Turn your Bibles to Luke chapter number 6.
Luke chapter number 6.
We're in Matthew, just go a few pages to the right of your Bible.
Matthew, Mark, Luke.
Look at Luke chapter 6.
We'll come back to Matthew 9.
Let's start out in Luke chapter 6.
I want to show you in verse number 12 where the Bible reads,
And it came to pass in those days,
that he went into a mountain to pray,
and continued all night in prayer to God.
And when it was day, he called unto him his disciples,
and of them he chose twelve, whom he also named apostles,
Simon, whom he also named Peter, and Andrew his brother,
James and John, Philip and Bartholomew,
Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus,
and Simon called Zelotes,
and Judas the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot,
which also was the traitor.
And he came down with them and stood in the plain,
and the company of his disciples,
and a great multitude of people out of all Judea and Jerusalem,
and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon,
which came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases.
Now flip over to Luke 10.
I'm just laying the foundation for the sermon here.
Look at Luke chapter 10.
The Bible reads in Luke 10, verse number 1,
After these things...
Now, after what things?
Well, this is definitely after Luke chapter 6.
And then Luke chapter 6 was where he had a lot of his disciples come to him.
He chose twelve, whom he named apostles,
and he sent out two by two preaching the gospel.
It says in verse number 1 of Luke 10,
After these things the Lord appointed other seventy also,
this is in addition to the original twelve,
and sent them two and two before his face,
into every city and place whither he himself would come.
Therefore said he unto them,
The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few.
Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest,
that he would send forth labourers into his harvest.
Turn to Matthew 9 now where we started.
The title of the message is this.
The labourers are few.
The labourers are few is the title of the message this morning.
Look at Matthew chapter 9 where we started reading.
It says in verse 36, the part that I want to emphasize,
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 sayeth he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous,
but the labourers are few.
Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest,
that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.
Now I want to preach this morning.
The labourers are few.
The problem wasn't the fact that there wasn't a great multitude following Jesus,
because there was a great multitude that had come out of all cities,
all Judea, all the region beyond Jordan.
They came from Syria.
They came from Decapolis.
People had come from all over.
The Bible called it in the book of Luke an innumerable multitude
that came to hear Jesus Christ preach.
But when he looked upon the multitude that had come to hear him preach,
he said, The labourers are few.
The crowd's big.
The multitude's big.
The church is full of people.
But the labourers are few is what Jesus saw.
And he said, Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest,
that he would send forth labourers into his harvest.
He didn't say pray for a bigger multitude.
Pray that I could preach to a bigger crowd.
He said, No, let's pray for more labourers.
He said, It's great that we have 12 labourers.
That's great.
And those 12 men, of course one of them was a traitor
and was replaced by someone else in Acts chapter 1,
but those men turned the world upside down in the book of Acts.
It's the wording that the people used.
The people of the false religion said,
These men have turned the world upside down with this doctrine.
12 men.
120 people in the early church in the book of Acts chapter 1.
120 people, men and women,
that had gathered together in that early church
went out and saw many, many people saved,
turned the world upside down,
preached the gospel all over the world,
reached the city of Jerusalem,
and they said they filled the city of Jerusalem with their doctrine.
I mean, they had gotten so many people saved.
First it was 12.
Later on, he appointed 70 other also.
70 other apostles that he appointed and he ordained and gave power.
He was looking for as many as he could find.
He wasn't limiting himself to 12 just because he liked the number 12.
He started out with 12, but later he chose 70.
He said, Let's pray for more.
We have 12? Let's pray for more.
Let's have 70.
He said the harvest is plenteous.
We just need more laborers.
Let me ask you something today.
Is Faithful Word Baptist Church interested in a crowd,
or are we more interested in laborers?
Laborers!
We want laborers.
What do you pray for?
A visitor, or do you pray for laborers?
Do you pray that the people that already go to our church
will become a laborer out in the harvest
when it falls to Jesus Christ?
That's what we have to be praying because the multitude is there.
The people are there.
They just need to become laborers.
The laborers are few.
You see, today we want to emphasize bringing in the crowd
instead of looking at what we already have and praying for laborers.
For example, I remember I was out soul winning with my good friend Reggie Way
when I was back in Chicago.
Me and my friend Reggie Way were soul winning partners,
so we would go all the time.
We knocked on doors and we wanted people to Christ
and we were basically finishing up and talking.
I said to Reggie, let's pray that so and so comes to church.
I said, I really want that person to come to church.
Somebody who had never been to church, who was going to be a first time visitor.
I said, let's pray that that person shows up for church.
He said, no, I'm not going to.
I said, yeah, let's pray about it.
He said, I'm not going to pray for that person to come.
I said, no, why not?
He said, you know why?
