All right, of course, I'm very happy to be here at the Red Hot Preaching Conference.
I just want to thank Pastor Jimenez for inviting me out and thank everyone here at Verde Baptist
Church.
You're putting on a really great conference here, and I mean that.
I know it's a lot of work.
Pastor Jimenez already was expressing how good of a job he did, but it really is.
I know it's tons of work and there's many people in the background doing a lot of work,
and I just want to say you're doing an awesome job.
I've been here since Friday, and everything has just been great.
So thank you all so much for having me here, and of course we're closing out the conference
tonight.
We started off here in Jeremiah, chapter number seven, and what we see in this passage is
the consequences of a backsliding nation, the children of Israel who have just completely
strayed away from the Lord.
One of the reasons we're starting with this, and I want to encourage you, I want to show
you some ways to not backslide and to not end up just not hearing what God has for us.
You've already heard a lot of great sermons this week, a lot of great preachers and really
good challenges and encouragements to change your life and to serve God more fully and
more perfectly from people who have been studying the word and are pastors and people
who God has ordained to deliver his word and deliver his message.
We ought not to ignore those things.
We're going to look down real quick in Jeremiah, chapter seven, and I want to apply some of
this to what we've heard already this week.
Look at verse number 22, the Bible says, For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded
them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings
or sacrifices, but this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be
your God, and you shall be my people, and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded
you that it may be well unto.
And this is a real common theme throughout the scripture where God is expressing multiple
times, look, I want your obedience.
I don't need all your sacrifices.
I don't need you to necessarily do anything for me.
I just want you to obey my voice.
I want you to listen to my words.
I want you to put my words into practice and just do what I'm commanding you to do.
This is what God has always just wanted for his people, yet the people are always coming
up with their own ideas and, no, I'm going to do this for God.
I'm going to serve God this way, and then they end up going outside of his word and
creating these altars and saying they're worshiping the Lord, but they're making these idols and
doing all these other things when God's just going like, look, I told you what I want you
to do.
Just obey me.
Right?
And there's a face palm because, obviously, there's serious consequences for the children
of Israel, for God's people, just to be kind of turning their back on the things of God
and just rejecting what they've been taught and rejecting what they're hearing and just
deciding to go and do things their own way.
Look at verse number 24.
The Bible says, but they hearkened not nor inclined their ear.
Basically, they just didn't listen.
They didn't want to listen.
They weren't inclining their ear, and I would just encourage you, based on the sermons we
heard already this week, that you don't just not listen or not incline your ear to the
great truths that have already come across as pulpit, but remember them.
Don't be the forgetful hero that's going to leave and be like, man, that conference was
great.
Everything was awesome, but then everything in your life is exactly the same as it was
before you came here.
The Bible says, but walked in the counsels and imagination of their evil heart and went
backward and not forward.
Our Christian life ought to be marked by forward progress.
We want to be very vigilant to make sure we don't end up sliding backward, and the way
we're going to do that is by not listening to what God would have for us to do.
It's amazing how, on one hand, the word of God and what God has for us is actually really
simple, right?
In the sense that it's not complicated.
There's multiple things that the Bible is exhorting us and commanding us to do.
It's not complicated, but it's just a matter of putting it into practice, overcoming our
flesh, right?
That's the hard part is actually doing it, but what we're supposed to do is not complicated.
And the longer you're going to church, the longer you've been a Christian, the more you've
been reading your Bible, you realize that you kind of see the same things over and over
and over again, yet people still continue to struggle with these things.
And we had a great podcast earlier with Pastor Shelley, and it's really interesting because
we didn't talk about what I was going to be preaching today, but it really is, it really
lined up perfectly with the content of my sermon tonight and the importance of coming
to church and trying to make sure you don't get distracted with the cares of this world
and end up just not serving God because of whatever is going on, whether that be politics
or sports or just anything else that could kind of draw you away from serving the Lord.
Now everyone here today, obviously you're here because you care about the things of
God, otherwise you wouldn't be here sweating and fanning yourselves and dealing with the
red hot preaching conference and hearing preachers rip your face and hold up big scary masks
and doing those things.
I have no props today, so I'm not much of a prop preacher, so you won't have any of
that from me, but you wouldn't be here if you didn't care about the things of God.
But what I want to encourage you to and also warn you against is straying away in the future.
I want you to leave here today with some good advice and some good practical applications
of the word of God to ensure that you will continue to move forward, that you're going
to take what you've received and put it into practice, that you don't end up by the wayside
or even worse end up kind of rejecting the things that God would have you to do and end
up just becoming disobedient and then falling into a position where you may end up having
to be chastised by the Lord and being punished because of your disobedience.
Turn if you would to Philippians chapter number three, Philippians chapter number three.
As with most things, it boils down to where your heart is.
Your heart needs to be right.
If you want to serve God, your heart needs to be in it.
Your heart needs to be right.
You need to maintain that as a forefront for doing the things that we do, for even going
out and preaching the gospel, coming to church and doing these things.
Your heart needs to be right with the Lord and I warn you against an attitude that I
think sometimes people end up getting, especially if you've been growing quite a bit, you've
been in the faith for a long time, maybe you've been coming to a good church for a long time,
you've changed your life tremendously, okay, and if you haven't gotten to that point yet
of having lots of changes, getting a lot of sin out of your life, look, keep going down
that path, but there's a danger in having this mentality, this mindset of thinking that
like you've arrived in your spiritual life.
I go to church, I pray, I read my Bible, right, like you do these things and like amen, do
those things, right, but don't allow yourself to get to the point where you just kind of
think like I am just doing everything that I need to do and everything's great, I've
checked every box and sort of, I'm going to be just coasting now doing these things.
That is a dangerous place to be because I'll tell you what, if you're not moving forward,
you're going to find yourself moving back and we need, and that's just the truth, there
is no stagnation for any significant period of time in the Christian life.
It's one of those things that you must keep yourself pressing forward and moving on and
trying to continue to grow and advance because as soon as you stop, as soon as you think
like well I'm just going to kind of take a break from the things of God or I've got this
all down, I'm just going to go on autopilot is exactly the moment when you start to slide
back and oftentimes you won't even realize it until you're much further down that path
of backsliding.
Look at verse number eight in Philippians chapter three, the Bible says, yea, doubtless
and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord,
for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do count them but dung that I may win
Christ and be found in him not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but
that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith,
that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being
made conformable unto his death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection
of the dead.
Look at verse number 12, not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect,
but I follow after if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ
Jesus.
Verse 13, brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do,
forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are
before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
And there's a lot to unpack here, I'm not going to spend too much time on this passage,
but essentially what the apostle Paul is teaching here, what he's trying to say, is when he
says, I count not myself to have apprehended, that's the mindset that he has.
