(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Heavenly Father, I thank you for your house, dear God, for the church that you died for, God, and I thank you for Verity Baptist Church, Lord, and the great things that are happening here. God, I ask that you be with our church. Please be with Brother Stuckey tonight, God. Fill him with the Spirit, Lord, to help him to have boldness and clarity, God. We love you, and we thank you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right. Well, first I want to thank Pastor Jimenez for giving me the opportunity to preach here this evening, and I want you to look at Matthew chapter 16, verse 18 in your Bible. Matthew chapter 16, verse 18. And this is going to be an introduction. We're talking about church growth here for several weeks, and tonight's sermon is going to be a little bit of an overview of the topic. Now, in Matthew chapter 16, verse 18, the Bible reads, And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. In Matthew chapter 16, verse 18, this is actually the very first time in the Bible that we see the word church appear. The word church does not appear in the Old Testament a single time. In fact, it only appears one other time in the Gospels, only one other time before Jesus actually rose again. Then when we get to the book of Acts, we see the word church appear over and over and over again. And what God says here in this verse is, I will build my church. We're talking about church growth here this evening. Now, this verse is one of the most misapplied verses in so-called Christianity that's out there. You know, the Catholics like to run with this verse, and they believe this is their mantra. They use this verse to say that Peter was the first pope, and based on him, he's the rock and everything like that. And what the Catholics believe is that if you're at any Roman Catholic church, you're part of this giant universal church. That's what they believe, that everybody who's Roman Catholic in the entire world is part of the same church. But it's not just the Catholics that believe that. The Protestants as well believe the same thing, because the Protestants came out of the Catholic church, and I remember growing up in a United Methodist church, and every single week, religiously, we said this. We said, we believe in the holy Catholic church. We said it just like that every single week. And so the question comes up, if we don't go to a Catholic church, why are we saying we believe in the holy Catholic church? And what they're going to tell you is, well, the word Catholic means universal. But here's the thing. At Verity Baptist Church, we don't believe in that. We don't believe that we're part of this one giant universal church. That is not what the church means. And honestly, I wouldn't take a second to preach on this part right now that I'm preaching of, but the charismatics, the non-denominational crowd, and a lot of Baptist churches have this idea that we're all part of this giant universal church. Now, we're all part of the same family. You know, I have brothers and sisters in Christ, in Iraq, in the Philippines, in whatever state, whatever country, but we're not part of the same church. Right now in Tempe, Arizona, they're having a church service, Faithful Word Baptist Church. We're not in the same church right now. It's a different church. Look at Hebrews chapter 2. Turn to Hebrews 2. Now, the great thing about the Bible is the Bible is its own built-in dictionary. If you want to know what a word means, you look it up in the Bible. The Bible says comparing spiritual things with spiritual. Usually, you can find the answer right in the Word of God itself. In Hebrews chapter 2 verse 12, the Bible reads, saying, I will declare thy name onto my brethren. In the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee. Now, keep your finger in Hebrews chapter 2 and turn to Psalms chapter 22. Psalms 22. And Psalms is in the very dead center of your Bible. And in Hebrews chapter 2 verse 12, it's actually quoting Psalms chapter 22 verse 22. So we're going to compare these two verses and see the change here. So in Hebrews chapter 2 verse 12, it says, saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee. Well, in Psalms chapter 22 verse 22, it says, I will declare thy name unto my brethren in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. So what we see here is that when the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, the word church in the New Testament is congregation in the Old Testament. Church means congregation. See, here at Verity Baptist Church, we're congregated together. We're one here tonight. This is a church service. But we're not congregated with people in other countries around the world or in other states. They're in a different location. And so this idea that we're all part of this giant universal church, the Bible does not teach that. See, that's why you always see the word church appear in the New Testament. Sometimes it mentions churches, plural. Obviously, it's talking about local churches. Or we'll say the church at Philippi. That's talking about a local church. The Bible never teaches we're part of this giant universal church. So going back to Matthew chapter 16, verse 18, when he says, upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, this is the main verse we're looking at tonight. And in this verse, what we're seeing, we can apply this to Verity Baptist Church itself. When he says, upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, Jesus has given instructions to every local church that there is out there. Now, we see that in Matthew chapter 16. I'm going to quickly go through a bunch of verses in the book of Acts. So turn to Acts chapter 1. Acts chapter 1. In Acts chapter 1, look at verse number 13. Acts chapter 1, verse 13. The Bible reads in Acts chapter 1, verse 13, and when they were come in, they went up into an upper room where abode both Peter and James and John and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon Zelotes and Judas the brother of James. These all continue with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brethren. And in those days, Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples and said, the number of names together were about 120. So we see here 120 people together. It's interesting that Jesus Christ preached to thousands of people, and everybody loved to hear him preach, but you know when persecution comes, a lot of people end up leaving. And now there's 120 people together. Well, look at Acts chapter 2. Acts chapter 2. And in Acts chapter 2, look at verse number 41 where the Bible reads, then they that gladly received his word were baptized, and the same day they were added on to them about 3,000 souls. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and prayers. So here in Acts chapter 2 verse 41, it says the people that were glad they were saved, they were glad they had heard the word of God and they believed on Jesus Christ, the people that were glad, they got baptized. I mean, that's exciting to see. 3,000 people were added on to them. It's not talking about 3,000 people were added to this giant universal church. It's saying 3,000 people in that local area. They got saved. They got baptized. They were glad to hear the word of God. 3,000 souls. Just think about that number for a second. And then in verse 42, it says they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship. If they're continuing in fellowship, that means they're together. 3,000 people. That's great. You know, in America, and I'm sure all around the world, IFB churches are not growing like this. IFB churches are dying across America. They aren't growing. They're dying. In IFB churches across America, the average age is getting older and the congregation is getting smaller, by and large with almost every independent fundamental Baptist church. That is not God's plan. See, God wants churches to grow. He doesn't want churches to stay at a really small number and die out. God wants this church, Verity Baptist Church, to grow. I mean, I remember I went to a church, you know, about 11 years ago. I visited the church a couple times because I was looking for a good independent fundamental Baptist church. They had a really zealous soul-winning program, and they had lots of members. And I went to the same church years and years later. No soul-winning program. The number of members was nowhere near as much. People were not that zealous for the things of God. And that's not just one church. It's like that across the nation. IFB churches are dying. They've left their first love. They are not growing like we see in the book of Acts. But this is God's pattern. God wants churches to grow like this. Turn to Acts chapter 12. Acts 12. And quite honestly, there's so many verses in the book of Acts that talk about church growth. I'm just hitting a couple. But in Acts chapter 12 verse 24, the Bible says, But the word of God grew and multiplied. You see, this is God's plan. In the book of Acts, we see what God's plan is. You know, Jesus Christ, He rose again. In Acts 180, He said, Go into all the world, get everybody saved. And they're going out there zealousy, preaching the gospel, and the church is growing. They're fired up for the things of God. You know, in America, one movement that's growing is called the house church movement, where basically you have just a couple families in a house, and they don't really have a set time they meet. It's just really casual. Nobody's qualified to preach the word of God, and they just kind of sit around and sing a few songs and shorts and a t-shirt, and then they just talk about, you know, what they think the Bible means. Now, when this church started, it started in the home, because it was a small church at the time. But it was not God's design for it to always be in the home. God's plan was for the church to grow so it can reach Sacramento with the gospel and get people saved. And, you know, I understand that when a church is small, you get to know people, and you love all the people at church, and once it starts growing, you don't have as much time to talk to everybody. But we should never get sucked into this idea that we don't want this church to grow. You better want this church to grow here at Verity Baptist Church. It's not about us. It's about God. And if we want to get people saved in Sacramento, it's going to take a lot of people here. When this church started, the people that were at this church were very zealous, pastor and his family. But pastor and his family can't reach all of Sacramento. They can't reach all of Natomas. It needs to grow. We need to bring more people in here so we can reach this community with the gospel and end up sending people out to start churches and supporting missionaries. We need our church to grow. Around the nation, independent Baptist churches, they should be growing. We need to get excited about the things of God again and be excited to bring people into church and them getting baptized and growing in the things of God. And that excitement is just not there in a lot of Baptist churches. We need to make sure it always stays here. We can never lose our first love at Verity Baptist Church. We need to always be zealous for the things of God because this is what God wants. God wants churches to grow. He doesn't want them to die out. Turn back to Matthew chapter 16. And in Matthew chapter 16, verse 18, the Bible reads, And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. It's interesting in Matthew 16, 18 that Jesus Christ says, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. See, what we need to understand is this. Some people seem to have this idea that when Jesus rose again, we were completely in the dark about what we needed to do to get a church to grow. God gave us the principles on how a church is supposed to grow. God revealed to us, the first point we have tonight is this, the revelation of church growth. See, God has revealed to us how we're supposed to get a church to grow. Look at Matthew chapter 18. Matthew 18. We're going to see the other place in the Gospels where the Bible talks about, uses the word church. In Matthew chapter 18. And in Matthew chapter 18, it says in verse 15, Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. So Matthew chapter 18, verse 15, is talking about if you have a problem with somebody at church. Honestly, we ought to be able to forgive people and forget about things very easily. But if there's some big issue that you can't forgive, let's say somebody borrowed hundreds of dollars from you, they didn't pay it back, and you can't forgive them and just let it go. The Bible says you're supposed to approach that person one-on-one. And the reason why is you don't want everybody in the church to just know about this big problem. And so you're supposed to talk to them individually, one-on-one, and then in verse 16 is what it says. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. So you get one or two more people with you, and they're there to confirm the things that are being said, and that you are the one that's been wronged. And once again, you're not telling everybody at church. See, the pattern for most people at church is this. When somebody wrongs you, you go and gossip and tell everybody about it. You want everybody to know what so-and-so did you. That is not the pattern in the Bible, because the Bible says he that seeketh love, or he that covereth the transgression, seeketh love. And if you really care about your brother or sister that's wronged you, you're going to try to work that out one-on-one so not everybody at the church knows about what happened. You ought to love that person and try to reconcile with that person. And so then in verse 17, this is what it says. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church. But if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. So basically, you've gone one-on-one to someone. You couldn't resolve the issue. Then you brought one or two more people with you. You still couldn't resolve the issue. And then it says you're supposed to bring it before the church. Now, this is an extreme situation. This should not be happening when somebody didn't shake your hand at the door. I mean, you ought to forgive them for something like that. This is talking about a major thing. But I suppose the universal church crowd thinks that, well, if you can't reconcile things, then you get on Facebook and tell every single believer in the world. I mean, that has to be what you believe if you believe in the universal church. Tell it unto the church. Go out in the streets and tell everybody how so and so wronged you. That is ridiculous. It's obviously talking about a local church where it's become an issue and you don't want to be gossiping and bitterness and murmuring to spread throughout the church. That's what it's talking about. But what I want to show you here in this verse, in Matthew 16 and Matthew 18, God mentions the church. It's not like the church just immediately started once Jesus rose again and then people had to figure out, well, what do we do? Do we baptize people? Do we preach sermons? Do we do this? Do we do that? Throughout the Gospels, you can see the pattern of what we need to do as a church and what we need to do to get our church to grow. We have to remember, the Bible says, Jesus said, I will build my church. He's the one who's going to do the work. Now, we can't just sit on the sidelines and just pray and say, God, please bring us people to church. In Mark 16, I love the verse where it says, and they went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them. The Bible says Jesus will work with you. Now, here's the thing. If you're not working, he can't work with you. It says they went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them. Turn to Matthew chapter 28. Matthew 28. And in Matthew chapter 28, we have the famous verses in verses 19 and 20 where the Bible reads, go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever have commanded you, and lo, I'm with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. So we see here in Matthew chapter 28, God says to go everywhere and preach the gospel. Go out, get people saved, baptize them, and then you're supposed to teach them to do likewise, observe all things. See, God showed us at the end of the book of Matthew, at the end of the book of Mark, and also in Acts 1-8 what our main mission is, to go out there and get people saved. He made it very clear. They knew what they needed to do. We today, we ought to know what the Bible says we need to do if we want this church to grow. We ought to go out there and get people saved. If we want God to bless this church, if we want to bring people to church, we need to be out there preaching the gospel, trying to get people saved. That's what the Bible teaches. And not only in Matthew chapter 28, he also showed us, if you think about the Sermon on the Mount, think about what the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. People have this idea that the God of the Old Testament was really evil, and Jesus just sought love. Yet in Matthew chapter 5, Jesus said if you've heard that if you lie with a woman, it's adultery. He said if you lust with a woman in your heart, you've already committed adultery with her. I mean, he brought that to another level. He said if you just lust after a woman, you've committed adultery. That's some pretty hard preaching. In Matthew chapter 6, he preached about not doing your alms and things to be seen of men, and then he preached really hard in the second half of Matthew 6 against the love of money and not trusting in God for your finances. And in Matthew chapter 7, he's talking about false prophets. That's some pretty hard preaching. It's not this Joel Osteen flowery sermon. So Jesus Christ showed us how the sermons ought to be. Hard preaching. The basic pattern we have is this. If we preach hard behind the pulpit and show people what the Bible says and cry aloud and spare not and we go out there zealously trying to win souls of the Lord, then God's going to bless his church. Now, it's not complicated, but it's not easy to do. It's very clear what we need to do, but it's not easy to accomplish. But God did not leave us in the dark about this. Now, here's the thing, though. If you look at independent fundamental Baptist churches, they brought a lot of patterns to their church that just aren't in the Bible. Some of the examples are junior church and Sunday school. Now, I used to go to a church where I preached every week at junior church. I was thankful for the opportunity God gave me, and I believe I was able to be used to bring people to church and get kids saved and preach them the Word of God with boldness. But junior church is not in the Bible. And Sunday school system, it's not in the Bible. There's a lot of reasons, and I'm not going on a tangent here, but there's a lot of reasons why we don't have that in this church. It's one of those things that if you just mention it, it seems like a good idea, but there's a lot of problems that are going to come if you have junior church and if you have Sunday school. But here's the thing about this. Jesus made it very clear in Matthew 19. He said, suffer the little children and forbid them not. He made it very clear that the kids should be in here hearing the Word of God, and there's a lot of other places in the Bible. But here's the thing. Independent Baptist churches, they ought to know that, because that's in the Bible. It's not like God said, well, you can do it this way or you can do it that way. He made it very clear the way you're supposed to do it. Everybody ought to be together. Another example is altar calls. We don't have altar calls at this church because they aren't in the Bible. And if you come from a different independent Baptist church, you're probably used to hearing a pastor get here at the end and have everyone bow their heads, close their eyes, and they preach you another five-minute mini sermon to try to convince you to come down to the altar. And then everybody partway through is looking up, saying, are other people looking yet, or do I have to keep my head down? And you get a sore neck afterwards because your head's been down for so long and everything. And I've heard a lot of pastors say this, not just one, but a lot of pastors have said, this right here is the most important part of the sermon. And here's my question then. How did Jesus screw it up in the Sermon on the Mount? Because he completely forgot the altar call. It's not there. I mean, if it's the most important part of the sermon, how did Jesus Christ, how did John the Baptist, how did all these great men of God completely screw it up