In verse number 11, Bible reads,
And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem,
that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee,
and as he entered into a certain village,
there were men of ten men that were lepers,
which stood afar up, and they lifted up their voices,
and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.
And when he saw them, he said to them,
Go, show yourselves unto the priests.
And it came to pass, that as they went, they were cleansed.
And one of them, when he could he was healed,
turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God,
fell down on his face, at his feet,
giving him thanks, and he was a Samaritan.
And Jesus answering, said, Were there not ten cleansed?
But where are the nine?
There are not found that return to give glory to God,
save this stranger.
And he said unto them, Arise, go thy way,
thy faith hath made thee whole.
Now, the reason that I wanted to turn to this scripture
and go over this story, is to show you
how that out of these ten men that were healed by Jesus,
they all had a terrible disease of leprosy,
their prognosis was very bad,
it was something that would kill you,
something that was very contagious,
pretty much just ruined your whole life.
And these men were completely healed
of that horrible disease, and only one of them came back
and thanked Jesus, and glorified God.
The other nine were just happy that they were healed,
and just went on their way,
and never even came back to say thank you.
Now, there are a lot of people today
who will criticize our Soul Winning Program.
And when I say Soul Winning,
I'm talking about the fact that we go out,
and we knock doors, and we give people the Gospel,
and try to get as many people saved as we can.
And a lot of people are down on that today.
And there are a lot of people who will attack it,
and really what it's a case of is,
it's a case of people who do nothing,
criticizing those who are doing something.
And people love to sit back and criticize
people who are actually doing the real work of the ministry,
going out into the highways and hedges,
rolling up their sleeves, and getting out there,
finding the lost, finding the unsaved, opening a Bible,
and preaching the Gospel to them.
What it comes down to in the end
is that people don't like Soul Winning
because it makes them look bad when they're not doing it.
It's convicting.
I mean, when I first heard about Soul Winning,
my first thought was, I need to be out there doing that.
Because of the fact that it is convicting
when you realize that our whole city today
is filled with people right here in Phoenix, Arizona
that are not saved and that have never even heard
a clear presentation of the Gospel,
many of which would get saved
if someone would take the time and open a Bible
and show them how to be saved,
and to just sit and think that they're just out there
and the fields are white under harvest,
and we're not going out there and doing it.
It's convicting.
We'd rather just sometimes not think about it.
But when we see the people around us going out,
knocking doors, getting people saved,
we can have one of two reactions to that.
Either that's going to inspire us,
and we're gonna say, wow,
they're going out and knocking doors
and getting people saved, I wanna go do that too.
Or we're gonna bristle at that
because we don't wanna get involved.
We don't wanna do the work.
And so we'll bristle, and in order to reconcile in our mind
why we're not out there doing it,
we'll try to say, well, they're not really doing it right,
or well, it's all fake,
or they're not really getting people saved,
and just make excuses for why soul winning doesn't work.
Look, there are a lot of Baptist churches today
in Phoenix, Arizona,
that are independent, fundamental Baptist churches
that preach out of a King James Bible
that are right on salvation,
that are right on a lot of their doctrine,
but there is little or no soul winning going on,
and it's a shame and an embarrassment to the cause of Christ.
It's an embarrassment that when we go out soul winning,
people think we're Mormons.
They think we're Jehovah's Witnesses.
Why?
Because the people who believe the true gospel
of Jesus Christ, whose final authority is the Holy Bible,
not some book like the Book of Mormon
or some Watchtower magazine,
it's a shame that we don't have the reputation
for going out there and preaching the gospel
to every creature and getting people saved.
And I'll tell you why.
It's not because of churches like ours.
It's because of all the dead as a doornail Baptist churches
where there's no soul winning going on,
and if you walked into those churches today and said,
hey, why aren't there any soul winning?
Hey, why aren't we knocking any doors?
Hey, what's the deal?
Faithful Word Baptist Church is doing it.
Other churches are doing it.
Why aren't we doing it?
They'll come up with a lot of lame excuses.
Yes, they will.
And what they'll do is they'll start to criticize
soul winning and say, well, yeah, that's soul winning.
That's not legitimate, and it's not.
Those people aren't really getting saved, and it's not.
They'll find fault with it because they don't wanna do it,
because they don't wanna do the work.
Now, when people attack soul winning
and find fault with soul winning,
the biggest criticism that they'll use
to try to say that soul winning doesn't work
is to say, well, if all these people are getting saved,
where are they all?
You know, we've all heard it before
in a non-soul winning type church
or around non-soul winning Christians.
Where are all these people that you're getting saved?
I mean, if you got this many people saved,
where are they all?
And it's sort of like this question that Jesus asked here.
Jesus didn't ask it with any ill intent.
He never questioned the fact that they'd been healed.
He just asked the question to point out the fact
that only one out of 10 even came back to say thank you.
And he asked this question, where are the nine?
I mean, here's one guy.
They were all cleansed.
I mean, Jesus makes that clear.
They were all healed, but only one came back to say thank you
and the way it works with soul winning
is that a lot of the people that we win to Christ,
a lot of the people that get saved,
they're not all gonna come and thank us.
They're not all gonna come and become a part of the church
and say, you know, now I wanna give back now.
They're not going to.
But does that mean that they weren't cleansed?
No.
But that's one of the biggest criticisms
that we'll get on soul winning
is where are all these people?
You know, if you're getting all these hundreds of people
saved, how come they don't all go to your church?
And I'm gonna give you this morning
a list of 11 reasons why most people,
why the vast majority of people
who we win to the Lord out of soul winning
will not come to church.
And you have to understand that I'm not saying
why they might not.
I'm saying I already expect,
I already know that the vast majority of people
that we win to Christ out of soul winning
will never come to church.
Now, when you hear these reasons,
you will realize how ridiculous this argument
against soul winning is.
And a lot of these reasons people just haven't thought of.
But I'm gonna go through these 11 reasons
and after you've heard these 11 reasons,
you will realize how ridiculous and foolish it is
to say that everybody who gets saved out of soul winning
shouldn't, you know, if they didn't come to church,
they didn't really get saved.
I mean, do you believe in work salvation?
It's funny how people claim to believe
salvation is by faith alone,
but if they don't come and get baptized,
they say they're not really saved.
Well, why don't you go during the Church of Christ?
You know, like your little hero from Duck Dynasty,
that long-haired hippie that everybody worships
and idolizes, because he's such a great Christian.
He believes you have to be baptized to be saved.
He's part of the Church of Christ denomination.
Let me tell you something.
If you believe that only the people who get baptized
are saved, maybe you'd be happier down
at the Church of Christ.
This is a Baptist church where we believe
that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish but have eternal life.
And that baptism is not salvation.
Baptism is a step of obedience that we should do
after we get saved, but you do not have to be baptized
to be saved.
You just have to believe on Jesus Christ to be saved.
Some people will even object to even the term soul-winning.
And they'll say, oh, you guys, we don't win souls.
