🎵Music🎵
Alright everybody, welcome to Sure Foundation Baptist Church.
If you could find your seat and grab your green songbooks and turn to page number 374.
Send the light.
Welcome to Sure Foundation Baptist Church.
If you could find your seat and grab your green or red songbooks and turn to page number 374.
Send the light.
🎵Music🎵
Song number 374, send the light. Let's sing it out on the first.
🎵There's a call come ringing or the restless wave🎵
🎵Send the light, send the light🎵
🎵There are souls to rescue, there are souls to save🎵
🎵Send the light, send the light🎵
🎵Send the light, the blessed gospel light🎵
🎵Let it shine from shore to shore🎵
🎵Send the light, the blessed gospel light🎵
🎵Let it shine forevermore🎵
🎵We have heard the Macedonian call today🎵
🎵Send the light, send the light🎵
🎵And a golden offering at the cross we lay🎵
🎵Send the light, send the light🎵
🎵Send the light, the blessed gospel light🎵
🎵Let it shine from shore to shore🎵
🎵Send the light, the blessed gospel light🎵
🎵Let it shine forevermore🎵
🎵Let us pray that grace may everywhere abound🎵
🎵Send the light, send the light🎵
🎵And a Christ-like spirit everywhere be found🎵
🎵Send the light, send the light🎵
🎵Send the light, the blessed gospel light🎵
🎵Let it shine from shore to shore🎵
🎵Send the light, the blessed gospel light🎵
🎵Let it shine forevermore🎵
🎵Let us not grow weary in the work of love🎵
🎵Send the light, send the light🎵
🎵Let us gather jewels for a crown above🎵
🎵Send the light, send the light🎵
🎵Send the light, the blessed gospel light🎵
🎵Let it shine from shore to shore🎵
🎵Send the light, the blessed gospel light🎵
🎵Let it shine forevermore🎵
Amen. Good seeing you, Brother Sean. Could you have a prayer?
Father Neman, I thank you for this day. I thank you for this opportunity to be out here today, Lord.
I pray that you would fill this church with your Spirit, Lord.
I pray you come to us to understand the message that is here today, Lord.
I pray you fill the pastor with your Spirit, Lord.
I pray you bless all aspects of service.
We love you. We pray these things in Jesus' name, Amen.
Amen. Our second song will be song number 138,
The Haven of Rest.
Song number 138, The Haven of Rest.
Song 138, let's sing it out on the first.
🎵My soul, it's at exile🎵
🎵Was out on life's sea🎵
🎵So burdened with sin and distress🎵
🎵Till I heard a sweet voice saying🎵
🎵Make me your choice🎵
🎵And I entered the Haven of Rest🎵
🎵I've anchored my soul in the Haven of Rest🎵
🎵I'll sail the wide seas no more🎵
🎵The tempest may sweep or the wild stormy deep🎵
🎵In Jesus I'm safe evermore🎵
🎵I yield myself to His tender embrace🎵
🎵And faith taking hold of the Word🎵
🎵My fetters fell off and I anchored my soul🎵
🎵The Haven of Rest is my Lord🎵
🎵I've anchored my soul in the Haven of Rest🎵
🎵I'll sail the wide seas no more🎵
🎵The tempest may sweep or the wild stormy deep🎵
🎵In Jesus I'm safe evermore🎵
🎵The song of my soul since the Lord may be whole🎵
🎵Has been the old story so blessed🎵
🎵Of Jesus who'll say whosoever will have🎵
🎵A home in the Haven of Rest🎵
🎵I've anchored my soul in the Haven of Rest🎵
🎵I'll sail the wide seas no more🎵
🎵The tempest may sweep or the wild stormy deep🎵
🎵In Jesus I'm safe evermore🎵
🎵Oh, come to the Savior, He patiently waits🎵
🎵To save by His power divine🎵
🎵Come anchor your soul in the Haven of Rest🎵
🎵And save my beloved is mine🎵
🎵I've anchored my soul in the Haven of Rest🎵
🎵I'll sail the wide seas no more🎵
🎵The tempest may sweep or the wild stormy deep🎵
🎵In Jesus I'm safe evermore🎵
Good morning, welcome to Shore Foundation Baptist Church.
Let's take our bulletins and go through them real quickly.
If you need a bulletin, would you lift up your hand?
Brother Ramon will bring you a bulletin.
On our front cover, we have our verse of the week.
It says, Behold how good and how pleasant it is
for brethren to dwell together in unity.
Psalm chapter 1, 33, 1.
And our service time's here at Shore Foundation Baptist Church.
Our Sunday morning service is 10.30 a.m.
And our Sunday evening service is 3.30 p.m.
We'll be in Genesis chapter 38 tonight.
And our Thursday Bible study is at 6.30 p.m.
And we'll be in 2 Corinthians chapter 4 for the Bible study.
It's at 6.30.
And we have our soul wanting times listed below.
And we do have soul wanting today at 1 o'clock.
Soul wanting is where we go in evangelizing the community
and try to get people saved at the door.
So that's the main goal.
We also just invite people to church with our invitations.
But our main goal for going door to door
is to preach the gospel.
So if someone's willing to listen,
we will tell them the gospel.
And if they're not willing to listen,
then we just go to the next door.
So just make sure that Brandon knows.
Where's Brandon?
Brandon knows that you're going soul wanting.
And we had an event yesterday
where we went up to Blaine, Washington.
And that's why everybody seems so tired today.
Because it was just like a normal day here
except for without the soul wanting.
But they did soul wanting on Friday
and had a couple of salvations.
So that was great. That was in Bellingham.
But we ended up having 70 people show up.
And so it was kind of a cross-border thing.
The Canadians, our Canadian church,
that's the only way we can see them
is this Peace Arch Park
where they kind of just let you go across the border
without messing with you or whatever.
And then so we rented this building there
and had a couple of church services and some fellowship.
It was a great time.
Yes, we had 70 people.
I think a little more than half was our people from here.
But we also had some visitors
and people from our other church that I've never met before
because there's been a lot of people added to that church up there.
But it was a great couple services there.
A lot of great singing and had some Bible preaching.
So it was good to see them.
So anyway, we're probably going to do that again at some point.
So if you missed out on that,
then we're probably going to plan something else like that soon.
Or probably in the spring or early summer.
So anyhow, our praise report you can see
down at the left bottom of the page
are salvations year to date.
Last year's salvations are there
and then baptisms this year versus last year
and then our attendance from last week.
There's been some challenges with sickness.
A lot of people have been in and out sick.
So just make sure that you're praying
for people that are sick in our church
and it's just kind of going around everywhere.
So we're doing the fist bumps here.
So if someone fist bumps you here,
it's not like we're trying to be ghetto or something.
It's just we don't want to do the handshakes necessarily
because, you know, people cough
and then they pass germs that way.
So we kind of implement that in the winter months
and I haven't said anything about it in a long time,
but we should probably do that.
Sometimes I'll accidentally try to shake someone's hand
and I'm like, ah, that gets awkward.
But anyway, let's try to do the fist bump thing
because it's just passing along with too many people.
So our upcoming events on the inside right page there,
right now we're in the middle of doing a New Testament challenge
where you have to read nine chapters
of the New Testament every day for 31 days
and at the end of that 31 days
you'll have the whole New Testament read.
So hopefully people are still doing that challenge
and it's a great challenge.
But there's other challenges out there.
I know that Pastor Jones is doing a two-month challenge
with seven grace days,
you know, seven being the number of completion or whatever.
I don't know.
But that's still a good challenge.
You know, I think it's about five chapters a day
or something like that.
So if you fell off the wagon on this one,
maybe try that one.
It's not easy to do.
It's not easy.
That's why it's called a challenge.
You know, so challenges are usually something
that are a little more difficult than you're used to doing, right?
All right, so we're still doing that.
And then on February 11th,
we have our Married Couples Sweetheart Banquet.
And so that's always a great time.
It's a Spanish theme this year.
So if you have any, like, outfits that would, I don't know,
that would match that, I don't know.
We're going to have, like, we're going to take pictures.
The couples will take pictures
and we'll have, you know, like a Spanish theme.
And we're going to cater from that place right over there
for the food.
I don't know what kind of food exactly we're going to get.
I can't pronounce the name, so that's why I'm not saying it.
But anyway, it's that place right over there.
But anyway, they have really good food.
And so we're going to cater food there.
And it is for married couples only.
So I'm not trying to hurt anybody's feelings,
but that's just kind of the rule it's always been
because people can get engaged and break up.
And, you know, or just be boyfriend and girlfriend
and never get married or whatever.
So it's designed for married couples only.
So hopefully everybody that's married in this church
is going to show up for that.
It's going to be on, I think, a Friday night, so the 11th.
And we'll have a guest speaker, Pastor Jonathan Shelley,
will be here preaching for us.
And he'll also preach for us on Sunday.
So if you don't know who Pastor Shelley is,
he's a really good friend of mine
and he's a great preacher.
So I'm looking forward to that.
February 20th, I'll be preaching at Verity Baptist Church
for the PM service.
