Growing in the Grace of God #17 - More Characteristics of New Covenant Living Part 1 — Bob Hoekstra

Thank you for your grace. Grace that forgives, grace that sustains, grace that transforms, grace that equips, grace that matures, grace that teaches, grace that shapes us and molds us, grace that brings forth abundant good works and fruit even like Jesus Christ.

We thank you for that grace, Lord. What can we say before it? Let all glory be to your name. We want to be those who live by that grace, walking humbly and dependently. And we lift up tonight, Lord, on our hearts are your servants, undershepherds, pastor-teachers throughout the Calvary chapels, especially these three brothers on my own heart heavy tonight.

But, Lord, you have no favorites. You're pastors throughout the body of Christ, near and far, denominational, independent, interdenominational. All those who really know you, those who are not hirelings, those who are not satisfied to make a way by the flesh, but those who want to know and serve the true and living God and do it in spirit and in truth, anchored in the Word, centered in Christ.

Lord, pour out your Spirit upon them these days. Encourage them, protect them, give them wisdom and spiritual courage and keep them true to you and your Word, Lord, we pray. And drive the enemy back with his taunts and lies and distractions and his strategic attacks.

Just let them be strong in you and the strength of your might. Make them strong in the grace that is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Use us, Lord, to encourage one another and especially use us to encourage those who are sacrificing greatly and stand right in the middle of the target.

And Lord, build us up tonight in these matters of growing in the grace of God. Show us what it is to be true new covenant servants of grace, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Study number nine, more characteristics of new covenant life and service.

New Covenant Life and Service

Remember, the new covenant is simply put, God's arrangement to live with Him by grace. Birth by grace, growing by grace, impacted by grace and becoming vessels of grace. That's what the new covenant is about.

Remember, by context, 2 Corinthians 3 .6. 2 Corinthians 3 .6, speaking of God who also made us sufficient as ministers, that is servants of the new covenant. Now we're talking about more characteristics of new covenant life and service.

This part of the course, coming to our ninth study of twelve, we're going verse by verse through the early heart of 2 Corinthians, which is all about the new covenant. Walking in the new covenant, living according to the new covenant, God then marks our lives with these characteristics.

We've looked at some of these characteristics before. Characteristics of being led in triumph, being a fragrance of Christ, having godly sincerity, becoming living epistles of Christ. Who wouldn't want that to mark their lives?

That's the will of God and things we hunger for. The sad thing is, so often we think we have to produce all of those things. It's almost a flabbergasting thought to the natural mind that God will develop those things in us if we but relate to Him the way He's called us to walk with Him.

Of course, the heart of that we've looked at in the last few weeks. Verse 5, not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God. Anyone who will walk that way with God, letting His sufficiency change us, admitting we don't have a sufficiency for life on our own, God will mark us with these characteristics.

The Ministry of Mercy

Well, that's grace abounding right there. Here are some of the things tonight God wants to mark our lives with. Let us see, embrace, depend on, understand, count on, and walk in. Second Corinthians 4, 1 -6 is about a ministry of mercy.

God wants to mark us by this ministry of mercy. God wants to mark us as those who minister by the mercy of God. Anyone who knows the Lord, to some degree or another, depending on their growing, yielding to His will and not the will of the flesh, has a desire to reach people.

But often when you try to reach people, don't you notice they seem to be blind? That can be discouraging. It can even lead to a desperation. You know, try anything that works. So what are we to be in this process?

What are we to say and what are we to do? These six verses speak of those things. Verse 1 is about our ministry, our ministry. We have a ministry of mercy. Second Corinthians 4, 1,. Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart.

This ministry, new covenant servanthood, ministering unto God under the arrangements of the new covenant, God's new arrangement for living, living by grace instead of by law, by God's provision instead of regulations that we're trying to live up to by our own performance.

This ministry, this kind of ministry is a mercy ministry. We have received mercy. God's mercy, His help for the helpless, both keeping them from getting what they deserve and then it flows right on, God's mercy flows into His grace, His adequacy, giving us then what we don't deserve.

Chapter 4, verse 15,. For all things are for your sakes that grace, having spread through the many, may cause thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God. That's what this ministry of mercy is all about.

