Okay.
John 3.
7.
In the first half of that.
And in half that is the song 312, watermelon and apples.
Okay?
Okay.
I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.
Though none go with me, still I will follow.
No turning back, no turning back.
The world behind me, the cross before me.
No turning back, no turning back.
Good singing, let's have a word of prayer.
Lord, thank you so much for this day and the opportunity to be gathered in your house.
I pray that you bless every aspect of this service, and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
All right, for our second song, we will go to song 324, Draw Me Nearer.
324, Draw Me Nearer.
Song 324, Draw Me Nearer.
I am thine, O Lord, I have heard Thy voice and it told Thy love to me.
But I long to rise in the arms of faith and be closer drawn to Thee.
Draw me nearer, nearer blessed Lord, to the cross where Thou hast done.
Draw me nearer, nearer, nearer blessed Lord, to Thy precious beating sign.
Consecrate me now to Thy service, Lord, by the power of grace divine.
Let my soul look up with a steadfast hope and my will be lost in Thine.
Draw me nearer, nearer blessed Lord, to the cross where Thou hast done.
Draw me nearer, nearer, nearer blessed Lord, to Thy precious beating sign.
O the pure delight of a single hour, that before Thy throne I spend.
When I kneel in prayer and with Thee my God, I commune with friend and friend.
Draw me nearer, nearer blessed Lord, to the cross where Thou hast done.
Draw me nearer, nearer, nearer blessed Lord, to Thy precious beating sign.
There are depths of love that I cannot know till I cross the narrow sea.
There are heights of joy that I may not reach till I rest in peace with Thee.
Draw me nearer, nearer blessed Lord, to the cross where Thou hast done.
Draw me nearer, nearer, nearer blessed Lord, to Thy precious beating sign.
On the front, we have our Bible memory passage, Psalms 148. We're on verse number 4.
If you're able to memorize the entire chapter, you can receive a special prize.
And if you're able to quote just this verse, if you're 18 years or younger,
and you're able to quote this verse of the week and you come back on Wednesday,
you can collect either an ice cream or some candy from our dish as a special prize and a treat there.
On the inside, we have our service times and soul winning times.
We have three English services every single week, 10.30, 5.30 on Sundays,
and then 7 p.m. on Wednesdays, we have our Bible study.
We're in Genesis, and it's a lot of fun going through the book of Genesis,
so I'd encourage you to show up.
We also have a Spanish service on Sundays at 4.30.
We have several church-wide soul winning times. They meet here at the building.
And then we have some regional soul winning times throughout the entire Dallas-Fort area.
And so if you'd like to participate, you can contact one of those leaders
or just show up at the building at one of the church-wide soul winning times.
Also, we have on the right our list of expecting ladies,
and so if you'll continue to keep them in your prayers.
Also, we have a large prayer list there.
If you have any other prayer requests that you would like to add to our bulletin
or you'd like some prayer for, you can always submit those to our email,
or you can fill out one of our communication cards.
If you're a visitor, we'd like for you to fill out a communication card
just so we have your information, and you can just slip that into the offering plate.
And then also on the back, we have a couple of events to mention.
September 11th, we have the Shreveport, Louisiana Soul Winning Marathon.
And there is a sign-up sheet over here on the cabinet,
so if you are planning on participating, please fill that out.
That way we have a pretty accurate count of who's going to be attending,
who's planning on coming to this thing to Shreveport.
All right, so we're going to get more hands up after the sermon this morning.
And then also we have an event in Houston, Texas on September 25th.
It's the third annual False Bible Burning.
And so we take fake Bibles that have corrupted the Word of God,
and we dispose of them, and we collect those throughout the year.
So when we go Soul Winning, we'll try to replace people's NIV, HIV with a King James Bible,
and basically we take those and we dispose of them annually.
And it's just a good reminder, you know, typically I show a lot of different verses
where they've corrupted, changed, and modified the text,
so as a reminder of why we use a King James Bible.
And we want our kids to, you know, grow up knowing why we use a King James Bible,
not that just we do.
Also we have October 2nd, a false swap.
Ms. Natasha Zermano is helping organize that.
Basically if you have items that are of value that you no longer want,
you're trying to declutter, you can just bring those by the church,
and basically just if there's something that you want, you can grab.
If you want to donate something, you don't have to donate to participate either.
You could just show up if you would like to just see if there's anything of value that you need.
And a lot of people have gotten some really good stuff over the years,
so I'd encourage you to just participate if you'd like to.
October 6th, there is the Fire Breathing Baptist Fellowship.
And so we're trying to finalize our schedule on this.
A lot of great stuff that's going to be events.
We're going to have the ice skating again this year,
and we're going to have a kids spelling bee on Saturday.
We'll have sewing times, we're going to have a singles event,
and it's going to be fun.
So I'm excited about all the events that we're going to have.
We have some guest preachers.
We have Pastor Aaron Thompson from Sure Foundation Baptist Church
who's going to be preaching for us.
Pastor Bruce Mejia from First Works Baptist Church in LA.
We have Pastor Roger Jimenez from Verity Baptist Church who's going to be preaching for us.
And then Pastor David Berzins from Stronghold Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia.
And so it's going to be a lot of great preaching.
And so I'd really encourage you, if you can be a participant, to show up.
We're going to pack this building out, and it's going to be a lot of fun.
On November 13th, there's also another sewing marathon in Oklahoma City.
And so we have a church playing up there, and we'll be going soul winning.
Oklahoma City is a really receptive area to go soul winning in as well,
and so I'd really encourage you. It's not that far.
It's about the same. It's like three hours to Shreveport.
If you're just heading east, it's about three hours north if you go into Oklahoma City.
And so it's really reasonable. Go up there, make a day trip out of it.
And so I'd really encourage you to participate if you can.
And also about four hours south is Houston.
So we're just surrounding the whole area.
We've just got to find somewhere west. I don't know what's west of us for it.
Maybe Abilene or something.
But that's pretty much all I had for announcements at this time.
Let's go to our third song for this morning.
400, or, sorry, I don't know which one it is. 124.
On 124, God will take care of you.
Song 124, God will take care of you.
Be not dismayed, whatever be time, God will take care of you.
Beneath his wings, O Lord of Thine, God will take care of you.
God will take care of you, through every day, O all the way.
He will take care of you, God will take care of you.
Through days of toil and hard to fail, God will take care of you.
When dangers fierce your path will sail, God will take care of you.
God will take care of you, through every day, O all the way.
He will take care of you, God will take care of you.
All you may need He will provide, God will take care of you.
Nothing you ask will be denied, God will take care of you.
God will take care of you, through every day, O all the way.
He will take care of you, God will take care of you.
No matter what will be the test, God will take care of you.
The merry one upon his breast, God will take care of you.
God will take care of you, through every day, O all the way.
He will take care of you, God will take care of you.
Proverbs 11, the Bible reads,
A false balance is abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight.
When pride cometh, then cometh shame, but with the lowly is wisdom.
The integrity of the upright shall guide them, but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them.
Richest profit not in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivereth from death.
The righteousness of the perfect shall direct his way, but the wicked shall fall by his own wickedness.
The righteousness of the upright shall deliver them, but transgressors shall be taken in their own naughtiness.
When a wicked man dieth, his expectation shall perish, and the hope of unjust men perisheth.
The righteous is delivered out of trouble, and the wicked cometh in his stead.
In hypocrite with his mouth destroyeth his neighbor, but through knowledge shall the just be delivered.
When it goeth well with the righteous, the city rejoiceth, and when the wicked perish, there is shouting.
By the blessing of the upright, the city is exalted, but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked.
He that is void of wisdom despiseth his neighbor, but a man of understanding holdeth his peace.
A talebearer revealeth secrets, but he that is of a faithful spirit concealeth the matter.
Where no counsel is, the people fall, but in the multitude of counselors there is safety.
He that is surety for a stranger shall smart forth, and he that hateth suretyship is sure.
A gracious woman retaineth honor, and strong men retain riches.
The merciful man doeth good to his own soul, but he that is cruel troubleth his own flesh.
The wicked worketh a deceitful work, but to him that soweth righteousness shall be a sure reward.
As righteousness tendeth to life, so he that pursueth evil pursueth it to his own death.
They that are of a froward heart are abomination to the Lord, but such as are upright in their way are his delight.
Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished, but the seed of the righteous shall be delivered.
As a jewel of gold and a swine snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion.
The desire of the righteous is only good, but the expectation of the wicked is wrath.
There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth, and there is that withholdeth more than his meat, but attendeth to poverty.
The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.
He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him, but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it.
He that diligently seeketh good procureth favor, but he that seeketh mischief, it shall come unto him.
He that trusteth in his riches shall fall, but the righteous shall flourish as a branch.
He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind, and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart.
The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he that winneth souls is wise.
Behold, the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth, much more the wicked and the sinner.
Let's pray.
Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you for your steadfast Baptist Church.
I pray you would fill Pastor Shelley with your spirit and help us to go soul winning later on today.
And please, Lord, help us be edified that we might glorify and honor you in the coming days and weeks.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Amen.
Let's look back at verse number 30 where the Bible reads,
The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he that winneth souls is wise.
And so the Bible actually uses this phrase of winning souls in the Word of God.
And it talks about someone who does this is very wise.
And there's a term that we use in our church, a really regular term.
It's called soul winning.
And I would say that we derive that term from this verse here
where it talks about a person who's winning souls.
And notice that the Bible describes them as being very wise.
It's the fruit of the righteous.
And it's talking about being a tree of life.
Now when we talk about the word fruit and the Word of God, fruit by itself is just the product of something.