Now, on the one hand, we know, of course, salvation, your eternal life is completely
by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
This passage, we read in context, clearly expresses that truth, and we know that there's
a resurrection to come, and we know that once you put your trust in Christ, that is an automatic
thing, that is a sure thing.
We have the hope of that resurrection, you will be a part of that resurrection.
In that regard, you've already attained to that resurrection.
But there's a better resurrection for people who are keeping the ways of God and doing
the right things and obeying the Lord and doing the work that you're going to receive
a lot of extra rewards.
And apostle Paul is saying here, look, I don't count myself to have apprehended anything,
I'm just going to keep on working and working until the day I breathe my last breath and
make that be my mindset, and whatever I've done in the past, I'm just going to forget
about that because it's done.
I mean, whether it be great things for God or no things for God, it's done.
But I'm going to keep pressing forward for that mark.
I'm not just going to coast now the rest of my life, I'm going to stay with it and make
sure that I keep moving towards that mark.
And look, we all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, so if anyone actually
thinks you've arrived in your Christian life, you better think again.
There's so much more.
God's standard of holiness and perfection is essentially unattainable while we're in
this flesh, which is why we need to continue to strive and keep pressing towards that mark
every day of our existence here on this life.
The Bible says in verse 15 there, let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded, and
if in anything you be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.
Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained?
Let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing, let's not lose ground.
Hey, wherever you've already attained to, let's keep building upon that and keep moving
forward and not allow yourself to fall back.
We need to keep increasing more and more.
You don't have to turn there in 1 Thessalonians, chapter number 4, verse number 9, the Bible
reads, but as touching brotherly love, ye need not that I write unto you, for ye yourselves
are taught of God to love one another, and indeed ye do it toward all the brethren which
are in all Macedonium.
And this is a good report.
The apostle Paul is teaching here to the Thessalonians, he's saying, look, I know you have brotherly
love and I don't even need to write unto you, as ye yourselves are taught of God to love
one another, this is a truth that you already know, and he says, and indeed ye do it toward
all the brethren which are in all Macedonium.
You're doing a good job of loving your brethren, you're doing a good job of supporting the
people, but he doesn't just say, great, now you just coast on autopilot, he says, but
we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more.
Look, we know that you're loving the brethren, we know that you're good to all of Macedonia.
Don't stop.
In fact, increase more and more.
We need to keep pushing.
You know what?
That's a little uncomfortable.
You know, the good thing about coasting?
It's comfortable.
You know, I love using cruise control, I'm out driving, set the cruise control, you've
got a long trip, man, it just makes driving that much easier, right?
Well that's great for driving a car, but in your Christian life you can't just set it
on cruise control and just sit back and relax because you're going to end up finding yourself
backsliding, we need to make sure that we're increasing more and more and keep ramping
up the speed and keep on pushing forward in order to keep ourselves from sliding back.
Now think about it this way, because there's also some dangers in your spiritual life that
we ought to be thinking about and conscious of, we want to increase more and more, but
the Christian life isn't like, isn't a short sprint, right?
We think about it in terms of a race.
It's a marathon, it's a mega marathon, it's an ultra marathon, right?
It's a really long endurance race that we need to run here, and you want to be careful
just not to bite off more than you can chew, right?
You want to be able to keep increasing, but keep it reasonable, right?
And I don't want, I'm not talking about quenching any zeal, hey, I love when people get zealous
and they want to work and serve the Lord, and we should always be encouraging of that,
but you have to also just be realistic in the sense of what you can do and being able
to make sure that you don't burn yourself out, right?
You could end up doing so much sometimes, I think, where people could get burned out.
If you think about it in terms of working out exercise, right?
If you were to, and I, it's been a while since I've exercised, but the truth, I still
know the truth is because I remember what it was like way back in the day when I would
actually work out a little bit more than I do now, but if you were to do too much in
any one day, like, man, I'm going to get ripped, I'm going to do all, I'm going to lift this
much, I'm going to do all these reps, and you just push yourself super hard, what happens
is you get like, you get really sore, and you're going to be unable to move for an extended
period of time, now, but here's the thing, in order to grow, you can't just be like,
have no weights on the bar and just be like, oh man, I'm going to do a thousand reps of
this, and it doesn't, you don't even feel it, right?
In order to grow, in order to gain more muscle, you need to feel it.
It's going to be uncomfortable.
You're going to need to push yourself, but you're going to need to be consistent with
it also.
If you just got, you know, got one exercise in, and then you stopped anything forward,
you haven't really gained much at all, right?
You need to keep doing it over and over again, and if you do it too hard, too fast, you just,
you try to get too zealous all at once, you might end up, man, that really hurt, and not
going back and continuing doing what you need to do in order to really gain the good results
of getting healthier, getting stronger, you want to plan it out to where, hey, I'm going
to start doing this and continue to increase, though, and continue to feel that pain and
feel that burn a little bit, because once you start just coasting, you end up losing
what you've gained to that point.
And consider this as well, you know, when you're gaining ground, even, you know, even
in a spiritual life, in almost any aspect of life, you always have to work really hard
to get improvements, to continue to get better.
And I remember back in the days when I was a competitive swimmer, you know, we'd have
to work real hard, do tons of practices, tons of workouts, and you're just shaving off fractions
of seconds or, you know, a really short amount of time, and you have to put in all this effort,
but then if you were to, like, take a break for a while, you know, just kind of get out
of it and just back off for a year and you don't put in that effort anymore, you're going
to end up losing tons of ground that you had gained by taking that break and kind of backing
off for a while, and then it's going to take a bunch of effort again to get back to the
place where you just were previously.
And spiritually speaking, it'd be the same thing, it'd take a while to get back, because
falling back, backsliding is easy.
Once you get started on that backslide, it can take you back much farther than you'd
ever want to go, and then it takes a while to gain back and get back to the place where
you were spiritually speaking as well.
Now turn, if you would, to Psalm 119.
So one of the ways that you're going to keep yourself from backsliding is to have the good
routines.
You know, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, if you're at the point in your life where
you say, man, I go soul winning, I read my Bible, I pray, I go to church, you know, I'm
doing all the things that I'm supposed to be doing, I think that's great and we all
should have a routine and have that set in our minds that that is something that we are
going to do, that that is something that I won't compromise on, I'm just going to keep
doing this, I'm going to make it part of my schedule, it's going to be part of my life.
As we had a discussion earlier today, you know, even just when it comes to going to
church, because going to church is critical for keeping yourself from backsliding, you
need to make that decision of where you say, look, I am going to be in church no matter
what.
And Pastor Shelley asked a question to me earlier, he said, hey, you know, what is it
that people can do to make sure you don't get distracted with things, so you don't end
up backsliding and kind of getting out of serving the Lord?
And the number one thing is staying in church.
And you make that, but the way that you're going to do that, that doesn't just happen
by chance, you have to set that priority as something that is non-negotiable.
It is something that you have to have established in your heart that just says, you know, no
matter what happens, I will make sure that I stay going to church to serve the Lord.
