You want to know the order of Christian growth? This is what it is. Number one, you get saved.
Number two, you get baptized. And number three, you win souls.
And you know what? Sometimes you might even win souls before you get baptized.
Because winning souls, getting other people saved, is the first command that God gives you to do after you get saved.
You say, wait a minute, Pastor Anderson, I don't really know all the Bible and I don't really feel confident.
I don't really have the boldness to talk to somebody.
I just don't know all the verses and I just don't know how I could get somebody else saved.
Hey, look, are you saved? Then you must know how to get somebody saved.
Why don't you just take one verse? Take John 3.16.
And take John 3.16 to somebody and just tell them what it says.
And tell them how you got saved. And preach to them the gospel of Jesus Christ from John 3.16.
You don't need to know the whole Bible to be a soul winner.
Because the first step that you need to do as a Christian is to be winning other people to Christ.
To be bringing forth fruit. The sad truth is that the vast majority of Christians, the vast majority of branches in the vine, do not bring forth any fruit.
99% of the people that you meet that are saved, and maybe yourself included, have never won somebody to the Lord.
They've never seen one person saved in their entire life. More than 99%.
I mean there are very few Christians who decide that I'm going to abide in Christ, I'm going to let him purge me, and I'm going to bring forth much fruit.
So step one is you bring forth fruit. But see, bringing forth fruit is not what glorifies God the most.
If you notice in verse number eight the Bible says,
Herein is my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples.
The Christian life is not just some do's and don'ts.
You know, like, wow, I'm such a great Christian because I didn't do this, I didn't do this, I didn't do this.
Hey, if you didn't do everything, and you never win somebody to Christ, and you never bring forth fruit, you're a failure in life.
But if you've got a cigarette in one hand, and you've got the wrong clothes on, and you've got a rock music CD in the other hand,
and you win somebody to Christ like that, I'd rather hang around with you any day than the person who quit all that stuff and does not win souls.
See, winning souls is everything.
So number one, you bring forth fruit. Number two, you're purged so that you can bring forth more fruit.
And then number three, you get your heart and your love right, where you're keeping God's commandments, because that's the purging that took place.
You're keeping his commandments, and that causes you to be closer to God because you're keeping his commandments.
He says, you're my friends if you do whatever I command you. That's how you can be my good friend.
And that's how you are abiding in Christ by keeping his commandments. Well, what's the result of that?
You'll begin to have more of a love in your heart. The love in your heart is what's going to cause you to bring forth more fruit.
Because if you think about it, what motivates me, what motivated me yesterday to be out knocking on doors in the middle of the day, you know,
high heat of the day, knocking on doors, what motivated me to do that? Why? Why did I do that?
There's one reason why I did that, because of love. You see, if I love people, I'm going to give them the gospel and I'm going to want to give them saved.
I mean, do you love your unsaved loved ones? Do you love your friends that aren't saved?
I mean, if you believe the Bible, you know there's a heaven and there's a hell, and that the only people that are saved are people that trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation,
that believe the record that God gave to the Son, that God has given to us eternal life.
Do you love your friends? Do you love your loved ones? Do you love your relatives?
Do you love people that you come into contact with from day to day?
I mean, the people that you run into at work, do you love those people?
Do you just walk down the street and meet people just here in Tempe, Arizona, and just, you see people?
You know, those are real human beings that you see, just people that you walk by and don't really care about and see.
Did you know that every single human being that you see has a soul that's one day going to go to heaven or hell?
Did you know that every single human being that you run into is somebody who Jesus Christ has died on the cross for that person?
And he thinks about that person all day long, and he has a plan for their life that he'd like to see happen, and he'd like to see that person get saved?
Did you know that that person is important to God? Did you know that he's an important person?
That person is somebody's mom or somebody's dad, somebody's mother or sister or mother or child or nephew or uncle and cousin?
Hey, somebody is who that person is. They're a real human being. They're a person with a soul.
Then you ought to love that person. And when you walk down the street and you see people walking down the street, does your heart ever break and you just say,
Oh, God, how's these people to be saved? There you are people, and they have no direction in life, no purpose in life.