February 20th, that's President's Day weekend.
March 4th through 6th is the Spokane,
Shur Foundation Baptist Spokane third anniversary.
Pastor Joe Jones will be preaching on Friday night
of that weekend.
Then we'll do a soul winning marathon.
And then I'll be preaching the services on the weekend.
So on the Sunday.
June 8th through 11th is our church camp.
It's back on.
They're going to try it again.
But if you see in the bracket, it says might get changed.
Because I realized I had a conflicting thing on my schedule.
So I might try to get it changed for the first week of June.
So Remy, it'd probably be on your birthday.
Sorry.
Your birthday, it always goes downhill, doesn't it?
But anyway, that's the plan right here for now.
But if that gets changed, don't be surprised.
So hopefully you didn't take time off work just quite yet.
I just wanted to give people kind of a glimpse of what's going on in our calendar this year.
And the Red Hot Preaching Conference is confirmed.
And that will be July 14th through 17th in Sacramento, California.
All right?
And there's some other cool plans that are coming up.
But I just can't quite tell you what they are yet.
But you guys are going to be happy about it, I think.
And we're a family integrated church.
That means that children and infants are welcome during the church services.
We do have a mother baby room and a dad baby room.
The mother baby room is located back there.
The dad baby room over there.
And if your children become distracting or disruptive, please take them to the mother baby room or use it,
utilize it for nursing or any needs that you would have.
And there's comfortable seating in there.
There's monitors so you can still listen and watch the preaching.
Please know men allowed in the mother baby rooms or vice versa.
No unattended children in any area of the building.
And please, no food in the assembly area unless we're having like a special event or something.
And silence your cell phones if you would at this time or place them on airplane mode.
I don't want to know who you're listening to preaching besides me.
And then escorts are available to anybody that needs an escort from an usher.
The ushers are the guys with the pins on their jacket that say usher on them.
And they would be happy to walk you to your car.
You know, it's usually like a nighttime thing.
And we used to be in a downtown location so it was a little more pertinent.
But hey, you never know.
I just think it's a good thing to have a lady escorted to her vehicle even in this parking lot.
So anyway, utilize that to your benefit.
And then you can donate online.
It's got the text giving number there.
And then you can see the tithes and offerings that have come in so far for this month.
And January birthdays.
So today is a Yefimoff birthday.
The birthday girl, is she even in here?
Oh, hey, hi.
How old is she now?
Two.
I was two once for a whole year.
You know that?
She's like, yeah, I know.
You tell that dumb joke every time.
Alright, let's sing happy birthday, alright?
Anybody else have a birthday this week?
I can get in the...
How old are you going to be?
Are you five?
Four?
Is today your birthday?
It was actually four years ago.
Alright, well let's sing happy birthday.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday, God bless you.
Happy birthday to you.
Alright.
And I think that's all we have for announcements.
If it's your first time here, we're very happy that you're here.
And we know that you have lots of different options you can go to.
But you've chosen to come here this morning, we appreciate that.
So every first time visitor gets a gift bag.
This is just my example bag.
But the gift bags are actually on that little foyer.
When you walk out, there's a little table right there.
It has some burgundy gift bags.
If you're a first time guest, please grab one of those.
It has the film Being Baptist in it.
It just kind of explains what Baptists believe.
A lot of people think that Baptists...
That our church is like a denomination.
But it's not a denomination.
We're an independent Baptist church.
That just means that Jesus Christ is the head of our church.
And we believe the Bible.
And believing the Bible.
And preaching the Bible is what our whole faith and practice is based upon.
And so we don't have a denominational head or somebody that tells us what to do.
We get the Bible and that's what tells us what to do.
But anyway, that film kind of explains kind of what Baptists believe.
There's some other things in there.
There's a nice pen and some other invitations and things like that.
But please take one of those if you're a first time guest.
As a gift for just being a first time guest.
And we appreciate you coming.
And with that, let's sing another song.
And then we'll receive the offering.
Alright, our next song is a song number 314.
More Love to Thee.
Song number 314, More Love to Thee.
Song 314, let's sing it out on the first.
More love to Thee, O Christ.
More love to Thee.
Hear thou the prayer I make on bended knee.
This is my earnest plea.
More love, O Christ, to Thee.
More love to Thee.
Once earthly joy I craved, sought peace and rest.
Now Thee alone I seek, give what is best.
This all my prayer shall be.
More love, O Christ, to Thee.
More love to Thee.
Let sorrow do its work.
Send grief and pain.
Sweet are Thy messengers.
Sweet their refrain.
When they can sing with me.
More love, O Christ, to Thee.
More love to Thee.
Then shall my latest breath whisper Thy praise.
This be the parting cry my heart shall raise.
This still its prayer shall be.
More love to Christ to Thee.
More love to Thee.
Amen. Good seeing Brother Sean Harrington. Could you bless the offering for us?
Lord, thank you so much for this day. Thank you so much, Lord, that we're able to go off and do the sermons yesterday up in Canada, Lord.
Pray that you would continue to bless that church, Lord.
Pray that you would bless this offering, Lord. Bless both the gift and the giver. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Amen.
All right, turn with me to Proverbs chapter 29.
Proverbs 29, if you don't have a Bible, raise your hand and one of the ushers will bring you one.
Proverbs 29.
Proverbs 29, the Bible reads,
He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed and without remedy.
When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice, but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.
Whoso loveth wisdom rejoiceth his father, but he that keepeth company with harlots spendeth his substance.
The king by judgment establisheth the land, but he that receiveth gifts overthroweth it.
A man that flattereth his neighbor spreadeth a net for his feet.
In the transgression of an evil man there is a snare, but the righteous doth sing and rejoice.
The righteous considerth the cause of the poor, but the wicked regardeth not to know it.
Scornful men bring a city into a snare, but wise men turn away wrath.
If a wise man contendeth with a foolish man, whether he rage or laugh, there is no rest.
The bloodthirsty hate the upright, but the just seek his soul.
A fool uttereth all his mind, but a wise man keepeth it in till afterwards.
If a ruler harken to lies, all his servants are wicked.
The poor and the deceitful man meet together, the Lord lighteneth both their eyes.
The king that faithfully judgeth the poor, his throne shall be established forever.
The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.
When the wicked are multiplied, transgression increaseth, but the righteous shall see their fall.
Correct thy son and he shall give thee rest, yea he shall give delight unto thy soul.
Where there is no vision, the people perish, but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.
A servant will not be corrected by words, for though he understand, he will not answer.
Seest thou a man that is hasty in his words? There is more hope of a fool than of him.
He that delicately bringeth up his servant from a child shall have him become his son at the length.
An angry man stirreth up strife, and a furious man aboundeth in transgression.
A man's pride shall bring him low, but honor shall uphold the humble in spirit.
Whoso is partner with a thief hateth his own soul, he heareth cursing, and beareth it not.
The fear of man bringeth a snare, but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe.
Many seek the ruler's favor, but every man's judgment cometh from the Lord.
An unjust man is an abomination to the just, and he that is upright in the way is an abomination to the wicked.
Brother Bill, will you pray for us?
Heavenly Father, thank you for this great chapter in the Bible.
Amen. All right. Well, we're in Proverbs chapter 29. Look at verse number 18.
The Bible says, Where there is no vision, the people perish, but he that keepeth the law happy is he.
And my sermon this morning is where there is no vision, the people perish. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, so much for a time we could meet together in church with your saints.
Lord, I just pray that you would bless each and every person that's here today.
Lord, I know a lot of people are tired, including myself. I pray you'd lift us up and that, Lord, you'd perk us up for the word of God
and that we would hear it with our ears and with our minds and, Lord, that you would help us to receive everything that is preached today.
And, Lord, if it's right and true. And, God, I just pray that you would just fill me with your spirit and boldness and power as I preach your word.
In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
All right. So where there is no vision, the people perish. Now, there's a lot of sermons that have been preached on this subject.
But everything's been kind of crazy since the first of the year. We had that snowstorm where I had to, you know, be at work or whatever.
And I wanted to preach a sermon to help us for the new year. And I realized that we're 16 days in.
But I wanted to kind of go over some of the triumphs that our church has gone through this year.
And so it's a little bit different of a sermon this morning. But I wanted to kind of show you where we're at.
What goals we met last year and kind of what goals we have in the future.
Because where there is no vision, the people perish. Right?
And so this church has a vision for preaching the word of God and not apologizing for anything that we say.
As long as it's in God's word, we should never be ashamed to preach it from the housetops.
Jesus said what you hear in the ear, preach from the housetops.
And at this church, our focus is also on winning souls to Christ.
Because the Bible says that Jesus came to seek and save that which was lost.
And so the main purpose of our church is to go out and seek and save that which is lost, which there's a lot of lost people in this world.
The Bible says there are few that be saved.
And so we try and go and reach people in different areas, in different towns, in different countries, all over the United States.
And here at home in Vancouver, Washington.
And also small towns that are across Washington and Oregon.
We've done lots of small town soul winning and things like that.
Like we went up to Bellingham and some people went out soul winning and got a couple of salvations there.
