June 7, 2026 | Passing on the Legacy

This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, Follow me, and he rose and followed him.

And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.

And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

But when he heard it, he said, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.

Go and learn what this means.

I desire mercy and not sacrifice, for I came not to call the righteous but sinners.

The gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Pray with me, please.

Heavenly Father, we we come into your presence through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And we thank you, Lord, for the life and ministry of Jesus.

Keep our eyes fixed on you.

I pray that we do that.

We need you, Lord.

We pray in the powerful name of Jesus.

Amen.

Please be seated.

So Paul writes, the apostle Paul, Paul, whom we are named after.

Paul writes in Romans chapter 10.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

He says this.

How are you going to call on the one you haven't believed in?

How are you going to believe if you haven't heard?

How are you going to hear without a preacher?

That faith comes from hearing and hearing the word of God.

You hear that?

Paul is asking this litany of questions.

How are you going to believe?

How are you going to believe without hearing?

Faith comes by hearing, hearing the word of God.

What is Paul saying?

What is he saying?

He's saying that the proclamation of the word of God matters.

He's saying that preaching matters.

And I just need to tell you, that's what we're grounded on, founded on.

Those of you that were here 15 years ago, you know, as we met at Robert Sandy Delap's house, you know that I asked a question, how many of y'all have ever planted a church and no one could raise their hand?

I didn't even raise my hand.

I said, well, let's consider, God, how did you do it?

How did you build the church?

The church that we read about in the New Testament, the ecclesia, the called-out people.

How did you do that?

And we began considering the basic foundations of how to plant a church.

And we saw very quickly that the church is God's idea, that it is his plan for this age that we live in, this age of Pentecost after the giving of the Holy Spirit.

And we looked at the basic building blocks of building a church, of planting a church, and we did that by looking at Acts in chapter 2.

You remember it's the day of Pentecost when Peter stood up empowered by the Holy Spirit and he preached.

And we learned very quickly that preaching matters, the proclamation of God's words matter.

And we see that in Acts in chapter 2.

That with the preaching of God's word, that people responded.

They encountered Him, that His will, that His purposes and His promises were revealed.

They were revealed through the preaching of God's word, not revealed through the culture, but revealed through His Word.

And it was through the gift given, the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, that the people who heard that particular sermon on that particular day were cut to the heart.

And they came to faith.

The tumblers began to click.

There was an epiphany.

There was an aha, you mean to tell me that the God of creation, the God of the universe, loves me?

He cares for me.

And those who heard responded.

And they became followers of Jesus.

In other words, they were anointed ones.

And it happened through the hearing of the preaching of God's word, the hearing and receiving of his grace and his goodness.

What am I saying?

I'm saying that preaching matters.

It's through the preaching, the proclamation of God's word that the church is built.

And again, that's what Peter did on the day of Pentecost.

He stood and he proclaimed and he preached the gospel.

And the result of that was dramatic.

We read in Acts chapter 2 that people responded, that there were 300 people, 3,000 people that responded.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

How are you going to call on the one you haven't believed in?

How are you going to believe if you haven't heard?

And how are you going to hear without a preacher?

Faith comes from hearing, and hearing the word of God.

So preaching matters.

It's a basic, fundamental building block of the church.

And the message.

What is the message?

It's a person, it's Jesus, it's life, death, it's resurrection, the giving of the Holy Spirit, and it was all in accordance to the fulfillment of scripture of the Old Testament prophets.

St.

Paul's.

This is what we're founded on.

We are founded on the preaching of the gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ, in a word, Jesus.

This is what we are founded on for 15 years.

Coming from the pulpit, we have been preaching Jesus.

Because you see, if we ever start preaching anything else, if we ever start preaching some kind of social good or some kind of political agenda, if we ever start preaching some objective to strive for, some rules and regulation, if we ever start preaching some kind of theory that we want to float out there, some good intentions, if we want to start preaching new data or some new material that maybe the preacher has learned about that's of value to him, if we ever start doing that, we're gonna miss the mark.

