1 Thessalonians 1, look at verse 4, Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God.
For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost,
and in much assurance, as ye know what manner of men were among you for your sake.
And ye became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction
with the joy of the Holy Ghost, so that ye were in samples to all that believe in Macedonia
and Achaia.
For from you sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also
in every place your faith to God were to spread abroad, so that we need not to speak anything.
For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you.
And now ye turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His
Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath
to come.
So notice this in verse 6, he's going to tie this together.
You say, I just want to follow Christ, well he ties it together and says, if you want
to follow Christ, you're going to follow man.
Look at verse 6, and ye became followers of us and of the Lord.
Why?
Because if you're following Christ, you're going to follow the guy that's teaching you
Christ.
He got these people saved, he turned them to God from idols, he's preaching in the Bible,
and guess what?
Now that they're following him, they're in samples to even other believers, to other
churches.
They're being in a sample.
Look at verse 7, so that ye were in samples to all that believe in Macedonia and Acaethon.
Everybody, I mean, it's not like one guy is leading, and then there's just this flat line
of millions of people behind.
No, it's usually a line.
So there's a person following a person, a person following a person.
There's a lot of people following in an order and a line, and the person that's following
right behind the leader, a lot of times people are looking at him too.
It's not just the pastor that's the only person that anybody ever looks up to, that's the
only example in the church, no, there's other men in the church, there's other believers
that people can look to and say, I want to be like that guy.
That guy's always going out soul winning, that guy knows the Bible, that guy's reading
his Bible a lot.
He's a great example of somebody I want to follow, of somebody I want to travel with,
of somebody I want to go out soul winning with, I want to talk to, I want to have fellowship
with.
I mean look, Pastor Anderson can't have 350 best friends, I mean there's like 350 people
in our church, he can't be best friends with every single person, right?
So there needs to be a lot of people that say, hey, I'm willing to be a mighty man,
like David had mighty men, where people can look to me and say, this guy's a good example,
I'm going to follow that guy.
So it's not just following the pastor, it's not just following one person, look, the Bible
gave us teachers and apostles and deacons and all these people that have offices that
we can follow.
Evangelists, I mean Brother Garrett is one of the best people to look to for being an
evangelist.
If somebody wants to be an evangelist, look to Brother Garrett, look to somebody that's
successful.
You say, who do I want to follow?
I want to follow someone that's successful.
I don't want to follow someone that's not successful.
So that leads me into my second point.
My first point is it's a clear command of God to follow a man.
You can't get around that.
You can't argue against that.
If someone's going to accuse me of following a man, I'm going to say, amen.
I'm going to follow the man that's following Christ.
That's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life.