then? They're inventing a new technique that is just not found in the Word of God. And here's the reason why altar calls came in, because they're not going out to get people saved. They're just bringing a bunch of lost people into church, and so you have to have an altar call if you want to talk to all those lost people. See, they're using unbiblical methods in the average IFP church. Now, we strive the best we can to follow the exact pattern that the Bible says. Turn back to Matthew chapter 16. So the first thing we see tonight is this, the revelation of church growth. God has revealed to us our job. Now, God said he would do the one building. We just have to follow the instructions he gave us. Matthew chapter 16 at verse 18, it says, And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church. We saw the revelation of church growth, but I also want to look at this, the rate of church growth. See, God says churches are going to grow, but the question is, how fast are they going to grow? Now, a lot of people have this idea that if something grows quickly, it's automatically a good thing. I remember many years ago, this is probably about 12 or 13 years ago, my friend's mom came to our church one time, and then she told me afterwards, she's like, Oh, I read that new Joel Osteen book, and yes, he's been around for 12 years or so. I don't know how long he's been around, but she's like, I read this new Joel Osteen book, and he's talking about church growth, and she's like, obviously God has blessed him, because look how many people go to his church. That was her justification, because lots of people go there, it must be a good thing. And people have, I mean, when this church started, the big criticism people had is that it was a small church. Now, they've changed the criticism, because this isn't a small church anymore. Obviously, if the church starts in the home with a pastor and his family, it's going to be a small church to start out. But steadily, it's grown. And I suppose, even though this is, this church has grown very quickly, I suppose other Baptists think, well, you know, your rate of growth isn't quick enough. And they try to put in all these new methods to change what the Bible says. Now, let me give you an example of something that grows really quickly, but it's a really bad thing. Weeds. I mean, if you mow your grass outside, I mean, weeds grow really quickly. It's frustrating. You know, I spend time, you know, mowing my grass, and two days later, there's weeds sticking out of the ground like six inches. Just because something grows fast, that does not mean it's a good thing. That's ridiculous. Turn to 2 Kings chapter 18. And in 2 Kings chapter 18, I'm going to show you the main reason why these charismatic fun centers and some of these non-denominational churches, why some of them do grow really quick. Why do so many people love Joel Osteen? Why do so many people love TD Jakes? In 2 Kings chapter 18, look at verse 26. It says, And the watchman saw another man running, and the watchman called unto the porter and said, Behold, another man running alone. And the king said, He also bringeth tidings. Now, the king here is talking about King David, and we have basically two men that are running to tell him the news of what happened in the battle. And I want you to look at verse number 27. It says, And the watchman said, Me thinketh the running of the foremost is like the running of Ahimaaz, the son of Zadok. And the king said, He is a good man and cometh with good tidings. Basically, David's happy he sees Ahimaaz, and here's the reason why he's happy. Because Ahimaaz always brings good news. He never brings any bad news. And if you study this passage, Ahimaaz is a liar. He knows exactly what happened, but he covers up the bad. I mean, he's so excited to present the news to David, the good part of it. He doesn't cover the bad news. He's so excited to run to David. And look, the king's excited. He says, He is a good man and cometh with good tidings. That is exactly why people love a guy like Joel Osteen. Because you know what? Joel Osteen comes with good tidings. He'll never get up here. I mean, he says he'll never use the word sin from the pulpit. He doesn't like to talk about hell. He doesn't say homosexuality is a sin. It's just not your best choice. It's not your best life now. And here's the thing. People love that sort of preaching. And what you've seen in these IFB churches is, since the rate of their church isn't growing as quickly as they want, they change their methods. You see, if a church is going to grow, if something good is going to grow, it's going to take some time. It's going to take some effort. We have a lot of people that come here, and one thing I love is you look at the numbers of soul winners. Half of our church was out soul winning yesterday in San Jose. That is a pretty good percentage. The percentage of soul winners has been increasing every single year at this church. See, if you want to build something that lasts, if you want to build something that's good, it might take more than five minutes. It might take several years. It might take a lot of time. But if you want to build something that's rewarding, you're going to put in that effort. See, Joel Osteen, he's got a bunch of people that go to his church that aren't even saved. I would venture there's probably more people saved here than in Joel Osteen's mega church. And there's certainly more soul winners here than in Joel Osteen's mega church. Just because there's a lot of people, and just because something grows quickly, that doesn't mean it's a good thing. I remember when I was in a Guyana, and I noticed a trend of one day I went walking to the store, and I heard this little food shop, and I heard this voice that I recognized, and it was Joel Osteen. And I was like, I'm in Guyana, and I'm hearing Joel Osteen? And he was talking about how to build a successful business. In a really poor country, he's talking about how to become rich and wealthy, basically. And what I noticed, though, when I was talking to people and giving them the gospel, a few people mentioned Joel Osteen to me. A Hare Krishna person told me how much he loved Joel Osteen. He said, I don't like many Christian pastors, but I love Joel Osteen. And then there was a Hindu who told me the exact same thing. So after I noticed this trend, I started bringing up Joel Osteen to people. And I mentioned to the one person, I told him the reason. There was another conversation I had. There was this guy who was half Muslim, half Christian. He had been Muslim for most of his life, and he was kind of in between, because he had family on both sides, didn't really know what he believed. And his wife was so-called Christian. So I spent 20 minutes giving her the gospel, and she wasn't getting it. I was about to leave, but then her husband came down, and he wanted to hear. Eventually, it was about 40 or 45 minutes