Our growth is gonna be stunned, we're not gonna flourish.

It's the way God intended.

It's his idea, the birth of the church, it's his good idea.

So we preach Jesus.

Because here's the deal.

Matthew writes a little bit later in Matthew 21 that he is either the foundation stone or he is the stumbling block.

What do I mean?

I mean that we have to make up our minds about Jesus.

We're either going to build our lives upon him or we're gonna trip all over him, and that's gonna happen in this life.

We can't avoid him in this life, and guess what?

We cannot avoid Jesus in the next life.

When every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord in heaven, on earth, and below.

We can't avoid him.

So we preach him.

We preach Jesus, he's the message, he's the central point of our faith.

Just a little bit early in Romans 10, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved.

And again, Peter preached in Acts chapter 4 that there is no other name under heaven given to all of mankind by which we must be saved.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

Do you hear that?

That's why we preach Jesus.

There's no other name which we must be saved.

There is, again, that urgency.

So preaching matters.

And here at St.

Paul's Church, it's part of our legacy.

Part of our legacy, passing on to the next generation.

And we see that.

We see that in the gospel today.

We see that in the life of Matthew.

Matthew is a powerful example of one person's encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ and how that one person can leave a legacy that blesses generations.

Now, Matthew, let's just think about this.

Matthew was a person like a lot of us, like me.

Matthew was a guy all wrapped up in himself.

And you know what they say?

The smallest package you can have is a person wrapped up in themselves.

And Matthew, he had one loyalty, that was to himself.

Matthew had one God, and that was to money.

Matthew was a tax collector.

Matthew's probably the least guy that you would think that Jesus would call to become part of his ragtag army, the disciples.

But yet, Jesus preached the word to him.

He gave the invitation to follow me.

And Matthew, we read immediately, he left everything that defined him.

He left the tax booth.

He left and he followed Jesus, and his life was transformed not merely for his own soul, but his life was transformed for the sake of others, countless others.

What I'm saying is that Matthew's legacy began with his calling.

And it's no different for you and for me.

I mean, Jesus didn't just rescue Matthew from his past, but he gave him a future.

He gave him a purpose with the calling.

So that Matthew would become part of the 12 disciples.

That's not our calling, that's already happened.

So that Matthew would actually write the gospel of Matthew.

We don't need to do that.

It's been done.

But yet we see through the life of Matthew that began with just the simple calling of follow me.

We see this legacy that's passed down from generation to generation for over 2,000 years with the writing of the gospel.

It's incredible.

What began so small with just follow me and a little dinner at the house with some other tax collector friends grew to be enormous.

I'm taking the opportunity right now to pack up my books in my office, take them off the shelves, and I'm really kind of having a good time doing it because I'm pulling out books that I haven't opened up in a while, and I get distracted and I start reading them.

It's really pretty good stuff in those books.

And and and I was reminded, though, in one of them, I was reminded about the Mississippi River, the headwaters of the Mississippi.

Maybe you've heard this.

I had forgotten about this.

That the at the headwaters of the Mississippi River up in northern Minnesota, the Mississippi River is about 20 feet wide, and it's about 12 inches deep.

I mean, you can actually just walk right across the Mississippi, the mighty Mississippi at the headwaters, kind of like walking across the Reedy River here in Greenville.

And the flow, the flow is a couple cubic feet per second.

I mean, it's almost stagnant at the headwaters.

But yet you go some 2,500 miles downstream.

You go where the Mississippi River flows into the Gulf of Mexico, or is it the Gulf of America?

I don't know which one it is, but it flow it flows into the Gulf.

And there at the mouth of the Gulf, it's two miles wide from 20 feet to two miles.

And the flow, the flow is not a couple feet per second, cubic feet per second.

It's a half a million cubic feet per second.

What's the point?

It began so small, but it grew to be enormous.

