Preaching in the Name of Jesus

If you have your Bibles, you could turn with me to the book of Acts, chapter 4.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

We'll be reading a section we've already read from chapter 4, verse 1 to 22.

Hear now and give attention because this is the holy and inspired Word of God.

And as they were speaking to the people, the priest and the captain of the temple

and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed because they were teaching

the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead.

And they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day,

for it was already evening.

But many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about 5,000.

On the next day, their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem

with Annas, the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander,

and all who were with the high priestly family.

And when they had sent them in the midst, they inquired, By what power or by

what name did you do this?

And Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them.

Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a

good deed done to a crippled man,

by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to

all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,

with whom you crucified,

whom God raised from the dead, by him, this man is standing before you well.

This Jesus is the stone that you rejected by you, the builders,

which has become the cornerstone.

And there is salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven

given among men by which we must be saved.

Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were

uneducated common men, they were astonished.

And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. But seeing the man who was

healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition.

But when they had commanded them to leave the council, they conferred one with

another, saying, What shall we do with these men?

For that notable sign has been performed through them is evident to all the

inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it.

But in order that it may not spread, but it may spread no further among the

people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name.

So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.

But Peter and John answered, Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen

to you rather than to God, you must judge.

For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.

And when they had further threatened them, they let them go,

finding no way to punish them because of the people, for all were praising God for what had happened.

For the man on whom this sign of healing was performed was more than 40 years old.

This is the word of the Lord You can be seated,

Let's pray together Father in heaven, we ask now that

you would look down upon us with your kindness and favor

So that we can understand what has been written And not merely understand it

But to believe it and to be called in love to Jesus Christ And to leave from

here calling others Even similar to our apostolic fathers We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

Today's sermon is entitled Preaching in the Name of Jesus, or Preaching the Name of Jesus.

And I'm wondering, just as a rhetorical question, that I'll start with this

and then I'll finish with this as well. Are you prepared to hear this sermon?

And I don't mean by that that I have something special in mind for one or two

of you that I'm thinking about. I know some naughty thing you've done.

What I'm asking about, I suppose, in general is, are you prepared for the preaching

of the Word of God in general?

If you say, yes, I am, then how do you do that? If so, what do you do to prepare?

You might say, well, you're such a great preacher, we don't need to prepare. Huh.

Nice try. But the Westminster Shorter Catechism has a couple of questions that

I'll, again, I'll begin and I'll end with them because I think it's important.

It's about the early church grew and thrived, not primarily through the signs

and wonders that were performed, but through the preaching that came with those signs and wonders.

It's always the preaching and teaching of the Word of God profoundly moves the

kingdom of God forward. And it's also your responsibility.

You say, wait a minute, you're the preacher. You're supposed to get a good sermon.

You're supposed to structure it well. You're supposed to do this for us.

But you have a responsibility also to be prepared to hear the preaching of the Word.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 89 and 90, says this,

how is the Word made effectual to salvation?

And the answer is the Spirit of God makes the reading, but especially the preaching

of the word and effectual means of convincing and converting sinners and of

building them up in holiness and comfort to faith unto salvation.

Next question, how is the word to be read and heard that it may become effectual?

This is you guys, not just me. It's me too, but answer, that the word may become

effectual to salvation. We must attend therein to with diligence,

preparation, and prayer.

Receive it with faith and love, Lay it up in our hearts And practice it in our lives.

This needs to be your responsibility as those who listen to sermons,

as those who hear the preaching of the Word.

And you might ask yourself the simple question, does this really characterize

my approach to coming to hear the Word of God?

And I know, I know because we have six children, and I know some of you are

like, it's all we can do to get into the car with the kids having all their

shoes on, let alone like, you know, diligence, preparation, prayer, and all.

But there's more than the time with just your children on the way here.

The night before, things like that. Just asking the general question pastorally,

because this morning's sermon is about a sermon.

It's an ongoing sermon of Peter preaching the Word of God to these Sanhedrin.

It's oftentimes easy to think, yeah, get the Sanhedrin, get them good,

Peter, without thinking in advance, get me good.

Let the Word of God dwell richly in me. Let me prepare for it.

Let me pray about it. because when the word of God is preached,

it's more than just a sermon. It's the voice of Jesus.

And that's what the people of God want to hear. That's what you want to hear.

The word says, my sheep hear my voice and they what? They follow me.

So with that in mind, let me go into the sermon itself because it's a sermon about sermons.

