the situations, would start to give counsel, biblical counsel, so that they can start to put their lives straight.
And you wouldn't believe some of the mess.
And Jesus has saved them. He's rescued them, he's forgiven their sin. He's removed it as far as the east is from the west. But now in the process of sanctification, we're justified Just as if I'd never sinned by the blood of Jesus is now the sanctification process, where he leads us into abundant life.
And the way he does that is through us.
Yeah, just anything you recognize some of these things in church life?
Okay, we're going to read. Why don't you stand? Because we're going to read the Bible.
I'll explain why in a minute.
Okay. Find Acts, chapter six.
Now, in those days when the number of disciples was multiplying, there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution.
Then the twelve summoned the multitude of the disciples and said, it is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables.
I'm going to now flip over to Timothy.
2, Timothy 3, 16.
All Scripture is given by the inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped with for every good work.
Take a seat.
This book, It's for teaching what is right, the ways of God. That's, you know, if you love me, you obey what I command.
Here they are.
This is the manual of life. Proverbs starts. This is the manual of life.
So we, we teach the book. It's rebuking and interesting. The, the word for rebuke here is not the rebuke of stop demons, you know, Jesus, and they stop it.
It's. It's rather the word that, that brings us through testing that, you know, you, firstly, I, I mean, you, you only know you're someone's pastor when you say no.
Okay, While you're saying yes, everyone loves you. The moment you say no, then, you know, if you're their pastor. But our preaching and our teaching of this book helps people through the testing that as they come to Jesus and they're starting to walk in his ways, we help them through the difficulties that they're coming up against so that they can be fully equipped. I think that's what discipleship is.
You know, it's.
Sometimes we think the hard work is just getting them to stand here. The hard work is getting them to stay standing here.
So we, we lead them through the testing, the correcting. You know, again, the word is square up. You know, people come to church wonky, and we square them up.
And as we teach week in, week out, I was really pleased how many people get the chance to preach and teach it, because that's what I want to talk about.
And then the NIV calls it training in Righteousness to raise from a child to a healthy adult. That's what this book is for. And that takes time, hard work and consistency.
Week in, week out, teaching, praying, preaching.
But what Paul says is, preach the word.
Preach it.
You know, we need more preachers.
You know, there's a saying, people often quote it to me. Preach the gospel, and if all else fails, use words. Where does it say that in the Bible?
Preach the word.
You know, the girl, you've probably heard of her, you've definitely met her, she decides that she's going to win her college to Jesus, okay? And she decides she's going to do it by loving them, by blessing them, Never speaking badly about anyone, just embracing people and praying for them. And after two years of just serving Jesus in a college, the day comes and someone says, there's something different about you. She goes, yes.
Are you a vegan?
You see, if we don't preach, they won't know we have to say it.
And there's something very English that doesn't like to get in people's face.
We used to. We haven't been for a while. We used to go to Thailand a lot, and we were doing church planning, school in Thailand. And I said, you just need to get in people's face. And the translator stopped and started laughing. She said, there is no word for that in Thai.
No Thai would ever get in someone's face, okay? But when we preach, we get in their face.
And do you know what? Sometimes everyone loves what you preach, and sometimes it's just hard.
Honestly, I preach here most weeks.
And do you know what? Sometimes they just stare at me.
They're not laughing. They're just like, you know, occasionally they grimace a bit.
I'm praying that that's because they're thinking about what I said.
Let me tell you, the temptation is to entertain, okay?
Now, I do try not to be boring, all right? You don't need to bore them to death.
But success is not entertainment.
You know, one of the things I usually do is I take a theme for the year, and I'm basically trying to say the same thing over a year.
And I know I'm winning when after I've been saying the same thing for a year, someone comes up and says, have I heard that one before?
And you think, yes, they're getting it because it takes a long while for people to hear and understand.
So I'm saying the same things over and over again because I want to root it in their lives.
Now I'm doing it in the anointing of the Holy Spirit. But I want them to grasp it. And when they start to say it back to me, I think, you've got it.
You're starting to get this.
You see, the thing that made the Bible preachers so effective was they taught and they did it. I think I suggest they were word workers.