Serving God, seeing all things that He's providing and doing for the sakes of those we're trying to reach in His name to this end, that grace will impact and spread and then grace having spread through the many may cause thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God.

Nothing stirs thanksgiving, praise and glory to God like the grace of God at work. And that's the ministry we've received. Since we have this ministry, new covenant ministry, what's that about? As we have received mercy, we do not lose heart.

Confidence in God Rather Than Self

Chapter 3, verse 4,. We have such confidence through Christ toward God. We don't lose heart. We find a confidence, not a self-confidence. Probably the greatest intruder in the American church to confidence in God is this passion that our culture and the flesh has for self-confidence.

It seems like from toddlerhood we want to raise our kids with self-confidence. And self-confidence is rewarded in school and sports and education and business and government, all the while either ignoring or quenching the spirit thereby.

We're to be those who have no confidence in themselves, blessed are the poor in spirit. You don't see that over the resume at the corporations, you know. Any poor in spirit out there, oh no, we're great, look at our resume, you know.

And in fact I'll interpret it for you, it's even better than it looks, you know. Gets in the way, it's a false confidence. Self will always let self down, though self will fight hard for self. We do not lose heart though having this kind of ministry.

I don't know if I told you this, but maybe I did. I remember sharing it somewhere recently, here or there or elsewhere. Years ago an older brother in the faith with many years of ministry said to a group of young pastors, I was sitting there, said, do you know what is the number one destroyer of ministry in the Christian church?

You know, most minds hear that and running off to power, money, ethics, sexual offense, you know. Yeah, those are always a grave danger. But the moment he said this, and it was not like any of the others, the moment he said it, just like zap, Lord, you've shown that brother something.

He said the number one threat to ministry in the Christian church is discouragement. Discouragement. He said he'd seen more pastors and servants fall from discouragement than anything else even close.

And that really makes sense. When you read the scriptures, you come up with things like this, and you realize God wants to encourage us. He doesn't want us to lose heart. He knows we are prone to losing heart.

Discouragement. You know what that is? It's often a sign of self-dependence. Because self isn't faithful, isn't reliable, isn't sufficient. Trust in self, discouragement is guaranteed sooner or later.

Trust in the Lord, he's always faithful. And he shows his faithfulness even the greatest when we're tending toward discouragement. The Lord's had me in ministry now 29 years. There have been many things the enemy's tried to launch or hold up, you know, or like this, that have been a threat along the way.

But nothing has been as relentless in trying to sneak back in as discouragement. But praise God, the more I have seen what the new covenant of grace is about, and I think I told you my eyes were beginning to be opened by God in the early 1970s, I've noticed the less impact discouragement has.

Instead of leading you to hopeless despair, it drives you to the Lord. And it kind of backfires on the enemy. It's like, no, that's not what I wanted you to do. I wanted you to give up, not fall on him.

Well, as you feel about to give up, just fall on the Lord. Just lean on him. Since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart. The more we see the ministry we're called to as a mercy ministry that leads to grace, grace that we offer, grace that we abound in, we do not lose heart.

We just keep pressing on. And sometimes it makes no sense to anybody but God because He knows He is our strength. So this is our ministry. It's a ministry of mercy. What is our methodology in this ministry?

Rejecting Craftiness and Deceit

Verse 2. But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.

Our methodology given here in this verse, in this ministry of mercy, has a negative and a positive. Oh, I think God wants us to see that negative and positive are neither innately good or bad in themselves.

They're negative and positive truths, they're negative and positive lies. Oh, this is one of the enormous distractions in the American culture. We're so positivistic. If it sounds good, it must be great.

If it sounds good, it must be bad. What a trick. In this verse, our methodology is put both in the negative and positive. Not this, but that. And we need them both. They're both the truth. They're both for our good.

The negative side, we have renounced, this is what we say no to, the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully. We have renounced the hidden things of shame.

Things that need to be masked, veiled, and hidden. Because they're shameful. New Covenant servants refuse dishonorable techniques and motives that would want their true character covered over. For example, craftiness.

We are those in the New Covenant who are not walking in craftiness. This word crafty talks about, oh, you could use sort of vernacular today. Tricky, sneaky. The root of the word has to do with sort of a ready to try anything to gain the goal.

It's kind of the end justifies the means. Hey, the end's great, it doesn't matter how you get there. Oh, no. God's just as interested in the means as He is the ends. And His ends, He is well able to reach by His means.