It's a sermon about preaching about this particular story, which is a great

story. I love this story.

Like I said last week, whether you're enjoying it or not, I'm having a good

time going through the book of Acts, so I hope you'll join me in it.

So to the text, Peter made it clear in this that the final verdict of damnation

and judgment would rest on the rebellion of these people against the preached

word of God in the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

But he also made it clear, and this is just strikingly amazing to me,

that as these people who represent a generation after generation after generation of hard-hearted,

stubborn, rebellious people, and finally, the chief cornerstone,

the one to whom Moses said, I will send a prophet like me, but you must listen to him.

All those thousands of years of history leading up to this point,

and they not only rejected him, they killed him. They killed him.

And yet in the midst of Peter's sermon, there's this constant striking reference

to, but you can turn to Jesus.

Even in all the damnation and all the fire and brimstone that Peter has for

them, woven into his sermon is this constant theme, repent and believe in Jesus.

It's amazing, really. We were talking about this in Sunday school earlier.

Sometimes it's actually difficult.

You know, if you have someone that you know is unrighteous and worthy of judgment,

Maybe just pick your worst political opponent or the cultural warrior or whoever it is.

You're like, man, that person, fire.

Our Pentecostal friends used to say that all the time. Lord, fire.

And then when the Lord doesn't bring fire and he converts them and suddenly

they're a believer, you're like, oh, it's not as easy as I, I wanted fire.

But Peter is constantly saying, all you need to do is repent and believe and

the Lord will have mercy on you.

That's why Jesus who you killed was raised up. That's why Jesus whom you hated

expresses his love for you.

And you see Peter, I love Peter as a character. I love Peter because Peter is

one of these fascinating characters that maybe you see Peter in you.

I see Peter in me, especially when I was younger.

Peter was the guy that was always out in front. I'm going to do this.

Peter was the guy that pulled out his sword, chopped off a guy's ear when they

were trying to arrest Jesus.

Peter was the one who was out front all the time, said, I'll never do this.

Peter was the one who jumped out of the boat, walked on water.

Incredible. He also fell.

Peter was the one who said to, you know, Peter even had the audacity to rebuke

Jesus. It's pretty amazing.

No, you won't go to the cross. and to which Jesus said, get behind me, Satan.

So Peter has this character with this unique courage and boldness and it always

seems to be in his own strength at first.

Even when he said the night of

Jesus' betrayal, the night in which he was arrested, I'll never deny you.

And then lurking in the darkness, even under the intimidation of a young woman,

denied Jesus three times, ran away weeping.

But this Peter is now standing and you've seen the development of maturity in

Peter's heart where he's no longer Peter proclaiming Peter, but he's proclaiming

Jesus with boldness and power.

It's a man who a little month before this event had denied Christ,

and now he's standing as the amazing first person to represent Christ in this new church.

He stands not now in his own strength, but it says over and over,

in the power of the Holy Spirit, Peter began to speak.

Peter began to be bold. And this confrontation of Peter, a fisherman,

to these guys increasingly makes it clear in the text that as you read the story,

the Sadducees and the leaders are like, we're not just confronting some guys.

It becomes increasingly clear that their confrontation is with God himself.

I've found that myself as a minister. Some people say, what do you think about this?

What do you think about women in the ministry? They're not supposed to be. Are you against women?

And then they have a beef with me. And I'm like, your beef is not with me.

I didn't write it. I didn't say it. God said it. Your beef is with God.

Their contention here with Peter is no longer with Peter. And they know it.

They get increasingly boxed in. They're increasingly painted in the corner.

They're hedged in. There's no way out. They got this guy standing here.

This is funny because the crippled guy has just been there like a pawn in this story the whole time.

There he is. like, yeah, what does he do?

And that constantly reminds them, we got nothing to say here. We have no defense.

Peter's confrontation of these guys revealed that it was God's confrontation

with them and their confrontation with God.

They realized right away too, that this is the same thing that happened with Jesus.

Remember, I've been pointing your attention out that the things that the apostles

are facing are the exact same things that Jesus faced to constantly,

in a structural way remind us that the work of Jesus is continuing in the work of the church.

The church is not an optional institution.

The church is central to the ongoing work of Jesus Christ.

Now they are mercifully given an opportunity to repent. It says in 15,

but when they had commanded them to leave the council, they conferred one another

saying, what are we going to do? What do we do with these guys?

We're given insight somehow into what their council was, and we hear them wondering.

