What Preaching Is Aimed At

Introduction

Well good morning to everyone. I am glad to be here. It was a little bit of a harried trip. I’ve lived in the north. I’m a southerner, but I’ve lived in the north for over 30 years. Don’t ask me why. It’s because folks in the north need the gospel. But anyway, and I don’t think I’ve ever driven on icy roads like we drove on Friday. I’ve never driven on a road like that. So there were times that we were going 25 miles an hour going down Interstate 55 headed toward Memphis. So it was a kind of a slow trip and then made longer yesterday by trying to make a diverted route to avoid some of that ice through Arkansas. But anyway, we finally got here.

And I think that Tony needs to know what the word frigid means because I don’t think he knows what frigid means if he thinks that today is a frigidly cold day, because it’s really not that cold to us.

I mean I might have walked out the car without my jacket on.

We’re so glad to be here. As I mentioned, Candy and I are grateful to be here. We’ve been with you before. I think we’ve been over the years, preached here periodically, and of course visited with you, and then I think I did held hold a meeting here several years back. and this one has been kind of in the plan for a couple years now, I think, and finally getting around to it, and I want to just say I appreciate so much your patience with us. I know that circumstances have been different here. One of the things that we had originally had this planned for in November, and then an opportunity came up for me to go to Sierra Leone, West Africa in November, and so you guys graciously were willing to change the meeting to December, and I appreciate that so very much.

And I had a great trip to West Africa with my two friends Andy Dieselkamp and David Diesel Camp, Andy D Dieselkamp and David Disselkamp. That’s a family feud that goes between them about what’s their correct pronunciation. But anyway, we had a great time and did a lot of good work. had a number of conversions there in Sierra Leone, and it’s just a great opportunity. And I’m thankful that you were willing to work with me and be patient with me and letting me change the meeting date to so that we can come today. And just grateful to be here and hope that we can say some things and do some things that will be useful and helpful to you this week.

I’m not a very fancy preacher. I don’t usually stand behind the pulpit. Most of the time I end up on the floor. I don’t use PowerPoint too well. I’m technologically challenged. I have trouble, I struggle even to turn on the microphone. so you’ll just have to bear with me. But what we’ll do is we’ll just kind of rear back and preach and try to talk to you about some things that are hopefully going to be useful and helpful to you. I understand we’ve got to try to be done by 20 after. So what I want to do is just talk to you a few minutes this morning about some things, share with you some ideas and some I concepts that I think are important and about preaching, and hopefully it will sort of set the set the tone for what we’re gonna do this week.

One of the things that I try to do is I you know, and this lesson will sort of probably make it pretty evident, is I try hard to figure out what my audience is like and try to preach things that are aimed at my audience and try to ask about you know what kind of things might be needed to preach here and that sort of thing, and I’m not sure if they told me, the elders told me to preach Rick’s greatest hits or something, but sometimes you go to a meeting and they say, just preach your greatest hits. Problem is if you’ve already been once in a meeting, you’ve already preached your greatest hits, you know. So but we’ll try to we’ll try to just preach some things that are going to be useful and helpful this week.

I want to start by asking kind of a question that I need you to think with me about and just think about it for yourself. what do you think? What do you suppose preaching? And specifically my preaching, I’m thinking about, but preaching in general. What do you think it’s aimed at? and we’re talking about target. We’re not talking about the goal, we’re talking about the target that we’re aiming at. We could really maybe ask the question a little bit differently. We could ask the question, what do you think the word of God is aimed at? What’s its target? And we say that because it is my conviction that any preaching that is not solidly rooted in the word of God and not consistent with the word of God simply isn’t good preaching.

So we might ask the question then, what is the word of God aimed at? What is preaching the word of God aimed at? And I want you to think specifically about my preaching and what I’m trying to do this week. What am I preaching of the word aimed at? We might look at that from the big picture and say, well, the aim of preaching ought to be the salvation of souls. And that would be in a very broad sense correct. in 1 Timothy chapter 4 and verse 16. Paul tells Timothy, pay attention, play close attention to yourself and to your teaching. Persevere in these things, for as you do this, you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you.

So certainly, preaching and persevering in preaching is aimed at not only the salvation of the soul of the preacher, but aimed at the salvation of the soul of those who hear the preaching. So certainly preaching is in a broad sense aimed at the salvation of souls, at saving people who are lost. But again, what we’ve done there is we’ve sort of changed the topic because we’ve changed the topic from target to goal or to objective of preaching. And I’m not really talking about what the objective of preaching is. I want to speak specifically about target. What is it that we’re aiming at? What is our target when we preach? And I believe that in order for preaching to accomplish its objective or goal, which obviously we’ve already suggested is the salvation of souls, that it has to hit a very specific target.