We don't save anybody.
It's Jesus that saves us.
But hold on a second.
What about this verse?
To the weak became I as weak that I might gain the weak.
I have made all things to all men
that I might by all means save some.
And people will say, we don't save anybody.
We don't win souls.
You are taking pride saying you got someone saved.
Well, that's what Paul said.
Exactly.
So why can the Apostle Paul say it
under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost?
He said that I might by all means save some.
In Romans 11, 14, he said if by any means
I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh
and might save some of them.
In Jude 22, it says and of some have compassion
making a difference and others save with fear,
pulling them out of the fire,
hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.
First Corinthians 7 16 says,
for what knowest thou, O white,
whether thou shalt save thy husband?
Or how knowest thou, O man,
whether thou shalt save thy wife?
You know why people object to that terminology?
You know why people don't use it?
Because they don't want to take responsibility for the lost.
They want to just say, oh, it's all in God's hands.
It's all in Jesus' hands.
They want this Calvinist mentality that says,
well, whoever's gonna get saved
is gonna get saved anyway.
It's not my responsibility.
No one is your responsibility.
The Bible says that Jesus Christ has committed unto us
the ministry of reconciliation.
We are ambassadors for Christ
and we beseech you in Christ's stead,
be ye reconciled to God.
It is our job to go out and preach the gospel
and win people to Christ and save people,
pulling them out of the fire.
But people who want to shirk that responsibility,
they don't like to take the responsibility
of saying, well, it's our job to go out and give people safe.
No, that is our job.
He committed to us that ministry of reconciliation.
Obviously, we know that it's Jesus Christ who is the Savior.
Obviously, we know that without Jesus Christ,
no one would be saved.
Obviously, we know we're saved through his blood.
But we as human beings still have a responsibility
to point people to the Savior, to preach the gospel.
So when we say we got someone saved
or we won someone to Christ,
what we're saying is we brought them the gospel.
And as the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 3,
we were the minister by whom they believed.
And we were the one that was the human instrument
that God used to pull that person out of the fire.
You see, Jesus Christ is not knocking doors today in Phoenix.
Jesus Christ will not knock a single door today.
And if he did, that'd be great.
I mean, if Jesus would come and knock everybody's door
and personally give them the gospel,
that would be the best gospel presentation
anybody could ever get
if it was straight from the mouth of Jesus.
Think about how fortunate the people were
who lived as Jesus walked this earth
and actually got to hear Jesus preach.
And people like the woman at the well
had Jesus come and just personally give her the gospel.
It's not gonna happen today, folks,
because Jesus said, as long as I'm in the world,
I'm the light of the world.
But he's no longer in the world.
He says, you're the light of the world.
And he's committed unto us, the ministry of reconciliation.
He told us, as my Father had sent me, so send I you.
And it is our job, it is our responsibility.
And if we fail to warn them,
if we fail to preach the gospel,
then the Bible says their blood will be required in our hand
because we have failed to do the job that God gave us to do,
which is warning the lost and winning souls to Christ.
People don't like you to bring that up
when they're not doing it because it's very convicting.
When you're not taking part in the great commission
of getting the gospel to every creature,
a lot of times you'll just go find a church
that has no soul winning where you can be more comfortable,
where it's not constantly reminding you of the fact
that you're doing nothing to get the lost saved.
Now I could go and preach a whole sermon on soul winning
and I could just go off on that
and all kinds of scriptures come to mind.
But instead I want to rather focus on this question
of where are they all?
That so many critics of soul winning will bring up
and say, well, if you're getting all these hundreds
of people saying, well, where are they all?
Why aren't they coming to church?
Before we get into the 11 reasons,
let's go to John chapter two.
And let's just look at a few scriptures
just to understand how this is such an unscriptural
question to ask and such an unscriptural claim to make.
We could go through Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
but for sake of time we're not going to.
I'm just gonna show you John and some things in Acts
for sake of time.
If you want to look this up on your own,
you'll find many more examples of this,
but I'm just gonna give you a few,
then we'll get into the 11 reasons.
First of all, I just want to show you
that a lot of people got saved through the ministry
of John the Baptist and through the ministry
of Jesus Christ.
I mean, John the Baptist was preaching to thousands
of people, thousands of people were getting baptized.
Okay, Jesus got thousands of people saved,
preached the gospel to huge multitudes,
many believed on him, many of those were baptized.
They had a huge ministry.
Let me just show you just a few verses.
Look at John two verse 23.
It says, now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover
and the feast day, many believed in his name
when they saw the miracles that he did.
So Jesus went to Jerusalem at the feast day.
This is when the whole nation comes
and gathers in Jerusalem.
People are traveling from all over the world,
huge crowds, and the Bible says that many of them
believed in him.
If you flip over to John chapter four verse 39,
it says many of the Samaritans of that city
believed on him, for the saying of the woman
which testified, he told me all that ever I did,
verse 41, and many more believed
because of his own word.
Look at chapter four verse one, John four one.
When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard
that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John.
Though Jesus himself baptized not but his disciples,
he left Judea and departed again into Galilee.
Now John the Baptist, the Bible says that when he was
baptizing, it says then went out to him all Jerusalem
and Judea and all the region round about Jordan
were baptized of him and Jordan confessing
their sins, huge multitudes, the Pharisees
and the Sadducees, they even went out to hear
and preach just to see what all the hype was about
because so many people were listening to John the Baptist,
so many people were getting saved, so many people
were getting baptized, huge amounts, and then the Bible
says that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John
and it keeps saying over and over, many believed on him,
many believed on him, many, you know John 10 45,
many believed on him there, John 11 45,
then many of the Jews which came to Mary
and had seen the things which Jesus did believed on him,
John 12 and 11 because that by reason of him,
many of the Jews went away and believed on Jesus
and all throughout Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
it just keeps talking about many people believing,
many believed on him, multitudes believed on him,
multitudes being saved, multitudes getting baptized,
thousands and thousands of people go to Acts 1.
Next book right after John is Acts.
All throughout the ministry of John the Baptist
which was a very short ministry, probably only lasted
less than a year in its main thrust
and all throughout the ministry of Jesus Christ
which probably lasted three and a half years.
So over the course of about four years,
these guys are preaching the gospel all day long.
I mean these guys are full time.
Jesus, his apostles, he had his 12 apostles,
they're going out and preaching.
They're not fishing, they're not doing carpentry.
I mean they've put everything aside.
They are full time going throughout the cities,
the towns, the villages, preaching the gospel.
365 days they're preaching the gospel.
In the Sabbath day they're speaking in the synagogue.
They're going throughout the week,
knocking doors, preaching the gospel.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of people
are being saved but look at Acts 1 verse 12.
It says, then returned they unto Jerusalem
from the mount called Olivet which is from Jerusalem,
a Sabbath day's journey and when they were come in
they went up into an upper room where it bodes
both Peter and James and John and Andrew,
Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew,
James the son of Alphaeus and Simon Zelotes
and Judas the brother of James.
So there's a run through of the 11 apostles.
Look at verse 14.
These all continued with one accord in prayer
and supplication with the women
and Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brother.
And in those days Peter stood up in the midst
of the disciples and said, look at the parenthesis,
the number of names together were about 120.
Now the Bible's clear, that includes the women.
That's everybody, that's not just the man,
that's not just the apostles.
It says that in that early church
where they were gathered together,
when they were assembled together
and they were gonna have this important service
where they're deciding who is going to replace
Judas Iscariot and be the 12th apostle,
that the people that were gathered there were 120 people.
And these are the same 120 people
that in Acts chapter two on the day of Pentecost
are gonna preach the gospel
and the Holy Ghost is gonna come upon them
and they're gonna speak in foreign languages
to all the people that have gathered there
from all over the world and see that great group
of 3,000 people saved in Acts chapter two.
So here's my question.
If they really had all those thousands of people saved,
why are there only 120 people in that church, huh?
I think John the Baptist saw it when he was a fraud.
I think Jesus saw it when he was a fraud.
They're just going on this easy believism,
you know, and then there's only 120 people in the church
and they claim to have tens of thousands of people saved.
Is that what you'd say to them?
No. No way.
Oh, you don't think that they had critics in their day?
You don't think they had people pointing at Jesus
in that day saying he's a fraud,
John the Baptist isn't the real thing,
you gotta keep the law of Moses,
these people aren't getting,
if they're not getting circumcised,
if they're not keeping the law, if they're not doing this.
Look, it's the same world that we live in today
that they lived in 2,000 years ago
and here's the honest truth.
It's a lot easier to believe on Jesus Christ
and get saved than it is to join a church
and follow Christ and be there every week
and get involved and be a worker for Christ.
You see, it's easy to get saved
but it's hard to live the Christian life.
And 120 people here represent the diehards.
120 people here represent the people
who really loved Christ the most
and they were really serious about serving God
and they were there in that early church
and they stayed with it through thick and thin
but they'd lost a lot of people along the way.
So is it really fair to hold a church today in 2014
to a higher standard than you're gonna hold
even Jesus and the apostles?
I mean, I don't consider myself a great preacher
as John the Baptist, I don't consider myself
as great a soul winner as Jesus Christ
or Peter, James, John, Andrew, Philip or any of them
but I'll tell you this, people today expect us
to have every single person that we win to Christ
continue in church.
And if there were 300 saved,
they wanna see 300 on Sunday morning.
You know that's their mentality.
It's not biblical.
Is it biblical based on what we just looked at?
It makes no sense.
Let's get into the 11 reasons why most people
who we win to Christ out of soul winning
will not come to church and the reason why this is important
is because if you go into soul winning
with the wrong expectation, you're gonna get frustrated.
If you think that the goal of going out soul winning
is to bring a bunch of people into the church
and that's our main goal, you're gonna get frustrated
because most of them aren't gonna show up.
But if you think that the goal is to go out
and preach the gospel, if you think the goal is to go out
and get people saved, you know what,
you're not gonna be frustrated
because you're gonna succeed at that goal.
If that's what you set out to do, you will go out,
you will preach the gospel, you will succeed
at getting people saved.
So you need to go into it with the right expectation
of going out there and preaching.
And here's what's so ridiculous.
People who say soul winning doesn't work,
how can it not work for me to walk up to somebody
who's not saved, open my Bible and start showing them
how to be saved?
What a horrible thing to do.
What a ridiculous idea.
How else are you gonna do it?
Number one, why many people who are saved out soul winning
will not come to church?
They don't speak English.
Now that's a pretty good reason not to come
to Faithful Word Baptist Church.
Because of the fact that at Faithful Word Baptist Church,
all the services are only in English.
Now I personally, when I go out knocking doors soul winning,
I would estimate that more than half of the people
that I win to Christ are Spanish speakers.
Because I speak Spanish well enough to be able
to give the gospel to somebody and win somebody to Christ.
And just about every single week, this week included,
I win somebody to the Lord in Spanish,
and I would say that more than half of the people
that I win to the Lord, I get them saved
in Spanish, not English.
Now is it really fair to say,
well I don't think those people got saved
because they didn't come to church.
Why would they come to a church
where they don't understand anything?
And I would say that over the whole spectrum of our church,
probably about 20% of the people that we win to Christ
speak Spanish and no English.
More than 50% for me, but only some of our people
know Spanish, to give the gospel in Spanish.
I'd say about one fifth of the people that win,
but is that what the soul winning critic is thinking of?
No, he wants every single one of those people
that got saved to come to church
or our soul winning programs are fraud.
But a huge percentage of people don't speak English.
Now I don't want anybody to go to hell
just because they don't speak English.
And so when I'm out soul winning
and somebody speaks Spanish, and when I first came here,
my Spanish was not good enough to get someone saved
when I first started the church.
But I realized, wow, there are a lot of doors
where people speak only Spanish, this is pretty important.
And so I took the time to study and learn Spanish
because I figured I'm missing out on a lot of opportunities
to get people saved, and I learned Spanish
so that I wouldn't have to pass by
all those hundreds of doors, and I could get,
well but that's not gonna build the church,
that's not gonna bring in visitors.
So what, it's about loving people.
We love the Spanish speaker
as much as we love the English speaker.
We need to just get as many people saved as we can.
And if that's in Spanish, great.
Is it gonna build our church?
No, but so what?
We love people, let's get them saved.
Let's get them on their way to heaven.
So number one, a lot of them don't speak English.
Number two, a lot of the people that went to Christ
are children and teenagers.
And they don't have a way to go.
I mean, if you were to ask anybody in our church
who knocks a lot of doors and does a lot of sorting,
they'll tell you that a lot of the most receptive people
that they went to Christ are teenagers.
I mean, teenagers are often
much more receptive to the gospel.
I'll tell you why, you don't have to turn there,
but Matthew 18 verse three says this,
and said, verily I say unto you,
except ye be converted and become as little children,
ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
And again, in Mark 10, 15, he said,
verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive
the kingdom of God as a little child,
he shall not enter therein.
And so the Bible teaches that in order for anybody
to be saved of any age,
they have to have the mentality of a child.
They have to be converted and become as little children
to enter the kingdom of heaven, why?
Because a little child is used to relying on someone else.
See, adults grow up and they wanna do everything
for themselves and they're gonna make their own,
and that's great in a lot of areas,
but let me tell you something, when it comes to salvation,
you're not gonna do it yourself.
You might be a big strong man in every other area of life,
but when it comes to salvation,
you gotta humble yourself and say, God, I can't do this.
I am unworthy of going to hell, I am a sinner.
And you have to humble yourself, admit that you're a sinner
and that you are doomed to hell,
and believe on Jesus Christ, your only way out.
It's like a little child reaches up to their parents
to pick them up, and they need that parent to feed them
and to clothe them and to diaper them
and to do everything for them.
That childlike faith that is willing to fully trust
and rely on the parent to provide all their needs.
My children don't lay awake at night wondering
how we're gonna pay the bills.
They don't lie awake at night wondering
where the next meal's gonna come from,
because they just fully trust their parents to do it.
And that carries over very well with the gospel,
when we tell them Jesus paid it all.
When we tell them it's not by works of righteousness
which we have done, but according to his mercy,
he saved us.
When we tell them to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved, but a lot of older people,
they're used to doing everything themselves,
they wanna pay it themselves.
Look, children are pretty good at receiving gifts.
You ever try to offer an adult a gift
and they keep turning you down?
No, no, you shouldn't have.
No, I don't want this.
When was the last time a kid told you that?
I mean, imagine, you walk up to a kid
and give them a really huge, expensive gift,
they're gonna go, no, this is too much.
I can't accept this, mom and dad.
This is too much.
But how many times have adults told you that?
A lot, right?
Oh, this is too big, I can't take it, I can't accept it.
You shouldn't have.
Kids are like, cool.
So it's the same way with salvation.
It's free?
Cool.
Oh, wow, it's just a free gift
purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ?
I'll take it.
That's why a lot of children will be saved.
That's why a lot of teenagers will get saved.
They're not as corrupted.
They have not been brainwashed as much by false religion
or this world system.
They haven't yet gotten a mentality
that doesn't wanna have faith in God.
And so it's easy to get children and teenagers saved.
But can you really expect children and teenagers
to get themselves to church?
They don't have a vehicle.
They don't have the decision-making in their home.
And so a lot of children and teenagers will get saved.
They don't come to church.
That's what a lot of that number represents.
But number three, another reason why a lot of people
who get saved through soul-willing will not come to church
is that they live too far away.
Or they have no vehicle or gas money.
Now, this is especially true of our church.
Because if you look at that map back there
where we shade in the streets
that we've knocked on soul-willing,
you'll notice that we've shaded in quite a bit of the city.
And if you actually look at the borders
of what we have shaded in, the edges,
you'll notice that you're looking at a 20-minute drive
to get to those borders.
Sometimes in some places, like out on the west side,
30 minutes to get to that border.
That means we're doing a lot of soul-willing
and knocking a lot of doors 30 minutes away.
Not everybody can make that one-hour round trip
to come to church.
And I'm sure that if they really wanted to, they could.
You know, crawl on their knees and get here.
And you know what, if I lived over there
and this were the only church,
I'd get up at three in the morning
and walk here and all that, amen.
But can you really expect a new believer
to be just always ready to make that one-hour round trip?
Not only that, but a few hundred of the people per year
that we went to the Lord actually get saved
through our small-town soul-willing program.
And we have a small-town soul-willing program
that is inspired by scripture.
Go to Acts chapter eight.
We try to do this about four times a year.
Usually we only succeed at doing it about three times a year.
But we go to a small town
that's usually about an hour and a half
to two and a half hours away.
So we go out into Arizona to just really remote towns.
Usually the towns that we go to
have about 2,000 people in them.
Sometimes they have as many as 3,000,
sometimes as few as 1,500.
And we go out to these small towns
and we bring a big group and we spend the whole day there
and our goal is to knock every single door in that town
and just give people the gospel, just get people saved.
And then we try to point them
to the closest halfway Baptist church
that's somewhere in their area.
Sometimes there's nothing.
And this ministry was inspired by scripture
because a lot of times I'd be driving down the road
and I used to drive a lot for my job
and I'd be driving at night.
And you ever drive at night and you come up over a hill
and you see a little town
and you'll see all the lights of that town.
And so many times I'd be driving
and I'd see the lights of a town.
Sometimes I'd be flying on airplanes
and I'd look down and I'd see all the neighborhoods
and you can see how the streets are all laid out
from that bird's eye view.
And I remember the thought just kept going,
who's gonna knock these doors?
Who's gonna give these people the gospel?
Boy, this little small town,
wouldn't it be great to just go in there
and just get everybody the gospel?
Just give everybody a chance to be saved.
And then after I kept thinking that,
I kept reading in my Bible
and Jesus' apostles were constantly going
to the towns and villages, it said.
And it said they went to every town, every village.
Jesus said to his disciples,
let's go to another village.
And they're going from village to village to village.
And I thought to myself,
this is what God wants us to do.
Go to the little towns and villages
and just give the gospel,
just preach the gospel to people.
In Mark 6, 6, it says,
he went round about the villages teaching.
But look at Acts 8, verse 25, it says,
and they, when they had testified
and preached the word of the Lord,
and returned to Jerusalem,
these are the apostles,
it says, and preached the gospel
in many villages of the Samaritans.
And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip,
saying, arise and go toward the south
unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza,
which is desert.
And he arose and went and behold a man of Ethiopia,
and Eunuch of great authority under Candace,
queen of the Ethiopians,
who had the charge of all her treasure,
and had come to Jerusalem for her worship,
was returning and sitting in his chariot,
read Esaias the prophet.
Now, this is of course the story about Philip,
who'd been going around preaching,
both Stephen and Philip had been going around
to all these towns and villages,
preaching the gospel to the Samaritans,
the apostles are going throughout the towns and villages.
Well, actually now, God leads him specifically
to one guy who's driving a chariot through the desert.
So, God goes away from the villages
and he goes and joins himself with this one chariot,
he runs toward the chariot.
And when he gets there, he finds this Ethiopian Eunuch
reading the book of Isaiah.
And he asked him the question,
understandest thou what thou readest?
And he said, how can I, except some man should guide me?
So, Philip comes up in the chariot, sits down with them,
and they read Isaiah together a little bit,
and it just so happened
that he just happened to be reading at that moment
the one scripture in Isaiah
that is the most prophetic about Jesus Christ.
Obviously, God timed this.
God worked this out to where Philip just happened to show up
when he's reading Isaiah 53.
He's reading that passage
that is so prophetic of Jesus Christ,
and Philip starts with that scripture,
and he goes to other scriptures,
and Philip preaches the gospel to this guy,
and this guy gets saved, he believes on Jesus Christ,
and then after he believes on Jesus Christ,
Philip stops the chariot
and baptizes him in water by the side of the road.
Now, let's pick up the story there in verse 38.
It says, and he commanded the chariot to stand still,
and they went down both into the water,
both Philip and the Eunuch, and he baptized it,
and when they were come up out of the water,
the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip,
and the Eunuch saw him no more,
and he went on his way rejoicing,
but Philip was found at the zotus, and passing through,
just notice those two words,
passing through, he preached in all the cities
till he came to Caesarea.
So here's Philip, I mean, he's on a trip,
he's going to Caesarea, as he's passing through,
he's just giving the gospel to everybody he can.
He's just preaching the gospel everywhere,
just as he's passing through.
He gives the gospel to this Ethiopian guy,
gets him saved, baptizes him, he's gone.
Next village, next town, keep going, preach the gospel.
