Amen, so the title of the sermon is What I Saw in Yakima.
What I Saw in Yakima.
Yeah, you see what I did there?
I was going to say What I Witnessed in Washington, right?
But I don't know.
Maybe that'll be the sequel if we get to go back.
But it's What I Saw in Washington, or excuse me, What I Saw in Yakima.
And I just want to kind of go over tonight and just do a review of that recent soul winning
marathon that we did up there with Steadfast, or excuse me, Sure Foundation Baptist Church,
and try to just draw some lessons from the trip.
I think there's things that we could learn from that and apply here and in our own church
down here.
Now, just so in case you're wondering, Yakima or more specifically Union Gap is where we
were kind of the headquarters where we were, which is not necessarily the reservation.
The reservation's just below it.
Yakima itself is a town of, it surprised me when I actually looked it up, of 100,000 people.
So it's a bigger city.
And it's kind of in that south central Washington area, which is kind of like, it's a high desert
kind of area.
You know, when you first land in Seattle and you drive there, you're just kind of taken
back by all the beautiful scenery, you know, the mountains, the pine trees.
I mean, we're up there where there's still snow banks and things like that, and all the
rivers and the pine trees and so on and so forth.
But then as you kind of get down towards south central Washington, it gets really flat
and it's more agricultural.
And it's kind of a high desert-ish kind of, it's almost, some people were even saying
it's kind of reminds me of Arizona, although it had a river in it, which was nice.
But that's kind of where Yakima is, that's kind of the geography there.
And again, it's about 100,000 people that are there.
And it's about 150 miles southeast from Seattle.
But it borders the Yakima Indian Reservation on the northern border.
So it literally butts right up to it.
You know, you leave Union Gap and all of a sudden you're into the Yakima Indian Reservation.
And that's a reservation that covers one million acres.
And that tribe, they claim a number of 450,000 people.
Now that doesn't mean there's 450,000 people living on the reservation, it just means that
there's 450,000 people registered with the tribe.
And the towns that we focused on, the two main bustling metropolises of the Yakima Indian
Reservation were Toppenish and Wapato.
And Toppenish was the bigger one, with about 9,000 people, and then you had Wapato, which
is about 5,000 people.
And like I said this morning, I haven't a chance to look at the maps, but we handed
out all the maps I made.
And all those maps came back, which tells me that we knocked all those doors between
this trip and the last time we were up there.
And the last time we were up there, you know, we didn't even do half.
We had a smaller group of people, still a big group, but we had 115 salvations last
time and 155 this time.
But, you know, we knocked thousands and thousands and thousands of doors over this last week.
You know, and people, again, they're going to say, well, how did you get that many people
saved?
Did that really happen?
Well, when you knock thousands of doors, of course people are going to get saved.
When you're taking the gospel and you're preaching to people thousands and thousands of times,
people are going to, you know, you're going to get salvations in the hundreds.
So over five days, I saw some things, and what I saw, what I want to focus on tonight
is the fact that I saw that there's still people out there today that want to hear the
gospel.
There's people out there in the world today, they want somebody to come and preach them
the gospel, whether they realize it or not.
And not only that, but that I also saw that there's people that still want to preach the
gospel, which is very encouraging.
And I also saw the need for them to be organized and sent, okay?
So I saw people, first of all, that were willing to hear the gospel, and if you would keep
something in Romans, go over to Acts chapter 8, Acts chapter 8.
You know, the Bible seems to highlight, you know, a specific type of individual, you know,
when it comes to salvation.
You know, we see, we think of the great stories of salvation, it's, you know, most of the
time it's people that weren't expecting to hear it.
But every now and then you see a story like of someone who's actually seeking, somebody
who wants to know, wants to know the truth and is hungering for it, you know, and we
do see that.
You know, I can't think of any specific examples for myself up there, but I know that there
were people that had their door knocked over these last five days, and they were seeking
to hear the gospel.
They wanted someone.
And I, we could probably go around the room, anyone that's gone soul winning for any length
of time is probably going to have a story like this, where they knock on a door and
they say, I was just thinking about that.
I was just wanting to hear about, you know, I was just, you know, thinking about this
or what's going to happen, and so on and so forth.
We all, you know, we hear those stories.
So there are people out there that are willing to hear the gospel and they are, there are
some that are seeking.
You know, one example that comes to mind up there, there was a young man, a teenager who
on Friday night at the hotel went around in the courtyard and was, all the hotel rooms
kind of backed up to the courtyard and he had the sliding doors and he was going around
with these other teenagers and preaching them the gospel.
And several of them got saved, I think three of them got saved.
And the next morning, you know, that one of those kids that got saved found him again
and said, hey, you got to come tell my friend.
You know, you got, and he got saved.
So there's people out there, they want to hear the gospel.
There's people out there, they want somebody to come and knock their door and preach them
the gospel.
And that's why it's so sad when you see Baptist churches saying things like, well, that doesn't
work anymore.