overall, they both ended up getting saved. And after he got saved, this guy who wasn't sure if he believed Jesus was the Son of God, he wasn't sure if he believed Jesus was God, all of a sudden he told me afterwards how, man, we do love Christian pastors. We listen to Joel Osteen every single week. I mean, I can't make these things up. I mean, they mentioned them. There was one other conversation, this guy who I gave the gospel to, he didn't get saved, and he was talking about how there's a lot of phony pastors out there that lie to people, they don't tell the truth, and they have a lot of money. And I brought up Joel Osteen. He's like, wait, wait, Joel Osteen, too? He's like, I love Joel Osteen. And here's the point that I have. If you're like a high mass, if you're like Joel Osteen, and you never say anything negative, you'll find a lot of yes-men that would love to be a part of your church. But see, if you're going to get up here and preach the truth, it might take a little while for the church to grow. Because honestly, we have a lot of people that come to this church, and they love the preaching, but then there's that certain sermon that steps on their toes. There's that certain topic that they just don't want to change. Whether it's clothing standards, whether it's the sodomites or whatever it is, there's that one sermon that offends them, and they're gone to never be seen ever again. Now, let me explain something to you. It wouldn't be hard for us to get this church to grow that quickly. We could change things a little bit and get it to grow, but it would ruin this church if we did that. IFB churches across the nation, they're changing the music. They're shortening the sermons. They're not going as in-depth with the sermons. They're preaching the positive-only style because they're copying the patterns of a high mass from thousands of years ago and from Joel Osteen today. Because they look at the numbers and say, wow, it really grew quickly. It must be a great thing. But that is not what we see in the Bible. Let me give you another example. If you've ever been into lifting before, when you first start lifting weights, you start getting a lot stronger very quickly. If you first hit the bench press, let's say you're benching 135, after several months, you're going to be benching 175. Now, if your rate of growth would continue like that, then you would get... I mean, it would be amazing. But it doesn't work that way. Eventually, you start to plateau, and it gets very difficult to get stronger. So eventually, you've got to change your workout routine. People start doing pyramids with their workouts, or they'd be doing high weight, low repetitions, or they do lots of repetitions, smaller weight. They try lots of different things to change it up to kind of trick their body so they can gain strength. There's actually a much quicker way you can put on a lot of strength. You could use steroids or performance-enhancing drugs, HGH. You could use those things, and you would get strong very quickly. It's not good on your body, though. It's going to destroy your body. You see bodybuilders that die when they're in their 40s all the time. It's not good on your heart to have to pump that much oxygen to your muscles. It requires a lot to be pumped to your muscles. It's not good on your body. And it's the same thing here with this church. We could change things, and it would grow a lot quicker. We could just change things a little bit and make it look like we're not becoming watered down, and this church would grow, but it would end up destroying this church. I'd rather have a bunch of people here that love the Lord and have a small, steady growth than bring a bunch of people here that don't love the Lord. We want people here that are zealous for the things of God, that want to go soul-winning, that actually love the Lord. Turn back to Matthew 16. It reminds me of that verse in the book of Galatians where Paul said, Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth? And Paul had spent so much effort with those people. He had gotten them saved. He had done so much work, but he became their enemy because he told them the truth. And honestly, you can really love someone and help change your life. You can even get them saved, but eventually you say something that offends them, and now all of a sudden you're their enemy. That's the way it is. It's sad that it works that way, but people leave this church all the time, people that you spend years training and helping, and then you know what? You're their enemy now. That's the way it works, unfortunately. So the first thing we saw was the revelation of church growth. We also saw the rate of church growth. I also want to look at the reality of church growth. Notice what he said in Matthew 16, 18. He said, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. See, it's not just that God wants churches to grow. It's not just that he wants Verity Baptist to get bigger. He promised, I will build my church. See, if there is a church that is following the biblical pattern, God is going to help that church grow. Let me give you several practical reasons why Verity Baptist Church individually is going to continue to grow over the next several years. Number one is this. This church has grown through local church growth alone since it started. This church has grown every single year. Now, a lot of people in here came to this church because of online preaching, but did you realize a lot of people were reached by this church, not through online preaching, but from door to door knocking? Every single year, people from the local community have joined this church. There are people that are zealous soul winners at this church right now that came because we knocked their door, and they love the Lord just as much as any of us do. They're here because we knocked their door. That can still happen in 2017. It's not like before or after the tribulation came out, there was no way to reach people with the gospel. Praise the Lord so many people were reached through those documentaries and through the online ministry that we have, but we can never forsake the local ministry. We got to realize we need to bring those people to church and get them trained up. I know this story about Brother Garrett Kirchwey, and I'm not sure if he's mentioned this in any videos or anything like this, but he said before why he visited Faithful Word Baptist Church for the first time, and I think most people here know Brother Garrett. He's a really zealous person. He loves the Lord, you know, very zealous for soul winning. Brother Garrett Kirchwey, he was Lutheran, and he visited Faithful Word Baptist Church because he saw an ad in the yellow paper about winning souls, and he had been trying every single thing under the sun in terms of Christianity, of evangelism, and he just knew it wasn't right. He was trying to find out how to win people the Lord. He actually