As we started, the Lord told us to go after his presence, salvation, healing, get you thinking about money.
We saw you started seeing these people get saved. He said, go and buy a new Bible and buy an expensive one.
Because again, sometimes we fall in my. You know, I go through Bibles, they get ripped. I spill my coffee over them.
So I'm trying to find a really nice one with as big a print as I can because I can't see any. Anything over an iPhone. Found this goat's leather one.
And so, you know, so I bought it. And when I got it, I would just kind of come down and I just go, you know, look, feel this. I mean, this is a nice Bible. It is nice. Doesn't it feel nice? And I just let them feel it and I let them have it. I did this in church. This is my Bible.
It's really expensive, you know, thanks for putting your money in the offering.
I didn't say that bit. I didn't say that bit. They thought that bit. All right.
But you know what the funniest thing is?
They started to buy Bibles because I wasn't telling them my Bible. They did what I did.
And you see, your Bible should be your most treasured possession outside of the Holy Spirit.
You go, what about my wife? No.
Why? Because your Bible says, love your wife as Christ loved the church wives. You want your husbands to love their Bible more than you because it will instruct them how to love you and treasure you.
A youth.
I think it was a year ago. I can't see Amelia, but she's around somewhere. They read through the Bible in a month?
Yeah, Social media detox.
And they were doing it and saying, this is where we've got to. This is how we're going. Oh, she's at the back. There she is. Was it a year ago you read through the Bible in a month?
Two years ago.
And she did it, and she did it with them. And we're gonna do this. You see, people do what you do, not just what you say.
We started to stand when we read the Bible, just like Ezra, you know, when he's.
The foundation of the temple's been built and Ezra starts reading the ways of the Lord and the temple's getting Reconstructed under Haggai and Zechariah. And the people stand as he reads the law.
Why?
Because these words are God's words.
They're higher than my words. My words are often ideas now they get anointed, but I have a lot of, lot of words.
This is God's word.
This is the one where we treasure.
Now, I hope I help my people understand this book. But we stand for him because especially if you want this generation that are coming to faith to live in his ways, they need to respect his word.
And we live in a society that respects nothing.
So we stand for the word of God.
You see, people will remember much more what you say when you do what you say.
Jesus, I'm going to say it again, was a word worker. He did what he said and he said what he did.
You see, part of being a church leader is demonstrating the power of the Word.
You see, Ben said last night, he said, I felt I wasn't a very good preacher. And I think he was talking about when he started out because I think he's an excellent preacher now. But we may not, you know, we may not be great preachers, but we can speak the words of God and then demonstrate his power.
That's what you saw last night.
That's why every week we heal the sick.
Look, I can't tell you how many times when I'm out walking before church and I'm praying, lord, can I just have a week off?
Because in the local church, it's hard healing the sick every week when that same person's coming forward again and again.
Are you going? God, come on.
I love it because when I. Often the Lord will speak, but when it's a night, he doesn't say anything. He. Can I just take a week off? Silence.
I don't think he does it, but I can almost see him like this. Yeah.
No, this is what I've told you to do. Old orders are good orders until you get new orders. I've given you the orders. I'm the captain. Yes, sir.
So you see, you can't teach the gospels without healing the sick.
It just doesn't work.
I mean, you can make stories about them, but the bottom line is Jesus came to undo the works of the devil and heal the sick. And it's time for the church to re establish the healing ministry of Jesus Christ.
I mean, you can't. I mean, you see, in Jesus Day, there would have been medicine and they would have been some, you know, reasonable medicine, but there wasn't the nhs.
So without the nhs you go, oh, well, God, did God use Jesus? But now we have the nhs.
I mean, now you can't go to the nhs, you can't get an appointment for love or money.
We need the church again.
People are sick, they need. If you work for the nhs, God bless you. It's not, I'm not telling doctors and nurses off. I'm just saying that there is an administration block.
I'm just saying it's time for the church to re establish the healing ministry of Jesus.
And you can't preach the gospel without calling people to salvation.
So what I want to do is I just want to quickly and humbly try and help you a little bit in how we teach this book. This book is God breathed, His breath is all over it.