You have to let the context decide what that fruit is.
And so a fruit of an apple tree would be apples, right?
That's pretty simple to understand.
You know, a vine that's a watermelon vine, its fruit is watermelon, right?
So the fruit is going to constantly be something different depending on the context.
In this context, what would be the fruit of the righteous?
Well, a righteous person is going to produce another righteous person.
Now, you say, well, how do you produce a righteous person?
That's through preaching the Word of God, preaching the gospel, and getting someone saved
because no one is righteous in and of themselves.
You know, no one is perfect. No one is sinless in and of themselves.
But if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have His imputed righteousness upon you.
And that person is now righteous in the sight of God, not by works of righteousness which we have done,
but by His mercy He saved us.
And so that person that's now righteous, their fruit is going to also be producing another righteous person.
And it's going to be a tree of life. Meaning what?
That it's going to spread out. It's going to be bountiful.
And you're going to basically have this tree.
We talk about families. We talk about the family tree.
Well, the same exists spiritually. There really is a spiritual family tree.
And it traces our roots all the way back through the beginning of the Bible.
It goes all the way back through Jesus Christ. It goes all the way back through Father Abraham.
And again, we're descendants of Abraham spiritually regardless of our physical descendantry.
You know, it doesn't matter who your parents were physically.
If you were a child of Abraham according to the Bible, it's if you believed on the Lord Jesus Christ,
that now makes you His seed. That now makes you also an heir and you're a joint heir with Christ.
And so when it comes to soul winning, what people are doing is they're going out
and preaching the gospel to someone and winning their soul to Jesus Christ.
That's what's being referenced here. That's what the essence is.
And that's what we mean when we say soul winning.
That's what we do is we go out and we try to preach the gospel to someone that's not saved.
And we try to win them over. We try to convert them to Jesus Christ.
Go to Proverbs chapter 18 for a moment. Proverbs chapter number 18.
It's not a miracle necessarily as far as how you get someone saved.
Now the process is a miracle per se, but it's not like this special thing that gets someone saved.
It's just real practical. Someone shows up and they start talking to someone about the gospel
and they compel them to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and they believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's that simple. It's that easy. It's not something that's, you know, a mystery to try and figure out how someone gets saved.
It's really clear. It's really easy. It's someone that's saved goes and talks to someone who's not saved.
They preach them the gospel and they get them saved. That's what soul winning is in a nutshell.
You know, other words people would use would be proselytize. Okay, that's kind of a fancy word.
The Bible uses proselyte and talks about proselytes in the Bible, meaning it's someone that was converted.
You know, people talk about conversion, meaning taking someone that's not a believer in Jesus Christ
and converting them into believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. Taking someone who's not a disciple of Jesus Christ
and getting them to believe on him, now they're a proselyte, now they're a Christian.
Other words like evangelism. You know, what does it mean to evangelize?
It's someone that's going out and preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. What's the purpose?
To evangelize someone, meaning you turn them over, you convert them into the religion in which you are converting them to.
Preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, trying to compel them to be a Christian.
And, you know, we even have the Apostle Paul talking to Agrippa and he says,
Thou almost persuadest me to be a Christian. Meaning what? Paul was trying to evangelize him,
he was trying to proselytize him, he was trying to convert him, he was trying to win his soul, is what he was trying to do.
Because at the end of the day, every single person has a soul.
And that soul is either going to go to heaven or it's going to go to hell.
Now, other ways that this is described in the Bible is life and death.
You know, when it talks about in John chapter number 5, people are being, you know, passed from death unto life.
What is that really talking about? It's talking about from hell unto heaven.
Now, look what it says in Proverbs chapter 18 verse 21 now.
Death and life are in the power of the tongue and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.
So, notice the Bible tells you, you have a special power with your tongue.
You can either preach life or you can preach death.
And here's the thing, the world preaches a death message.
It's a death style. Broad is the way which leadeth to destruction and many there be which go in there at.
Because straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life and few there be that find it.
It's a narrow path unto life because that only path is Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.
But what you have to realize is you in your mouth, unless your tongue has been cut out,
you have the power of life and death in that tongue.
And you say, what is that power? It's preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Which is the only life, it's the only light that we have in this world.
Go to Acts chapter number 2, go to Acts chapter number 2.
And that's why the Bible is saying that you're a wise person if you're someone who would preach the gospel.
If you are someone that would win souls.
And I love the fact that if you think about Proverbs chapter 11 verse 30,
it's not just saying someone who preaches the gospel, okay?
It's saying someone who successfully preaches the gospel.
Because it's talking about he that winneth souls.
Meaning that it's not that great if you're going out and preaching and having no effect.
What's great is the actual converting of people.
What's great is actually winning someone to Christ, converting them, being compelling.
So it's not just enough to go out and preach a few verses of the Bible.
What you really should strive towards is actually going all the way and converting someone.
Taking someone that's not saved and being able to fully preach them the gospel,
doing a good job, being thorough, and doing everything that's necessary to end up winning that soul to Jesus Christ.
It's not like it's bad to preach the gospel at any point in time or preach a few verses.
But you don't want to be an ineffective soul winner.
You want to be a very effective soul winner.
You want to be someone that's actually converting people to Jesus Christ.
Now Acts chapter number 2, we're going to see an instance where people are going out
and they're preaching the gospel, they were filled with the Spirit,
and Peter ends up preaching a message,
and then it kind of full circle brings it back, the whole story in Acts chapter number 2.
That's in verse 41.
Notice how the Bible's wording it.
It's saying after they preached the gospel, what was the fruit of preaching the gospel?
They added unto them 3,000 souls.
You know what that's called? Winning souls.
Soul winning.
They added that 3,000 unto their group, and obviously God is there working with them.
Obviously they were filled with the Holy Spirit of God.
Obviously it's a spiritual transaction.
Someone who's not saved could never get someone saved because it's a spiritual transaction.
It goes from faith unto faith.
But what you have to realize is that there's fruit there that was accounted unto them.
They added 3,000 souls to their group by preaching the Word of God.
You say, how do you know that?
Well, look at the beginning of the verse.
Then they that gladly received His Word.
So what ended up adding them to their group?
The receiving of the Word.
So how does someone get saved?
You preached them the gospel, they received the gospel, and now you've won their soul.
It's that clear. It's that simple.
Yet a lot of churches, a lot of preachers, a lot of pastors, a lot of people, Christians today,
they really don't even do this at all.
Look at Acts chapter number 5, Acts chapter number 5.
And you'll see a lot of even independent fundamental Baptist churches scaling back on soul winning,
not doing soul winning, or they'll change it into a program like visitation,
or they'll change it into other types of programs that they have for outreach.
And look, I'm not down on outreach programs.
I'm not going to say that visitation's wrong.
I'm not going to say that bus ministries are wrong.
I'm not going to say that, hey, if you want to go stand on the street corner and scream the Word of God to the wind,
you know what? You can do that.
I don't know if I would say it's a sin necessarily, but it kind of seems very ineffective.
And notice the Bible said, he that win his souls is wise.
So if I go out and stand on the street corner and just scream at a bunch of people,
and I have no fruit from that, I can't call myself a soul winner then.
Really, I'm just a soul screamer or soul, you know, soul warner, maybe at best.
But, you know, I want to be a soul winner.
And it's a lot easier to win somebody to Christ when instead of just screaming at them with a bullhorn,
you just come up to them meekly and you just start a conversation.
You have a one-on-one encounter with someone where you show them out of the Scriptures.
You're patient with the person.
You know, it's a little bit more of an intimate setting.
It's not like this public just scream fest or something like that.
And what I've noticed is typically if you preach the gospel to a bunch of people just as a crowd,
usually they don't ever get it.
Usually it takes the one-on-one encounter.
It takes somebody sitting there and asking questions, kind of having a dialogue, kind of a conversation with somebody,
to end up actually converting them all the way, helping them realize their error,
helping them realize what the gospel is really teaching.
That's why we do soul winning.
We don't go out and scream on the street corner.
We're not rounding people up in a bus.
We're not, you know, just visiting people.
We're confronting people about the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And you'll hear this term, confrontational soul winning.
Now don't get confused about what this term means, okay?
Confrontational soul winning doesn't mean like we show up with a weapon in hand, you know,
and say like, you better believe, buddy.
You know, it's not Islam, okay?
We're not forcing people to become Christians.
And we're also not going to be like, you better be a Christian or I'm going to beat you up or something.
You know, we're not confronting people in that way.
Here's how you confront people.
If you were to die today, are you 100% sure you'd go to heaven?
What is that?
You're confronting them about their belief.
You're confronting them about what they're putting their trust in for Jesus Christ.
And to some degree, it's a little bit adversarial to some people, you know?
People will be like, I don't think you should ask that question.
Or how dare you come, you know, ask me that question.
Or, you know, I go to church but I don't think it's right for you to ask these type of questions.
Because they get a little bit offended by you asking them.
But here's the thing.
You know what?
I will offend everybody by asking that question.
Because if I don't care about you, then I would just let you go to hell.
And at the end of the day, we're supposed to confront people with the gospel because they're not going to come to you.
Let's just be honest.
I mean, who has someone ask them on a daily basis what it takes to get to heaven?
No one.
How about monthly?
No.
I mean, it's very rare.
It's very rare circumstances where you have people literally coming to you, asking you, trying to be proactive about how to go to heaven.
It's a rare circumstance.
And people say, oh, I'm a lifestyle evangelist where I just live such a godly life that people are lining up asking me how to go to heaven.
And it's just like, well, you're just so much more righteous than me and everybody I know.