He doesn't need our Jacob, heel-grabbing, supplanting, scheming ingenuity. We renounce craftiness. We don't walk in craftiness. Tricky, sneaky, anything to get you in. You know, in Texas you hear crazy stories.

I think I told you I pastored 14 years in Texas before I came to Calvary Chapel, Irvine for 11 years. Well, in Texas it was routine. Big churches, you've got to build that Sunday school. That's the heart, that's the key.

You've got to build that Sunday school. That's how you get the kids here. You get the kids here. That's how you get the parents here. You get the parents here. That's how you get the thing going. Really thought through.

And since that's the thing, you do whatever it takes. If a side of beef offered to the leader of the largest Sunday school department motivates him, nothing wrong with that. Hey, look, 50 bigger than last year.

Give them two sides of beef. And if it helps to really jolt the one who did the least in getting the kids in and getting the buses filled and all, you bring them up in front of the congregation and you cut off their tie in front of everyone.

Everyone kind of has a roar at the Sunday school lunch. Now, if you've only grown up in Calvary Chapel, you must think I've gone into science fiction here. People do things like that in churches? Oh, yeah.

That's more kind of what I've shared is more kind of playful carnality. I don't condone it. I think it's of the flesh, but it's not near as deadly as a whole lot of other methodologies and motivational techniques.

The American church is not yet in these days, more so in generations past, but in these days, not characterized certainly by and sometimes in revival days, we've had a characterization of a lot of New Covenant ministry in America.

Certainly not that today. Ministry in America is not built on God's sufficiency generally, but what? Man's sufficiency. Surveys of populations and how do you get them to do what you think they ought to do or what you want them to do?

And New Covenant service just renounce all that stuff. Now we are to be wise, wise as serpents, but we're to be harmless as doves. This stuff is harmful. You can't build a spiritual kingdom on carnal motivation.

It's harmful. Yeah, but look at all the people it gets involved in what? Perpetuating carnality? That which is born of the flesh is flesh. You can't kind of hitchhike spiritual fruit off of it. It's in the way.

It's a problem. It's not an aid. So we don't walk in craftiness, nor do we handle the Word of God deceitfully. Well, that's an amazing thought to think that people do handle the Word of God deceitfully.

That is literally adulterating the Word, corrupting it, tampering with it, making it fit preferences and prejudices, making it fit politics and economic systems and color preferences and denominations and nationalities and all that sort of stuff.

It's bad. New Covenant servants denounce that. Now, obviously, some political things, some economic things and other are more in line with the Word or less in line with the Word. That's fine. But many in any group that have sort of a religious bent or see an advantage there will take the Word and try to, you know, put their group in good light instead of saying, Lord, here's our group.

Put yourself in good light, you know. It gets all twisted around. It really comes down pretty much this handling the Word of God deceitfully, preaching what people love to hear instead of what God wants to say.

New Covenant servants renounce that. We say no to that. But on the other hand, it's not just about what we don't do. What do we do? Second half of the verse, but by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves in every man's conscience in the sight of God.

Boy, what a powerful, simple, right kind of methodology there. By the way, God knows we need both. Warnings of what to stay away from, as well as exhortations, pictures, instructions of what to get into.

This one verse does both. Not that, but this. We don't do that. We do this. Manifestation of truth. That's what we want to be involved in. That is a clear, open display of truth, of God's reality. Depending on the power of God's truth, not on the ingenuity of man's tricks.

That's what New Covenant servants do. We believe there's power in the truth of the Word of God. We just let God speak, and we stand on that truth, and we ask God to change us by that truth. It's part of our sufficiency.

His truth impacting us, and that truth passed on to impact others. All this other approach is the sufficiency of man. And that's all about laws and rules and regulations. What man thinks he can do to impress God.

Old Covenant servanthood. And then we are commending ourselves to every man's conscience. Commending ourselves. New Covenant servants don't just have a message that they commend to people. Their lives are to become a commendable vessel.

We are very concerned about the truth as servants of the New Covenant. We serve a God of truth. His truth has His power in it. We're concerned about truth. We want to rightly divide the truth. We don't want to be casual or careless with the truth.