1. Changing People, Not Just Their Behavior

It has to be aimed at really changing people into different people, making them different people, changing them, but not just changing people’s actions or modifying their behavior. Certainly, preaching does seek to help people modify their behavior, to change their behavior so that their conduct is more in keeping with the will of God. Certainly it does that or is aimed at that. But preaching cannot and will not profoundly or permanently change a person’s behavior without first changing a person’s heart. And what we’re interested in is not just modifying people’s behavior so that they act a little differently. What we’re trying to do is change people. And change them in a permanent way to make them different, people who are better and more like Jesus Christ. And that won’t happen unless we first we first are able to somehow change a person’s heart, his spiritual heart, his way of thinking about things.

You ask yourself this question, maybe, how is it that I change my actions or my conduct in a positive and permanent, meaningful way? How do I do that? Someone answers, well, by exercising self-control. And that’s certainly true. In some ways that’s correct. That’s one of the ways in which we modify our behavior. We change our actions by deciding from the Word of God what is the correct action or what is the correct course of action. And then we force our bodies to comply. We say, what here’s what’s right, and now we force ourselves to do that which is right. And all of us have the ability and can to one degree or another change our actions by willpower for a while. You can sort of change yourself and force yourself to act differently for a while.

2. Be Transformed by the Renewing of Your Mind

But if you want to really change who you are, if you really want to make a change in your character, so that your behavior and your thing, everything’s different and more like the Lord wants, so that you can have the salvation that you ultimately want to have, then you’re going to have to first change the way you think in your heart. There are a couple of passages that I’d like to focus on for just a moment. First of all, Romans chapter 12 probably is the most obvious of the passages. Romans chapter 12, as Paul gets to the practical part of that epistle or that letter, he talks about offering our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is our spiritual service of worship.

And then he says in verse 2, and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. I want you to notice here that Paul says, don’t let yourself be forced into the mold of the age in which you live. The word that’s translated the world in this particular passage is a word that has to do with age or the times in which you live. It’s not the sphere or the planet on which we live, it’s the age in which we live. Don’t let yourself be forced into the mold of your times. Instead of being forced into the mold of what’s around you, your age, the age in which you live, he says, be transformed. And he uses a word that we know in English, the word metamorphosis is the original word in the text.

And if you say that word a couple of times in your head, the metamorphosday, you understand we get metamorphosis from that word, and that’s a word that describes this transformation or change that takes place. I remember when I was a kid living in South Africa, we used to collect silkworms in a shoebox. We’d put them in a shoebox and feed them, I believe it was mulberry leaves, and those ugly silkworms would eat those leaves. And after a while, we would notice that the silkworm was beginning to build a cocoon around itself and close itself into this silk cocoon. And sure enough, after a while, it would be completely enclosed, and we’d just leave them in the box there a couple days. And I don’t remember the time frame, but I just know that after a while, those cocoons began to open.

And what came out of that cocoon was not what went in. What went in was this ugly worm. What came out was a white moth, a beautiful moth. The caterpillars go through that same kind of transformation or metamorphosis. And we’re not supposed to be forced into the world of our world. We’re not supposed to be conformed to the age in which we live. We’re different, folks. We’re not in the world. We’re not in the world. We’re supposed to be transformed, changed. And that happens according to this text by the renewing of your mind. If you really want to change who you are, you have to change the way you think about things. Look at the Ephesian letter, Ephesians chapter 4, for just a moment. Ephesians 4, I want to begin at verse 17.

Paul says in Ephesians 4, verse 17, so this I say and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart. And they having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard him and have been taught in him, just as the truth is in Jesus, that in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lust of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on a new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

I want you to notice here that the Gentiles were very corrupt, as Paul describes them in this text. Their understanding was darkened because of the hardness of their heart. They had become callous as regards their lifestyles and the things that they were doing, which resulted in them giving themselves over to every kind of sensuality, you know, giving themselves over to sensuality for practice of every kind of impurity and whip greediness. And so they hungrily went after things that were wrong. That’s the way the world of Paul’s day was, the age in which he lived. And it’s very similar to the age in which we live. It’s very much like that kind of an age. That kind of thing describes our world. But that the Ephesians had escaped that.