Because everybody I know, and myself included, we never have people coming up and just falling on the ground and saying,
Pastor Shelley, what must I do to be saved?
You know what they do?
They say, you're a cult leader, you know.
The people that have the boldness enough to come and approach me, they're usually saying something negative about me.
They're not usually asking me how to go to heaven.
Okay.
That's why we have to take the gospel to them.
That's why we have to go out and preach the gospel.
And what's the example set by the first Christians, by the early disciples, the early apostles?
Well, Acts chapter 5, look at verse 42.
And daily in the temple and in every house they cease not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.
There's the thing.
A huge gathering of people would always come to the temple.
I mean, when you read the New Testament, they have hordes of people that are coming to the temple on a regular basis.
But notice, they didn't stop there.
They didn't say, well, we're only going to preach in these public arenas.
No, they also went to the houses.
They also went to where people live and confronted them on the gospel of Jesus Christ and came unto them and were telling them about the Lord Jesus Christ.
And you know, the apostle Paul, as he goes through his missionary journeys, they weren't, you know, necessarily saying like, hey, will you come preach at our synagogue, too?
No, he'd just show up and be like, hey, I'm here ready to preach you all a message.
I'm ready here to deliver the gospel of Jesus Christ.
They have a handful of experiences where people are praying and the Lord sends a messenger and they were directly seeking the Lord.
But that's few and far between.
The majority of the time, they're going out, they're being proactive about finding people and preaching in the gospel and teaching them about things that they have no idea about.
You know, the apostle Paul goes to Mars Hill and he's teaching unto them or preaching unto them the God, the unknown God.
They have a devotion to the unknown God and he's like, him I declare unto you.
And then he preaches them Jesus Christ and the resurrection and they get a lot of people saved.
Now, don't go into Matthew 28, go to Matthew 28.
I have three points this morning.
I kind of laid down a simple foundation for soul winning, okay?
What is soul winning?
Soul winning is just simply preaching the gospel with the goal of converting them to Christianity.
That is the purpose, that is the goal, that's what we're striving to do.
You know, when we have a soul winning time, we hand out invitations to our church.
But the goal is not to invite them to church.
That's just an icebreaker.
The goal is, if they're interested and they're not saved already, is to preach them the gospel and compel them to become saved.
Do believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and look, if they come to church, great, but that's not where we're going.
You know, a lot of times visitation, that's what visitation is.
Visitation is, hey, you've come to church a few times, we missed you, we want you to come back to church or we would like to see you.
And look, there's nothing wrong with that.
Hey, people bring gifts or they'll, you know, give them information or they'll sit down and they'll pray with them or they'll have a Bible study with them and they'll do other things.
That's great.
I'm all for you trying to help people, loving on people, talking to people.
But here's the thing, that's not a replacement for soul winning.
And you shouldn't substitute soul winning with fellowship.
You shouldn't substitute soul winning with any other activity.
You know, soul winning needs to be the forefront activity.
It needs to be the main activity of a church.
That's why when you literally open up the bulletin, right below service times is soul winning times.
I mean, and we emphasize that, we encourage that, and sometimes people get annoyed.
They're like, oh man, you guys constantly push the soul winning.
It's like, that's the whole essence of why we're here.
And how can you not realize that that is the duty that God has given us.
The duty of God is to preach the gospel.
That's point number one, is the duty.
Look, soul winning is a duty.
What is a duty?
It's a job.
It's a responsibility.
And you say, well, why is it a responsibility?
Because if we don't do it, no one else will.
No one else is going out and preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It's the church that's supposed to go out and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And, you know, they always want to talk about the Great Commission.
Well, what is the Great Commission?
Well, let's just look at it.
Matthew 28, verse 18.
And Jesus came and spake of them, saying,
All power is given unto me in heaven and earth.
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations.
So notice what is the first essence of the Great Commission,
is to go out and to teach all nations.
So if you're not going out and preaching the gospel,
if you're not going out and teaching the word of God,
then you've instantly failed at the whole purpose of preaching the gospel.
And you say, well, teach.
That's just anything in the Bible.
I think it does include everything in the Bible, number one, okay?
But the emphasis has to be the gospel specifically.
And let me explain to you why.
Because notice what the next phrase is.
Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.
Now here's the thing.
Can I baptize someone after that I've taught them that the world was created by a God?
If they're not saved?
No.
What if I show them that, you know, the earth is young.
It's young earth creationism.
Can I now baptize them?
No.
I could teach them all manner of things from the Bible,
but unless they're saved, I can't baptize them.
But notice, the whole essence here is to teach them what?
How to get saved.
So then I can follow the very next step, which is to literally baptize them.
So of course, the teach here has got to be emphasizing and stressing the gospel specifically.
This is going out and teaching every nation the gospel of Jesus Christ.
So then I can follow the very next step, which is to baptize them, okay?
And then what's the next after this?
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you,
and lo, I am with you all the way even to the end of the world.
Amen.
Now I don't think that's a coincidence of the order.
Notice it says teach, then baptize, and then notice teach all.
So when I go to the door, my goal is not to teach all.
My goal is to teach you the gospel.
Then it's to get you baptized, then to compel you to come to church,
and I'll teach you all the word of God, teach you everything that the Bible has to offer.
And that's the model that we should follow.
This is what Jesus said.
My Bible, it's red letters.
You know, I don't mind the red letter Bible because, you know, sometimes it'll help remind you.
This is not just in the Bible.
This is something that came out of Jesus' own mouth, okay?
Now go if you would to Mark chapter 16.
Let's go to another gospel of the New Testament and see how it ends.
What is the ending?
And usually the ending of a document is the call to action.
You know, if you're writing a document, any kind of good writing,
they'll say when you finish your writing, you need to have a call to action.
And that call to action is basically you've made a point.
You know, you have this great thesis statement.
You've proved why you need to do things.
Then you need to point people into the direction of where they're supposed to be headed.
And here's the thing.
We just went through the great thesis of the gospel.
What was it?
The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
So now Jesus is going to tell everybody, what's your call to action?
What's your job?
What's the whole point of this?
Well, Mark chapter 16, verse 15, and he said to them,
go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
It's that simple.
You're supposed to go.
And notice he doesn't say, call them down the aisle.
He says, go.
And look, I'm all for getting people saved in the church service.
But you know what?
Why don't we just have every single person in the church service
able to give them the gospel?
And then afterwards, they can go hog wild.
I mean, you know, we typically never have more visitors than members in the service.
So we have an ample army ready to preach the gospel and to get people saved.
And, you know, I, by myself, can't necessarily even talk to every visitor.
There's tons of times where people show up and we have 10, 12 visitors,
and they hit the door before I can even talk to them.
You know, it makes more sense is to have everybody ready to talk to them,
engage them, potentially preach them the gospel and get them saved.
You know, they don't have to get saved by me personally.
You know, I'm not, it's not the Pastor Shelley show.
And sometimes I kind of wonder if pastors, it kind of feeds their ego a little bit,
that they get all the glory for the altar call and they're getting everybody saved
rather than worrying about just making sure everybody gets saved.
Because if I call 30 people down to this aisle,
I can't get 30 people saved, you know, for sure in a short period of time
because I'd have to go to each one and kind of confirm and talk to them.
And if I just give this blanket thing,
most people aren't even paying attention.
Most people, it kind of goes all over their head.
They don't really get it.
And so it's a very ineffective method.
And you say, well, how do you know that?
Because I go out soul-winding every week
and I talk to people that have walked an aisle and they're not saved.
They pray to prayer and they're not saved.
They've talked, you know, they've gone to these services,
they've gone to church their whole life and they're not saved
because it's not an effective method, number one, typically.
Number two is because they just haven't had anybody explain it clearly.
They just had generic statements like, who wants to be on Team Jesus?
And it's like, who doesn't lift their hand on that?
You know, a Muslim could lift their hand on that.
Because, you know, if they have their version of Jesus,
they like Jesus, they just don't like the Jesus of the Bible.
But they have their prophet Jesus that they all like.
You know, Mormons, they want to be on Team Jesus.
You know, every Christian so-called wants to be on Team Jesus.
That's why, you know, they come down, they have the big numbers.
And they just get the same people saved every single week.
You know, it's funny, the church I grew up in, the main pastor there,
he said that he knows his dad isn't going to be in heaven
because his dad raised his hand to get saved every week.
And I'm like, that's how I know your dad's not saved.
And that's sad. It's not like I want him to not be saved.
But I'm just saying, like, if someone's trying to get saved every single week,
that indicates to me they don't understand how to get saved.
They don't understand the gospel of Jesus Christ then at that point.
They've turned it into a Catholic confessional booth.
They've turned it into some kind of a progressive thing
or some kind of a works-based thing or a continual renewing of themselves
or they have to stay right with God or something.
So they must not be saved because they're not trusting what Christ already did.
They're trusting themselves to be right with God every single week.
And so it's important that we, as a church, know how to preach the gospel
and not just the pastor, not just the preacher, every single person.
Man, woman, boy, child, all of us.
If you're saved, you can give the gospel.
I don't care if you're five years old, you can give the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so that's why it's important that we realize this is a duty.
This is the commission. What's a commission?
You're being told what to do.
And it is our duty as Christians to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It's not just for the pastor.
It's not just for the minister.
It's for every single person that's believed in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Go to Revelation chapter number two.
Why is our church emphasized soul winning?
Because it's the duty of God.
It is the duty of God.
And it boggles my mind how a church would not have this as a main emphasis of their ministry.
Because the Bible makes it clear that this is the most preeminent work.
It's the most important work.
It's, in fact, I would call it the first work.
And we have that described here in Revelation chapter two in verses number one through eight.