Or, you know, we're not, you know, we're, we're living in the loudest teenage, you know,
everyone's lukewarm.
You know, we're, we're just going to do things differently.
It's really unfortunate because the Bible shows us that there are people out there that
are seeking, that would get saved if somebody would just come and share the gospel with
them.
You're in Acts 8, I mean, it's the quintessential example of this in verse 26, and the angel
of the Lord spake unto Philip saying, arise and go toward the south and the way that goeth
down from Jerusalem to Gaza, which is desert.
And he rose and went and behold a man of Ethiopian eunuch of great authority under Candace, queen
of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all her treasure had come to Jerusalem for to worship.
I mean, why did he go to Jerusalem?
He was there to worship the Lord and he's unsaved, he doesn't understand the gospel,
but is he seeking?
Yeah, he, he's coming to Jerusalem, he's doing the best that he can, but he doesn't know
the truth.
And it says in verse 28, he was returning and sitting in his chariot and he read Isaiah
as the prophet.
I mean, he's got the Bible open.
Good night.
The guy goes to Jerusalem, he's riding back, he's literally reading the Bible and he wants
to know the truth.
There's people out there like this.
There's people out there who have a form of religion or they've been brought up in some
religion.
There's, there's people that just want to know the truth and the Holy Spirit wants to
send people to those people and lead them to them and get them saved.
And he was returning and he was reading, right, in verse 29, then the Spirit said unto Philip,
go, oh, don't worry, Philip, he's close enough.
That's what the Spirit said.
Well, he's got the Bible, you know, he's seeking, I'll take it from here, Philip.
No, the Spirit said, go, Philip, and join thyself to this chariot.
Then Philip ran thither to him and heard him read the prophet Isaiah and said, understand
what thou readest.
And he said, of course, you know, this all makes perfect sense to me.
No, he said, how can I except some man should guide me, right?
Because the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he
know them for they are spiritually discerned.
They're foolishness unto him, the Bible says.
It takes somebody to come along and say, let me explain to you what the Bible means.
We run into all the time out there when we're preaching the gospel.
People who even, they might even have, you know, especially with Catholics, I mean, they
understand so many basic things, right?
They might even have the Bible, but they totally miss salvation because it takes somebody else
to come along and show them the way of salvation.
They have to be, it has to be explained to people.
That's the way it works.
That's the way you see taking place here, you know, and this is a great example of somebody
who is willing to hear, who is seeking, who wants somebody to come and preach in the gospel.
He's seeking for the truth.
Now, these are, there are fewer of these.
Now there are people that are willing to hear the gospel, but then you have within that
group, you know, you have people that are seeking.
I mean, they want to hear, they want someone to come and preach in the gospel.
This is rare.
You're not going to see, you're not going to see a lot of that.
You know, it's very, that's why it's always seemed so amazing to us when we go out and
someone was like, says, you know, I was just thinking about this, it's amazing, I was just
got up this morning.
I've heard testimonies like that, and I was thinking to myself, what's going to happen
when I, well, that's the Holy Spirit ministering to them.
That's them, you know, God working them on and knowing that you're coming along, and
it's great.
It's a miracle.
But look, there's fewer of those.
What there's more of are the people that are not seeking.
There's more people out there that are not, they're not the Ethiopian eunuch.
They're not going to Jerusalem.
They're not reading the book of Isaiah.
They're not even thinking about spiritual things.
They're just living their lives, just going along, not really thinking about eternal matters,
just kind of living for the day, just living their lives, not having a care in the world
when it comes to spiritual things.
That's the majority of people, in my opinion, those that are not seeking.
Not that they're not willing to hear, just that they're not seeking it.
They're not looking for it.
When we come knock on their door, they're just, you know, they aren't thinking, I was
just thinking this this morning.
They don't say that.
They were just thinking about what they're going to do that day.
You know, and here's the thing about this.
Go back to Romans chapter 10.
People need to keep that in mind because what you see is a lot of times people get really
discouraged when people aren't just flinging the door open, you know, and falling down
on their knees and saying, what must I do to be saved?
You know, if you think that's what soul winning is going to be, you're in for a rude awakening.
You know, the vast majority of the time people aren't interested.
They're not seeking.
You know, they don't have time for it, right?
And on the second or third day we were there, I believe it was the second day, we went into
the actual, here's the thing about Yakima, the reservation is that it's been, the natives
there have leased out most of their land to white farmers and then the white farmers have
in turn hired migrant Mexicans to come work the fields.
So you actually have a very large, there's more of a, there's a larger Spanish population
or Mexican population than there are natives on that, on that Indian reservation.
A lot of second generation Mexicans there.
You have to really go looking for the natives and I found, I've been on enough reservations
I can look at a map and say, okay, that's the Bureau of Housing right there.
That's Indian Affairs right there.
I can recognize how the homes are built and everything.