The Christians at Ephesus have escaped that according to verse 22. They had not learned Christ in this way, verse 21, in the reference to their former manner of life, it was their former manner of life, that they lay aside the old self, which would be corrupted according to the lust of deceits. And I want you to notice how they accomplished that. It was accomplished, according to verse 23, by the renewing of the spirit of their mind. They’ve been renewed in the spirit of their mind, and look what it enabled them to do, verse 24, to put on the new self, which in the license of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth. What I’m trying to get you to see, what I’d like you to understand is that if you really want to change who you are, if you really want to become a better person, the kind of person that reflects the image of your creator, if you really want to change who you are, you’ve got to change the way you think about things.

3. Our Actions Reflect What Our Heart Really Looks Like

You’ve got to start by changing your thinking, your mind, and the way you approach things in your mind. So it says, why is that important? Why is it important that you change the way you think? Well, I think Jesus gives us some insight into this in Mark the 10th chapter, so go to Mark the 10th chapter. And notice with me beginning at verse 20, I think is where I want to go. Maybe that’s not the right text. Let me see if I’ve got the right place. Mark 7, sorry, Mark 7, the verse 20. I knew something didn’t sound right. I’m not fancy, okay? So we just do the best we can. We don’t do all the niceties of oratory. We just try to just try to talk a little bit about Scripture.

So here we go. Mark 7 and verse 20. And he was saying, that which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men produce the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these things proceed from within and defile the man. Jesus is saying here that the things that those old ways of thinking and acting come out of a corrupt heart. Our thoughts and our words and our deeds are really a reflection of what our heart really looks like. Okay, really looks like. Sometimes a person tries to justify his wrong behavior by saying something like, Well, I know my heart.

And I know in my heart I’m a good person. And yet his outward deeds reflect that he is, his heart is not so good. His outward deeds say something different. And others who see your deeds or my deeds, can also, to some degree, know your heart, because your conduct is reflected by your heart, according to what Jesus is saying here in this text. We are human beings, and as human beings, we have a terrible tendency to look at ourselves subjectively. I think one of the hardest things that we do in preaching is try to get people to recognize how bad sin is. And the reason we have a trouble getting people to realize sin is so bad is at least I know why I have trouble seeing that sin is so bad is because I’m a participant.

I’ve been involved in it. And I’ve been around it for so long that I don’t smell its stinky rottenness anymore. And so we kind of get involved in it, and so it becomes hard to look at things and see things the way they really are, and hard to see sin for what it really is. And we have a real hard time seeing ourselves objectively and sort of stepping outside of ourselves and taking a look at ourselves and trying to see ourselves, our heart, our actions, our thoughts, our words, everything about us, try to see us the way God sees us. It’s very hard to do that. And what we have to recognize is because we are, we tend to be so subjective in the way we evaluate ourselves, that subjectivity tends to be quite slanted.

And so a man says to his wife, in my heart I know that I love you. But is abusive and unkind actions screen otherwise? A disciple says, I know that in my heart I want to do what’s right. But his lying and his stealing says otherwise. I know that I want to be a pure man. And yet, those thoughts and intentions, those lustful thoughts that constantly reside in his mind, those things say otherwise. If you want to know what your heart really is, if you want to know what the real condition of your heart, don’t just look at your feelings. Look at your actions. Look at what you think about. Look about at your conduct. Look at what comes out of your mouth, what comes out of your in your actions.

Look at those things. Too many times we feel one way, but we act another way. And our actions are the real reflection, according to Jesus. They are the real reflection of who we are. My actions are a more objective way of determining what is in my heart. Because whatever actions come out of my life are a reflection of what is actually in my heart. And guys, I don’t know about you, but I want to know who I really am. I don’t want, I don’t want to one day stand before God and find out that I wasn’t who I thought I was. Because I was looking at myself too subjectively. And I wasn’t really behaving the way I thought I wanted to be.

So if you really want to change your life so that it pleases God and finally gain the salvation that you hope to ultimately have, you have to change your heart. Change how you think in your heart, and you’ll be able to change positively and permanently your actions in your life. You will become a different person if you change the way you think. As the wise men said, watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the spring of life. Proverbs chapter 4 and verse 23. So now I want to get back to my original question. Get back to this original question that I had. What is good preaching aimed at? Again, we’re not talking about the objective. The goal of preaching is certainly the salvation of souls.