And so we have a church up in Canada. We have a church in London.
Well it's not in London but it's outside of London, about an hour.
And we have one in Spokane, Washington.
So those are the church plants that we have right now.
And we're trying to move forward with the gospel and not let the sun set on Shore Foundation Baptist Church's empire.
No I'm just kidding.
But you know in order to reach the whole world we're going to have to reach out and branch out to more than just our Jerusalem.
You know we've got to go to Judea.
We've got to go to Samaria.
We've got to go to the uttermost parts of the earth.
And so we have a vision of this church.
What do you think of when you think of where there is no vision?
Most of the time you think of blindness right?
So we're not a church that's just here flying blind and trying to just you know take it as it comes and fly by the seat of our pants all the time.
We like to plan things out.
And obviously some things happen where you just have to kind of jump on it immediately.
Not everything can be planned to perfection.
As you can see in 2020 we had a 20-20 vision and it was like one of the hardest soul winning years for our church.
It was a real hard time because of all the COVID stuff.
And we thought you know it sounds cheeky right to have like you know Acts 20-20 it's like a great verse where you're talking about going soul winning or whatever.
But the year ended up not being the greatest soul winning year for us right.
So sometimes God has other plans.
You know we can make plans all we want but we don't know what a day is going to bring forth.
We don't know what a year is going to bring forth.
Everything could change.
I mean we've seen how the world has changed in the last two years and we didn't have any control over that.
You know God has control over it but we don't have control over that.
So we can make plans all we want.
We can set goals but sometimes God has different plans and we have to be able to roll with the punches sometimes.
We have to be able to roll and we need to be on God's wave not our own wave. Amen.
So when you think of not having a vision you probably think of you know being blind.
Or you know and what I what I take it as is if there's no spiritual vision for the people then the next generation is not going to hear the gospel.
If we're just like a country club here where all we do is just care about each other and we do fun events and we do potlucks and we do all this you know trips to Six Flags or whatever it is.
And look I'm not against having fun. I want to have fun. I think we have fun at this church.
But we also we can't lose sight of the true mission and the true vision is to reach that next generation of people so that there'll be another generation of a church like this.
There'll be another generation of God's people.
And like I said there's only there's few that that actually find salvation.
You know true salvation is salvation by grace through faith alone apart aside from any kind of works.
The Bible says it's not of works lest any man should boast.
But yet people will just continue to say well but you have to have the works or you have to see evidence of their salvation.
Is that what the Bible says? It doesn't say that.
So you know there's a lot of people that are going to go to heaven and they didn't have a lot of works or maybe they had no works.
You can actually go to heaven with no works.
You know the Bible says that in Romans 4 5 let's actually turn over there really quickly.
Romans chapter 4 verse number 5 it wasn't necessarily in my notes but it's still a great scripture.
Romans 4 5 actually says but to him that worketh not but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly his faith is counted for righteousness.
So what is the Bible saying right there? That your faith is what makes you righteous.
Your faith in Jesus. Your faith in the shed blood of Christ.
He's the one that's the propitiation for our sins and God has pardoned us because Jesus paid the price for our salvation.
And so salvation is just a free gift that we get and believing is not works.
Believing is faith. Faith and works are two separate things.
Do I believe that a saved person should have works? Absolutely I do.
You know I was talking about this the other day. I think it was Thursday. I preached like five sermons this week. This is number six.
But I was talking about how we go to the door and people are like well you just so you're just saying you can do whatever you want and you're still saved.
It's like I'm at your door. It's like 30 degrees outside. It's raining or no it wouldn't be raining. It'd be snowing then.
But it's 37 degrees OK. It's raining. The wind's blowing sideways and you're asking me if I think that we should just do whatever we want or whatever.
No. If I was doing what I wanted I'd be warmed up and a little snugly or something at home with my feet up you know with a fire in front of me or something.
We don't just do whatever we want at this church. This is a working church here. We're soldiers for Christ.
And the Bible explicitly tells us that he has called us to be soldiers. Men women boys and girls we are called to be soldiers and we you have to you know even the military has strategies right.
So the worldly military they have strategies they have ways that they go in and different strategies of attacking people and you know the Bible says that the gates of hell will not prevail against us.
So what does that tell you that we're supposed to be attacking those gates. See gates are something to keep people out right.
You know in the old medieval times when they had castles and stuff like that people would attack and put siege weapons and all this kind of stuff.
There was a strategy to attack that place and to destroy it. Well we are trying to destroy the gates of hell and the Bible says the gates of hell will not prevail against us.
So we are soldiers of God. We are the soldiers of the Lord and we are supposed to be attacking the gates of hell.
And you know the devil doesn't like when his gates get attacked and you know they can't you know the devil can fight back can he.
He is the God small g of this world and he does actually run a lot of the things in this world but in spite of that fact God's will is still done.
So we're not trying to fly blind here we're not trying to be blind physically we're not trying to be blind spiritually we want to have a vision for our church.
Goals that we set and again God can disrupt those goals you know and he has in the past so but we have a vision to not fly blind.
You know the Bible says thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto thy path right.
So as long as we're following the Lord and the Bible says his law so it's talking about the Bible.
When we read the Bible it's going to be like a blueprint and a path that we can walk on and not only is it a path but it's a litten path.
Have you ever been out in the mountains and you're just like walking through the dark parts of the forest and you have like just a lantern.
Sometimes those lanterns aren't very powerful you know but when you're reading God's word everything lights up for you.
It's not just the feet because if you can see a far off in the dark that's good but if you can't see where your feet are going that's bad isn't it.
So isn't it great that God's word not only illuminates what we can see ahead of us you know but it also illuminates what we can see at our feet.
And so we want to be able to see where we're going in this world and you know we're supposed to take up our cross daily and follow after Christ daily.
That means it's a daily grind.
You know there's a saying that me and my wife say and it's probably not original to us obviously but rise and grind.
And it kind of has like a coffee annotation about it but rise and grind just means like hey it's time to get back on the grind you know.
There's a lot I think Miss Jessica said they didn't get home till like two o'clock in the morning or something.
You know that's what happens when you stop at a restaurant it's going to mess you up but and they live farther away from everybody else.
But then she was up at six thirty in the morning that's rise and grind that's exactly what I'm talking about.
You know and Christianity isn't always like that.
Sometimes Christianity you know it can be you know it's obviously pleasant it's obviously supposed to be filled with joy.
But there's also times when we are supposed to work.
There's times that we're burning the lamp at both ends right.
And so I just kind of want to encourage everybody to stay on the path and to you know when we're grinding you grind.
But when you know we get times of rest and times where we can kind of just chill when you're sick or something.
No I'm just kidding.
But turn to Philippians chapter three verse twelve.
Philippians chapter three verse twelve.
The Bible says not as though I had already attained either were already perfect but I follow after if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ.
Brethren I count not myself to have apprehended but this one thing I do forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth onto those things which are before.
Now obviously you can be talking about your past life the past things that a lot of people just live in a guilt.
Parents live in a guilt and sometimes they parent their children out of a guilt.
But Paul is saying hey forget those things that are behind.
Forget all that stuff.
It says in reaching forth onto those things which are before.
We should be always looking forward to the future and not living in our past failures.
Not living in the past parenting failures or past failures in Christianity.
Oh I didn't read my Bible in the challenge yesterday and now you're just guilty for the rest of the month.
It's like hey just put that behind you and rise up and get back on the horse and keep going.
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
Every day is a new day for us and God is merciful to us.
He's not just waiting to smash us with a hammer every time we do something wrong.
Although he will do that but the Bible also says that God is merciful.
God is long suffering and he loves us and he wants us.
He wants to have peace with us.
You know and we ultimately if you're saved today you have peace with our Lord Jesus Christ.
You have peace with God the Father.
But obviously you know we can get caught up and we can just get caught up in thinking about things that are in the past.
But what Paul is saying here is we need to go forth.
We need to reach forth onto those things which are before.
So what we did last year it's cool to kind of just see what we did last year.
But you know what I'm already moving on to the next year.
We can't live in our past laurels. We can't live in the past things that we've done.
It's like you know the sports athletes like I was the greatest athlete of all time.
You know Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain they're arguing about who's the best of all time.
Well you might be the best of all time but you're not the best now.
There's somebody better than you now. LeBron James is better than you now.
I'm not saying he was better than Michael Jordan as a player totally.
Don't go too far with this. I watched Michael Jordan play. I know he was good.
But anyway you can't just rest on the things that you've done in your past.
You just can't do that. We have to move on and move forward and look to the future.
And if your Christianity was whatever it was last year you still have to strive to be a better Christian than you were the year before.
We should never be moving backward. We should always be moving forward.
Just like you know in the military you know there is retreats but the goal is to move forward and to move and conquer your enemies.
And as soldiers of Christ and when I say soldiers of Christ I'm not talking about a physical soldier.
I mean we do physical things like soul winning. That is a battle right. It's a battlefield but it's a spiritual battle.
There's a little bit of physicality when you're walking up three flights of stairs or whatever.
Or you know it's just not a receptive place. You're just walking for long periods of time.
You know we've got the weather to contend with and things like that.
But ultimately I kind of want to look at this as in we need to forget what we did last year.
You know I'm going to read what we did last year but we need to forget all that and try to be better than we were last year and do more things this year.
So it says in verse 14, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
That's what we should ultimately be doing. What is the mark? The prize of the high calling.
And we have a high calling from God to do great things.
You know not to be just mediocre Christians. Not to be just low level do nothing Christians.
Are you still going to go to heaven if you're a do nothing Christian? Absolutely you're still going to go to heaven.
We believe in internal security of the believer at this church. Once saved always saved.
And why do I believe that? Because he says I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish.
Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
I mean if no man can pluck you out of God's hand how can you pluck yourself out of God's hand?
That doesn't even make sense.
Just the fact that it says it's eternal life or everlasting life.
You know if you lose it for some reason then God is a liar.
And I don't believe God is a liar. I believe God tells the truth.
It doesn't matter what you do after you get saved you can never lose it.
Now will God punish you? He could punish you and he will punish you for the sins that you do in this life.
But he'll never send you to hell.
It's just like if you have a child like if your child doesn't clean the room do you throw them in the oven?
Absolutely not. That's ridiculous.
You know God's not going to throw his children in a fire either because we are God's children by faith in Christ Jesus.
Anyway it says I have pressed toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Let us therefore as many as be perfect be thus minded and if anything you be otherwise minded God shall reveal even this unto you.
Nevertheless whereto we have already attained let us walk by the same rule.
So there's things that we kind of attain in the Christian life you get to where you do know how to go soul winning without having the map mapped out for you in your Bible.
But you know once you attain that don't lose that.
Because if you don't use one of your skills in life you're going to lose it.
If you barely pass math and then you never go back to the math that they teach you in high school that you'll never use anyway.
You're not going to retain that in your mind. If you don't use it you're going to lose it.
And if you don't care about calculus if you don't need calculus in your day to day life then you're definitely going to lose that.
But it says let us walk by the same rule let us mind the same thing.
So keep your mind still on what you've already attained to.
It says brethren be followers together of me and mark them which walk so as you have us for an end sample.
So Paul is saying here hey be followers together of me.
And you know a lot of times when it says mark something it's saying mark that person because they're bad.
But this is saying mark them which walk so as you have us for an example.
So when you see that someone's doing great things for God that's a person you should mark and maybe use them as an example in your Christian life.
OK. So if there's a if there's a pastor that's doing great things but just remember everybody is just a man.
All right. Men can fall. Men can make mistakes. Pastors are not some higher echelon of human being or something.
Pastors make mistakes. Pastors sin. Pastors you know they do things that they shouldn't do sometimes.
I'm just saying you know don't go too far with it. Don't worship some man and just think that that person well they were my hero and they let me down.
Guess what. Any man that you follow is going to let you down someday. Any man except for Jesus Christ because he was perfect.
Now that's a man you can follow. If you just feel like well I just can't follow any man. OK. I can't follow any other woman.
Well just follow Christ. Just follow Christ because Christ is our ultimate example to how to live how to how to preach how to preach the gospel.
Everything that he did was wonderful. He do with all things well the Bible says right.
So with that in mind I want to move on to what our goals of 2021 were.
And when I preached a sermon about it in 2021 I said that we're going to try to start a church in England. OK.
We did that. We we we got that goal done and that church is thriving.
It's sometimes beats us in attendance right now just because everybody's been sick and stuff like that.
But they're still like they're basically bursting at the seams. They have no more room to add any more people.
They've been trying to get a building secure for a long time. They've been in talks with different people but they're trying to expand because you know it's the 80 20 rule.
If the building is completely full people are going to walk in like I don't know there's no place to sit and then they won't come back or whatever.
So we're trying to get a building done for them. That's a goal for this year. A goal that we need to get done.
But we did successfully start a church in England. I went over there and preached. I baptized 22 people when I was there.
I preached a multitude I think five sermons when I was there. But it was a great time. Great fellowship.
It's a great church. It's a great work. I ordained our evangelist Ian Taverner there and he's doing a great job.
So and his wife is a really nice lady and their kids are great and it's taken off over there.
It's exceeded my expectations and probably yours too. I'll get into the numbers that they they hit this year in a minute.
But one of our goals was to start a church in the Seattle area. Now I always picture everything north of here Seattle.
So that could be no actually everything from Olympia I kind of consider Seattle but it's not true I know that.
But you got all these little sub areas like Canton Bothell and Paul's Bow and whatever.
But our goal was to get a church started up there and we didn't end up getting that done.
So we did have a plan for that but that plan fell through. And in my mind we dodged a huge bullet with that one.
We dodged a huge bullet. So that person would have quit. There's no doubt about it.
And I'm glad that that they decided not to do it. I'm super happy about that.
But I still have plans. I still have plans for that area. That's never changed.
It's not like it's like well that one person wasn't going to do it. So now you know I'm not going to do it at all.
That's not that's not the case. But you need a man to lead. You need a man with a great woman behind him to lead.
And so we are still on the long term goals but that's one thing we didn't get done. Get a new building was another goal.
You're sitting in it right now. So we reached that goal. It's a great building. It's got a lot more room than we had before.
And I really just want to say I appreciate everybody. I know there's a lot of sacrifice made trying to get this thing together.
And manpower and man hours and just money that people put into it. I really appreciate that. This building is great.
And so we got two out of three sixty six point six percent done. So that's the number of a man. Right.
Don't don't read too far into that. All right. So but anyway we we did well. I mean I think that I think that it was a bonus that we didn't start in Seattle because
it just wasn't the right time obviously. See there's open doors to us all the time. Sometimes God closes the doors just like he closed the door to Asia and wouldn't allow them to preach.
But then later on churches were started in Asia. So I take comfort in that fact. So here at our church just the Vancouver location here we had five hundred and forty three salvations.
And so I think that we did beat last year's goal. I didn't look up what I'm just trying to forget those things which are behind and move forward. No I'm just kidding.
I couldn't find the info that really happened. So but I don't think that we even hit 500 salvations last year. I'm pretty sure we didn't.
It might have been close but I'm I'm pretty sure we beat that. And this year we had 57 baptisms this last year. And so that was combined with all of our churches.
But the 57 is a good number right. And so places I preached in. I preached in Fort Worth Texas. I preached in Sacramento. I preached in Boise. I preached in Georgia.
I preached in Hawaii. I preached in Cincinnati. I preached in England. I preached in Houston. I preached in Tucson. I preached in OKC. I preached at Yakima.
And through Ian Taverner he preached in Geneva Switzerland. Who would have thought the Sure Foundation Baptist Church would have preached in Geneva Switzerland.
And so he had a person baptized while he was there and they had some salvations while they were there. And so we're branching out to Europe now.
And so that's great. There's there's little pop up groups all over the world of people that would like to have churches.
But Geneva Switzerland was like a Calvinist stronghold for a long time and maybe it still is. I don't know. I know they have like statues of the reformers.
I asked Ian to bring me the head of John Calvin but he he wasn't able to get it done for me. So that was a goal that we didn't get. I'm just kidding.
The head of the statue. That was a joke. But anyway. So here's some stats on our other churches.
So Sure Foundation Baptist North which is the church we fellowshiped with yesterday our church plant in Surrey B.C. had 255 salvations and five baptisms.
And we have an evangelist and his wife Queenie brother Winfield and Queenie and their son Kingsley. They have been doing a great job up there.
And the church is kind of. Did you. A lot of you guys met different people that you'd never met before there. I met a lot of people I'd never met before.
We hadn't been able to see them in over two years because of all the COVID stuff but we we kind of have that that loophole where we can meet together in that one location.
Peace Arch Park. And you know what's really cool. I just want to tell the story really quick. So I preach this I preach a sermon about brethren dwelling together in unity.
That was the title of my sermon. So after the sermon I preach about that and after the sermon I said hey let's all go down and take a picture at the arch.
There's this arch that's been there since 1814 or something that's right on the border the Canadian U.S. border.
And on the other side we walked on the other side and someone says hey look what look what what it says and it says brethren dwelling together in unity at the top of the arch.
So cool as I had no idea it was there. I mean I'd seen the arch before but I never looked or zoomed into the words.
I thought how how could that be an accident. I don't believe in accidents like that. But it was pretty cool. So we all took a big picture there. Anyway I thought it was cool.
So our church up there is doing great. I think that that might be the top number of salvations that they've had in a year before. I'm pretty sure it is.
And Spokane our church in Spokane has been there for two plus years. The church in Surrey has been there for three years just like so they celebrated their third anniversary in September.
But the church in Spokane has been there it'll be three years this March and this year they had 218 salvations and four baptisms at that location.
So in our church there is probably running between 25 and 29 people. The church in B.C. and Surrey is running about between 30 and 35 people.
So now Hawaii is a church and this is where a heartbreak happened for me and my you know I just we had a church going in Hawaii and we had a lot of problems there and we end up having to close the church there.