So I found one of those neighborhoods and I said, this is where we're going today.
If we're on the reservation, let's actually preach to some Native Americans while we're
here, right?
Now when we went there, you know, that wasn't very receptive.
I mean, the first half of that was just, you know, we got, I think one person got saved,
which was still, by the way, that's receptive to me, right?
But even then, people were kind of going, well, this is kind of an aggressive neighborhood
because, you know, they're just like, oh, you're from a church, just bam, you know,
not interested, right?
Take that white man's religion somewhere else, right?
And I even heard one guy, he was preaching, I was kind of staying in value, this is kind
of a funny story.
He felt, you know, normally doesn't include this in his gospel presentation, but he felt
compelled to include the fact that Jesus isn't white when he was preaching these things.
And I'm just sitting back, like I was doing something and I just heard, you know, Jesus
wasn't white.
And I'm going, well, he's going to start a race for it right here on the Res, nah,
I'm just kidding, right?
And I get where he's coming from because, you know, sometimes people, you do hear that
on the reservation.
Oh, that's the white man's religion.
Really?
Because I'm pretty sure Jesus was a Hebrew, you know, he wasn't, you know, he didn't
look like me and my kids, right?
You know, he was dark, probably.
We don't know, it doesn't matter, right, but the point being is this, is that it was
kind of unreceptive.
But you know what, that turned out to be one of, we turned out to have the most fruitful
day out of a lot of people.
I think, what are we going to end up getting?
You were there, we got like three or four salvations, yeah, something like that.
We got, you know, and it was in that latter half of the day where it just seemed like,
I mean, at one point it was like door to door, people were getting saved.
Now were those people seeking?
Were they throwing open the door and running out in the street and taking us by the, you
know, by the coat and saying, tell me how to go to heaven, I don't want to go to hell?
No.
They woke up that morning and they were just thinking about anything else besides spiritual
matters.
And to me, that really is more miraculous than the other group.
The group who's been seeking, I mean, that really, but people get surprised by that,
don't they?
When they're like, man, I knocked on this guy's door and he was telling me how he was
thinking about this and praying that somebody, I've literally heard that, that he was praying
someone come to his house and show him how to go to heaven.
I've heard that testimony and I get it, that's rare, it's cool, but to me, what's more amazing,
what's more miraculous is that you can go knock on somebody's door who has no interest
in spiritual things, has no desire to know the truth, but if they'll listen, they'll
get saved.
They're willing to listen, they're just not going out of their way to do it.
To me, that's more amazing.
I mean, look at Romans chapter 10, verse 20.
It says in Romans chapter 10, verse 20, but Isaiah is very bold and sayeth, I was found
of them that sought me not.
I was made manifest unto them that ask not after me.
That's a great verse.
I love that verse.
I think about that verse so often when I go out soloing.
He's of course quoting Isaiah 65 where he said, I am sought of them that ask not for
me.
I am found of them that sought me not.
I said, behold me, behold me unto a nation that was not called by my name.
To me, what's more miraculous is the person who's not seeking after God, but is still
willing to hear, and they end up getting saved.
That's more miraculous to me than the seeker.
But here's the thing, in either group, whatever category people are going to fall into, whether
they're seeking after God like the Ethiopian eunuch, or they're just somebody that's just
living their life, not thinking about spiritual things, either way, with either group, without
someone willing to go and preach them the gospel, neither of them are going to get saved.
Neither of them is.
I harp on this because, every time I get a chance, because this doctrine that creeps
into churches where people say, oh, you can get saved without a preacher.
Not true.
You need someone to come and preach you the gospel.
That is a biblical doctrine.
I'm tired of churches that won't hold that line.
That is the line that we hold here.
Look, I've been in a part of a church where they say, oh, if they're meant to get saved,
they'll get saved.
That's the church that does nothing for God.
That's the church that doesn't go out and preach.
Why would I go preach the gospel?
Why would I take my time and my energy and my resources and go preach the gospel to people
if they're just going to get saved anyway, with or without me, with or without a preacher?
That makes zero sense.
That's where people go when they develop this doctrine of, well, it doesn't matter if we
preach to them or not.
If they're supposed to get saved, they'll get saved.
We're not Calvinists.
They need to have somebody come and bring them the gospel.
Go to Romans chapter 10.
Romans chapter 10.
The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 3, who then is Paul and who is a Paulist, but ministers
by whom he believed, even as the Lord gave to every man.
So the people that believe, are there people out there that believe that don't have a minister?
No.
Otherwise, the Bible's not true.
The Bible says that they were ministers by whom he believed, as the Lord gave to most
men, the majority of men, some men?
No.
To every man, to every person that believes, there was a minister given to them to preach
them the gospel.
That's why it says in Romans chapter 10, where you are, look at verse 13, for whosoever shall
call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?
And how shall they believe in him on whom they have not heard?
And how shall they hear without a preacher?
