morning everybody and welcome to Steadfast Baptist Church. It's great to see everybody
here this morning. If we can find our seats we will get started. We found a seat. Let's grab a
hymnal and we'll start this morning with song number 397. 397 as much as in it. Singing everybody
let's open up the service now. We love you and we just thank you so much for this church. Thank
you so much for the ability singing and be a part of it. We just ask that you help us lift up our
voices and fill this room with your spirit. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. For our next song
let's go to song number 108. 108 may be a newer song to some. You know it well. Sing it out loudly.
Song number 108. Son of my soul. Let's all sing it out together on the first.
If you're coming to Setfast Baptist Church, if you don't already have a bulletin,
you can lift up your hand nice and high whenever ushers can come by and get you guys
a bulletin. We got a picture of the Bahamas here on the front of our bulletin and I want to talk
about that here in a minute but we have our Bible memory passage, Matthew 28 verse 17. Anybody who
can quote the verse of the week can get a prize on Wednesday night 18 and under and then additionally
anybody who can quote the entire chapter of Matthew 28 can receive a special prize as well.
We have a lot of people here and maybe even some more filling in so if an usher asks you to kind
of just move around please just help us out on that. On the inside we have our service and
soul-winning times and then we also have our church stats down below. So we have a Spanish
service on Sunday mornings at 9 a.m. If you'd like to participate the entire service is in Spanish
all the singing, the announcements, the preaching and everything and that ministry has been doing
really well and so if you'd ever like to participate we'd love for you to join us. Sunday evening is
our 4 30 and Wednesday night is our seven o'clock Bible study. We have church-wide soul-winning that
meets here at the building. So on Sundays at two we just meet here and go out. If you want to
participate the day you just just be here at 2 p.m and we help organize people to be sent out for
soul-winning. Regional times meet in different parts of the city and we have different leaders
that meet throughout the city for that. Down below is our church stats and honestly this has
just been such a a great start to 2025 and we've been doing a big work and so we want to maintain
that zeal and that effort and that energy but thank you so much to everybody who's been
participating in this. On the right we have a list of our expecting ladies. Down below some
upcoming events so we've been practicing we've had a kids choir that's practicing for an Easter
special and my wife's been helping lead this it's the Sundays at 2 p.m and so as soon as we get the
soul winning organized and out of here she's going to help organize there's two groups for the kids
choir practice they just meet here in the sanctuary area. Spring recital there is a sign-up sheet
hopefully you already signed up because there's tryouts and my wife is going to be doing that
today so make sure you show up for your tryout time. We also have an exciting news about the
Foley's who are going to be having their wedding on March 28th at 6 p.m so congratulations to them
finally yeah it's exciting. This has been a long prayer request and so it's great to see it come
to fruition and just continue to pray. Also they are planning on inviting the entire church so if
you'd like to just participate it is that Friday March 28th 6 p.m we'd love for you to come but
they are going to have an RSVP and so please make sure to RSVP you say who do I ask Ask Brother Sam
all right so Ask Brother Sam and and we probably put that detail and information in our group chat
as well so you can follow up but if you are planning on coming please let us know so we can
organize that down below that we have our Mansfield soul hunting marathon it's April 19th and that's
going to be just the day before Easter now we have Easter flyers that can be handed out in preparation
for Easter services and we'll be doing that on our marathon as well down below of course is Easter
this year is April 20th there's some church reminders down below make sure and again this
is a little bit different we sometimes have a quiet time in between services but because of the
kids choir that's a little bit different for now but we also have some reminders please no running
or rough playing in the church we don't want kids on our stage area please also kids shouldn't be
in the kitchen or fridges or ice machine without adult assistance and then children should also
not be in their mother baby rooms without their mother so we want them to be in there we have one
right here right behind and then we have another one across the way so there's two mother baby room
options we also have a fellowship room back here with several chairs so if a dad or somebody needs
to use that area or overflow seating we have that in the back as well also children shouldn't be
using any of our church supplies we should be cleaning up after ourselves the water bottles
in the fridges are for soul winning and parents please just make sure you're watching your kids
if any adult gives you some instruction just say yes sir yes ma'am and just do it so you know we
we allow you just need to obey whatever authority is in there today we are having a luncheon and it's
going to be outside in our back patio area and everyone's invited so we're having a big barbecue
bash and brother Ryan Urbanik his company RNN barbecue is going to be cooking for us and so
you definitely want to have it because you know there's nothing like Texas barbecue and not only
just Texas barbecue but brother Ryan's really good he's actually he competes very well and he
makes a good it's hard for me to say positive things about him but I mean when it comes to the
brisket I mean it's it's it's good so I have to say it all right I can't lie so but his better
half's here with us Duncan Urbanik and his brother and so we're going to get a testimony from here
in just a minute I do want to say on the back they organized an azel marathon yesterday and had 92
soul winners come out and 43 salvations that that is a great work because it's not like they're
going to the Bahamas or something okay azel and so that's that's a great work down below we have
our prayer list please make sure you're praying for our church family if you have other prayer
requests that you would like to add to our bulletin please just email us or you can fill out the
communication card and just slip it in our offering plate and we'll try to get that added to
our prayer list i did want to take just a few minutes um just to say this week i went on one
of our cruise missions trip ideas i went with one of my friends pastor steven anderson and we went
to a couple different spots we went to nasa bahamas and then we also went to freeport bahamas
and then they had just like a recreation day so we kind of only had like two days for soul winning
but on the first day we went to nasa i was able to meet up with one of our friends there brother
kenton knolls who lives there and he helped facilitate taking us to their university there
and it's a it's really just a hot spot for soul winning because there's just so many students there
and the the student population is really receptive to the gospel so we just pretty much we went out
there and just did soul winning for about five hours straight and we end up having as a group 58
salvations for just that five hours of soul winning which is honestly is unbelievable but
if you go you can believe it and and it's really just a lot of fun i personally was able to preach
the gospel to over 30 people and i had 30 people saved for that five hour period which you know
for me personally like i don't remember exactly but i would say like the biggest days i've had
in my mind are probably like 15 or 18 or something like that i've never even probably
gotten in the 20 so to get all the way to 30 is just it's kind of unusual and so you know i
preached a whole sermon on this called "Bahamas soul winning made easy" and honestly for foreign
missions it probably can't get any better in my personal opinion just because it's really close
to where we live it's super beautiful it has pretty much every american amenity you could ever want
and then the soul winning is just honestly one of the one of the easiest places to go soul winning
you talk to people say hey could i show you how to go to heaven and they're just like yes i'm really
interested yeah i want to know people know the bible they respect for the bible but most of them
just aren't saved i did run into a few people that were saved already but for the most part most
people think that they have to work their whole life and and be faithful their whole life and ask
for forgiveness every day and just be like a a zealous christian in order to be saved and so
when you show them that it's a one-time event of believing on jesus christ and just trusting in
his finished work a lot of them you know it really connects well and and they get saved and so uh you
know i can't i can't really recommend the bahamas anymore there's a little picture here and i mean
the water there is beautiful the beaches are beautiful the weather is amazing it's pretty
much everything you could ever want you might the only this is the only danger of the bahamas i was
thinking is you might get spoiled because because like other foreign missions trips actually a lot
more work and effort and not necessarily as nice but me and the bahamas is just like one of the one
of the easiest soul-winning opportunities and so i highly highly encourage it we also went to freeport
and we ended up going to one of their universities as well which was much smaller a lot less student
population but we were able to preach to several of those students and many of them got saved too i
think we had 18 salvations for our freeport day which is still a great great day big number is
just it's just hard to compete with nasa i mean you just can't really compete with that particular
area and so uh but you know thank you so much to everybody who was praying for that trip thanks for
brother duncan for coming and preaching for us on wednesday while i was out of town and i know some
people here weren't here on wednesday and didn't get to hear so i want to ask him to just come up
and just kind of give us a little bit of a brief just uh just a summary of what he's doing in the
philippines what's going on and then of course today we're celebrating lunch with him and
celebrating the work that they're doing and them going back so why don't you give us a little bit
of a testimonial first i'd just like to thank pastor shelly for uh bringing our family back
here uh it's it's great to see everyone you know it's been about a year and so we moved march 22nd
so we're hitting on that year mark so it's great to see everyone again i got my family in the back
here my wife argi and uh we have two children titus and anna but actually we have three now
because my wife is expecting so praise the lord on that and i just like to thank everyone here
because without this church we would have no ministry in the philippines and as you've been
seeing through the reports i've been sending out through this last year it is a very receptive
country i mean especially if you're talking about foreign missions again the biggest comparison
with the philippines and the bahamas is just distance because that's why it's easier to do
missions in bahamas because it's really close but they're probably about equal as far as how
receptive it is uh since we moved there last year in march we just started soul winning right away
uh as not counting march salvations so for the last 11 months we've had four thousand three
hundred and nineteen salvations and that's just it's crazy to think about and i was reminded about
the soul winning in the united states yesterday out in azel because i'm like wait why why does
no one want to hear the gospel because when you go to foreign missions especially to the philippines
you don't have that issue and typically for us we're not going door to door we're going to parks
