If in the process of these talks questions come to your mind that I don't answer I hope that you will write them down and come back for the question answer session time tomorrow I really do enjoy

interacting with things and so if you feel frustrated that I didn't get around

to answering yours, come.

Let me try to recap this morning's talk even though it seems like we hardly took a

breather. The point I wanted to get across this morning was that the aim of

biblical preaching is to bring people to worship God and one of the ways of that in Pauline texts, the aim of preaching is to bring people to faith.

And then I pointed out that I believe both in Paul and in John, and I think we could show it elsewhere.

The essence, the heart, the indispensable core of saving faith,

is to be satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus and that this being

satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus magnifies God. And that magnifying of God is worship and therefore since the aim of

preaching is faith which magnifies God, the aim of preaching is worship. That was the

point this morning. So always in every text, however practical the issue is that you're taking up into God, the aim is that

God exulting satisfaction in God would be created in the hearts of your heroes.

James Henry Thornwell was a great old preacher in South Carolina where I was where I grew up in Greenville.

1834 Henry Ward Beecher called him the most brilliant minister in the old school Presbyterian church and he wrote a letter near the beginning of his ministry which captures this focus of preaching that I'm trying to capture. Let me quote from him. I felt that a new

era had commenced in my life in that I was no longer a citizen of the world, but an ambassador of God,

standing in the stead of Jesus Christ and beseeching men to turn away from unsatisfying vanities of a fleeting life and to fix their hopes on the enduring

sources of beatitude.

It's amazing what you can say if you use flowery words.

It really means make people happy.

But if you say that, people get upset at you.

So I'll say it the way he said it. To persuade people to turn away from

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