But God is more involved. He wants us to be, as it were, an embodiment of that truth. Not just talking about truth, but walking in truth. But by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves. As committed to the truth, and as vessels of the truth.

We become vessels of the message we share. And as the truth, God's reality, is manifested both through us and in us. There's an appeal there. There's a spiritual reality that reaches out and grabs people.

Appealing to the Conscience

It appeals to their conscience. Their conscience. Commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. God is watching all of this process. This is happening before God. We're serving before Him, and He's looking at the lives we're reaching out to.

And He wants to touch their conscience through us. Not just their minds, but their conscience. If we just want to touch their minds, we come up with systems, concepts, procedures, systematic theologies.

I like what Warren Wiersbe said today on theology. He said, systematic theology, that's okay, that's good, I like that. He says, biblical theology, oh, I like that better. It's not just systems. It's what the whole Word of God has to say to man.

And we're also not appealing to their lusts. Do you know there are many churches that build a ministry appealing to the lusts of humanity? It kind of comes out this way. Message is about how you can use God to get what you want.

Instead of how to let God use you to get what He wants. I believe TBN is a valid suggestion here, yes. I wasn't thinking of anyone in particular, but... If you want to raise an illustration, I would say...

Yes, yeah, that's it. Jesus would have had a Rolls Royce, you should have one. If you don't, you can't be Christ-like, you must be doing it wrong. Oh, what a perversion of the message. What a perversion of the message.

I'm almost tempted to get off on this. This TBN network. Suffice it to say, it's the largest religious broadcasting system that has ever visited the family of man. It goes around the world. And though some involved may know the Lord and may want to serve the Lord, and sometimes you might find some truth there.

Fine. But it is a heartbreaking perversion, really, of the message and what ministry is all about. It appeals to the lust of the flesh. To the lust of the eyes. To the boastful pride of life. Yes, brother, you pushed my button.

Too bad it's the fraudulent ones that get all the airtime. Yes, yes. It is too bad the fraudulent ones get the most airtime. It's amazing, though. It seems like God, from the beginning, has dealt with the remnant.

And praise God, I'd rather be God's almost hidden remnant than to be among those who had access to all the power structures of the whole communication network of the world. But one heart at a time, life at a time, church at a time, God can move.

And praise God He does. But let that be a reminder to us. I like to pray now and then for all those guys on there, that if they are apostate wolves, that they will be smitten, stricken, and silenced. And if they're true children of God that are off on a flesh trip, we're just confused.

We all get it distorted sometimes. That God will just miraculously rescue them. I don't know the full story yet on Jim Baker, but my dad was talking to him recently at a prison conference where they were both speaking.

And he said the early evidence is that that man who was a major perpetrator of all that fraud is being totally remade into a humble vessel who renounces all of that now. That's kind of encouraging, you know.

I'd love to see just a whole great revival of that sort of thing. Wouldn't that be fantastic? Revival hit TBN. I don't mean holy laughter, barking, and all that, and growling. I mean real revival. Wouldn't that not be something?

Wow. Well, God can do it. It's good to ask Him. So we're not to appeal to the lusts of people's flesh in ministry. And we're not to appeal to their pride. Appealing to their self-sufficiency. Hey, we're southern... whatever.

Southern interdenominationalists. You know, we're the best. We're God's favorite people. You can plug any denomination that's tempted to say that. Calvary Chapel is going to be tempted to do that. God's done such a mighty work in the Calvary Chapel.

We can get that crazy idea that we've got some kind of monopoly on God. Or, boy, He is sure blessed to have us around. Does anything ever happen outside? Listen, God's kingdom is far bigger than us. I praise God for the Calvary Chapel.

I don't, for a second, minimize the wonderful work He's done. But we also have our needs and problems. And, second, we're not the only place God's working. But there's something about the flesh, even religiously.

It wants to take pride in who it is and what it's accomplished. And now it's so much better than everyone else. And that's an appeal to self-sufficiency. It undermines true ministry. We're appealing to people's conscience.

A sense of righteousness and unrighteousness. A correctness, a wrongness. A conviction that just draws them to reality. And stirs their heart to flee from the fraudulent and the phony and the pampering and the self-serving.

The conscience. Perhaps you could speak of it as the image of God imprint. Where man has this sense of ought, or should, or even could. You know, what could be. Major damage and unfulfilled in man since the fall.