filled with teenagers who want to hear the gospel and they're in big groups and a lot of them speak
good english so it's just really easy you can walk up to a group of five kids ask them hey do
you want to hear the gospel they're all excited and they say yes and virtually like everyone you
talk to agrees with you like you don't you don't deal with as many heretics and weirdos as you do
in the United States so the soul winning there is just insane and so I believe it when Pastor
Shelley saying they got 30 in the Bahamas in one day because you can get similar results
in the Philippines as well if you're spending several hours per day you can get a lot of
salvations and those salvations weren't 100 by me also through my wife's soul winning we also
have a couple of kids in my wife's family they're both 17 now and I think yeah one's about to be 18
and there's another one he was with us but now he's working so he's he's not always with us today
but we've trained three members of my wife's family and now two of them are going soul winning
with us on a weekly basis and also brother James he pretty much moved to the Philippines as well
and so um he's able to do a lot of soul winning so I think this year from you know March to March
we'll have around 4500 salvations and I really think this year in 2025 we're gonna have even more
especially if we're counting brother James numbers I think we're gonna get a lot more than that
and so it's just a great opportunity and I appreciate all the support from the members
of this church again without this church none of those people would have been saved right and so
this all just started a year ago so we're excited to see what the Lord is going to do I like the
competition that pastor Shelley's bringing us now because y'all are taking all these trips to
Bahamas so now you know I'm starting to sweat a little bit as far as keeping up with you guys
because we're about neck and neck right now I think uh for January and February I think we're
around like 900 or 1000 salvations so now now I'm gonna make sure I'm gonna beat you guys this year
and here's the thing the day we get back to the Philippines we're staying here until March uh the
24th so we're getting back in the Philippines on the the 25th I have a school I'm scheduled to go
pre-chat on the 26th so there's over like a thousand students there so if y'all want a
chance y'all got to keep sewing a lot because we're gonna we're hopefully you know lord willing
will dominate but uh we're really hoping we can get into a lot of more schools this year so
just keep us in your prayers for that again it's great to see you guys and um god bless okay yeah
thanks so much to our evangelist uh Duncan and his family and honestly while it is other people have
contributed uh he's definitely the pioneer and the individual that's caused a lot of people to have
the zeal to go out there he gave the zeal to brother James and without brother evangelism going
out there brother James probably wouldn't even gone out there but uh and i wouldn't have gone
out there and uh a lot of people may not have partnered with them he's trained a lot of people
and so we're we're planning on trying to start a little church plant in his area and so just pray
for that pray for vangels or bannock if you ever want to donate to him and his ministry specifically
you can always just let us know and he he definitely accepts those donations he appreciates
them very much and our church does pay for him 100 as far as just finding funding their operation
and funding their opportunity and you know our our philosophy on missions is different than other
churches instead of having 150 missionaries that we support for 25 bucks a month or 50 bucks a month
we try to just put that all together in one and just support one evangelist and try to get him
out there and it's great to see his testimonials he's giving us a monthly update and it's really
exciting to see hey he's getting 400 saved 500 saved and the schools are going into and the new
soul winners and the baptisms and all the different works that are being done and so
we really really appreciate the work he's doing we also appreciate uh Verde Baptist Church in
the Philippines with Pastor Matthew Stuckey we pride to partner with his ministry and also come
alongside them and help them as well and they've been a great success and help so we're still very
supportive of their ministry and helping them as well and you know the Philippines it's kind of
crazy to think about numbers like that but Metro Manila just that area is approximately 15 million
people is kind of an estimate of how many people live there and it's very densely populated so if
you've ever been to somewhere like New York City or maybe another very densely populated area in
the United States the Philippines is more densely populated from my personal opinion and so you know
that's why sending multiple missionaries and multiple people out there is just kind of a drop
of water on a hot stove in many ways just because there's just so many people and there's just so
much opportunity to preach unto people because 15 million is a lot i mean the Dallas Fort Worth
area is about 8 million and it's a lot but think about double and in almost a smaller geographic
area all just densely packed into one spot and so and that's just Manila Metro there's still tons of
other little cities and areas and communities and towns and just the Philippines is a very populated
country and it's growing the population's growing and a lot of people are moving there and so it's
definitely a thriving area and with more and more of the gospel and people getting saved I think the
country is going to get better and better every single year and so we want to just keep doing the
work and keep harvesting while the the harvesting is just so plenious over there so we love the
Philippines we love our evangelists and we love that work over there and we want to keep supporting
it while it makes sense right now so but for a lot of people it may be hard to go out there that's
why we also advertise Mexico missions trips we we advertise Caribbean cruise missions trips
and just small town we have a lot of small town soul winning opportunities and so you know you
just got to get plugged in we want to be a church that's doing a lot of soul winning and we want to
emphasize it because that's the most important thing and that's what I'm going to be preaching
about this morning anyways is about the works and so I'm very excited to preach unto you this
morning and actually today and tonight this morning and tonight I'm going to be preaching a lot about
just steadfast baptist church and things we've gone through in our history and some of the stuff
that we've seen because I think it's important to reflect and this is a time for us to reflect
to celebrate to enjoy and and to kind of uh get more zeal for the things of God and we've had
other people brother Jacob and Jared they went to the Philippines recently and they did a lot of
work and they got a lot of people saved and so you know anybody can get plugged in anybody can do
a lot of soul winning and that's what we highly encourage at our church so thank you so much for
being here please join us for lunch this afternoon now we're going to be singing a new song if you
want to get out your binders I'm going to be leading it it's Psalm 58 and uh now we talked a
lot about a lot of positive things and and exciting things and encouraging things and I love those
but the Bible has some negative songs okay and so Psalm 58 I'm just going to be honest is not
a nice song in any way all right but here at the church we like to balance ourselves with singing
not just only positive things but also some negative things and so you know we also we sing
praises of the Lord but you know you can't get mad at singing a song that's in the Bible okay
so we should be excited now this is a song that goes through five times so the first time you may
not quite pick up all the words perfectly or the tune but it repeats five times so hopefully by
the third the fourth and that fifth you can really sing in you can really kind of get uh the song
kind of in your heart a little bit our musicians have been practicing really hard on this so i'm
very excited to sing it it is a little bit low of a tone but it's kind of a dark hymn so all right
so i'm excited to practice this with you guys and learn it this is the first time we're singing
psalm 58 and the first thank you very much for singing that with me if you turn in your bibles to
second kings chapter four and we're going to pass the offering plate second kings chapter number
four the bible reads now their crime of the wives of the sons of the sons of elisha saying thy
servant my husband is dead and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the lord predator is come to
take unto him my two sons to be bondmen and elisha said unto her what shall i do for thee tell me what
hast thou in the house and she said thine handmaid hath not anything in the house save a pot of oil
then he said go borrow the vessels abroad of all thy neighbors even empty vessels borrow not a few
and when thou art come in thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon thy sons and shout pour out
into all those vessels and thou shalt set aside that which is full so she went from him and shut
the door upon her and upon her sons who brought the vessels to her and she poured out and it came to
pass when the vessels were full that she said unto her son bring me yet a vessel and he said
unto her there is not a vessel more and the oil stayed then she came and told the man of god and
he said go sell the oil and pay thy debt and live thou and thy children of the rest and it fell on a
day that elisha passed to shunem where was a great woman and she constrained him to eat bread and so
it was that as oft as he passed by he turned in thither to eat bread and she said unto her husband
behold now i perceive that this is an holy man of god which passeth by us continually let us make a
little chamber i pray thee on the wall and let us set for him there a bed and a table and a stool
and a candlestick and it shall be when he cometh to us that he shall turn in thither and it fell on
a day that he came thither and he turned into the chamber and lay there and he said to Cahasi his
servant call this Shunammite and when he had called her she stood before him and he said unto him say
now unto her behold thou hast been careful for us with all this care what is to be done for thee
wouldest thou be spoken for to the king or to the captain of the host and she answered i dwell
among mine own people and he said what then is to be done for her and Gehazi answered verily she
hath no child and her husband is old and he said call her and when he had called her she stood in
the door and he said about this season according to the time of life thou shalt embrace a son and
she said nay my lord thou man of god do not lie unto thine handmaid and the woman conceived and
bear a son at that season that Elisha had said unto her according to the time of life and when
the child was grown it fell on a day that he went out to his father to the reapers and he said unto
his father my head my head and he said to a lad carry him to his mother and when he had taken him
and brought him to his mother he sat on her knees till noon and then died and she went up and laid
him on the bed of the man of god and shut the door upon him and went out and she called under her
husband and said send me i pray thee one of the young men and one of the asses that i may run to
the man of god and come again and he said wherefore wilt thou go to him today it is neither new moon
nor sabbath and she said it shall be well then she saddled an ass and said to her servant drive
and go forward slack not thy writing for me except i bid thee so she went and came under the man of
god to mount carmel and it came to pass when the man of god saw her afar off that he said to gahazai
his servant behold yonder is that shunammite run now i pray thee to meet her and say unto her is
it well with thee is it well with thy husband is it well with the child and she answered it as well