I tried to jump start it and get it going again and it just didn't end up working out. But we still had 77 salvations in Hawaii. We still went on a successful missions trip and got a lot of people saved.
And so I don't regret that. It does hurt but you know sometimes like I said God just closes the door and he definitely closed the door on that. There was just no way to continue to limp it along.
Without leadership without good great leadership it's just not going to work out. But hey we still had 77 people saved there this year which is good.
So and then our church in England I mentioned that before February 14th is when it started so it started on Valentine's Day weekend or whatever.
And so their one year anniversary is coming up next month. And so but their salvations for the year it wasn't quite a full year. They had 986 salvations.
So that's almost a thousand salvations in 11 months. That's really really good or actually 10 months I think right.
Yeah something like that. But anyway and then 24 baptisms. Ian had two baptisms and I did the 22 before he was ordained. So it was a very successful church plant.
I mean they almost doubled our salvation totals. And so it's all about the team though. It's not about how the home church does necessarily.
It's you know we're all one big team. You know we're one big church. We just have different locations. And again it's not a denomination and so people that might not understand this.
When we plant the church that church is you know the umbilical cord is still attached so to speak. So we still have you know if they don't have an ordained pastor as their leader they're not independent at that point.
But once they become independent once a pastor takes over that church then we cut the umbilical cord so to speak and that church becomes its own independent Baptist church.
So but you know until they're out from underneath our leadership then they are still kind of attached to the mother I guess you would say.
So these are definitely independent in their locations but they're not independent Baptist churches yet. They're an extension of our church.
And again I'm not trying to I was joking around about the empire. You know we're not trying to build an empire.
I actually would rather just have this church that I deal with and that's it. But you know that's not what the Bible tells us to do does it.
So anyway as far as our total salvations for the year for the Shur Foundation Baptist Church banner we have two thousand seventy nine salvations this year.
So we did really well I know it was better than last year and we had 57 baptisms I know for a fact that that was better than last year so our church did really well this year or last year.
And again that's the efforts it's not just those are all my salvations those are everybody's salvations of all the churches that we go to.
And it's really important that we have a soul winning program because then two thousand seventy nine people would have not been saved that needed to get saved last year.
Right. So now we do support missions. You might not realize this but I do support two missionaries and actually one of them is a pastor.
One is an evangelist and Brother Matthew Stuckey is one of our missionaries that we support.
And let me just tell you so we get rewards based upon you know exponential numbers that we'll never know.
Like we can't crunch these numbers. So you have individual rewards for the things you do in heaven.
And look I'm not trying to start a 7-Eleven rewards club here but the rewards in heaven are going to be far greater than the 7-Eleven or whatever any company you can think of.
It's like they got all these rewards programs for everything and it's great but God has to you know he's a great mathematician a lot better than I am for sure.
And he's the one that can compute all this stuff. There's a lot of people supporting Verity Baptist Church which is a church that I was sent out under ordained by Pastor Jimenez.
But he sent out Brother Stuckey to start a church in Manila in the Philippines.
And so he's done a lot of great work there. It's very receptive there. It like is when I read you the numbers that they have it's just like it's crazy.
But when I was talking about the exponential numbers that we have when we give to our local New Testament church and that money goes to help those missionaries we have a part in that.
It might not be that we were knocking the doors or we were giving the gospel but you still have a part in it right.
And I don't know how those dividends are going to be distributed or whatever but I just know that God knows how to keep track of it all.
He's got everything straight in his mind. I mean if he knows how many hairs are on your head he can count you know the rewards that you're going to get for the extra things that we do.
And so as far as our church goes I'm very leery on who I give money to for missions just because there's a lot of missionaries out there that are just muchinaries right.
They just they take all this big sum of money with them and really they're not doing the work. They're just like on a permanent vacation in Spain or they're on a permanent vacation wherever they're at.
And they're getting all the support money and then they'll write a letter back to the church and it's like we had one salvation this year.
It's like so you were being paid six thousand dollars a month so that you could get one salvation this year.
That's I mean once you're like well one salvation means you know yeah I get that.
But like that's a lot of time and money invested in one salvation.
I even there was these missionaries in China I think I've told the story before but they came to our church and they said they had one salvation in China.
But they also had someone that they invited over for dinner.
And it's like they can't even preach the gospel in China. It's it's illegal. You cannot preach the gospel in China.
So they have to go there under a false pretense and say that they're there for something else.
They're not allowed to approach another person and tell them about Jesus. That person has to ask them a question.
And then if that spurs on the the the talk like but but what he was telling us basically in his missionary report is that they had to get good at asking questions that would lead them to ask a question about
you know God somehow like oh what's your favorite holiday. Oh ours is Christmas.
And then so like if they started talking about Christmas and they could tell them the story of Jesus or whatever or I mean or just I forget how he brought up Adam and Eve but he brought him up somehow.
Like how do you think the world began or I don't know. So that's not really the kind of missionary that I want to support.
Now some people are just misguided. I realize that some people are just lazy though some people just they want they have the idea of being a missionary but when they get there they're not really doing the work.
I'm not saying no missionaries do the work. I'm not saying that at all. But if a missionary can't even give you a correct gospel presentation then there's a problem.
I would never support a missionary that could not explain to me how to give the gospel because isn't that what missionaries are supposed to be doing preaching the gospel.
I mean if you think about Paul the Apostle the greatest missionary that ever lived you know he was going and preaching the gospel.
And so I want a missionary that's like unto Paul someone that's example is Paul not someone's example as well.
You know I gave him an Adam and Eve coloring book and then I asked him some questions like that is garbage.
You know if a country is closed off then it's closed off for a reason. You know and maybe God will open that door again someday.
But if it's not open now you know what there's plenty of countries out there that need the gospel and it's free and clear to just go in there and preach.
But these missionaries would rather go someplace where it's nice weather and good for them or whatever and just suck the church's money dry.
They go around traveling for years and years to try to drum up money for the support for themselves.
You know it's just not biblical. And then when they get there they do nothing. It's trash.
I mean a lot of churches they have like these these walls where they have all these missionaries they support.
I'm sure who's been to one of those churches where it's just oh these are the missionaries we support we give them all $20 a month.
It's like well I'm sure that's really helping. But they do that so they can say well look at what all we're doing in the mission field.
You're not doing that. And do you check up on those missionaries on a regular basis and make sure they're doing what they're supposed to be doing.
Brother Stuckey was doing a weekly report for years. And then he finally just said well I'm just going to change that to a monthly report.
Because it's just a lot to just crunch all those numbers and stuff because he's doing so they're doing so well over there.
Listen to these numbers. OK. This is why I support Brother Stuckey. Manila seven thousand one hundred eighty five salvations.
Just in Manila. But see Brother Stuckey didn't stop in Manila. He's expanded the empire of Verity Baptist Church. I'm just kidding.
But he's extended his you know so he got over there he started the church and they were under some of the most crunching COVID rules in the whole world.
Like you literally were not allowed to go to the store with your children. I mean and that country is not free like we're free here.
So you know if you're caught doing something like that they could throw you in prison or beat you or whatever.
So Papanga was another church they started an area called Papanga and they had seven hundred and ninety salvations in Papanga.
So somebody have a calculator. I forgot to add it all up. But anyway somebody want to add these up for me.
See they said you're not always going to have a calculator with you when you're out in the world in school. Yeah we do we all have calculators don't we.
So seven seventy one eighty five for Manila seven hundred ninety for Papanga. And then I hope I'm pronouncing this right but it sounded like he was saying Beekle.
But he said five hundred ninety seven salvations for that place. It's just like kind of a start up Bible study area.
So they've kind of started some Bible studies in different areas and and there's some Asian countries over there that are kind of I didn't get Hong Kong's number.
But Hong Kong has a really small group of people. And of course Shanghai has taken over Hong Kong. It's not Hong Kong used to be run by the British Empire for a long time.
And they said that they would never you know do do certain things that they've done and but they do still have a Bible study group that's still going so in there I didn't get those numbers.
But then he also has an outpost in Singapore that he oversees and that Singapore Bible study group had four hundred and sixty three salvations.
So what's the total number for all those combined anybody do that for me huh.
Nine thousand thirty five. So do you see why we support that missionary.
Tell me another missionary around the world right now that has those numbers.
I want to see it.
And I'll support them too.
I want to support. Hey I want to support anybody that has numbers close to that.
And so that church those churches over there are thriving despite being pressed down by all this COVID stuff.
Now the other person that we support is Pastor Paul Waringa and he's over in Nigeria.
And so we've been supporting him since the Christmas before last time.
And he has a very small church but they had two hundred fifty four salvations at their church.
And he's not a missionary he's a pastor but we're just helping them.
And and so they had two hundred fifty four salvations and nine baptisms.
That's the missionaries that I'm supporting right now.
Those are the missionaries that I have grown to trust.
But I mean Brother Stuckey is a great missionary isn't he.
I mean they're doing a great job over there.
And obviously that's God's power upon their lives and you know but they're they're receiving we're receiving some kind of dividend rewards right.