Now if you're going to church to serve the Lord, that's the right reason.
So no matter what may happen, you can still then continue to go, because what happens
sometimes in people's life, they may have that zeal or the desire to serve the Lord
and to go to church, but they put too much confidence in one aspect, maybe one church
or one man, and then if that man fails or if that church fails, then they end up just
getting out of church altogether because they were let down when the real, you know, the
whole point of going to church is God commands it and you need to have that established.
Even if someone else fails, even if some other man of God fails, no matter what happens,
I will continue to go to church because it's right, because it's true, because it's what
God has for us to do, because if I let anything else, any other circumstance allow me to get
out of church, well guess what, that's when the backsliding starts to happen.
And God holds you individually responsible to make sure that you're getting into church
and not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together.
The Bible says in Hebrews chapter 10, and you're in Psalm 119, just stay there, but
in Hebrews chapter 10 verse 24, the Bible says, and let us consider one another to provoke
unto love and to good works.
This is why you need to be in church, by the way, and not just listening to sermons online.
Because when you gather together, you're actually considering the other members of
the body.
It's one whole body.
I don't know what body part the internet is, but it's not really a body part.
You need to be gathered together where the Holy Spirit is moving and working.
And I'll tell you this, I've listened to it, I'm not against listening to sermons online,
I do it myself.
I love listening to other pastors preach and teach the Bible, and I learn a lot from listening
to other people, and I think it's great.
But I'll tell you what, the most serious impactful sermons and influences I've had in my life
personally have been from sitting in church listening to the man of God preach the word
of God way more than hearing any other recording that I've ever heard come across the pulpit.
It is impactful, it is important, and not only is it the sermon that has that impact,
it's everybody else around you.
I mean, those people who might follow the line, you're not getting the experience of
being here and singing the great praises unto the Lord with a bunch of people that love
God.
I mean, it is moving.
We sing these great hymns that are packed full of great doctrine, we're teaching one
another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart
to the Lord, among God's people, there is something special to that in itself, there's
something edifying in that in yourself that you don't get sitting at home.
And that is powerful, and that is going to help you to keep in the Christian fight day
after day, week after week, especially when things get difficult, hey, being around God's
people, they care about you, they should, if you're part of a healthy body, they're
going to care about you individually, they're going to care about you and say, hey, what's
going on with this other body member?
The finger, the toe, as the Bible says in 1 Corinthians, talking about the different
members of the body, hey, what's going on with them?
You love that person, you're going to help that person and say, what can I do for that
person?
I'm going to pray for that person.
You don't get that when you're not in church because you're not part of the body.
You need to get plugged in.
And then the Bible says in that same passage there in Hebrews 10, let us consider one another
to provoke and to love and to good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves
together as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another and so much the more as you see
the day approaching.
Church is critical.
Getting in church is critical.
Now what I want to do this evening, and everything was pretty much by introduction up to this
point, is to issue some challenges, and by doing this I'm going to just kind of fill
you in with what we do at our church, at Strong World Baptist Church.
I have challenges that we issue every single month out of the year.
We get one month that I don't have a challenge for, like the summer break, okay, where it's
choose your own challenge or you do whatever you want to do.
But I found this to be very effective for myself personally as well as for our church
because it's important to be focused on the things of God and it's a good idea, you know,
not to let anything, any one thing slip in your life.
Sometimes we get out of balance, right, there's a lot of different things that happen in life.
Life gets chaotic.
There's plenty of reasons why people might end up having some circumstances that happen
that are out of their control that can cause you to get distracted from the things of God.
Or even just various specific things, you know, it could be something as simple as well
work really ramped up and I've gotten really busy, so the time that I normally would be
praying or reading my Bible I've kind of, I've kind of forsaken that a little bit because
of these extra circumstances that just stole my attention for a little bit and that happens
and we know that things like that will happen.
There's going to be emergencies, family emergencies, things that happen that get you out of that
routine, right, so it's good to have that routine but sometimes you can get shaken from
that routine and we need to make sure that we don't just never come back to doing those
things that are all critical in our spiritual life, in our spiritual walk with God.
And one of the ways I kind of try to keep tabs on these things is by having these challenges,
a different challenge each month, so that if anything was kind of slipping or falling
by the wayside in my spiritual life, it's a time to focus on those things and be like,
no, okay, now I'm going to really spend a lot of time and make sure that I'm not letting,
for example, my prayer life slip.
I'm going to make sure I'm spending the time and staying focused on my church attendance
and make sure that that's not slipping.
I'm going to do everything I can and focus on that and make sure that if anything has
caused me to not be able to make it into service, that I'm going to make sure that I get into
church every time there's a service because it's that important.
I mean, the Bible says in 1 Timothy 3.15, but if I tarry long it, thou mayest know how
thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living
God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
I mean, if, you know, it makes me, it drives me nuts hearing people who want to just put
down the importance of going to church when the scripture is saying it's the pillar and
ground of the truth.
I mean, how more foundational do you need than the pillar and the ground?
Right?
You've got the ground, like that's the supporting structure of the truth.
Oh yeah, but hey man, you know, we have church in my house where we've got a couple of people
gathered together and we just talk about Jesus.
Look, you could have church in a house, but don't get fooled by these house church people
that don't have a bishop, they don't have an elder, they don't have someone who's a
man of God that's ordained to actually have a church service where you're getting a bunch
of believers together to do the thing, you know, to worship the Lord and to hear and
be edified and do the things that the Bible lays out ought to be done in a church.
Don't think just hanging out with your buddies is church.
One of the things that we do is we focus on the church attendance.
Another thing that we do, and I had you turn to Psalm 119, we do a Bible memory challenge.
And I'm going to talk about a lot of different things that you could be doing in your spiritual
life and I want you to take stock and just think, hey, is there any area in my life where
I should probably be doing more of this?
And when you leave this evening, don't just leave thinking, oh, yeah, everything's great.
We all have areas that we can improve on.
I mean, I continually, I'll be honest with you, I always have an area that I need to
improve on.
There's always something that's lacking and we need to always be focused on making
the adjustments that are proper to make sure we're not letting anything slip as much
as is possible in our lives.
There's a lot that we ought to be doing for the Lord.
There's a lot that we ought to be doing for our families, a lot that we ought to be doing
in our lives.
But don't ever just get to the point where you're just thinking like, no, I got it all
covered because you don't.
But take the time to reflect and think, what should I be doing and where is it?
And I'm also going to be giving you, because the Bible, like for almost all these things,
the Bible doesn't tell you specifically, well, how much is it that I need to do?
And then I could just be like, that's good enough.
And the reason that the Bible doesn't tell us that is because God wants your heart in
it.
He wants you to have the right attitude and the right heart that just says, hey, if God
says this is good for me, I should be doing it, then I just want to do as much as I can.