Look, whether they're seeking or whether they're not seeking, the people that are willing to
hear the gospel are not going to get saved if there isn't a group of people that are
willing to go preach the gospel to them.
That's what I saw up in Yakima, Washington this last week, that there's a lot of people
out there that are willing to hear, but it takes a group of people that are willing to
bring the gospel to them in order for them to get saved.
So not only did I see that there were people that are willing to hear the gospel, but I
also saw that there were people that wanted to preach the gospel.
Not out of duty, not out of just, well, I know it's what we're supposed to do, but that
people that desired to go out and preach the gospel to every creature, people that wanted
to be there, that wanted to go knock on doors, I mean, you couldn't stop them.
I scheduled a day of recreation on Friday.
I don't think anybody, any of them did it.
I think they were just like, we're just going to keep soul winning and keep soul winning.
I mean, we're flying back out of the state on Saturday morning and the WhatsApp group
is still just going off.
This many more are saved.
This many are saved.
Who wants to go out now?
And they're supposed to be going home.
You got church tomorrow.
And they're still out there knocking doors.
Why?
Because they wanted to be there.
There are people that desire to go out and preach the gospel to every creature, not out
of just duty, but because they wanted to be there.
That's what I saw up in Yakima, Washington.
People that wanted to preach the gospel.
Go to Philippians chapter four, Philippians chapter four.
The Bible says in Psalms 126, he that goeth forth and weepeth bearing precious seed shall
doubtless come again, bringing his sheaves, coming again, excuse me, shall doubtless come
again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.
But notice it's the guy that's going to come back with rejoicing is the guy that goes out
with weeping, the guy that has a burden for the lost.
People say, well, you know, I go, I go knocking, I go out and I preach the gospel, but nobody
ever gets saved.
It's like, well, do you have a burden or are we just going because, well, it's just our
job to do because if I don't, you know, the next time the preacher gets on that, I'm going
to feel uncomfortable, you know, or it's just, it's my job to do it, you know.
That's great.
And look, I know we all have highs and lows.
We're not all just going to be running out the door to go soul witting every single time
and get together.
But if it's, if that's always the case, you know, we ought to pray and ask God to give
us a burden for the lost.
Maybe think about, you know, some eternal things like hell, listen to some sermons on
hell or read your Bibles about hell.
Think about your own salvation.
Think about, you know, if you're having a hard time at the door getting a burden for
people, because again, it's he that goeth forth with weepeth, right?
He that goeth forth with weepeth bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again with rejoicing.
He has a burden.
If you're having a hard time with that at the door, imagine that person that's going
to answer the door is your mother, your father, your brother, your sister.
How would you want them to be preached to if someone came to your lost relative and
preached on the gospel and not just like, oh, from a Baptist church, do you want to
hear this or not?
You know, we might not say those words, but sometimes it's all over our face.
We can just, we can just, people can look at us and just go like, you don't want to
do this.
And you can't fake that.
You can't, you either got that or you don't.
And look, that's what I saw up in Washington.
A group of people who had been knocking and, you know, and not to say that all of Vancouver,
Washington is unreceptive or all of Portland is unreceptive, but they've hit the receptive
areas there time and time again, and now they're moving on to complete the Great Commission.
You have to knock every door.
That means you got to go through some rough neighborhoods.
I saw a group of people who had been spending a lot of time knocking in the unreceptive
areas that finally got somewhere where there's people that were wanting to hear the gospel,
that were willing to hear the gospel.
They couldn't get enough of it.
They were eating it up with fork and spoon.
They were just more, more, they'd still be there if we let them, they'd still be up there
knocking doors.
I'm convinced of it.
I'm surprised like they're not going to, it wouldn't surprise me if a bunch of them moved
out there and just for this whole wedding.
I'm just kidding about that, but that's what I saw.
People that went forth and then they were weeping, they had a burden.
They were self motivated.
I want to focus on one particular group up there, and that was the ladies that were up
there.
The mothers and the wives and the young ladies that I saw up there, they led a charge.
They were after it.
They were, hey, take the kids, I'm going.
They were hungry to go out and preach the gospel.
They got a lot of people saved.
I want to draw attention to Philippians chapter four.
We just were going through Philippians two weeks ago.
We were in this chapter, but it says in verse three, and I entreat the also true yoke fellow,
help those women which labored with me in the gospel.
We should never feel that ladies can't do a great work for God.
That's what Paul said of these women.
He said, help those women which labored with me in the gospel.
We were going to meet these people in heaven.
What are we going to get to heaven and say?
Well, I was a preacher.
I did X, Y, and Z, and she's going to say, well, I was one of those ladies that labored
with Paul.
What'd you do?
I got mentioned in the Bible with Clement also.
She gets a shout out from Paul.
The greatest preaching, the greatest work that anyone's going to do is going to be out
there in the streets.
Look, the preaching that takes place in here, of course it has an impact.
Of course it's important.