wasn't saved at the time, but he had a heart. He was kind of like Cornelius in the book of Acts, and he saw this ad from Faithful Word Baptist Church, and he visited. He ended up getting saved after going soul winning for a couple weeks, but do you realize that there's Brother Garrett Kirchwey in Sacramento? People that want to be a part of something that's exciting, people that actually want to do something with their life. I mean, you reach a point in life where you realize what's the point of me even being here? I was like that when I was getting out of college. I mean, when I was going to college, I'm like, what am I doing here? I'm going to get my degree, and then I got saved when I was a freshman in college, and I realized I have a purpose. I have a plan for my life. I can do something that actually matters. I'm not just going through the motions and wasting my time here on earth, and there are people in Sacramento that are the same way. I remember when I first started going soul winning. I didn't go to a church that went every single week, so I was visiting several different churches for their evangelism times and soul winning times. I hadn't really learned the proper methods, so a lot of things I was probably doing wrong at the time, but I remember there was an independent Baptist church right next door that I did not go to because it was not King James only, but they had a soul winning time, and I showed up at soul winning on Saturday morning. I was trying to be involved in all these different things because I wanted to be part of something that's exciting, and I guarantee you that if I was a 19 or 20 year old kid right now that had just gotten saved, the person that I was back there, and I knew that there was a church going to a soul winning marathon in San Jose, I literally would have messaged this church and asked if I could have been a part of it, and I would have realized very quickly, hey, this is the church I need to be a part of. Where has this church been? We ought to realize there are people here in Sacramento that would love this church if we reached them. Turn to 2 Kings chapter 2, and in 2 Kings chapter 2 in verse 16, one of my favorite characters in the Bible is the character of Jehu, and this is what it says in 2 Kings chapter 2 verse 16. Jehu said, come with me and see my zeal for the Lord. Then he had him right along in his chariot. You see, when some people see this, the excitement of what's going on, living for the Lord, some people are going to join you. Some people are going to want to be a part of that. There are people in Sacramento, we can never forget that there's people out there we can reach with the gospel and get them to become zealous soul winners. Not only though has our church grown every year since it started, that's a pretty good reason to think that it's going to keep growing, but also our church is still doing the same things it's always done. See, if we were changing things up, we couldn't really guarantee that it's going to keep growing, but if every single year it's grown and we keep using the exact same techniques, logic would say this church is going to keep growing. Not only that, but this church has reached people in the local area, but now there's something different about this church. Now there are actually people that move here to be a part of the church. When this church started, there wasn't really this really exciting online ministry. The goal was just to reach people in the local community and it grew into something. Now our online ministry, it really does reach a lot of people. There are people in this room that have moved to be a part of this church. That would be another reason why we could think that this church is going to continue to grow, but not only have we reached people in the local area every year and people are moving here now, we're doing the same patterns, but there's a higher percentage of people involved in the work right now than there's ever been. You see, our church may be in number. You say, well, eight months ago or whatever, we were doing really well until the protests and everything and our numbers haven't really gotten bigger, but do you realize the percentage of people soul winning has gone up dramatically? I mean, it's not even close to the same. There's lots of ways to measure church growth. I mean, I would rather measure a church based on how many soul winners there are than how many people are in the congregation. Yeah, Joel Osteen's got a bigger church than us, but do you think he has more soul winners? I don't think so. T.D. Jakes has a much bigger church than us, but are there more soul winners? No. And there's a lot of independent Baptist churches that are pretty big, and their percentage of people that go soul winning, not very high. It's kind of just like the Mormons. They have those two years where they serve the Lord and go soul winning, just kind of like a lot of people in Bible college. They spend a couple years going soul winning, and then it's like, well, I'm in retirement now. I'm 20 years old. I'm retired from being an elder. You know, I'm done. You know, a lot of Baptist churches do the exact same thing. Turn back to Matthew chapter 16. Actually, turn to Acts chapter one. Sorry about that. Turn to Acts chapter one in your Bible. Now, the first thing that we saw is the revelation of church growth, and then we saw the rate of church growth, and then we saw the reality of church growth. But I want to show you this, the reason for church growth. In Acts chapter one, verse eight, this is a very famous passage, but it says in Acts chapter one, verse eight, but ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses on me, both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and on the uttermost part of the earth. This is really reiterating what he says at the end of Mark chapter 16 and at the end of Matthew chapter 28. We're basically telling them the reason is to reach the whole world with the gospel. That is why we're here. He's given to us the ministry of reconciliation. It is our job to go out there and preach the gospel. And let me tell you something, if you're someone that is physically able to preach the gospel, you have good health, especially if you have time on your hands, you ought to be part of this soul-winning ministry. If you haven't come here, you need to visit and check us out on Saturday. You can be a silent partner, and we'll show you how to knock the doors and get people saved. Because if you're not going out and preaching the gospel, what is your real purpose in life? What is your purpose if you're not going out there trying to get people saved? And that's what I felt before in my life. Even after I was saved, before I'd learned the real techniques of soul-winning, I talked to people all the time, and I didn't have that much success. And I just knew this can't be right. You know, God has given us this job to go out and get