He said, I'm going to be praying for Mrs. So and So to come.
It was an elderly lady that came to church every week at our church
and she brought visitors and she was a faithful member and she came every week.
He said, I'm going to pray for her.
He said, I would rather pray for the people who already come to church.
He said, I'd rather pray that God will help them grow,
that they'll stay in church.
He started listing a bunch of people.
He said, I'm going to be too busy praying for this person.
I'm going to be too busy praying for this person.
He said, I'm not going to have time to pray for somebody
who has never even come to our church that they would find in their heart to show up for church.
You see, we're more interested in most cases in what we don't have than what we do have.
I mean, look, here we are at Faithful Word Baptist Church, for example.
We have a great group of people.
And instead of always just being emphasized what we don't have,
how are we going to bring in more people?
And that's what every church is about today and I'm all for bringing in more people.
I'd love to see 12 turn into 70, turn into thousands.
But let me tell you something.
I'd rather take what God has already given us in this church.
I'd rather stand up on the pulpit during Ephesians chapter 4.
I'd rather stand up on the pulpit on Sunday morning and Sunday night and Wednesday night
and preach to the people who are a part of the body of Christ.
And I can pray that they'll be built up.
I can pray that they will remain in church.
I can pray that they'll be faithful and pray that they will be a laborer to be sent out into the harvest.
You see, and really this could carry over into every area of life.
We are more worried about what we don't have than what we do have.
Look at Ephesians chapter 4. I'll give you an example.
It says in verse 11,
And He gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers.
Why do we have a pastor? Why the teaching?
He said, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work.
And by the way, work and labor are synonymous.
For the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.
Till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.
Unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,
we need to be built up as a church.
This body needs to be edified.
The people who are in this church need to grow.
And we're so worried about what we don't have, let me just give you an example.
I remember I was in a church and they talked about, oh, we need a new building, new building, new building.
And I remember me and my friend, Roger Jimenez, we looked at it and said, you know what?
This building is not quite full.
And we said, let's work on filling up this building.
You know, there are a few rows in the back, we said, that are not filled.
And I said to my friend, Roger Jimenez, let's fill this place up.
Let's make that our goal. Let's try to fill what we've got.
You know, it's great to get a new building, but you know what's even better?
Just filling the building that you've got.
You know, and today, everybody is covetous.
We're living in a covetous time where we covet what we don't have.
And we look at our house and we wish we had a bigger house.
Why don't you just make the best of the house that you have?
You know, if you have a small house or a trailer or an apartment, why don't you clean that house?
Decorate that house, improve upon that house, instead of coveting a different house.
Oh, I wish I had this, I wish I had this.
And you know what the truth of the matter is?
Most ladies who covet a big giant mansion, they wouldn't want to do the housework to keep that big mansion clean.
And you have to ask yourself, why would you want a big giant mansion if you can't keep the small house clean?
If you can't keep the apartment clean, why do you need a great big house?
Stop and think about this.
I'm not trying to criticize people who don't keep their house totally clean.
I understand we live in a busy world in 2015, but what I'm saying is you can make better with what you have, can't you?
Can't you just make where you live nicer instead of wishing that you lived somewhere else?
Can't you just make the best of what you already have instead of sitting here and saying,
boy, I wish that so-and-so would start coming to our church and I wish we could just give more families.
We just need more of these young, good-looking families.
That's what we need.
We can put them on the flyer, we can put them on the website, you know what I mean?
We have young, good-looking families with little toddlers and they look good.
No! I just want laborers to come.
But more than that, I want the people who already come to become a laborer.
You see, when I get up to preach, I don't preach to the visitors.
Have you ever heard the expression preaching to the choir or preaching to the saved?
Amen. That's my motto. I will preach to the choir.
I'm not trying to preach to the visitor or the visitors or the new people.
I've always tried to gear my sermons toward the most spiritual people in the church.
That's who I'm preaching to.
You know why? Because those are the laborers.
You see, instead of being so interested in just amassing a crowd,
and I'm all for church growth and our church is growing and will continue to grow,
I'm all for it, but instead of just trying to get a big multitude together,
I'd rather have 12 men that are of the quality of Peter and James and John and Andrew.
I'd rather have men like that, even if there are only 11 of them,
than to have multitudes of people who do nothing.
I'd rather have the laborers.
I'd rather pray for 12 laborers than to feed the 5,000.
What did more in Jesus' ministry, the fact that he fed 5,000,
or the fact that he trained 12 and then later 70 men
that spent the rest of their life winning souls to Christ,
that turned the world upside down?
You see, the crowd that he had when he fed the 5,000,
he rebuked them and said,
The only reason you're following me is because you were fed, he said in John chapter 6.
And then he started to preach God's Word and many of them were offended and quit the church.
