Now, the thing that I'd like to point out in this chapter is the statement that comes
up over and over again, starting there in verse number two, where the Bible reads,
I know thy works.
And in fact, that's the title of the sermon this morning, I know thy works.
Later he said at the end of verse 23, I will give unto every one of you according to your
works.
Later in the book of Revelation, he says, behold, I come quickly and my reward is with
me to give every man according as his work shall be.
Now Revelation chapters two and three are the messages to the seven churches.
This is where Jesus Christ gives a personalized message to each of these seven churches in
Asia.
And he talks about some of the things that he likes about these churches, and he talks
about some of the things that he doesn't like about these churches.
And the one thing that he says to all seven churches, the common denominator, is that
he says, I know thy works.
You see, when Jesus Christ looks down from heaven and he looks upon this church or my
church back home in Arizona or any other church, the first thing out of his mouth when he's
judging that church or examining that church is, I know thy works.
That's what he says to all churches.
Why?
Because there's an emphasis placed upon the work that a church performs.
Now go if you would to Ephesians chapter two in your Bible, go ahead and turn to Ephesians
chapter number two.
This is a pretty famous scripture in Ephesians chapter number two.
I'm going to start by reading the familiar verses starting in verse eight, but go ahead
and turn to Ephesians chapter two and we're going to look at verse 10.
While you're turning there, I'll read you verses eight and nine.
The Bible says, for by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves it
is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
In fact, as I'm preaching right now, I see the sign above the back door is Ephesians
two chapter eight.
You know, the Bible is really clear that we're not saved by our works, right?
We are saved by faith alone.
The Bible says right here, you know, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
It's whosoever believeth that shall be saved.
We are saved by faith, not of works, lest any man should boast.
But look at the next verse in verse number 10.
It says in Ephesians 2 10, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good
works which God had before ordained that we should walk in them.
So the Bible says we are his workmanship, meaning that Jesus did all the work to get
us saved.
You know, he died on the cross, he was buried, he rose again.
We were created in Christ Jesus as his workmanship.
He did all the work.
All we had to do was just believe in him and we're saved, right?
But he said we're his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God
had before ordained that we should walk in them.
So even though works have nothing to do with our salvation, after we're saved, we should
do works.
We shouldn't just sit around and do nothing, right?
We should do some work for the Lord.
Now we don't have to do any works to be saved.
We don't have to do any works to stay saved because it's all by grace, it's all by faith.
But once we're saved, it's time to get to work for the Lord.
And when God looks down from heaven and if he looks at a church that's not working, he's
not going to be pleased with that church.
That's the first thing that he looks at.
He says, I know thy works.
Now if you would turn to Joshua chapter number five in the Old Testament, Joshua chapter
number five.
You see, there's a lot of work to be done for the Lord.
There's a lot of work that God has given us to do.
And one of the things that Jesus brought up in Revelation chapter two was that he said,
you've lost your first love to the church at Ephesus.
And he said, remember therefore from whence thou art fallen and repent and do the first
works.
So because they had lost the first love, he told them that the way to correct that would
be to do the first works, repent and do the first works.
That's how you're going to get the first love back is by doing the first works.
Now what are the first works?
Well, if you stop and think about it, when Jesus Christ ascended up to heaven after he
rose from the dead and after he'd given instructions to the apostles, the last command that he
gave them was to go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Ghost and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever he had
commanded them.
That's known as the Great Commission.
Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
You know, the first thing that Jesus said to the disciples when he called them, when
he chose men like James and John, when they were out fishing with their father Zebedee,
or when he chose men like Peter and Andrew, you know, the first thing that he said to
them was follow me and I'll make you fishers of men.
That was the first work.
I mean, that was the first thing that he told them that we're going to do, we're going to
go out and we're going to preach the word of God to people.
We're going to get people saved, we're going to get people baptized, and then after they're
saved and baptized, we're going to teach them to observe all things that Christ commanded.