4. Good Preaching Has as Its Target the Heart

But what is it aimed at? What is my preaching aimed at? I’m going to tell you something about my preaching specifically. In view of what we have learned about the importance of purifying our hearts and changing our hearts to change our lives, I would suggest that good preaching ought to have as its target the heart. It ought to be aimed at changing people’s hearts. Faithful preaching of the Word of God is aimed at the hearts of men and women. It’s not just aimed at changing the way a person acts. And I think that’s the way we sort of do things in churches of Christ. And I say that a little bit about us because I’m not talking to a bunch of denominational folks. I’m talking us.

And my experience of over 30 years of preaching has taught me that in churches of Christ, we tend to fake it quite a bit. We put on a show when we come together. When we are in with one another at church services, we look one way and we act one way, but when we go home, we act differently. And that’s why our families are all messed up. That’s why our lives are all messed up. That’s why we’re getting in trouble with things. That’s why we’re not enjoying the kind of happiness and joy that the Lord wants us to have as his blessed people. That is why we’re not accomplishing more in the world with changing people and helping other people come to know Jesus Christ, because in too many instances we are just sort of pretending to be something.

And so I’m not interested in just helping you to know how to act right while you’re around certain people. We’re interested in helping people change their heart. Look at Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 12. Hebrews 4 and verse 12. We’re all familiar with this text. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. And piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. This text tells me that the word of God is pointed. It’s sharp. It cuts and it cuts deep. It forces us to see ourselves not subjectively, but objectively, the way God truly sees us, the way God sees us from his perspective, from his point of view.

It helps us to do that. At least it will help us to do that if we will look at it, if we will read it objectively as much as we possibly can. If we’ll listen to it from a personal perspective, and I’ll tell you that’s another little problem that we have in churches of Christ, is that we tend to look at the scriptures on the basis of how we can make somebody else different. How we can change our denominational friends, or how we can change some of our own brethren, or whatever the point is. We’re trying to change somebody else, but we’re not looking at it so often from how it changes me. Get over that, okay? Get over that. If you’re interested in going to heaven when you die, try to let the Word of God look at you and talk to you about how you are.

I know that very often when we preach that people will sit and listen to something and they’ll go, boy, he’s sure giving it to Brother So-and-so. Man, I’m sure glad I’m not in that guy’s shoes. And that is the wrong way to look at preaching. That is the wrong way to look at preaching. You need to listen to preaching, and you need to read your Bible without anyone else in mind except you, in terms of what that message is for you and how it’s supposed to change your life. Yes, we ultimately want to help others, and we do want to reach out and help others to change and be better people. Certainly that’s the case. But ultimately, we’ll never help to fix anyone else until we first are ourselves changed.

5. The Word of God Is Like a Mirror

And that is something that I really want us to get in our heads. I cannot change anyone else until I change me. Until my life is changed by the Word of God. Until I am a different person in Christ. I cannot be effective in helping anyone else to make a change in their life. And so when we look at the Word of God, as we ought to look at the Word of God, it forces us to see ourselves not subjectively, but objectively, the way God sees us. The Word of God is described in a passage in James chapter 1 as a mirror. James 1 and verse 21. I love this text. Verse 21 particularly, but then on down through verse 25 or so. James writes, and he says, Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness in humility, receive the implanted word which is able to save your souls.

Some of the older versions may use the word meekness. And we don’t have a great English word for the original word in this text. It’s a word that has to do with the idea of being under the control of God, really. That’s what the whole point is that we put ourselves under the control of God. So you look at the Word of God, the Word of God is supposed to be it, if you receive it in humility, you receive it with a willingness to let that message from God control you. Okay, so he says, he says, therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all the remains of wickedness in humility, with a willingness to really humbly let God’s word take control of your life, receive the word implanted, which is able to save your soul.

That’s when the word implanted is able to save your soul. When we receive it in a way that allows, that we allow it to change who we are. Take control of our lives. He says then in verse 22, but prove yourselves to be doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror. For once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But the one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer, but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.

The word of God in this text is described as kind of like a mirror. It is intended to reflect our natural real face, as it were, so that we can fix whatever it exposes to be out of shape or out of place. And I’ll tell you something that a mirror doesn’t do, unfortunately, probably fortunately, but as a mirror does not lie.

I at times think of myself in a distorted way as I used to look when I was younger.