Not going, well, what's the minimum that I have to do to not make God angry, right?
So the Bible says when it comes to church attendance, hey, don't forsake the assembling
of yourselves together.
Now look, what does that mean, forsake, right?
Is that if I don't go to all three?
No, I don't think that I miss a Wednesday night, I'm going to church twice on Sunday
that you're forsaking it.
I don't think that you're forsaking church if you only go once a week.
I don't think you're forsaking it, right?
But there's going to be a point where you're going to say, look, when people don't even
know if you're a member of the church, like nobody in the church knows when you show up,
you'll be like, oh yeah, I mean, this has been my church for 10 years.
And you show up and everyone's like, I'm sorry, who are, you know, you might have forsaken
the church, right?
Or like, oh, I thought you moved away.
No, I've been here.
But that's also why the scripture says so much the more, as you see the day approaching,
right?
The point isn't, well, how little can I go to not forsake?
It's no, you need this more and more and more.
You need that provoking, you need that edification, you need that encouragement more and more.
So where you have the mindset of going, hey, I'm going to try, I'm going to make it to
the church every time there's a service, as much as possible.
When it comes to Bible memory, for example, you know, there's reading the Bible and look,
reading the Bible just by itself, again, the Bible doesn't say how often you need to do
it, but the Bible does say, Jesus said this when he answered Satan, when Satan was trying
to tempt him into turning the stone into bread, he referenced the Old Testament.
And he said, you know, Jesus answered him saying, it is written, man shall not live
by bread alone, but by every word of God.
So the word of God is important.
And you say, well, how often do I need to read my, how many chapters, how many verses,
how, you know, what is it that I need to do to be right with God?
Well, I'll tell you this much, if Jesus is relating the word of God and consuming the
word of God to bread, I mean, how much do you need to eat?
Well, you need to eat enough to survive, right?
But do you think that God's going to be like, okay, just eat, you know, if you ate once
every three days, you'll survive, like you'll, you'll continue to exist as a human being.
Well, that's not really thriving, right?
I mean, you want to think about this, well, in Matthew 6, you know, the, in the Lord's
prayer, Jesus says, give us this day our daily bread.
So I mean, if you're, if you're eating bread every day and he's likening the word of God
to eating bread and say, look, it's more than just eating bread.
I would think that reason would stand that we should be reading our Bible at least every
day then.
If we're going to be eating bread every day, we ought to be getting the word of God every
day.
And these are standards that we ought to have in our life.
And I think that, you know, you're going to do yourself a disservice if you don't set
up these standards in your life, spiritually speaking, if you just, if you just start to
let these things slip, you let them go away and look, we also need to make sure why we
put these standards in effect to begin with, right?
Like I raised my children, they have rules that they have to follow, but I don't want
them just to follow the rules because they're the rules.
I want them to understand the rules.
And when I preach on this stuff, I also don't want anyone thinking like, well, that's what
Precious Lavergne said.
So that's just what we should do to the spiritual, no, let's, let's understand why that is.
So we don't just have rules for the sake of having rules.
We have the rules so we can look at why is that there?
Why do we have these standards?
Well, it's because of what the word of God says and the importance that the Bible places
on these things.
And again, we could look at, well, how much should we be reading of the word of God?
As much as we can.
Consume as much of the word of God as you can, and we're going to find that answers
could be coming up a lot with all these different things.
Well, yeah, you're going to have a little bit of a conflict, which is also why I want
to make sure we don't get too out of balance with all the various things that God wants
us to do, to where we just leave some things by the wayside and just focus only on one
thing.
We need all of these things in our Christian life to make sure that we're growing properly
as a child of God.
So I had you turn to Psalm 119, and you know, one of the challenges that we do in our church
is in the month of January, we read the entire New Testament.
I understand that you all do that here at Verity Baptist Church as well, where you have
that challenge of going, hey, let's try to make sure we read through all of the New Testament.
And if you do about nine chapters a day, then you can easily do that task.
And what I love about these challenges is that it forces you to look at your schedule
and say, how can I make this happen?
And say, hey, well, this is important, this is something I want to make sure I do, I want
to make sure that I'm getting through this much Bible every month or every year or every
day.
How am I going to make this happen?
You need to start making other sacrifices, maybe, in your life.
So reading the whole New Testament, that's one of the challenges that we do.
Another challenge that we do is a Bible memory challenge.
Look at Psalm 119, verse number nine.
You say, well, I read my Bible, isn't that enough?
Well, the Bible talks a lot about meditating on the Word of God also, and keeping the Word
of God in your heart.
Verse number nine, the Bible says, Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way, by taking
heed thereto according to my word?
With my whole heart have I sought thee, O let me not wander from thy commandments.
Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.
You know, warning against backsliding, well, what's backsliding entail?
Getting into sin, right?
Just doing sinful things.
Well, you want to make sure and try to prevent yourself from getting into sin.
Well, you know what a great way of doing that is?
Hiding God's Word in your heart.
It's going to be a lot harder for you to give in to that flesh when you've been feeding
the Spirit with the Word of God so much that it's in your heart.
So much when, you know, when you're saying, you know what, I'm not, you know, wine is
a mocker and strong drink is raging and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise, and when
you have that just committed to memory, you have a problem with alcohol, well, the Holy
Ghost is going to bring up that passage to your remembrance because you've already hit
it in your heart.
It's going to help you to avoid that temptation and that snare of going down that wrong path
of getting involved with booze, right?
Even just, well, it's just one beer.
Keep the Word of God committed in your heart.
That's why it says, hey, thy word have I hid mine heart that I might not sin against thee.
Jump down to verse number 97.
Verse number 97, the Bible reads, oh, how love I thy Lord is my meditation all the day.
Thou through thy commandments has made me wiser than mine enemies, for they are ever
with me.
I have more understanding than all my teachers, for thy testimonies are my meditation.
You know what's going to really help you in this life and make you really wise?
The Word of God.
I don't know about you, but I hate making stupid decisions.
I've made enough of them in my life, I don't want to make any more.
Well, you know what, when you get the Word of God in your heart, and you let the Word
of God guide you and instruct you to light your path before you, and you use the wisdom
and the Word of God, and you have that hid in your heart, you have that ready to go,
so when any situation comes across you, where you're just like, wow, I don't think the Bible
talks about this, you've got enough Bible in your heart, it's going to guide you down
the right path and make the application, one, because if you just, just by even committing
to memory, you're meditating on that word, you're thinking about that verse, probably
more than you ever have just by reading.
And I see a lot of the heads nodding, and you know what, those are the people who've
memorized verses.
Because you know what I'm saying is true.
When you commit the Word of God to memory, you are forced to think about it a lot more,
because you're going to be reciting that passage over and over and over again in your mind,
and just trying to remember that.
How am I going to remember this?
It's very repetitive.
But as you do that process of memorization, you're thinking about things, and God's going
to open up truths that you hadn't seen before, just by virtue of you spending so much time
thinking about it, meditating on it.