We're going to teach them everything in the Bible.
Those were the first works, being a fisher of men.
And then he closes on that before he ascends up into heaven when he gives that Great Commission
to go teach all nations, to go preach the gospel to every creature.
The first works have to do with reaching people with the gospel of Jesus Christ and with preaching
and teaching the word of God.
Those are the first works.
And this is something that God wants everybody to be involved in.
You know, the reason that I'm here today and the reason that Brother Shane and Brother
Rob are here, we actually came to Guyana just for this week.
They're here for the whole week.
I'm only here for three days.
My purpose here is to win people the Lord.
My purpose here is to preach the gospel.
We spent about five or six hours yesterday just walking up and down the streets, walking
up and down the neighborhoods with our Bibles in our hands, just preaching the gospel to
people, just talking to people, just one-on-one, just humbly, just talking to people and giving
them the gospel and, you know, with a tear in the eye or that might have just been all
the sweat, you know, because it's so hot and humid here.
But it seemed like I had tears coming down my face.
But you know, we're preaching the gospel to people.
We love people.
We want to get people saved.
You know, I think that that's the most important work that we could be doing is to preach the
gospel.
And then there's other work that needs to be done as well.
You know, other work to support the pastor and to help him, you know, get the facilities
in order or whatever's needed, giving rides to people to get them to church and so forth.
You know, whatever the work is, we need to obviously keep the first works paramount,
but we need to do some work for the Lord, okay?
Now a lot of people have an attitude where they think it's very spiritual to not talk
about work and to just basically really put a lot of emphasis on prayer, but then they
don't want to do the work to go with the prayer.
You know, they have this attitude of sort of let go and let God, you know, and kind
of like let's just sit back and let God do the work.
And they feel that this is a spiritual thing.
And then they look at somebody who's kind of working hard and they say, oh, that person's
just, they're just doing it in the flesh, you know, because they feel like they have
to work so much.
They're doing it in the flesh.
You know, they need to just sit back and let God do the work.
But you know what?
That's just frankly not biblical.
Now let me give you some examples.
For example, didn't God promise to provide us our needs in the sense of giving us our
daily bread?
For example, the Bible says in Psalms, I've never seen the righteous forsaken nor his
seed begging bread.
It says in Philippians chapter 4, 19, but my God shall supply all your need according
to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus.
The Bible says, you know, ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and
it shall be opened unto you.
For everyone that asketh receiveth, everyone that seeketh findeth and to him that knocketh
it shall be opened unto you.
Or else what man is there of you whom if his son asked bread, will he give him a stone?
Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?
If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall
your heavenly father give good things to them that ask him?
So the Bible is clear that God's going to meet our physical needs.
He's going to provide our daily bread.
He's going to take care of us.
But does that mean that we just don't need to go to work?
I mean, does that mean that I should just stay home and just not go to work, not go
out and make a paycheck, just stay home and just pray, Oh God, give me the daily bread.
Oh, please Lord, give us your daily bread.
And then just sit there and wait?
No, because the Bible says six days shalt thou labor.
I mean, God tells us to go out and work and to do something.
The Bible says that if a man won't work, neither should he eat, it says in 2 Thessalonians
chapter 3.
He says that we should study to be quiet and to do our own business and to work with our
own hands that we might have to them that are without and also that we might have to
provide our own needs.
We're supposed to work.
God commands us to work.
God expects us to work, not to be lazy, not to be a slugger, not to be slothful, but to
work.
So God's going to provide our needs when it comes to food, but we still have to do the
work.
We have to work every day and do our best.
Now, the purpose of prayer is to get God to step in and help us where our works come up
short.
You know, once we've done everything that we can and once we've worked and done what
we can, then we pray and God can step in and miraculously fill the need that's still there.
Also, we can pray that God will give us the strength to work, that God will give us good
health to work, that God will give us the ability to work, but we can't use prayer as
an excuse to be lazy.