Look what it says.
Under the angel of the church of Ephesus write,
these things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand,
who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks,
I know thy works, and thy labor, and thy patience,
and thou thou canst not bear them which are evil,
and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not,
and hast found them liars, and hast borne, and hast patience.
And for my name's sake hast labored, and hast not fainted.
Nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.
Remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works,
or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.
So we have an epistle here written to the church of Ephesus, to the Ephesians,
and we have the Lord Jesus Christ himself saying, hey, you're doing a lot of work.
Hey, you guys are busy.
But there's a problem, because you stopped doing the most important work,
you stopped doing the first work, and because you've stopped doing the first work,
if you don't change, if you don't get back to the program of the first work,
you will no longer be a church, in my opinion.
Say, how do you get to that conclusion?
Well, notice he said he would remove their candlestick.
Well, go back just up to the top of chapter 1, verse 20.
Notice what it says in verse 20.
So notice a candlestick is a church.
A church is a candlestick.
Now, this makes perfect sense when you understand the picture that Jesus Christ is painting for us here, okay?
So if they're not doing the first works, he's going to remove the candlestick.
Now, let's say you were lighting up your house, and you had a candlestick,
and this candlestick, it would not hold a light.
I mean, every time you try to turn the light on, or you try to light it up, it does not light.
It's impossible to light it. It's broken.
What's the point of having the candlestick anymore?
You know what you're going to do? You're going to remove that candlestick,
and you're going to throw it away, trash it, or whatever, because it serves no purpose at this point.
The whole purpose of the candlestick was the light.
You know, show light and have the light emanate, okay?
Now, again, go to Matthew, chapter number 5.
What is this first work, then? What is this light?
Well, we know very clearly that the light of the world is Jesus, okay?
And he came to give a light unto all men. What was that light?
It was the gospel of Jesus Christ.
That's the light that shineth in the whole world is the gospel light.
And so, here's the thing. When a church stops preaching the gospel,
when a church is not emanating the clear gospel of Jesus Christ, that clear, bright light,
then it serves no purpose anymore. It's now just a social club.
And we see most churches today are a social club.
Most churches, they are a candlestick with no light on it.
And for a couple reasons. Number one, because the majority of churches in this world aren't even saved.
They don't even have the gospel, so therefore it's impossible for them to have that light.
They have a strange light or something, okay? They're faking it.
But then, there's still a lot of churches that have the right gospel.
You know, the people in there are saved. They're even doing a lot of work for Jesus Christ.
It's not like they're just lazy. It's not like they're derelict.
This is a church at Ephesus. Didn't he commend them on being very hardworking?
I mean, they're busy. They're hardworking. They have good things going on.
But because they're not preaching the gospel, Jesus doesn't even consider them a church. Think about that.
You know, to me, if I'm going to a church and they're not preaching the gospel,
I feel like I'm in danger of not even being right with God because I'm not even going to church.
I mean, what's the difference between me joining some, you know, boy and girls club downtown
where we all get together and we have fellowship with one another and we help people and we do good
and a church who doesn't preach the gospel and just helps people and gets together and has a good time.
What's the difference? You know, the difference should be the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The difference should be the purpose is going out and getting people saved.
And when a church stops doing that, when a church is no longer getting anybody saved,
when a church is no longer emphasizing the first works, notice Christ is saying,
well, you're just a social club now. There's no point here.
So at that point, they're not even going to church. Think about that.
They think they're going to church, but they're not.
You know, some people say, oh, we're two or three gathered together. That's church.
And so they say, we're having church right now.
You know, they'll be sitting in their pajamas in their living room.
You walk up to them, this is church right now.
They're deceived in their mind. They are not going to church.
They're forsaking church. They're forsaking the assembling of their selves together.
And look, if I assemble myself with a bunch of people from our church and we go play basketball,
that's not church. And you say, what's missing? The gospel.
You know, we're not gathered together to have that meeting.
You know, it's not just being around other saved people that makes it church.
It's that we're called together to go out and preach the gospel.
We have this commission. We have this duty of God that we're fulfilling. Otherwise, it's not a church.
And look, there's other requirements to make it a church, but that's one of the requirements.
If you want to be a church, you must be preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Otherwise, according to Jesus, you're disqualified from being even a church.
Obviously, he gives them a space to repent.
I guess it's possible that a church could be in a situation where they were and they're kind of backslidden.
And they're still kind of in a church, but he's saying, like, you better fix it.
Because if you don't fix it, then eventually I'm not even going to consider you a church anymore.
You're just going to be dead. You're just going to basically have a name that you live, but you're really just dead.
Matthew, chapter number 5, let me prove this a little bit further to you. Look at verse 13.
Hear the salt of the earth, but at the salt of loss of savor, wherewith shall it be salted?
It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and to be trodden underfoot of men.
Notice again the same type of language. He's saying that you are the salt.
Now, what does salt do? It preserves things.
You put salt on meat to have the shelf life last longer.
Anything that's food in your house that's not refrigerated, it's because it's full of salt.
Whether that be soups, whether that be canned goods.
I mean, your canned vegetables, you know why they can last so long? Salt.
You know why the soup can last so long? Salt.
You know why the meat can last? I mean, there's certain meats that aren't even refrigerated.
Palami, pepperoni, a lot of these other type of deli meats that it can just sit out for long periods of time.
And it's because of a high concentration of salt and sodium in them that preserves them.
And we are that salt.
But if, you know what, we end up missing out on our purpose, what was the purpose of salt to preserve, right?
So if our purpose is to preach the gospel, if we're not doing that purpose anymore, notice how Jesus Christ classifies you and me, good for nothing.
Just like a church, they could have every work. They could have the greatest choir, the greatest Sunday school programs.
They could be busting at the seams. They could have thousands of people showing up.
But if they're not preaching the gospel, you know what Jesus Christ says to them? You're good for nothing.
Isn't that extreme? That's why it's important to make sure you're going to a church that's emphasizing the first works, isn't it?
Verse number 14, you're the light of the world.
A city that is set on the hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick.
And it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
So notice he's saying, you are that light. So I want to put you on a candlestick.
I want that candlestick to be lit up, otherwise it's meaningless.
What would be the point of taking good, saved Christians and putting them in a church that's not going to then tell them to go out soul winning?
You're basically hiding it under a bushel.
Jesus is going to say, you know what, I want to take that person out and I want to put them on a candlestick somewhere.
I want them to find a candlestick and get on top of it so they can start lighting the world up with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Look, I've been to independent fundamental Baptist churches that are running 500 plus on Sunday morning.
500 plus on Sunday morning and they would have hundreds of soul winners.
If the pastor would just get up and say, we're going soul winning on Saturday at 10 show up.
This is our duty. This is what God said to do.
But typically how the sermons end is they would have a great lead up to basically plug soul winning, but because they don't have the program, it's just like occupy.
You know, you're like, what does that even mean?
Occupy till he come.
You know, it's a biblical phrase, but when you have no practical call to action, then the people just don't know what to do.
And you say, I don't know if you're telling the truth here.
Well, here's the thing.
They decided to have a visitation day one time where people would go out and hang flyers, but not preach the gospel.
And they had like 150 people show up to hang door hangers.
And they even had, they had a change of pastor at one point and they had multiple people from the congregation asking questions about soul winning.
Making it clear, like they wanted to go.
They knew about it.
They understood it's important.
But when you just don't have someone like compelling you, you don't have it coming from the, from the top down, you know, a lot of times people just won't do it.
You kind of need the prodding.
You kind of need the provoking and people like, oh, you're always provoking us to go soul winning.
That's because I want you to go.
That's because that's the whole goal is to try and encourage and provoke people to go out soul winning.
Why feel bad for not soul winning?
Good.
I mean, if you have a job and you're not doing your job, isn't the boss supposed to make you feel bad for not doing your job?
Right?
I mean, wouldn't that, if you go to the workplace and you're not doing whatever it is that you're supposed to be doing, you know, maybe you're a salesman and it's like, how many cells do you have this year?
Zero.
You're going to fix that?
Do you make any calls?
No, I haven't gone and called on any customers.
Have you spoke to anybody?
Nope, I didn't speak to anybody.
I'm waiting for them to come to me.
I'm a lifestyle salesman.
I just walk out into the world and I just expect them to just get down on their knees and be like, I need to buy a car.
Will you sell me a car right now?
It's like, no, you have to go out and find the customer.
You have to go and talk to them and engage with them.
It's not going to happen by some miracle, okay?
It's a real practical thing, just like the gospel.
You know, we don't really get people saved by this random miracle of like, man, I was just sitting at my house and then somehow the ceiling, my roof just popped open.
A guy fell down in my lap and asked me how to get saved.
Yeah, it might have happened with Jesus one time, but you know, it's like that's not how you're going to get people saved.
You have to actually go out and find them and practically sit them down, explain them the verses and preach them the gospel and compel them to get saved.
That's how it works.
Look what he says in the next verse.
Verse 16, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
Now here's the thing.
Some things that we do as a Christian, we're not supposed to go around bragging about it or telling people that we're doing it.
You know, the Bible talks about when you give your alms to do it in secret, not let your left hand know what your right hand doeth.
But when it comes to soul winning, you know, as a church, it's supposed to be a public program.
It's supposed to be something that we let people know about, that we're encouraging people to show up at, we're telling people let's go out and let's go here and we're going to go get people saved.
And if, you know, sometimes people even get mad, they're like, oh, well, you talk about how many people got saved.
But you know what? God does.
Didn't we read in Acts chapter 2 they had 3,000 people saved in one day?