Now look, this is exactly what is criticized
about soul winning today,
yet we see the apostles doing that very thing.
See, we go to these small towns,
and we preach the gospel to every creature
for the simple reason that if we don't do it,
probably no one's going to go to these remote towns
and just knock every door and give the gospel.
Usually these towns don't even have any baptist church,
or if they do, it's a small baptist church
with no soul winning, and they're not really doing much,
it's dead as a doornail.
We're doing it because we want people to hear the gospel.
I remember I told a local assistant pastor
of an independent, fundamental baptist church in this area,
I was talking to the assistant pastor,
and I explained to him our small town soul winning program.
Yeah, it's really cool, we go to these small towns,
we knock all these doors,
and the church has a great time, a fellowship,
and we get to see the sites,
and we end up getting a bunch of people saved,
and we'll knock every door in a town of 1,500 people,
and we'll give them all the gospel,
and we give people safe,
and you know what he did?
He criticized it.
Here's what he said.
Oh, well yeah, now you get these people saved,
but then you just leave them there,
like sheep with no shepherd.
You just leave them there.
And I even heard a baptist preacher one time compare it
to someone who gives birth to a baby
and then throws it in a garbage can.
Because he said, you're giving birth to these people,
you know, these people are born again,
and then you just don't, you don't disciple them,
you're not trained enough.
He said, are you gonna send somebody back
to that town every week to go disciple them?
And you know what I said to him?
I said, you're right, we should've just let them all
go to hell then, because if they're not gonna get
discipled and trained, they might as well
just burn in hell, buddy.
What kind of bizarre logic is that?
Well, if we can't get them saved and teach them everything,
then let's just not get them saved.
Philip didn't teach the Ethiopian eunuch much.
He taught them the gospel,
and then the spirit whisked him away.
He's like, wait, I was trying to follow up!
I was trying to disciple this guy!
But he's just gone.
But it's so ridiculous to say,
well, if I can't do everything for that person,
well, I'm just not even gonna give them the gospel.
Well, you're not biblical.
You're making stuff up.
You're not getting that from the word of God.
Because Jesus and his apostles constantly were just
coming into a village, preach to God,
and then they're begging Jesus to stay.
They're begging the apostles to stay!
And he's like, sorry, I gotta go.
I got another village to go to.
See ya!
And he'd go preach somewhere else.
But today, he would be mocked and ridiculed for doing that.
Do I believe in training people?
Yes.
Do I believe in discipling people?
Yes.
Do I believe in baptizing people?
Yes.
Do I believe in teaching people to observe all things
whatsoever Christ has commanded us?
Yes!
But this church is set up for that purpose.
And you know when discipleship takes place in our church,
Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night?
Amen.
Every single person we win to Christ,
we invite them to our church.
This is where we are.
This is where the Bible's being preached.
Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night.
They can get here if they need to.
But you know what?
I can't sit there and come to their house 10 times.
Because I have other things to do with my life.
Like getting other people safe.
Like preaching to the flock here.
Like taking care of my family.
Like making a living.
So this whole attitude that just criticizes so many,
it's not based on biblical principles.
It's just based on wanting to criticize
the people who are doing something.
And think about it.
If our church knocks the doors in four villages per year,
you know in 10 years we could do 40 towns.
We could put a pretty big den in small town Arizona.
Just our little church here.
And we can knock doors and win people to Christ
all over the city.
And you know what?
I'm not just gonna knock doors within a five minute radius
I wanna go 30 minutes away.
I wanna go 45 minutes away.
I wanna knock every door in Peoria.
I wanna knock every door in Glendale.
I wanna knock every door in Avondale.
I wanna knock every door in Chandler, Gilbert,
Apache, Junction, Mesa.
Look, let's knock every single door in this whole valley.
Let's knock every door in Maricopa County.
Let's preach the gospel to every creature.
Let's preach four million people of this county
with the gospel of Christ.
And then let's go to all the forgotten small towns
where soul winning has probably not taken place
in the last hundred years.
And there are people who live and die in those towns.
Let's give them the gospel.
Amen.
But why didn't they come to church?
Because they live two and a half hours away.
Because they live in Dudleyville.
Because they live in Hayden.
Because they live in Winkleman.
Because they live in Miami.
And I'm not talking about Florida now.
They live in Baghdad, Arizona.
So they can't make it to church.
But number four, I gotta hurry.
Number four, some people are just too shy
to come to church where they don't know anybody.
And I remember in particular there was a lady
that I talked to about soul winning.
And this lady, I didn't win her to Christ.
She'd already been saved.
She grew up in a Christian home.
Her dad was a pastor of a Baptist church.
She grew up in a Christian home.
She was very used to going to church.
And I knocked on her door.
And a couple weeks later, she came to church and showed up.
And this is in the very early days of our church.
Our church was running about 25 people at this time.
Early days.
And she came up to me and she said, yeah,
she said, actually, she said, I have to confess to you,
I actually came to church last Sunday.
But she said, when I got here and I saw the crowds,
I chickened out at the last minute.
I was thinking, the crowds, we have 25 people.
No, but she's like, you know, the crowd,
she's just like, I'm shy and I got nervous.
And she said, I got all the way here, I parked my car,
I started to walk in, I chickened out, and I drove home.
But she said, this week I brought someone with me
and that's why I had the boldness
to come and visit the church.
That's somebody who grew up in church.
And I can tell you right now, I am not a shy person.
I'm a pretty outgoing person.
I'm pretty comfortable meeting people.
But I can honestly say that many times,
I've been very nervous when walking into a new church
where you've never been.
Even to this day, I'm a little nervous.
You know, walking in to a new church.
It takes a little bit of guts to walk into a church
where you don't know anybody.
And so you can't just expect somebody
who just got saved yesterday,
who has no habit of going to church,
no strong convictions about church yet,
they just got saved.
To always be able to muster up the boldness
to show up to church.
I know, I've been to some churches
where I was just embarrassed.
You walk into some churches and everybody just looks at you.
Yes.
But nobody greets you, nobody says hi to you.
You walk in and people are just like, look at you.
And I remember when I was 13,
I went to this church that had a,
it was a big mega-type church.
And they had about 150 teens in the youth group.
And I would go to the youth group every week.
I went there for a year and a half and no one talked to me.
For like a year and a half, two years, no one talked to me.
And I dreaded it every Sunday morning,
I dreaded walking into that Sunday school class.
Because I'd walk in and I'd just sit down
and nobody would talk to me, nobody acknowledged me.
Sometimes the youth leader would come talk to me,
but then it's kinda like, okay, well he's just talking to you
because he has to, you know what I mean?
But I'd come in and sit there and nobody would talk to me
and I felt so awkward and then the longer that went by
without making friends, it got even more awkward.
And I hated it and guess what?
I would not have chosen to go to that Sunday school class.
I'm only going because my parents are taking me.
Now I would have gone to church,
I would have gone to a different church, you know,
because this church was not friendly.
