Music
Welcome to Steadfast Baptist Church. If you could please find your seats and grab a song book.
And we'll turn in our hymnals to song four hundred and thirteen.
Stand up, stand up for Jesus.
Four hundred and thirteen. Stand up, stand up for Jesus.
Half of you are standing anyways. Let's go ahead and just stand for this opening song.
Four hundred and thirteen. Stand up, stand up for Jesus.
Music
Stand up, stand up for Jesus.
We soldiers of the cross.
Lift high his royal banner.
It must not suffer loss.
From victory until victory.
His armies shall be beat.
Till every foe is vanquished.
When Christ is Lord indeed.
Stand up, stand up for Jesus.
A trumpet call obey.
Forth to the mighty conflict.
In this his glorious name.
That our men now serve him.
Against the numbered foes.
Let courage rise with danger.
And strength to strength upholds.
Stand up, stand up for Jesus.
Stand in his strength alone.
The arm of flesh will fail you.
Do not trust your own.
Put on the gospel bar.
And watching unto prayer.
Be gentle
watching there.
Good singing. You may be seated and we'll have a word of prayer.
Lord, thank you so much for this church and thank you for all the people that would show up on a Sunday morning
to praise us to you and to fellowship with God's people. I pray that you bless every person here.
That you fill us all with the Holy Spirit and that you would just bless the services and soul winning today.
And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Alright, for our next song we'll go to 147, Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.
147, Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.
147.
What a fellowship, what a joy divine.
Leaning on the everlasting arms.
What a blessedness, what a peace is mine.
Leaning on the everlasting arms.
Leaning, leaning
safe and secure from all alarms.
Leaning, leaning
leaning, leaning
on the everlasting arms.
Oh how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way.
Leaning on the everlasting arms.
Oh how bright the path grows from day to day.
Leaning on the everlasting arms.
Leaning, leaning
safe and secure from all alarms.
Leaning, leaning
leaning on the everlasting arms.
What have I to dread? What have I
to fear? Leaning on the everlasting arms.
I have blessed peace with
my Lord so near. Leaning on the everlasting
arms. Leaning, leaning
safe and secure from all
alarms. Leaning, leaning
leaning on the
everlasting arms.
Good morning, thank you so much for coming to Said Fast Baptist Church. If you didn't already get a bulletin you can lift up your hand nice and high
and one of our ushers would love to come by and get you
a bulletin. On the front we have our Bible memory passage
John chapter 1 verse 14 and then on the inside we have our
service and soul winning times, also our church stats
and then on the right we have our list of expecting ladies. Continue to pray for
all of our ladies that are expecting. We have our prayer list. If you would like to be added to
our prayer list, please just email the church, SteadfastBaptistKJV
at gmail.com or you can fill out one of our communication
cards and just slip it right into the offering plate and we'll make sure to add that.
Do indicate if it's a public or private prayer request, otherwise we
assume it's public. Down below we have the church reminders.
This is for soul winning. Please remember to
mark your soul winning maps especially if they're done and put them in the
respective folder or bin over here. If for any reason you need to you can just
give them to me or brother Dylan or something like that and we can put it in the
respective bin. But if you could help us with that, that would be great. Also
please return English soul winning invitations to the English bin
in Spanish. We actually have both English and Spanish invitations and sometimes
people accidentally put them in the wrong bin. So whenever you're just putting
back extras or something, just please pay attention so that way you're putting them
in the right spot. Also on the back we have
the upcoming events. We have a Waco Soul Winning marathon that's coming up this Saturday
and we're going to be meeting at Pecan Bottom Park. So it's there
in the Waco area and we're really excited about this. I think
it's going to be a great opportunity to preach the gospel. We'll be meeting there for breakfast and
lunch. So it's the exact same spot and we have
everything pretty much set up and scheduled. Who's planning on coming to this thing?
Oh yeah, lots of people are coming. That's great. And I know some people from
PeerWords are coming up and I believe that it's even some other people
in the surrounding areas might show up for our soul winning marathon. So it's a great opportunity
to see new soul winners and meet other people
as well as preach the gospel all day and to get fed. I don't know what's better.
So it's a great day. Please participate
if you're able. Also we have the Soul Winning seminar
coming up March 24th, 25th, and 26th.
Now the seminar aspect is only going to be in the evening on Thursday
and Friday and then in the morning on Saturday. But we will have soul winning
all day. So we'll have soul winning on Thursday during the day and Friday
and soul winning after the morning session on Saturday. So there will be lots
of opportunity to go soul winning. There will be three seminar
sessions and we'll be feeding people.
I want people to show up so I was like, well let's feed them. That's when people show up.
So we'll feed you and then we'll help you.
Again, it's kind of going to give you an opportunity to actually practice
soul winning. I really find that it's going to be a great opportunity
especially for people that maybe feel a little nervous or a little intimidated
to try and preach the gospel to someone for the first time. You can preach it to someone
that's already saved and it's going to go really well. They probably
won't even slam a door in your face or curse at you.
Now that's really getting into character if you're doing that.
We'll have experienced soul winners, we'll have brand new soul winners
just anything and everything and again, it's for all
groups. So hopefully everybody will get something out of it but we want everyone to participate
if you can. I'm really looking forward to this event. We're also encouraging
you to invite people to this event and we're going to even have some goodies
and they might be some really nice goodies. So I'm telling you, you want to come
to this thing, alright? Also a college station Sony Marathon April 2nd
Homeschool field trip April 29th, May 21st, Austin Texas
Sony Marathon. So a lot of Sony Marathons, a lot of events. One other
announcement I want to make, we put up a bulletin board
just to the other side of our cabinet and it's
going to be our member board and basically the goal of the member board
is that sometimes church members like to communicate to each other
about events or activities or things that they want to do
and we're just basically wanting to provide an opportunity
for you guys to communicate those things. So whether that be
just ladies want to get together for coffee or you want to
teach piano lessons or you want to help put someone's
dog down, whatever activities that you're wanting to do
or able to participate in, I want to be able to provide a place where you
can basically put that information because I want the bulletin to
kind of stay strictly to church activities or church sponsored activities
but there's going to still be plenty of things that you guys want to communicate
have fun, maybe a birthday party, I don't know what it is, you
come up with the idea. I'm not coming up with the idea. It's just essentially if you say I want to
communicate this to the church you can use the bulletin board and we've
always had this available but you could use our church Facebook group. So we have like a
Facebook members group and you can communicate your activities
or whatever you want to plan or anything like that. So
we just wanted to provide that. It has a little tax in there and stuff like that
so just if you have something you would like to communicate
to other people or you want people to be aware of or to share information
that should be used at your discretion. So if you
have questions just ask me about it or you could ask my wife
but at the same time it should be pretty self explanatory. These are just
things that y'all want to fellowship with and again as our church grows
I want people to feel like they can have fellowship activities that
aren't necessarily church sponsored. We want y'all to
have your own social life and y'all to be able to have your own activities and I don't want to
hold you back. Sometimes you want to do something and it's like you don't
need my permission to hang out with people. You can hang out with whoever you want, whenever
you want, however you want and so we just really want to help you
still communicate with people that you love to fellowship with and hang out with
and church is usually a common place where people come together, show up, get to talk
about things so if you would like to use it you can, if you never want to use it
that's great too. Also there's one other announcement
that I'm making. We're starting a new soul winning
system and it's called Soul Winning Tribes
and basically the goal here is to try and create a little bit of a
formal system around our soul winning to help
the soul winning increase and so every single person
in our church that is a member of our church is automatically
assigned into one of these soul winning tribes and that was just done by me.
As new members get added to our church we'll have
basically the leaders or the captains of these tribes add people
to those groups. Now some of you might question like I don't know how the membership works here
I'll just remind you, if you come to our church services three times
in one month you're automatically a member. You say I didn't
know if I wanted to join, you joined.