If it's such a sin to know how many people got saved, then why is God telling everybody how many people got saved that day?
He's trying to tell you how many people got saved to show you that it works.
Preaching the gospel works.
When you have a bunch, and look, they had great numbers.
You have 120 soul winners, 3,000 salvations, that's a good ratio.
That means it must have worked.
And you know what it also means?
It means that it doesn't take hours to get someone saved.
Because the math doesn't work.
If you have 120 people preaching the gospel on one day and you get 3,000 people saved,
you know what that tells me?
You can get someone saved pretty quick.
If you start thinking about the math on that, if you start realizing that it's actually a pretty quick process to get someone saved,
it's just you go out and you preach the gospel.
Now, it's not one minute.
You know, I literally saw this thing called SWAT or something.
It was like soul winning and action training or something.
I don't know what it's called.
It's something weird.
And these people would literally walk up to someone and say like, do you believe in Jesus?
It was just some black ladies, okay?
They're just like, do you believe in Jesus?
And they're like, no.
And they're like, well, just call upon his name and you're saved.
You want to pray a prayer right now?
And they would just pray and they would just declare them saved in 60 seconds or less.
And I'm just like, that's not soul winning.
Now, you might have been real enthusiastic.
That's great.
Hey, you're confronting people.
That's great.
You know what?
You need to actually sit there and explain what it really means to believe in Jesus Christ.
Hey, you're a sinner.
You deserve hell.
You got to believe.
You can't lose it.
And you got to change everything you've ever believed before.
You got to actually repent of whatever you were believing in and believe only in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Did you change your mind?
Because, you know, I've seen some people, they walk up to a Catholic and they're like, do you believe Jesus, you know, died on the cross for your sins?
They're like, yeah.
Do you believe that we're sinners?
Yeah.
Do you believe that Jesus, you know, says all you have to do is believe to be saved?
And they're like, sure.
You're like, do you want to pray?
And they're like, yeah.
And they're like, oh, I got him saved.
But if you actually ask that person, are you still Catholic?
They would be like, yeah.
And do you still believe in works or necessary salvation?
They'd be like, yeah.
It's like you have to actually talk to that Catholic and say, now what you believed before is by works.
I'm saying by faith.
Which one do you believe?
And then they have to choose.
They have to say, oh, actually I'm going to choose life and not death anymore.
I'm going to choose faith alone and not the Catholic Church.
That's why when I talk to a Catholic every single time, before I pray with him, I ask him this question.
I say, do you believe what the Catholic Church teaches or what I showed you from the Bible?
Because I'm not going to sit here and just pray with people just to pray with people.
I'm not just trying to come back and just say, I got a thousand people saved today.
You know, I would rather have one person genuinely saved than a thousand people that I'm not sure about.
Because who cares, you know, if you're just going out and just screaming at people about Jesus
and just praying a prayer with them per se.
Look, Catholics pray with people all the time.
Call confession.
A Catholic's ready to pray all the time.
I've gone out and given blankets to people just for free, just as like community service type thing or whatever,
just going out and blessing people.
And I said, hey, can we pray with you?
And you know what percentage of people wanted to pray with us?
One hundred percent.
I mean, you say, hey, here's a free gift.
Can I pray with you?
And they say yes every single time.
But you know what percentage of people want to get saved?
Not a hundred percent.
Okay, so that's why you have to realize it's not hard to convince someone to pray with you.
What's hard is to convince someone to stop trusting in themselves, to humble themselves,
and to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
So that's why we want to have the balance of it doesn't take hours, but it takes more than a minute.
Okay, hey, it's going to be, you know, a sweet spot.
Somewhere in that, well, fifteen, twenty minute range depending on how receptive they are,
how clear you are at communicating things.
You know, there's going to be a few factors there.
If it's taking you multiple hours, there's probably something wrong.
And if you thought you think you got someone saved in one minute or two minutes,
there's something wrong there too, okay?
It's going to be something in the middle there.
Now go to Titus chapter number one, Titus chapter one.
So I believe when you compare scripture with scripture,
Matthew chapter five and Revelation chapter two, it becomes super evident what the first work is there.
It's the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It's us going out and preaching the gospel.
We're not supposed to hide them under a bushel.
We're not supposed to lose our saltness.
Because if we do, now we're good for nothing.
Now God will remove our candlestick.
Now the church ceases to do the primary duty in which has been instructed, which was to teach all nations.
What was the first thing mentioned?
I mean, think about it, right?
First work, okay?
What's the first thing mentioned in the Great Commission?
Teach all nations.
And I already explained to you how that's got to be emphasizing the gospel because the next step was baptism.
And the only thing necessary to believe in order to get baptized is the gospel.
And then it said teach everything after that, okay?
Mark chapter 16 verse 15, what was instructed?
Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
So again, that's the first work.
What was the first thing that they did in Acts?
Did they start churches?
No, they started preaching the gospel.
Then they started getting people baptized.
Then they started forming churches, okay?
So we don't want to get confused on what the first work is.
The first work is preaching the gospel.
The apostle Paul, when he went out, a lot of times that's the only thing he did.
He said, Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel.
So he was going out just doing step one, preach the gospel, preach the gospel, preach the gospel.
And then he was letting other people follow him, baptizing, establishing the churches, setting up all this work.
So then when you come back to a church and say, you guys aren't preaching the gospel, you forgot what?
The first work. What even started the whole thing to begin with?
That's why it's important to realize that you need to be going soul winning.
Every church, every Christian, every person.
And look, you say, well, the church ceased to be important.
You as a person ceased to be important when you're not a preacher of the gospel.
You say, that's me. That's what Jesus said.
He says you're good for nothing.
What value do you add to society when you stop preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ?
You know, people will say like, oh, I contribute so much to society.
Look, you could build a building, but guess what? It's all going to burn up eventually.
You could give money to the poor, but if that poor person never believes in Jesus, he's still going to the same hell.
You could clothe and feed as many poor people as you want.
And you know what? If they go to hell, they're not going to be in hell being like, well, at least you gave me a sandwich.
They're never even going to remember the sandwich.
They're going to be like, what kind of a jerk are you that you literally have the gospel that you could have handed me and instead you handed me a sandwich.
And probably it wasn't even that great of a sandwich.
Because you know what I noticed? These people that are feeding the poor programs, their food is stuff that you and I would never eat.
It looks like dog food. If you ask me, it's all kinds of weird, storable food.
And look, I'm not down on feeding people that are hungry.
And if you're hungry, every bitter thing is sweet.
But what I'm saying is it's not even that great.
It's not like they're taking them to Outback or something, you know.
It's not like they're sitting them down with a five-course store meal, you know, a five-star, five-course meal.
They're not sitting down, you know, and giving them something really great, something really wonderful.
They're just really just doing this.
They think, what is the cheapest thing that I can possibly give them and still do this at the same time?
It's nutritious, it's whatever.
Look, I've been to these places and I've volunteered.
Like, I've worked for companies that force you to volunteer.
I don't know if it's volunteering.
You're forced to volunteer at the place and, you know, you make meals for people and do whatever and they talk about their program.
And I mean, you look at the food and it's just like, it's something that the poor people in our country would never eat.
That's probably because they're not really poor, but I'm just saying like, I mean, it's just, you're just kind of like, okay.
And look, again, I'm not down on feeding the hungry.
I'm not down on helping people.
What I am saying is this, if that's your goal in life, it's a worthless goal.
Because at the end of the day, everyone's going to die.
Everyone, everything's going to burn up.
You know, if you want to contribute to the society, you need to preach the gospel to you.
You need to realize that's the first work.
That's the most important thing that you could possibly do.
And anything you're doing that's not preaching the gospel is typically going to be almost vanity.
There is stuff, if you're a preacher of the gospel, hey, we can love the brethren, we can go to church, raise our families.
Hey, there's other important jobs that we have.
But if you're not doing the first job, Christ just looks at you as like, I don't even care.
All the other stuff that you're doing.
Hey, I'm glad you're doing it, but you need to fix this.
Otherwise, you're worthless.
You're just good for nothing because that's our primary job, our primary focus.
You know, the church is the pillar and ground of the truth.
And what's the most important truth that we could possibly preach to someone?
It's the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Now, in Titus, obviously these are instructions to a pastor or to a preacher.
And I think that it's the most important job in the world, is preaching the Bible.
I think a pastor is the most important job in the world.
Not because I have it, just because that's the role that we see in the Bible is being elevated right now.
At current present time, the most important job someone could ever have is preaching the Word of God.
And why? Because you're communicating from God to people.
The way that they have the communication is through the Word of God.
And you say, well, I want to make it clear to people what God actually said.
Well, look how the Bible prescribes that.
Titus chapter 1, verse 1, Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ,
according to the faith of God's elect and the acknowledging of the truth, which is after godliness,
and hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began,
but at the due times manifested his word through preaching,
which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Savior.
Notice he's saying, look, Titus, the job that I have is the same job that you have,
and it's one of the most important jobs you could ever have because it's manifesting the Word of God.
And how do you do that? Through preaching.
God has ordained it.
God has chosen it that people would understand what God is actually trying to tell them
through listening to the preaching of God's Word.
And look, if we were honest with ourselves, we would all realize that we've learned so much from preaching.
Praise the Lord for preachers and pastors in our lives that just made it plain what the Bible is saying.
Because a lot of times we just read stuff and we were just like, I don't know.
And then a preacher comes along and just explains it to you and you're like, how did I not get that?
They just make it obvious, they make it clear, they make it manifest.
And how could that not be the most important job when you're delivering a message from God himself?
I mean, what other message could you ever deliver that's more important?
A message from Joe Biden's not that important.