Of course it's going to mold and shape lives.
Of course it's going to motivate people and all of that.
But look, the most influential preaching you'll ever do is when you preach the gospel.
What could be a more dramatic change from being going to hell to going to heaven?
I know we make changes in here.
We hear the preaching and we change our lives.
We take on things.
We get rid of things.
We adjust, all that.
But there's going to be no more profound change in a person's life from going from unsaved
to saved.
Look, that's the preaching anybody can do.
Man, woman, boy, girl, child, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter the age.
And I saw a lot of young people going out there eager to knock those doors, and I saw
a lot of ladies that led a charge out there.
And you know what?
Here's the thing.
A lot of them had multiple children.
A lot of them had kids and young ones to take care of.
They packed everything up.
They went up there.
Look, I know what it's like to have to pack up kids and go.
It's a process.
It's like there's a wagon involved.
There's multiple bags.
You're like, we're just going around the corner.
No, I'm just kidding.
It's tough though, right?
You've got to think of all the things they might need.
There might be an accident.
They're going to have to eat.
There's all these things you have to think about when you're carting around young children.
So it's not like the ladies, you know, they didn't have a lot of other responsibilities
while they were up there, but what made it possible is the fact that the husbands and
the fathers pitched in.
You know, and I think that's important.
I think that's important.
You know, that's something I took away from myself and said, hey, we need to make this
important for the ladies.
Now granted, we don't have as big a numbers, as big a church as they do up there.
We don't have as many people in these demographics, but you know, if we are, and we do in the
future, you know, I know for myself at least, I want to make more of a point of freeing
up my wife to be able to go out and do the soul winning she wants to do because you can't
just say, well, yeah, honey, you can go soul winning, but just take all the kids with you.
That's not going to go, especially in this heat, that's not going to go over so well.
That's not really, you know, now she's babysitting and soul winning, right?
It's like, it's too much.
The fathers, you know, what made it possible for all these ladies to go out and do this
great work in Yakima was the fact that there were a lot of dads, a lot of husbands that
were willing to stay behind, you know, and watch the kids during the afternoon and, you
know, enjoy the courtyard and the swimming pool and the lunches and everything else that
we had going on.
But I think that's important.
You know, that's something that I saw that I think is important.
And you know, we see it in the scripture that there were women that labored with Paul in
the gospel, you know, and it's just crazy today that women want to labor in a lot of
other things, don't they?
But in the areas that, other than the areas that God has, you know, said are the best
areas.
They don't want to be the homemaker, they don't want to raise children, they don't want
to preach the gospel, they want to do what the world tells them to do.
That should not be said of God's people.
You know, the ladies should desire to labor in the gospel and to, and so on and so forth.
I'm not going to re-preach the Mother's Day sermon.
But basically, you know, what you get out of that, you know, the dads helping the moms
and so on and so forth.
The other thing I saw is that this, we were able to achieve this because it was a group
effort.
It was a group effort.
And not just between moms and dads, but the whole group of people that were there.
It was one cohesive unit.
There was no, you know, one superstar soul winner.
There wasn't like one guy that went out and said, well, I got 100 souls and the rest of
them got the other 55.
You know, it was the fact that there was a lot of people going out consistently for hours
at a time for days on end that added up to those numbers of 155 salvations.
You know, myself, you know how many souls I, how many people I got saved?
One.
You think I'm sad about that?
You think I've beaten myself up and only got one soul saved?
You know, that's great.
You know, I only had one salvation.
But there were other people that only had one, that only had two.
You know, there's probably other people that had five or six over the course of the week.
You know, that's very possible if you're going out for hours at a time.
But here's the thing.
It was a group effort.
You know, when we were in that neighborhood I was talking about earlier where the housing,
the native housing was there, you know, there was three teams at the end of the day.
And I think there was one team that didn't get any salvations, is that right?
Yeah, it was your team, right?
See, he's still bitter about it, right?
He's sour even now.
No, I'm just kidding.
But they had to soak up all those bad doors, right?
Sometimes that's the role you play out soul wading.
You have to be what we call the sponge, right?
You're the mop.
You're just there to just soak up all the doors that are no good.
Why?
So the other people can get to the doors where they are receptive.
It's a group effort.
You know, that's what I saw in Yakima this week.
And the other thing I saw is that there were a lot of firsts, and this is always exciting.
And you know, you see this anytime there's a lot of soul wading going on, a lot of people
who have their firsts.
The Bible says, I read it to you from Psalms 126,
He that goeth forth and weepeth bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again with rejoicing,
bringing his sheaves with him.
It's going to happen.
Look, if you're going to go out and preach the gospel to sinners, and you have a burden
it's going to happen.
You are going to reap.
Somebody eventually is going to get saved.
Now of course there's a process involved there, right, of getting to that place, of being
a silent partner, of then, you know, taking that step of doing the talking, and then maybe
having to do a lot of talking before you get to that first one, right?
