Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name. Throughout all the earth, You have covered the heavens with Your majesty. Because of Your adversaries, You have established a stronghold from the mouths of children and nursing infants to silence the enemy and the avenger. When I observe your heavens, the work of your fingers, and the moon, and the stars which you set into place, what is man that you remember him, the Son of Man that you look after him. You made him a little less than God, and you crowned him with glory and honor, and you made him, Lord, over the works of your hands, and you put everything under his feet.
All the sheep and the oxen, as well as animals in the wild, birds of the sky and the fish of the sea passing through the currents of the sea. Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name throughout all of the earth. There are two statements that our Lord makes in Matthew 23 that leave me, I believe it's close to, I understand Peter's expression when he realizes who Christ is and he says I'm I'm undone. I'm dead these two statements. Are are among many statements in this 23rd chapter of the book of Matthew.
And they strike close to my heart as a pastor. They speak indictments back into the work and the duty that I have as a pastor. And so the Lord says this in the 13th verse says, but woe to you. You scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, You lock up the kingdom of heaven from people. If you don't go in and you don't allow those entering to go in, that's that's a serious indictment.
And it it sits heavy upon this preacher. And then a couple of verses later. Locks in close upon this great commission appeal that is all the time incessantly upon the Lord's church and her duty to it and we give so little care to how we go about doing this important necessary work of taking the gospel of lifting this gospel banner and advancing it into the world and and our Lord says this about that. Woe to you scribes and you Pharisees you hypocrites you travel over land and sea to make one cross a light or one convert when he becomes one you make him twice as fit for hell as you are. That kind of indictment lays heavy upon a preacher.
That kind of statement strikes great fear. Into the one who speaks the oracles of God, our duty, our responsibility. And how is that? How is that? How am I living that out as a preacher?
How am I living that out as a husband? How do I live that out as a father? How do I live that out as one who proclaims the oracles of God? With great soberness, or I should say, with increasing soberness, to my own shame, there are many years spent engaged in the promotion of silliness and and the programs and the methodologies and the inventions and the creativity of man and not spending significant amount of time considering the majestic nature of who God is one of our great responsibilities over the next couple of days is to is to really seek that God would show us his holiness and And that's for us as well as the important nature of that, especially for the young men, for the young people who will be at this conference that we would see in our day a rising of a generation of young people who understand that God is not at all impressed with our silliness and that he longs to see a people completely captivated by his glory and by his holiness. So dear, dear young men in this room, may you listen closely over the next couple of days to these important teachings and to the preaching of the Word of God.
A major event, and I suppose I've had a lifetime of major events, but a significant moment in my life, nearly six years ago, while a serious, unknown outcome of a circumstance that we were engaged in with our church. Realizing in the midst of this, in the midst of the unknown, in the midst of physical darkness and physical hardship and suffering in the ways of this world, a reality came upon me in a serious, real manner, while in work of the Lord in a foreign country, and the reality that essentially I had done little, if even anything, to prepare the people in my church to be serious about the holiness of God. And as a result of those important and I believe in seriously God ordained days. God began to really. Help me see the need to make adjustments and everything that I did as a pastor.
Everything I did as a father. Everything I did as a husband, everything that I did as one who would proclaim to be one who is a follower of Christ. And so I don't submit this as necessarily a complete work, but of a burning in my soul in relationship to a new enlightened awakening in my own soul of the seriousness of the work before us, of the joy that comes in seeing a holy God, of the pleasure that comes in obeying His commandments and pursuing Him in all of His ways. I've begun attempting to write into a very personal manner a statement concerning my call to the ministry. I do not submit it to you as one that is perfected or one that is complete, but I submit it as one that is certainly a burning in my soul.
I began pinning this April the eighth of this year. And it starts in this way and I'll come to a close to it to a conclusion as far as the written words go, but I leave it as an open movement of how God will continue to even take some of the statements that I have here and to give better clarity even in my own life, but. There is no doubt in my own life that there is no way I would ever volunteer for such a duty as one that I've been called for. There was a day I would have volunteered for the ministry I was engaged in and involved in because it always brought about the applause of men, but I would not in my own volunteer for this work of the preaching of the oracles of God. This would certainly have to be a call that would come from outside of me.
My response is one of increasing submission, asking with awareness that I am tempted to take and make this calling my own once again. And I reject that temptation to see this calling as a calling because of anything special about me that is independent of Christ. Who am I to exercise pride and arrogance and employ the means of men to accomplish the sovereign holy majestic work of God? I call upon God for help to do this and to speak carefully, to speak daring words, and to speak honoring words in all of my life With an increase, whether by increase or by loss, whether by life or by death, by liberty or imprisonment, oh God help me never to forget that the craving of the applause of men is always before me, and it is a strong and a fierce craving. Oh, dear God, help that I not pursue that craving.