It's kind of like with salvation, when you get saved you also join the Lord's army
whether you liked it or not. So here's the thing, if you're coming here
you get all the benefits of being a member. Now
if you don't come for three months straight you're automatically removed
as a member as well. So basically membership being automatic, you come
three times in one month, you're in. Then you just have to show up once every three months.
So the Easter only people are not members.
But if you make like one holiday
every quarter, you're in. You're in like Flint. So that's basically how
it works and if you're not quite sure you're a member you're
probably a member, just letting you know. If you're a first time visitor or guest
we're glad that you're here but this is specifically to
those who are members. Now in order to manage
soul winning more effectively I felt like it was beneficial to have more leadership
that could make more decisions about soul winning. So that's the goal
of this particular process and I'm going to
end up starting with and designated four soul winning captains.
And they're basically going to be in charge of a section
of the church which will be their tribe. And these captains
are essentially just going to help me with soul winning responsibilities.
Now when it comes to soul winning specifically
they're going to be empowered to make every decision about soul winning.
So you don't have to talk to me about anything
related to soul winning. The captains from now on are going to have
full authority and power to make any and all decisions about soul winning.
So whoever your soul winning captain is
whatever questions you have regarding soul winning you can go to them directly
and they can answer all those questions. And this is essentially just because our church is
getting bigger, we have more and more soul winners, we have more and more soul winning times
it's just going to help if we have other people that can make those decisions
they can basically set up times and help people.
So if you're already leading a soul winning time nothing's going to change.
If you're already going to a soul winning time nothing's going to change.
Really the only thing that's changing is you have more people that you can
have help you in making decisions regarding soul winning.
That's all that's really changing, we're just adding more people and empowering
these captains to basically assist in the soul winning responsibilities.
Some of the things that are going to change, all soul winning reporting is going to go through the captains.
We're not going to gather it during the announcements anymore. So essentially
if you go to a soul winning time you either give your number to that leader of that
soul winning time or if soul winning is done outside of that you just give
a direct leader captain. So you only have to report the soul winning one time to one person.
It's either the leader of that soul winning time or it's the captain of your tribe.
And we'll let everybody know who that person is, we'll disseminate
that information. Our captains, to start
with this new soul winning system is going to be Ryan Urbanek,
Jason West, Phillip Milstead and Dylan Oz. Now again all of you
are going to be designated a captain, you're going to be part of their tribe.
But it's not that there can't be cross communication so don't feel
intimidated that you can't talk to the other captains or anything like that, they can always assist
you and help you in these situations but
you will have a primary captain that's going to assist you in regards
to soul winning. So if you want to start a soul winning time, if someone wants to start a soul winning time
I don't even have to make that decision. My captains will have full
power and authority to help people set
their soul winning times up, get those things going and working. Because for me it's
not very practical. If we have like 50 people going soul winning in our church
I can't necessarily go soul winning with every single person and know exactly
how good a soul winner everybody is and where they're at and what would be practical for them.
So it makes more sense to start designating more and more leadership around
soul winning so they can make even more informed decisions and they can
assist you in their soul winning responsibilities.
Mostly everything related to this is just simply
in soul winning and again since we're in the Lord's army it makes sense to have
more positions of authority, more leadership and to basically just to
help me make better decisions and just
to deal with potential issues if there was an issue. But if you say
I don't go soul winning you probably won't experience
any difference. You may have someone come around
and ask you to go soul winning with them. That's about it. But that's the same anyways.
If you go soul winning I don't envision anything changing
except for who you're reporting those numbers to essentially.
Now again for these people they're going to have a few tasks and a few responsibilities to kind of
assist and to help our church and I think that it's going to be
a great formal process around what we're already doing
to help us grow and get better and to help people
that want to get involved in soul winning to have more people they can approach, talk to,
train from and learn. All of these men have led soul winning times.
All of these men are very good soul winners and so that's why I'm putting them in these
positions. But we have other men in our church that are great soul winners
very good at getting people saved and so
it's not that these are the only good people that are soul winning in our church. In fact
they might even be the best but they are the best people for these positions.
So I've hand picked them. They've all said yes and I'm going to actually
be preaching a sermon on it this morning to explain it even further.
If you have questions or any concerns or you want to know something
you can always approach me and I'll definitely address it with you to help you understand.
I think this is going to be a great way for us to grow and to be more efficient
in everything that we're already doing. One other quick announcement
this evening we're having a church finance
and business meeting. It is for members only. So if there was a visitor that comes
to the evening service we'll just have to ask them to leave for the meeting afterwards.
But it's going to follow the evening service immediately. So immediately following the evening service
we're just going to have our church business meeting going over our financials like we always
do and just a couple other updates as far as just
what's going on with the church. So you're welcome to participate. You don't have to.
All members are asked to come if possible.
So that's pretty much all I had for announcements. We'll go ahead and go
to our third song. 174 my
Jesus I love thee. 174 my Jesus I love thee.
174 my Jesus I love thee.
I know thou art mine
for thee all the
follies of sin I
resign. My gracious
Redeemer my Savior
now. If ever I
love thee my Jesus
is now. I love
thee because thou hast first
loved me and purchased
my pardon on Calvary's
stream. I
love thee for wearing the
thorns on my brow.
If ever I love thee
my Jesus is now.
I'll love thee in life
I will love thee in
death and praise thee as
long as thou lendest me
breath and say when the
death do lies cold on my
brow. If ever
I love thee my Jesus
is now. In vengeance
of glory and endless
delight I'll ever
adore thee in
heaven so bright. I'll
sing with the glittering
cloud on my brow. If
ever I love thee
my Jesus is now.
As the offering
plates are passed around, please turn in your Bibles to First Chronicles chapter 11.
First Chronicles chapter 11. We'll read the whole chapter prior to the beginning
of the sermon.
First Chronicles chapter 11. The Bible reads
in First Chronicles chapter 11.
Then all Israel gathered themselves to David unto Hebron saying,
Behold, we are thy bone and thy flesh.
And moreover in time past, even when Saul was king, thou wast he that
ledest out and broughtest in Israel. And the Lord thy God said unto thee,
Thou shalt feed my people Israel, and thou shalt be ruler
over my people Israel. Therefore came all the elders of Israel
to the king of Hebron, and David made a covenant with them in Hebron before
the Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel, according to the word
of the Lord by Samuel. And David and all Israel went to Jerusalem,
which is Jebus, where the Jebusites were, the inhabitants
of the land. And the inhabitants of Jebus said to David,
Thou shalt not come hither. Nevertheless, David took the castle of Zion,
which is the city of David. And David said,
Whosoever smited the Jebusites first shall be chief and captain.
So Joab the son of Ziruriah went first up
and was chief. And David dwelt in the castle,
therefore they called it the city of David. And he built the
city round about, even from Millo round about, and Joab repaired
the rest of the city. So David waxed greater and greater,
for the Lord of hosts was with him. These also
are the chief of the mighty men whom David had, who strengthened themselves
with him in his kingdom, and with all Israel, to make him king,
according to the word of the Lord concerning Israel. And this is the number
of the mighty men whom David had, Jehoshabim and Hachmanite, the chief of the captains.
He lifted up his spear against three hundred slain by him at one time,
and after him was Eliezer the son of Dodo the Ahohite,
who was one of the three mighties. He was with David
at past Amim, and there the Philistines were gathered together to battle,
where was a parcel of ground full of barley, and the people fled from before
the Philistines. And they set themselves in the midst of
that parcel, and delivered it, and slew the Philistines, and the Lord
saved them by a great deliverance. Now three of the
thirty captains went down to the rock to David,
into the cave of Adullam, and the host of the Philistines encamped in the valley
of Rephaim. And David was then in the hold, and the
Philistine's garrison was then at Bethlehem.
And David longed and said, Oh, that one would give me
drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem that is at the gate.
And the three break through the host of the Philistines,
and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem
that was by the gate, and took it, and brought it to David.
But David would not drink of it, but poured it out to the Lord,
and said, My God forbid it be that I should do this thing.
Shall I drink the blood of these men that have put their lives in jeopardy?