And I was in a meeting just in the last few months and a new convert asked. We were doing a Q and A and the new convert asked a question.
He said, what do you think about the creation story? To the teacher preacher who was a theologian, and he answered, well, first I'm a man of science.
And my heart dropped.
First we are people of the Spirit, then we are people of the book.
Open your Bibles.
Stand again. It's the word of God. Come on.
Genesis, chapter one.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
The earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, let there be light. And there was light.
And God saw the light and it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night.
So the evening and the morning were the first day.
And you go, yeah, but Steve, you don't understand.
It's just that word can just be translated a period of time, a billion years.
It actually means a recurring period of time.
Look, if we can't get over the first page, how are we going to get to the last page?
And we start with our new believer, the first page of the Bible and go, well, you know, look, if God wanted to create, yeah, you know, he could do it in a day. But science says.
And they go, so I don't need to Worry about the first page.
Verse 26. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created them, male and female.
You see?
If you don't have verse one, why would verse 26 work?
Do you see the problem? We've got God's word.
Grab a seat.
Look, one day I'm going to stand before the Lord Jesus Christ and I'm going to give an account for my life, for everything I've taught, everything I've done. And he's going to be really loving.
But I don't think when I stand before Jesus, he's going to go, you wicked servant. You believed me for too much.
What were you thinking, believing that I could do that?
He's not going to scold us for faith.
There's only one sentence you want to hear. Well done, good and faithful servant. You were faithful in little.
Now I'm going to give you cities.
Enter your master's joy.
That's what we want to hear.
I've lived at Church for 34 years now.
My roots. I'm a Methodist.
My roots are the greatest revival this nation has ever seen, bar the one that is starting now.
I believe that.
And I'm telling you right at the start, if we can't do the first page, we won't be able to do the last page.
And God is calling us to believe. And you know, the disciples had the same problem, you know, when Jesus would teach and he would say, you know, it's easier for a rich man to go through.
It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
I was saying, jesus, who can be saved.
This is really hard. How can we preach this with men? This is impossible. With God, all things are possible. Jesus says. The disciples struggled with what Jesus was saying with the word of God.
You know, we see the woman that was caught in adultery.
The law to stone her, the Romans all around. If Jesus.
If Jesus doesn't stone her, he breaks the law.
If he lets her go free, the Romans will probably arrest him for causing a riot. Because they were ready to riot. They just wanted to get him. What does Jesus do?
I love the. Don't you wish we knew what you wrote on the sand? I think it was Ten Commandments.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind.
Just write them down. And he looked up and he said, anybody who has no sin, throw the first stone. And he says, from the older to the young, they went.
Then he looked at the women and said, where are they?
Where are those that want to convict you? And she said, they've gone. He Says, neither do I.
Go and stop sinning, be free. That's what we were talking about last night.
You see, Jesus taught with authority because he was the author of scripture.
By his love of blood, we are freed from law.
But now he has written his law on our hearts and the grace of God is released in our lives.
So pastors, you get, you know, we face dilemmas all week.
16 year old girl comes into your, you know, is in your church or she comes into your church and she's pregnant, cast out the immoral brother or girl, sister.
What do you do?
Been in your youth group.
This is the first time in her life she actually needed to church because she's in a mess.
I've watched pastors struggle with some of these dilemmas.
And fall into liberalism because they love the people so much and they lose the authority of Scripture because they don't want to say the hard sayings of the scripture for fear of hurting the broken.
The problem is with that root is the broken never get healed.
They stay broken. And I just really quickly want to talk to you about orthodoxy and orthopraxy.
Orthodoxy is the right belief, believing and preaching the right things about God, faith, salvation, scripture.
You know, one of the things we started to do in our offering was declarations. I talked about that. But we, we realized that people were coming, they didn't know what they believed.
So we put the Apostles Creed in.
You know, will it go up? Did we get the Apostles Creed? See if that comes up.
Yes, you know, and you know what, in some of the charismatic churches, we don't always say these things.
Do you want to say it?
For hundreds and hundreds of years, Christians have declared their belief so that we stay orthodox.