But you know it's like when you put I don't know I don't understand a lot of that but I know that God understands it.
I know that God understands what we're getting for that.
But that's not my motivation for doing things just rewards.
Like honestly when I'm going soloing I never think about rewards.
I don't. And that's not my motivation like I can't wait to see all the rewards I'm going to get today.
Yeah. You know that's not my motivation. I don't think that's anybody's motivation really.
But if you had that motivation would it be wrong.
It's not wrong because God is giving us those rewards.
Not only does he give us rewards in this life the life we live now but he also is going to give us rewards you know in heaven.
So and with that everlasting life see everlasting life is the baseline that everybody gets.
If you're saved the baseline is everlasting life.
So even if you are sweeping the temple or something that's that's you know that's your job up in heaven for all eternity.
That's still a good reward.
You know we're still going to work there.
It's not like we're just going to be like you know jello rolls that just are floating around or something.
We're we're going to be doing stuff.
We're probably going to be tending our own lands and vineyards and stuff all the stuff that you want to do right now you're going to get in heaven.
So it's like you know why not work now for a better heaven for a better reward.
Then to just flounder here on this earth and just be like man I really wish I would have had rewards when I had the chance.
Because let's just be honest.
You know I saw this article and it was a lady that was 85 years old with a walker.
And somebody posted this I think it was Pastor Young Pastor John Young posted this.
And it was like a Baptist group was trying to like show people what you know they had this like evangelism thing that they're doing or whatever.
But the lady knocked 30 something doors and she was crippled.
She said I could barely walk most days.
I don't even know if they have the right salvation or anything like that I just was reading the article a little bit.
And this lady is 85 years old and knocked like 36 doors in a walker.
But most Christians won't even get off their hind ends and knock one door.
But think about this you do have a shelf life in your Christian life.
You have the time that you start and that you're saved and that might be when you're a child and you might not have control over your own destiny at that point.
But when you're old enough to be accountable for yourself and be the Christian that you know God wants you to be there is a shelf life.
You get saved later in life I get that some people get a lot of people get saved when they're young.
You have you know and those that get saved when you're young you can get way more rewards than someone like me.
I got saved when I was 25 right and I already had a whole bunch of baggage that I brought into my Christian life.
You know and if you are raised in church obviously anybody can sin.
Even people that go to church sin.
Even people are raised in church sin.
It's not like you know they're the holiest people of all time.
You have a better advantage what advantage hath the Jew you know.
You have an advantage if you're raised in church I get that.
But you only have a certain amount of time that you can serve the Lord with all your might.
Not everybody's Caleb not everybody's Moses.
Those were special abilities that God gave Caleb at I think he was 85 years old when he took the mountain didn't he.
He was 85 years old.
That lady with the walker knocked 36 Thor she's 85 years old.
Caleb had all the strength that he had when he was a young man when he took that mountain.
But you're not going to have that strength.
If you think you are well maybe you're the exception to the rule.
But in case you haven't noticed there's no 85 year old people in here that go soul winning.
There's no 85 you know that was a that that article was written because that's a rarity.
And she did it one time.
It's not like she was doing it every week.
She did it one time they wrote a whole article in this Baptist newspaper about her.
But when you're 80 are you going to be going up the triple decker apartment complexes and knocking those doors.
Probably not.
Probably not and especially if you're in a walker.
I remember on one of our soul winning marathons I pushed somebody in a wheelchair the whole time I was like good night.
You know imagine pushing yourself in a wheelchair trying to knock doors.
You know you don't know what a day is going to bring forth either so you know what's the best thing for you to do is to serve God with all your might right now while you have the time while you have the health while you can still do it.
Because how many 70 year olds are in this church knocking on doors every single week.
Zero.
How many 85 year old people are doing it every week.
Zero.
How many 65 year old people there might be a couple.
I don't know how old everybody is but but it's a rare thing.
People get you know there is a retire you know we say we like to say there is no retirement age for serving God and I get that and look I'm not against you if you're too old or too you know beat up to be knocking doors like barnstorming like you were in your roaring 20s or whatever.
You know what you can still do though you can still pray for people you can still pray that people get saved you can still be a prayer warrior.
But don't just be like you know I'm 30 years old it's time for me to retire.
I've done five years of soul wanting that's my retirement plan I'm just going to take what I got.
No.
Serve God while you have the strength to do it now.
And you say well I'm just going to wait until I make my fortune and I can go on mission trips and do all this.
You know what that time is going to pass you by.
Do it while you can do it now and you will be able to do a lot more instead of just waiting to do all that stuff why don't you just do it now.
Just do it now because let's be honest most 65 year old people are still not going to be knocking doors every single week.
Let me tell you I'm almost 50 and that's not that old but I have aches and pains.
You know I'm sure who has aches and pains every morning.
Come on be honest all right even young pups over here.
How old are you Remy?
24 he's got aches and pains it's a hard life.
But hey when you're working construction you're going to have those aches and pains trust me.
Brother Joe do you have any aches and pains?
Yeah a few.
I think most people you know the older you get the more you're going to get and the harder it's going to be to get up in the morning to do those things.
Just be honest.
Anyway let's turn to Jeremiah chapter 29.
See God wants to bless us.
God wants to help us.
God always wants the positive things for us.
We're the ones that turn things negative because we we get off the beaten path.
Look at verse number 11 Jeremiah 29 it says,
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you sayeth the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you an expected end.
Then shall you call upon me and you shall go and pray unto me and I will hearken unto you and you shall seek me and find me when you shall search for me with all your heart.
If you really truly want to do God's will you need to call upon him you need to pray to him.
But he will hearken unto you.
We can't take responsibility for who gets saved and who doesn't.
We just have to preach the gospel.
But God has his thoughts towards us, the things he thinks towards you all in this room.
It says thoughts of peace and not of evil.
It's not like he just wakes up in the morning and is like I can't wait to thunder cloud on brother Bill this morning.
You know he did a sin yesterday that I'm not you know.
Obviously morning by morning new mercies we see when you confess your sins, when you confess your sins to the Lord he's going to be faithful and just forgive you of all your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
But I just want to show you this verse because God's, his thoughts towards us are peace.
You know and if we seek him it says we'll find him and when he searched for me with all your heart.
But is your heart all in or are you kind of just like is part of your heart back in Egypt?
Kind of talked about this yesterday.
You know sometimes our heart wants to go back to Egypt. Sometimes things get hard in the Christian life or you know we have losses in our life.
Our family members you know don't get saved or you know so there was a heartbreaking story that I saw one of our friends on Facebook.
They sent some information to their uncle and said you know they wanted him to get saved.
And then like she called her uncle and the uncle said I don't want to have anything to do with you ever again. You're dead to me.
Those things are hard, those things hit hard. You know someone that you grew up with that you loved your whole life all of a sudden because of Christ wants nothing to do with you.
I'm sure everybody in this room has a story similar to that though.
Turn to James chapter 4 verse 15. Now we have goals in this church like I said and I also said that those goals don't always get met.
Now just because a goal doesn't get met doesn't mean you know it was us that screwed up or me that screwed up. It could be just God you know not allowing it to happen.
James 4 verse 15 says for that ye ought to say if the Lord will we shall live and do this or that.
See our attitude should be well if God's going to allow us to do this then I'm going to go soloing next week.
Or if God's going to allow me to do this I'm going to continue preaching.
But we ought not to think that we're in control of everything because God is ultimately in control of what we do.
It says but now ye rejoice in your boastings all such rejoicing is evil therefore to know him or therefore to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not to him it is sin.
So hey that's why I'm saying we need to do good now while we have the time to do it and when you know that you're supposed to be doing something good and you don't do it it's sin.
I mean that's just the bottom line right.
So what are our long term goals of the church? Well I want to grow our church here at home. I want to reach new families in our community and we've been doing a great job of that so far.
And the location of this building has been a very big help but also reaching into new neighborhoods and things like that has been good.
I'd like to see more people get saved. I'd like to see more people get baptized. I mean that's ultimately always the goal for the next year.
But I'd like to start more churches. Obviously right now might not be the right time to do that but I always still have my ear to the ground.
I always still am looking and watching for things. It's like well don't you have enough on your plate? Yeah I do.
How many churches did Paul start? Do you think that people said to Paul, Paul how many churches are you going to start?
What's wrong with you Paul? Don't you have enough going on? You're writing letters to the Philippians, you're writing letters to the Galatians, you're writing letters to Smyrna, you're writing letters to all these places you've been to.
What's wrong with you Paul? To me when people have that attitude to me that's a discouraging attitude.
If we can handle it we can handle it. If Paul can handle it, I'm not saying I'm Paul obviously, but Paul handled all these churches at the same time and wrote letters to them and went and visited them.
I don't think it's, it's not weird to want to start new churches. I think it's biblical. And it also takes faith. You have to have the faith to start a new church.
And you can't just say well I don't know it's not the right time, I don't have this, I don't have that. Is it ever the right time?
When is it ever going to be the right time? See people just wait and they just make excuses as to why it's not a good time.