For with the jeopardy of their lives they brought it, therefore he would not
drink it. These things did these three mightiest.
And Abishai the brother of Joab, he was chief of the three.
For lifting up his spear against three hundred, he slew them,
and had a name among the three. Of the three
he was more honorable than the two, for he was their captain,
howbeit he attained not to the first three.
Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, the son of a valiant man of Kabziel,
who had done many acts, he slew two lion-like
men of Moab. Also he went down and slew a lion in a pit
in a snowy day. And he slew an Egyptian, a man of great stature, five cubits high,
and in the Egyptian's hand was a spear like a weaver's beam.
And he went down to him with a staff, and plucked the spear out of the
Egyptian's hand, and slew him with his own spear. These
things did Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, and had the name among the three mighties.
Behold, he was honorable among the thirty, but
attained not to the first three, and David set him over his guard. Also the
valiant men of the armies were Azahael the brother of Joab, Elhanan the son of
Dodo of Bethlehem, Chamoth the Hororite, Hilez the
Pilonite, Ira the son of Ikkash the Tekoite,
Abiezer the Antithite, Sibikai the Hushithite,
Eli the Ahohite, Meherai the Natophathite, Helad the son of Bayanah the
Natophathite, Ithai the son of Ribai of Gibeah that
pertained to the children of Benjamin, Benaiah the Pithonite, Hurai of the
brooks of Gaiash, Abiel the Arbathite, Asmaveth
the Bahramite, Eliabah the Shelbanite, the sons of Hashem the Gizanite, Jonathan
the son of Shaggy the Haraiite, Ahaim the son of Seikr the Haraiite,
Eliphil the son of Ur, Kepher the Maquitharite,
Ahijah the Pilonite, Hasro the Carmelite, Neorai the son of Esbaai, Joel the
brother of Nathan, Mibhar the son of Hagarai,
Zelak the Ammonite, Nehairite the Birathite,
the Armabara of Joab the son of Zeruiah, Ira the Ithrite, Gereb the Ithrite,
Uriah the Hittite, Zabad the son of Eli, Adinah the son of Shiza the Reubenite, a
captain of the Reubenites, and thirty with him,
Hanan the son of Maacah and Joshephat the Mythknight,
Uzziah the Ashtirithite, Shema and Jehiel the sons of Hothan and Arorite,
Jadiel the son of Shimri and Joah his brother
the Tizite, Eliel the Mahevite and Jerubai and Joshephiah the sons of Elnaim
and Ithma the Moabite, Eliel and Obed and Jeziel the Mesobite. Let's bow our
heads for a word of prayer. Father God we thank you for the morning service
and for our church. I pray that you protect it. I also pray Lord that you
would fill Pastor Shelley with your spirit and enable him to thunder forth
the message you've laid on his heart and help us to pay close attention so we
can apply this message to our lives. In Jesus name I pray. Amen. Amen.
The title of my sermon this morning is Church Captains. Church Captains. And you
know what I love about books of the Bible like 1 Chronicles or
Kings or some of these other books where they mention all these names is
just the reality that the work of God is not a one-man
job. It's not a one-man show. There's a lot of people involved here
and even David himself while he is a mighty man
he has a lot of other great men that are standing alongside him
helping him assisting him and doing the work of the Lord
and these people's names are in the word of God for all of eternity.
I mean this is a lot of people a lot of great men
men that were willing to serve the Lord and the capacity that they were given
and while not everyone can be David this is still a very
honorable list of men. These are great positions
of opportunity for them to serve the Lord here
and when it comes to a church not everyone is going to be a pastor
necessarily but just because not everyone's a pastor
doesn't mean that there isn't great opportunities for people to serve
to step up to help assist for there to be a need for leadership
and as a church is going to grow and have more and more people
there's going to be a need to appoint other leaders in the church
so as for the church to be run successfully
you know throughout the old testament you're going to constantly see these
concepts of war military you're going to see soldiers
and they need to have organization they need to have structure they need to have
leaders they need to have rulers and so the bible is constantly appointing
captains throughout the old testament captains is actually found in your bible
so many times in so many different places and i
believe that it's obvious that we also as a new
testament church being the spiritual army of God need
spiritual captains of war okay and so the title of my sermon is church
captains let's look at first chronicles chapter 11
verse 6 the bible says this and david said usa smite of the jebesites
first shall be chief and captain so joab the son of
zariah went first up was chief we noticed that joab is
listed in the bible as being a captain now what is a captain well
go if you would keep your finger but go to chapter 27 for just a moment
the word captain is really a just basic broad term it simply means a leader
of some capacity now exactly what that person is a
captive of or a captain of is just basically
subjective you know it could be all kinds of different things it's
contextually driven what that person is the captain of
you know i usually think of a captain as being a captain of a ship right
basically the person that's in charge of the ship but a captain can simply be
any capacity any area it's just someone that's a leader
if you look it up in a dictionary a captain is referred to as a military
leader the commander of a unit or a body of
troops now again it's not saying what specific
rank or where it's designated which troops because
the captain could be of a handful of people it could be the
guy at the top and joab specifically what's interesting
about his uh capacity is he's not just a general
like a basic captain he's like the highest level of captain
and he has other titles that are given to him look
what it says in verse 34 of chapter 27 the bible says
and after it hit the fell was jehoi to the son of benaya and the
biathar the general of the king's army was joab
so notice joab is also referred to as the general
because that's like his more formal official title
he's the general of the army he's the top of the food chain
as far as the army is structured but at the same time
you could still refer to him as the captain or the chief captain
of the army because captain's a more broad term
general's more the specific role and position that he's holding
yet there's going to be other men throughout the army ranks
of david's army that are also known as captains
go if you would to deuteronomy chapter number one go to deuteronomy chapter
number one now essentially when it comes to the
armies of the lord especially when you have a king the
structure is essentially of the king is the top of the food chain okay
he is the the main leader of the army then below the king he has his general
then below the general you have captains okay and so then you have all these
captains that are basically uh designated to lead to rule and to
help with organizing things now we see this
captain's being mentioned in deuteronomy chapter one look what it says verse 10
the lord your god hath multiplied you and behold ye are this day as the stars
of heaven for multitude now this scenario that they find
themselves in is not necessarily the place when you
start implementing captains it's just that it's extremely needful
when you have millions of people and the children of
israel coming out of the land of egypt are you know
millions of people hundreds of thousands of people millions of people
here especially when you're including man woman boy child servants and
everything else that's coming out with them
you gotta have some leadership you gotta have some structure how can a
million people all talk to moses i mean that's just
completely impractical it makes no sense therefore you have to
have other structure and think about it this
way back then especially they don't have
facebook social media email so how would you even
disseminate a message to a million people how could
you even preach to a million people whereas today you could preach online
and millions of people could hear your message
so with the advent of technology it's allowed for people to manage more people
at a bigger scale but still it's impractical
to assist a million people or hundreds of thousands of people
and so the bible is going to break up and divide
the lord's people so that we can have other rulers other leaders assist
in just the job duties of life it says in verse number 11
the lord god of your fathers make you a thousand times so
many more as you are and bless you as he hath promised you
not only were they a lot of people but then they want to get even bigger
which is great because the bible says be fruitful multiply you know one of the
instructions and commandments for us is to grow you know and so sometimes
while growth is not necessarily the most important thing and you can't
necessarily always impact growth we should be striving for growth we
should be building processes and doing things that will help us grow
if possible it says in verse number 12 how can i myself alone bear
your cumbrance and your burden and your strife
take you wise men understanding and known among your tribes and i will make
them rulers over you so moses is just saying there's no way
i could take care of all these people there's too many problems too many
issues too many things to deal with so we need other people now when they
point other people over them notice the title that's given to them
rulers i mean this is not just like a a paper tiger this is not just someone
that's you know a team lead it's a ruler because it always frustrates me when i'm
at the job and you know they have like a department
and they make someone a team leader but you don't really have any rule you
don't i mean you know if someone's not doing a good job or not doing right yeah
you can kind of tell them that's not right
you don't really have any power authority to do anything about it
but these men are different these men actually have the ability to rule
they can actually make real decisions they're empowered
they're not just a leader on paper they're a leader and a ruler
physically in reality says in verse 14 and he answered me and said
the thing which thou has spoken is good for us to do
so i took the chief of your tribes wise men and known and made them heads over
you captains over thousands and captains over
hundreds and captains over 50s and captains over
tens and officers among your tribe so notice
they ended up appointing military positions leaders which are
called captains so again a captain is a kind of a