He got down to pretty much, he looked at the 12 and said,
Well, you also go away?
You see, we need to get our mind right here and think of church not as what we don't have,
but why don't we just love the people that we do have?
You know, why don't we just look at the people that we have?
Because you see, it's not that we don't have enough people in this church, because we do.
Now, we're all for growing and getting bigger and so forth,
but you know what we need is for the people in this church to grow individually.
It's not that we need more people necessarily.
And you know, we do want more.
But you know, Jesus had 12, he had 70, and he did a lot with that, didn't he?
With 70 people, he did a lot.
We have the people that we need.
We need the people that are here to grow.
You see, we need the children that are here.
We need the teenagers that are here
to listen to this preaching, to be warned of the danger of sin,
to be warned of going down the wrong path,
to be warned of what it is to live a life after the flesh,
to understand the meaning of soul winning,
to know what it is to labor for the cause of Christ.
That's what we need.
And let me tell you something.
When you preach what the saved need,
when you preach what the choir needs,
and no, we don't have a choir,
but when you preach to the choir, quote unquote,
that offends the visitor in many cases.
That offends the unbeliever.
That offends the people that you're just so busy trying to get in
because we don't want to turn them off or turn them away.
But let me tell you something.
I'd rather offend and harelip every visitor who walks through that door.
I would rather preach and have a revolving door out there
because people can't handle this kind of preaching
if my own children will learn what it means to live a pure and righteous and godly life
and to grow up and serve God for the rest of their life.
That's what I want.
And you know what?
I care more about your teenager and your child growing up and being pure on their wedding day
and going to the marriage altar pure.
I care more about that than somebody being offended when I preach against fornication
or getting offended when I preach against the smut that's on TV.
And gets offended when I preach against the porno that's sent around on cell phones
and the pic message.
You know what?
If that offends you, then get out of here because I am here to preach to the laborers
because I'd rather have some laborers who are pure and godly and righteous
and want to be holy and children who grow up in that kind of environment
than a free-for-all because nobody wants to preach what needs to be preached
because it's going to offend people and we can't be big enough.
You know what?
I want this church to be as big as possible with zero compromise
because I don't care if I could build a church that had 5,000 people in it
and my children go astray.
That's not what I want.
And it's not just my children.
It's you.
I love you.
I want you to live for God.
I don't care as much about somebody who's outside that door
as what I care about you who come to this church.
You should be flattered to come to Faithful Baptist Church and know,
hey, he's preaching to me.
He's not preaching to them.
What was that thing when you were a kid?
Was it the bubble tape?
Where it's for you, not them?
Who knows what I'm talking about?
It was like geared toward kids.
It was like, hey, it's for you, not them about bubble tape.
It was explaining how adults don't understand why kids want to chew bubble tape.
Who knows what bubble tape is?
It was like a little roll of gum.
That's our motto here.
For you, not them.
You see, if a visitor walks in, I'm not going to change my sermon.
Oh, man.
If somebody calls me and says, hey, I'm bringing somebody who's unsaved to church,
oh, man, I've got to make this a salvation message.
Don't you care about getting people saved?
Yeah, that's why we were out all day yesterday getting people saved all day long.
From 10 a.m. to 830 p.m., getting people saved all day long.
And now I'm not trying to get somebody saved right now.
I'm trying to preach God's word for the edification of the body of Christ right here,
trying to edify you until you can grow up,
until you can be a mature believer that brings forth much fruit,
some 30, some 60, some 100.
That's what I care about.
I'd rather have the teenager be pure because they heard a pastor breathe fire
and scream and yell about the evils of fornication,
even if everybody runs away scared and says, oh, that church is mean
and that preaching is too hard and it's too negative.
You know what?
I would rather have one teenager be pure
because they're part of our family here.
They're part of the body.
I mean, they're part of the group here.
And you know what?
We're going to accomplish more for God
if we can just even take one person
and turn them into the believer that God wants them to be.
We're going to accomplish more than just bringing in the multitudes.
It's true.
Do you realize what one person can do with their life?
Let me put it another way.
Do you realize what you can do with your life?
I mean, if your life, and I don't care who you are, man, woman, boy, girl, young, old,
if you will completely surrender your life over to Christ
and just say, you know what?
I want to do God's will with my life.
I mean, whatever it is, I want to read the Bible every day.
I mean, I want to just sell out for God, pull out all the stops and say,
you know what?
I want to read the Bible.
I want to be clean.
I want to be godly.
I want to be in church every time the doors are open.
I want to be out there knocking doors when he souls to Christ.
I want to talk to my friends about the Gospel,
my loved ones.
I want to clean up my music.
I'm going to clean up my lifestyle.
I'm going to clean up everything about my life.
