I was thinking this week how impossible it would be for a true, God-called preacher, to preach anything other than the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified. How could I, a desperately wicked sinner, stand week after week, and service after service and tell men how to live when I struggle and fail daily myself? How could I, the wretched and depraved man that I am, tell others how to become better spouses, parents, children, friends, employers and employees when I have failed and continue to fail miserable at these things myself? What hypocrisy and vanity that would be! It is not my place to try to straighten people out. A wiser and older friend of mine told me not long ago that concerning preaching, to always remember that a man could shear a sheep many times, but he could only slay a sheep once. Friends, it is the preaching of Jesus Christ only that causes us to be sheared (John 3:30). My responsibility is not to tell people how to live, but proclaim to them how our Saviour lived, died and resurrected, doing everything perfectly for and in the place of hell-deserving sinners. If God is pleased to save a man or woman, they will want to hear only one message and this is the only message they will hear. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and sinners are saved by the free and sovereign grace of God alone by the foolishness of preaching (I Cor. 1:21).