You can't even make it manifest because it wasn't clear to begin with.
You know? I mean, there was nothing to deliver.
It was lacking of substance anyways.
You know, the most important message that could be delivered, the most important job that could be done,
would be service to God, would be delivering his message.
And that's why it's important that we're preaching.
And look, you can be an active participant in this.
It's not just the pastor because, you know what?
You actually are the same person because you can preach the gospel to someone.
You say, what's the most important job?
Again, it's preaching the word of God.
You know what's the most important truth? The gospel.
And you know who that's limited to?
Anybody that's saved.
If you're sitting and you're saved, you have the most important job in the world.
It's not just me.
You know, it's not like, oh, the pastor's the most important job.
It's the preaching of God's word, okay?
But specifically, it's the gospel and you have the literal most important job on this planet.
You are the most, you are the MVP of the universe.
Right now, you sitting in here are an MVP.
The problem is a lot of people just don't want to get in the game.
I mean, imagine.
You're sitting here and it's, you know, game seven or whatever of basketball
and you have Michael Jordan on the bench and you're like, you need to get in the game, bro.
Get in there.
You know, you got Michael Jordan sitting there.
You got Shaq and Wilt Chamberlain sitting there.
And you're like, you guys are the MVPs. Get in the game.
And it's like, we're sitting here with the church.
Look, you are the Michael Jordans.
You are the Wayne Gretzky.
I don't know what analogy it is.
You are the Andre Agassi, okay?
Nobody cares about NASCAR, so we're going to bring them up.
You know, you are the Tiger Woods of spiritual matters today.
And I'm trying to tell you, get in the game.
You have the most important job that you could ever have.
It's preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It's not about touchdowns. It's not about field goals.
But you know what? You can still keep score if you want.
Go out and add 3,000 souls then.
Get one for the team.
You know, you never win a game by never scoring.
You got to score.
You know, and the best defense is an offense.
That's what I learned in sports and I think it's true.
Hey, you want to defend the gospel? Preach the gospel.
Go on the offense and start getting people saved and start growing the church
and start helping people learn what the truth is.
Go to 2 Timothy chapter 1, 2 Timothy chapter 1.
You say, why preach a message like this?
Well, number one, it's a fundamental truth of our church, okay?
This is a basic sermon. It's a fundamental truth, but we need to be reminded of that.
But I would say secondly, a lot of people in our culture, especially in the last few years,
have kind of awoken to this idea of the reality that a lot of people are deceived.
A lot of people are being taken advantage of.
There's a lot of propaganda out there.
There's a lot of evil out there.
And so they kind of want to help people.
They want to enlighten people.
They want people to realize all the deceptions that are out there today.
And so they get into a fight.
But here's the thing.
The most important deception you can wake people up to is the deception of works-based salvation.
Look, every religion teaches works-based salvation.
And if you really want to awaken people to the truth, if you really want to help people,
you need to get in the right fight, the right battle, you need to get the right job,
because it's not my job to convince people that the earth is a globe.
If you don't already believe that, good luck, okay?
It's not my job to convince people that 9-11 was an inside job.
And look, I'm not against teaching people.
I'm not against exposing lies and deception.
But you know what?
The most important deception that I need to unravel in people's minds is that of believing
that they're going to heaven because they're a good person.
Or that their works are going to get them to heaven.
Or their devotion is going to get them to heaven.
Or their repentance is going to get them to heaven.
Look, the only thing that gets you to heaven is faith in Jesus Christ.
And that's what we have to go around and awaken people to.
And you say, well, I'm kind of nervous about talking to people about the gospel.
Well, look what it says in 2 Timothy 1, verse 7.
For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
I would to God that Christians today would have this spirit today of power.
They'd have a spirit to say, you know what?
Jesus Christ said, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
Look, we have the power.
We have the greatest being on our side, God, who's with us when we go out and preach the gospel.
Stop cowering. Stop being afraid today.
We need to confront people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And you know what? It's the most loving thing you can do.
Hashtag love wins.
Okay, well let me show you what love is.
It's preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It's confronting people about heaven and hell.
It's confronting people about the fact that they're a sinner.
It's confronting people about their damnation.
It's confronting people about their false religion.
It's confronting people about their false doctrine.
And convincing them to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and to get saved.
And to have a sound mind.
Because you know what? The world is crazy.
The world is so far from a sound mind today.
You know what? God has given us a sound mind.
No one in this room is confused on what a man is or a woman is.
No one in this room thinks a man can get pregnant.
And if you do, just leave, okay?
If you think you're a man and think you're pregnant, definitely leave, okay?
You know, they think math is racist.
It's like, what? What are you even talking about?
They just come up with all kinds of goofy ideas, goofy doctrines.
They think the whole universe was created out of nothing.
Nothing exploded and created itself.
What? That's not a sound mind.
These people aren't rational. They're not reasonable.
They have been deceived. They've been led astray.
And so we have to go out and preach them the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Verse 8, be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord.
Look, this verse is here for a reason.
Some people are, they're just afraid to tell people they believe in Jesus.
They're ashamed.
You know, they don't want to admit that they're a Christian.
They don't want to admit that Jesus saved them.
Or specifically, they don't want to admit that they believe salvation by faith alone.
Because, you know, you live in America, you live in Texas,
especially if you're in the Fort Worth shade of things.
You know, saying that you're a Christian is not even a bad thing.
It's typically popular.
They're like, oh, you're a Christian? We're a Christian. Cool.
And you say, yeah, I think the Catholic Church is a wicked false religion.
Now all of a sudden it's getting dicey, right?
Yeah, I think that Robert Morris is a false prophet.
It's like, ooh, oops.
I think that most churches are wicked.
You know, I actually believe the Bible.
I believe the NIV you're holding in your hand is a satanic deception.
Now all of a sudden it starts getting a little bit dicey, right?
And people would be ashamed of that.
People are ashamed to admit that the message is garbage.
People are ashamed to admit that the Pentecostal speaking in tongues is demonic.
People are ashamed of what the Bible has to say and they're ashamed of the Gospel.
They're not willing to confront their co-workers.
They're not willing to confront...
And look, obviously, when you're on the job, do your job, okay?
You know, when you're on the job, it's not like a green light that just preached the whole Bible, okay?
You use some discretion here.
What I am saying is when you have an opportunity to let your beliefs be known,
a lot of people are afraid.
Or they're afraid of the Apals in their life.
Nor me as a prisoner.
But be thou partaker of the afflictions of the Gospel according to the power of God.
You know, we're supposed to partake in the suffering of believing in the Gospel.
Saying that you know Jesus.
Saying that you know His disciples.
Saying that you know His men.
It says in verse number 9,
Who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works,
but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,
but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ who had abolished death
and has brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.
So it's now been made evident how to get saved.
It's been made obvious through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
And He's brought immortality to light.
You can tell people how to have immortality.
You can tell people to have eternal life.
But it's through the preaching of the Gospel.
Go to 2 Peter chapter number 3.
Point number 1 of this morning's sermon is this.
The duty of God is soul winning.
Soul winning is the duty of God.
Number 2, though, is the desire of God.
And we've already seen a lot of verses on this, but I want to show you a few more.
It is the desire of God that every single person be saved.
You know, I'm not a Calvinist up here today.
I don't believe that God wants people to go to hell just to go to hell,
or that He created people destined to go to hell.
Nope, God created man upright, but they sought out many inventions with the Bible.
So God wanted everybody to get saved.
He desires for everyone to be saved.
He gives them an opportunity to be saved.
But a lot of times people are not getting saved because we're not doing our duty.
We have to understand the desire of God is that people will be saved.
2 Peter chapter 3 verse 9.
So notice God doesn't want anyone to go to hell.
He doesn't want any of them to die and burn for all eternity.
He doesn't want anybody to be destroyed.
The Bible says for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.
The Bible is crystal clear. God loves everybody at some point in their life.
God desired everybody to be saved.
God desired everybody to believe on His Son.
But obviously when you die and you haven't believed, it's too late.
You know, there is no being baptized for the dead.
There is no pulling people out of hell.
You know, it's a done deal at that point.
And in fact, the Bible teaches there are people who are alive and have already made the decision
that they will never believe in Jesus and they're damned.
That was the Bible called reprobate.
People who have not believed in Him and don't want to believe in Him.
They never will believe in Him.
God considers them reprobate.
He gives them all kinds of opportunities.
This would be like your Pharaoh in the Bible.
Pharaoh was given lots of opportunity to hearken to the Word of God.
But since he kept hardening his heart, rejecting the Lord,
rejecting the truth that was offered unto him,
he got to a point where God started hardening his heart and he wouldn't believe.
The Pharisees, they saw Jesus preaching.
They saw the miracle.
But because they denied Him, because they rejected Him over and over and over,
Jesus said, you know what?
You're never going to believe that.
Now that you've blasphemed the Holy Ghost,
now that you've seen all the miracles and you didn't believe,
now that you're calling me Beelzebub,
they're saying I'm doing this by the power of Beelzebub.
You know what?
He's going to harden their heart to where they'll never believe.
That's why it's important that we go out and we reach people
while they still have a chance.
And you know what?
That's why we love preaching to children,
because children love to hear the gospel being preached.
They're very receptive and they're not reprobate yet.
You know, Jesus loves all the little children of the world.
We sing that song because we mean it.
We believe it.
Red, yellow, black, and white, they're all precious in His sight.
God loves every single soul.
God doesn't care about any of your physical characteristics.
God is after your soul, and we should be after people's souls too.
That's the desire of God.
If you go to 2 Corinthians 4, 1 John 2, it says,
And He has the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only,
but also for the sins of the whole world.