I want to serve God and be filled with the Spirit
and present my body, a living sacrifice unto God, holy, acceptable.
It's my reasonable service.
If you, one person, would do that,
the impact that that would have for the kingdom of God is unbelievable.
You can't even fathom it.
Think about it.
Think about how many people who attend this church right now
have literally spent thousands of hours out soul winning,
hundreds of hours over the years.
Think about how many people in this church have gone out there
and literally won scores of people to Christ.
Just week after week, they're out there.
I mean, we have a lot of great people in this church, don't we?
We have a lot of laborers.
Think about how many people in this church just go out there
week after week after week after week.
And it's not some quick, big slam band.
Just week after week, they just keep plowing away, plowing away, plowing away,
hour after hour after hour after hour.
And how many hundreds of people have been saved as a result?
Now our little, one little, tiny little store front church,
we don't even have a real building.
You know, we're in a store front.
Well, hey, we have a really cool foosball table out in the lobby.
How you doing?
Big, fancy cathedral with stained buttons.
But you know what?
Hey, our little store front church, and oh yeah,
yeah, but we've knocked the doors of every door,
like within a 20 minute radius in every direction.
We've knocked the doors of three quarter of a million people
in the Phoenix area.
We knocked the doors of, of what now?
I think nine small towns.
We've knocked every single door and preached the gospel.
Hey, we've got the laborers.
Let's not lose that.
Let's not tone, don't ever tell me to tone down my preaching.
You got to back off a little so you can get more people in here.
Now hold on a second.
If you talk to me in the terms of let's get more laborers in here,
well that sounds good, but guess what?
Laborers like this kind of preaching.
The real laborer loves this kind of preaching.
He loves it.
You say, how do you know?
I'm a laborer.
I love it.
And everybody I know is a laborer and loves it.
And it's the people who want to sit around and do nothing.
They want to show up to church,
and that's why many people quit the church, by the way.
They don't want the conviction.
They don't want to be told about soul winning.
They don't want to hear about winning souls.
They don't want to hear about doing the work of the ministry.
They don't want to hear about doing the labor.
They want to just go somewhere where they can check it off.
I went to church like I voted today.
They want to get a little sticker at the door.
Put this little sticker on.
I went to church today.
They can check it off.
I showed up.
I sat in the pew.
I threw in my money.
I did my time.
I've done my duty for the week,
and I can go on with my life.
No, they want to go somewhere where they hear nothing.
Where it's just nothing.
Just blah, blah, blah.
Something that they already know from the pulpit.
They don't want to go somewhere with real Bible preaching
because it's making them have to act.
You know what I mean?
When you hear Bible preaching that's really Bible preaching
that's telling you to labor,
that's telling you to work,
that's telling you go ye therefore into all the world
and preach the gospel to every creature,
it compels action and they don't want to act.
They just want to listen.
We don't need hearers of the word.
We need doers of the word.
We should measure the church by the number of doers.
I'd like to see this.
I'd like to look at it through God's eyes.
I'd like to say, you know what?
Instead of measuring the Sunday morning attendance of churches,
why don't we measure the soul winning attendance?
Amen.
That's good.
Because who cares about a bunch of people
who just show up and sit here and listen
and then walk away and do nothing with them
and do nothing.
Why don't we measure the number of visitors
that our members bring to church?
Why don't we measure that
and say that's the measure of how we're doing?
Why don't we measure how many people
are getting right with God?
Instead of just measuring how many people came and listened.
Now look, you know what happens when you have a big crowd
that comes and listens?
Then you need a bigger building.
Why would I want to go through the trouble
of buying a bigger building,
of renting a bigger space
that's just more cleaning, more hassle,
more chairs, more work,
so that a bunch of people can listen and do nothing?
I don't want it.
Everybody who doesn't care what the Bible says
and doesn't care about getting their brothers and sisters
and grandkids and nephews
and parents and uncles and aunts saved,
they don't care about that.
They don't care about cleaning up their life at all.
They don't care about growing in grace
and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
What are they even doing here?
But that's what our churches have become,
just a social club.
You show up and just get together with all your friends
and hang out and play foosball or whatever.
But the point is, we need to pray for laborers.
We need to get our emphasis right and say,
What?
Oh, pay for Baptist Church needs to grow.
No, you need to grow.
I need to grow.
We need to grow as a person.
If we grow as a person, we'll do great things for God.
And then you know who's going to build the church?
Not us, God.
Jesus Christ said, upon this rock,
I will build my church,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against me.
We've got too many people trying to build the church
instead of letting God build the church.
Let him build the church.
But you know what? Let's build ourselves.
Because the word edify,
if you know the Spanish language, for example,
you know that the word edificio means what?
A building.
To edify means to build.
So Jesus said, I'll build my church.