I’m not kidding about this. There are times that I actually have in my mind’s eye what I look like. And it ain’t bad. It’s pretty good, as a matter of fact. And sometimes I actually look down at this body of mine, and I can still see my feet. But I look down at this body of my mind of mine, and I think, you know, Rick, you don’t look so bad. You don’t look so bad. And I find myself hanging out, for example, with younger people, and I think to myself, I wonder how they see me. You know, I’m pretty cool. I’m pretty neat guy. And you know, I’m kind of fun to be with, I think. And so surely they don’t see you know I remember when I was in my twenties what I thought of when I looked at a 55-year-old man.

I think, old geezer. I’m an old geezer. But surely that’s not the way. Surely that is not the way these young 25-year-old men or women see me. Surely they don’t see me that way. And I really sort of think that way sometimes. And I’m kind of surprised when my interaction with those young people sort of reveals that, hey, they do sort of see me as an old guy. And I’m kind of torn by that, disturbed by that. But anyway, I look at myself in my mirror the mirror. I think about myself and I think of myself differently than I really appear. I think of myself sometimes that I look better than I do. And then I look in a mirror, and immediately there is the white hair.

I mean, that’s the dead giveaway. It’s not just white here, it’s here. It’s in my beard. And I’ve been white-haired and whitebeard bearded for years. And it’s not just the white hair, you know, because some, I’ve seen some guys in their 30s who wear white haired, and they look pre-cooked you. So maybe that’s why. But then I look at the face. And my wife is watching me very carefully because I have to be very careful because she knows that I tend to sort of look down on myself and say bad things about myself, and I’ll get a big lecture if I’m not careful. But when I look at my face, then I really realize, you know, it’s it’s not smooth like it used to be.

The years are beginning to show themselves in some wrinkles. And I don’t know what happens when you get to be 45 or so. I’m 55 now, so it’s been happening for at least the last 10 years. Suddenly things start to grow on your body, like, where did that come from? What is that? You know? And hairs grow in places that you didn’t know hairs could grow. And they gross out your kids, you know. My kids are sitting there, and Dad, you’ve got this terrible eyebrow hair. Do something about it. It’s grossing me out. And so the point is that you start, I look at myself in the mirror, and I begin to realize that, you know, I’m not as young as I pictured myself in my mind.

I don’t look that, I really do kind of look older. Rugged, rough a little bit. And then my eyes fall on the reflection in the mirror of my true body. Which I have tried to tell myself is not fat. It’s just muscular. But it is fat, unfortunately. And I see really just how big my girth truly is. And I realize that I’m not as I imagined in my mind’s eye. I am bigger. I am rounder. I am older. I’m rougher looking than I was when my sweet bride married me 32 years ago. And it hurts. It hurts to see that. Well, the word of God is like that. I didn’t go through that just to amuse you. I’m trying to get you to understand that the word of God is like that.

And it’s a little easier to laugh at ourselves when we think about that physically. But let me tell you something. It’s not really so funny. When we look at ourselves, our spiritual man in the reflection of God’s mirror, because God’s mirror reflects how ugly our bad habits really are. How unholy and sinful our actions truly are. Our words, how hurtful they really are, how impure our thoughts often really are. They reflect the unwholesomeness of our words and our thoughts. They show that our bat, our heart really is at times not what we would like it to be. And the word, as it reflects that true image of our spiritual self, is pointed and sharp and cuts deep. And it really hurts.

A lot of folks don’t want to see that picture of themselves. And so what they do is they just refuse to look at the picture. They refuse to look in the mirror of God’s word. Or if they’re forced by someone who speaks to them and talks to them and lovingly tries to help them see themselves in the mirror of God’s word, they walk away from that image and they forget about who they were. Or they ignore the sad state of affairs that their spiritual life has come into and they do nothing about it. You want to know why it’s hard to get people to study the word of God? One of the reasons it’s hard to get people to say the word of God is because the word of God shows them who they are, and they don’t like the picture.

And they recognize that if they’re going to truly be someone who will ultimately have salvation, that they’re going to have to do the hard thing. They’re going to actually have to change. And change is tough. Change is hard. Change hurts.

And people, some people get stupid about that and think that Jesus really means that you must literally cut your hand off or literally poke out your eye. And that’s not the point. The point of that passage where Jesus talks about, you know, if your right eye makes you stumble, verse 29, tear it out and throw it from you, for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you. For it is better for you to lose one of those parts of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. What that text is saying is that no matter how bad it hurts, you and I need to make a break from whatever it is that’s wrong in our life.

