Jesus The Preacher

I'm glad to be back here at my home church, Bethlehem Bible Church. We had a great week. The Shepherds Conference, probably one of the highlights, was having 3 ,400 men singing, and singing a cappella, and pastors, and deacons, and elders.

It was really just a great joy to listen to the preaching of Dr. MacArthur and Mark Dever, C .J. Mahaney. We got to hear a little bit Dr. Mohler, R .C. Sproul, Ligon Duncan. It was just great. When you think of Jesus Christ, what are some of the names you use to describe him?

Master, Jesus Christ, Master. He's Christ the Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man, Savior. Can you think of others? You can say them out loud if you'd like. Wonderful, pardon me, Rose of Sharon, Prince of Peace, Mighty God, Lamb of God, Lion of the tribe of Judah.

You have more than I thought you'd have. Good for you. How about this one? I don't think we think of Jesus like this very often. Jesus, the preacher. Jesus, the preacher. For the last 11 weeks, I've been absorbed in the Sermon on the Mount, watching and observing and trying to learn about Jesus Christ and how he preached.

Maybe his most famous sermon in Matthew 5, 6, and 7 commonly called the Sermon on the Mount. And I think Jesus alone is the Prince of Preachers. He's the greatest expositor. He is the preacher. I have a question for you this morning, congregation.

Do you love preaching? Do you love preaching? Do you love long sermons? Lots of preaching, in other words? Do you love convicting sermons? Encouraging sermons? I love preaching so much I'll pay to go to a preaching conference just like some men did last week.

The old days I had to pay, you guys as a congregation paid for me to go last week, but I would pay to hear preaching. I pay to buy CDs, cassettes, reel-to-reel was before my time, but maybe some of you would.

MP3s, I have thousands of tapes that I've listened to, that I want to listen to. Mark ever preached John chapter 12 in the conference and as he was praying after the sermon I began to cry thinking, Lord there are lots of reasons I know I'm a Christian, but one of the reasons I know I'm a Christian is that I love Bible preaching.

Before I was saved, I didn't want Bible preaching. Don't preach to me, get that out of my face. Who are you to tell me anything? That's fine for your truth as long as it's not my truth, but now with the work of God in our hearts, He's turned our hearts to listen to Bible preaching and we love Bible preaching.

Sadly, like Amos 8, we live in a day that there's much famine, but not for bread or for water, but for hearing of the words of God. I love preaching, it doesn't bore me. By the way, if you don't like preaching, I'm not trying to run you out, I'd like to convince you that preaching is for you, but at the end, if you don't like preaching, this is the wrong church for you.

The words of life, of salvation, of sanctification, about Jesus Christ. I love to hear Bible preaching. I love to hear Jesus Christ proclaim the truth. Some say, well, I like the person, but I don't like what he said.

Yet it's a package deal, the proclamation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. God had one Son and He made Him a what? A preacher. Any idea what I'm going to talk about this morning? You say, well, you've just been back from the Shepherd's Conference, so you're going to talk about preaching.

Not necessarily. Nothing changed at the Shepherd's Conference in terms of a new philosophy or a new methodology or a new kind of theology, but what has been secured and what has been taken like a rivet and punched into my brain is the preeminency of proclaiming Jesus Christ, the risen Savior, from the pulpit as long as we live.

Martin Lloyd-Jones, I learned last week, the first thing he did at Westminster Chapel is he bolted the pulpit down into the center of the church so everyone would know we sing yes, we give yes, we have the Lord's table, yes, we have baptisms, yes, we pray certainly, but the proclamation of the Word of God is central and will stay central in this church.

So this morning what I'd like to do is just kind of give you one of my spleen sermons. This is kind of from the heart. We'll take a break from the Matthew exposition and I want to talk to you this morning about lessons that we can learn as a congregation from the preacher Jesus Christ.

I'll be in Newtown, Connecticut next Sunday and so I wanted to take a little detour before we get into the seventh beatitude, Blessed are the Peacemakers. And so let's look together, lessons we can learn both as a congregation and as a pastor, our elder board, and we even have preachers in the congregation, from the preaching of Jesus.

I believe when you preach, you need to preach with a verdict, right? You learn information so that you can respond properly. And so you have to answer the question when you preach. You have to ask it, so what?

And then you have to answer it. So there'll be implications for both you and for me as we see Jesus Christ the preacher. Lesson number one, Jesus Christ placed a high premium on preaching. That is to say, he ordained preaching.

For Jesus, preaching was a very high thing in his ministry, a high priority. Did you know preaching was Jesus' idea? He came up with it. Sadly, what attracts people to churches these days would be friends, family, relationships, programs, music.

There's a place in Illinois you can get a free car wash if you go. And preaching has fallen on hard times. Who wants to be preached to? I'd rather have kind of a pep talk, feel good message, kind of a dialogue.

You know, having one guy up in front, thinks he's better, kind of speaking down to the congregation, that's out of style. That's not in. Some man up in the pulpit preaching away. Yet Jesus ordained preaching.

He had his apostolic messengers say, when you're in the public assembly, you preach the word of God. Is it foolishness, as 1 Corinthians 11 says, 1 Corinthians 1, or is it the wisdom of God? In today, our chats, sharing, story time, my ministry, feel good stuff.

You know, preaching might offend, so we just better back off a little bit. We'll get them into the church with kind of the nice warm fuzzies, but then, you know, later we'll get them on a Wednesday night study.

But we can't preach to people these days. Plus, if the guy does preach, then you can just throw everything out the window with this little retort. That's your own what? Interpretation. Two weeks ago, there was a pastor's conference in California, and these were some of the titles of the conference seminars for the pastors.

This is not the shepherd's conference, by the way. Designing emergent worship gatherings that go beyond preaching and singing. Here's a good one. This is for pastors, how to minister to people. Encountering God in solitude and silence.

How to read the culture. How to lead the artists, including your worship leader in your church, because they're the most difficult. Worship leader? That's not, by the way, that's not Charlie Crane. And I am only in the position because it's a God-ordained position.

The worship leader is the pastor of the church. It's the elder board. They're the worship leaders. They preach the Bible. The seminar, no perfect people allowed. Creating a come-as-you-are culture in your church.

By the way, they interviewed these pastors on a side note. Here's what happens when you don't preach. They were asked, pastors at this convention, are you familiar with the doctrine of imputation? 33 said they were familiar.

67 said they were not familiar. What we just talked about here, where God takes our sins and counts them against Christ. God takes Christ's righteousness and counts that to our righteousness. Righteous account.

Our account to declare us righteous. But of the Bible, God says this of preaching. Romans chapter 10. It saves. How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him without having heard?

How will they hear without a what? A preacher. How will they preach unless they're sent? Just as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of great things. However, they did not all heed the good news for Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report?

So faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. On the flip side, one man said, what is the function of a clergyman in the world? Answer, he gets his living by assuring idiots that he can save them from an imaginary hell.

It's a business that is similar to snake oil salesman for rheumatism. Another man said, it's an outmoded form of communication in our postmodern age. After all, do you use medicine techniques from 2000 years ago?

When's the last time you've been to the barber to let some blood? But let's turn our Bibles to Mark chapter one and let me show you Jesus and how he had a high priority on preaching. In a sense, this is a topical message I'm talking about preaching today, but I want to show you expositionally each point so we can see the context and see the authorial intent of the passage.

Mark chapter one, Jesus, the preacher. Mark is known as the go gospel. It shows much about Jesus, certainly not less than God, but focusing on his servant heart as a man serving others, coming to seek and save those who are lost.

And Mark chapter one is one of the most amazing chapters in all the Bible to me to talk about Jesus, the preacher. And typical two out of every three verses, Mark starts with and, and he healed many who were ill with various diseases and cast out many demons and he was not permitting the demons to speak because they knew who he was.

Demons, you will not be my messengers of truth. Verse 35, very early in the morning. By the way, that's a very vivid time designation. It could be anywhere from three in the morning until six in the morning.

It was early. Two adverbs at night, very much. While it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place where he prayed. Now, if we backed up a little bit in Mark, there's been a healing ministry, a lot of commotion, certainly a lot of sick people back then.

They all want to talk to Jesus, be healed by Jesus. And Jesus gets up early. He leaves most likely the house of Peter and goes off to a solitary or a lonely uninhabited remote place. Crowds earlier, now contrasted with very quiet alone.

Busy day, he needs now refreshment with the Father, as it were, and fellowship with him. Did this very often and he prays. And what would you think you would do if you woke up in the morning, you were at the house with Jesus that night, you went to sleep, he was sleeping right over there, he heals, he can do all kinds of things, there's a crowd gathering, you wake up and Jesus isn't there.

What would you do? You go find him. That's exactly what happened, verse 36. Simon and his companions went to look for him. That doesn't really do much good for the real Greek sense. Emphatically, at the beginning, is the words hunted, are the words hunted for him.

They got up and they were hunting for him with sweat and toil, pursuing, tracking. It's kind of like my initial reaction when you're walking someplace and I kind of have two things that I look for all the time, besides my children.

As one, I put my hands here to make sure I have my keys in my front pocket. And the other one, I put my hand back here to make sure I have my wallet. And when you feel for your wallet when you're supposed to have it, there's that sense of kind of panic, I've got to go find that.

Once I lost Luke at Riverside Water Park, I think it's Six Flags now, could not find the young man. I was off dumping buckets of water on some other unsuspecting four-year-old kid and lost my kid. Just that feeling.

Jesus was in our house, we wake up in the morning, he's gone. They went out to hunt for him and track him. Same words where Christ's enemies were seeking to destroy him. Verse 37, And when they found him, they exclaimed, Everyone's looking for you.

Everyone's looking for you. You think that's what they did? We don't have any kind of intonation here, but I don't think this was blandly said. I think this was with disdain and with emotion and with exasperation.

Hands on hips type of thing saying, Everyone is looking for you. Everyone's looking for you. What are you doing? A la Peter rebuking Jesus. Surely you're not going to do that, Jesus. People at the door, they're coming back.

Everyone's looking for you. All the people of Capernaum, present tense, they keep looking for you over and over and over. What are we going to tell them? There's only so long we can do the song and dance routine, Jesus.

Everyone's looking for Jesus. Those that had demons in their children, they wanted them cast out. Others who had heard the news, they're all converging for a healing service. Everyone needs to be healed.

Everyone needs to have their children, have demons cast out of them. And what does Jesus do? One of the most amazing verses in all the Bible, verse 38, Jesus replied, Let us go somewhere else to nearby villages, so I can preach there also.

That is why I have come. It's shocking, isn't it? Healing. Demons cast out. And Jesus, with amazement to me, it's astonishing, it's stupefying even. Everyone's looking for you. Well, I'm going to go. And by the way, the tense is, this is not going to be a night trip.

This will be a protracted, extended preaching trip that I'm going on. Why would He do that? Well, lots of reasons, but do you know you can be healed from any disease and still die and go straight to perdition?

Jesus is here to preach about how to have sins forgiven. And He has the message, Repent. This is about souls. This is not necessarily about healing. Certainly, Jesus was kind and loving, so He would do that.

But God's justice demands payment, demands punishment. And so either you will be punished, people, or there will be one to look, the Messiah of which I am, that I will bear your punishment. It's amazing.

He said in a parallel passage, Luke 4, 43, He said to them, I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose. If you love Jesus, you love it that Jesus was a preacher.

I loved Dick Lucas when he insightfully said, How to ruin your ministry. One, get the power to heal all sickness. Two, get a large crowd of sick people. Three, turn away and tell them you're going on a preaching trip.

Jesus knew the priority of the word of God and the proclaimed truth. Miracles certainly have a place, but if you have a healing ministry and you don't have the proclamation of the word of God, your healing ministry isn't biblical.

The love of God for sinners is the message. Mark 1 earlier had said in verse 14, After John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of God. Jesus is a preacher. So what happened, verse 39 in Mark 1, so he traveled throughout Galilee preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.