Go on, stand up, let's say it.
I believe in God, an almighty creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again. That's where you cheer.
He ascended into heaven. He is seated at the right hand of the Father and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.
Amen.
Take a seat.
I leave the Holy Catholic Church bit in by on purpose.
I just want to check that people are listening because what they do is they come after me and go, are we Catholic and I go, no, that's not what it means. It means we love the whole church.
The bells and the smells, the crazy clappers and dancers and everything in between. We love the whole church.
Anybody who has put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Look, if it was just us, it would be like a pane of glass, the church, all the same, a pane of glass. Really boring.
But the church is a diamond.
It has so many different facets.
And the Lord loves it all, every single bit of it. And, you know, it's so easy for us to make the mistake that it's just us and we're the ones that have all the truth and we're the ones that have all the blessing.
He died for his whole church, and he's going to present his church pure and spotless.
And he is working his plan, and we are part of that plan.
You see, this is the creed, what we believe. We preach orthodoxy, the Bible, salvation by faith, transformative journey of life with the Holy Spirit, marriage, sexuality, the cross, and repentance from sin. Heaven and hell. No one spoke about heaven and hell more than Jesus.
But then we have all the praxis, the right practice. How do we live and act?
How do we live out the faith?
You know, I mentioned the woman caught in adultery.
Jesus doesn't break the law. He sets her free.
You know, it's interesting in Ephesus, I think Ben mentioned it last night, the most sexualized city on the planet, and they're seeing lots of salvation happen.
And so you've got men with multiple wives, and they're all coming to faith. You know, the Corinthian Church is writing the. Paul, what do we do? This is a mess. You know, husbands are getting saved, wives are getting saved. You know, are the children clean? What are we. What are we. What are we going to do with all this?
And Paul, Paul writes to Timothy and he says, you know, when he sends Timothy to Ephesus, he says, what I want you to do is I want you to establish some leaders.
And this is the criteria for leaders.
And they're to have one wife.
You see, orthodoxy be. You know, guys, you're more than one wife.
Well, which one do you want to keep?
And let's get rid of the rest of the.
Because, I mean, people come to faith. Oh.
So they asked Paul this question. Corinth, I don't really like my wife, and now I've come to faith. Can I get rid of her? No.
Stay in the state you were in when you found Christ. This isn't an excuse to get a younger model.
So what happens in Ephesus?
Leaders have one wife, leaders have a higher bar.
Why?
Because people do what you do, not just what you say, and they start to copy you.
Historians believe. And one of the things that has turned some of the new atheists to faith is they look of what happened in the New Testament church and the move of God. People come into faith, the wisdom of God, and they see that Christianity changed morality forever.
And now in any Christian nation, one man, one wife, the wisdom of God, the transforming power of the kingdom of God, orthopraxy.
Because we've got to somehow make this work.
The problem is, if you don't preach orthodoxy, how will they know how to live?
If you water it down for fear that you're going to hurt their feelings, how will they know that there has to be a bar?
You see, God doesn't lower his standards. He raises ours.
That's what he does. He enables us to live for him. And so when we're preaching and teaching, we don't water it down. And do we sometimes hurt their feelings? Yeah.
Oh, when you said that, that really made me feel bad. That's called conviction.
But, you know, godly conviction brings repentance and brings a turnaround.
And so we, you know, new believers come in. You know, marriage is between a man and a woman.
Any kind of sexual intercourse outside of marriage is sin.
And they go, I didn't know that.
How do I sort it out? So then we get down here because we've put the bar, and we take them by the hand and we walk with them and we drink coffee with them and we talk with them and they. And, you know, do you want to stay with this guy for the rest of your life?
And what about you? And are you gonna walk with Jesus? What are you gonna do with your lives?
And then what is the journey of putting this right?
And honestly, we can't afford to get married. What do you mean you can't afford to get married? I don't charge anything. I could make a fortune out of this if I wanted to.
I don't charge. No, no, but we've gotta have this and we've gotta have that and bells and, you know, jets flying over. And I'm going, no.
You make a commitment to each other before the Lord and you start the greatest adventure of your life, and then you build your lives together with him at the center.