Except, through Christ coming in. Colossians 3 says, we're recreated in the image of God in Christ. And that conscience that says, this is wrong and this is right. Finds a resurrection and a fulfillment and answers to all that.

Forgiveness for the wrong and righteousness in Christ for the right. And sufficiency from the Spirit to walk in that rightness. That's what we're appealing to, the conscience of man. Sin and self and rebellion.

Leaving spiritual deadness and emptiness and frustration in lives. We're appealing to that. There is life where you're struggling in death. There is fullness where you're just in emptiness of life. There is forgiveness where you're under such a sense of condemnation.

There is love where you feel so alienated from everybody. I mean, that's what we're appealing to. The conscience of man. Not their lust, not their pride, not their feelings, not their mind only. God can touch all those areas.

And He wants to move through all those areas. But we're appealing deep down into the heart of man to his conscience. So we speak and we want to live and reveal all the hope that is in Christ. Appealing to their conscience.

The Spiritual Blindness of Those Who Are Perishing

And then, our ministry, our methodology. Next, our target, our listeners. Or you might say, those looking on as we minister to them. Verses 3 and 4a. But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.

Whose minds the God of this age has blinded who do not believe. Those are the ones we're trying to reach. Mankind. Humanity. They're looking on at us and what we're offering. But Satan is blinding them.

It's part of the spiritual warfare. Haven't you shared with someone before? You know, it's like... And then, our ministry, our methodology. Next, our target, our listeners. Or you might say, those looking on as we minister to them.

Verses 3 and 4a. But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. Whose minds the God of this age has blinded who do not believe. Those are the ones we're trying to reach. Mankind.

Humanity. They're looking on at us and what we're offering. But Satan is blinding them. It's part of the spiritual warfare. Haven't you shared with someone before? You know, it's like print right up in front of their nose.

Can't you see this? No. No. Remember when you were like that? People were trying to explain it to you. They go back. Don't you see what I'm trying to get at? No. It's blindness. Spiritual blindness. And the enemy is blinding by encouraging people to trust in man.

Or false gods. Or superstitious hopes and, you know, New Age philosophy. In this day and age, one of the great blinding instruments of the enemy is psychological theory. This is how you make lives whole.

You understand man by these great geniuses. Geniuses who were dead and blind. Mega thinkers when compared to many of us. But they were dead and blind. And they're explaining what's inside a man and how to adjust it and make it whole.

The world's excited about it still. The church has gone on a feeding frenzy almost to integrate psychological theory into the church. I played along with that early on. It's so subtle. It's so pervasive.

If you don't look for it and pray to be warned and be an earnest contender for the faith against it, it just slides in like, you know, smog in a city. It just permeates everywhere.

Jonathan? Do you think that the church is actually a little more excited about it than the world? I believe they are.

I believe the world, which has fed on it for decades now, maybe to some degree five, six, seven, eight decades as it began to be put forth as theory. And then for the last three decades, probably the church has just been, hey, bring that our way, you know.

And now the world is kind of facing a lot of the bankruptcy of it, you know. And they're groping around for other substitutes. And the church is often still defending it. Yeah, a little bit of denial.

I know most of the times when I am teaching and traveling, which is almost every weekend, this issue comes up in one way or another in questions or in the very things the pastor wants me to teach. And it seems like some of the saints are greatly offended that anyone would suggest that that which blind, dead heathens speculate and imagined could not help build the kingdom of heaven, you know.

And I think you're touching it. But you know what that is too? It seems that two things. It's a tip off on our lack of attention to the word and the appetite of our flesh, you know. Those theories are very satisfying to the flesh, very.

Proclaiming the Gospel of the Glory of Christ

So, the enemy is trying to blind people and he has many tactics to do it. So what is our message to these blind folks that we were once? Whose minds, verse 4, the God of this age is blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.

For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus' sake. Our message is the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. Fits perfect too. Light drives out darkness.

The world is blind and in darkness. They cannot see the light. So we keep offering the light and in a minute we'll see what we're praying, hoping, anticipating will happen. Into that dark world we shine out the light.

How are they going to see their way out of the darkness without the light? And it's the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. The splendor of Christ, the majesty, the wonder, the person, the work, the adequacy, the sufficient one, able to save, able to transform.