They don't understand anything about life. They're unsaved. They're going to live a stupid, miserable life of sin and whatever.
They try to have fun with all the drugs and the alcohol and the promiscuity, and they end up destroying their life.
You know, kids out of wedlock, they don't know who their dad is, living off the government.
Their life's a mess, screaming and fighting and hating each other. And then what happens? They die and go to hell.
Well, does that break your heart? Don't you love those people and also want to get them saved?
Don't you want to get them the gospel? Hey, that love is what's going to motivate you to say, I'm going to buy it in Christ.
I'm going to buy it in church. I'm going to be in my Bible reading it. I'm going to let God purge me.
What do I need this stupid music for? What do I need this stupid clothes for that are wrong?
Well, what do I need it for? I need to be used by God. I need to be purged from these things.
I've got to get these people saved because I love them. But you know, when there's a lack of purging that goes on,
when there's a lack of fruit bearing, it's only because of a lack of love.
But the closer you get to Jesus Christ, the more you read in this Bible, the more you get in church and get out of the preaching of God's word,
the more that you allow yourself to be purged, the more that you begin to bring forth a little bit of fruit,
the more God will put that love inside of you. And the Bible says the love of Christ constraineth us to preach the gospel.
See, the love of Christ is forcing us practically. I mean, because it's just inside of me, this love that I have that makes me want to get everybody saved.
If my sin is going to hold me back from getting somebody that's saved and that person's going to go to hell because I wasn't meat for the master's use,
because I wasn't a branch that was purged that could bring forth fruit, what a tragedy.
We've got to have love in our hearts for our fellow man. And see, it's all tied together.
See, you have to just jump into this cycle somewhere because bringing forth fruit makes God purge you.
God purges you, you bring forth more fruit. And then because you bring forth more fruit, God purges you even more.
And then you have more love, and that makes you bring forth more fruit because of the love.
And now you're abiding in Christ, so you bring forth more fruit, and then God purges you more, which gives you the ability to produce more.
And it goes on and on and on. And you say, well, where do I jump into this cycle of more fruit, love, purging, love, fruit, purging?
Where do I jump in? You jump in with the fruit. That's where it starts.
You jump in, in verse number two at the beginning, and he says, bring forth fruit, and I'll start purging you and we'll start this whole process.
And I'm going to tell you something. There are churches all over that have withered up and dead.
They've withered and died. And maybe they even believe right. But they're dead as a doornail when you walk in the door.
Nothing's happening. Nobody's getting saved. Nobody's getting baptized. Nobody's excited about the things of God. Nobody's excited about the Bible.
It's because they didn't bring forth fruit. And if this church ever ceases to bring forth fruit, this church will die.
I don't care how many people we have. I don't care if everybody here is still here and everybody's still reading the Bible and everybody is still dressed right and they got their hair right and they're following all the rules in the Bible.
This church ceases to bring forth fruit. This church will die and wither up and be worthless and good for nothing. That's what the Bible says.
We must bring forth fruit. We must love our fellow man. We must love one another enough to where we can see somebody that's on their way to hell and love them enough to give them the gospel.
And love them enough to be the kind of person that we need to be where God can use us to see a multitude saved. Hey, God doesn't use everybody the same.
God looks for the cleanest, most purged, best-looking man. And that's what he uses.
So I use the apostle Paul greatly to see thousands and probably a million people saved. That's why he used these men greatly.
And go ahead. Be worldly. Be not purged. And you know what? You might see a couple people saved in your life if you're lucky. And praise the Lord for it. That'd be great. You'd still beat 99% of people.
But don't you want to be somebody who really glorifies God? And don't you want to be somebody who brings forth much fruit? I mean just multitudes of fruit. I mean just hundreds of people saved.
Hey, it's available to you. I don't care if you're male, female, rich, poor, talented, not talented, shy, both. It is available to you. God can use you, no matter who you are, to see multitudes saved.
I promise you, anybody in this room could decide, I am going to be a fruit-bearer. I'm going to do what God has said in this chapter.
And you can jump into this thing. I guarantee you that God could use you to bring forth huge amounts of people when unto Christ. Just watch. Just see what God can do.