and when she came to the man of god to the hill she caught him by the feet but gahazai came near
to thrust her away and the man of god said let her alone for her soul is vexed within her and the
lord hath hid it from me and hath not told me then she said did i desire a son of my lord did i not
say do not deceive me then he said that gahazai gird up thy loins and take my staff in thine hand
and go thy way if thou meet any man salute him not and if any salute thee answer him not again
and lay my staff upon the face of the child and the mother of the child said as the lord liveth
and as thy soul liveth i will not leave thee and he arose and followed her and gahazai passed on
before them and laid the staff upon the face of the child but there was neither voice nor hearing
wherefore he went again to meet him and told him saying the child is not awake and when elisha
was come into the house behold the child was dead and laid upon his bed he went in therefore and
shut the door upon them twain and prayed unto the lord and he went up and lay upon the child and put
his mouth upon his mouth and his eyes upon his eyes and his hands upon his hands and he stretched
himself upon the child and the flesh of the child waxed warm then he returned and walked in the
house to and fro and went up and stretched himself upon him and the child sneezed seven times and the
child opened his eyes and he called Gehazi and said call this Shunammite so he called her and
when she was come in unto him he said take up thy son then she went in and fell at his feet and bowed
herself to the ground and took up her son and went out and Elisha came again to Gilgal and there was
a dearth in the land and the sons of the prophets were sitting before him and he said unto his servant
set on the great pot and seeth pottage for the sons of the prophets and one went out into the
field to gather herbs and found a wild vine and gathered thereof wild gourds as lap full
and came and shred them into the pot of pottage for they knew them not so they poured out for
the men to eat and it came to pass as they were eating of the pottage that they cried out and said
oh thou man of god there is death in the pot and they could not eat thereof but he said then bring
meal and he cast it into the pot and he said pour out for the people that they may eat and there was
no harm in the pot and there came a man from Baal Shalisha and brought the man of god bread
of the first fruits 20 loaves of barley and full ears of corn and the husk thereof and he said give
unto the people that they may eat and his servitor said what should I set this before in hundred men
he said again give the people that they may eat for thus saith the lord they shall eat and shall
leave thereof so he said it before them and they did eat and left thereof according to the word of
the lord that's power heads for a word of prayer father in heaven i ask lord god that you would fill
pastor shelly with your spirit enable him to preach the sermon you've laid on his heart with
clarity of mind and with boldness i pray also that you would help us to pay attention to the message
this morning and apply it to our lives and help us lord to glorify you in everything we do we
love you in Jesus name i pray amen amen i want to look back in second kings chapter 4 look at verse
number 14 the bible says and he said what then is to be done for her and Gehazi answered verily she
hath no child and her husband is old now in this story we have a woman who's been ministering unto
Elisha and the man of God and doing good unto him and so the question's kind of like well what's
going to be done unto her what how can we bless her and Gehazi brings up this idea of the fact
that she doesn't have a child now in verse 15 he said call her and when he had called her she stood
in the door and he said about the season according to the time of life thou shalt embrace a son and
she said nay my lord thou man of God do not lie unto thine handmaid and the woman conceived and
bear a son at that season that Elisha had said unto her according to the time of life now something
you'll notice in the Bible as a big pattern is the men of God are often telling you things that
are going to happen and then they come to pass exactly like they said and this is a confirmation
of the fact that God is with them that God is confirming them through their works and so we can
constantly see in the Bible the real men of God are constantly confirmed and established by their
works whereas the fake men of God the insincere imposters they have no works or their works are
in failure and what's great is contrasting in this story Elisha and Gehazi. Elisha and Gehazi
because they're partnered together Gehazi is his servant but the problem is is that Gehazi
cannot do what Elisha does in this story. Now she gets this child a little bit later the child
dies. If you skip down look at verse number 25 because the woman goes to try and seek for
the man of God to help her. It says in verse 25, "So she went and came unto the man of God to Mount
Carmel and it came to pass when the man of God saw her far off that he said to Gehazi his servant,
'Behold yonder is that Shunammite. Run now I pray thee to meet her and say in her, 'Is it well with
thee? Is it well with thy husband? Is it well with the child?' And she answered, 'It is well.'" Now
this is interesting because her son dies. She goes and seeks after the man of God. On her journey,
she runs into Gehazi. Gehazi is sent ahead. Gehazi is there to ask, like, "How's it going?"
And she's just like, "It's well." It's almost like she could tell that Gehazi is kind of off
or a bozo. And so she doesn't even want to get bothered by talking to him about this issue.
She's just kind of in a beeline to Elisha specifically. Now, in verse number, let's skip down to verse 27,
"And when she came to the man of God, to the hill, she caught him by the feet, but Gehazi came near to
thrust her away. And the man of God said, 'Let her alone, for her soul is vexed within her. And the
Lord hath hid it from me, and hath not told me.'" Notice that when she finally gets to the man of God
and she's going to beg something of him, she wants something, Gehazi kind of wants to get rid of her.
Gehazi is not really interested. He doesn't really care. He's not empathetic. And yet Elisha's like,
let her alone. Obviously, there's some kind of an issue here. I don't know what it is. God hasn't
told me yet. Says in verse 28, "Then she said, 'Did I desire a son of my Lord? Did I not say,
'Do not deceive me?' Then he said to Gehazi, 'Gird up thy loins and take my staff in thy hand,
and go thy way, if thou meet any man, salute him not. And if any salute thee, answer him not again,
and lay my staff upon the face of the child.'" So Elisha now sends Gehazi out and says, "Hey,
just go, just go straight to the child, put my staff on him to try and raise him from the dead."
So Gehazi is sent out to go and do this task specifically for Elisha. He's instructed by
Elisha to do so. And it says in verse number 30 though, "And the mother of the child said,
'As the Lord liveth, and as the ISO liveth, I will not leave thee.' And he rose and fell there."
So if you get the picture, Elisha's there, the woman comes, he says, "Fine, send my servant to go
raise the kid from the dead." And then the mother says, "I'm not going back until you go back with
me." She doesn't trust Gehazi. She's not into Gehazi. And as we get further in the story,
it's good reason, but she's like, "I want you to come." So then he comes back with her to their
son. Now it says in verse number 31, "And Gehazi passed on before them and laid the staff upon the
the face of the child, but there was neither voice, nor hearing. Wherefore, he went again
to meet him, and told him, saying, The child is not awake. And when Elisha was coming to
the house, behold, the child was dead, and laid upon his bed. He went in therefore, and
shut the door upon them twain, and prayed unto the Lord. And he went up, and lay upon
the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands
upon his hands. And he stretched himself upon the child, and the flesh of the child waxed
warm. Then he returned, and walked in the house to and fro, and went up, and stretched
himself upon him, and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes. So the
child comes back to life. Now, there's a lot of things we can talk about in this story.
I'm trying to just get some foundation before I really get into my sermon. One thing that's
kind of interesting, something lays on the child, like eye for eye, mouth for mouth,
all of these things. I don't know exactly what that means, but this is kind of what
I've thought, is that it almost, it almost pictures like your spirit re-entering your
body because it's like eye for eye, nose for nose, mouth for mouth. And I think what it's
kind of illustrating is a resurrection in the sense that when Jesus Christ rose again,
his spirit, his soul returned into his physical body and he came back to life. And so it just
is like kind of picturing a resurrection and it really was a resurrection where the
child really comes back to life. Now what's interesting is you contrast this, Gehazi was
sent by the man of God, told by the man of God, had the rod of the man of God, yet when
he laid the staff on nothing happened. Whereas when Gehazi is put aside and then Elisha comes
in, Elisha actually performs the miracle and Elisha's successful. And what we can discern
between these two guys is one is successful at doing the works, the other one's a failure
at doing the works. Now let's go to chapter five, let's read a little bit more, go to
chapter five, verse 15. Here's another story about Gehazi. And again, for sake of time
I'm not reading these whole chapters, you should read all of them. But Naaman the Syrian
comes unto Elisha, has leprosy, asks Elisha to heal him, he tells him to go dip in the
river seven times, he is healed. Then Naaman wants to give a gift unto Elisha for having
done this. And it says in verse 15, "And he returned to the man of God, he and all his
company, and came and stood before him, and he said, 'Behold, now I know that there is
no God in all the earth, but in Israel. Now therefore I pray thee, take a blessing of
thy servant.' But he said, 'As long as the Lord liveth before whom I stand, I will receive
none.' And he urged him to take it, but he refused. And Naaman said, 'Shall there not
then? I pray thee, be given to thy servant two mules, burden of earth, for thy servant
will henceforth offer neither burnt offering, nor sacrifice another God's butt unto the
Lord.'" So Naaman wants to give Elisha a gift, and Elisha says no, because Elisha's
not a prophet for money. Elisha's not into the things of God for a reward. Now there's
nothing wrong with him having taken a reward, there's nothing wrong with him getting paid,
but just in this particular circumstance, he's just, he's not saying yes, and he's
not taking it, and he's sending Naaman on his way with a blessing. Well the problem
is Gehazi doesn't like that. Skip down to verse 20, "But Gehazi the servant of Elisha,
the man of God, said, 'Behold my master hath spared Naaman the Syrian, and not receiving
at his hands that which he brought. But as the Lord liveth, I will run after him and
take somewhat of him.' So Gehazi followed after Naaman, and when Naaman saw him running
after him, he lighted down from the chariot to meet him, and said, 'Is all all well?'
And he said, 'All is well. My master hath sent me, saying, 'Behold, even now there
be come to me from Mount Ephraim two young men of the sons of the prophets. Give them,
I pray thee a talon of silver and two changes of garments.' And Naaman said, 'Be content,
take two talons.' And he urged them, and bound two talons of silver and two bags with two
changes of garments, and laid them upon two of his servants, and they bare them before
him. And when he came to the tower, he took them from their hand and bestowed them in
the house, and he let them in go, and they departed. But he went in and stood before
his master, and Elisha said unto him, 'Whence cometh thou, Gehazi?' And he said, 'Thy servant
went no whither.' This is like all your kids. It's like, 'Hey, what are you doing?' 'Nothing.'