people saved, and what's amazing is if somebody's receptive, it only takes 15 minutes. It doesn't take that long. It's not like you have to memorize the entire Bible before you can get somebody saved. If you memorize the verses for soul-winning, and you practice, you can become a soul-winner within a few months, learn how to get somebody saved. And I mean, there's nothing more important. That is the reason why we're here. Otherwise, what's the point of this church growing? If we're not going to get more people saved in Sacramento, why do we care if it grows? Why not just keep it small and have good fellowship with the people that are here? There'd be no reason for it to grow. But see, God says, I will build my church, and the reason why he wants to build local churches is so we can reach the world with the gospel. Turn to Acts chapter 8. And in Acts chapter 8, you know, here's the thing that's interesting. God told them to go into all the world and preach the gospel, but if you actually read the book of Acts, they didn't follow that command. They preached the gospel to some people. They didn't go into all the world. And notice what happens in Acts chapter 8, verses 1-4. And it says, And Saul was consenting unto his death. This is right after the chapter where Stephen's killed. And at that time, there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem. And they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Do you notice that when there's persecution, it causes them to scatter, and they reach more areas with the gospel? Look at what it says in verse 2. And devout men carried Stephen to his burial and made great lamentation over him. As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and hailing men and women, committed them to prison. Therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word. Man, it's got to be frustrating to be the devil that you try to destroy something and it just causes it to spread. You know, you try to get rid of that fire and it spreads just everywhere. And that's what we're seeing here. There's a great persecution. Saul's persecuting them. What does it cause? It causes them to go everywhere preaching the word and fulfill what it said in Acts chapter 1, verse 8, when he said to go everywhere and preach the gospel. And obviously at this church, our main goal is to reach people in Sacramento, but we want to get people sent out to start churches at other places and start that small local church and have that church grow and become something big. We want to get pastors out everywhere. We need to get pastors throughout this world preaching the gospel. And there just is a big dearth of good churches out there. It is ridiculous that you have to move across the country to find a great church. That is insane. And all IFP churches are not the same. The church here is not the same as the other IFP churches in Sacramento. The church here is not the same as the other IFP churches in California. I wish this wasn't the only one. I wish there were lots of great churches. I mean, I would have loved to stay in West Virginia. I literally, when I was a kid, especially what you see on the media, California is like the last place when you're growing up, you think of you want to live, because you think everything's like LA, which it's not. But that's the impression you get from the TV growing up. And I was from West Virginia. It's like the whitest state, literally. I'm not just saying that it is literally rated the least ethnically diverse state in the country. And California is listed as second to Hawaii. Literally, this is not where I would have expected to live. But you know what? My most important thing is to be part of a great church. And I am willing to move across the country to find a great church that will train me to be a pastor. Let me tell you something. I wish there were great churches throughout the United States and throughout the Philippines and everywhere, but you just don't find it. I mean, sometimes I get messages from people asking me, is there a great church in this area? There should be, but sadly, in most places there aren't. Now, yes, we're starting to get more churches, but there's still such a dearth. We need churches everywhere. I mean, it shouldn't just be, well, you have a church here, and then six hours away is another church. You know, there's a big gap in between the people we need to reach. And honestly, it's great that we had that soul-winning marathon in San Jose, but it's like we can't go up there every week and then train those people to become soul winners, the people that we get saved. We need churches there in San Jose, in Oakland, and probably even in San Francisco as well. We need churches everywhere preaching the gospel. And see, that is the reason why God wants churches to grow. Turn to Acts chapter 6. Acts chapter 6. And so the first point we saw tonight was this. We saw the revelation of church growth. We saw the rate of church growth. We saw the reality of church growth, and we saw the reason for church growth. But now let's look at the result of church growth. Look at Acts chapter 6 verse 1. It says, And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily administration. So basically, the number of people in the church has grown, and all of a sudden there's a problem. You see, when a church grows, there are gonna be some problems that come when a church grows. There's more obstacles. There's a lot of different people. Things come up. There's fights within the church sometimes. There's new situations that arise. You have to get a new building. New obstacles come up. In this particular one right here, it says the Grecians are murmuring against the Hebrews. Now, in the Bible, is murmuring a good thing or is it a bad thing? It's a bad thing. They shouldn't have been murmuring against the Hebrews. There was a real problem here, that their widows were being neglected. We see that in this passage, but murmuring is never the way to fix a problem. Like we were talking about earlier in Matthew 18, murmuring or complaining against something or being bitter, that's not the way to fix a problem. You go to them one on one. But here, they're murmuring against the Hebrews. Now, when we look at that today, honestly, in churches, cliques form all the time. All kinds of different churches. There's factions everywhere. You know, the Grecians are against the Hebrews. Now, that's so dumb because, think about this, it doesn't matter what country you're born from, if you're saved, we're still brothers and sisters in Christ. It says of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. It doesn't matter if it's someone in Asia or someone in Africa or someone in North America, whatever country you're from, wherever you were born, whatever your background, hey, if you're saved, you're my brother in Christ if you're a guy or you're my sister in Christ if you're a girl. It doesn't matter where you're