And that's a fact.
And if you haven't done it before, you say, well, I'm not really good at memorizing things
in general.
I'm not very good at it.
Well, I mean, don't you want to not sin against the Lord?
Don't you want to have more understanding than all my teachers?
Don't you want to have that wisdom?
I mean, I do.
And that's not a spiritual gift.
Memorization's not a spiritual gift.
Some people may have to work at it a little bit harder than others.
I get that.
But everybody can memorize things.
You all learn that, I mean, you all probably know a password to get into your account.
Everyone has some things memorized.
The Word of God's no different.
It's just, are you investing the time in it?
You care enough about it.
Is it that important to you?
Oh, here's a really good, I love this challenge.
Turn if you would to, turn to Romans chapter 8.
We do two different challenges, but they're both tied together.
One of them that we do at our church for one month is you've got to dedicate one hour of
your day to anything that would be spiritual or a godly activity, you know, like it would
be soul winning, praying, reading your Bible.
You know, you're making sure you're spending and giving God your first fruits and making
sure that you're dedicating and, you know, partitioning off at least a section of your
life to where every single day I am going to spend time with the Lord one way or another.
And again, that will force you, and that could be any of the things that you know are the
will of God, things that God would have you to do.
You're dedicating one hour of your time and just making sure, now look, I don't think
one hour is much of a challenge, personally.
I think we should have more than one hour of our time spent doing things that are of
God, but, you know, I'm trying to get as many people involved as possible, and you know,
wherever you're at, we can always do more.
We should always be trying to increase more and more.
Another challenge that we have is we just did this for the first time where I specified
what it was.
We did a challenge where it was identify one thing in your life that is just kind of a
waste of time and just stop doing that for the month, right?
Just find one thing that's just, it adds no value and just stop doing it because you know
what it's going to do?
It's going to free up your time because the Bible says that we ought to redeem the time
because the days are evil.
We need to make the best use of our time as possible.
This year, I changed the challenge just a little bit to be the digital detox because
what I find is that the most common way that people waste their time is right here.
I'm not against technology, okay?
I'm in IT, like, in my secular job.
I think there's great tools and great resources.
I love being able to learn and use technology to my advantage, but let's face it, it is
a huge time waster for a tremendous number of people in this world.
And I see the ramifications, the impact of this, I see what's happening to our society
and to our culture and to our children especially with how much time they're putting their face
in front of a screen.
And look, it's dangerous.
When you just have yourself this kind of unfettered access or you just start spending so much
time on this, people lose interpersonal relations.
Now look, the Word of God, our mission here as ministers of the Word of God, people are
the most important thing.
We need to be focused on building relationships with people, on serving people, on loving
your brother and doing these things, but you know what I see?
Interpersonal relationships going down the toilet.
I see entire families going out to eat and sitting down and everybody's got a stupid
phone in their face.
So instead of enjoying time together with your children, your mom, your dad, brother,
sister, everybody's just looking at a device and just seeing what everybody else is doing
or playing some game, wasting your time.
I think it's ridiculous.
It makes me angry to see people.
It's disrespectful.
It's rude.
When you're gathered around fellowshipping with people and then someone just off on their
phone, like what are you doing?
Seriously, this is a big problem.
And in Romans 8, I turn to Romans 8, look at verse number 15, the Bible says, For ye
have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the spirit of
adoption whereby we cry Abba, Father.
Ye ought not to have an addiction in your life.
Now commonly we refer to addictions like smoking, drinking, pornography, there's all really
bad things.
And look, if you have that addiction, get rid of those things out of your life.
You ought not to be in that bondage.
But I think the addiction that probably affects the most number of people is the digital addiction.
This is why I call our challenge that we do in our church, a digital detox.
Test yourself.
Are you able to put the device down for any amount of time?
Even just one day.
If you can't put your phone down for a day without just having to pick it up and, I just
got to check it.
You got a problem.
We do it for a month.
Now it doesn't mean you can't use the tool for something that's legitimate, but if you're
just wasting your time scrolling through social media or just doing stuff that's just completely
not necessary, yeah, that's, we're trying to make sure that we don't just get sucked
into these things because it's so easy.
It's so easy to do.
But I'll tell you what, that ends up just being a huge waste of time.
Redeem the time because the days are evil.
That's one of my favorite challenges.
In fact, you know what, though?
This works.
I've had church members come up to me and say, you know what, Pastor Burzins, since
we did that challenge, and people get excited about the challenges, and I hope you get excited
about challenges, and saying, you know what, I want to improve my spiritual life, and I
think I might have a problem here.
I'm going to give it a try.
I'm going to do it.
I've had people say, you know what, we canceled our subscriptions to these streaming media
or whatever because we got rid of it for a month, and we just realized we don't need
this in our life.
Our life's busy enough as it is.
I don't need to be wasting my time just looking at the world's garbage anyways.
Just get rid of it.
I wonder if you would, too, Acts chapter 3.
Acts chapter 3.
How much time do I need to redeem?
All of it.
Redeem your time.
Make the best use of it as you can.
Look, I'm not against entertainment in and of itself, but you really ought to have that
in check and under control, right?
We do another challenge, a prayer challenge, and I think this is also another area where
a lot of Christians are lacking in.
It's funny because prayer is not hard, but it ends up being very hard for many people.
Why?
Because you have to carve out the time to do it.
We often, and I'll include myself as guilty in this, can end up just kind of speeding
through prayers.
You know you need to pray.
You want to pray, but you don't really end up taking the time that you ought to be to
really be praying and caring for the people as you should, as other members of your church
or even for needs that you have yourself.
We need to go to God with all of our troubles and our cares.
Jesus said, the Bible says that you have not because you ask not.
Jesus said, ask and you shall receive.
What a great promise from God.
Hey, just ask and you'll receive.
And how many people just don't ask?
Where pray means to ask, but you just don't do it.
God's saying, hey, just ask.
Ask me what you want.
We should be taking advantage of that because God's a God that answers prayer and nothing
is too hard for the Lord.
So when we go to the Bible though, we think like, well, what's a reasonable amount of
time?
How much time as a Christian should I be spending in prayer?
What really would be a good number?
I mean, I want to pray more.
What should I be thinking about?
What should I be using as a good standard for my time in prayer?
Well, look at Acts chapter three, verse number one, the Bible says, now Peter and John went
up together into the temple at the hour of prayer being the ninth hour.
Well, you know, there's one example where there's an hour set aside for prayer.
The hour of prayer was at the ninth hour and people gather together and pray at the ninth
hour regularly, consistently.
You know, there's plenty.
And look, I'm going through so many different subjects, you know, entire sermons can be
preached on all of these things.
Look them up for yourself and start looking at the Bible.
How much time should I be spending here?
Well, in Luke 6, 12, you don't have to turn there.