It's like, you're not doing nothing. No one's doing nothing, okay? You know, this is where
we all learned it, right, the excuse. It's just like, 'Oh, I didn't go anywhere.' Well,
where have you been then? I mean, think about how silly that is. Like, you've been missing
you, and you've been gone, and he's like, 'Where'd you go?' 'Nowhere.' 'No whither.'
And he said unto him, 'Went not mine heart with thee, when the man turned again from
his chariot to meet thee? Is it a time to receive money and to receive garments in all
of yards, and vineyards, and sheep, and oxen, and men servants, and maid servants? The leprosy
therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee and unto thy seat forever.' And he went out
from his presence a leper as white as snow. And so we have another story, another example
of Gehazi who doesn't perform a miracle, doesn't do right, only interested in money, and he
ends up being cursed with leprosy for having deceived the man of God, deceiving Naaman,
lying about things, and just trying to get money. Whereas the real man of God doesn't
lie, isn't interested in money, and you know what, actually helps people and blesses people.
And what we can tell the difference between these two people is the works. One person
heals people, helps people, does good unto people, the other person lies to people for
money. And if you want to understand Christianity, if you want to understand the real prophet
from the false prophet, it's all about the works. And that's the title of my sermon
this morning, is it's all about the works. Now we could go through the whole Bible and
I could just show you this because there's so many examples. But I just kind of wanted
to focus on this one and then I'm going to go to a lot of different illustrations. But
here's another simple illustration. How about Moses and when he has this standoff with
the magicians of Pharaoh. And we see Moses performing miracle after miracle, turning
water into blood. Then he casts his staff down and it turns into a serpent. And of course
the magicians are able to copy some of those things. But we notice that Moses' serpent
swallows up the other two serpents and then gets a staff pack. And then eventually when
he gets to the lice, they're like, "This is the finger of God." Because it's again
all about the works. The real works of God will always triumph over the works of darkness
and over evil. And we of course need to make sure that whoever's doing the works has the
right message. The Bible gives a caveat. In the Old Testament it says if a man were to
give some prophecy and it come to pass, but he was trying to get you to go after false
gods, just still not listen to it. The Bible tells us in the end times that the anti-Christ
will perform some basically miracles, false signs and wonders, and that we're not supposed
to necessarily be them. So we have to have the right message. But when you have the right
message, there still can be a Gehazi and there can be an Elisha. And how we determine that
is it's all about the works. So when we have the right messenger, we have the right message,
we still need to make a distinguishment between a Gehazi and Elisha. And look, you say, "Well,
Elisha is a man of God and Gehazi is a servant." Okay, but Elisha used to be the servant too
because he used to be Elijah's servant. And then what we end up seeing is that Elijah
ends up performing great works. And why is it that we love the men of the Bible? Why
is it that we love the prophets of the Old Testament? It's because of their works. Why
is it that we hate Gehazi? Because he doesn't have any works and because he's a liar. Okay.
And so when we're measuring and we're testing the spirits and we're trying to see what's
really going on in this world, God wants us to trust in things. He wants us to trust in
the works in many cases. Now think about this Gehazi character. It's a very interesting
character because to some degree Elijah would have trusted him. Why would Elijah have this
guy as his servant? Why would he be sending him out to do works? Why would he be there
to try and have him do all this, you know, spiritual stuff if he didn't actually trust
in him? And the reality is sometimes men of God are going to have servants or people that
they put in positions of authority. They send out to do works and they believe in them.
They trust them. They think that they're sincere. They think they're a good guy. They must have
confused them or lied to them or something. But we know that he lies to Elijah, doesn't
he? When Elijah asks him, "Hey, where'd you go?" He's like, "Oh, I didn't go anywhere."
Because he's a liar and he's fake. He's not real. And as the man of God, sometimes you
just excuse people's behavior. You think like, "Well, I know Gehazi went and the staff didn't
work." But you're just kind of like, "Yeah, but he's probably still a good guy. He's still
-- at least he did the task. I don't know what's wrong, but he must have given them
the benefit of the doubt." But finally, he's just like, "Okay, this guy's obviously not
legit. He's cursed with leprosy. He was wicked. He was not sincere." And we have to realize
that in our ministry and in the ministry of Christianity, we will have Gehazi's. We will
have fakes. We have bozos. We'll have people that we send out. We'll have people that we
put our blessing on, our spirit on, our authority on, and they just completely fail because
they're a fake, insincere Gehazi. And you say, "How do you know he's a Gehazi?" The
works. It's the works that tell us. You know, what did Gehazi want? He wanted a reward.
He was really in it for the money. And a lot of people are in it for the money. He was
told to run ahead, but he was not able to do a spiritual work. He was sent, but he wasn't
established. And here's something we have to understand is that sometimes men of God
can be sent, in a sense, or they're ordained, but they're still not legit because God never
established them. And there's a difference between being ordained and being established.
Ordained, say you're appointed to do a work, established as you accomplish the work, that
you're doing good with the work. And at the end of the day, it's all about the works.
You know, who cares if you're ordained and you accomplish nothing for God? Who cares
if you're sent out to do work for the church and you do nothing? I mean, hey, this, hey,
they sent me to the Bahamas and I got zero saved. What's the point? Hey, they sent me
to the Philippines and we did nothing. You know, it doesn't really matter. What matters
is like, hey, we got 4,300 people saved. That's what matters because it's about the works.
I mean, how many missionaries have been sent out into the world to preach the gospel? That's
not what's important. You know what's important? The results. You know what's important? The
works. Because at the end of the day, we're not sending out missionaries to fail. We're
not sending out missionaries to learn a foreign language. We're sending out missionaries to
preach the gospel and get people saved. And let me tell you something. It's about the
works. And you want to know which missionaries I get excited about? The ones producing works.
People like Evangelist Duncan or Bannock is going out and doing works. You know what?
Maybe one day we'll send out a Gehazi and he won't have the works and we'll say like,
well, you suck. Hey, I guess you're going to have a lot of problems. And you know what?
There is an evangelist I can think of that was sent out of a church. Pastor Aaron Thompson's
church that was sent out and was entrusted with a work. And he totally failed. His church
totally failed. He's a complete failure and a loser. And then he ended up stealing money
from our church because he's a disgusting, evil failure. And what happened to Gehazi
when he went out and failed? Oh yeah, he got leprosy. And you know what? It's no coincidence
that the same failure of Pastor Thompson now has some incurable disease and is dying of
some unusual, strange punishment. You may not have heard about it, but this weirdo who's
just rejected Christianity, loves fags now, now has some strange, weird, creepy punishment
that according to the news, only 70 people in the world have this disease. It's like
unknowable. This person, he was given 6 months to live. I hope it's less. And you know what?
Is it any coincidence that Gehazi is fake and then gets all this leprosy for wanting
money and stealing money and lying about money and then the same thing, someone gets
sent out and then guess what? They're a Gehazi and they're going to be destroyed too. Look,
it's not about being ordained as an evangelist as special. You know what's special? Doing
the works. You know what's special is sending someone out there and getting thousands of
people saved, preaching good sermons, having a zeal and a love for the things of God. And
that's why we love evangelists of Bannek and that's why we hate Gehazi. You know, my love
should be for the people that are doing the works, not for the people that are fake and
a failure and a loser. And let me tell you something. You shouldn't mess with Steadfast
Baptist Church because you think that's one story. I got plenty more. Okay. And when you
got people in this room praying for you, you might buy some shoes and end up dead later.
All right? That's all I'm going to say. Because let me tell you something. You know, if God
be for us, who can be against us? Now, I have more to, I want to say, you know, not every
Gehazi though or fake guy is in it for just the money. Because you have people like Simon
the Sorcerer, he wasn't really in it for money, but he just wanted attention. He just wanted
attention. Let me tell you, there are certain guys that it's like the only thing they want
is attention. And boy, the worst thing you can do is give them attention. And boy, when
they try to buy attention, what does the man of God say? You don't have any part or love
in this matter. You're done. Like we don't care about you. In fact, because you want
attention so much, God's going to give you zero attention. And that's going to be your
punishment because you're just such a narcissist and you love yourself so much. And so God
will strip all of that away from you. Whereas the men of God, they often don't even want
attention, but they just get it anyways. They don't really want it. And you know, God likes
to give attention to people that don't want it. God does not want to give attention to
people that want attention. If you want attention, you need to change your heart if you want
to be used by God. Because it's not about attention. And let me tell you something,
when you just humble yourself and you just do a small work or you're just going to do
something where no one's noticing, but you're filled with the Spirit of God, the attention
will come if you do the right thing. You know, but you know, the attention is honestly not
worth it. Like, here's what's funny. People that have actually gotten attention realize
it's not something to desire. It's not something you want. It's way better to just be under
the radar. It's way better to not have because the attention is mostly negative. It's not
positive anyways. You know, I would love to be able to still use, I don't credit cards,
YouTube, any app on the phone. Like, I mean, I can't hardly do anything. I don't love that.
That's not fun. That's not convenient. It's not fun to sign up and buy all of our Airbnb's
for the Bahamas and then all gets canceled. And then I have to do it again. It's not fun
to just sign up for all kinds of services. It's not fun that I can literally be on almost
nothing that is a sermon platform. Sermon audio? No. Podcasts? No. YouTube? No. Facebook?
No. I mean it's just like, that's annoying. It's annoying to constantly be banned and
censored and attacked and threatened. Protesters at your house. Like that's not necessarily
fun. And so don't give this attitude like, "Man, I can't wait to get attention." It's
not worth it. It's better to just go somewhere and serve God and get a lot of people saved.