I was reading this verse many, many years ago and a question pounded on my heart that day. Like God was asking me a question that kept forming in my mind. It was something like this. Bob, is there much glory in your gospel?

See, our message is the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. And I got to thinking on that and I kind of realized, you know, the gospel I shared, though it wasn't erroneous, it wasn't glorious.

It was good news. There's a way to miss hell and make heaven. Nothing wrong with that. But that isn't yet getting at the glory of Christ. The gospel is the good news. The good news is all about Christ and our message here is called the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.

The more our gospel shines forth the glorious realities of Jesus Christ, who he is, what he has done, what he offers, that light is magnified, penetrating out into that darkness. Is our good news about Jesus or just the good news that you can escape hell?

The reason we can escape hell is because of who he is and what he did. So it is all tied together, but you can end up just, you know, do you want to go to heaven or hell? Well, that's not bad, but there's more.

The fact that we can go to heaven instead of hell is all about Jesus Christ. You know, it isn't, here's heaven, here's hell, you're going the wrong place, say this prayer with me. You know. Now, I'm not saying God can't work through that.

Again, God's not a Pharisee, you know. Nope, I see they're desperate for my mercy and grace, but I'm sorry. You didn't quite say it right, you know. God isn't like that. But this is what he wants to get out.

The light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. And since those days when I've shared with those who didn't know the Lord, I've concentrated more on Jesus and less on the consequences of what he has spared us from and brought us to.

Because you take Jesus out of it all, there's nothing left anyway, you know. All those other things that sometimes we concentrate on, they are consequences of the fact that Christ, the Son of God, the everlasting one, came and died on our behalf.

And he himself paid the price, rose victorious over sin and death to give us victory over sin and death for time and eternity. And this one, this Lord and Savior, now comes to live in us. And day by day be our hope of glory, not just one will someday meet in glory.

Today can put a flavor of heaven in our lives and take us even out of the hell on earth to a foretaste of the powers of the age to come. And it's all about the glory of Christ. And so we're declaring that, we're sharing that, and we don't preach ourselves.

We preach Christ Jesus as Lord. As master, as king, he's ruler over sin and death, able to give life eternal. This isn't lordship salvation. That is, you've got to show that he's lord over every issue.

There's no way you can be saved. What's that in your pocket there? I see a pack of cigarettes, no way you're saved. You're not making Christ the lord of those cigarettes, you know? It's not about cigarettes or no cigarettes.

I'm sure God wants to free everyone from that slow physical death. It's about do you believe or don't you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? Because he's lord of all, and if he's your savior, he can free you from those cigarettes.

But your salvation doesn't hinge on whether you're proven he's lord over your cigarettes, you know? That's getting the whole thing confused, you're back under the law. But see, we preach Christ Jesus as Lord.

We don't preach ourselves. We preach him, what, as Lord. It is sad that some people that really seem to know the Lord, only know him in at least their vocabulary and all, and even their testimony sometimes, as savior.

And then they kind of wake up, you know, and it's not that they had no honor of him as master at all, but they kind of all of a sudden realize he's to be in charge of everything. Why let that wait 15 years down the road, you know?

We need to preach him for who he is. He's the Lord, and because he's the Lord, he's able to be an effective savior. He's the Lord of all, he's master over all. And he's conquered sin and death. We preach Christ Jesus the Lord.

Serving as Bondservants and Trusting God for New Birth

We do not preach ourselves. Boy, that's the temptation. Preach ourselves. Our hope is not in man, our hope is not in our church. We don't preach ourselves. Our message isn't, come join us, we're the friendliest church in town.

Come join us, we're the fastest growing church in North County, you know? Come join us, we're this, we're that, we're the other. I saw a big banner in Texas one day. Come worship with us. Sanctuary, fully air conditioned.

Boy. Lord, surely that's not our invitation. No, you know, nothing wrong with, we don't have to purposely afflict the saints. You know, see if we can make them uncomfortable. But our message isn't, look what we've got, you know, and look how good we can make it for you.

Our message isn't, well, we've got the greatest pastor west of the Mississippi, you know? We've got the greatest young pastor ever to hit America. There's all kinds of ways to preach yourself. That's not our message, that perverts the whole thing.