And I always warn them, all marriages are happy. It's the living together afterwards. That's the difficult bit.
All right?
And that's the journey.
Oh, I think you see, It's so important.
And the reason I'm saying this is because I've led church for a long while now and I know the temptation to, to water it down.
I just want to encourage you. Don't.
Because they need to hear the truth. That's what Ben was talking about so brilliantly last night, of God's ways. So that they have a bar, my friends, at the Vivi mienta, the first class of all the new Christians that come in is stop doing drugs, make sure all your financial dealings are good, and stop beating your wife.
That's the first requirement, first week of being a Christian.
Just stop it.
And they go, oh, yeah, they're in the class. We've been in the class. They're going. And I mean, they're all some young people, old people suits and everything, okay?
That's what we do. And we lead them into the truth. We have to tell them the truth. Don't be scared now. Will some of them go, oh, I don't want that. Yeah, of course they will. That's the parable of the sower.
But you'll never get true disciples if we don't put the bar. We had a young girl and I'll finish and we'll pray. We had a young girl saved.
She came from a. Well, actually, I don't know how old she was, but they all look young to me. She came from a hard. They do now.
I don't know what happened.
And I remember she was at our prayer thing because that's actually where I often meet people. And we were praying and she was chatting to me and I noticed her arms and she had all burns down her arms and she just come from not a good background and her low self esteem was right down here.
And anyway, she said to me, she said, I said, oh, when did you give your life to Jesus? Just a few weeks ago.
And she said, can I just check something with you? I said, absolutely.
And she said, I've given my life to Jesus now. And I had this guy over for dinner and I cooked him a lovely meal and then he wanted to have sex, so I threw him out the house.
Was that the right thing to do?
Yes.
True story, true story. Absolutely. You got it. You got it.
And then it was like she vanished.
And then I was looking back, you know, over a month, maybe three months later, and I looked over and there was a girl at the back. And I'm looking, I think, I think that's that girl. The thing is, she was totally different.
Her face had changed. The way she dressed had changed. Everything had changed about her.
And she still serves coffee here. You know, she'll be serving coffee here tomorrow morning because Jesus had transformed her. But they can only be transformed if the Word is preached and they know where to go. And we hold to orthodoxy, but we walk with them in orthopraxy.
And then you will stay on the narrow path because you will understand that God has a standard, which is why he sent Jesus. We don't lower his standards to get people in. We bring.
Look, I really am going to finish on this possibly.
Look, if this is Jesus, and this is.
No, sorry. This is Jesus, and this is our lives, and this is the sin. I'm sorry, I'm using the Bible, okay? For sin.
Okay.
This is Jesus.
This is our lives, and the sin is between us and Jesus.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him. And by his stripes we are healed all. We, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way.
And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
It's here.
It's His Word. This is what he's done.
This is why we preach the Word.
He's put it all on Jesus.
We're free.
We can live. We're justified. Just as if I'd never sinned.
And now he leads us into sanctification, one degree of glory to another. And what had happened to that dear girl where she'd been changed by glory?
But she had heard the Word. It had fallen on good soil, it had taken root. And the cares of the world had not choked it off. And she had believed him. And we get a disciple.
And what I want to say to you, I've been doing this now for a little while.
I really want to encourage you to be preachers of the Book, to work hard at your preaching, to be in the Scriptures.
And to be in the Scriptures, not just to preach, but because you love the Scriptures and then to teach them accurately.
Not all of us are humorous. It doesn't matter. Just try not to be too boring. And if you're short, that helps.
Because even if you're not a good preacher and you're short, whenever you stand up, they'll go, he's all right. He's short.
That's what they'll remember, okay?
And you just.
They don't think that of me.
And you will faithfully teach, week in, week out.
Sometimes they'll look at you with glazed eyes. Sometimes they'll look at you cross. Sometimes they might even throw things at you. But I tell you, when we stand before the Lord in glory, they will say, thank you. Thank you you were honest.
Thank you that you taught the truth. And thank you that I'm standing in this queue and not that queue. And I owe my life to you. Why don't you stand?
[00:48:48] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Chroma Charge podcast.
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