And I sat there and I was so embarrassed,
I was so uncomfortable.
And all the other teenagers that were there,
they all had their friends, you know,
because they all went to the same high school,
they'd grown up together and everything.
And it was really clickish and I was just kind of
left out in the cold.
A lot of people are just embarrassed and shy
and I'm not even that shy of a person.
Many people are more shy than I am.
They just don't come because they're just too shy
and they need to know friends before they'll go somewhere.
Number five, I gotta hurry,
they might already go to church somewhere else.
A lot of people that we went to Christ
already go to church.
Many of them already go to a Baptist church.
But the gospel's just not being preached really clearly
at that church.
So we'll get them saved and they keep going to church
wherever they're going to church.
So just because people aren't going to church here
doesn't mean they're not going to church.
Because they can be going to church somewhere else.
Number six, they're often recruited to another church
by friends or family.
Now I've had this happen to me many times
where I will win somebody to Christ,
let's say a coworker or a friend,
and as soon as you win them to Christ,
all of a sudden their liberal, non-soul winning
Christian family and friends will just jump on them.
All the people who never gave them the gospel,
you know, all the people who never got them saved,
all of a sudden now that they are saved,
it's like, oh, you need to come to church.
Oh, it's so great that you're saved now, praise the Lord.
Come to church with us, come to our liberal,
dead as a doornail church with the first deep breeze
that never got you saved.
And I remember one guy in particular,
I won this guy to the Lord at Round Table Pizza
where I worked as a teenager.
And this guy got saved and he had a,
you know, his mom went to a church,
his cousin went to a church, his sister went to a church,
and I'm trying to get him to go to church with me
after I won the Lord, but he's just being taken
to all these other churches, you know,
because it's like that's where his family was
and they're, oh, it's so great that you're a Christian now,
you know, come to church with us.
So a lot of times they get recruited to a different church
by friends and family.
When their friends and family start to hear
that they got saved, they want to jump on that
and get them plugged into their church.
A lot of people are just too lazy to come to church.
Yeah.
Number seven, we go to a lot of areas, in fact,
that are the poor areas.
I love soul winning in the ghetto, you know,
I love soul winning in the areas
that are a rougher area because you know what,
that's where Jesus and the apostles
did a lot of their soul winning.
You know, and a lot of times those people
are more receptive to the gospel, just like Jesus.
He was preaching to a lot of publicans and sinners.
Now, I understand that not everybody in the ghetto
is a sinful, wicked person or a lazy person.
There are a lot of good people
and a lot of hardworking people
and a lot of good Christian people and godly people
who live in poor areas and who are poor.
And I'm not gonna sit there and say, and stereotype
and say, well, everybody who lives in that area
is a derelict, because it's simply not true.
I know some of the most hardest working,
godliest people that I know
live in some pretty gnarly areas, right?
So I'm not saying that for one second, but let's face it,
a lot of the people in those areas are derelict.
A lot of them are lazy.
A lot of them are not working.
A lot of them are drinking or on drugs
or they just have no character.
Now, some people have a lot of character, right?
They get up, they go to work, they work hard,
they take care of themselves,
they take care of their family.
Other people are a little bit more
of a deadbeat than a derelict.
Can the deadbeat and the derelict get saved?
Yes.
Do the deadbeat and the derelict offer get saved?
They love freebies, you know,
and salvation's a gas freebie, yeah?
So a lot of them, their heart is in the right place.
The spirit, indeed, is willing, but the flesh is weak.
They can't even drag their carcass to work,
let alone the church, okay?
So a lot of people are just lazy.
I'm not making excuses for them,
but it doesn't mean they're not saved.
Because they don't have the character to go to church.
You know, we take for granted,
we're used to going to church all the time,
so to us, going to church is second nature.
I mean, of course we go to church,
of course we go three times a week.
Some people, if they come to church once a month,
they think, wow, I'm going to church a lot.
Like, oh, man, I'm going to church constantly
because they go once a month.
And to us, we look at that and we're like,
you missed 13 services!
I mean, literally, or even this,
people who come to Sunday morning only,
they miss one Sunday morning.
To them, it's like, yeah, I just missed one service.
And then, you know, they missed a week,
maybe they're sick or gone or whatever.
But some of us that come three times a week,
we're like, wow, I haven't seen so-and-so in a long time.
It's like, wait a minute, they were only here two weeks ago.
People will say to that, where's so-and-so?
I haven't seen them in so long!
It's like, but they were just here two weeks ago.
Yeah, but to them, it's like six services have gone by.
Where are they, where are they, where are they?
So different people have a different mentality of church.
To us, to me, to my family, to the way I grew up,
church is three times a week.
Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night.
To some people, church is Christmas and Easter.
And if they're going once a month, they are on fire.
You know, because they're going once a month.
Seriously.
Different people have a different mentality.
Number eight, some of the people that will win the Lord
are physically disabled.
Yeah, right.
A lot of shut-ins, a lot of elderly people
that can barely even make it to the door.
People that are on oxygen, people that are crippled,
people that are late, you know what?
We need to get those people saved.
And this whole, you know what, this attitude that says,
I don't believe in door-to-door soul-winning,
let's just bring them into the church to get them saved,
right, you know what they're saying?
All crippled people go to hell.
Yeah, pretty much.
All shut-ins go to hell.
The elderly go to hell, the cat lady can go to hell.
The one who never leaves the house.
I mean, I've knocked the door out of soul-winning,
where there was a car in the driveway
with a car cover over it.
And if there was one can of cat food, empty can,
there were five billion.
I mean, it was just, okay, I'm exaggerating.
But anyway, all over the car,
it was like this thick of empty cat food containers.
All over the car, stacked here, stacked there.
I mean, just cat food everywhere.
Empty cans.
How is that woman gonna get saved?
She's not coming, I mean, she doesn't leave the house.
It's all ordered online, you know?
And it's just, there are a lot of strange people,
a lot of shut-ins, a lot of reclusive people.
You know, a lot of people, they come to the door
and they're so white, it's like they've never seen the sun.
You know, they're like, it's like,
they're like, bright light, you know,
just coming to the door.
But you know what?
We need to give everybody the gospel.
We need to love the disabled.
Love the crazy cat lady.
Love the elderly that's on oxygen and that's on dialysis
or that's, you know, ill and sick.
Look, you get to give the gospel to everybody
when you go out knocking doors.
And a lot of people are just physically disabled,
they can't make it to church,
but thank God they can make it to heaven.
Give them the gospel.
Number nine, some reason, a big reason
why some people won't come to church
is because their spouse doesn't want them to come.
Either their husband or their wife doesn't want them to come.
Now obviously, I'm not condoning of a lot of these reasons.
I don't condone of being too lazy to come to church.
I don't condone of saying the drive's too far.
I don't condone of saying, you know, I'm too shy.
I mean, you know, you need to just get past that
and obey the Lord when he said,
not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together
as the man heard some it, but exhorting one another
and so much the more as we see the day of virtue.
