So it says in verse number four, "And when much people were gathered together and were
come to him out of every city, he spake by a parable."
Now let me make a key point here.
I told you that a theme in this chapter is the travel.
You know, they're going here, they're going there, they're crossing the Sea of Galilee,
they end up in this place.
While they're on their way, he stops and heals somebody else, preaches to somebody else.
Well, there's a key point here, because in verse number one, it says that he went throughout
every city and village preaching and showing the glad tidings or the gospel of the kingdom
of God.
Then in verse number four, it says, "Much people were gathered together and were come
to him out of every city."
Now there are a lot of people, they don't follow the program that Christ and his disciples
were on and the program that they were on in the book of Acts, which involved taking
the gospel to all the towns and villages, to all the cities and towns and villages.
That's what Jesus did, it's what the apostles did and that's what they continued doing in
the book of Acts.
I mean even in the back of your Bible you probably have a map of these missionary journeys
where Paul is just hitting town after town, city after city and preaching the gospel.
No, they want to just stick with their little corner of the world and just they've limited
their scope of evangelizing to just their zip code or just their little town or just
their area.
But I believe that God wants us to evangelize all towns and villages.
Now obviously our primary responsibility is to make sure we get the gospel right here
at home, right here in Tempe and in Phoenix and in Mesa and Scottsdale and all these places
where we are.
But what about all the towns and villages out there that don't even have in many cases
even a Baptist church in the town necessarily?
Or if they do, it's not a soul winning church.
There's no soul winning going on.
There's no evangelism going on.
I mean, people in Phoenix are more likely to have had their door knocked at some point
by someone with the gospel than somebody in some one horse town an hour, two hours, three
hours from here.
So our church is also involved in evangelizing the small towns and villages throughout Arizona.
And we've taken ownership of our whole state where we say, you know what, we want to be
responsible to get the gospel to all 21 Indian reservations, just us.
You know, whatever other people are doing, which sometimes seems to be very little, when
we never see any Baptists preaching in these towns, it's just a lot of Mormons and Jehovah's
Witnesses, you know, we're going to take ownership of it.
And I hope that other churches will see our example and that they'll get to all the Indians
in New Mexico and in California and into Nevada and Oregon and Washington.
But then beyond just the Indian reservations, what about just all the little mining towns,
right?
And just all the towns that have 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 people, 8,000 people, just little
places.
We, if we follow Christ's example, are going to get the gospel of those towns.