But it's going to happen if you go through that process.
That's what I saw up there.
I saw, you know, first time silent partners.
You know, people who had never been soul winning at all before.
They show up and they say, hey, we're here to go soul winning.
You know, don't underestimate the value of the silent partner, because that makes us,
you know, one, you're investing in somebody who's going to in the future be a talker,
right?
So take it seriously.
You know, make sure you're instructing well and, you know, being a good example.
And also it gives us more people to go, right, because if we have two talkers and two silent
partners and we pair them up, we split those two teams up.
Now instead of just one team, we've got two.
We just doubled our efforts, okay?
So don't ever underestimate that.
Not only that, we saw a lot of first time, you'll see a lot of first time talkers, which
are what?
People who started out as silent partners, right?
And we saw a lot of people who maybe got people saved for the first time.
That's always exciting.
You know, when you've been going out there, you've gone through that process, you've been
the silent partner, you know, you stepped up the plate and start talking, which is,
look, you know, sometimes after we've been doing a while, we forget what that was like.
That's nerve-wracking.
You know, maybe not for everybody, but it was for me.
You know, you fumble through it, you're not sure what you're going to say, you're worried
about what kind of response you get, but then eventually, you know, you get in your groove,
you figure out how it goes, you learn what not to do, you learn what to do, and then,
you know, you're winning souls.
Why?
Because the promise is true that if you go forth and weep at bearing precious seed, you
shall doubtless come again.
There's no doubt about it.
Bring your sheaves with you.
And we also saw, you know, first-time Spanish salvations, right?
Got your first guy saved in Spanish.
Amen.
You know, and I really want to emphasize that.
That's incredibly important.
That's one thing I saw up in Yakima, because like I was saying, you know, there's more,
there's more, you know, Spanish speakers up there than there are natives.
They make up the majority of people.
That's, it's a huge, there's, Pastor Thompson was telling me there's whole towns where that's
all they speak is Spanish.
You can't even find English speakers.
You know, he said, I went up to some town with Brother Chris Segura at some soul-winning
marathon up there in Washington, you're like, we're practically in Canada, what do you mean
we're speaking Spanish here?
Right?
They're a long way from home.
But that's, that's the way it works, right, because this is the agricultural community,
the migrants are going there, and they're picking the fruit and the vegetables and doing
all that work.
They're living there, they're raising their families there.
And you know, he was telling me, hey, we did a small town soul-winning up here with Brother
Chris Segura.
And he's like, I was a silent partner the whole day, because everybody we talked to
spoke Spanish in Washington, okay?
And we're in Tucson, I mean, we could throw a rock over the border practically, right?
How much more valuable is speaking Spanish in our community?
You know, and here's the thing, you know, I'm endeavoring to learn Spanish, I don't
know that, you know, I'm hoping it happens, I hope everything clicks, you know, and eventually
I can, you know, get all the neurons to fire and the words will come out and make sense,
right?
But it's a lot of hard work.
But you know, there's some people who, you already have the hardest part done.
You can have a conversation in Spanish.
Because look, can I just memorize some gospel presentation in Spanish and just go up like
a robot and just knock on the door and then just, you know, start regurgitating some Spanish
gospel presentation?
You know, and when they respond, I just move on to the next point, you know, I have no
idea what you said, but I'm just going to keep talking.
Can I pull out, you know, my smartphone and start using Google Translate to try and communicate
to them?
Yeah, but that's a really poor way of soul winning.
And you know, I wouldn't trust it.
And in fact, we don't.
In fact, that's our policy here.
And we don't use scripts, we don't use Google Translate.
If you can't have a conversation, just a normal conversation, if you're not conversational
in Spanish, you have no business giving gospel in Spanish.
Because that's really the hardest part, being able to communicate, isn't it?
It is.
I mean, talk to the rest of us who don't know Spanish who are trying to learn it.
It's a lot of hard work to try to even get to, like, where is the bathroom?
You know, donde esta el bano?
I said it, you know, there's pressure even now, just to get that little bit across, right?
It's difficult.
But there's people in this room, you've already got that down.
You could speak Spanish fluently.
You could have conversational Spanish.
The only thing that's lacking is vocabulary.
That's it.
That's the only thing that's lacking.
Bringing in some Bible words, bringing in the scriptures, and giving the presentation.
The hardest part is done.
And I'm just emphasizing this point because of the fact, what I saw up in Washington,
in Yakima, Washington, is how valuable being a Spanish speaker is when it comes to soul
winning.
It opens up whole new avenues.
And we're in Tucson, you know, and we all know there's doors that we knock, you know.
Lueblo inglés, you know, and that's like, okay, well, sayonara, or whatever.
I'm out of here.
And here's the thing, I really want to encourage this because, you know, this is kind of an
inside scoop, right?
Mexico trips are coming, you know, I'm just letting you know.