But if it's an open door we should walk through it. Titus 1 5 says,
For this cause left I thee in Crete that thou shouldest set and ordered the things that are wanting and ordained elders in every city as I had appointed thee.
So Titus was sent to this island of Crete to ordain elders in every city at the behest of Paul.
What is God's will? That there's elders in every city. There's pastors of great churches in every city.
This is a small island. Okay? It's a very small island and he's saying every city on Crete needs to have a pastor.
So what do you think God's vision for the whole world is? And look there's a lot of gaps out there.
And in case you didn't realize that Christianity is not doing as well as it was 50 years ago.
There's not a lot of churches just tearing it up as soul winning. Not a lot of churches that are preaching and thundering forth God's word without apologizing for it.
Not a lot of hard preaching on sin out there is there? Because these pastors are afraid to lose people.
They're afraid to offend people. They're afraid of their own shadow. They've shaved their legs. They're too scared to preach God's word.
They want that smooth preaching that you get from a Gillette razor.
But there needs to be men of God that stand up with some hair on their legs and preach God's word.
And hey sometimes your sermons need to be hairy sermons.
You know John the Baptist was a hairy man. Not just his physical appearance but also his sermons.
He's like how can you escape the damnation of hell? When the Pharisees came. Most people were afraid to even talk like that.
Oh he said that to the Pharisees. John the Baptist was like how are you going to escape the fires of hell? You vile serpents.
You know he's calling them names and stuff and people are like Jesus would have never preached like that. He would have never said that.
You know they're like hair is going to get you and he's like tell that fox to you know go jump in a lake or whatever.
You know he's calling the king of Israel a fox. And foxes are like they're kind of like giant rats.
You're like but they're cute. Yeah well when they're in your garbage they're not cute.
There was like I saw foxes in England I was like tripping out because they're pretty big.
You know they're dogs. But it's not a good thing to call someone. Foxes in the henhouse.
You know that's what probably most people think of because they go and eat all your chickens and eat the eggs.
But anyway I'm droning on here. I've got to move forward here.
So what are some of my other goals? Well I still want to continue to preach around this country and around the world.
I still want to plant a church in Seattle. I still want to plant a church in Yakima. I still want to plant a church in Tri-Cities.
I want to get into Europe and start preaching into Europe and Ireland and Scotland.
You know I'd like our churches to have pastors that lead them and we can cut the umbilical cord with those churches.
But hey is three years really that long of a time to have a church plant? I mean I don't think it's that long.
You know sometimes it takes a while to get a pastor or a man of God that is trained and ready to go.
I'd like to take a trip to America's Samoa. I'd like to take a trip to Tahiti for missions trips.
I mean I preach a sermon about how I want to reach the Pacific Islands. It's a difficult task.
You know with real missions work it's going to be a difficult task but I want to do it someday.
Short term I want to go back to Yakima and continue to knock Yakima proper and you know just add it to my list.
I'd like to do a soul winning marathon in Bellingham and see what we can do.
And then do another trip to meet up with the Canadians and have some more preaching services there.
And again like I said I want to have more salvations than we did last year but again that's not in our control.
All we can do is knock the doors and do the work and God is going to bring the increase right?
And I'd like to do some more missions trips. So turn to Acts 17.
Acts chapter 17.
I want our church to have this reputation.
Where people see us coming they're like oh no it's your foundation Baptist church again. Draw your blinds you know.
It says and when they found them not they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city crying.
These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also.
You know the people were you know Paul's reputation preceded him when he'd go to a new place and they're like oh no Paul's actually here.
They're like they're upset about it because you know what not everybody that we knock on their doors is happy to see us in case you didn't realize that.
But I want us to have the reputation that we've turned the world upside down.
But in reality what they're saying is not really true.
They turned the world right side up because there's something wrong with this world and we need to bring the light of the gospel to them so that they can be saved.
And so they can see the world for what it actually is.
Luke chapter 23 verse 31.
Now Christianity and the Christian life is like climbing a mountain sometimes isn't it?
And we got this great picture back here of Mount St. Helens and you see all the green trees at the bottom.
You know that's beautiful right?
And they're like evergreen trees but you look at the mountain itself and obviously sometimes it has snow on it.
This picture itself does not have snow on it.
But so climbing it at this time of year would probably be an easier time wouldn't it?
But when you be, you know I'm not an expert on mountain climbing and I'm not pretending to be.
I have climbed buttes and done some things like that.
I've gone hiking but it's not like something I do every week or something obviously.
But what it says in Luke 23 verse 31 it says,
For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?
Now this is, in context of this, this is talking about how the children of Israel were reacting to how Jesus was preaching and they were treating him roughly.
And this is the time when the green tree was there.
When the life giver was there.
You know Jesus Christ is there and they're responding in the way that they did.
How are they going to act when it's dry?
But I kind of want to use this verse to explain that when we first get saved, salvation has a newness to it.
Going to church has a newness to it.
It's like being in this green forest.
It's all good.
Everything's great.
No major battles have happened yet.
You're just like praying.
You're reading the Bible.
You know it's just like this newness that you have.
And even like going to a new church.
It's kind of like that.
And you know you're kind of in a green tree at that point.
Most of the time people don't start off being persecuted right away.
You know sometimes that takes a little bit of time.
It can happen right away.
You know depending on who your family members are because usually it's the family members that come at you first.
And you're like why are you doing this?
You know your uncle's been on drugs his whole life and they're helping him and they love him.
But when you find Christ and you turn your life over you know and just change everything about yourself.
They're like you're so judgmental.
This is weird.
But anyway so you just think about this.
If you're going to go climb a mountain you'd probably start your base camp in the green trees.
And that's kind of how salvation starts out right.
And so you go to trek up the mountain begins and you start hitting some mile markers.
You know hey I've read my Bible all the way through cover to cover.
Hey my prayer life has really taken off.
You know you're starting off you're hitting the mile markers trying to climb up the mountain.
Because ultimately who's at the top of the mountain and I'm not saying this mountain in particular.
I'm just using it for like a visual.
But who's usually at the top of the mountain when the prophets go up there?
It's God. God meets you at the top of the mountain.
So if you look at our Christian life as in it kind of starts here in the green tree.
Everything's kind of easy.
Everything's good. You feel great about your salvation and all that stuff.
But you start trying to get up here. The goal is to reach for that mark right.
Your goal is to get to the top and you know finish well.
And at the finish line you got God.
And you see it throughout the Bible in multiple different places where men of God would go and meet with the Lord at the top of the mountain.
So the top of the mountain is the goal.
I mean that's like the getting to the pinnacle of your Christian life.
But you got to go through all this stuff first.
You got to go and you know and sometimes you know you can try to go up a mountain and climb a mountain and get to God.
But if you're not reading your Bible you're never you're never going to understand where to go next.
You're going to get lost.
And you know when the blizzard comes and you're like right here.
You know you're if you can see that or you're like right here the blizzard comes.
It's going to make life hard.
And so you know if the Christian life is like climbing a mountain.
There's going to be a lot of things about that mountain that are going to hold you back.
It's not easy to climb a mountain.
You know some mountains are harder to climb than others I'm guessing.
But people climb Mount Everest.
That's that's like you know a big deal when you climb Mount Everest.
You know and people in the world just aren't necessarily Christians.
They climb mountains.
They get lost all the time don't they.
They always have to have life flight.
You know our taxpayer dollars go and pick them up off the mountain.
That's always irritated me by the way.
But anyway.
So.
But you as a Christian can get lost sometimes trying to get up to the mountain.
But you know if you if you're doing things right in your Christian life you're going to be able to meet your milestones.
And get to the top of that mountain.
That's the goal.
To get to the top.
Now.
When you get in the perseverance to get to the top and reach your goal.
That's what it takes.
But it's the same way in the Christian life.
Our faithfulness.
And our and our daily walking close to God.
Is what's going to help us get up that mountain.
Because remember I said that you know that laws is a light to my path or a light to my.
Good night huh.
Lamp under my feet and a light under my path sorry.
The brain brain aneurysm there.
But it's a lamp unto our feet that shows us where to go and a light to our path.
And you know if you're climbing a mountain most people climb a path that somebody's already gone up before.
You're not the first Christian to ever climb that mountain.
You know of the Christian life.
But you know there's going to be things and hard things that come and sometimes people retreat and go back to the green tree.
Sometimes people want to or sometimes people just leave the forest altogether.
Right.
When the Christian life gets too hard they're like this is just too hard.
I don't want to deal with this anymore.
I'm done.
You know and you don't ever want to get to that point.
If you have to go back down to the green tree go back down to the green tree and get yourself you know get your supplies that you need and whatever.
But don't just leave the forest.
Don't leave the mountain.
You know you want to keep but you want to keep moving up.
Or like well Pastor Thompson what happens when I get here.
Then go back down and climb it again I guess.
I mean you know Moses came down from the mountain didn't he.
So I mean it's not it's not bad to do it again it's like you're just you're just doing more work right.
So Moses went up to the mountain and what happened God met with him there and he talked with him face to face.