broad term isn't it you could be a captain of ten
or you could be the captain of the entire army as joab is evidenced
so essentially the word captain is just meaning the ruler or leader
of a particular group of individuals and
in god's army he was setting up all kinds of different captains
now the way i envision this and again we could look at this in a lot of
different ways is you kind of have your low level captains who are responsible
for the 10 individuals and then you would have a
captain above them now that captain is most likely
when it's talking about over 50s he probably has like
five captains that report to him you know because that would make sense you
have five captains of 10 each that would be
50 people and then you basically have one captain
that's in charge of that guy right and then with the hundreds you know you
probably have again we don't know exactly what number that is
let's just say it's maybe like 500 again or something like that then you maybe
have 10 captains or five maybe it's 250 it doesn't matter
but essentially you have another captain above that and then
you would have quantities of being thousands
so then you have a captain above that group so you just kind of have this
little bit of a hierarchy where you're only having to manage maybe
around 10 men or 15 men or you know some kind of a
number of men that you can actually talk to
respond to think about jesus he's kind of only dealing with 12 people isn't he
he's only dealing with his 12 disciples he's not
necessarily able to teach and train hundreds or 50s of people at the same
time it becomes too impractical it gets to a
point where it's not as reasonable and you're not going to give all those
individuals the amount of attention that they deserve or they need
now obviously this isn't just saying all the people because it's probably just
the heads of the household right so while it's 10 men it could still
be 80 people in general because we're talking about
their wives and their children you know if they've got families like
the cardonas it could be thousands of people right
it's all over the map though right it's got a lot of people
so they're kind of managing the heads of the household the mean that they're
able to go to war and in fact it could be even more than that
because most of the time when it's talking about these men it's only
talking about the men that are able to go to war
so your young teenagers wouldn't count some of your older men wouldn't even
count this is just like the heads of the
household the prime military men you've got a captain over about 10 of
these guys and they're leading that particular
group now when i see the word officers again
that also gives leeway to the fact that there might even be other
designations other positions that might be appointed
within these ranks to even assist the captains so then you have
officers within those tribes and for our church captains we're going to end up
doing this where we have captains who are leading groups of people and
assisting in these job duties assisting in
basically the sole winning responsibilities but there's going to be
officers as well who are going to be designated and i'm going to call them
lieutenants and and lieutenants are basically if you
look up the word in dictionaries an assistant
but a lieutenant would be a great guy in the tribe that's going to be able to
assist that captain and all the captains and
lieutenants will officially be selected by
me they may be recommended by the captains but then the lieutenants are
basically captains and waiting or they're just to
assist and then as the tribes grow maybe they
divide and then those lieutenants become more captains
it's basically we just want to create a formal system
so that people can end up falling into these roles in these positions
and it's no shock to me that when you think about it
the bible is written way before america was even the twinkle of
in the eye of the british okay and yet all of our military designations
follow the biblical principles because we have our generals which are at the
top and then we have captains and we have
other designations that follow the exact same biblical model
even biblical naming and and positions here so
i think it makes sense for us in a spiritual war in a spiritual army
to start creating a formal process around what we're already doing
so that we can have better decision making better leadership
and that problems if they ever arise would be resolved
appropriately go to numbers chapter number two numbers chapter number two
now if you think about this jesus is also described as being the captain of
our salvation meaning what he's the top of the food
chain when it comes to the military conquest
you know in a sense we have our king which is god
and obviously jesus is also king but he's also considered the captain
and i envision this as being similar to david david i would say is the king
but he's also the captain of the army and jesus is our king
he's also our captain and then he's gonna have under
captains he's going to basically have under leaders that are essentially
ruling and reigning and that this captain structure is not
necessarily just only solely designated as like a
pastor or whatever it's just going to basically have
delineations based on practicality right if you're running a church of
thousands it's impractical to have one leader
you know it's impractical to have one person manage all these groups of people
and and to do things appropriately and effectively and look we want to be the
best spiritual army for the lord possibly
you know the lord is looking down and expecting us to
organize and manage ourselves appropriate and to put good men in good
positions of leadership and to exercise good dominion over the
things that he's given us you know the bible tells us that we're
supposed to have dominion over the the fish in the sea
over the whole earth and you know we need to set up
proper roles and the proper designations and putting godly men
in these positions to help and assist us so that we can be successful for the
lord you know i think that the the army that
we're in the the battle that we're in is very
serious there's no more important role than being in the military for
jesus christ you know that is our designation and
when you read in the old testament they were not it was not a suggestion
to be in the military it's like are you able or not because
if you're able you're in the you're in the military
you know it wasn't like well i just that's not who i am
no no men are commanded to fight men are designated to be in the lord's army
and you know what in a church if if you're got breath in your lungs and
you're saved you're in the army okay maybe you're in the reserves i don't
know but you know what you're you're in the military
and so we're going to start designating ourselves like
the bible describes because the bible is written for our ammunition our example
you know why would i sit here and think like there's just
page after page talking about military and war
and setting up all these positions and then it's just like well that's no
practicality for us today no designation of course it has obvious
practicality for us today and it's how we want to organize
ourselves now look at numbers chapter 2 verse 14 the bible says this
then the tribe of gad and the captain of the sons of gad
shall be eliasath the son of raul now the reason why i pulled out a verse
like this and there's probably hundreds of verses like this is
that we see the children of israel divided in a few different ways
we have tribes and then we have captains okay and so that's why i'm using these
titles or designations for our church as we essentially will have tribes
and then we'll have captains of those particular tribes
now in the old testament the tribes are designated based on your family members
but we're all brothers and sisters in christ so you have no problem being an
indie tribe okay now we're not going to call you dan or
izakar right you're going to you're going to you're
going to be the tribe based on your captain
okay the captain's name that way you don't have to
uh be like disparaged against or something like that like i don't want to
be you know dan or i don't want to be menassi or something like that right
look what it says in verse 15 and his host and those that were numbered of
them were forty and five thousand and six hundred and fifty
all that were numbered in the camp of rubin were a hundred thousand and
fifty and one thousand and four hundred and fifty throughout their armies
and they shall set forth in the second rank so
also they had ranks within their military conquest and a rank is like a
row in this in this particular context so
they're lining up they're ready to go to war
they have a captain they're able to go to war
and we see that they're taking the spiritual bat or they're taking the
physical battle seriously and if they're taking the physical
battle this seriously then how much more should we take the
spiritual battle right i mean if they're designating ranks and
they're putting people in positions of leadership
and they're ready to fight and this is a major deal
and they're putting all this effort and energy and they're naming people and
doing all this work like why would i think that that's more
important that physical battle than the spiritual battle that we have in the new
testament i think it's more important the
spiritual battle and i think we should take it just as serious or more serious
than they did and if they're going to put all this
work and effort and energy into the military you know what they're
going to reap what they sow who wants to mess with the military when
they're this organized and all the men are mighty men
i mean you're not going to mess with this now when it's gi jane
it's like when they have no leadership when the military is making their
soldiers walk around in high heels i mean that makes no sense or when they
point people in positions of leadership that shouldn't really be there
that are essentially just a political play
or or they just have to elevate people because of nepotism
or whatever you know we don't want to be like that because it would make our
military weak we want to designate men that are
filled with the spirit of god that are valiant men that are going to do
the work of the lord that have already shown themselves to be
faithful men and then we want to get everybody else in rows and ranks
and ready to go to the battle you know what there's nothing more
important than being in the lord's army and doing his work
you don't have to be at the top you don't have to be the greatest person
ever or anything like that because some of these men in the bible
that we read about in first chronicles chapter 11 some of their exploits
are epic i mean they're killing so many individuals so many wars i mean we don't