The Bible says, and it came to pass in those days that he went out into a mountain to pray
and continued all night in prayer to God.
That's what Jesus Christ did.
More than once he would go out and pray all night.
So here we have Jesus, during the day, he's out healing, preaching, ministering to people,
and then he separates himself from the group for a while and carves out time.
He said, look, my day was busy today, God, I don't have time to pray.
Well, you know what he did?
He's like, well, no, I'm making time to pray.
Yeah, I had a busy day and I was serving the Lord, but we're not going to stop.
You know, I mean, he was doing everything he was supposed to do.
I mean, think about that.
How many times do you waste your time or spend time on other things that aren't even Godly?
You just be like, well, I was too busy today, so tomorrow I'll just worry about reading my Bible
or praying or doing these things.
It's bad enough having that attitude.
Jesus was doing all the right things where you might be able to say, hey, look,
I spent my day serving the Lord, I'm just going to take a break now.
He's like, no, I'm going to go now and I'm going to pray because I didn't get a chance to pray
as I should, and he ends up spending all night in prayer.
Now, I'm not saying on a continual basis you need to spend every night in prayer.
You're going to run into some problems if you do that.
But we see the importance of spending a significant amount of time in prayer.
And when you study the Bible, you'll see when people have, when there's serious things coming up,
when Jesus was going to select his disciples, he spent a lot of time, you know, in prayer,
big decisions are going to make, people will fast and pray and do things.
Look, don't let that slip by.
Don't, you know, don't be negligent.
If you've got some important decision coming up in your life, some big, you know, some big thing,
some big tragedy, some big event, whatever it is, carve out the time to pray.
We see in 1 Thessalonians chapter 3 verse 9, for what thanks can we render to God again
for you for all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before our God, night and day,
praying exceedingly that we might see your face and might perfect
that which is lacking in your faith.
Night and day, praying exceedingly to see other people.
We see the disciples, we see the apostles, we see the apostle Paul making that statement here
saying that he's been praying night and day.
We even Daniel, right?
Now, you could say, well, I pray at night before I go to bed.
Great. I pray in the morning when I get up. Amen.
That's good.
And whatever your schedule is, don't stop.
Well, I'm saying we should increase more and more.
Daniel had a habit of praying three times a day, clearly laid out in scriptures.
And even when they passed a law saying you can't pray unless you go and ask permission first from the king,
you know what he did?
He still kept praying.
Just as it was, I'm going to pray three times a day.
And look, I think that's a great standard to have.
I'm going to make sure I'm praying three times a day.
I'm going to pray in the morning when I wake up.
I'm going to pray at some point in the middle of the day while I'm
doing my work, doing my business, whatever it is.
And then in the evening again, I'm going to pray again.
You know what that helps you do?
It helps you keep God at the forefront of your mind.
Making sure you're communicating to your Heavenly Father.
You know what it's going to help you do?
Not backslide.
You know what it's going to help you do?
Stay spiritually minded.
It's going to help you not get distracted with the cares of this world
when you continually have a part of your day, every day, three times a day.
I'm going to spend time praying to the Lord.
It's another challenge.
We have another challenge with getting people baptized and focusing on that.
And this is something that, again, can fall by the wayside.
You know, we go out sowing and sometimes you remember to bring up stuff.
Sometimes you don't.
Sometimes you'll talk to people about the King James Bible.
Sometimes you'll talk to them about going to church.
You know, these are all important things after you lead someone to Christ.
But you know what's really important is people getting baptized.
It's a command.
You know, we are Baptists, by the way.
We shouldn't be laying up on the baptisms.
We need more people getting baptized.
And you know, I can't even fully explain it, but
there's definitely a power to people getting baptized.
I got saved when I was 20 years old, but I didn't really start getting on fire and
serving the Lord until after I got baptized.
And that didn't happen until I got plugged into a really good church.
You get the good church, you get baptized, and you know what?
And we ought to be getting people baptized.
There's some that, obviously, you can't change history.
I don't know exactly what would have happened.
But if I would have gotten baptized a lot earlier, I would guess I'd be more
likely to be living for God much earlier in my life by taking that first step
of obedience and dying to old self and walking in newness of life.
But the Bible says, of course, the Great Commission, Matthew 28, verse 19,
go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
I mean, this is part of the Great Commission.
Getting people baptized, bring it up to people.
Hey, if you're here tonight and you haven't been baptized since you got saved,
you haven't been dunked under the water, not just sprinkled, but
haven't been biblically baptized, get baptized tonight.
The good news is you only have to do it one time, and then you're set.
Just get it out of the way, get it done, make sure that that's settled for you.
And look, if you've already been baptized,
encourage other people to get baptized.
And not even necessarily just the people that you win to Christ,
sometimes you run into people who are already saved.
Why don't you think about asking them, hey, have you been baptized?
I know you've got a church and you're saved, hey, praise the Lord.
But have you been baptized?
And even if they don't come to this church and get baptized, if they say, no,
no, I haven't been baptized, I'm going to get baptized tomorrow at my local church.
Great.
That's a win for the kingdom of God.
And I love this.
I just heard this recently from Brother Segura from Faithful Word Baptist Church.
It's a method.
I haven't put this into practice yet,
but I love it and I'm going to start using this.
Sometimes it's hard to change your own routines, right?
But if you think about them and you care about them, you can do these things.
And he has this method of convincing people to get baptized,
because people have all kinds of different reasons why they don't want to
get baptized, right?
I mean, whatever it is, whether it could go on and on and
on on all the different reasons why someone might not want to get baptized.
But if someone's saved, you care about the things of God,
you just ask them this question, hey, well, what do you think about baptism?
You think it's a good thing to get baptized?
You think it's good?
Yeah, I mean, who's going to be a saved person that says, no, it's not good?
Of course they're going to say, yeah, it's good, right?
The Bible says we should get baptized.
You show Matthew 28, right?
Jesus said, hey, we should be baptized.
You say, okay, well, it's a good thing, right?
Well, the Bible says in James 4.17, therefore to him that knoweth to do good
and doeth it not, to him it is sin.
What do you think about getting baptized at church on Sunday?
I think it's great, because you know what that should do?
It should highlight baptism is important.
Look, if it's something good, we ought to be doing it.
And when you don't do things that are good, that is sin.
Don't lose sight of that.
And it's important to understand that.
And it's the truth.
It's the truth.
Let the word of God convict people.
Turn, if you would, to Hebrews chapter 13.
So I already covered our church attendance.
We have a church attendance challenge.
I think that's super easy.
It's just show up to church every time we have a church service.
And for those people who come to our church that don't live really close
and they might not be able to make it, I say go to another local church in your area.
It may not be your favorite one, but just find a church that's got the right gospel.
Find a church that you could still consider is a church in God's eyes.
And just go there for the midweek service.
And you know what?
I think some of those people now, when they can't make it to our church,
have a church to go to.