If the attention comes, well, the attention comes. There's another thing I want to mention.
Go back to 2 Kings Chapter 2, and I think this is really interesting, is if we think
about Elisha, and you kind of have to really emphasis the last part of this word because
you've got to like "ja" and then you've got to like "sha." All right? "Ja" is before
"sha." Think about a "j" before "s," right? So you've got to like "ja" who appoints
Elisha. And when Elisha is being appointed, he is asked, like essentially Elijah asks
him, like, "What do you want?" Now think about this in contrast with Gehazi. Gehazi, what
does he want? He wants the talents of silver. He wants the money. He's in it for the goods.
What does Elisha want? Well, look at verse number nine. "And it came to pass when they
were gone over that Elijah said unto Elisha, 'Ask what I shall do for thee before I be
taken away from thee.' And Elisha said, 'I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit
be upon me.' And he said, 'Thou hast asked a hard thing. Nevertheless, if thou see me
when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee, but if not, it shall not be so.'
So when Elijah is going to be carried up by a whirlwind into heaven, and he's basically
saying, 'Elisha, this is our last chance.' Like, what do you want? And he says, 'I want
a double portion of thy spirit.' And he basically says, 'Well, if you see me go up, then you
have it. If you don't, sorry, you're stuck with one time speed.' All right? And he ends
up seeing him go up, he gets a double portion of his spirit when you read in the Bible.
What do we see about Elisha? What makes Elisha different than Elijah? He does double the
works. He does double the work. Because again, it's all about the works, folks. It's not
about like, 'Oh, I got this double spirit, so now I can just smoke people or do whatever,
like do weird stuff.' What's the point of having the spirit? It's to do more works.
It's about the works being accomplished and accomplishing great things. Now, I'll say
this. Whenever I was going to be ordained by Pastor Stephen Anderson, because that's
my sending pastor, I was going to Faithward Baptist Church in Phoenix, Arizona. I got
on my knees before that happened, like a few weeks before, and I just asked God, I said,
'God, please give me a double portion of Pastor Anderson's spirit.' And I wasn't joking.
It wasn't just to try it. I meant it and I believed it. He ordained me. I got sent to
Pure Words Baptist Church. Just doing my thing. But then something happens with Steadfast.
And I ended up being willing to come up there. And you know what? The first service? He ordained
me a second time. That is not a coincidence, folks. That is not something that just accidentally
happens. I asked for this and guess what? He has laid hands on me twice and blessed
me twice. And you know what? I take that very seriously. I know some people don't really
care about ordination. I think ordination is special and I think it's very serious.
And I prayed for it and by no coincidence, I believe it happened. Now here's the thing.
What would make that special though is only one thing if we have a lot of works. Because
what would be the point if I go through that process and then nothing is accomplished?
Nothing happened. Then it just is meaningless. Who cares if you get laid on by hands by a
hundred preachers a hundred times if you end up accomplishing nothing? You know, it doesn't
really matter. It doesn't really benefit anything. And let me say something. It's not special
to take over a church of 50 people and run it into the ground. I don't even care if it
has a great name. It could have the greatest name of the church. It could be in a great
position when you take over it. But let me tell you something. If you run it into the
ground, that is not special. Now if you take over a church, I'll say this. If you take
over a church of 100 people and the pastor is committing rampant adultery, preaching
weird stuff, there's a bad spirit, there's tons of weirdos, he's doing drugs, he's doing
weird stuff with the money, and he gets cast out and the whole church finds out. If you
take over that church of 100 people and after five or six years you're running 50, so it's
less than half and you're doing good works and they're going so many, I personally believe
that's a success. That's a success because you know what, that's a rough situation to
enter into. And we have a bunch of weirdos, just by even keep going and cleaning up the
spirit and actually doing the works, that's a success. If you were able to just maintain,
if you just kept the hundred, you know, the number and you're doing great works, I would
say that's phenomenal. If you grow it to more than double, that is impossible. That is only
because God is blessing that work and God is doing something special. And you know what?
You should recognize that is special and that God's hand is upon those people and recognize
the works. I mean, this morning, I don't even know what our final count is, but I think
we have 271 people here this morning, which our previous church record was 241. That was
the highest attendance we had had. That was our 10 year anniversary service where I told
everyone to come and take a picture and that me and my wife were going to give everyone
a gift. We had 241. The second highest attendance we had ever had before that was 222, so like
way less, 2023, and it was on my birthday. It was a secret birthday party that y'all
threw for me with food. We have 271 this morning. Now of course we have food and we have guests
and visitors or whatever, but I mean obviously God is just trying to grow this church and
to bless this church, and I'll be honest with you, it is not because I'm trying to do it
at all. Like if you're saying, hey pastor Shelley, what are you doing to try to grow
the church? Nothing. I preach, I preach sermons to get people to leave. Like, you know this.
I'm preaching and people are just walking out in the middle of the service. I'm screaming
leave. I'm rough around the edges. I'm not necessarily the most polished speaker, pastor,
any of that. But you know what? God is just doing something special here and we need to
recognize that. You know, God's doing something special when we send an evangelist to the
Philippines and he's getting over 4,000 people saved, folks. There's going to be 4,000 people
in heaven that are going to come up and shake your hand and say thank you for sending an
evangelist to give me the gospel. And that's just the start. We don't even know where the
Lord's taking us right now. But you know, how silly is it when the children of Israel
come out of the, they're coming into the wilderness and they just forget, oh yeah, the Passover
where God spared all of our firstborn. Oh yeah, God drug us to the Red Sea and we walk
through it and then he destroyed all the Egyptians behind us. Oh yeah, he's raining down heavenly
bread from heaven and we're eating this manna and they're just like, I want cucumbers. But
you know what, there are people like that that have been with us and they saw all these
miracles, they saw God blessing us and guiding us and then they're like, I want cucumbers.
Well go to the old guy and pay for cucumbers, okay. But you know what, it's kind of silly
to have God just be with us so much and have blessed us so much and so many good things
have happened and then just act like, you know, it's bad or something. Look, we can
tell the Gehazi from the Elisha, folks. Why? Because it's all about the works. And you
know, when I came here, I think the devil did want to destroy us. Go to Acts chapter
5, I want to go to Acts chapter 5. I think that God was definitely blessing me, but let
me tell you something, the attacks were real. When I first came to be the pastor of St.
Thomas Baptist Church, I was immediately ripped off for over a hundred thousand dollars, which
most of you don't even have a hundred thousand dollars to lose, okay? I clawed my way to
that money just saving, investing, doing businesses, you know, cleaning up poop from rental properties
that I had acquired, just anything and everything. I mean, a decade of just trying to accumulate
all this wealth and just hard work, investing, saving, all kinds of things, because when
I, I mean, whenever I was a college graduate, I had no money. I didn't have anything.
So it took a long time to accumulate that kind of money, accumulate that kind of wealth,
just to have it lost in just a month or two. Boy, that's a real big incentive to get sad,
mad, frustrated, want to quit, just all kinds, I mean, it's real. Or just to have a bad mentality.
It's really easy. I mean, I'll be honest, I was kind of low mentally. I'm just like,
man, what a failure. But at the end of the day, I think that that's just Satan trying
to discourage me. Not only that, I had all kinds of people were stealing my back. I
had someone smash into my car, steal my backpack with the thousands of dollars worth of merchandise.
I had people that I hired to do other work and they ripped me off and did bad work. I
mean, just all kinds of horrible things happening. In fact, not only did I get ripped off for
a hundred thousand because this guy was just attacking me on top of this, I went to a lawyer
just to consult like, what do I do? And he was saying like, well, actually you need to
count all the damages and the damages in the situation was two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars worth of damages. But, you know, I don't even want to sue people. I just want
to like move on with my life. And so I did. But, you know, sometimes God just wants to
humble you just to help you realize like he's in control. And I'll be honest with you,
I think that God blessed me through that experience because prior to I kind of have this attitude
that like I can't really, like I always make the decisions, I'm really smart, I'm good
with money, which is not like I'm not. But God is showing me it doesn't matter how good
you are with money, it doesn't matter how smart you are, it doesn't matter how dillons
you are, someone can just come out of nowhere and rip you off. Someone can just come out
of nowhere and take advantage of you, do you dirty, and it happens to the best of us. And
it helped humble me to realize, wow, God's in control and it doesn't matter how smart,
how much I protect myself, like bad people out there and they'll rip you off. And you
know what? There's no justice in our justice system. When you get ripped off, taken advantage
of, many times you have to eat it. You have to just suffer. And it's ugly, it's nasty.
I'm sure many of you have been ripped off before. I'm sure many of you have been stolen
from and taken advantage of. And it can be very discouraging. But you know what? When
you come into a church situation, you have all this weird stuff happen just all at the
same time, you have to realize that it's some form of persecution. And whenever you're
persecuted for the cause of Christ, instead of getting upset about it, what you should
really do is say, you know what, this is a privilege. You know, not only did I come in,
we have protesters, we have all kinds of heat coming in on us. And we're a small church
in comparison to a lot of churches in Texas. I mean, Texas has mega churches, folks. They
have huge giant churches, all kinds of groups, all kinds of associations. And for us to get
so much attention, and why are we being so protested and so many attacks? You have to
realize, like, we're blessed. I mean, look what it says in Acts chapter 5 verse 41. This
is Peter and John. It says, "And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing
that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name." You know what? If our church
is protested and attacked and persecuted, we should say, like, thank you, God, for considering
us worthy to be persecuted. Because not everybody's worthy of being persecuted. God's just like,
you're not even good enough to be persecuted. If our church is persecuted hard, that means
in God's mind, you're worthy to suffer persecution. He likes you. He likes what you're doing and
he wants you to receive that persecution because you're the one doing the right thing. It's
like when you play a sport, if you were the wide receiver out on the corner and they say,
no one guard him. You know why they say that? Because you're not good. They're like, hey,
we're gonna put him in triple coverage. That's worthy. You're worthy because they're saying
this guy is a threat. This guy is legit. There's something special about this guy. And so he's
needed to be covered in this way. That's how it works in God's economy that boy, the church
is being triple covered. You should say like, wow, that's an honor. That's an honor that
they think that we're actually doing something, that we're actually a threat, that we're actually
the ones really doing something for God. And look, from 2019 to now, we've accomplished
some, some giant works. It's obvious why the devil wanted to triple cover us, because he
knew what Randy Moss could do. You know what I mean? I mean, Randy Moss, I think against
the Cowboys, he had like a three catch game, and it was like 260 yards and three touchdowns,
because every catch was a touchdown. I think it was like a Thanksgiving game or something
like that. And it's like, it didn't matter if you triple covered, double covered. I mean,
the guy is just going to catch it. And you know, when you see a church doing things like
that, it's not about the individual, for our church. But when you see a church doing things
like that, you just have to recognize, wow, God must be doing something with that church.
Because again, it's all about the works. What's the point of having a wide receiver if he
never catches the ball? What's the point of going out and playing on the field if you
never score? What's the point of being a church if we never accomplish anything? What's the
point of us all just coming up here and showing up and patting ourselves on the back and
doing nothing? You know what, it's about the works and we need to accomplish works. You
know, but this church has reached millions of people if not billions. I mean, billions
of people have heard about our church. Millions and millions of people have heard about our
church. At one point in just a week's time, we had 5,000 emails. I'm sorry, voicemails,
not emails. We had way more emails. We had 5,000 voicemails. The phone was ringing every
30 seconds, 24/7. Just voicemail, voicemail, voicemail, just voicemail. Why? I mean, you
think about it, we're just kind of a smaller church at the time, especially. I mean, we're
running 100, 120 people at that time. We made a movie, the Preserved Bible film. After just
a few weeks of uploading it, it already had 50,000 views. Tons of people were being reached
by it. Then, of course, they shut down our YouTube channel because we can't let that
thing grow. I saw someone mirror it. They mirrored our Preserved Bible film. It got
over almost 100,000 views before they took that channel down. If you wanted to
destroy a YouTube channel, just put a video with me on it, okay? But like, here's a
movie that got around... I mean, conservatively, that movie got over 200,000
views on YouTube alone. And I'm thinking like, how many small, medium-sized
churches can make a film and get 200,000 views on their film? I mean, just take
another random old IP church that makes a film and put it on their YouTube channel
and get 200,000 views. It's not going to happen. And if we were back in 2016, 2018,
when YouTube censor wasn't there and we put that movie up, it would have gotten
millions and millions of views for sure. No doubt. We made a movie, The Sodomite Deception,
and one week, 20,000 views. And plenty, I put this on Internet Archive, which is just like,
it's supposed to just be, you can put anything on it. And they would just like take down one,
I'd put it up on it. I was putting it on our website, like the Internet Archive version,
and just put it up, taking down. It would get like 5,000 views taken down, 7,000 views taken down.
I mean, that film at least has gotten over 30,000 views. If that was back in YouTube days,
again, millions and millions and millions of views. But here's the one thing I love
about Sodomite Deception. You know what I love about Sodomite Deception is Brother Rich Caputo.
Brother Rich Caputo was living here in this area, didn't even know about our church,
watches Sodomite Deception, gets super excited, and joins our church. And boy,
I love Brother Rich Caputo. You know why? Because of the works that he does. He does a great job
song leading. I mean, he's excellent on the guitar, helping all kinds of people, great soul winner,
great friend. He's done a lot of work for our church. You know what? Even if that was the only
thing the Sodomite Deception accomplished, praise God. It's all about the one, isn't it? I mean,
that's what the whole idea is. Just reach one person. Well, it reached Brother Rich Caputo.
He's our Sodomite Deception baby, all right? And look, look at the fruit. I mean, that's a great,
that's a great product. If I say, hey, you said Pastor Shelley, if you make another film,
the only thing you're going to get out of is another Brother Rich, I would make it right now.
Not only that, our church, with one-on-one soul winning, has gotten over 10,000 people saved
in the last six years. So since 2019, you say, what happened before 2019? No records, okay?
I don't know, I can't tell you, all right? The records ceased to exist. I don't think they
started to exist either, but since 2019, I take meticulous records of our church. We had over
10,000 people saved just on one-on-one soul winning. Not only that, we've had, just on paper,
like we take, you know, account of all the people that are members of our church, people that leave
our church, people that have been thrown out of our church, people that were kind of coming a few
times, filled out the visitor card, but maybe they just didn't come enough to become a member.
Those people, so not just one-time visitors, basically they've come at least a couple times,
they've filled out the information we have, their record of them, they've been coming through our
doors. 631 people have come through the doors since 2019, and then I then I also thought,
well how many people are labeled a railer and been thrown out of our church? And it was 19,
okay? So, because this is what's funny, these people say like, "Oh, Pastor Shirley labels
everyone a railer." Well out of 631, 19. It's less than 3%. So sorry, you know, not everyone gets a
labeled railer. Railers get labeled railers, okay? And they're less than 3%. I would not want to be
on that list of our church. Especially when I just saw this one guy have the worst black lesions all
over his body, and having this incurable disease, and he's like melting like a snail, literally.
I'm so glad we sang Psalm 58 today. Currently, we have around 280 active members of our church,
which is pretty much the highest that we've ever had. And when I took over, it was about 120. Now,
active members is not people that show up for a service, it's just people that come,
they come for services. Maybe they don't always come Sunday morning. Sometimes they come Sunday
night or whatever. So as long as you've been coming to the services regularly, you're considered an
active member. And we had about 120 when I took over, we have 280. So our first services when I
was a pastor was like, we're running 89, 99, around 100 for the services that I was here.
Pastor Romero told me they had like 150 people coming for services, but that was just not true. So
it was like, it was a lot closer to about 100. Because we really didn't hardly lose anybody when
I first came. It just then you preach against the flat earth and you just lose lots of people. So,
but you know, if you kind of look at how our church works, like every year or so, we lose about 20
people that are active members, like people that are plugged in active members lose about 20 people.
But then, well, we leave slash get thrown out. It's kind of a combo. I'm just putting them in the
same category. Then we have about 45 new people joining every year as well. So we end up having
about a 25% net gain year after year. Now, of course, it's not necessarily always just like
exactly like that because you, you typically kind of have big purges every once in a while
where you just lose a bunch of people. We recently had one of those. So about six months ago,
there was a lot of drama, people trying to make drama more drama than it was. And so I just kind
of looked at it. I said, six months ago to now, how many people did we lead like lose as a church?
We lost 38 people. So 38 people had left our church. Now, not all of those are for the drama.
Many of them actually several of them were had nothing to do with it at all. It wasn't even
they had nothing to do with it, just personal issues or whatever. So we lost about 38 people.
But since then, we've added like over 40 people. So we've actually had a larger increase. And we've
had even more people in the last few weeks. They're not even on the radar. I'm just saying our
church is somehow keeps growing. And I don't have space. I mean, just look around the room. Okay.
We have 240 chairs and sanctuary and 271 this morning. I that's doesn't math. All right. And
I keep preaching for you to leave, but you just won't. All right. I can't I can't figure out how
to do that. But I mean just there's so many things going on our church and I kind of wanted this
evening I want to talk a little bit more about the emotional well-being of our church how that's
changed. We're just kind of talking about numbers here for a second because the Bible says be thou
diligent to know the state of thy flocks and I'm going to be preaching on that this evening.
But we should know I want to know the stats of our church. I want to think about the people. I want
to think about what's going on in their hearts and their minds and the works that we're doing.
Why? Because the church is about works folks. What's the point of us just getting together to
pat ourselves on the back? No, we need to think about the works. There's been so many marriages
that have happened at this church since I've been the pastor, many babies birthed since this church,
and there's been many marriages that have been preserved. Because you don't know,
but I just kind of made a quick list in my mind. There's been well over a dozen, well over a dozen
couples and individuals that I've counseled, had marriage conversations with, because it's
a common thing. There's no such thing as, you know, there's no such temptation taking you,
but such is common to man. And, you know, people have all kinds of issues and problems,
and you know what? I think that's a great thing, because the world is divorcing at a 50% rate.
Let us not be that of St. Fast Baptist Church where we're exactly the same. Let us work on
our marriages and let us preserve our marriages. And, you know, if you feel like, man, we've had
some hard spots in our marriage, join the club. There are some pastors and preachers out there
that want to make it seem like we've never fought, like me and my wife have never fought.
He's never said a bad word to me. She's never said anything. She's never been irrational.
I'm just thinking, like, like, do you even hang out? Like, how is that even possible?