The enemy himself has clothed himself with wool and deed, and false sheep ignore the dangers and the warnings of God's word. So as a result of that, dear God, as a preacher of your word, as a pastor to your people, give me sharp eyes that I might see the nearness of the enemy. Give me ears to hear the deception that is in his voice. Give me a nose to smell out the foulness of his ways and give me a voice like that of God's that speaks with clarity and give me courage to give faithful reports of what I hear, what I see and what I smell among the sheep. Lord, give me awareness of what lies dark across the landscape of my own soul of my own life.
Give me awareness of what lies dark in my own family. What lies dark in the crevices of the lives of the people I pastor. Oh Lord, as I put my hand to this gospel plow, forbid me for looking for anything or anyone but you. Help me to resist the curse of compromise. Help me to resist the lure of imitation.
Help me to avoid the trappings of professionalism. Help me to remember that I'm an under shepherd, not a promoter or an event manager. Help me not to exchange my calling as a faithful herald for the profession of people-pleaser. O Lord, help me to be steady and true to Your Word, not a manager of the ways of men's and the methods of creative people. O God, help me to remain free from the bondage of popularity.
Deliver me from the desire of things and with your strength help me to resist the cravings of laziness that are always about me. Well, God help me. I accept I will accept if it be your pleasure sleepless nights and no recognition of anything in my life and Help me to exercise caution as to not behaving rudely toward those who oppose me. Help me to resist unnecessarily unnecessary expectations from your church. Help me to resist selfish ambitions.
Help me respond with joy. For the poor and resist pride and compromise from the rich. I commit my days to you if asked to stand before the rich or the famous or the poor or the needy. I commit to stand before you. I accept this choice is not mine.
Because if it were mine, I would choose wrongly. I want to hunger and thirst for holiness and righteousness to direct me and to constrain me. Oh, oh that I desire the table of heaven and not the table of men. Lord, I desire that you would guard my heart from pride. Do not let me forget the place that you've called me from, that place from which I had to be rescued from, because I was blind and deaf.
Oh, I was worse than blind and deaf. God, I was dead with no craving whatsoever for holiness. Oh, fill me with the promise of the deposit of heaven, the promise of your Holy Spirit. Oh, that I would only go forth in your power to the nations with the news of a Redeemer, saving sinners in need of a redeemer so long as I have breath. Oh, that I might not be like those you warn us of in the book of Jude.
That Where I live in the desert regions of the Northwest in Idaho, from the months of late April into May, all the way through October and November is our rain less season. On an annual basis in Idaho receive around seven to eight inches of rain. I think I received that on the drive here from Idaho. One thing that we see on an almost a daily basis is the promise of rain on the horizon. As the summer temperatures rise and the humidity gets sucked out of the air, a promise of a cloud begins to form usually in the southwest.
And there it begins to show itself is perhaps today will get relief. It will bring promise of rain. You know, one of those things one of those many things that Jude warns, warns of those in the in his short epistle, are those of rainless clouds. Hypocrite clouds, really. They have the looks of rain.
They have the promise of rain. They have the promise of all things true and all things refreshing. But when they arrive, they do nothing but give little drops and drizzles and really make life really even more miserable than it was before the cloud even arrived. Oh, it would be my longing desire that whenever I read of those warnings in Matthew, that I would not be listed among those that Jude would be warning of of those who would lock up the kingdom of heaven. And even so much with His pitiful promise of reign really brings no relief whatsoever.
And by doing so, essentially locks up heaven. And then, O God, forbid that the preaching of Your Word from the pulpit that I stand behind on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a regular basis, And then in those works that we take of the gospel to the ends of the Earth that there would not be a promotion of. Of who we are. But rather the promotion of who Christ is and that in doing so, I would not find one person fit for hell. Leading them blindly, deftly, mutely, oh, but worse than that, Leaving them remaining in their dead state unconverted with no promise.
There's a burning to my soul. That the preaching of the Word of God would be rich with the Word of God. And it would be barren of the philosophies of Paul, the philosophies of men. It would be rich with the majesty of God. And that the true attraction of the church would be the holiness of God, the majestic majesty holiness of God, and that people would finally find a church in our communities that literally are and want to be pillars and buttresses of truth and not the promoters of silliness.
That's what's burning in my heart. That's what it's longing in my life that God would find me prepared. And where He doesn't find me prepared in that, I want to be made prepared by him for such.