know from just a physical fighting perspective
i mean benaya might be a better warrior than david
now obviously david killed goliath and obviously david
killed lots of people himself and he's probably the baddest dude i don't know
but we don't know that for sure and it doesn't even matter
you know because you might as well just get in line
and serve the lord and work as hard as you can and just
if i'm in the second rank i'm in the second rank if i'm in the third rank i'm
in the third rank wherever i find myself but you know what
i just want to say here my lord send me just put me in there i just want to be
in the ring i don't want to be on the sideline i
don't want to be someone that's not willing to
get into the battle and do the work of the lord and i'm so glad
that i'm in the lord's army and not in the u.s military
i don't want to be in that rank i don't want to be on those lines i don't want
to fight the battles that they're going to send me to fight
because you know what i like the battles that the church is going to send people
out to fight i'm not that interested in fighting you
know for the corporate greed of our nation for political lobbying
power or for political pressure or to assassinate
people that are going to actually exercise freedom you don't think
that that happens you don't think that there's a lot of
evil going on and the mercenaries of the day or the united states military
who are doing their bidding for them who are trained to be mindless robots
to just basically just kill on command or to just
yes sir and do whatever inject anything in their body
i mean at will go and shoot at any target
man woman boy child i mean shoot missiles do whatever
i mean i don't want to do that kind of work and fortunately for us
in the lord's army we have a captain of our salvation the lord jesus christ
we have the word of god to keep all of us in check
whereas the u.s military it doesn't seem like they have that
theoretically they have the u.s constitution theoretically they're
supposed to fight against terrorists domestic and foreign but you
know what i know that that doesn't necessarily happen
and you know what i know it'd be super unpopular to go against the stream of
the u.s military but i'll tell you what every single
person in this military you better say that this is your top
commander in chief this is your captain at the end of the
day and i don't care what instructions you get if it violates the
word of god you say no you stand on the bible you stand on the
word of god you know we still need men to come
alongside us and to help guide us and to rule us and lead us and as long as
they're in the parameters of the word of god
you just say yes sir and you do it now i like that
i like this structure i like this philosophy go if you would back to first
chronicles chapter number 11 so what is a captain
doing in the bible what are some of the attributes of these captains
what are these captains striving for well the bible gives us all kinds of
different reasons why these men are selected as captains you have to
realize that the leader david here from an earthly
perspective the main captain what he's doing is he's
unifying god's people he's a rallying point for god's people
and it makes me think of the lord jesus christ the lord jesus christ and
christianity should be a rallying point for all of god's people all of the
children of Israel so that they're all gathered together
and that we can fight in unity we can fight in unison
you know a church is supposed to be unified a church is supposed to be
rallied together with one common purpose in mind and
that common purpose is the word of god the common purpose is the lord jesus
christ and as we have this great unity it's
going to help us grow and it's going to attract more people
that same common purpose of getting people saved
preaching the gospel of jesus christ getting people baptized
teaching them to deserve all things whatsoever christ commanded us
the great commission we are here commanded to teach
all nations the bible says go you know the world and preach the gospel to every
creature now how are we going to do that
effectively well we need to organize ourselves
and we need to get into the military ranks of god's army
and say here am i send me you know and we want to be a sending church
where we're sending out our troops we're sending out our
military to go out and to do spiritual warfare today
which is preaching the gospel of jesus christ
and with more leadership it's going to make us more effective
it's going to help us grow it's going to help us make sure that we're doing
things right and appropriate okay now it says in verse number one then
all israel gathered themselves to david unto hebron saying behold
we are thy bone and thy flesh now you have to understand again in the old
testament everything was physical so they're saying we're brothers and
sisters physically now today we're not brothers
and sisters you know it'd have to be a church in
like kentucky or new jersey for that to be true
but here we're not y'all look different than me okay
but we are brothers and sisters in christ
so we have that same unity we have that same commonality that's mentioned here
says in verse six now skip down and david said where whosoever smite at the
jebi sites first they'll be chief and captain so joab the
son of zariah went up for went first up and was chief so when it
comes to a captain what is one of the most important
aspects of a captain is that they're brave
we see that the first captain the person that's going to be in charge of all of
david's military what is he saying who's going up first
and think about this this makes sense coming from david why is david in the
position he's in because he's the guy going against goliath
no one else should go against goliath and david's like well i'll go
and so david's gonna say the same challenge he's gonna say you know what
the person that i want to put in a position of leadership and authority
is the guy that's first to the battle the guy that says
i'm going up there i want that mountain i mean he's saying hey it's mine for the
taking i'm going up there i'm filled with the
spirit of god and i'm ready to go to the battle
and you know what if you want to be in positions of leadership you have to be
brave you have to have courage you have to be
able to take on challenges you have to face adversity you have to
be one of those that were first to attempt something
not like hey why don't you try it no no a captain is the one that's like i'll
do it no i'll step in no i'll take the on the
hard tasks i'll do the difficult job i'll do the
thing that somebody doesn't want to do and this applies to all areas of life
it can apply to your job you want to be a manager you want to be
the team leader be the guy that steps in and is brave
and is willing to take on the hard task doing the difficult jobs
and that's what's going to put you in that position look at verse 16 skip down
for a moment and let's look at verse number 16
and took it and brought it to david but david would not drink of it but poured
it out to the lord and said my god forbid at me
that i should do this thing till i drink the blood of these men that have put
their lives in jeopardy for the jeopardy of their lives they
brought it therefore he would not drink it
these things did these three mightiest now
what i wanted to pull out of this is these are
the top of the top these are the greatest of the captains
the strongest the mightiest what is something that they're willing to do
they're willing to put their lives in jeopardy
now that is bravery that is courage when there's
actual real threat something could happen to them
and they say you know what i'm willing to put it on the line
i'm willing to be brave here i'm willing to put myself in a little bit of
jeopardy and think about this they're putting
themselves in jeopardy for the most menial task of getting water david
and it's on a whim so talk about bravery this isn't like
david's like i really need you guys to get in there
it's saying like just on a whim they're willing to put themselves on the line
they're willing to be brave they're willing to put things in jeopardy
they've counted the cost as it were and they said you know what
i'm here to serve i'm willing to be brave and have courage and to lead
and it doesn't matter if i potentially have danger or risk here
because i've already committed i've already decided that i'm ready to put
this on the line and do the work now this
makes me think of the new testament because the bible says go to second
timothy chapter one i want us to read it actually
keep your finger and go to second timothy chapter one i want to read this
but makes me think of the new testament how we're supposed to have courage too
we're supposed to be brave too and as a christian whether you're a captain or
not you're supposed to have this mentality
you're supposed to have this attitude of saying i'm going to put on the line
i've already counted the cup you want to be a disciple of jesus christ
you have to say i'm counting all the rest of my life dung
i'm burning every bridge i'm as elisha did
killing all the oxen and just you know i'm gonna have a good steak first
but then i'm gonna go to the battle you know i'm
saying bye to dad you know when the disciple
the disciple wannabe came to jesus and said let me bury my father first he
said let the dead bury their dead now if i'm thinking like what is a
legitimate excuse not to follow jesus isn't it going your
father's own funeral i mean that's a pretty legit excuse but
he's saying you know what you just have to completely just keep
your hand to the plow no looking back i i'm gonna follow jesus no turning back
look what it says in second timothy chapter one verse seven
for god has not given us the spirit of fear
but of power and of love and of a sound mind being not the other for ashamed of
the testimony of our lord nor of me as prisoner but be the partaker
of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of god do you
know what he's telling timothy hey don't be ashamed of jesus christ
don't be ashamed of the word of god hey you're willing to put yourself in
jeopardy's sake for the bible's sake for jesus sake and
you're acknowledging you might have to go through
some afflictions he's not saying like well it's just easy
because nothing bad is going to happen to you
he says no be a partaker of the afflictions of the gospel
knowing that what there's going to be a little bit of suffering there's going to
be a little bit of hardship there's going to be a little bit of
fighting you know what a threefold cord is not strong is not quickly broken
and when these three men go to get that water they say hey we don't
i got these two guys i don't need anything else you want water
done what is that bravery what is that is power
