Paul's Guide to Ministry By Joel Settecase

God is going to send someone into your life who needs to hear this message, and you're gonna be tempted to water it down and to not talk about the hard truth about sin, self control, redemption. Paul says, don't worry about being shrewd. Don't worry about being crafty and trying to manipulate the person. Just tell them about Jesus. Just preach Christ and view yourself as a servant for Christ's sake. That's it. Leave the results up to God. [00:38:26] (31 seconds)  #PreachChristPlainly

When a person trusts in Jesus Christ, Paul connects that to the creation of the world. Go back to Genesis one verse three. God says, let there be light. It's the first act God does in creation. After he creates the heavens and the earth, he says, let there be light and there was light. Paul says that as grand and amazing as that is, that is analogous to what God does every time he brings a new sinner to faith in Jesus Christ. He shines the light of Jesus Christ on the heart and mind of that person. [00:33:42] (32 seconds)  #LightOfSalvation

And that word can mean distorting. It can also mean watering down. This too was a common practice in those days. Winemakers would water down their wine just enough so that it had enough potency so that they wouldn't lose a customer, but they wouldn't really give people their money's worth for what they were paying for. Again, very common practice. And it's the same word the word that is used for that diluting down of the wine is the same word that Paul uses for distorting the message. Paul says, we don't distort the message. We don't water it down. We give the straight up uncut truth of God's word. [00:18:06] (37 seconds)  #UncutGospel

it seems clear that the god of this age here is the devil, and he has blinded the minds of unbelievers. But lest we think that the minds of these unbelievers that these unbelievers are therefore just innocent victims, that's not what Paul is saying. The god of this world, the devil, the way that he blinds unbelievers is by offering them sin that they already want. So first John two sixteen speaks of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one's possessions. And the devil uses these things to blind unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the truth of the gospel. [00:25:24] (37 seconds)  #SinBlinds

The real reason for unbelief is Satan and sin. We need to approach our gospel ministry as if it is spiritual warfare. That's exactly what it is. Do you see why we need to cling to to the Lord and his mercy so much? We're no match for the devil. Not in and of ourselves, but God is. And Jesus Christ is, so we need to cling to him and cling to his mercy. [00:27:15] (28 seconds)  #GospelIsWarfare

And this really takes the pressure off of us because if it was up to our greatness and our incredible skill and our know how and our intelligence and our spiritual fortitude, if it was up to that, we would fall completely short. But God gives us mercy, and that's why we don't lose hope. And what that means is we can preach Christ plainly and leave the results up to God. Do you see? [00:11:23] (23 seconds)  #LeaveResultsToGod

After all, it's God's message, isn't it? We didn't originate the gospel. We didn't originate God's word. This book wasn't written by Joel Cetecays. Thank god. It wasn't written by you either, so we have no right to change it any more than a sheriff has a right to change the speed limit. We can't change it. We just relay it, and we say, well, god, you do what you wanna do with it. We've been saved by God's mercy, and it's God's mercy that fuels our ministry. So we can't change it. We can't distort it or or dilute it. [00:20:02] (30 seconds)  #GospelIsGods

Or you know what? There's certain sins which right now if I were to come up here and I were to speak about them, people might not like that. So maybe I'll just be quiet about some of those sins. Maybe we just won't talk about repentance. Oh, repent. That sounds like such a harsh word. Maybe we better just water down the message to get more people in. After all, don't we want people to believe? We don't want the gospel to be veiled. We wanna we wanna proclaim the gospel. So we'll just preach the gospel, but we will we'll get rid of repentance and sin and all that stuff. Paul says we don't do that. [00:19:23] (31 seconds)  #RepentanceMatters