And then as they're wondering, it's going back to this question of,

what do we do with these guys who have authority, but it doesn't come from us.

It doesn't come from their credentials. It doesn't come from anywhere.

It reminds them of a story we read in John 7, 15.

And the Jews marveled, saying about Jesus, how does this man know letters, having never studied?

There's a striking parallel between the confrontation of Jesus and the striking

confrontation that says, you don't have the right to do this.

You never went to seminary with Rabbi Gamaliel.

You never went there. So how are you doing this?

And Jesus answered and said to them, my doctrine is not mine, but it is he who sent me.

If anyone wants to do his will, he shall know concerning the doctrine,

whether it is from God or whether I speak for my own authority.

He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory, but he who seeks the glory of

the one who sent him is true and no unrighteousness is in him.

That is precisely the issue in our text as it was last week.

By what authority are you doing this? These were fishermen that were confronting studied rabbis.

The great leaders of the whole Jewish world were collected there,

including as they're connected to Gamaliel, whose Gamaliel will be Paul's rabbi.

Remember, we'll see that later. Paul studied under Gamaliel,

the most renowned rabbi in the world at that time.

And yet, the guys who are confronting them and defeating them in front of all

these people are nothing but uneducated fishermen.

It says in the text, it says they were, they perceived, verse 13,

they were uneducated common men.

Agromatos is the word, no education, no formal training, no letters, no university degrees.

And yet they spoke as if they had them. And the next word is interesting.

It's translated to my version, common man, but it's actually the Greek word

idiotai. Ever heard that before?

Idiot. These guys are uneducated idiots. They're common men.

What do they know? How dare they do this?

The nature of who they were enhances the audacity of what they were doing.

How can they be doing this? They're foolish men. They're common men.

By the way, fishermen, we don't have anything culturally related here because

we're not near any great bodies of water, but fishermen were commonly understood

to be the worst of the worst.

We don't live near bodies of water. In Uganda, I had a pastor friend who was

a fisherman, and it was a common story. He said, well, when you lost everything

else and you couldn't do anything else, you became a fisherman.

And you went to Lake Victoria and you somehow got a little canoe that would

barely work and went out and caught some fish.

It was well known that those fishermen would get a fish, you know,

to sell and to give money for their wives or give it to their wives and then

get another fish so they could drink beer.

These were, that's, I mean, you didn't have to work all day.

You just needed about two fish, one for your family and one for beer.

And these guys would go out in those boats. They didn't even know how to swim.

That astounded me. Like, you guys are... Anyway, fishermen were among the most hated and despised.

Now this fisherman is the spokesman of the apostolic church with no letters,

no degree from Harvard, Yale, no training, and he is a common man.

Foolish, in other words. Keep that in mind. They're foolish people.

And they were able to speak as if they were not. In other words,

as if they did have the training.

The Sanhedrin understood the nature of education. This is classical Rome now.

And so when you went up to a public forum and you wanted to say something,

you wouldn't go up into the forum unless you were schooled in classical rhetoric.

This idea that rhetoric to us means just propaganda today, but rhetoric was

actually the capstone of a great classical education, where you took your grammar

and your logic and all that you'd learned throughout all of the days of schooling

and in the rhetoric stage,

you were weaving everything together, all your facts, all your knowledge,

all your logic, and you were becoming a persuasive person, the kind of person

who could persuade people's opinions.

And the apostles were doing that, yet they'd never gone to school.

They didn't read Aristotle.

By this time, Aristotle was a well-known book of rhetoric that people were using.

They didn't have Aristotle.

But everyone in the culture at this time knew the power of persuasion and the

power of words. And these guys had it.

There was one famous Greek rhetorician named Gorgias, and he says the following,

speech is a powerful Lord, which by means the finest and most invisible body

affects the divinest works.

Speech, words, can stop fear and banish grief, create joy, and nurture pity.

The effect of speech upon the condition of the soul is comparable to the power

of drugs over the nature of bodies.

For just as different drugs dispel different secretions from the body,

some can bring it into disease and others to life.

So also, in the case of speeches, speeches can distress, others delight,

some cause fear, and others make hearers bold, and some drug and bewitched the

soul with a kind of evil persuasion.

The culture knew what was going on.

They knew how you would persuade people and how you could use speech and the

power of words. And yet these guys seemed to have it all, but they had a different word.

They had everything. In rhetoric, you were supposed to have at least three things.

Logos, pathos, and ethos.