what is that it's love what is that it's a sound mind i mean these guys are
going in there now david thinks it's kind of crazy a
little bit all right when we get that go back to first chronicles chapter 11
you know i don't know what all the spiritual pictures are here but you know
this made me think of it made me think of salvation by works
because if you think about it this is a great work that they do
and they offer it to david and notice david rejected it
meaning that the greatest work that you could possibly do if you offer that for
your salvation jesus is going to pour it out and he's
like i don't want this you know what because it's all by grace
i don't know if that's the picture that's here or not but it just made me
think of it okay and you would think like why would god
ever reject my really good work but notice david rejected a really great
work didn't it i mean don't you think that those people
would be a little disappointed they went through that much hassle
that much effort that much energy hazarded their own lives
and then he's just like i don't want it but you know what that's what people do
all the time catholics will literally risk their
entire life give all this money give their body to be burned i mean you
name it they're risking it all they're giving it all
and you know what when they stand up before jesus christ and they offer that
water he's going to say depart from me i never
knew you because it's either a free gift of grace or you don't get into heaven
well i could go reject my offering well you know what he rejected kane's
offering too and i bet kane worked really hard for
that offering and notice these three men work really
hard do what seems like a great work i mean no
one's going to argue this was a great work
and isn't even an according to david's will i mean didn't say david say like i
really wish this would happen and that's what a lot of christians are
going to do well i tried really hard not to lie
jesus i tried really hard to preach the bible jesus
i tried really hard to do all these wonderful works
but then he's going to say department never need it's not good enough
your greatest works are nothing in god's sight
it's filthy rags compared to what jesus did that's why you have to get saved by
grace
now after you're saved let's add a lot of works to that
you know let's do some great works but at the same time you know
your works are only acceptable to god when they're according to his will
and while david is kind of just being like man it'd be great to drink some of
this water he didn't want his men to do that
and so here's another thing that you can learn as a captain
is it's better to do exactly the will of your leader
than to just make some great sacrifice that he didn't ask for
you know it's better to follow instructions than to just make some
great sacrifice it's better to obey than to sacrifice as king saul didn't
understand and these men are past saul saul's
already died so they should learn from saul's mistake
that obedience is more important than some great sacrifice
than doing something that your leader or commander doesn't really want you to do
you know a lot of people would think like well i don't tithe
you know what i give a lot of money to you know this homeless shelter
i sold all of my i sold all of my goods and i gave it to africa
but you know what jesus is going to be mad at you for not just tithing
even if you gave a hundred percent of your your goods to the poor
because you know he'd rather just obey than have this great sacrifice
and some people think like well i want to serve god my way
no no no you serve god his way and as a captain in the military
it's more important to the will of your superior
than it is to do your own will you're really just supposed to submit yourself
and subject yourself unto the leadership and do as they would
have you do okay jesus already gave us plenty of
commandments to follow we don't need to start inventing new
tasks or new ideas or other things that we want to do or
to jeopardy our lives it's like hey pastor
shelley i know you didn't tell us but we snuck
over to israel and are like preaching the
gospel to a bunch of jews or it's like no why don't you just go next door you
know it's like we spent millions of dollars
it's like no there's there's bad ideas and i'm sure the leadership has plenty
of good ideas for you called god called the bible don't try and
invent things that don't make sense or aren't found in the scripture
you know faith coming by hearing and hearing by the word of god if you really
want to have great faith do the things god already told you
rather than making something up and deciding that that's what you think god
wants you to do now in first chronicles chapter 11 look
at verse number 20 let's learn some more from these these
captains it says in abishar the brother of joab
he was chief of the three for lifting up his spear against 300 he slew them
and had a name among the three of the three
he was more honorable than the two for he was their captain
albeit he attained not to the first three now one thing you'll notice very
quickly in this chapter is that not everybody's the same not
everybody's equal some people are better than others you
know and look this is the bible this is the
word of god and instead of getting offended at
where you line up or match up why don't you just work on being more
honorable because notice when god designates the
leadership he's not saying like this guy was just
kind of a bozo and just snuck up there here's your nepotism hire here's your
you know random no no these are all men that are
really prestigious they deserve it they're very respectable
because god's going to elevate you in due time
god's not just sitting over here with a david at the sheepfold
and just saying like i know you could kill goliath but i just want to keep
you watching sheep no he takes the david out of the
sheepfold and puts them on the front lines and puts them in the valley
okay god knows you and knows what you're capable of
and wants to use you and you just have to say here am i send me
you just have to get plugged in but if you know you say i want to do more
then start doing better or where you're at start being more honorable where
you're at because these captains are very
honorable men what is that they have respect they
have a good reputation people fear them people look to these
people as a leader before they're a leader they're
basically saying i want to be like this guy
i want to fight like this guy i want to be brave like this guy
i want to have courage like this person now go to chapter 12 and look at verse
number one so what are some of the things we've
learned if you're going to be a captain you got to be brave you got to
be obedient you got to be honorable here's another
one verse one now these are they that came to david
to ziklag while yet kept himself close because of
saul the son of kish and they were among the mighty men
helpers of the war here's another point they're
they're a helper they're helpful you know the worst thing
you can do when you're in position of leadership is not being helpful
causing more work causing more burden the whole point of you being appointed
is to assist the upper leadership so if you're making it more difficult
than them managing the people under you you're going to get fired
you're going to get replaced the whole goal is for you to help if you're not
helpful then essentially you're going to get
replaced and you know that's how god views it
when god looks down to someone saying you're not really helping me accomplish
my will then he's like i'm going to toss you
aside buddy you know the branches that aren't producing fruit
god's like you know what why am i going to give you water why i'm going to give
you nutrients why am i going to let you why come birth at the ground as the
bible describes the trees that are not bearing fruit
you know they might dung it but you know what's dunging it's hard preaching okay
but it might try to work on a little bit but if it's not going to produce fruit
it's like let's get this one out of here and let's get a
a tree that's producing fruit and so it's important to be someone that's
helpful go to galatians chapter six keep your
finger and go to galatians chapter number six let's look at a verse here
and at the end of the day why why do we have positions of ministry
why do we have positions of leadership why are people appointed
to do this work it's to it's to basically assist in the burden
of other people it's to minister to other people it's about people
about helping other people okay so you know a position of leadership is not to
be served but rather to serve and the bible teaches in galatians look at
chapter six verse number two bury one another's burdens and so
fulfill the law of christ so by doing things that help other
people take burdens off of other people you're
essentially a helper and that's what god wants you know when
you think about marriage think about the beginning of the
bible you have the husband and the wife and the wife is called the help me
what does that mean she's taking burden off of her husband
now she's adding burden to her husband she's just not
fulfilling the role that god has called her to
ideally a wife is going to take burden off of the husband
not adding burden and when you read proverbs 31
you're not sitting here thinking like man that's tough to manage you're
thinking like that sounds great i mean she's cooking all the meals she's
providing him with the best clothing in the entire
you know country everybody's like you look sharp
meaning yes you need some of you men need your wife to help you get dressed
i can tell that your wife doesn't dress you and you say how do you know that
because you don't look that great okay we noticed that the proverbs 31 woman
is taking care of all the children and all the children are are well
educated and respectful and they're doing their job and you know
she's she's doing them good all the days of her life is what the bible says
right because she's a helper so in the same context
when we have men that are in positions of leadership
they should fulfill the same role they're a helper they're helping you
accomplish tax and taking burden off and assisting in job duties and they're
not shifting the burden bad leaders shift
burden good leaders take burden on they
basically help assist other people when i look at a
pastor a pastor should not put burden on the congregation's life
the pastor should take the burdens of the people and and try to
offload some of those help remove burden and when we think about it our
ultimate pastor our ultimate bishop is jesus christ
who literally says we're supposed to cast all of our care upon him
you know we're supposed to lift all of our burdens upon him and and that's
really what we're supposed to do is in christ