Luke 4, verse 44, it said, Jesus did this with persistence and thoroughness. He kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea. Well, what's the so what question? Let's do this. Jesus loves preaching. There's a so what for me and there's a so what for you.

The so what for me, the preacher is, I'm going to preach. We're going to preach from this pulpit. It is, as G. Campbell Morgan said, the supreme work of the Christian minister. I cannot imagine standing before God one day and having him examine my ministry and said, You know what?

I didn't think the preached word was that good. I didn't think it was really that big of a deal. And so I just kind of told them what I thought I should tell them. It's like if you have a dog and you can't control your dog.

You don't want the dog to bite somebody else or bite you or bite another animal. You just put that muzzle right on top and strap one strap here and strap one back here and that dog can't bite. People jam towels in other people's mouths so they can't talk prisoners.

Preachers need to preach. God has spoken. God has spoken with authority. And God says you can't offer anything else, so preach the word. Remember what Jesus said to Peter at the very end after he had been raised from the dead?

You know I love you, Lord. Okay, do you love me? Then I've got a job for you. And what is that? Feed my sheep. I want to be like John Bunyan. They said, you know, you can come out of jail anytime you want.

Just don't preach anymore. If you let me out of prison today, I will preach again tomorrow by the grace of God. Well, back to prison then, Bunyan said. I will go back and stay there if need be till moss grows on my eyelids, but I will never deny my Master.

Preachers need to preach. What about congregations? If Jesus is a preacher and he puts a high premium on preaching, how should you respond? I think, number one, you should respond by saying, this is relevant.

This is good for me. This is not some kind of old, antiquated, culturally not up to speed, kind of an Amish Mennonite deal where I don't need to hear preaching. It's 2 ,000 years old, you know. It's not relevant anymore.

Is the eternal Word of God relevant? Is sin relevant? Forgiveness of sin is relevant? Hell and heaven, are they relevant? The holiness of God, is that still relevant? How to be right with God? Psalm 19 says, the fear of the Lord is clean.

The Word of God is clean. It endures forever. It is eternally relevant, the Word of God. God has something to say in every area of our life. The Word is sufficient. When you're hurting, Psalm 119 .25, my soul cleaves to the dust.

Revive me according to thy Word. When you're heartbroken, Psalm 119 .28, my soul weeps because of grief. Strengthen me according to thy Word. When you need comfort, Psalm 119 .76, O may thy loving kindness comfort me according to thy Word, to thy servant.

When you're afflicted, the Word is sufficient. Psalm 119 .107, I am exceedingly afflicted. Revive me, O Lord, according to thy Word. The fallacy of giving the congregation some band-aid, may you never accept that.

How about you when you evangelize? When you evangelize, what should you be saying? You should be saying, the Word of God says, the Bible says, and you should be preaching and proclaiming the Word. I've told you this many times, Barnhouse said, if Satan were really to take over a city, the following would happen.

The bars would close, no alcohol would be sold, there would be happy marriages and well-behaved children. No crime, and everyone would be in churches on Sunday where Christ is not preached. If we ever stop preaching at this church, I implore you, I command you, I beg you, you kick us all out.

You say, well, it's elder rule, then you vote with your feet then. You rise up, throw the bums out and get somebody else in here who will preach. Jesus placed a high premium on preaching. Do you? Secondly, Jesus, the preacher, preached God-centered messages.

High premium on preaching, number two, he preached God-centered messages. High view of God, and that meant what? Low view of man. I found some actual sermon titles this week. Low view of God sermons.

What would Jesus say to Madonna? How could I make that up? How can I feel better about myself? How can I get more time for myself? How can I be a better parent? I am caught in an adult children of alcoholics ACOA pattern.

How can I like my job? How can I handle my money? How can I have a happier marriage? That will pack a church, except it's not really a church. Strikingly, Warren Wearsby said this, listen, when worship becomes pragmatic, it ceases to be worship.

Did you get that? When worship becomes pragmatic, it ceases to be worship. Worship is not God, we're here to extol your praises, and by the way, I need to figure out all these things on how I need to do them.

Oh, God tells us that's for certain, but he tells us in his own way. The sermons that Mike Horton calls, how to get up when life's got you down. Very, very low view of God. Have a very low view of God.