And you know what?
That should just boggle the mind of every Calvinist,
because they sit there and they say,
well, Jesus paid for everyone, and then they still go to hell.
That's double jeopardy.
Like, I don't care what you call it, it's reality.
And the reality is, Jesus did pay for every single person.
He is the propitiation.
That's what that means, payment.
The payment for every single person.
And it says, not for just us that are saved.
For every single person, He's the savior of all men,
especially they that believe.
He's everyone's savior.
Everyone can look at Jesus and say they're saved.
But here's the problem.
You can reject your savior.
You're drowning in water, and someone shows up and says,
I'm the one that's going to save you.
And they say, well, I want another one.
Too bad.
I'm the only one that's willing to save you.
Just ask me and I'll save you right now.
And they say, I'll never ask you.
That's what the unsaved are like.
But you know what?
It's not that Jesus wasn't their savior.
It's not that Jesus wasn't ready to pull them out.
It's the fact that they rejected Him.
They didn't want Him.
And that's the message that we need to communicate to people,
so they can wake up and they can call upon the name of the Lord
and they can be saved.
It's because it's simple.
Second Corinthians chapter 4 verse 1.
Therefore, seeing we have this ministry,
as we have received mercy, we faint not.
We have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty,
not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully,
but by manifestation of the truth,
commending ourselves to every man's conscience on the side of God.
But if our gospel be hid, it's hid to them that are lost,
and whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them
which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ,
who is the image of God, shine unto them,
who preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord,
and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake.
For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness,
hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
You know what I love about this?
It says in verse 5,
For we preach not ourselves.
You know what?
I've grown up in a lot of churches that were false.
And you know how I know they were false?
Because they preached themselves.
Here's how they would preach.
Oh, I lived this really wicked life of sin,
and I was a gang banger, and I did all this evil,
and I was a bad person,
but then I turned over a new leaf, and now I'm saved.
That's your testimony.
You know what?
Your testimony gets no one saved.
You know what's the testimony that gets someone saved?
Jesus Christ.
Hey, Jesus Christ was born of a virgin.
Hey, Jesus Christ preached the gospel freely.
Hey, Jesus Christ did all the miracles.
Hey, Jesus Christ, he was condemned and spit upon
and beaten and bruised when he did nothing wrong,
and he went on the cross, and his blood was spilt,
and the Bible says that when his body was buried in the tomb,
his soul descended down into hell for three days and three nights.
But he rose again.
That's the testimony that we go out and preach.
We don't preach ourselves.
I don't knock on the door and say,
Hey, have you heard my testimony?
I say, Hey, have you heard about Jesus Christ?
Hey, have you heard the gospel of Jesus Christ?
And we're supposed to, out of our heart,
shine the light of the gospel.
Now, here's the thing.
Riddle me this.
If you're not saved,
how are you going to have the light come out of your heart?
You don't even have the light in your heart.
You have to first get the light in your heart,
and the Bible says that out of the abundance of the heart,
the mouth speaketh,
and when you have your heart full of the gospel,
you know what's going to come out of your mouth?
The gospel of Jesus Christ.
You know, people that aren't preaching the gospel,
here's my question.
How much of the gospel is really in your heart?
Because if your heart's full of the gospel,
you know, it's going to be pouring out of your mouth
the gospel of Jesus Christ, the light.
Go to 1 Corinthians, chapter number 9.
1 Corinthians, chapter number 9.
And I have so many other verses I could go to this morning.
But here's the thing.
The duty of God is soul winning,
but the desire of God is soul winning, too,
because he wants every single person saved.
That's why he says every other work is a back burner item.
Yeah, there's other things we do,
but here's the thing.
The forefront is the gospel,
because at the end of the day, it's all going to burn up.
We're all going to die.
All of our bodies are going to rot and decompose,
and you know what?
The only thing God cared about was our soul.
The only thing we can take with us is the souls of men,
and we need to be worried about the souls of men today.
We need to look at this world today as an opportunity
to get the souls of men to Jesus Christ,
and praise God.
It's so easy.
Praise the Lord.
All you have to do is stand there with a Bible in hand
and tell them the greatest story ever told,
the best thing that's ever happened,
Jesus Christ paying for all their sins.
How hard is that?
Yet so many people don't want to do it today.
They get mad at a church like ours,
and they say,
oh, you preach on all kinds of things.
You preach Genesis chapter 19,
and you preach Leviticus 20, 13.
How is that going to reach people with the gospel?
And I have to look at them, and I say,
how is you never preaching the gospel
going to reach anybody with the gospel?
You know, most of the people that ridicule
all the other things that we do,
all the other ministries we have,
never even preach the gospel one time.
And they want to tell me how I'm not reaching people
with the gospel,
and I'm looking at them saying that you not preaching
the gospel is definitely not reaching anybody
with the gospel.
I mean, how do you think your plan's working?
How about you show me how great of a plan you have?
And here's what I know.
The people that preach all the Bible
and the hardest truths are typically the ones
that are also preaching the most of the gospel,
the most soul-winning, too.
Yeah, people would say, like,
well, why don't you just focus only on soul-winning?
Because if I focused only on soul-winning,
you know what would end up happening?
We'd start reaching new people and bringing new people in,
and as for fear of offending them with, you know,
other parts of the Bible,
you shy away from those other parts of the Bible,
you won't preach it.
So then you're just kind of getting this gospel message.
But then you start getting this fear of offending people
that aren't even saved, too,
because you start bringing in all these people
that aren't saved, and you don't want to start offending them.
So you start talking in coded language.
You start saying both things,
and then you start having all these altar calls,
and then eventually you know what your church service becomes?
You preach the gospel every single week,
but it's not clear enough to actually get anybody saved.
Who's ever seen a church like that?
Yeah. Why?
Because they stopped preaching the whole Bible.
Look, you've got to preach the whole Bible
so you don't turn into that.
It's not a coincidence that they all turn into that.
Look, we preach the whole Bible here,
but then we can go preach the free gospel out there, okay?
And when you realize that you need all of the Bible,
not just the parts that are convenient,
you know, you'll start realizing that
all of the parts of the Bible actually help you in soul winning.
You know, when your marriage is falling apart,
it's harder to then go out soul winning sometimes, you know?
And a lot of times when people's marriage falls apart,
they get out of church to stop serving God.
Here's another factoid.
When you're not going to a soul winning church,
you're not a soul winner.
There's people that are able to do it on a one-off basis
that typically they only last a few years anyway,
even if they do it, you know.
And really this, if you've ever been backslidden
or let's say you just didn't go to church for a month,
did you do a lot of extra soul winning that month?
No, you didn't.
Why? You need to go to church, you need to be revoked,
and here's the thing, you need to be encouraged
by every doctrine of the Bible.
You know, almost every doctrine encourages me to go soul winning.
Hey, the reprobate doctrine,
let's reach people before they be heard and reprobate.
Hey, hell, that reminds me of how bad hell is.
It might provoke me into going out and preaching the gospel.
Learning that we're going to heaven
reminds me of the vanity of this life.
Motivates me when I go out and preach the gospel more.
You know, we need all of the Bible today,
and we need to realize that if we don't go do it,
it's not going to get done.
God of this world, the devil, he's blind to the minds,
and if we don't preach the gospel, no one's getting saved.
God's not going to just come down from heaven by himself
and just start getting everybody saved.
He could do that, if he wanted, in a heartbeat.
Do you know what he's done?
He's designed it for us to preach the gospel.
Soul winning is the duty of God,
and in fact, it's the desire of God,
and it's the design of God.
It's the design of God.
You say, how do you get people saved?
Soul winning.
He didn't design the altar call,
he didn't design the bus route,
you say, show me those things in the Bible.
I can show you soul winning all day long.
Show me where it says, you know what,
you just, there's a tractor beam that comes out of the sky
and just gets people saved.
Calvinism.
Nope, that wasn't the design.
It's not a donkey to go out and give the gospel.
It wasn't for Judas.
Show me that.
It wasn't for Judas to go out and get people saved.
No, he designed it that the saved would go out
and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It's our job.
It's God's desire.
And it's the design, and it's the only design that works.
Look at 1 Corinthians 9 verse 22.
To the weak became I as weak that I might gain the weak.
I made all things to all men that I might by all means save some.
And this is what people get so offended by.
We got this many people saved.
It's like, you didn't get anybody saved, Jesus saved them.
Well, tell Paul that.
Because you know what Paul said?
He said that he was doing everything in his power
to get people saved.
That I might by all means save some.
Notice who Paul's saying is doing the saving.
He's saying he's doing the saving.
Let me show you this more.
Go to Jude chapter 1.
Now, obviously, there's not a person on this planet
that would get up and say, I saved people without Jesus.
That's a Christian, okay?
No one's going around pretending like Jesus isn't involved
or pretending like God has no part in the preaching of the gospel
or that me preaching the gospel is somehow mine or something.
Look, it's obviously that we're preaching what Jesus did that gets them saved.
But here's the thing.
God partners with us, and we are the instrument,
we are the vessel, we are the minister,
we are the ambassador that God is going to use to deliver that message.
And if we're not involved, it's not going to happen.
Jude chapter 1 verse 21.
Keep yourselves in the love of God,
looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ and eternal life,
and of some have compassion making a difference,
and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire,
hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.
So notice who's doing the saving?
Others.
Paul does the saving, others does the saving.
Go to Romans chapter number 11.
Look, it's a biblical doctrine to say, I saved someone.
And look, it's not to go around and brag.
It's not that we're going around and trying to puff ourselves up.
We're just communicating what happened.