You know, the only way, this is the only way I could rationalize a couple that never fights
is if the husband always does what the wife says, period. Like, if you just, if your just wife just
says something and you're just like, yes, ma'am, whatever you say every single time, then I could
kind of see how you don't fight, but if you actually ever rule your house for even one second,
there'll be some friction every once in a while, there'll be some problems, but you know what,
it's good. And really friction just kind of tells me that you both like each other and you actually
care, because when you don't have friction, it's usually because you don't care about the person.
People that I work with or friends that I don't like, I try to avoid them, I don't talk to them,
I want to stay as far away from them as possible, and there's very little friction because I'm just,
I could care less. You say something stupid, I'm just like, whatever. But somebody I care about,
somebody that I actually like, when they say something dumb, I'm like, hey, that's kind of
dumb. Like, hey, you shouldn't do that. Hey, I don't like that. Because you actually care about
the person and you want to be around them. And what I'm just trying to help you understand is
that, look, there's no such thing as this perfect marriage. It just doesn't exist. And we all are
in this boat. But you know what? I've seen, I've seen a lot of people's marriages improve.
And I've seen a lot of people get over issues, whether it be minor, whether it be severe.
And you know, that's, that's special to me. Because marriages, you know, problems are ugly.
And I personally don't want to deal with it. I'm just gonna be honest with you, like, I don't want
to deal with it. But I will deal with it. Because you know what? Someone needs to deal with it.
Someone has to do it. And you know, a pastor that's neglectful in this area, you'll see a lot of just
marriages falling apart constantly. And a lot of huge problems in these areas, because they just
won't deal with it. And they won't deal with it appropriately. A lot of times, this is what
marriage counseling has turned into in other churches, the wife's right. I heard Jimmy Evans,
a former pastor I had a long time ago, he was talking about how he goes to marriage counseling.
And he's just like, "Yeah, we went to this lady marriage counselor, and she told me that I was
wrong, my wife was right." And I'm just thinking like, that's not, you know, this is, this is bad.
It's bad advice. You know, and again, I think that men can be jerks, men can be wrong, men can do
things that are bad. You know, we need to make sure that we're not tearing down male authority
and the marriage. You know, according to the Bible, the man is 100% in charge and he is the one that
gets to make the decisions. Now, I think that men should be a benevolent dictator. They should
make decisions that are sometimes a sacrifice on their part to bless their wife. But at the end of
the day, they need to make all the decisions and they need to be put back in the driver's seat.
We need to make men drive again and in their marriages, right? And spiritually, and buying
the pulpit, everything, okay? Put men back in the driver's seat. I mean, you really think that our
country would be great with Kamala running the show? And as much as I have problems with Trump,
at least he's a man, all right? Okay? And he's given us an opportunity to focus on our job right
now while he takes some of the heat, so just praise God for Trump, all right? Whether he's
saved or unsaved, I don't really care. He's just taking heat off, and I just like it.
All the missions trips that our church has been taking, just tons and tons of missions trips.
We've gone to Mexico almost every year, sometimes twice. We've gone to the Bahamas. We've had lots
of people go to the Philippines on their own. We obviously have Evangelist or Bandit going to the
Philippines. We've had other people just go on other missions trips to other churches, just join
up. And I had a pastor compliment me this week. They said, "You know what I love about Steadfast
is like for some reason, your people just always show up." He said, "Whether we have like a
conference somewhere, Steadfast is always well represented there." And he said, "You have a
missions trip, Steadfast is somehow well represented there." And Steadfast is excited. And he said,
"Also, when they show up, it's not weirdos, it's cool people." He said, "There's a couple
exceptions." No, he's saying, "Hey, the Steadfast people are cool people, and they're showing up,
and you know, our church runs hundreds." But you know what, you don't see Steadfast,
you don't see our church is running our mouths online, like a bunch of just unhinged lunatics.
You know what, that's a great testimony. It's a great testimony that we don't have a bunch of
loud-mouthed women in our church, constantly defending our church, and running their mouth,
and just making our church look like an embarrassment. And there are some people
that are doing that. We had three church plants, and here's what I can say, is the moment that I
was handing it over, it was in good shape. I can say with an honest heart that when I handed the
keys over to Revival, you know, taking over our Jacksonville church, or when I handed over the
keys for Pure Words Baptist Church, or when I handed over the keys to Anchor Baptist Church,
when I'm handing over the keys, it was in good shape. I can say that. And you know, I can't,
I can't force Gehazi to put the staff on the kid's face and it actually worked out,
but you know what I can do is I can give them the staff, and it's not my fault if they screw it up.
I want to go to a few more verses. We need to go a few more verses. Hey, we got lunch for you,
so you can stick around, all right? I know you're not going anywhere. Go, Govee Wood to,
go to Hebrews for a moment, go to Hebrews chapter 13. You know, the Bible says that
wisdom is justified over children. And at the end of the day, I believe this with my whole heart,
that the pastors and the missionaries and the evangelists that are being used by God,
you can tell. You say how? The works. It's the works. You can see the move of God because of
the works. John the Baptist is out in the wilderness. Everyone comes out to hear him preach.
You know why? Because he's a better preacher than everybody else. His YouTube channel got shut down
and they're still coming out to hear him. Even the haters, the Pharisees can't get enough of
John the Baptist's preaching. And then Jesus shows up. Same deal. They just follow him around,
all the works. Of course, Jesus, no one's going to out preach or out do his works. But, you know,
those that are filled with his spirit are going to be likewise. When Peter comes into town,
when Paul comes into town, you see the works being done and the works is confirming and establishing.
You know, you know, a pastor, a young pastor needs to allow God to establish him before he gets a
little too big for his britches. When you do something for God, you know, even a new, you come
to our church, why don't you become a successful soul winner for a while before you think you're
hot stuff? Why don't you do something? Why don't you actually prove that you're a godly Christian
before you act like you're so hot stuff? You're such a great pastor. Well, you know, if you're
a great pastor, then you don't even need anybody to tell you. It's kind of like the Proverbs 31
woman. You say like, why is my husband not complimenting me? Well, what about the works?
Because the woman that's doing the great works will be complimented, period. The person doing
great works for God will be complimented, period. If you're doing great works at your job, you will
be complimented, period, because it's about the works. And we're here because of the works. Look
at Hebrews chapter 13 verse 7. The Bible says, "Remember them which have the rule over you,
who have spoken unto you the word of God, whose faith follow, considering the end of their
conversation." Hey, follow the people that you considered like, hey, I want to follow these works.
I'm looking at what this guy is doing, and I want to do likewise. Go to John chapter 14,
go to John chapter number 14. And, you know, you could argue it sounds like bandwagon Christianity,
but honestly, like, I can't see how that's wrong. I mean, why would you not want to join in with the
movement of God that's doing great things for God? Why would you not want to be a part of the church
that's growing, not shrinking? Why would you not want to be a part of the church that's doing more
soul-winning, not less soul-winning? Why would you want to go to the church that's never going
to be protested versus the church that you never know? Why do you want to go to the church that's
never going to make a step on anybody's toes, not preach anything that's going to challenge you,
you're not going to grow, that basically says, "Hey, you want to learn that? Go to Bible college."
No, I want to go to the church that says, "You don't need Bible college. I'll teach you that."
No, I want to go to the church where, hey, they're encouraging people to have babies,
physically and spiritually. Hey, I want to go to a church where they're encouraging women to dress
like women and to dress like godly ladies and not have to show up at church where there's some
woman dressed like a hoochie mama that I have to kind of try and not look at while I'm trying to
worship god. I don't want to have to go to church and fight the idea of a whore sitting there in
church that I have to try and disguise my eyes on from and where my wife's like looking at me
where I'm looking. You know what I know, I'm like, I'm just, I'm just like trying to be like praise
the lord, praise the lord, good night. So I want to go to church. I want to go to church where men
have a gun on their side of their hip. I want to go to a church where men actually talk and act like
men. I don't want to be around a bunch of lisping effeminate weirdos. I don't want to go to a church
where it's all about school and the college and all this other stuff. I want to go to church where
it's about the Bahamas and Philippines and Shreveport and Lancaster and South Dallas and preaching the
gospel of the lord Jesus Christ. I want to go to a church where evangelist comes up and doesn't tell
me about his missionary trip to Israel. He tells me about my his missionary trip to the Philippines
where he actually got people saved. We'll pray that Alfonso will come to church one day. Now it's like
brother Duncan's like hey I got 4 000 Alfonso's saved. You know what I mean? That's the kind of
church I want to go to. You say well I don't know I don't know if I can believe you pastor Shelley.
Okay well what does the bible say? Look at verse 10. "Believest thou not that I am in the father
and the father in me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself but the father
that dwells in me he doeth works. Believe me that I am the father and the father in me or else
believe me for the very works sake." Hey if you don't like me you don't like my face you don't
like my sermons well okay put all that aside. "Believe said fast baptist church for the works
sake." How can you deny what God has done? How can you deny what the Lord is doing here and the
works that are being accomplished here? You know what you should believe me for the works sake.
You say like hey was it a good thing that pastor Anderson came and helped this church and appointed
a pastor and we moved on? Well I know it was because of the works sake. You know when you
don't know what's the right decision you're going to find out eventually because of the works sake.
You say hey what kind of minister do I want to follow? Well look at their works.