You know I just want to encourage us as Christians that hey we don't have to get stuck right here.
You don't have to get stuck right here.
But you should leave this area at some point to try to make that push up the mountain right.
You wait for you got the weather.
But all these things there's all kinds of things that can stop you from getting up the mountain.
Weather is one thing.
Snow.
What about grizzly bears.
I don't think we have grizzly bears in that forest there.
But we have bears.
Lions Tigers and bears right.
We have at least mountain lions.
But you know you could you could break your leg on a you know tripping over a rock or whatever.
It's rough being out in the wilderness.
But a lot of times you'd see God's people in a wilderness area having a hard time in their lives.
And you know we just got to understand that there's going to be times in our lives where we're going through really hard times.
But that doesn't mean that we stop.
It's not the mountains fault.
It's not God's fault that these things happen to you.
Time and chance happen to every person.
You know and sometimes God is putting you through a trial and you just don't understand that.
Like why is this happening to me.
It could just be a trial.
You know we're going to be tried.
And we're and you know if we if we get through that trial.
We're going to come forth as gold.
That's what the Bible says.
Job went through all the things that he went through in his life.
And he didn't even understand.
We don't even know if he understood the full magnitude of what was going on with that story.
But what we do know is that God blessed him beyond measure at the end of his trial.
Right.
And he lost a lot of things.
But you know what God gave him 10 more children.
So the Christian life can be hard.
It is like climbing a mountain sometimes.
You know Caleb said I want that mountain.
Didn't he.
Elijah went to the mountain when he was in despair and afraid that Jezebel was going to kill him.
And God spoke to him on the mountain didn't he.
And so but what part of the mountain are you at this morning.
Where are you at in your Christian life.
Are you still at base camp.
Are you up here.
Are you right about here.
But you just can't quite get all the way up.
You know the goal is to get to the top.
The top of the mountain to press towards the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
That's that's the goal.
So are you on your way back down because the paths too difficult.
Are you are you reading your Bible.
Are you praying.
Are you going sowing.
Are you a regular attendance at the tender at church.
Those are the things that are going to make and break a Christian.
If your life's off balance.
I mean think about you got two arms and two legs.
And all those things are pretty necessary for climbing aren't they.
But if one of your arms tied behind your back you think it's gonna be harder to climb up the mountain.
You know you got the Bible reading you got you got the soul when you got the church attendance.
The soul when you got the church attendance.
You're lacking a balance in your Christian life.
Turn to Jeremiah chapter 12 verse 15 or verse 5.
Jeremiah 12 verse 5.
I know I'm kind of going over here a minute but.
I've got a few more verses to look at here I'll try to speed up.
All right.
The Bible says in Jeremiah 12 5.
If thou is run with the footman and they have wearied thee.
Then how canst thou contend with horses.
If you can't beat footmen in a race.
You're trying you know you're racing men.
And your goal is to try to beat a horse in a race.
You know how and if the footman wearied thee.
How are you gonna beat a horse.
You're not.
And if in the land of peace wherein thou trustedest.
They wearied thee.
How wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan.
If it's a land of peace the waters are flowing nicely everything's going great.
And you know that has made it that's that's too hard the Christian life's been too hard for me.
If that wearies you.
How are you gonna deal with the swelling of Jordan.
How are you gonna deal with the actual hard times of your life.
We got to get tougher as Christians.
We got to realize that there's a goal to get to the top of this mountain.
And we can't let every little thing knock us down.
We can't let every little hiccup in life take us off the path.
But we also have to do our part in trying to grow in the Christian life.
And not just just kind of flow through it like oh you know this is this is great.
You know which kind of Christian you gonna be the one that leaves the forest or you gonna be the one that gets to the top of the mountain.
You're like well I don't know I don't know the mountain climbing is hard.
It's a metaphor to say no.
I'm not actually asking you to climb that mountain but it can be like that.
And so I'm gonna zip through some of these.
So you know just how are you doing in 2022 spiritually.
Are you doing better than you were last year or would you say you're more spiritual this year than you were last year.
If not well why don't you try to get more spiritual.
You know there's this thing called trying.
Trying.
Doing it.
Matthew 5 15 29 says and Jesus departed from thence and came unto the sea of Galilee and went up into a high mountain and sat down there.
You notice that Jesus is always going someplace.
He's not just staying in Jerusalem kicking his feet up and saying I'm the king of the Jews.
I'm the king of Israel.
He's walking all over the place for years and is he just staying in the lowlands.
No right here it says he climbed up into a high mountain.
But Jesus did that kind of stuff all the time.
He went apart from the disciples and prayed by himself.
He went up into a mountain to pray.
They're in a boat just kind of row row row your boat and he's just walking up to them on the water.
So you know Jesus Christ gave us examples that you know we should always be going someplace.
And sometimes you've got to climb places that are a little higher than others.
You've got to get off the flat lands and get into the hills sometimes.
Now I'm just going to let's just go through some verses really quick and I'll be done.
Isaiah chapter 2 verse 2.
I'll make it easy for you.
Isaiah chapter 2 verse 2.
I just want you to think about these verses as we close our services here.
Isaiah 2 verse 2 and whenever I drive past a mountain this is just my inner thoughts I don't know what it means.
But I'll drive across the 205 bridge on my way to work sometimes.
And in the morning sometimes you know the sun has just risen and you see that big majestic Mount Hood covered with snow.
It's just beautiful.
And I always just think to myself the mountain of the Lord.
Because you know the Lord in scripture it equates this mountain in heaven.
You know where's he going to dwell on earth?
Mount Zion.
It's a mountain.
It might not be a mountain like Mount Hood but it's still a mountain.
Look at Isaiah 2 verse 2 it says,
And it shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains,
and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it.
And many people shall go and say,
Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob,
and he will teach us his ways, and we'll walk in his past.
For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
Amen, right?
That's awesome.
So his place is going to be above all the hills.
It's going to be set established upon the tops of the mountains.
Where does God want us to be?
He wants us at the top.
He wants our Christian life.
He wants us to finish and when we finish we finish strong.
Not backslidden in some retirement center where nobody wants to come visit us anymore.
Finish strong.
Now it says, turn to chapter number 30 real quick.
Isaiah chapter 30 verse 29.
It says, ye shall have a song as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept,
and gladness of heart when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord,
to the mighty one of Israel.
See, God is waiting for us at that mountain,
but we have to actually make an effort to get up it.
People don't just float up mountains.
They climb.
And the Christian life is a climb.
Sometimes we're walking down the other side of it.
Sometimes we're in a valley.
But sometimes we're at the top of the mountain.
Sometimes we're in the middle.
You know, we're just, our life is a series of ups and downs.
And we need to try to be the best Christians that we can be this year.
Not just say, well, I'm just going to maintain.
The Bible already tells us to maintain what we've already accomplished, right?
What we've already done, just keep up on that stuff,
but we need to try to get higher and lower.
Keep up on that stuff, but we need to try to get higher
to where we're up here in the upper echelon, right?
John 8 31 says, and Jesus said to those Jews which believed on him,
if you continue in my word, then you're my disciples indeed.
There's a big if there, though.
If you continue in my word.
So what do I want this morning?
I want us to continue.
Don't quit, continue.
John 15 nine, as the Father hath loved me,
so have I loved you.
Continue ye in my love.
See, it's all about continuing, moving forward,
moving to the next marker.
So what do I want this year for our church?
Well, I want us to get with the program.
Whatever program we have going on, get involved.
And if you can't get involved in everything,
look, I'm not saying you have to,
but we should be on board with the,
the main program is still wanting, right?
Stay on course with the program that you're already on
and let 2022 be the year of the most
that you've ever done for God.
And that should really be our goal ultimately every year
is to get better as a Christian,
to get rooted and grounded in the word of God,
to know the Bible better.
If you just read the Bible once a year,
you're gonna know more every year about the Bible.
You're gonna know more about God
and what he wants for your life.
That's just one time a year.
So what would I say?
Well, I say this all the time.
Let's all want to make church a priority in your life.
All right?
Let's bow our heads in prayer.
Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord,
so much for this great church
and we pray that you just continue
to bless our church, Lord,
and help us to move off the mountain this year
into bigger and better works
and bigger and better things.
I pray that you just bless our church tremendously.
Help us to have a vision for the things that you want.
Help me as a pastor to have a vision
and, Lord, to be watching over the sheep of this fold.
In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
This is my Father's world
And to my listening ears
All nature sings and round me rings
The music of the spheres
This is my Father's world
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees
Of skies and seas
His hand the wonders wrought
This is my Father's world
The birds their carols raise
The morning light the lily white
Declare their Maker's praise
This is my Father's world
He shines in all that's fair
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass
He speaks to me everywhere
This is my Father's world
Oh, let me ne'er forget
That though the wrong seems off so strong
God is the ruler yet
This is my Father's world
The battle is not done
Jesus who died shall be satisfied
And earth and heaven be won
Amen. Good to see you, brother Anthony.
Could you close your water prayer?
Thank you so much for this wonderful day, John.
Please bless the rest of the day.
Thank you.