Now here's a perfect example right here in the book of Joshua.
The children of Israel, they were enslaved in the land of Egypt and you remember how
Moses led the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt and they went across the Red
Sea and they're wandering in the wilderness for 40 years.
And while they were in the wilderness for 40 years, they had no food because it's just
a desert.
It was just a wilderness.
So here you have millions of people, probably, you know, two, three, four million people
and they're in a desert.
There's not enough food.
There's not enough water.
So God had to miraculously provide their food and water.
So he did that by providing the manna.
Every morning when they woke up, there was manna on the ground and they would gather
the manna and it was food from heaven.
It was called angel's food.
And then God also opened up a rock and made water gush out of a rock.
So God miraculously provided their food and their water because they were in a desert
where it was impossible for them to gather food for themselves by natural means.
So God had to step in and do a supernatural work.
Look at Joshua chapter 5 verse 12.
This is the book of Joshua.
After they wandered in the wilderness, this is when they enter the promised land.
They enter into Canaan or what we know as Israel.
The Bible says in Joshua 5, 12,
And the manna ceased.
Ceased means it stopped.
And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land.
Neither had the children of Israel manna anymore, but they did eat of the fruit of the land
of Canaan that year.
So what the Bible is telling us here is that for 40 years they ate manna in the wilderness.
But as soon as they got into the promised land and there was fruit growing on the trees,
there were plants growing with food, there was the old corn of the land.
As soon as they had a natural physical means to provide their own needs and to plant their
own crops and to gather their own food, the manna stopped that day.
Why?
Because God's not going to give you manna from heaven when you've got the means to just
go get your own food by yourself.
He doesn't want you to just be lazy and say, well, God, I just want you to keep sending
me manna.
Well, no, no, you need to go out and work for it now, buddy.
The manna is only there for when you're unable to do it for yourself.
And here's another great example of this.
In the New Testament, do you remember how at the day of Pentecost there were people
gathered from all nations under heaven to hear the word of God preached by Peter and
by the other 120 people of the early church?
They were devout men, they were worshiping at Jerusalem, and so Peter and the rest of
the apostles and even the men and women of the early church, if you would flip over to
Acts chapter 2, they gathered there and they preached to those people the word of God.
And God performed an amazing miracle in Acts chapter 2 because even though all of the people
who were preaching were Galileans, God miraculously gave them the ability to speak foreign languages
that they didn't even know because there were so many foreigners there, right?
People that were gathered from all these different nations under heaven.
And so God wanted all these people to hear the gospel, so he allowed these Galileans
to miraculously speak a language that they did not know, okay?
So look down at your Bible in verse number 4 of Acts chapter 2, it says, and they were
all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave
them utterance.
Other tongues just simply means other languages.
It says, there were dwelling at Jerusalem, verse 5, Jews, devout men out of every nation
under heaven.
Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together and were confounded because
that every man heard them speak in his own language.
And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, behold, are not all these
which speak Galileans?
And how here we every man in our own tongue wherein we were born.
So notice how the word tongue and language are used interchangeably there, he goes back
and forth between calling it a tongue or a language.
Then in verse 9 he begins to list the languages, Parthians and Medes and Elamites and dwellers
of Mesopotamia and in Judea and Cappadocia and Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
in Egypt and the parts of Libya about Cyrene and the strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes,
Crete and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues, they're saying in our languages,
the wonderful works of God.
And they were all amazed and were in doubt saying one to another, what meaneth this?
So notice when this miracle took place on the day of Pentecost, they're speaking a foreign
language that they didn't know.
So that a guy from Arabia or a guy from Crete or a guy from Asia was able to hear the Gospel
in the tongue wherein he was born, in the language wherein he was born.
God provided this miracle because otherwise there's no way that Arabian guy was going
to get the Gospel.
How else is that guy from Asia going to hear the Gospel from a bunch of Galileans?
It wasn't going to happen.
So that's why God stepped in and provided this miracle.
There's a whole group of people today that call themselves Pentecostal and they're basing
it on this event.
They say, hey, we're just like the day of Pentecost, we're Pentecostal.
But those people actually, when they say speaking in tongues, it's nothing like this event.
When they speak in tongues, it's sort of like just an outburst of just, you know, just some
kind of a random gibberish that nobody understands of just a babbling, you know, whatever kind
of...
And nobody understands.
Nobody's getting the Gospel and it's not a real language.
See, real languages are like English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, those are real languages.
And look, right here in the Bible, it's pretty clear these are real languages too.
These are Arabic, languages of Crete, languages of the Medes and Persians and things like
that.
These are not ecstatic utterances of babbling or gibberish or heavenly language or different
things.
You know, these are foreign languages.
Now why did God do this miracle?
Because people needed to hear the Gospel in that language.
Now today in 2016, okay, I can't just get on an airplane and fly to Brazil and expect
to just get off the plane and just start soul winning in Portuguese without studying
Portuguese.
I mean, you think that's going to work?
If I just get on an airplane and I just pray and say, oh God, help me speak Portuguese
and then I just get off the plane in Rio de Janeiro and I just start soul winning and
I'm just going to start speaking Portuguese, do you think that's going to happen?
No.
Now you say, well, why not, Pastor Anderson?
Why isn't that going to happen?
Here's why.
I have the means and the ability and the intellect to learn Portuguese from a book or a CD, you
know, to learn it myself and God expects some people to do that work.
You know, a lot of missionaries have to do that work to learn foreign languages.
I live in Phoenix, Arizona and a lot of the people where I live don't speak English.
A lot of the people in Arizona only speak Spanish, a huge part of the population.
So when I first moved to Arizona, if I got to a door where they only spoke Spanish, I
just had to skip that door and just move on to the next door and just, okay, you know,
gracias, adios, and just move on to the next door.
But I started learning Spanish.
I started working on studying and learning it and after a few years I got to where I
could effectively preach the gospel to people in Spanish.
So now if I knock on a door where they speak Spanish, it's no problem.
In fact, even just yesterday in Georgetown, I ended up knocking the door of a lady that
spoke Spanish.
She was from Venezuela and I was able to preach her the gospel in Spanish.
I didn't need a miracle.
I didn't need a special gift of tongues to come upon me because I studied Spanish, okay.
So what I'm saying is that God does perform miracles in the Bible.
God does step in and do supernatural things and I don't believe that God's done doing
that.
I believe that God can still do supernatural things today.
God can still do a miracle today.
But here's the thing.
We can't just expect God to just step in and do a miracle when we could do the work and
do it ourselves.
You know, God wants us to work hard and pray and then He'll step in and do exceedingly
abundantly above all that we can ask or think, okay.
So we need a combination of work and prayer in our lives.
We don't want to just get imbalanced where it's just, well, I'm just going to pray and
then be lazy.
No, no, no, we need to pray and work.
You see, God wants us to have balance in our lives.
He wants us to read our Bible and pray and do the work and go soul winning and go to
church.
You know, He wants us to also work our secular job.
You know, if we have a secular job, a physical job, He wants us to put our heart and soul
and mind and strength into that and to be the best worker on the job and to be a good
testimony to our boss and to our employer by being a good worker and doing a good job.
And the Bible says, servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to
the flesh.
The Bible says, not with eye service as men pleasers, but as the servants of Christ doing
the will of God from the heart with good will, doing service as to the Lord and not to men.
That means if you work in a restaurant, you serve the people in that restaurant as if
they were Jesus.
He said, do your work as unto the Lord, not unto men.
Not with eye service, meaning that, oh, the boss is looking.
I guess I better look busy for a minute.
You know, the boss is looking.
Even when the boss is not looking, hey, the boss is always looking because the boss is
God.
He's always looking.
And when we go to that restaurant and work at that restaurant, we should serve that person
as if Jesus just walked in for lunch and we're serving Jesus.
And if we're maybe landscaping, we should do the landscaping as if that home belongs
to Jesus.
If we're pouring concrete, if we're doing electrical work, if we're doing plumbing work,
whatever we're doing, everything we do, the Bible says, whatsoever thy hand findeth to
do, do it with thy might.
Put your effort into it.
Do it as unto the Lord and not unto men.
You see, God wants us to be like Job where the Bible said that Job was a perfect man,
okay, a perfect man.
Now that doesn't mean that Job never made mistakes because obviously everybody's a sinner,
right?
The Bible says that if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth
is not in us.
The Bible says there's not a just man upon the earth that doeth good and sinneth not.
Every single one of us sins.
Nobody is perfect in the sense of being flawless, okay?
But when the Bible uses the word perfect, it means complete, okay?
That you may be perfect and entire, the Bible says, wanting nothing.
Entire.
What does entire mean?
It means complete, okay?
Like if I said I'm going to eat an entire pizza, I'm saying I'm going to eat the whole
pizza, okay?
I'm going to eat a complete pizza.
Well, when the Bible used the word perfect, if you look up every time the word perfect
is used in the Bible, you'll see perfect means entire, complete, the whole.
So when the Bible says that Job was a perfect man, it doesn't mean that he never sinned.
It means that he was complete in the sense that he had all areas of his life in order.
He wasn't just a guy who was good in one area and then really bad in another area.
For example, he wasn't a guy who was really good about evangelism, but he didn't know
the Bible.
He didn't know Bible doctrine.
Or he was really good at praying, but he never did any work.
Or he really worked really hard, but he never prayed.
Or he did a lot of work for the Lord, but he had a lot of sin in his life.
Or he lived a really clean life, but he never went to church.
Job being a perfect man meant that he was complete.
He had the whole package.
He was mature in the Lord in all areas of life.
And so that's where we should strive to be as Christians.
We need to balance our lives and to get Bible reading in its proper place, prayer, working
for the Lord, dedication to the church.
We need to work hard at our secular job, if we have a secular job, to do it unto the Lord.
And by the way, there are a lot of ladies here today.
And I'm sure that being a weekday and you're here this morning, a lot of you ladies are
probably I'm guessing a stay-at-home wife or a stay-at-home mother or a homemaker in
your home.
That's a very important work to do as well.
And that's a work that you can do unto the Lord when you're serving your husband and
serving your children and taking care of the household.
That should be done as unto the Lord as well.
And so prayer is important, but we want to make sure that prayer is always accompanied
by work, hard work, because the manna is there for when we need it.
It's not there for when we just want to sit back and see what God can do and relax.
It sounds very spiritual, to just kind of sit back and see what God can do.
It sounds great, except it's not biblical, because the Bible says that God has committed
unto us the ministry of reconciliation, that it's our job.
See Jesus, while he was in the world, he said this.
He said, as long as I'm in the world, I'm the light of the world.
As long as I'm in the world, I'm the light of the world.
But then he turned around and said, you're the light of the world, because he's not in
the world anymore.
He's seated up at the right hand of the Father, and he says unto us, ye are the light of the
world.
A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid, neither do men light a candle and put it under
a bushel, but on a candlestick, and he giveth light unto all that are in the house.
Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father
which is in heaven.
What are they going to see?
Your good works.
What does God see when he looks down from heaven?
He sees your works.
I know thy work.
What's he going to reward us based on when we get to the judgment seat of Christ?
Are we going to be rewarded on the best dressed?
The best dressed Christian award goes to Pastor Ram.
Is that what they're going to do at the judgment seat of Christ?
The guy who prayed the most.
Here's the thing.
He said, I will give every man according as his work shall be.
He's not going to say, the guy who read the most Bible.
Here's the award.
Now look, we have to read the Bible in order to do the work effectively.
We have to pray in order to stay close with God and to not enter into temptation, and
we want God to step in and enable us to do the great works.