Amen.
It's not just about our church.
It's about people getting among believers and serving the Lord.
I don't care if you do it at our church or another church.
Just serve God.
I mean, yeah, you should go to the best church that you can.
But get in church.
We have another challenge where we try to encourage people to bring visitors.
Right?
We say, why is that important?
Where is that in the Bible?
How about making disciples of people?
Lead someone to Christ.
Get them plugged into church.
That's how they're going to grow.
That's how they're really going to start serving the Lord.
Actively participate in being part of that great commission
and bring people in the church and be thinking about that.
Hebrews 13, we have another challenge.
It's a singing challenge.
One of my church members actually suggested this to me.
And I thought it was an awesome idea.
I love it.
Singing challenge.
Singing is important.
And look, I'm preaching in the sense of the choir here.
This is some of the best singing that I've heard of any church
that I've been to.
It's awesome.
It's great.
But it is an integral part of church.
And I was just preaching on this in my church last week.
Because there's some people.
Look, this is a great, there's great singing here.
But I guarantee there's probably at least one person
who doesn't really sing during the singing that's
in the congregation tonight.
You know I know that because I used to be that person.
I'd get my songbook.
Time to sing.
I'd turn to the song.
Maybe I'd move my lips, right?
And not sing.
Or if I did sing, it would be like under my breath.
Like no one could hear it.
Look, usually the reason why people don't sing
is because you're focused on the wrong thing again.
You're thinking about yourself.
You're worried about what other people might think.
You're worried about hurting someone else's ears.
Right?
Maybe that's the case.
I don't know.
But we don't sing for ourselves.
We don't sing even for other people
to think how great of a singer we are.
We sing because we're praising the Lord.
So the Lord's good.
His mercy endureth forever.
OK, God is great.
God is worthy of our praise.
And when you think about it that way,
when you think about, hey, I'm going
to refrain from praising God in the midst of the congregation.
I'm going to stop doing it.
What does that say to God?
Who do you really care about?
You care about embarrassing yourself?
How about you just care about the Lord enough to love Him
and just give Him the praise.
Hebrews 13, verse number 15, the Bible says,
by Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God
continually.
That is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.
You want to offer up a sacrifice to God?
How about you offer up the sacrifice of your lips,
the sacrifice of praise to our Savior,
who is way more than worthy of your praise.
It's what we ought to be doing.
Christians ought to be praising God every day,
but especially in the house of God.
Soul winning.
This is a challenge.
We have multiple soul winning challenges
because of the importance.
We have a challenge where the challenge
is to go out and try to attempt to give
the gospel to at least one person
every single day of the month.
I have another challenge where you
have to add at least one hour to your regular soul winning
that you do every week.
Why?
To get focused on doing more.
Try to push yourself.
Make it uncomfortable.
You know, the Red Hop Radio Conference,
I don't know how you're feeling right now,
but hopefully something that's been mentioned tonight
is making you a little bit uncomfortable.
Say, I don't think I'm doing that great of a job
in this area.
I think I could do more.
I think I need to do more.
Hey, that's what it's all about.
That's what hot preaching is all about.
You hear and you see the areas.
You look at that glass using the word of God
to see yourself, to see your own life, and say, you know what?
I need to make a change.
I need to do more.
I think I've gotten a little too comfortable.
I think I've let this area of my life go by the wayside.
You say, no, I'm going to change that now.
Don't be the forgetful hearer.
Go out from this conference with all the excitement,
with all the zeal, and incorporate that change.
Amen.
That's good.
Second Corinthians, chapter 5.
Second Corinthians, chapter 5, verse number 17.
The Bible reads, therefore, if any man be in Christ,
he is a new creature.
Old things are passed away.
Behold, all things have become new.
And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself
by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us
the ministry of reconciliation.
Look, if you're born again, you're saved.
You're a new creature.
You've got that new man.
Old things are passed away.
All things have become new.
You know what part of that is?
All things are of God.
He's reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ,
and he's given to us that ministry of reconciliation.
That's right.
This is every believer.
This is everybody who's a new creature.
This isn't just for the pastor.
This isn't just for the deacon.
This isn't just for anyone that you
can think of that's not you.
Everyone else, but not me.
No.
Are you a new creature in Christ?
Well, guess what?
This is for you, too.
Have you been reconciled with God?
Well, now that ministry of reconciliation
is committed unto you.
Verse 19, to wit that God was in Christ reconciling the world
unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them,
and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.
Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ
as though God did beseech you by us.
We pray you in Christ's stead be ye reconciled to God.
Jesus Christ isn't walking around on this earth anymore,
you know, preaching the gospel to people.
He said, but you know what, we are.
So in Christ's stead, we are representing Jesus Christ.
We're his ambassador to go forth and tell people, hey,
you need to be reconciled to God.
You've got a problem because of your sin.
You've got a debt that you owe, a hell payment
that you need to make.
But you know what, someone made that payment for you.
You can be reconciled from that problem you have.
God is angry with you.
The wrath of God is abiding on you.
But you can be reconciled.
It can all be made OK right now if you
put your trust in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,
because he made that sin payment for you when he died on the cross
and rose again from the dead.
That's your job.
Look, someone did that for you.
You ought to do that for other people.
The Bible says that the Lord's given ministers
by whom we believe, he's given that for every man.
Because the Lord's not willing that any should perish,
but that all should come to repentance.
God wants everyone to be saved.
God's given the command to go forth.
God has a plan for everybody, for every new creature,
for every child of God to go forth and reconcile people
to Christ.
That is our job.
And we definitely want to make sure we're not letting
that fall by the wayside.
That's why we as a church do two challenges like that a year.
I mean, we have regular soul winning times, of course.
We've got all this stuff, but we ought
to try to push ourselves a little bit more.
What more can I do?
Try to increase more and more.
And as you focus on these various aspects of your life,
I want to make it as a pastor of my church
so people don't have free time because you're serving God.
You know what that does?
It helps people not to get involved in sin.
Because when you have a whole bunch of free time,
just like, oh, I got all this time, I've got tons of time,
I can just do whatever I want, and you
don't have a plan for that time, you're
going to find yourself doing something sinful.
Because if you don't already have the plan,
if you don't already have a focus,
you've got this flesh that's going
to give you all kinds of ideas of what
you could do with your time.
We have the will of God.
We know what it is.
It's right here.
Nothing in your life should be by accident
or just be like, well, I don't know, look, I have a plan.
Set up this, I'm a big proponent of the routine, of the schedule.
Put it in.
I have certain standards, or it's a very base minimum.
No matter what, the Bible on the objective,
now I want to do a lot more.
I do do more than that, but I'm saying
there is a level where it's just like,
I will not fall below this standard.
Just not going to happen.
And soul winning, same thing.
Praying, same thing.
All these various aspects, we ought
to have at least a severe alert, red alert warning level
of going, I'm not going to go below this.