It's your job, Pastor, to build the saints.
You got that?
He builds the group.
He builds the assembly.
He builds the church.
It's my job to build up who's here.
Instead of wishing that God gave us more church members,
why don't we build the ones that he gave us?
I mean, think about it.
Look if you look at Luke chapter 16,
great chapter, Luke 16.
Luke chapter number 16, Matthew, Mark, Luke.
Luke 16, great chapter.
It says in verse number 10,
I think this is a great concept in every area of life.
You know, we're kind of emphasizing this morning our church.
But Luke 16 is a great concept.
While you're turning there, let me just say this.
A lot of people misunderstand what soul winning is even about.
And Justin and I were talking about this yesterday,
but they think that the purpose of soul winning
is to build up the church.
See, I don't believe that.
And I had somebody contact me recently and say,
you know, boy, I see you're doing all this soul winning.
And they said, you know, I'm a pastor.
Is that really getting results for you?
Like, is it building your church?
Is your church growing?
You know, I'm just thinking to myself, this guy doesn't get it.
And let me break it down to you very simply.
This is one of the most important philosophies you will ever get
of who we are at Faithful Word Baptist Church.
If you understand what I'm about to say,
you will understand Faithful Word to a great degree.
We don't go soul winning so that our church will grow.
Okay?
So there's the means and there's the end, right?
Soul winning is not the means toward the end of the church growing and being built.
It's the exact opposite.
We want the church to grow so we can do more soul winning.
That's what it is.
We don't do soul winning so that the church will grow.
Totally backwards.
We want the church to grow so that we can do more soul winning.
Because if our church is twice as big, that's twice as many doors will knock.
Twice as many people will hear the gospel.
Twice as many small towns will be covered.
Twice as much laborers.
But we don't go soul winning so that we can have a bigger church.
What's the point of having a big church?
Why is that our goal?
No, our goal is to preach the gospel.
So they got the means and the ends completely reversed.
Get that down.
We want the church to grow for one reason, to win more souls.
We don't win more souls so we can have a big church and say,
look at the big church we have.
Wow.
You see, we need laborers to go out into the harvest because it's plenty.
I was very happy yesterday just because we had such a great soul winning marathon.
It was unbelievable, the small town soul winning marathon.
Great time.
Put up your hand if you're there.
Great soul winning marathon.
I mean unbelievable.
And let me tell you what a great feeling it was to get in the car.
I mean this is a great feeling.
Get in the car, drive for over an hour and a half into the middle of nowhere
to a town that no one's ever heard of.
Okay.
Winkelman, Arizona.
Okay.
Go to a town that nobody's ever heard of.
You know, we handed out the maps and everything.
Then I drove to the furthest, uttermost corner of that town in the middle of nowhere
no one's ever heard of, to one house that was just all by itself.
Just in the middle of nowhere.
And I had driven, you know, over an hour and a half to the middle of nowhere.
Why?
You know, why?
I get all the way out there.
I pull into some random driveway.
The guy is just standing on the lawn looking at me like, can I help you?
You know, what are you doing?
Because I just drive up to his house.
I get out and pull out an invitation to say hi.
I'm from Faithful Word Baptist Church.
Do you know for sure if you died today, you'd go to heaven?
And that guy got saved.
I mean, that guy was so receptive.
He wanted to hear the gospel.
He was really happy about being saved.
I ended up talking to him about a lot of other biblical things afterward,
teaching him some basics and so forth.
That is great to be used by God.
Because, you know, that's God leading us.
And it was just everywhere we went, God was leading us.
And we had people saved and people...
It was a bittersweet feeling because on one hand,
it was glorious and exciting to see all the people get saved.
And what a great day we had.
But you know what the sad part was?
The sad part was thinking, what if we hadn't have come?
I mean, all these people who'd never heard the gospel,
and some of them just, they really wanted to be saved.
They just didn't know the gospel.
And just to think, what if we hadn't have come?
Wouldn't that be sad?
And you say, oh yeah, they'll hear it some other way.
Those people live and die in that small town.
Remember Joe?
We said just one, one of the many examples.
I mean, we give examples all day long.
We're there all day long.
Just one example.
We sat down with a guy named Joe.
Went through the gospel with him.
And he said, I was born in this town.
He said, I have never left this town.
I mean, this guy was a grown man.
He was married.
I mean, he had his own house.
I mean, he has never.
I mean, he said, like, I think once he went to Show Low
and came back the same day.
I mean, this guy has never left his house.
We talked to another.
We talked to a young lady that got saved.
And I said, have you lived in this town your whole life?
She said, no, no, no, no.
You know, I used to live in Kearney.
I mean, we're talking about in the middle of nowhere.
And Kearney's like eight miles away.
And she'd think, oh, no, I used to live in Kearney.