But at the end of the day, we better get some work done for the Lord.
And there are a lot of churches where I'm from in the United States that are just kind
of a social club in the sense that they're not really doing a lot of work to reach people.
It's just kind of the same people showing up for church week after week, and everybody's
just looking at the same faces week after week.
And you know what happens in a church like that?
It slowly dies.
The people get old, and the people die, and there's no next generation.
There's no youth coming in.
There's no young families being brought in.
You see, if we're not growing, we're dying as a church, okay?
We have to constantly be bringing in new life, constantly be bringing in new blood into the
church, and we've got to be working at it.
It's not going to happen by itself.
It's not going to happen on its own.
God's not just going to do it by itself.
Jesus said, take my yoke upon you and learn of me.
And you know, taking up a yoke, that's work.
What's a yoke?
A yoke is something that you would hook up to oxen as they work hard and pull a load
and pull a burden.
We need to get in the yoke with Jesus, where Jesus and us are in the yoke together, and
we're working together.
We're working hard.
The Bible says, with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel.
We as a church need to strive together for the faith of the gospel.
We need to work together.
We need to work with Jesus, with the Holy Spirit, with each other, and get out there
and do some work for the Lord.
Now, in Acts chapter two, are you still in Acts chapter two?
Is that where we start?
Let's go ahead and turn there again if you turned out of there.
Acts chapter two was that day of Pentecost event where this miracle took place, where
these soul winners were able to actually preach in languages that they'd never studied.
I mean, wouldn't that be cool to just be able to walk up to a Chinese person and just
nǐ huì shāo yùng yěi mā and just start talking Chinese?
That'd be pretty cool, right?
I mean, that would be great.
But that's what happened on this day.
The reason why was because pretty much all the members of the church were Galileans,
and God wanted the gospel to go to everybody right away.
He wanted the news of the resurrection to get out fast, and everybody being gathered
from every nation under heaven, devout men out of every nation under heaven, at the day
of Pentecost was a great opportunity to send some people home with the gospel, just like
God sent Philip to specifically talk to the Ethiopian eunuch so he could take the gospel
back to Ethiopia to get it down into Africa.
So that's what happened in this story in Acts chapter 2.
Now a lot of people, they misunderstand the story.
I've heard this my whole life, where people will say this, Peter preached and 3,000 got
saved.
But that's not really true because the Bible says that there were multiple people speaking.
There were actually 120 people that were there speaking, and that's why it's plural.
It said, are not all of these which speak Galileans and we're hearing in our own tongues
the wonderful works of God.
So this wasn't a one-man show.
This was actually a church with 120 people, and everybody was working together.
That's how they got 3,000 people saved.
It wasn't just one guy that got 3,000 people saved.
It was a team of 120 people that got 3,000 people saved.
But here's something that I want to point out about this group.
Because Peter, when he explains what's going on in verse number 16, look down at your Bible
here, Acts chapter 2 verse 16.
It says, but this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel.
So he's telling them, this event today is a fulfillment of the prophet Joel, verse 17,
and it shall come to pass in the last day, saith God, I will pour out of my spirit upon
all flesh, and your sons, watch this, and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young
men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams, and on my servants and on my
handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my spirit, and they shall prophesy.
Let me ask you something.
According to those verses that we just read, was it only men who were doing the soul winning,
or were the ladies involved as well?
The ladies weren't, because it said right there, it said, I'll pour it out upon the
servants and upon the handmaidens.
That's the ladies, right?
He said, your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.
Now of course, the Bible teaches that when it comes to being a pastor or a preacher in
the church, the Bible says, I suffer not a woman to teach, nor do you serve authority
over the man, but to be in silence.
The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 14, let your women keep silence in the churches, okay?
It's not permitted of them to speak.
So basically, we don't have a woman pastor, you know, we don't have a woman preacher.
That's not biblical.