But not just that, but the focus is, what more can I do?
I don't ever want to have to get to that point of just being
like, hey, things have gotten out of control.
But sometimes they do.
Crazy things happen in life.
We just want to make sure, hey, I'm never
going to forget these things.
So then we could get right back quickly to going, all right,
now I'm going to, things have gotten a little bit more
settled down in this area of my life.
I'm going to focus more about serving the Lord again.
It takes a lot of work in this life.
It's work.
It's laborers.
That's why Jesus said in Matthew chapter 9,
as well as in other places, Matthew 9, 35, the Bible says,
and Jesus went about all the cities and villages,
teaching in the synagogues and preaching
the gospel of the kingdom, and healing
every sickness and every disease among the people.
But when he saw the multitudes, he
was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted
and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd.
Then say at the end of his disciples,
the harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few.
Pray, therefore, the Lord of the harvest,
that he will send forth laborers into his harvest.
We need more workers.
We need more people that are going to say, yeah,
I'm going to do it.
And again, praise the Lord for those 250-some people
yesterday that showed up for sowing, that's amazing.
That's great.
Praise God.
That's good.
We ought to be happy with that.
It's great.
But you know what?
There needs more.
How many million people are in the Sacramento area?
Anyone know?
I don't know.
Two?
Two million?
That's a lot of people.
250 people, it's going to take a long time
to reach two million people.
We need more laborers.
Because you know what?
There's not that many people out there doing it.
We need people to make the commitment and say,
you know what, no, this is important.
No, I'm not going to let myself backside.
No, I'm not going to get caught up
with the cares of this world.
I'm going to make sure I'm plugged into church.
I'm going to make sure I'm praying.
I'm going to make sure I'm reading my Bible.
I'm going to make sure I'm going out there, even when
it's over 100 degrees outside, and preaching
the gospel to people.
Turn, if you would, to 1 Thessalonians chapter 2.
It's the last place we're going to turn tonight.
1 Thessalonians chapter 2.
And I appreciate you all hanging with me.
I know it's hot, and you're probably exhausted from all
the work that you've done.
But hang with me.
It's the last passage.
1 Thessalonians chapter 2.
I'll read for you from 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse
number 58.
The Bible says, therefore, my beloved brethren,
be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding
in the work of the Lord.
For as much as ye know that your labor is not
in vain in the Lord.
There's lots of ways you'd be spending your time.
There's lots of work you could be doing
that, at the end of the day, is going
to end up kind of being vain.
There's a lot of wood, hay, and stubble
that you could dedicate your life to that's
going to account for nothing in the kingdom of God.
But when you work for the Lord, when
you work for the spiritual things that God has set for you,
that's not in vain.
That's not in vain.
That's something that you can take with you.
Those treasures, those eternal rewards that you get in heaven,
hey, they're laid up.
Praise the Lord.
1 Thessalonians chapter number 2.
Now look, you've been receiving a lot from the word of God
over the past few days.
There's been a lot of different sermons preached
about various things.
And I could probably safely say, I
could speak for all the pastors in this regard,
that the people who are preaching to you
are preaching these things because we love you,
because we want to help you, not because we're
coming from this position of like, oh, I'm perfect,
and you're not.
No, look, we're helping each other too.
And all the things that I preach,
I struggle with the same things you do.
I've got the flesh as much as you do.
But I've made some decision in my life, and these are important.
I'm going to place these as a high priority,
and I want you to do the same thing.
And these things work.
And when you hear the word of God from people that love you,
just as the Apostle Paul did, we read his heart
to the Thessalonians in chapter number two, receive the words
and don't just let it pass you by.
It's the last sermon of the conference.
Don't leave here without something, something
you're going to take with you, something
you're going to change, something
that you will be impacted by as you move forward.
Because there's been a lot of effort
from the people who've been standing behind this pulpit
to help you in whatever area you needed help with.
And I don't know what that is, but I
know that I've done a lot of praying
in advance of this conference for God to help.
Hey, whatever it is, Lord, please
help me to help as many people as possible
that are going to hear the sermon that's going to be preached.
Whatever that may be.
And for all the past, for all the preached,
for all the sermons.
God knows.
Look at verse number eight, the Bible says,
so being affectionately desirous of you,
we were willing to have imparted unto you,
not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls
because you were dear unto us.
The sermons preached at the conference,
while you may not always think so
if you've got this creepy head in the hand,
are still preached out of love.
And I know these men very personally, look,
you're dear unto us.
And as much as possible, I'd like to impart my own soul.
Whatever could be helpful, whatever
is going to help you to succeed, I'll
get props if that's what's needed.
I'll change what I could change to help you.
Verse number nine, for you remember,
brethren, our labor and travail for laboring night and day
because we would not be chargeable in any of you.
We preached unto you the gospel of God.
Your witnesses and God also how holy and justly and unblameably
we behaved ourselves among you that believe.
As you know how we exhorted and comforted and charged
every one of you as a father doth his children.
As you hear the word of God preach,
if you've got someone that's preaching
and is trying to exhort you and comfort you and give you
charges and say, look, receive that.
Don't close your ear to the word of God.
Receive it that you would walk worthy
of God who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory.
We're called unto God's kingdom and glory.
Let's try to walk worthily.
Verse 13, for this cause also, thank we
God without ceasing because when ye
receive the word of God, which ye heard of us,
ye received it not as a word of men,
but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually
worketh also in you that believe.
There is definitely nothing special about me
as a person or the words that I say, but you know what?
There is something special about the word of God.
So the things that I've taught today
that are from the word of God, receive those things.
Why?
Because they are effectual in working in you that believe.
Receive it.
Think on these things.
I'm trying to call your attention some area
where you might be lacking.
Receive it.
Make the change.
Increase more and more.
Things have been increasing here, and it's awesome.
Keep increasing.
Don't back down.
Don't let it slide.
Don't back off a little bit.
Yeah, it may be hard.
Yeah, it requires a lot of work.
Yeah, you might need to labor day and night
to help other people, but you know what?
That's what the life's all about.
That's what the Christian life is all about.
That's what Jesus Christ is all about.
He esteemed others better than himself.
Let's follow his example.
Let's have a word of prayer.
Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you so much for your word,
for all the encouragement that we receive,
for all the highlights of the areas of our life
that we need to work on and improve, dear Lord.
I pray that you please help us.
Give us the strength that we need
so we can increase more and more.
Lord, I pray that you would please help us
to avoid backsliding and that we would all be open
to identifying areas of our life that need work, dear Lord,
and I pray that you would please help us with that.
Lord, thank you so much for bringing everyone here together,
and it truly has been an honor to be here among your people
and to serve you and to preach your word.
I pray that you would please keep everybody safe
as we travel, especially those of us
that have traveled from out of town.
Lord, watch over us, protect us, keep us safe from evil,
and Lord, please bless Verity Baptist Church.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.