This is not like a classical education class, but these guys were able to have,

logos is the stuff you say, the substance of what you say, your logic and your argument.

And pathos is the passion with which you say it. And ethos basically was the

credibility of the speaker. These guys had it all.

And you'll notice from last week's sermon, they were able to go back and grab

psalms and grab prophecies and take the Old Testament scriptures and weave them

together with perfect logic and then drive them through recent events and the

work and life and ministry of Jesus into the present events.

Very powerful thing to do. If you can actually take a story from the ancient

world and weave it together with prophecies and scriptures and Christ's ministry

and what's happening and then point to someone and say, this is you.

That's very powerful, very persuasive. And the people believe them.

That's another thing a speaker has to have.

It's one thing to have a good argument. It's one thing to be passionate.

But if people believe what you believe, that they believe you believe it,

what you're saying, it's powerful.

If you don't believe it, if you stutter and hymn hall around you,

you lose your audience. They had it all.

And they were perplexed. How can they have it? And furthermore,

what they were saying was an offense, which gets us to the passage we read this

morning earlier from 1 Corinthians.

What they were saying was foolishness.

Listen to 1 Corinthians 18 again. For the message of the cross is foolishness

to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. Here they are.

Here are the Sanhedrin, here are the credentialed, here are the elites.

Where is the wise, Paul says? Where is the scribe?

Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

For since the wisdom of the world, the world through wisdom did not know God,

it pleased God to the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

For Jews request a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ

crucified. To Jews, a stumbling block, to Greeks, foolishness.

But to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God, the wisdom of God.

Because the foolishness of God is wiser than man, the wisdom of man,

because the foolishness of God is wiser and the weakness of God is stronger than man.

For you see your calling, brother, that not many wise are called,

not many according to the flesh. And here we have that confrontation.

The wise of the world literally sitting in council, gathering together, speaking against them.

The text says that Peter and John spoke also with boldness. It's a word that's

something that every great speaker would need to have.

But this word boldness is actually a word that doesn't just mean courage and

boldness in general, but courage and boldness in a particularly intimidating

situation where they stand in front of this council.

And most of us know almost all of the great stories of history are those stories

in which our forefathers stood at a council.

Recently, we went to a Reformation service and we recounted that great story

where Martin Luther stood and said, here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.

It wasn't an ordinary stand. It was a stand where he was sitting literally face

to face with the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, King of Spain,

King of most of Europe, all the assembled princes and bishops and teachers of the church.

And Luther stood with boldness. That's the situation we have here.

And they recognized, this is really confounding to them, they had been with Jesus.

In other words, the leaders were directly confronted with Jesus as they heard

the words of the apostles.

The work of the church is the continuing work of Jesus Christ.

And then there's that crippled man again, always there in their presence.

Peter and John proclaimed that the man standing before them had been healed in the name of Jesus.

And the rulers of Israel were in no position to refute the claim.

You'll notice all throughout it, they don't contend with any of the arguments.

They don't contend with the resurrection of the dead. They don't contend with the claims of Jesus.

And they can't contend with this guy because he's standing when he had been crippled for 40 years.

So the council goes aside and says, what on earth are we going to do?

It goes back. The text goes from what's being said publicly to their private

council. Some commentators say, ah, you know, Luke just made this up because

how could Luke possibly know what they were saying privately?

Well, very easily, there's a lot of explanations. Very easily,

there was this guy named Saul.

He's everywhere in the text. You'll notice he's in these councils.

He's with these guys. He's holding coats. He's stoning people.

There's also Gamaliel that's there who was Paul's teacher. There's a lot of

different ways they could have known this. This is not any sort of weakness in the text.

And when they had sent Peter and John out of their presence,

they were painfully aware of their weakness. they had nothing.

No law existed against healing someone who was crippled. That point had been made by Peter already.

Because of the power of the crowds, which really makes you hate these guys all

the more, they know they want to do something. If it weren't for these crowds,

they would do something.

But if it weren't for these crowds, because of these crowds, they can't do anything.

The entire deliberation had to do with their ability to deal really with the

miracle and the preached word of God.

How do they confront it? They never once argued against the evidence. F.F.

Bruce points that out. They never even dealt with any of the arguments whatsoever

because the Sanhedrin began immediately to hate apostolic preaching,

which all the enemies of Christ hate.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? People don't want to hear the message of the voice

of Jesus who confronts them with their sin while at the same time offering them salvation.

Verse 18 says, so they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.

Be quiet. Isn't that the answer these days?