uh example we're supposed to also try to take burdens off people take the
care off of people encourage people give them bravery give
them courage you know you say it's not just one thing for you to be brave
it's another thing to inspire other people to be brave encourage other
people to come with you to the battle to assist them and basically not having
the spirit of fear but of power and of love and it's not
much it's a lot easier to be brave with people
and you know the the men that are in positions of leadership they have to be
brave as evidenced by when the spies go into
the land of canan and they come back and give an evil
report the whole congregation gets upset the whole congregation gets disappointed
the whole congregation's hearts are basically weakened and saddened by
the the evil report even just one group of
people not going to fight and they get mad at them they're like
you're not allowed to just sit here and inherit
you know this this other area of land gad and manasseh
and everything like that they're supposed to go and get in the battle
ruben what is it ruben and manasseh and some of them they just basically don't
even want to go into the battle and it's like you're going to basically
weaken the hearts of your brothers now we're all in the battle we're all
going to fight and it's important for the captains and leaders
to come alongside those that are weak and encourage them
so that everyone is ready for the battle everyone is ready for
the fight i mean if you know i was going to go face somebody
or i had to approach somebody and it's it's kind of an intimidating
situation but i got brother conley and brother west next to me i want to be
like i feel a little bit safer you know i just feel a little bit more
emboldened right you know you feel like a little bit like
what do you say now you know and there's other men in here too that
you know it's scary you know i wouldn't want to be on the other side of the
situation okay and we know who you are and it
doesn't matter you know if if you're brave alone
because you need other people to be brave with
right what if david had killed goliath but then the rest of the men still
stayed scared no he needed to inspire them by
killing goliath and grabbing that head and running around with it
for everybody else to go and chase the philistines with them they're like sweet
let's go you know if david can do it i can do it
you know and praise god i don't look like these guys so it's like a past
show i can do it you know of course i could do it you know of course i could
be strong of course i could be brave right and you know what god is glorified
through my weakness god is glorified through my
infirmities you know what i may not look like
someone that just got a fresh off the marine corpse
but at the end of the day you know what my power rests in the might of god and
in the power of god and we just need people that are
strong in faith to actually stand up and be courageous today
and to be honorable and to be helpers of the lord
and to help those that are weak
now first chronicles chapter 12 let's look at the next verse here
we read verse number one look at verse number two
what are these men like it says they were armed with bows
and could use both the right hand and the left and hurling stones and shooting
arrows out of a bow even of saul's brethren of
benjamin now that's incredible these guys are
skilled you know it makes me think of a soul winner
you know a soul winner he can he can not only get people saved just from going
straight through his presentation you could just start anywhere in the
bible and you can get him saved i mean this guy's like philip the
evangelist who just runs in the guy reading a part of the bible he's just
like let me just start explaining to you right now
i mean he's got his left hand he's got his right hand i mean whatever the
situation calls for he's able to fight and when i think about
men of god soul winners the best soul winners
it doesn't matter what you do just hand them the sword and they'll start
slaying with it whether it was their left hand or their
right hand or whatever it is they're ready to slay they're ready to
fight they're prepared it doesn't matter what
doctrine it doesn't matter what enemy it doesn't matter what situation
they're ready to get in there and fight because they're skilled and you know
what we should i don't care if you're a pastor
or not memorize scripture we should study the doctrine of the
bible you know when the pastor or a preacher gets up
and teaches you a doctrine you should pay attention learn those verses of the
bible know where to turn your bible it would
be a shame and reproach to be out there contending for the faith
and you just don't know how to do it well i can't throw with my left hand
no you need to be able to throw that left hand i'm not talking about
literally i'm talking about spiritually okay because left-handers are weird
right but that's a different sermon look at verse 33
of zebulun such as went forth to battle expert
in war with all instruments of war 50 000 which could keep
rank they were not of a double heart again emphasis on
expert in war you know there's nothing stopping you from being the greatest
warriors ever you know it's not like you have to be a
pastor to be expert in war in fact i guarantee
many of the men in our church are expert in war when it comes to preaching the
gospel and they would make many pastors look
like a weakling they would make many pastors look like a
coward they would make many pastors look not
expert or not skilled whatsoever and look it's not a contest of one
better than a pastor what i am saying is you should not let
any position hold you back from being the greatest soul winner ever
you can be the greatest warrior people should look at you and say this person's
expert in war this person is great with the word of
god and look with all instruments of war with genesis
with x i mean everything every instrument they could possibly use
they do it and i like this though they could keep rank
what does that mean that they're humble meaning it doesn't matter what position
they're in they're just happy to serve you know and
that's an important quality and attribute
of anybody regardless of where they find themselves
and those that you want to put in positions of leadership are ones that
were content with the rank that they were already in
they weren't well i have to climb the ranks or
whatever no no they're just fine just being in the military they're just fine
serving the lord and they're not of a double heart
now go if you went to james chapter number one go to james chapter one i
want to look at a verse here what's a double heart you know they're
not
they're not someone that you're going to have them commit
one day and then change their mind the next they're loyal
so you kind of have the opposite a double heart would be someone that's not
loyal they're fickle they'll change they're not
resolved whereas the opposite of that would be
someone who's loyal committed essentially when they say that
they're going to do something they're going to do it
they're not going to just back away they're not someone that you would
not be able to trust it says in james 1 5 it says if any of you lack wisdom
let him ask of god that giveth to all men liberally and it braideth not and
it shall be given him let him ask in faith nothing wavering
for he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the
win and toss let not that man think that he's
received anything of the lord a double-minded man is unstable in all
his ways look as as leaders you can't be
double-minded when you make a decision you have to
commit to that decision you have to be loyal to that decision
you don't want to be wishy-washy and and when it comes to uh upper levels
of leadership you don't want to trust people that
could go back on their word or would just be like well i know i said that but
i'm not going to actually do that well i know i committed but i can't well
i know no we need people that are willing to just
say hey i've made up my mind i'm going to do it period
he that swearth through his own hurt and changeth not is what the bible says
i mean we sing it and that's what men of god should be like
one who keep rank and they're not of a double heart they're not like well i
i don't want to be in this branch of the arm anymore i don't like the navy
well don't sign up for it i don't want to be in the armed forces
you know well you know get some skills nobody got that joke okay
go you go if you would to psalm 84 go to psalm 84
i'm just saying that it's important to be humble and content
where you find yourself the bible says great peace have they which love thy law
and nothing shall offend them now when it comes to rank when it comes
through these situations you know not everybody's at the top and
you know what you shouldn't care where you find yourself you should just care
that you're serving god and and i like being rated
but you know some people just can't handle that they can't handle the rank
because they don't want to be in that position or they think they're
better than that rank it's like eh why am i in this position you know why
am i a captain of 10 i could do hundreds for sure you know it's
like no no you should be content with wherever you're at whatever rating or
i love being graded i love being rated because it helps you know where you're
at so you can improve rather than just rating yourself all the
time trying to figure out and of course you should you should
judge yourself but at the end it's nice to have judgment from other people
and you shouldn't get offended if someone else ever
judges you if someone else ever gives you a rating i mean
how else are they going to have these captains how are they going to
identify people to put in positions i mean the whole bible is a rating system
here's the top guy here's the next guy these guys weren't as good as this guy
i mean that's like the whole bible i mean what if they were just like but he
was really offended by that you know he was mighty but he was just a
little offended at the position he was in no no no
you wouldn't be in that position if you were offended so easily
men should not be offended great peace of they which love thy law and nothing
shall offend them no matter where you find yourself no
matter where you're at you know and if you say well i want to be in a
better position then work really hard where you're at
then elevate you know your game and be more honorable
because i guarantee the honorable man is going to be elevated
whether that's by me or not god's going to do it now look at psalms 84 look at
verse 10 for a day in thy courts is better than a
thousand i had rather be a doorkeeper in the house
of my god than to dwell in the tents of wickedness
you know it's better to be humble in the doorkeeper than to get an evil or a