And this is what we see with Matthew.

And this is what we see for St.

Paul's Church.

I bet Matthew never imagined that the testimony that he was writing about Jesus would reach people for centuries and cross all over all the continents.

But yet God used him in a powerful way to tell the story of Jesus.

How are you going to hear without a preacher?

Faith comes from hearing and hearing the word of God.

Isn't that what we heard Libby read?

She did a great job reading.

I mean, I understand.

It gets a little bit emotional sometimes.

But when you start talking about the children, we always get emotional about children.

But did you hear that?

In Psalm 74, 78?

We're not going to hide these things from the children.

We're going to tell the next generation.

We're going to tell the next generation what?

The praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, the proclamation of the gospel.

We're going to tell of his power and the wonders that he has done.

So that the next generation would know them.

Even the children yet to be born.

And they in turn would tell their children.

Isn't that what we just did with baptism?

We took these precious children.

We took them and we baptized them.

And life is beginning in Christ and the family of God.

It's just small.

It's just small.

And we're doing our part with the parents.

We're doing our part to see if they're raised and nurtured in the Lord.

And guess what?

They're going to live into this calling.

They're going to live into this family.

And they're going to live and they're going to grow and get stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger on the Mississippi River.

Let me say this.

Whenever we put our faith in Jesus, God anoints us with the Holy Spirit.

We see that in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Those people, they responded to the word of God, to the gospel of Jesus.

And they were empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Whenever we put our faith in Jesus, God anoints us with the Holy Spirit, however weak or however inadequate we may feel.

This is what He does.

And God can use us in extraordinary ways.

And get this.

See that even our weakness is anointed.

Do you hear that?

That when we receive the Holy Spirit, He can even anoint our weakness for His purpose.

I know that to be true on a personal level.

I know that to be true.

Because I'm the last person, kind of like Matthew, to be called.

I'm not a theologian, I'm not an academian.

I just love Jesus.

And I don't, I can't even speak clearly.

I stumble through the services all the time.

I have to be careful with the words I choose so I can say them correctly.

I'm like Moses, I got this speech impediment.

But let me tell you something.

I know this should be true.

That the Lord can even anoint our weakness to purpose his will.

And so for 15 years, I'm standing here proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ because it's all about him.

This is our legacy.

St.

Paul's don't lose the legacy.

Jude writes in his letter that we contend for the faith once delivered.

We contend for the faith and trust and trust it to the saints.

What does he mean?

We contend.

We contend earnestly, he says.

What does he mean?

He means that we guard the faith, that we defend the faith, that we preserve the faith, and faithfully we pass the faith, the truth on of the gospel to the next generation.

Faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God.

How are you going to believe if you haven't heard?

And how are you going to hear without someone proclaiming the truth of the gospel?

St.

Paul's.

A little bit, very small.

But look at the children now.

Look at what the Lord is doing through the faithfulness and being poured into.

They're learning of Jesus.

That's what they're learning of about Him.

We see this with our youth.

Our youth, they're being poured into.

Lauren and all the volunteers, grand prophet.

He has done this from day one where he's poured into the youth, passing on to the next generation.

And the Lord brings the growth.

And we see that here at St.

Paul's.

We began so small.

And look what he's done.

St.

Paul's.

Stand on the word of Jesus going forward.

This is our legacy.

This is what we pass to the next generation.

And that generation will pass to the next generation if we are faithful with our part.

I know y'all probably are tired of hearing me preach about Jesus, but I'm sorry.

There's no other name under heaven that can save us.

And we need to be saved.

Father God, we thank you and we praise you.

We thank you, Lord, for the word, the message for Jesus.

Oh Lord, we we pray that you empower us through the person of the Holy Spirit to proclaim the gospel.

To be bold.

That even you can use our weaknesses for good.

It's in our weaknesses, Lord, that you're made strong for your purpose and your will.

We pray in the powerful name of Jesus.

Amen.