For you hateful, conservative Christians who want to say things like don't kill

babies, keep quiet. You're troublemakers.

You're controversial, even though you're just simply speaking the truth.

And so they said, keep quiet. But Peter and John answered, whether it's right

in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge.

Now, for those of you who are maybe thinking I should delve into this more,

and I was also, I'm going to pick up on this verse later.

I'm not just skipping a verse because it's controversial or hard.

In fact, I love this verse.

I'm moving later to when they also have a similar confrontation when they say,

you judge, is it good to obey God or man?

I will develop that into at least one sermon, maybe two.

Will you let me do too? I don't know. We'll see. It depends.

But I love that verse, and I'm going to pick up on it later,

because this becomes one of the central verses that establishes resistance at

the heart of Christianity, a resistance that I must say,

even though I was watching it a bit from a distance in Africa,

I was stunned by the lack of resistance in the American church during the COVID crisis.

Absolutely stunned. I mean, here you have the apostles standing in public, preaching the gospel.

The leaders, the immediate leaders of their culture says, keep quiet,

and they said, you tell us, what should we do, God or you?

They went on, they preached, they confront. Not only did they not stop preaching,

they continued to confront them directly.

We have no legitimate right to tell us not to preach if God has told us to preach.

When they heard the preached word of God, they hated it because in the preached

word of God, I want to remind you, when the word of God is preached,

when a body of doctrine is taught that Jesus Christ came, he died, he rose from the dead,

he's raised, he's seated at the right hand and he loves you and he's ruling

and he's calling you to him, people hate it.

When you hear that, however, you're hearing the voice of Jesus.

As the people of God, you should love preaching. You should love preaching.

Again, not my preaching, but when the word of God is given to you,

when word of God is unfolded before you, you should receive it with faith and

love, lay it up in your heart and practice it in your lives.

The preached word of God, think of it this way, is the voice of Jesus coming

from a minister of the gospel to his people.

And God's people should want to hear his voice.

And preaching is central to this gospel call.

This is why missions, for the most part, is critical.

Preaching is critical in missions. We confronted this in our missionary journeys.

There are many missionaries all over the world who go all over the world to

drill wells and start medical clinics and schools and orphanages.

There are very few whose central focus is preaching Christ from the church and

establishing churches that preach Christ as well.

One preacher said this, he says, This council's attempt to stop Peter's preaching

was an attempt to put an end to the name of Jesus, to put an end to the authority

of Jesus, to put an end to Messiah's reign, to deny him and his rightful position of kings.

Next week, in the next sermon, we'll see that they're participating in Psalm 2 rebellion.

Why do the nations rage? Why do the peoples plot in vain to do a vain thing?

That's happening in our text.

They wanted to deny Jesus his rightful place. Remember, this is now,

Judaism is now a rival religion.

It's a rival religion. To believe in the tenets of the Jewish faith is a rival religion.

Sometimes people put religions on a continuum and they'll say,

well, let's put monotheistic religions over here.

Here's Islam and here's Judaism. they're very close to Christianity because

they only believe in one. No, they're a rival religion.

They're not that close to God. They just need a little push towards Jesus.

They deny Christ. They crucified Christ. The Jewish faith, Judaism is no closer

to Christianity than Islam.

And they're proving it here to us in our text.

They don't want preaching. But Paul says without preaching, the central aspect of Christianity dies.

He says in Romans chapter 10,

Romans 10 · chapter mention

for the scripture says, whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.

There's no distinction between Jew and Greek for the same Lord is overall rich to all who call upon him.

Whoever calls in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved.

Then he says, verse 14, how then shall they call upon him in whom they have not believed?

And how shall they believe in him in whom they have not heard?

And how shall they hear without a preacher? Thank you.

And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written,

how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace,

who bring glad tidings of joy.

It all hinges on this moment right here in our church, where someone happens

to be me now, but it doesn't have to be.

Someone proclaims the word of God to the people of God. And as he does so,

he unfolds to them the voice of Jesus.

And they hear it. And they heed that call. And they love and follow Jesus.

A true proclamation of the gospel in that sense is apostolic.

It's always been the case throughout history. And that's why this church,

one of the goals that I have as a minister that your elders have is that one

of the central aspects of this church's faithfulness will be the preaching and

teaching of the word of God.

Preaching being central to everything. The council before Peter stands is not

the judge. You'll notice that now they are being judged.

It's an amazing twist here where the judges are revealed to have being judged.