There's going to be the trips coming up real soon, I believe they're going to be going
over the border.
And you know who's going to get to go?
Not the people who can't speak Spanish.
You have to be speaking Spanish, and you have to be able to win people to the Lord in Spanish
if you want to go.
And look, that is a, you want to talk about a field that is white unto harvest.
It's right over here.
It's right here.
So you know, I'm trying to do my effort, you know, do my part to get there.
I would encourage everybody else to do the same if you can, if you have the ability.
Because you know, that was the thing we saw for the first time, was somebody get to lead
somebody first time in the Lord in Spanish, and it just goes to show you there's a real
need for that.
So these are the things that I saw in Yakima, that there's people out there that are willing
to hear the gospel, and that there was a group of people that were willing to go and do that.
But those people that were willing to go, you know, they had needs.
Obviously they had needs.
We couldn't just say, you know, if we had just said, hey, get yourself up there and
go do the soul weighing, it probably wouldn't have happened.
You know, somebody had to come along and say, well, let's just take care of everything.
Let's just go ahead and foot the bill for this thing.
The laborer is worthy of his reward.
Let's just take care of him.
Let's get this group of people out there and provide everything, and pay that bill, and
they'll go soul weighing.
Now, to me, that's a good investment, to say, you know, you spend all that money, is that
really the best use of funds?
I can't imagine a better use of funds than to get 155 people saved.
I mean, what price are you going to put on that?
It's priceless.
You can't put a price on it.
The people at the, here's the facts.
So the people that went up there, this group of people that are willing to do all this
work, they had needs like, what, oh, I don't know, food, no, they're Baptists, okay?
You know how Baptists are, Baptist meat, Baptist meat, bro.
And they had need of lodging, couldn't just be like, well, you know, get yourself a tent.
You know, you're from Vancouver, I mean, look how they're doing in Portland.
You just get some tarps, right, just throw it up right in the middle of the street, wherever
you want.
Go to your house and just start a tent city, right?
That's how they do it in Portland.
Isn't that how these people do it up there in the Pacific Northwest?
No, you know, not the normal people anyway.
They needed lodging, they needed supplies, they needed the materials, they needed the
maps, they needed somebody to organize and say, you go here and you go there and do this
neighborhood and do that neighborhood and come back and report.
They had need of all that.
Are you still in Romans 10?
I should have had you stay there.
Romans chapter 10, it says in verse 13, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the
Lord shall be saved.
How then shall they call on whom they have not believed?
And how shall they believe in whom they have not heard?
And how shall they hear without a preacher?
They need somebody, they need a preacher, they need somebody to come to them and preach
them the gospel.
More than that, they need to be sent, they need someone to send them to go and preach
the gospel to them.
And that's what we were able to do.
That's what Faithful Word Baptist Church was able to do.
And let me just, don't take this the wrong way, but this is the truth of the matter.
Sure Foundation Baptist Church could not have done it without Faithful Word Baptist Church.
It wouldn't have happened.
It's just not there financially.
It would not have happened.
But you know what?
Vice versa.
Faithful Word Baptist Church could not have accomplished what it did in Yakima, Washington
without Sure Foundation Baptist Church.
Because not only does it just take the funds, it takes the people that are willing to go
there, right?
But you can't just have a group of people that are willing to go and not be able to
send them.
You have to be able to send them.
You don't say, well how is it?
Go over to 2 Corinthians 9, we're going to close here in a minute, but go to 2 Corinthians
9.
How is it that you can take all these 80 plus people and just take them for five, six days
to another part of the country and just put them up and feed them and have all those materials
and invest in all that planning?
How is it that we can afford to do that?
Because the reputation that Faithful Word has is that we invest in eternity.
We don't take the funds that come into this church, the donations, the tithes.
This is the same suit I wear every Sunday.
We invest back into the work of God.
And people know when they send their donation, when they send their tithe, it's going to
the work of God.
That's true.
It doesn't go into some building, I mean obviously.
Now don't get me wrong, we've got some nice chairs, right?
If you don't think those are nice chairs, I can get those white ones back out.
You'll really appreciate those ones after that.
We have some nice things to help us get the work of the ministry done, but we're not buying
10 acres on the outskirts of town and trying to put a bunch of asphalt down and build some
giant edifice to man for a handful of people.
What are we investing in?
And look, I'm not against buildings, but why need more than what you need?
Why take more than what you need?
What we have is adequate, and as we grow, we'll get more.
But what we're about here is preaching the gospel, sending people.
That's how we're able to afford it, by having eternity in mind.
By not just thinking about, well, how nice of a building can we have?
How many nice things can we put in our building, and why can't we get a nice foyer with a bunch
of nice furniture for people to walk in and be really impressed?
And look, some churches, this is where they go with things, because they want to impress
money bags when it comes in.
And I've seen people walk into churches like ours and look around and look at each other
and walk out.