In the New Testament, men are the ones who are the pastors and preachers.
But when it comes to going out and evangelizing, when it comes to going out and soul winning,
the Bible is clear that the women were involved here.
He said it was the handmaidens.
He said your sons and your daughters.
Also the Apostle Paul said in Philippians chapter 4, he said, help those women which
labored with me in the gospel.
So he didn't say just, you know, help the women who labored with me in the kitchen.
He said help those women which labor with me in the gospel, why?
Because actually, ladies can also be greatly used by God to present the gospel to someone,
to go out and win people to Christ.
You know, I thank God that at our church back in Arizona, Faithful Word Baptist Church,
it's not just the men who go soul winning.
We have a lot of godly ladies at our church who go out with the Bible and they go out
two by two, three by three, and they go out and they win people to Christ.
They preach the gospel.
They get involved in the work of the gospel too.
You know, this is something that everybody can do.
Even at our church back home, many of the teenagers and children actually know how to
win souls.
I thank God that my children, I have nine children.
I have five sons and four daughters, okay?
And my older children, my three oldest boys are 15 and 13 and 11, and all three of them
go out on a weekly basis and they go out and knock doors and preach the gospel, and they're
actually able to win people to the Lord from time to time.
They actually are effective at soul winning, especially when they can give the gospel to
another child or another teenager, okay?
And then also my next two children, my daughters that are, they're younger, so they're only
ages nine and eight.
They're just getting to the point where they're learning how to give the gospel.
We went soul winning about two weeks ago on an American Indian reservation in Arizona
because Arizona has more Amerindian reservations than any other state in America, and we have
the largest Amerindian reservation in the whole nation of the United States is right
in Arizona, the Navajo reservation.
Who's ever heard of the Navajo?
You guys familiar with that at all?
Navajo.
How about the Apache?
Heard of the Apache?
Nope?
All right.
Well, we were on an Apache reservation, okay, two weeks ago, and we went to also the Hualapai
reservation, couple of the tribes there in Arizona, and actually my daughters were able
to win their first souls to Christ.
They talked to some little girls their own age.
There were some little girls that were playing in the street right near where we were doing
the soul winning because I had brought my daughters along as my silent partners.
There were some little girls that were playing in the street and my daughters asked me, hey,
can we go talk to those little girls?
We want to do soul winning ourselves because they'd been for years have listened, gone
as silent partners, so they know all the verses by heart.
They can quote Romans 3.23, Romans 6.23, John 3.16, Acts 16, 30, 31.
They had the whole repertoire of verses in their minds, and they had their Bible, and
they had invitations to our church, and they had the little flash drives that we hand out
with preaching on them.
They actually walked across the street, and they spent about 25 minutes talking to these
little girls.
They were each able to win one soul to Christ, and it was their first soul to Christ.
That's great to start at such a young age learning how to work for the Lord, learning
how to open your mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel, learning how to
give utterance to the gospel and preach the gospel.
Why?
Because Jesus' last command should be our first priority, that's why.
That great commission, the first works, being a fisher of men.
And by the way, Jesus did not say, follow me and you might become fishers of men.
He said, you follow me and I will make you fishers of men.
You know what that tells me?
That tells me if somebody's not a fisher of men, they must not be following Jesus.
Because if we really follow Jesus and become his disciple and get in the yoke with him,
if we're really led of the Holy Spirit, he's going to lead us out soul winning.
He's going to lead us to go preach the gospel.
You see, when Jesus was on this earth, he said, the Son of Man has come to seek and
to save that which was lost.
To seek and to save that which was lost.
What does seek mean?
To go out and look for people.
Seek and save.
That's the mission.
To go out and look for people and give them the gospel and preach the gospel unto them.
To seek and to save the lost.
One last thing I want to point out is that whenever the Bible talks about the gospel,
there's often an association with our feet, right?
Like for example, when he talks about putting on the whole armor of God, he says, have your
feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, right?