My sermon is just to preach to you today
why most people when we went to Christ
are not gonna come to church
and how foolish it is to criticize soul winning
by saying, well, you know, a thousand people got saved
and there's only a hundred people in the church.
What's going on?
Well, here's what's going on.
A higher percentage than what was in the book of Acts came.
And so to sit there and say,
oh, these people didn't really get saved.
You didn't get a thousand people saved.
And look, do we really ever know
how many people did we get saved?
Only in heaven will we know for sure.
I mean, I promise you,
I promise you that some of the people
that I thought I went with the Lord
didn't really get saved.
Yeah, they did.
So let's just quit doing it.
I mean, isn't that ridiculous?
But you know, but also, I'll tell you this.
Whenever I'm out knocking doors, I don't count people,
I don't count people if I don't think
that it's certain that they got saved.
Like sometimes I'll give somebody the gospel
and they'll receive the whole thing
and I'll pray with them
and they'll call upon the name of the Lord
and trust Christ as Savior.
But I'll walk away thinking to myself,
I don't know if that person really got it
for whatever reason.
Maybe they're a little shaky on it, right?
You got that happening, right?
A lot of times, you know people got it.
It's clear, they got it, they understand it,
they believe it.
Other times, they're shaky on it
and when in doubt, I don't count it.
Because I don't want to just have some inflated number
because people say it, but a lot of people are doubtful.
Especially when I'm doing it in Spanish,
it's harder for me to read people as well in Spanish
as I do in English.
So a lot of those will, you know, I hope they got saved.
And then sometimes I'll talk to that person
a few weeks later, like I'll be in the same neighborhood
and I'll walk up to them, hey, you know,
we talked a few weeks and then I'll check with them
and then they're really solid on it.
Oh yeah, I know I'm saved, you know, I believe.
And then sometimes I'll go back and count them
because they won't.
So what I'm saying is a lot of the people
that I didn't count probably really got saved.
And I just didn't count them because I was in doubt.
And then there were probably a lot of people
that I felt pretty sure about
that actually didn't get saved
because I can't see their card.
So nobody's number, if we say this many people got saved
in our small town, so many, it's never going to be
100% accurate.
Just get over it, would you?
So what?
We'll find out when we can tab it.
But I do believe that our numbers are pretty accurate.
I would say that our numbers are probably 90% accurate,
would be my guess.
But who cares?
The point is, we're giving the gospel,
we're getting people saved.
And I guarantee you, we're getting hundreds of people saved
by going out and spending hours.
And they say, well how does your church
get so many people saved?
Oh, because we go soul-witting like three or four times
as much as any Baptist church I've ever been to.
Amen, that's it, yeah.
Because we spend three hours when they spend one hour.
We spend four hours when they spend one hour.
I mean, you spend more time,
you're going to get more people saved.
And because we have so many people going soul-witting.
We have people who go multiple days in the week
and we just do a lot of soul-witting.
But where are they all?
Shy, where are they all?
Children and teenagers, where are they all?
Speaking Spanish somewhere, eating a burrito
or a taco somewhere, you know, where are they all?
You know, they're physically disabled, crippled, can't make,
where are they all?
They've been recruited to church by their friends and family,
where are they all?
They're going to some liberal, dead church
because it's closer to their house?
That's where they are, right?
Or, their spouse doesn't want them to come.
Now, if you're a man and your spouse is telling you
where to come to church, it's time for you
to grow a backbone.
It's time for you to join the club and become a real man.
Yes!
But, sometimes it's the other way around.
It's a more difficult situation where sometimes
the husband doesn't want his wife to go to church.
That does happen sometimes.
But you know what, a lot of times it's the wife
doesn't want the husband going to church.
Okay, we ought to obey God rather than men.
Now, I'm definitely not one to promote
wives being rebellious against their husbands
because the Bible does teach that wives
should obey their husbands, and that children
should obey their parents, and that employees
should obey their bosses.
But let me say this though, there is a chain of command
and the Bible says in Romans 13,
let every soul be subject unto the higher powers
and God is a higher power than your husband.
God is a higher power than your parents.
God is a higher power than your boss at work.
If your boss at work tells you to do something
that violates Christ's command,
we've got to go with the higher power.
Now, I don't think that wives should be rebellious
or disrespectful to their husband,
but I'll bet you that 99% of the time
a wife could talk her husband into letting her go to church.
And she could be kind and meek and make supplication
unto him to allow her to go to church,
that it wouldn't just come to a head.
I don't think at the drop of a hat she's just,
well, I'm going to church because God said so
and you can go drop dead or jump into,
obviously that's not what I'm saying,
but I do think that women should go to church.
Even if their husband doesn't like it,
even if their husband is against going to church,
they need to just try their best to work something out
with their husband and come to an agreement with them.
And usually we can come to an agreement
and make something happen, right?
But in the final analysis,
I do believe that you should go to church,
no matter whatever your spouse thinks about it.
If you're a man, you just go.
You know, if you're a wife,
obviously it's a more difficult situation,
but I do not believe that it's right for a wife to say,
well, my husband doesn't want me to go to church,
so I'm not going to go.
Yeah, but what does God want?
And he's the highest authority in your life,
even higher than your husband.
Number 10, a lot of people don't come
because they're offended by something
in our church invitation.
Or offended by something on our website.
Or they do the dreaded thing and Google the name
of our church.
Then it's a miracle if anybody shows up.
Say, oh, where are all these people, what do they look?
Well, they Google our church, you know what I'm saying?
But anyway, they're offended by something
in our church invitation.
And our church invitation does not seek to be vague.
You know, we try, in all the different invitations
we've handed out over the years,
we try to be clear and to be bold about what we believe.
We want to make sure that people know who we are.
We don't want people to show up expecting one thing
and getting another.
We have not been guilty of false advertising.
You know, like the biggest false advertising
is these churches who use a lot of stock photos.
A lot of single guys show up like,
I wanted to meet that girl on the invitation.
It's a stock photo.
And honestly, you'll see the same stock photo
for multiple churches and you're thinking,
man, this couple, this elderly black couple
gets around because they're on every church's invoice.
You know what I mean?
I saw this elderly black couple on an ad for a dentist.
I saw it on three churches and on an ad
that I'm not gonna mention what it was about.
And I mean, this elderly black couple is just to show,
see, we have black people in our church.
You know when you show up,
everybody's as white as film in that church.
And what I'm saying is, you know, a lot of churches,
they put out these little colorful invites
with a bunch of stock photos,
just look how nice in front of you.
And then you show up in the past, like, ahhh!
And then you're like, what in the world, where did I go?
You know, at least in our church,
people know what they're getting into.
Because the invitation matches
what you find when you get here.
The website matches what you find when you get here.
You find a leather lung, fire breathing,
independent, fundamental, soul winning,
King James Bible only Baptist church.
That's what it looks like on the invite.
That's what it looks like when you get here.
The invitation's ugly, and it's ugly,
but no, I'm just kidding.