They see the drop tile, they see the halogen bulbs, they see the chairs all disheveled,
there's no rock band, there's no giant screen, there's no lights and smoke, there's no stained
glass windows.
There's none of that, but you know what there is, is there's a group of people that are
willing to go if someone will send them.
There's a group of people that have eternity in mind, rather than just some earthly building.
Look at 2 Corinthians chapter 9 verse 6, but this I say, he which soweth sparingly shall
reap also sparingly, and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.
Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give, not grudgingly or
of necessity, for God loveth the cheerful giver, and God is able to make all grace abound
toward you, that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.
That's the faithful word right there.
We have all sufficiency, why?
Because we reap, we sow, we don't sow sparingly.
When it comes in, we sow, and then we reap, and then we have everything we need is taken
care of.
The rent always gets paid, we have a van to cart people around, the salaries get paid,
and we have everything we need taken care of, why?
Because we're always sowing, we're not just sitting on it and trying to just build up
some big bank account or something like that, or invest in things that don't matter.
So let me just conclude by saying this, what did I see up in Yakima?
What I saw in Yakima was the fact that there's people out there that are willing to get saved.
People that are seeking and people that aren't seeking.
I saw a group of people that were willing to go out and preach to those people that
I wanted to hear.
People that had a burden to go out and preach the gospel.
And what we can do here in Tucson is apply what I saw in Yakima.
Now look, I believe we already have a lot of that here.
We have people in this town that are willing to listen.
We just counted up the numbers, I mean six salvations this week.
Amen.
It wasn't 155, yeah, but there wasn't 80 of us going out for five to eight hours for four
days a week or whatever it was.
I can't really do the math on it, but it was a lot of people going out.
But this is a receptive area.
I believe that.
Might not be the most receptive area, but there's sinners here, and the gospel still
has power, and if we have a burden and we're willing to go out and preach it, we can reach
this city.
Yakima is a city of, what did I say, 100,000?
This is a city, and I'm glad I looked this up because I've been lying to a lot of people.
It's a city of just over one million.
I've been going around telling it's two million.
It's like half that.
Two million sounds better though, right?
Doesn't feel so podunk, right?
It's not one million.
It's like, what kind of a podunk collar am I living in?
No, I'm just kidding.
One million's huge.
I come from a town of 70,000, right?
Smaller than Yakima, but that's what we have here.
We have a huge metro area, one million people.
You're telling me there isn't somebody out there that wants to get saved?
You're telling me there isn't people out there that want to get saved, that'll get baptized,
that'll join this church and join in the work?
It might not be all one million of them, but maybe it'll be 100.
Maybe it'll be 10.
Maybe it'll be 1,000.
I don't know.
The Lord knows.
We might have less workers, but here's what we have that we didn't have in Yakima is an
abundance of time.
You know why they were so eager to go out there and knock those doors for so many hours
day in and day out until the sun set and they had to just go home and get back to their
lives?
It's because there was a short amount of time before they had to leave that and go back.
We have the advantage here in Tucson that this is where we live.
It's going to take time to knock the doors of a million people.
Say, well, is it even possible?
Well, you know, faithful word in the next five to 10 years easily is going to have knocked
the town or a city of almost five million people, I believe.
Most of that was done with less than 100 people.
It just takes time and persistence and patience.
That's what we need.
Patience and persistence.
Look, we already have the power.
We already have the Holy Spirit.
We already have the power of God.
That's there.
It's not a matter of whether or not it's going to work.
All we need is to be patient and persistent and do the work and it will happen.
I should have had to go to Galatians 6.
I'll close there.
What I saw in Yakima I see here in Tucson.
People that are willing to get saved.
People that are willing to go out and preach.
What I didn't see in Yakima is what we have here in abundance.
That's time.
The Bible says in Galatians 6, look at verse 7,
Be not deceived, God is not mocked.
For whatsoever man soweth, that shall he also reap.
For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.
But he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.
So you have this promise in the word of God or a warning depending on how you're going
to take it.
You can either sow to the flesh and reap the corruption.
You could sow just to a life of living the flesh and have no fruit unto God, have nothing
to show for it in eternity.
Or you could sow to the Spirit and reap to life everlasting and have fruit and rewards
in heaven.
That's a warning and a promise.
Look at verse 9.
Because we understand this, what should our attitude be?
Let us not be weary and well doing.
For in due season we shall reap if we faint not.
There's going to be rough neighborhoods.
We all know they're coming.
I know we're this close to it anyway.
I'm just going to start saying it right now.
It's going to get really hot.
We all know that.
You know what?
It's cool.
We just try to ignore that fact.
But it's right there now.
It's going to get hot.
The days are going to get long.
We're going to be less motivated to do it.
But you know what?
If we're willing to go out and we do the work, we shall reap if we faint not.
Maybe it's not going to happen overnight.
But if we stick in it, stick by the stuff and keep going out there, we shall reap in
due season.
Let's go ahead and pray.