Last March, Ladies Home Journal, Rick Warren's column says, learn to love yourself. Quote, self-esteem still wobbly after all these years. These are five simple truths we'll show you that you don't need to be perfect to be priceless.

Five points, accept yourself, love yourself, be true to yourself, forgive yourself, believe in yourself. You know what you call that? As we even observe with our own eyes, as he preached last Sunday, we call that man-centered blasphemy.

That's blasphemous. To preach who men are, to exalt them to that kind of place, he denies sin, he denies the substitutionary atonement, and he ends with this, you can believe what others say about you, or you can believe in yourself as God does, who says you're truly acceptable, lovable, valuable, and capable.

A little different than this, and as he was saying to them all, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, Luke 9. Take up his cross daily and follow me, for whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake, he is the one who will save it.

For what does a man profit if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

That will clear out a crowd. Turn with me, if you would, to John 4, and I want to show you that Jesus, when he preached, he had a high view of God, he talked about God the Father's will, God the Father's glory, God the Father's work, God the Father's purposes.

It was all about the Father, and secondarily, it was the souls of the people. Certainly, he talks about trials that we're in, and our own need of salvation, but it's all through the lens of the glory of God and how great God is.

He preaches a high view, that is to say, of God. His focus is on God. And we're just going to take a survey through John, so we'll look at several chapters. God-centered survey in the Gospel of John as Jesus, the incarnate preacher, preaches.

John 4, 34. Jesus said to them, My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. It's all about God. Chapter 5, please, verse 19 and following. Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to him, Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son of Man can do nothing of himself unless it is something he sees the Father doing.

For whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing. And the Father will show Him greater works than these so that you will marvel.

Just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes. For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father.

The Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. See where the focus is? It's on the Father, on God. He keeps going. Look at John 6, verse 39. For this is the will of Him who sent me, that of all that He has given me, I lose nothing but raise it up on the last day.

John 6, 40. For this is the will of my Father that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life and I myself will raise Him up on the last day. It is all about the glory of God.

Why do we eat? Why do we drink? Why do we preach? Why do we listen to preaching? For the glory of God. It's about God. It's not about us. And when you flip it around, you've got a problem. Think about a telescope, kind of like one of those, I wish I knew what you called them, a long telescope that captains on the ship used to look and they would try to see if there were any pirates on the horizon and they would look at those things.

And here we have God-centered preaching where you have the eyepiece next to your eye and you have the expansion of things that are far away and you see them the way they should be seen, great and high and exalted and honorable.

And then you take that with the man-centered ministry and you flip it around where the audience should be small and God great. And now you've got the big lens right here. You see a small little kind of children's God and the only thing you really see is if you look far, you see small, but if you look close, you see a reflection of what?

Your own big eye. It's a spyglass. Okay. When you listen to Jesus preach, it was all about God. It was all about the glory of God. That's what we want to do. Did you notice the songs we sang today? I'm so great and I'm so lovely.

Skip to the loo, my darling. All this kind of stuff. No, I want to see God. Frankly, I haven't loved God this week very well. I haven't honored Him. I haven't loved Him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.

So when I come to church to worship with you, the saints, I want to talk about a God and sing about a God and listen to a God and preach about a God who's high and who's great and who forgives. I've already contemplated on my own navel too much this week.

It's time to look out. It's time to look up. And all our life throughout the week, we just kind of start off on Sunday looking up and then kind of down, down, down, down, down before you know it, it's the navel experience.

And then I want to come to Sunday and say, I want to see God high and lifted up. That's how Jesus preached. But, you know, people want to hear about themselves and that's why you'll kill a church if you want to talk about God and how great He is all the time.

But I thank God that there are a couple hundred people in Massachusetts that want to hear God. I want to hear what God said. I want to have an exalted view of God. And that is the work of God, by the way, in your hearts because we wouldn't normally do that.

Why are we different than the people down the street or over the hill or someplace else? Because God has opened our mind to realize, yes, we want to hear the Bible. It hurts, yes, at times. It convicts, it rebukes, it reproves.