I would call that you've been here your whole life.
No, we lived in Kearney until I was 10.
Then we made this big, huge move over to Hayden from Kearney.
And I ran into so many people, so many people who said,
we have lived here our entire life.
Many had never even been to Phoenix.
They'd never been outside that area.
They were born and will live and die.
There's no church in that town.
There was no Baptist church whatsoever in that town.
Who is going to go and reap that harvest?
I mean, can you think of a more disgusting thought
than a field of wheat?
OK?
And this is what Jesus is saying.
He says, the harvest truly is plenteous,
but the laborer is a few.
Pray, therefore, the Lord of the harvest,
that he will sin for the labors and disown.
What if you owned a harvest?
You've got to put this in terms of the parable.
What if you owned a farm, OK?
And all of a sudden, you planted the farm,
the wheat had grown, and I mean, that represents wealth,
doesn't it, for a farmer?
I mean, we're talking about just financially,
just in this world, that's his income.
I mean, that represents the money
that he's going to pay his bills,
that he's going to feed his family,
the wealth that he needs.
And what if he didn't have anybody to harvest?
He didn't have any workers.
And you would just see food go to waste.
Think about that.
Just all that food that could have been feeding people
and producing wealth and could have been, you know,
helping him support his family, and he did all the work.
I mean, think about how much work went into plowing the ground,
planting the seeds, pulling the weeds, protecting it,
watering it, caring for it, just waiting in expectation.
And then comes the harvest, and nobody wants to do the work.
His son is sitting on the couch watching TV,
and he says to his son,
Son, the harvest is ripe, son.
We don't have any workers.
You know, all the illegals went home, and then,
no, I'm just kidding.
But anyway, you know, we don't have any workers.
We don't have anybody to do this.
Son, get off the couch, son.
We have to survive.
And he just says no.
No, this is my favorite part.
I'm watching a movie.
I'm watching the Star Wars trilogy again
for eight and a half hours.
No, Dad, I want to play video games.
I mean, can you imagine how sickening that would be?
And he's like, Son, look, we have to pay our bills, son.
We have to pay the bills.
We have to work here.
Somebody's got to do this.
I can't do this by myself.
Son, work.
No.
I mean, wouldn't that just be ridiculous?
And then he says, feed me.
What's for dinner?
But he won't work.
And that's what people do.
They come to church, and they say, feed me.
I like that church because I wasn't being fed.
Here, open up.
Open your mouth.
Here you go.
We need you.
Open your mouth wide.
Here, let me feed you.
Now go work.
Because hey, how about this?
If a man won't work, isn't that what the Bible says?
How about this?
If a church member won't work, they don't deserve to eat.
You know what I mean?
Look, I think that's why a lot of people
who won't do any work for God, they won't do anything for God.
I'm not saying to come work for me.
I'm not telling you to clean the toilet and vacuum the place.
I'll be glad to work on that stuff and clean up the place.
We have other people cleaning up the place.
I'm just asking you to work for the Lord, not for me.
And just going out, preaching his word, doing his work,
winning souls.
But the church member who won't work, neither should he eat.
And I think, and I mean work spiritually and eat spiritually.
And I think to myself, why do so many people
stop coming to church if they don't do any work for God?
It's like they eventually quit coming to church.
Which is cool in a way because then pretty much everybody
in our church does the work.
So we have a great atmosphere of everybody pitching in.
I love the unity.
But it's funny, I think God actually looks down at them.
This is my theory and it's biblical based on the verse
that I just quoted to you.
My theory is that God looks down and he sees somebody
that's not working and says they don't even deserve
to get this great biblical preaching.
You know what I mean?
It's being wasted on them and they're not using it.
Did you hear that?
Because this is what Jesus said,
I'll support it further from the Bible.
He said, take heed how ye hear.
Okay, you got that?
Take heed how ye hear.
For to him that hath, more shall be given,
and he shall have more abundance.
But to him that hath not, from him shall be taken away,
even that which he hath.
He said, you better be careful how you hear.
Because he says, you know what?
To him that hath, more shall be given,
and he shall have more abundance,
and from him that hath not,
from him shall be taken away, even that which he hath.
He said, be ye doers of the word,
not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
If any man be a hearer of the word, and not a doer,
he's like unto a man, beholding his natural face in a glass,
for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way,
and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
But he shall looketh into the perfect law of liberty
and continue it therein.
He being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work,
this man shall be blessed as deep.
You see, the person who's not a doer of the work
will forget the great Bible truths that they've learned.
They will forget biblical doctrine.
They will not continue to be fed,
because God will take away from them what they have.
Because the person to whom much is given from them
shall much be required, the Bible says.
And so if you want to come to Faithful Word Baptist Church
and eat and feast upon God's Word and biblical preaching
and all the things that are taught, boy, use it.