And you know what?
I think we should talk and use that language
so that people realize that you are an active participant
in what gets someone saved.
I don't want to go around and just be like,
God's just saving people left and right,
because then maybe they think it's a mystery.
Like, well, then how does it happen?
It's like, we went out there.
We preached the gospel.
I pulled this person out of the fire.
You know?
How is that unbiblical?
That's what the Bible literally said.
You know why people get mad at you saying, I saved someone?
It's because they've never saved anyone.
Because you're not, you know, it's kind of like in the game,
you know, you play the game and it's like, I scored a touchdown.
And they're like, we scored a touchdown.
And it's like, you say that because you didn't score any touchdown.
You know?
It's like, if you scored a bunch of touchdowns,
you're not mad at the person that also scored a bunch of touchdowns.
You know, if you get five people saved, and they're like,
I got five people saved, they're like, sweet, me too.
Woo!
Yeah!
It's the guy that's a do nothing, that's lazy,
that's not doing the duty of God,
that doesn't have the desire of God in his heart.
His heart's not full of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And he wants to be like, oh, you think you saved people.
Yeah.
He that win his souls.
What kind of a worthless verse would it be if you didn't save anybody?
He that win his souls.
But, wink, wink, no, no, nobody gets somebody to save.
How does that verse even work?
If a person can't even do it.
Romans chapter 11, look at verse 14.
If by any means I may provoke to emulation them,
which are my flesh, and might save some of them.
Look, notice he wants to save them.
Go to second Timothy chapter number two.
Second Timothy chapter number two.
And I'll say this, look, the world is getting ridiculous.
False religion is increasing.
Drugs are increasing.
Alcohol is increasing.
Satanic music is increasing.
You know what really makes me, television is increasing.
Because now, when I go and get gas, there's a TV there.
That's so annoying.
It's like I avoided TV.
I got rid of them, and then they come back into my life by force.
Because I'm sitting there, I like trying to hop in my car.
Yesterday, I was getting gas right after I was going home.
And it just immediately pops up.
You put your card in, it like immediately pops up.
It's this artist called like little Nas X or something.
It was like one of the most satanic people on the planet.
Just immediately.
Just Satan's music is just trying to hit me in the face as soon as I'm trying to get gas.
And look, you can't avoid that.
I mean, you have to get gas, okay?
You have to fill up your tank.
I mean, I just tried to get in my car right away so I didn't have to listen to that disgusting garbage.
But look, music today is so satanic.
It's in your face about it.
In his songs and music, I mean, he literally has the devil in it.
And he's, I mean, I don't even want to describe what he's doing.
It's so wicked, it's so filthy, it's so reprobate.
I mean, this world, the devil is just like on full skill attack right now.
Movies, the internet, YouTube, social media, education.
And let me tell you something about education.
Education is religious whether you like it or not.
There is no such thing as secular education.
Yeah, I understand one plus one you could abstract a little bit from religion.
But here's the thing, one plus one is true.
And guess what, truth is the word of God.
If you're going to tell me that one plus one is racist, that's an ideology.
Now all of a sudden it's religious all of a sudden.
And let me tell you what, anybody that goes to math class, you know that they have word problems.
And you know what they try to do with their word problems?
Put in agendas, put ideologies.
How do you know that?
Look, my wife used to write the literal test questions for the state of Texas.
He was hired in work and would write the questions and they would try to put certain agendas into those questions.
Literally.
And that was one of the reasons why she didn't like it.
She liked writing questions, she enjoyed the work for it.
And she was really good at it.
But you know what, she wasn't really good at putting, you know, filthy ideology into the word problems, into the questions or whatever.
And I'm telling you what, education is more religious than it's ever been before.
And you know what, that's why you should give them a Christian education.
From home.
From mom and dad.
Because look, history is religious.
Whether you like it or not.
It's going to have all kinds of religious connotations associated with it.
You know, all the science, so called.
Very religious today.
Medical information is actually very religious today.
Because if you even go to the hospital, they're looking at people as an evolutionary accident as opposed to a creation of God.
And you know what, that's going to affect how you feel about people.
The decisions that you make.
I mean, in science, so called, and in medical history, they used to think you had all these vestigial organs.
And vestigial means left over from evolution.
Look, that's ideology.
That's not science.
Science, and most of the vestigial structures over time, they start realizing, oh wait, that actually has a purpose.
Oh wait, your spleen and, you know, all these other things, they actually have a purpose, they actually have a function in the body.
We shouldn't just start taking all these parts out and trying to mess with the human genome or whatever.
And splicing all kinds of DNA models.
You know, that's why I'm not into these injections that are going to modify your DNA.
Like I'm some kind of an experiment.
I'm not a cosmic accident here.
I'm fearfully and wonderfully made.
And you know what, Jesus say, they that behold need not a physician.
You know what, I'm going to go to the doctor when it's absolutely necessary.
I'm not inviting them into my home though.
I'm not asking them to experiment on me and try all kinds of drugs and whatever they want.
No, I'm going to just, I'm fine.
I'm good.
And at the end of the day, there's so much deception right now.
There's so much evil.
I've seen a lot of people, they're finally like, let's fight.
Let's start waking the world up.
Let's tell them 9-11 truth.
Let's get them on gab.
You know, let's get them to listen to this person, this personality.
You know, Alex Jones or whatever.
You know, and look, I'm not even saying any of those things are bad necessarily.
Hey, you know what, 9-11 was an inside job.
You're welcome.
Okay, there you go.
All right, a lot of these mass shootings that have gone on in our country,
there's a lot of weird stuff going on with that, okay.
The Vegas one, okay, that was weird, all right.
There's all kinds of weird stuff going on.
Operation Northwood, yeah, it's real.
Okay, look up these things.
Yeah, I'm sure us leaving Afghanistan, there's a lot of weird stuff going on with that.
I'm sure there's a lot of bad reasons why that's happened.
Probably mostly, though, just a distraction.
Hey, the election issues, there's a lot of election issues.
You know what, if I can sit down with somebody and I can explore, you know, a new truth with them,
you know what, instead of telling them how the election was rigged
and how they're going to die from the next vaccine they get or all this other stuff,
maybe I should say, you know what, if you die today, are you 100% sure you're going to die?
Say, you know what, if you die today, are you 100% sure you go to heaven?
And fight the good fight.
And get involved in the one purpose that you really have.
Because you know what, I could take someone that's a liberal leftist
and turn them into the most conservative, far-right personality
that's wearing like every Trump person, you know,
merch that you could even buy and they could still go to hell.
What's the point then?
You know, what I should do is I should go out and earnestly contend for the faith.
Hey, you know what, the faith is putting your faith in Jesus Christ.
You know, why go to Shreveport?
Get people saved.
You say like, well, are they going to come to your church?
Probably not.
You know, when we went to Wichita Falls, they weren't coming to our church.
You know, when we went down to College Station, they weren't coming to our church.
We go out to a lot of these places.
Look, when I go next door, they don't even come, you know.
Why do you? Because I don't want them to go to hell.
And look, this is the design.
Look what Jesus said to them.
Teach all nations.
Do you really expect every nation to come to your church?
No.
Paul didn't expect them to all come to his church.
They started setting up churches where they were at.
And he didn't even do a lot.
He's just like going, just doing a wildfire, preaching the gospel
and trying to get people saved.
Look, you know what? Don't worry about setting up churches.
Don't worry about baptizing people.
How about you just worry about getting people saved?
And you say when?
Well, you know what?
Sundays at 2 p.m.
Tuesdays at 10.30. Wednesdays at 5.15.
Saturday at 10.
Tuesday at 5.30. Thursday at 6 p.m.
Friday at 6 p.m. Saturday at 10 a.m.
Sounds like you have a lot of opportunity.
And I've even said multiple times.
Hey, if none of those times work, call us or text us or whatever
and we'll figure out how to make it work for you.
Your schedule.
Whenever you want to go.
Why? Because it's the heartbeat of a real New Testament church is soul winning.
Soul winning, soul winning, soul winning.
And you say, why do you constantly harp on soul winning?
Because it's the duty of God.
It's the desire of God.
It's the design of God.
And you know what? If you want to expose people to the ultimate truth,
expose them to the gospel of Jesus.
Thank you Heavenly Father for giving us the gospel.
And thank you so much for the gift of your son and the gift of eternal life.
I pray that we'd realize that no matter who we are or where we're at,
we have a purpose in this life.
You've given us the most important job that we could ever have.
That we're an ambassador for Christ today.
I pray that we wouldn't be ashamed of that testimony.
But rather we would see the importance of us going out and preaching the gospel.
That you decided and ordained it that men would go out and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And I pray that we would take our job seriously.
That we would fill our hearts with the love of God and the gospel
and we could just preach that.
And we would realize that this is what you've commissioned us to do.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Alright, for our final song we'll go to song 125, The Solid Rock.
Song 125, The Solid Rock.
My hope is built on nothing less,
And Jesus' blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest cream
That only need not Jesus' name
On Christ the solvent of Christ heaven
All other ground is sinking sand
When darkness fails his blood he frees
I rest on this unchanging grace
In every high and stormy gale
My anchor holds within the bale
On Christ the solvent rock cuts down
All other ground is sinking sand
His soul has covered in his blood
So I'll pour me in the wilting flood
When all around my soul gives way
We've done as all my hope and state
On Christ the solvent rock cuts down
All other ground is sinking sand
When he shall come with trumpets and
Only I can in him be found
Christ in his righteousness alone
I am blessed to stand before the throne
On Christ the solvent rock cuts down
All other ground is sinking sand
God bless, you are dismissed.
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