We're gonna make a better invitation someday, I promise.
But, I'm just saying, you know,
I just had to get that off my chest about stock photos.
Stock photos are lame.
What makes stock photos are lame?
Put a real picture of somebody
who actually goes to the church.
I mean, what, are they too ugly?
I'd rather have an ugly person on the photo
who actually comes here.
You know?
Then they sit there and just put all these little perfect,
and you know, here's the thing, our church,
our church has all nationalities.
Look around, we have black, we have Asian,
we have Indians, we have, you know,
every type of, we have Hispanic, we have white,
we have all these different nationalities,
we have all age groups, we have children,
we have teenagers, we have adults,
we have, well, we have almost no elderly, okay,
but anyway, they're all at home on oxygen.
But anyway, what I'm saying is we have the diversity,
but these churches, it's like they just wanna follow
the world's marketing campaign,
so they wanna just make sure they show like one person
from each nationality, right,
like one person from each age group,
and they show like this perfect little family
with like one boy and one girl, you know,
they're all on the beach or whatever,
and they're just walking down the beach,
and it's like Arizona, we don't have a,
we're in Arizona, and you're using a stock photo
of this, you know, this couple with two kids
walking down the beach, little perfect family,
everybody's good looking, you know,
thank God for real people, thank God for a pastor
with messed up teeth that looks like a real person
and everybody in the church is a real person,
you know, not this Joel Osteen, Madison Avenue,
Hollywood Baptist, where it's just all about
the appearance, and it's all about looking good,
it's a white encepulcher is what it is, right,
and I'm here to tell you that a lot of people
don't come to the church because they don't wanna go
to a fundamentalist church, they wanna go
to Tickle Your Ears Baptist down the street,
now turn if you would, I'll finish up with this,
turn if you would to Isaiah 30,
and this is my 11th point,
they consider our church too extreme, okay,
so as you turn to Isaiah 30, let me give you
the quick review, why will most of the people
who went to the Lord not come to church,
number one, a large percentage don't speak English,
number two, they're all older children or teenagers
that just don't have a way to get here,
number three, many live too far away,
have no vehicle or gas money, some even live
three hours away from a small town soul wedding,
number four, they might be too shy to visit,
doesn't mean they don't believe in Jesus Christ
as their savior, number five, they might already
go to church somewhere else, number six,
they might be recruited to a different church
by friends or family, number seven,
they might just have no character,
they might just be lazy and they just can't
drag themselves to church, number eight,
many are physically disabled, number nine,
maybe their spouse does not want them to come
and they give in to that pressure,
number 10, they might be offended by something
in the church invitation itself or on Google
or whatever, church website, whatever,
number 11, they might consider our church
to be too extreme, so they say,
you know, that church is really extreme,
I'd rather go to something a little more moderate,
I wanna go to something a little more,
look what the Bible says in Isaiah 30, verse nine,
this is a rebellious people, lying children,
children that will not hear the law of the Lord,
which say to the seers, see not,
and to the prophets, prophesy not unto us right things,
speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceit,
that is the world that we live in today,
people are looking for a smooth type of a church,
they're looking for a smooth preacher,
they're looking for somebody who's gonna tell them
what they wanna hear, and look, a lot of these pastors
are gifted speakers, and they're very smooth,
they're good looking, they're very eloquent,
they can tell you illustrations and stories
that will bring tears to your eyes,
and they can tug on those heart strings,
and they can really put on a good show,
and this is what people are looking for today,
the Bible says they don't want a prophet of God
to tell them what's right,
they don't wanna hear about soul winning,
they don't wanna go knock doors,
they don't wanna hear about preaching the gospel
to your friends and family and loved ones and coworkers,
they wanna hear about your best life now for you,
your best life now, they wanna hear God's not mad at you,
and everything is great, and you know,
God loves you just the way you are,
therefore just stay the way you are, okay,
and then they wanna hear all this stuff that's smooth
and that sounds good, go to Jeremiah chapter six,
that's why they consider a church like ours extreme.
Now I personally can honestly stand here right now,
and with all honesty and integrity tell you
that I do not consider our church to be extreme at all.
I do not consider this church, and I get offended,
now when the world labels us as extreme,
when outsiders label us as extremist,
that doesn't offend me, because I know how weird they are
and the crazy stuff they believe in,
I do get offended when people in our church
sometimes will insinuate that our church
is radical or extreme, and I don't even know,
what's that supposed to mean?
Because it's not, this world is extremely wicked,
our nation is becoming extremely perverse,
and therefore the normal starts to look extreme.
We are not radical here, I wish we were,
I wish we were more radical, I wish we'd be extreme,
but honestly I feel pretty mediocre right now,
I feel pretty average, I feel like our church
is just what a Bible preaching church is supposed to be,
where we win souls, we preach the Bible,
I don't consider myself the greatest preacher,
I'm such a great man, I'm this generation's Elijah,
I don't think of myself that way,
I think of myself as just an average preacher,
average church, because you know why?
Because I'm comparing it to the book of Acts.
You know when you compare our church to the book of Acts,
when you compare my preaching to Isaiah, Jeremiah,
and Ezekiel, it's humbling, it's humbling for me personally,
it's humbling for our church, I don't consider myself
and I don't consider our church to be extreme or radical,
I feel that we are just a Bible-believing Baptist church,
just a Bible-preaching Baptist church, that's all we are,
nothing crazy, nothing wild or radical,
but the world has gone so far into just worldliness
and ungodliness that it makes us seem extreme,
look at Jeremiah 6, 16,
and thus sayeth the Lord, verse 16,
Stand ye in the ways, and see and ask for the old path,
wherein is the good way, and walk therein,
and ye shall find rest for your souls,
but they said, we will not walk therein,
so they said, we want smooth preaching,
we do not want old-fashioned, don't give us the old paths,
we don't want to walk in them,
that is the way the world is,
it was that way in Jeremiah's day,
it is that way in our day,
and so a lot of people, when they are confronted with it,
old-fashioned, independent, fungal Baptist church,
they find it too extreme,
and they'd rather go somewhere else,
so there you have it folks,
11 reasons why most of the people
that we win to the Lord out on soul-winning
will not come to our church,
maybe they'll come once,
we have visitors every single week,
a lot of them come through soul,
I mean one time on Wednesday night soul-winning,
we went out and we had two people saved
and 12 of those people came to church that same night,
well those two really got saved,
it's not always gonna be that way,
many times it's not gonna be that way,
but who thinks we should still go soul-winning?
Say amen.
Amen.
God is in that word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord,
and thank you so much for just the opportunity
to be an ambassador for you,
what a privilege to be ministers of the gospel,
to have your gospel commended unto us,
help us to be good stewards of the gospel,
and good stewards of the ministry of reconciliation,
help us not to shirk that responsibility,
help us to embrace it and say,
I am responsible for this,
it's my job to get these people's gospel
in my area, in my family,
help us to embrace it in Jesus' name.