Work.
Do something with it, because it's a tragedy.
I hate waste.
Now, boy, food's expensive these days, isn't it?
Especially if you don't want to eat a bunch of synthetic garbage
that's put on the shelf today, the hydrogenated
and the sodium benzoate and all these different things.
You know, if you want to eat really bona fide,
good quality food that doesn't have Roundup in it, okay?
It's expensive, isn't it, to get a quality meal,
to get quality ingredients, to get quality produce,
to get quality grains, quality meats.
It's expensive.
And it costs a lot of money to feed eight people,
because that's what I do,
because basically I'm feeding eight people.
One of them's in the womb, but I'm feeding eight
because that one in the womb
causes my wife to eat twice as much.
So I basically am feeding eight people.
It's true.
And I believe God's going to provide
for me to be able to feed my family,
which consists of eight people.
But you know what really gets me is when food goes to waste.
That's what really burns me up,
because I'm spending so much on food.
There's so many people in my family
that have so many mouths to feed.
And you know what?
God bless them as they put as much food in their mouth
as their little heart desires.
But let me tell you something.
It burns me up when food goes to waste.
But think of the waste of a harvest that's ripe.
Think of the waste.
Jesus has already died on the cross, shed his blood.
I mean, he did everything.
All things are now ready.
Come to the feast, he says.
Go out, compel them to come in.
I mean, salvation is done.
It's paid.
It's just a gift.
It's all wrapped up.
It's under the tree.
It's got the wrapping paper.
It's got the bow.
It's got the card made out.
And it's just sitting there, and people don't know about it.
And it's going to waste.
And the harvest is literally rotting
and dying upon the vine.
We went to that town of Hayden in Winkleman.
And we were in Winkleman.
Who saw that big cemetery in Winkleman?
Huge cemetery, remember?
And you saw all the Catholic headstones.
You saw all the Catholic idolatry
on all the grave markers.
Because pretty much every door we knocked,
either they had nothing to do with believing the Bible
or they were a Catholic.
And we won people to Christ at both gods.
We won some that were totally unchurched.
We won Catholics.
That's pretty much what they were.
Isn't that what we were pretty much running into?
I mean, 90%?
Just all the Catholic headstones, all the idolatry,
all the false religion.
And I said, we finished this street.
We figured we were marking up the map,
making sure we knocked every door.
And I pointed at that cemetery, and I said, you know what?
I said, too late for them.
You know what I mean?
Because we knocked all these doors.
But I said, it's too late for them.
I said, that was the failure of the last generation right there.
That was the failure.
Because I said, I wonder if any other churches came in
and knocked these doors back in those people's generation.
It makes you wonder, right?
Like, did anybody come in?
I mean, I'm not saying they didn't.
I don't know.
But it made me wonder.
Did somebody at least give these people a chance?
Did anybody come in and knock these doors?
Or did anybody bring the gospel?
And you say, well, come on, Pastor,
just because you have some cute little ministry
where you go out to small towns, and that's like, hey,
that's straight out of the box.
That's what Jesus did.
He said, let's go to another village.
Just get out of your concordance and look up the word village.
It's in almost every chapter in certain parts of the gospels.
Look up village.
Look up towns.
He said, let's go to every town.
When he sent out his 70, he sent them out to small towns and villages.
He said, we will go into all the towns and villages.
That's what he did.
He didn't just care about the metropolis.
He preached in the metropolis, and so do we every week.
But he cared about the small town.
He cared about the village.
And if in the past generation, if that cemetery,
if that graveyard, and I don't know if it does,
but if it represents a town that had never been reached with soul winning,
that had never had anybody bring the gospel,
that represents the failure of that generation's Baptist churches.
That's what I say.
It represents the failure.
To get the gospel out there.
And you know, we're worried about missions.
Every church talks about missions, missions, missions,
and they want to send people to the uttermost corner of the earth
bringing the gospel.
I'm all for it.
Amen and amen.
Bring the gospel all over the world.
But then we're just ignoring the harvest that's right by us.
We're ignoring the small towns.
We're ignoring the metropolis of Phoenix where there is door after door.
You know, it's funny, we made that video.
Brother Segura and I made this video.
And some of you have probably seen it.
We made a slide show of photos that we took in Phoenix.
But we made it seem as if we were in Africa.
And I mean, we're taught, it has us giving the gospel to people.
And these people are wearing head coverings.
They're dressed in African clothing, head to toe.
I mean, these people look like they're straight out of the jungles of Africa
or the deserts of Africa.
I mean, they're wearing headscarves.
They have all kinds of really different clothing and authentic African clothes.
And we gave them the gospel.
And everybody who watched that, who didn't know,
they thought we literally went to Africa.