And the reality is it does hurt sometimes to quit being what we used to be. To change, to stop being the old man, to see ourselves the way God actually sees us, to stop trying to fake ourselves out or pretend or deceive ourselves into thinking that we’re something that we’re not, and to see ourselves for what we really are, that hurts, it’s hard, and changing it is hard, and it hurts.

6. Sanctify Christ as Lord in Your Heart

Not just what I act like, but who I am. Good preaching is aimed at the heart. It’s aimed at helping you to sanctify Christ as Lord in your heart. 1 Peter 3 and verse 15. And he has to be Lord in your heart. Or you’re not going to make it. You’re not going to make it. And let me tell you something. Jesus is Lord of your life. Somebody says, well, you know, have you made Jesus the Lord of your life yet? You can’t make Jesus Lord of your life. He already is the Lord of your life. The very idea that you say think you can somehow make him the Lord of your life is indicative of the fact that you don’t recognize what the reality is.

And that somehow you think you’ve got the power to grant him permission to be Lord of your life. You don’t have the power to grant him to be permission, the permission to be the Lord of your life. He is the Lord of your life. And you will obey him, or you will pay the consequence. And you can either obey him now and accept his lordship in your life now and enjoy all the wonderful benefits that he wants you to have, or you can be hard-headed and think you’re in control, and you will pay the price. But one day you will bow to him.

Conclusion

Us better people. So let me just say to you, without apology or excuse, I acknowledge that all of this is true of my preaching. It’s not fancy, it’s not eloquent, but I’ll tell you what it’s aimed at. It’s aimed at your heart. Someone says, it’s sounded like you were preaching right at me today. I was.

Were you thinking about me when you were preaching? Yeah. Yeah, I was. I was.

I have no interest in stroking your psyche and making you feel better about who you are in your ways that aren’t right. I want to help do what’s right. I want us to do what’s right. I want to help us change who we are so that we can be the kind of people that God wants us to be. And so if you feel that something I’m saying in a sermon is aimed specifically at you, it is aimed specifically at you. I’m going to tell you that right up front. It is aimed specifically at you. If it fits, I want it to aim right at you. We’re trying to capture your heart with God’s word. And if it’s already captured, we’re trying to make sure that your heart stays captive.

And that’s why our preaching is aimed specifically at you. I’ll give you a promise that I promise people, certainly I promise this to the people in Peoria where I preach and serve them. And preaching as an elder there. I promise you that I will never preach or use the pulpit as a means of beating you up or telling you off or grinding some personal axe. I’ll do my very best not to ever do that. But I will preach sermons that are pointed, that are sharp, that cut deep, that may even hurt. I will do them in love, do it in love. I will try to be as kind as I can because I am not trying to hurt anybody. But we will say what we believe needs to be said so that we can help people with their heart.

So we can hit the heart of a person so that the person changes. I believe that’s what good preaching is about. Paul said this to Timothy, going to 2 Timothy chapter 5. No, there’s no 2 Timothy 5. 2 Timothy 4, verses 1 to 5. Paul says, I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing in the kingdom, preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine. But wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

But you be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. We’re living in times where people want their ears tickled. We’re living in a time where people want to be stroked and they want to be made feel to feel better about who they are and they want to be able to go home feeling better about who they are. And I want people to feel good about who they are. I want people to be edified and lifted up and encouraged. I’m not a negative preacher at all. I try not to be a negative preacher, at least. It’s not my objective, is to be negative. But I do want to preach things that make a difference. I want to make a difference.

I want to help that. I want to preach a message that changes people and brings them more into the kind of into the kind of characters that God wants them to be. And I want I want to do that for myself. I want to be that person myself, and I want to help other people do that. And so I don’t know what you’re expecting to have happen this week in the preaching.

And I’m so thankful for the opportunity. The elders have presented me with this opportunity, and I appreciate their confidence in me that allows me to they’ve invited me to come and ask me to be here with you. But I want to talk about things that are going to help us. I want to talk about things that are going to hopefully change us and to make us people who are better people. My prayer is that as we preach the word, holding up the mirror of God’s word to your life, that you will look into it and see yourself the way God sees you. That you will take it very personally. And that you will do whatever needs to be done in order to correct anything that is out of place.

And that you will learn to be what He wants you to be. And I believe that if we will do that and we will persevere in the preaching of the Word and listening to the Word and living by the Word and applying the Word to our lives, that we will save not only ourselves, but those who help us. And that’s what we’re interested in doing.