prideful heart and desire that which is not yours to
be covetous you know think about people like korra i
mean they were already in a really elevated position yet not
content even though they were in such an
elevated position they had to be at the top
they have to displace moses they have to displace
erin and people that have to be in positions of authority are often very
wicked people and even if they're not a wicked person
it's at least a wicked thought it's definitely something that needs to be
put in check and needs to be resolved otherwise
they're just not going to be a good leader
and look not everybody has to be a leader not everybody has to be a leader
of tens or whatever you know you need to work on your
leadership skills because if you're a man
you're leading your wife you're leading your children and these people are the
most important people to you and so you want to make sure you're
doing a great job with them now i'm i'm pretty much done with the
old testament i i was going to quote a few verses from the new testament
you can look at one go to jude but i want to just explain
our church captains real quick what's going to be happening and then i'm going
to close but you know the bible says this charger
committed in the sun timothy according to the prophecies which before on thee
that thou by them mightest war a good warfare
now in the old testament they fought a physical battle we don't we fight a
spiritual battle but it's still war and we want to fight
a good warfare so we want to have a good military we
want to have a good system we want to be diligent with what god has
given us you know the bible says for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal
but mighty through god to the pulling down of strongholds the bible says though
we walk in the flesh we not war after the flesh you know what we war
the bible says fight the good fight of faith the apostle paul says i have
fought a good fight and the bible says in jude 1 3
beloved when i gave all diligence to write unto you the common salvation it
was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you
that you should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered
unto the saints now i didn't tell them this but i want
those four guys to come up here real quick on the stage with
dylan jason brian and philip
now what are these guys going to be doing that way you have a face with the
names you probably already know all right
you probably don't really want to look at their face i get that but you know
you guys can come up here so these guys are going to be our
are starting out captains now i'll say this things could change tomorrow
they could change before the evening service okay if need be right
okay no i'm just kidding so so obviously we're going to put these guys in these
positions they're going to help assist me and if
they're giving you a direction in regards to soul winning
you should treat them like you would treat me and you should treat me like
you treat jesus so you should assume that jesus is
talking to you when they give you instruction in
regards to soul winning now what they're going to do they're going to manage the
soul winning times so if you have any questions regarding
the soul winning you don't ask pastor shelly
you ask them okay they can handle your questions if they have a question that's
too difficult or they really want to get my opinion
i'll help them but at the end of the day i am giving them full of power and
authority to make decisions regarding soul winning
i don't want that to be confusing i want you to know exactly where i stand on the
issue i will support them in their decision
even if it's kind of a bad decision i'll support them and then we'll fix it later
okay so but at the end of the day if you if
you have a problem that can't be resolved obviously i'm
still willing to talk to you and address problems and address issues
so it's not like you can't talk to me i'm just saying they can still make all
the decisions necessary for goal winning okay um also
they're going to help me disciple soul winners what that means is they're going
to approach the people in their group and ask them
to go so winning with them just because they want to go so winning
with you and i've told them to do that so if you think it's you know like why
are they asking me to go so anything with you because they want to go so
anything with you and essentially i want them to go so
anything with you and i want you to go so anything with them
and it should be an honor and a privilege to go so any with them you
know of benaya the son of joe is like hey i want to go fighting with you i'd
be like let's go like hey i'm gonna go slay this lion in
the pit it's like let's go and look there's other great soul
winners in my church don't think that there aren't
i'm just simply saying these guys are our good examples as well
and they're going to end up helping me appoint lieutenants which are other
great soul winners in our church and with and they're going
to help identify other people that are good soul winners
and then when we go to so many times when we have new people joined to our
church people start coming and they're like i
want to go so winning we have people that we know of that are
really good soul winners that we can point them
if you're new to so winning and you say i want to learn so winning try to go
something with one of these guys okay or one of the guys that they
recommend because they're going to have really good knowledge as regards to soul
winning and we want to make sure that we're
putting forth a good example for soul winning not only that
they're going to help pair every single person so
if you know if you are just at a loss for someone and you want help
you know you're a lady or whatever talk to your soul winning captain and they
can help you now this does not replace the so many
leaders at a soul winning time the so many leaders in charge
you know whatever you know when i show up to so many time i'm not in charge the
so many leaders in charge okay they're not necessarily in charge but
if the so many leader needs to answer a question their captain can basically
assist them in that situation so if you're leading a soul winning time
nothing's changing you're just simply reporting your numbers to your captain
okay and if you have questions instead of asking me about it just ask them
about it they're also going to capture the
sowing list for everybody i'm also charging these guys you guys have to
pray for every single person in your tribe
so they're on a regular basis being praying for you caring for you guys
also i've designated that they can have one tribal party per year
paid for by the church so and and i'll say this you don't have to
go but you're going to be invited so i was
like what's going to be the change you you tell a different person you're
so many numbers and you get invited to an extra party
yay you know i mean what else is there okay
and they'll probably feed you i don't know what they're going to do all right
that's for them to decide if if you decide to go missing
they may try to call i'm going to tell them you call that person
and you you go talk to that person and it's going to help
you know encourage people that are going through a hard time or going through
difficulty or whatever just someone else that you can reach
out to and then i'm going to commission them to recruit new members to the tribe
now of course you can also do that if you see new people come into the church
and you form a friendship with them and you say hey we have tribe
i want you to be part of our tribe and you basically take them take them to
your leader you know let me take you to my leader you
know and be like this guy's on our team and
he's like let's go you know you're supposed to be fruitful
multiply we're supposed to go out and preach the gospel and again
i want you to because then as these tribes grow
they're going to divide and become more tribes and we're gonna have more
captains around more you know the goal is to grow
the goal is to have more positions of leadership
and more men that can help stand in the gap and do the work
and these men are willing at this time to you know take on a big
responsibility and and it means a lot to me it helps me a lot
it helps me to be able to manage the things i need to instead of having to
deal with a lot of other menial tasks or smaller job duties we
can appoint more positions of leadership and basically
help our church grow so if you have questions concerns or you
want me to answer something just ask me i will post
a list of your tribes out publicly so you just know
but they'll also contact you email you or whatever so you you're not in the
dark if you for some reason don't find out or don't know email call
me text me or whatever or just ask one of the captains and
they'll let you know what team you're on what tribe you're on
but i'll have that posted by this evening so don't bother people about it
but i'll have it posted by the evening service and then you can look and you
can see and you can know where you're designated but i think
that's pretty much all that i have to say on that issue i'm really excited
about this i think it's going to be a blessing to our church
it's going to help us do even more for the lord so i just want to pray
help you guys pray with me we're going to pray over these guys right now
and just ask the lord to just fill them with his spirit and that they would do a
really good job and leading in our soul-winning effort
all right we're just going to pray for these guys
thank you only father so much for steadfast baptist church and for these
men that are willing to step up in
positions of leadership i pray that our church would just rally behind them
that you would fill them with your spirit you'd fill them with wisdom that
you'd give them great discretion that you would allow our church to be a
great soul-winning army that we would go out and do great
conquests in your name i pray that you would just keep all
these men humble that you would keep our church humble that we would look to you
as our strength and our power and that as you give us these men that
you would help our church to just grow to be fruitful and multiply
in your honor and your glory and in jesus name we pray amen
thank you guys let's go ahead and go to our next song for this for this
afternoon 173 and we'll finish 173
all right 173 love lifted me
oh
i was sinking deep in sin far from the peaceful shore
very deeply stained within seeking to rise no more
but the master of the sea
me
when nothing else
all my heart
marries my soul
nothing else
souls in danger look above jesus
out of the angry waves he's a master of the sea
billows his will obey me your savior wants to be be saved
when nothing else
me
good singing thank you all for coming you are dismissed