Who didn't know, we hadn't told them what we had done.
They thought that Brother Segura and I were, you know, soul-ending in Africa.
And really, the moral behind that video that we made
was to show people, hey, the mission feels a lot closer than you think.
Instead of wanting to just raise hundreds of thousands of dollars
to build up all this, to bring your big container
to some foreign country on the other side of the world
because you have to bring all the amenities of America
and set them up over there.
Instead of all these hundreds of thousands of dollars,
you know you can do the same thing just right down the street here.
You know that you can speak Swahili to these people.
You know, if you want to learn.
Oh, I don't want to learn until I get there
because I don't want to get it wrong.
Well, just go over here to McDowell Road
and I'll show you a place where you can speak Swahili all day long
if you want to learn how to speak Swahili and have a perfect accent.
Hujumba Bwana, you know, I'll teach you how to do it.
You know, I've got a lot to learn myself, but I mean,
you know, we're over there.
We pulled out the Swahili scriptures and given the gospel
from the book of John.
And then talking to people who spoke a little English,
a little Swahili combined, doing a little bit of back and forth.
You know, it's right here.
And by the way, God loves white Americans too.
You know what I mean?
Somebody doesn't have to be living in some jungle in Africa
to need the gospel.
He loves white American blue-collar people too.
And so we can give the gospel at Phoenix.
We can go out to all these towns.
We can go to foreign countries.
But let's just do something and not let the harvest go to waste.
And let me tell you something.
This ought to be called Laborer Baptist Church.
That's a great name for a church, by the way.
Write that down if you think about starting a church someday.
Laborer Baptist.
See, I don't know if people want to come
because then they might think they have to work if they come.
Look, Pastor Anderson will never make you work.
I'll never make you work.
I'll never make you go solo.
I'll never even pressure you to go solo.
And when we're out soloing,
I won't pressure you to do the long haul.
I never will.
It's freedom.
But let me tell you something.
I'm going to get on my knees and pray that you become a laborer.
And instead of praying for a bunch of strangers,
you know, why don't you help build up the crowd that we've already got?
You know what?
Instead of wanting to go out and reach everybody else's children
in the world with the Gospel
and start a big orphanage and Christian school
and I'm not against somebody reaching kids with the Gospel,
but you know what?
Are you reaching your own kids too, though?
Because those are probably the most important.
Think about that.
Are you helping the children of our church right here?
Are you praying?
Do you pray for my children?
Do you pray for Solomon?
Do you pray for Isaac?
Do you pray for John?
Do you pray for other people's children?
Do you pray for Chris 1 and Chris 2 and Chris 3?
Do you pray for Valerie?
Do you pray for Kelsey?
Do you pray for Thomas?
Do you pray for the people that God has already given us?
That they will be pure?
That they will be righteous?
That they will be laborers?
Instead of just worrying about what we don't have
and criticizing what we don't have
and saying, oh, we don't have this
and we don't have this
and this other church has this.
We have the Bible and the power of God and laborers
and that's all we need.
That's what a church is supposed to be.
And if we have what matters,
then we can do the work that God has called us to do
and one day the first shall be last
and the last shall be first.
Because it's about being a laborer.
That's what it's about.
Son, go work today in my vineyard
is the command of God.
God wants us to be a laborer.
He wants us to build ourselves,
to build our fellow church members.
Not to worry about what we don't have,
but to pray for the people that we do.
I mean, look.
Love the people in the church that we already have.
Love the people in our church.
Pray for them.
Love them.
Care about them.
Take an interest in them.
Help them grow.
Help them grow because if you help them grow,
that's how the church is going to grow.
If you help the people that are already here to grow,
that's how our church is going to grow.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, please just help us.
And Father, let me pray right now what Jesus told us to pray.
God, please send forth labors into your harvest
out of Faith Forward Baptist Church.
God, I have five children, a sixth on the way.
Send them forth to be laborers.
Help me never to preach to the visitor
by holding back at the expense of my own children
and the other children in this church that I love
and the other young people and old people in this church that I love
to miss out on the preaching they need
because I was afraid to offend God.
Help us to preach what needs to be preached
for the sake of those that are a part of the body.
Help us to edify the saints.
Help us to build the body here, dear God.
And we love you and thank you for saving us.
We thank you for the great blessings that we had yesterday out soul winning
and for the many, many future blessings that are in store for our church.
And God, I pray that everybody who's here this morning,
because that's all we need,
that everybody who's here this morning would say,
you know what, I want to take my Christianity to the next level.
I want to be a laborer.
I want to serve God.
I want to win a soul to Christ.
I want to bring somebody to the church.
Help us all to grow to the next level individually, dear God.
And help us to become the laborers that you want us to be.
And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.