So he says, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, that
bring glad tidings of good things.
So over and over again in the Bible, the gospel is associated with our feet.
And the reason why that is, is that it's our job to use our feet to go out and get the
gospel to people.
He could have said the lungs of the gospel, the mouth of the gospel, the throat of the
gospel, but instead, or even the hands or shoulders, he chose the feet to represent
the gospel.
Because it's our feet that go into all the world and preach the gospel to every future.
In fact, I took a guy out soul winning a few weeks ago for the first time.
And he wanted to do a lot of soul winning.
So we went out and we spent several hours soul winning.
And he said, boy, my feet hurt.
He said, my feet hurt.
He said, I'm not used to doing this much walking.
He said, this is a lot of walking, you know?
He said, my feet are killing me.
And I've heard that from a lot of people when they first go out soul winning.
They say, oh, my feet, my feet, why?
Because the Bible was right.
It's the feet of the gospel, you know, the preparation of the gospel of peace.
Now here's the thing.
A lot of people have this attitude of, well, let's wait for them to come to us.
You know, we'll just kind of have a church service.
And if you build it, they will come, you know, and just sit there and wait.
But that's not what the Bible says.
The Bible says, go ye, go ye.
And that's what you see.
Your feet aren't going to hurt sitting and waiting for people to come.
Your feet aren't going to hurt just praying for people to come.
But you know what?
Get your feet hurting is when you go out there and seek and save that which was lost.
And if that's what Jesus did when he was on this earth, if he said the Son of Man's come
to seek and to save that which was lost, well, Jesus said to his disciples, he said, the
works that I do shall ye do.
The works that I do, Jesus said, shall ye do and greater works because I go to my Father.
And when Jesus said that we would do greater works, he didn't mean that we're going to
do something better.
Nobody can do anything better than Jesus.
I mean, Jesus is the best, right?
So when he said greater works, he meant basically greater quantity because Jesus' ministry only
lasts for three and a half years.
And he's only one person, right?
But he told these 12 men, you know, the works that I do shall ye do and greater works.
And those 12 men went and literally, you know, they actually turned the world upside
down with the gospel in the next generation.
You know, they went out and went beyond Judea, beyond Galilee.
They took the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth and they turned the world upside
down with the gospel.
They did greater works.
So my challenge to you at this church is to do greater works for the Lord, to do the works
that Jesus did and greater works and to reach this entire community, this entire town with
the gospel.
But then to have a bigger vision that says, you know what, let's go to the next town.
Let's go to another tribe.
Let's go into another city and whenever we get a chance, let's preach the gospel to as
many people as we possibly can.
Let's do the first works.
Because when Jesus looks down at this church, I know you want him to be pleased with it.
I mean, that's what I want.
I want the Lord to be pleased with Faithful Word Baptist Church, the church that I'm a
part of in Arizona.
And I know that you want the Lord to be pleased with this church here.
And if you want him to be pleased, you better know that the first thing he's going to say
is I know thy works.
It's the first thing.
That's the first thing he said to Ephesus.
That's the first thing he said to Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia,
Laodicea, all five of them.
I know your works and God knows my works and God knows your works.
And if we want to be rewarded and not be ashamed when he comes, but to have rewards, then we
need to get back and do the first works, roll up our sleeves and do some work for the Lord.
Make our feet hurt a little bit, sweat a little bit.
And of course here you sweat even when you're not doing any work because it's Guyana.
But you know, get out there, work up a sweat and work hard for the Lord.
Amen.
Let's bow your heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for the chance once again to be in your house and to learn
from the Bible.
Lord, please help us to be hard workers for you, Lord.
And please just give us the strength and the health and the endurance to physically be
able to do the work that you want us to do, Lord.
And also just guide and direct us, Lord, into the work that you want us to do.
Lead us to the right people that you've prepared for us, Lord.
And just guide us, direct us and equip us for the work ahead.
And in Jesus' name we pray, Amen.