from. And I never understand this, how certain people, they just want to hang out with people that have similar backgrounds. I'll be honest, I like hanging out with people that love the Lord. I like hanging out with people that like talking about the Bible. Do you think I just want to hang out with a bunch of people from West Virginia that live in California that don't care about the Lord? That doesn't make any sense. You know, you should want to hang out with the people that love the Lord. Yes, I understand that people have different personalities, but just think if at this church, this is a very diverse church. Think about if we just had a bunch of groups. We had the Filipinos, we had the white people that were not born in Europe, the white people that were born in Europe, we have the Russians, we have the blacks, we have the Hispanics or Venezuelans. I mean, we have the Venezuelans and the other group of Hispanics. I mean, wouldn't that be ridiculous? We shouldn't care what people's background is. You know, racism is literally one of the dumbest things that there is. You know, and the government tries to keep it going, but it is stupid. I don't care where someone's background is. If they love the Lord, they're my friend. But, you know, if there's some sodomite from West Virginia, you think I'm gonna love that person because we were both from West Virginia? That's stupid. You ought to want to hang out with the people that love the Lord. We got to be very careful not to let cliques form. And what we see in this story is the Grecians are against the Hebrews. They're two different factions, the Grecians and the Hebrews. Now, it shouldn't be like that. You have to understand that at Verity Baptist Church, you might not realize this, but every week there's certain things that come up. You know, I'm not saying there's fights every week, but, you know, there's different obstacles. When we moved into this new building, there was a lot of things to fix. And every week, you're seeing new things. You fix one problem, and you realize, oh man, there's another problem. I mean, if you own a house, you're probably used to this. You think I'm getting caught up on everything, and then all of a sudden, you look outside and say, man, I haven't mowed for like two weeks. Or all of a sudden, your water faucet isn't working. I mean, whatever it is, there's always something that comes up. At church, there's things that come up all the time. We got people from tons of different backgrounds, people with different personalities, people with different opinions, and there's people that have strife sometimes. Things come up all the time. But let's see how they dealt with it in Acts chapter 6. Because God says he wants a church to grow, we have to understand there will be problems sometimes. In Acts chapter 6, verse 2, And then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples on to them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God and serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves continually to prayer unto the ministry of the word, and the saying, Please the whole multitude. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith, and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicholas, a proselyte of Antioch, whom they set before the apostles. And when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them. This is a great way to solve the problem, because now instead of just two factions, everybody is happy. It says that everybody was satisfied with this result. That is what we need to see. We want to get these problems at church resolved. Unfortunately, things do come up. And when a church grows, you're gonna have more things that come up. It's just the way it is, not just at this building, but just different personalities, new people coming, people having different ideas. We want to minimize those at church, because this church is gonna grow, various situations are gonna come up. Look at what happens in Acts chapter 6, verse 7, after they resolve the problem. Acts chapter 6, verse 7, and the word of God increased, and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly, and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith. What if they hadn't fixed the strife? Do you realize they probably wouldn't have been multiplying like that, if there was a bunch of bitterness and fighting and strife? But I mean, the word of God is so amazing. Look at the timing. The next verse and the word of God increased, and that is our goal at Verity Baptist Church. God's goal is for this church to grow. We want this church to grow as well, so we can reach people with the gospel. We can support missionaries. We can send people out as pastors. We want this church to grow to reach more people with the gospel. Let me just give you two final thoughts here this evening. One is this, when you're looking at this series, never develop a small church mentality. Never get this idea that us four and no more, where you love everybody in the church, and you don't want other people to come. And honestly, a lot of people might say, well, of course I want this church to grow, but you know, honestly, a lot of people leave church because they liked it a lot better when it was small. We go soul-winning all the time, and sometimes people will tell you, well, you know what, how big is your church? And usually, they're saying that they're justifying why they don't go to church, but you tell them, you know, what the size is or whatever, because they'll tell you usually, I don't like big churches. I mean, who's heard that before the door? They're like, I want to be a part of a small church. And here's the thing, this isn't the right church for you. I'm not telling, I'm not saying I say that at the door, but honestly, if you want a small church, this is not the right church for you, because our goal is for this church to grow. We want this church to grow so we can reach more people with the gospel. Never develop the small church mentality. You say, Brother Stuckey, do you really think this church is going to grow over the next several years? Do you and Pastor Menez and all the people, do you really think it's going to grow? Well, look at how many chairs there are here that there weren't here a couple months ago. Yeah, we believe this church is going to grow. I believe God's going to bless because we're still doing the exact same things that have caused this church to grow. You say, it's not growing fast enough. You know, a steady growth is great as long as we keep growing. Let's close in a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for allowing us to be here in your house this evening, and I ask you to help us keep these things in mind of church growth and meditate on these things, God, throughout the week, and always have a goal to help continue to be a blessing to this church and help it to grow. We pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen.