(Exodus) Exodus 20:26

Now, there's something else here, verse 26. "...neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon." Now, there are a great many that would build some nice, lovely steps to go up to the altar. That would make it very convenient, you see.

And when a man would step up, and they wore a type of a skirt in that day, why, the nakedness would be revealed. God says, I don't want to see it. That which speaks of the flesh, God can't use.

And let me make this very personal. Anything that Vernon McGee does that's of the flesh, God hates it, and God won't use it at all. God does not want a display of the flesh in anything that has to do with His work.

We need to guard against that type of thing. And sometimes it disturbs me when people can only see the preacher and not see the one that He's trying to present. I personally don't like anyone to tell me it's a beautiful sermon.

The last thing in the world I want to preach is a beautiful sermon. I want to preach a beautiful Savior. And I'd like for people to leave and say, my, isn't Jesus wonderful? Not that the preacher is, that doesn't make any difference about Him.

I've had very few real compliments since I've been a minister. But when I was a pastor as a student down in Georgia on a little white unpainted church on the side of a red clay hill, and one morning after the message, after everyone had left, a boy, there's a country boy, and I mean country, friends. He wore high yellow shoes, buttoned up too, by the way.

And he waited around, as timid as he could be. He was really a country boy. After everybody left, why, he came up to me and tears were in his eyes.

He took hold of my hand and he said, my, I didn't know Jesus was so wonderful. And he wanted to say something else, but he wasn't able to say it. And he just turned and walked out of the church.

And I watched him because that church was in a cotton patch then. It's in the city there now, but that was a cotton patch in my day. And I saw him walk down across that cotton patch.

And I watched him as he walked, that country boy. He said he didn't know Jesus was so wonderful. And I said, oh God, let me so preach that people will think Jesus is wonderful.

That was a compliment. I've had many like that, by the way. And we don't need the display of the flesh in the ministry, in the pulpit, or in church work.