What kind of works is that guy doing and that's the kind of guy that you should follow. That's
the kind of pastor and mentor that you want. I don't want to go somewhere where the works
aren't being accomplished because let me tell you something then the spirit of God is not flowing
there because wherever the spirit of God is flowing works will be accomplished and we can't
always judge a church just by well they have a lot of attendance that isn't the only thing
we're measuring here we're measuring at the works have you seen the soul winning numbers though
because hey if our church goes if our church cuts down to half but we get more people saved
i'm going to say praise god because we need the room anyways okay it's not about that you know
i don't want to have a thousand people and 10 people going soul winning i'd rather have 50
people and 50 people going soul winning you know what i mean i'm not praying for god to send me
church members i'm praying for god to send me laborers you know why laborers you know why
god's asking for labors because it's about the works we are a church about works here that's
why people get plugged in you know people hold their nose at the hard preaching for the works
people come to a soul winning church for the works they'll say well i don't really agree with the
sodomite deception but i'm going to go for the soul winning and then eventually they're wearing
the shirt all right because they went soul winning and they ran into those people and they're like
wow they hate the gospel every single time is there a movie that explains us here you go
oh they're protesting us is there maybe they explain it lgbt terrace here you go is there
is there something that explains why king james only churches are doing way more than everybody
else yeah here's the preserved bible watch it say how do you know the king james is better than the
other ones the works how do you know what preacher what pastor what evangelist what person it's the
works folks hey here's here's a good application i didn't think about it how do you know what person
you want to marry marry someone that has some works and wants to work i don't want to be in
a relationship where they're not going to work because you know what marriage is work go to first
thessalonians chapter number five hey why did you believe jesus the best preacher to ever preach
never man spake like this man spake his works how can you argue with the works how can you disagree
with the works that are being done and let me tell you something when you see a church just thriving
in the works you do not want to be on their bad list it is just is a fool's errand you are just
kicking against the pricks and you might be a prick yourself all right look at 1st Thessalonians
5 verse 13 and to esteem them notice oh let's do verse 12 too and we beseech you brethren and know
them which labor which labor which labor among you and are over you in the lord and admonish you
to esteem them very highly in love for their works sake and be at peace among yourselves
you know why i love pastor anderson because of his works you want to know i love
pastor mahia because of his works you want to know i love pastor amenez because of his works
when i know i love pastor thompson because of his works and you know some of the young guys some of
the newer pastors you know i'll end up loving them because of their works you know i love
pastor matthew stuckey because of his works how can you hate that guy when he is just
tearing it up in the philippines i mean he's starting churches in poland you know these
europeans think they're so much better than everybody else but you got somebody in the
philippines starting a church in poland because you can't get the job done because it's about
the works you know i love evangelister bannock you know why we're celebrating him because of the
works if he came back and said i got 4.13 people saved 3.14 pi day we probably wouldn't have a
barbecue bash we'd be like yeah maybe you need to ride the bench right i mean what's the point of
us spending money on a guy that's going to go out there to one of the most receptive places in the
world and do nothing and accomplish nothing look it's all about the works well but he has such a
sweet spirit you know i'm not paying for sweet spirits i don't know if you've met me before but
it's not it's not how i play go to revelation we'll finish when you see a pastor though that's not
doing what i'm saying and you know the bible says i hate the work of them that turn aside
it shall not cleave to me you know when you see a pastor not doing this you know i don't have good
feelings towards that person we should love the pastors for their works and we should hate the
work of them that turn aside you know i'm not excited about that i don't like that what is
turning aside the disgruntled railing backbiting people that just want to attack the work of god
you know those are evil people and you should look at their church and you'll notice things you'll
notice that their church is filled with unhappy marriages you'll notice that they have bossy wives
in their church you'll notice they have unruly wives in their church you'll notice that their
church members are running their mouths online all the time and are unruly have no respect for
authority no respect for pastors you'll notice that they're not doing more soul winning they're
doing less soul winning there are people that were pastors that were friends of ours pastors of the
new ib when they leave they do less soul winning not doing more doing less they're not skilled in
soul winning either you go to their soul winning marathon you go with their soul winners they're
weak ineffective they don't know what they're doing they're not good at soul winning they're
not very skilled they have goofy doctrine they teach you that railing is not really railing
and they make it meaningless they say that women should be teachers they tell you that hey if you
preach the right gospel but then you sin that's preaching a false gospel and they put a wet
blanket on soul winning and tell you to not go soul winning look at the jobs of the people in
their church and you say you say like what does that mean i feel like oh you just you just care
about money no but here's the thing i know in america if you're a hard worker you'll have good
jobs you have skilled jobs when everybody in the church has some kind of a lazy apathetic unskilled
job it's coming from the preaching folks i'm just gonna say it i'm sorry if you don't like that
point but it's fact they're friends with heretics they don't take bold stands they're not preaching
really hard sermons on fags they're not preaching hard sermons on jews they're not preaching hard
sermons on king james onlyism and you know what they don't have a big faith they also
don't appeal to intellect they don't make sound arguments for their preaching and you know what
they don't appeal to authority either but let me tell you something that is not the type of
church you want to go to why because of the works i don't even you could insert any personality any
person any any like prior stat sheet they had it doesn't matter if this is the works that they're
producing i want nothing to do with that church and if you you insert another guy i don't care
how rough around the edges he is i don't care the sound of his voice i don't care about any of these
carnal things show me the works and that's the kind of guy i want why because it's about the works
it's all about the works what is revelation two it's a church it's written to seven churches which
are in asia what does it just say look at verse two i know thy works look at verse number five
remember therefore from whence thou art fallen and repent and do the first works look at verse
nine i know thy works look at verse 13 i know thy works look at verse 19 i know thy works and charity
and service and faith and patience and thy works hey i just want to remind you again it's about
the works and i know your works and then i know your works too verse 23 look at the end of this
and i will give unto every one of you according to your works look at verse 26 i need that
overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end to him will i give power over the nations look at
chapter three verse one i know thy works look at verse two for i have not found thy works perfect
before god look at verse eight i know thy works look at verse 15 i know thy works man i feel like
i'm noticing a pattern that when god's judging a church how does he judge a church works works
works works works faith without works is dead and you know there's a lot of dead churches a day
because they don't have works and we it's something that we need to make sure that we're taking care
of now look you can be dead and be in heaven i mean how many people have died are in heaven
lots millions millions of people are dead and in heaven but you know how much they're accomplishing
on the earth right now zero and christians who are saved but they're not doing anything they're
effectively the same as a dead person that's what the bible means faith that works is dead
it's just saying hey if you don't do any works well you're effectively a net zero you just do
don't do anything so hey you're not helping and what's what's the main thing that we need to do
what is james two really driving at we need to have works add to your faith works patience you
know all these other things and we you know of course the first works is super important
because in verse five of chapter two he's saying hey if you don't even have the first works you're
just done anyways i don't even care there's a lot of work to church we never ever want to leave the
first works the first love which is soul winning which is preaching the gospel that's what really
matters at the end of the day the people that we drag with us to heaven look at verse 11 of chapter
three this is the last thing i'm going to say behold i come quickly hold that fast which thou
hast that no man take thy crown let me tell you something if you are with us right now if you are
steadfast right now you are working towards a crown that only one person can take away from you
there's only one person and look why would i want to go through so much work so much so much drama
so much strife already to have been getting this crown to then quit later you know and you know i
don't know if i can believe you pastor shelly well believe me for the work's sake i mean have you seen
what our church has been accomplishing have you been seeing the spirit that god has been look the
spirit in this church has never been better i i want to talk about the emotional well-being tonight
and i want to talk more about that but just if you just look at the just the numbers and the works
something's happening here and something special this church is special i i feel like i have a
great privilege to be the pastor of this church and i love you guys so much you know why i love
you guys so much because of the works if i was pastoring a bunch of carnal jerks that wouldn't
go soul winning i wouldn't have nearly as much love it wouldn't it wouldn't be so much of an honor
to pastor that kind of a church it's an honor to pastor a church that's zealous of good works
it's an honor to pastor a church that takes sacrifice of the time money effort family job
and everything to preach the gospel and get people saved and you know what you know and i know the
people in this room are special because of the works that they want to accomplish let us not
stop it's all about the works and you know what when we see people that are doing great works for
god you better love them and this is what i know people that don't love pastor anderson don't love
god people that don't love pastor me here don't love god people that don't love pastor amenas
don't love god people that don't love pastor thompson don't love god people that don't love
pastor stuckey don't love god and you know what if you don't love me you don't love god either
and let me tell you something there's not some like magical old ib guy out here doing so many
works and i don't like him if you can find me someone doing great works i guarantee i love
that person because i love the works i love the things of god i want them to be greatly
accomplished and you know we should have great camaraderie with people that are doing the works
of god whether you like their face their personality where they're at it doesn't matter
just like our church don't get so fixated on everybody's personality and looks and all the
other stuff just love the people in this room for their works because it's just all about the works
and when you notice Gehazi's out there that don't have the works stay far away from them you don't
want to get leprosy either those in prayer thank you heavenly father so much for giving us just a
great litmus test that we can just see clearly the work of God being done because of the works
thank you for using our church to do so many special things in the last six years
thank you so much for evangelists or bannock and men that are willing to sacrifice to do great works
we know that being a pastor is a great work thank you for giving me an opportunity to pastor this
church I pray that you would help motivate me to be an example of working I pray that you would help
our soul winning captains to be an example of working I pray that you would help our
soul winners to do great works and I pray that we would never lose sight of what makes this
church special and that's the works and I pray that we give you all the honor and glory for
those works and in Jesus name we pray amen in closing let's go to song number 408 song number
408 t to christ number 408