The reading and preaching of the word is ridiculed in today's society.

I was told years ago, almost 30 years ago, you can never start a church by just

focusing on preaching. No one wants that.

You need praise bands, youth groups, buildings. You need a gymnasium.

You need all these other things.

You can never build a church from just preaching. We started that church in 1996.

Now there are five other OPC churches in the area that that church started, including this one.

Part of starting churches all over. And the main focus has always been worship

and preaching, preaching the word of God.

That's central to who we are. It's central to the apostolic call.

It's central to who we are as a church.

But these guys were now saying, no, preaching is outlawed. No going into the

public square and preaching the word of God.

The lack of the word of God has also borne fruit in our social order today.

People in many churches are not hearing the preaching of the word of God,

the proclamation of the gospel and the rule and reign of Jesus.

And as a result, everything's turned upside down over and over.

I've gone over many things.

I was even thinking about it last week. It was like, we've lost sight of the

rule of Jesus so much that today,

the penalties for crimes today are so upside down, you can sometimes get in

more trouble for abusing a pet or a dog than you can a person. What happened?

Somehow, somewhere along the way, the word of the gospel has not been preached,

that Jesus Christ rules, everything

is ordered under him, and we follow and love him above all else.

And everything in our lives is then structured around Jesus.

The authority of Jesus Christ is the crux of the conflict.

And when the church loses her primary calling in regard to preaching the gospel

of Jesus Christ, the church loses its entire focus altogether.

And Christ's authority is not proclaimed.

What about you? Back to this question at the beginning. How do you approach

the preaching and teaching of the Word of God.

Maybe you even said, yeah, this sermon wasn't bad, but last week's was way better.

I even think that. Now, when that happens, just so you know,

and there will be better or worse sermons, okay, when that happens,

as a good preacher, I just say, well, I blame it on the text.

That text just was not as preachable as last week. Last week was,

but this text, you know, it's not my fault, in other words.

There will be times when you think that sermon was not that much,

that great, it was just okay.

But the question is, did you hear the voice of Christ in it?

Did you hear Christ came, loves you, was died on the cross, rose again from the dead, and rules now?

If you did, there's something to redeem from it.

I know it's difficult. I told one of you this story recently.

When I was in seminary, there was an old Southern boy that used to go off and preach together.

And we'd come back the next Monday at class. And I'd say, well, how'd it go?

How was the preaching? He said, well, I fed him, but the groceries is mighty dry.

I said, oh, I get that. But in other words, there's food to eat,

but you had to really be hungry.

And so part of what I would ask you to do is be hungry for the word.

Be ready to receive it, even if it comes in fits and spurts,

even if it's not perfectly rhetorically

proclaimed with a rhetorical flourish at the end that wows you.

Not every Sunday can be a home run. I wish it could.

I do just every Sunday. Whoa, you're great. But the word of God when it's preached

needs to be eaten up by the people of God.

You need to be hungry for it, pray for it, prepare for it, receive it with faith

and love, lay it up in your hearts and practice it in your lives.

Even if the groceries are mighty dry and they will be from time to time.

They won't be as, not every sermon is as magnificent.

If you're coming to hear the voice and call of Jesus Christ, you'll be blessed.

And that's what you need to do as his people. And that's what we've heard Peter

proclaim over and over and over.

Jesus Christ came, was crucified, rose, and is seated now, and now proclaims

his love for all who will believe. How do you respond to that voice?

Every single Sunday will not be the same in terms of the sermon or the preaching,

but every single Sunday, the people of God need to come hungry to eat the food

of God, to hear the bread of life, to hear the voice of Jesus.

Do you do that? And how do you do it?

Again, let me just repeat it, and I'll close on this. That the word of God may

become effectual to salvation, we must attend thereunto with diligence,

preparation, and prayer.

Receive it with faith and love, lay it up in our hearts, and practice it in our lives. Let's pray.

Father in heaven, we thank you for this word from Peter, who again just confronts

these Sadducees with the resurrected Jesus Christ.

And as he does so, Lord, we find in the text that over and over and over,

he calls them to repent and believe.

And Lord, as he does that, help us to do the same.

As we prepare to come to the Lord's table, help us to just reflect and renew

our love for Christ as he feeds us through his body and blood.

And as we reflect on that, help us to be thankful people who have received your

word with faith and love, who lay it up in our hearts and practice it in our

lives and send us out, having heard the voice of Jesus.

Send us out, we pray in Christ's name, amen.