But that is all with the Father's love and God loves me enough to make me like His Son. And He makes me like His Son by the preaching and the proclamation of the Word of God. I could read John 8, John 10, John 12, John 13, John 17.

It's all about God. Forget hiring preachers who are dynamic leaders, who are team builders, who are problem solvers, who are administrators, who are entertainers, who are coaches. These are all things that I've learned that people try to hire their pastor because they want him to do such and such.

We want pastors, one guy said, who are innovative, progressive, change-initiating, team leader, builder, someone who can relate well to fast trackers, approachable, catalytic. Man, I would be fired yesterday.

Only reason you keep me around, and rightfully so, because I'm going to proclaim the truth. I hope you say, well, you know, he's just kind of a regular guy and not too impressive, and why is he here? But at least by the grace of God, when he preaches in that bolted-down pulpit, he's going to preach the Word of God.

Degrees in music and business and audiovisual, leading worship through drama and dance. When I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or wisdom, proclaiming you the testimony of God, for I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him, what?

Crucified. The person of Christ and the work of Christ. Raised certainly, but the work of Christ, epitomized by the death of Christ. Paul knew it, 2 Corinthians 4. We preach not ourselves, but Christ.

If the preacher preaches Christ, shouldn't then the preacher not do this? We preach about you, so you can feel good. No, we preach about Christ, and we preach about how He forgives and how He sustains and how He governs and how He will be exalted.

Implications for me to preach the Word? Implications for you? Please, beloved, come to this church saying, I'm coming here in worship today to give to God. It's not about how I feel or what I expect, because we're gonna give you God.

You know, on a side note, it amazes me, someone will come in, and they've gone through a horrible trial in their life, and I know what the sermon's about. And I know that sermon is not gonna have anything to do with their trial, and I would love to give them a trial about God comforts you, He's the God of all comfort, and Isaiah chapter 40, or 1 Peter chapter 5, and how He comes alongside of you.

And those people who struggle will come up after the sermon and say, that word ministered to me today. How could they do that? Because it's the Spirit of God working through the Word of God to say, yes, I got to see Christ high and lifted up, and that's what I needed today.

I didn't need to know four easy steps to get rid of my trials, because frankly, if you get rid of those, more are coming. It's worshiping God and trusting in Him, even though everything's not right. Just waiting for the next hammer to fall.

God, make me faithful when that hammer falls. Jesus placed, number one, a high premium on preaching. Number two, Jesus preached God-centered messages. Thirdly, the third lesson from Jesus the preacher is that Jesus the preacher preached His message from God.

He preached only the words from God. He preached the mind of God, as it were. If you'll turn your Bibles to Matthew chapter 4, let me give you a little survey, that Jesus, of course, it's a little different for Jesus, because everything He spoke was the Word, and we're going to get to, we need to be proclaimers of the Word and listeners of the Word.

But Jesus often, even though He could just speak the Word, He quoted what? The Old Testament, and affirmed that very book. Often, 22 times in the New American Standard 95, these three words are found when Jesus was preaching.

It is, what? Written. Very interesting, the Greek students will tell you. It means it is written, and it stands written forever and ever and ever. The words were uttered, and in a perfect tense, it just continues throughout all eternity.

It stands written. A sampling from Matthew's Gospel to show you that Jesus preached the mind of God, and often the Old Testament. Matthew 4, 4. But He answered and said, It is written. As He is rebuking Satan, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

Verse 7. Jesus said to him, On the other hand, it is written. You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Verse 10. Then Jesus said to him, Go, Satan, for it is written. You shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.

Let's jump ahead a few chapters. Matthew 11, verse 10. Matthew 11, 10, where we see again that Jesus came preaching certainly the mind of God because He was God, but just trying to incorporate this idea that Jesus often preached the Bible.

And certainly, we do not have the mind of God in terms of we are God. We only have the mind of God as it's revealed to us. So preacher, preach it. Congregation, demand it. 11, 10. This is the one about whom it is written.

Speaking on the Baptist. Behold, I send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way before you. You don't have to turn there, but Matthew 21, 13. It is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer.