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Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Amen. Sign number 441. Great is thy faithfulness. Number 441. Praise thy faithfulness. Praise thy faithfulness. Morning, night, morning. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Good mercy. Sun, moon, and stars, their forces above, join with all nature in wonderful faithfulness. To thy great faithfulness, mercy and love. Great is thy faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness. Morning by morning. Good mercies I see. All I have needed thy hand hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me. All in mercy, though reached and endured, thy holy presence to cheer and to guide. Strength for today, and rival for tomorrow. Blessings of the night, in thousand weeks' time. Great is thy faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness. Morning by morning. Good mercies I see. All I have needed thy hand hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me. Service times there listed above, as always. We'll be in 2 Kings 4. Just a lot to cover in that chapter. I'm not in any rush, so I'm looking forward to that. And we've got the salvation and baptisms as well as the offering totals and attendance below that. Also over on the right hand side, don't forget we're still working on the weekly Bible memory project here memorizing the books of the Old Testament with their corresponding number of chapters. And this is something that's going to be primarily for the children and young people. They can earn their ice cream bar week by week by reciting this section for this week. And then at some point, unannounced, there will be a pop quiz to those who can recite it. Meaning all of the books, all of the chapters will be able to earn a special prize. Below that we've also got the Sunday morning sermon series. I'll be in part 2 this week. Also next week I'll be finishing up there on our vision for 2023. So that's Sunday, September 25th. And then Thursday, excuse me, we've got the song schedule for the upcoming services there. So you've got Thursday this week, Sunday the next two following weeks, and then the next service. And then also on the back too, there's going to be a bridal shower not for anybody here. All the ladies are gasping. Who is it? No one. So this is actually for up in Tempe. But it is for, the bridal shower is in honor of Charlotte Hessler who is getting married to Thomas Forte. Forte's have been people that have spent a lot of time with us down here. They've been to our camp and they visit and things like that. So I did want to let the folks know here, let the folks here know that if they wanted to go up to that, they're more than welcome to do so. You've got the details there. And also the wedding, which is the next announcement there. Everyone's invited to the wedding of Thomas Forte and Charlotte Hessler. And that's going to be Friday, October 14th at 2.30 p.m. at the church building in Tempe. There will be cake and light refreshments following. I'm going to this. I might have a little bit of room in the van, the church van, if people want to go. Just speak to me. It's limited space obviously because of my family. That's seven people right there. And we don't want to just cram in there. But that's something that's available if someone wants to come to me and wants to go on that. I'm certainly going to at least get a few people up there if they'd like to go to that. Below that, there's also a kind of a last minute home school field trip. Again, this is for Tempe or taking place up there. This is for you too. But this is going to be this Thursday, September 22nd. I know it's kind of last minute, but that's kind of how it was announced. It's going to be at an exhibit called Ripley's Believe It or Not. And there's also another exhibit called Surprise Your Eyes at the Arizona Boardwalk and up in Scottsdale. So you've got some of the other details regarding that. If that's something you want to go to, please let me know so that I can pass that information along and we can anticipate how many people do, anticipate how many people will be attending. So if that's something you want to do, by all means do that and just make sure you let me know. That's going to do it for announcements. We'll go ahead and sing one more song before we get into the preaching this morning. So, number 31, he lives. 31. Nice. A circle is his savior, he's in the world today. I know that he is living whatever men they say. I see his hand of mercy, I hear his voice so sheer. And just the time I need him, he's always here. He lives, he lives, Christ Jesus is his name. He walks with me, he talks with me. He walks with me, he talks with me. He walks with me, he talks with me. He walks with me, he talks with me. He walks with me, he talks with me. He walks with me, he talks with me. He walks with me, he talks with me. He walks with me, he talks with me. He walks with me, he talks with me. I know there's peace in a room. I know there's peace in a room. I know that he is weeping all the storming past. The day of his opening will come and pass. Jesus lives today. He walks to me and talks with me along my stairway. He bends, he bends, salvation to them all. He asks me how I love, he raises. He lives with me, I'm all alone. Rejoice, rejoice, oppression, pick up your voice and sing, eternal hallelujah to Jesus Christ the King. The hope of all who seek, in the help of all who find. The mother raised so lovely, so good and kind. He lives, he lives, Christ Jesus lives today. He walks with me and talks with me along my stairway. He lives, he lives, salvation to them all. He asks me how I know, he lives. He lives within my heart. Amen. At this time, we'll pass the offering of life. As the plate goes round, let's turn our bodies to Numbers chapter 1. That's Numbers chapter 1. As always, we'll read the entire chapter. Please follow alongside me as we push forward as it leads to us from Numbers chapter 1. Numbers chapter number 1. Numbers chapter 1. The Bible reads, and the Lord spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai and the tabernacle of the congregation. On the first day of the second month and the second year after that they were come out of the land of Egypt, saying, take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel after their families, by their house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their poles, from 20 years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel. Thou and Aaron shalt number them by their armies. And with you there shall be a man of every tribe, every one head of the house of his fathers. And these are the names of the men that shall stand with you of the tribe of Reuben, Eliezer, the son of Shaddur, of Simeon, Shalomael, the son of Zorai Shaddai, of Judah, Naashon, the son of Amminadab, of Issachar, Nethaneel, the son of Zor, of Zebulun, Eliab, the son of Helon, of the children of Joseph, Ephraim, Elisha, the son of Amahad, of Manasseh, Gamaliel, the son of Peter Hazor, of Benjamin, Abidin, the son of Gideoni, of Dan, Ahiezer, the son of Amminishaddai, of Asher, Pagayel, the son of Ochran, of Gad, Eliassath, the son of Deuel, of Naphtali, Ahirah, the son of Enon. These were the renowned of their congregation, princes of the tribes of their fathers, heads of thousands in Israel. And Moses and Aaron took these men, which were expressed by their names, and they assembled all the congregation together in the first day of the second month, and they declared their pedigrees after their families by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names from 20 years old and upward by their poles. As the Lord commanded Moses, so he numbered them in the wilderness of Sinai. And the children of Reuben, Israel's eldest son, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of names by their poles, every male from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Reuben, were 40 and 6,500. Of the children of Simeon, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, those that were numbered of them, according to the number of their names, by their poles, every male from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Simeon, were 50 and 9,300. Of the children of Gad, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Gad, were 40 and 5,650. Of the children of Judah, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of names from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war, those that were numbered even of them, even of the tribe of Judah, were three score and 14,600. The children of Issachar, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of their names, of the names from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Issachar, were 50 and 4,400. Of the children of Zebulun, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Zebulun, were 50 and 7,400. The children of Joseph, namely the children of Ephraim, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names from 20 years old, all that were able to go forth to war, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Ephraim, were 40,500. Of the children of Manasseh, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Manasseh, were 30 and 2,200. Of the children of Benjamin, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Benjamin, were 30 and 5,400. Of the children of Dan, by the generations after their family, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Dan, were three score and 2,700. Of the children of Asher, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Asher, were 40 and 1,500. Of the children of Naphtali, throughout all their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of their names from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war, those that were numbered of them, even of the tribe of Naphtali, were 50 and 3,400. These are those that were numbered which Moses and Aaron numbered, and the princes of Israel being 12 men, each one was of the house of his father, so were all those that were numbered of their children of Israel, by the house of their fathers, from 20 years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war in Israel. Even all they that were numbered were 600,000 and 3,550, but the Levites, after the tribe of their fathers, were not numbered among them, for the Lord had spoken unto Moses, saying, Only thou shalt not number the tribe of Levi, neither take the sum of them among the children of Israel, but thou shalt appoint the Levites over the tabernacle of testimony, and over all the vessels thereof, and over all the things that belong to it, and they shall bear the tabernacle and all the vessels thereof, and shall minister unto it, and shall encamp round about the tabernacle, and when the tabernacle seteth forth, the Levites shall take it down, and when the tabernacle is to be pitched, the Levites shall set it up, and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death, and the children of Israel shall pitch their tents, every man by his camp, and every man by his own standard, throughout their hosts, but the Levites shall pitch round about the tabernacle the testimony, that there be no wrath upon the congregation of children of Israel, and the Levites shall keep the charge of the tabernacle the testimony, and the children of Israel did according to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so did they. Let's go ahead and have a word of prayer. Dear Lord, again, thank you for the time that we had to come together this Sunday morning for the preaching of your word. I pray that you would meet with us by your Holy Spirit, where they'd fill me, guide me, direct my thoughts, I ask in Christ's name, amen. So this week, obviously, we're continuing on in the series that I started last week about our vision for 2023, and again, I know it's kind of early in the year to start thinking about the next year, but as I stated before, I don't wanna go into 2023 not knowing what it is that we're doing, and that's why I've decided to go ahead and begin preaching this, and really, this is gonna be, I was thinking about this series, I might have mistitled it, because I think people are getting the impression that we're gonna get into the nitty gritty, we're gonna get into the specifics, the nuts and bolts of what exactly our vision for 2023 is going to be. That's actually gonna be coming in the coming weeks, the more specific, the specific details of what I would like to see happen in the coming year, but really, I'm preaching through this series as to kind of prime the prompt, again, to remind us, if you were here last week, of the importance of having a vision, and I understand that this is gonna be maybe a little repetitive, a little bit redundant, but a vision is something that you have to keep in front of you, it's something that you have to be reminded of continually. I can't just get up and preach one sermon and hope that everybody gets it the first time and everybody keeps it in front of them, and before we go into these specifics, before we go into the details about what we need to do as a church to get to the next level, the areas that we'd like to improve, it's important to understand that you know, the need to, what am I trying to say? Before we do all that, before we go into those specifics, what we need to do is we need to, basically what I'm trying to say is this, I don't wanna waste time going into all that and preach it to people that are just gonna completely forget the need, the vision at all. They're just gonna hear the vision, they're gonna hear it, it's gonna go through their one ear and out the other, and then I'm gonna go and spend the next several weeks trying to preach through and get people to understand and go on and to improve in certain areas, and people say, why are we even trying, okay? We need to understand the importance of a vision, because as we checked out, as we looked last week in Proverbs 29, it says, where there is no vision, the people perish, and again, I understand, this is redundant, but the point is this, when people have no vision, when people don't have the motivation, when people aren't trying to improve and get better as individuals and as a church, it's only a matter of time until things wither up and die. And again, I know I stated this last week, but this is what can happen to a church. If we don't go into 2023 understanding the need to even have a vision, what's the point of me even getting up and trying to express that vision, okay? And again, we looked at several passages, and keep something there in numbers, but go over to Romans chapter 12. You say, why would you read Numbers chapter one? Why go through all those names and the litany and all the numbers and just this numbering of these people that really don't seem to have anything to do with us? Well, if you, and we'll go back there and we'll look at it, but I don't know if you noticed there at the end, it was real specific about the Levites' role. He said, look, the Levites are not gonna be numbered as those that go to war. They're going to serve the tabernacle. And he said, and if anybody else tries to fulfill that role, they're gonna be put to death. Did you catch that at the end? Which as I'm reading it, I'm just thinking, boy, God wants his people to get it right, to figure things out, how things ought to be done, and make sure they're doing things right. Thankfully today, if we mess up in serving God, we're not gonna be put to death. If somebody else decides to get up and just preach the sermon that shouldn't be doing that, or we mess up in our service to God, we're not gonna be executed. Back then, somebody else said, hey, I'm gonna go be the Levite today. I'm gonna go ahead and try and offer the sacrifice or put my hands on the holy things or try to do the office of the Levite. It was, you're done. You say, that seems extreme. Yeah, well, it just seems to me like God wants things to be done a certain way, that God wants people to take serving him seriously and make sure that they're doing things the right way and not just however they feel it, feel like doing it or being lackadaisical about it. Again, we need to have this vision. The Bible says in Ephesians chapter five, see then that he walks circumspectly, what? Not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time. Last week, we talked about how a vision is not just seeing what's ahead of you. We talked about last week about it's important to understand where we've come from. I'm not gonna re-preach that. If you weren't here for that, I encourage you to go listen to that online. Today, I wanna talk about where we are currently. To have a proper vision of what lies ahead of us or to understand what it's gonna take to accomplish a vision when it's expressed, we kinda have to take stock of where we are. Knowing our current position is a critical point of reference. Knowing where you are, you can't really get to a destination if you don't know where you are. I mean, that seems pretty common sense, doesn't it? If you were to go out on one of these hikes somewhere on some trail, every so often, you come across one of these maps, hopefully, if it's a well-marked trail, that says, you're here now. And then you go a few more miles, it says, okay, now you're here, and now you're here. You are here, we've all seen that. You ever try to navigate an airport? You try to find out what terminal you gotta go to. You go to the map, and it says, this is where you are. Why, you have to have a point of reference of where you currently are to understand where it is that you're trying to get to. You have to have a point of reference. It's critical to know where you are in order to get where you're going. That's why it says here in Romans chapter 12, look at verse three. For I say through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. What Paul is saying is, hey, have a sober view of what you actually are. Take stock of where you don't think so highly about yourself. And this is something, of course, we can apply to individuals, but this is something we could definitely apply as a church. We can't just sit back and say we've arrived. That's us as a church thinking more highly than we ought to think. Oh, we got into this bigger building. Oh, we're running 40 to 50 people on a Sunday morning. Work's done. Truth is, that's great, amen for all that. Praise God for all that. But all that is is just telling me that the work has actually only just begun. We haven't achieved what it is that we're trying to achieve as a church. We can say, what are we trying to achieve? Just some arbitrary number of attendance? No, what we're trying to achieve, if you remember last week in closing, was that macro vision that God has, that big picture that God has for his will for all the earth that it would be filled with his glory. We have to take the fulfilling of that vision on an individual basis, church by church. Churches are at different points in their lifespans all throughout the country. We could say, this church has this vision, and this church has this vision, and this church is trying to accomplish this, and this church is trying to accomplish that. But ultimately, what they're all trying to accomplish is God's broader will, which is to fill the earth with the knowledge of his glory, and to see souls saved. And that's what we're trying to accomplish. And look, we shouldn't just get to a point where we say, well, we're in so many square foot of a building, we've got so many seats put out, we've got such an average attendance, we've kind of arrived and begin to coast. And maybe that might be where we're kind of at as a church. And I understand that this all rises and falls on leadership, okay? And I'm gonna get into that this morning as well. But that's what we need to think about as a church. Think soberly, and think soberly about where you are as an individual in this church. And say, I mean, we, again, closed last week talking about, hey, what have you accomplished since you came here? Where were you before this church came along? What was your service like then? What have you accomplished? What things have you gotten right? If you just have checked off some boxes and think, well, that's it, that's not thinking soberly. That's not what's gonna get us to where we need to be. Now, it's definitely important, again, to stop and think about where we are currently. Where are we on that map? Where are we in order, where is that reference point? Where is that as an individual and as a church? Once we understand where we are as a church, that's when we can start to actually determine where we're going, okay? We have to have, you know, if we wanna plot a trajectory, you know, if you wanted to launch some kind of a missile or some kind of a round or a shell at a target, you know, you're gonna sit down and take those calculations and figure out how you're gonna get to land there. One of the first things you're gonna figure out is where you are. You know, what's the windage? Where am I at? How many miles away? How far is this target? You know, we as a church, we're trying to have a vision. I'm gonna begin to express that vision, but before we get there, we have to understand where we are now, where are we currently? And that's really what you say, that's where numbers one comes in to play this morning. I mean, remember what the goal that Moses had in mind. What was the goal that Moses had in mind? What was Moses' objective? Was to get the children of Israel, not just out of Egypt, but actually into the promised land. You know, it's great that we got saved. It's great that we've been, you know, that the death angels passed over us in a manner of speaking that, you know, we've been washed in the blood, that we've applied the blood to the doorpost of our lives, that we've been saved by grace. It's great that maybe we've even started assembling with the congregation. It's great that we've been baptized. You know, we've kind of symbolically been, you know, like that the children of Israel and Egypt, we've come out and now we're in this wilderness, but that we haven't arrived. That's not, the wilderness was not the end goal for the children of Israel. They had a vision of getting to the promised land, but notice before they could go there, they stop here at Numbers 21, and God says, number everybody. You're going out in the wilderness. You're gonna fight these wars. Eventually, the intent is to get you in the promised land. Before we can get there, we need to stop. We need to take stock of what we actually have, of who we actually are, of what's available to us. You have to take stock before acting. And there in Numbers chapter one, it says in verse 17, and Moses and Aaron took these men, which are expressed by their names, and they assembled all the congregation on the first day of the second month, and they declared their pedigrees after their families by the house of their fathers, according to the number of names from 20 years old and upward by their poles. So the Lord commanded Moses, so he numbered them in the wilderness of Sinai. I mean, is this just a math problem that God had for Moses? So he's just saying, hey, let's test your counting ability. Let's see what your organizational skills are like. What he was trying to do was get a sense of what they had available, where they were as a people before they could move forward. It's part of having a vision and seeing what's ahead is understanding what we are currently, where we are currently. Look at Numbers chapter two and verse one. He says there in Numbers chapter two, verse one, and the Lord spake unto Moses and to Aaron, saying, every man of the children of Israel shall pitch by his own standard, with the ensign after their father's house, far off about the tabernacle of the congregation shall they pitch. And I'm not gonna go into the rest of that chapter, where God tells them not where they are, but he's beginning to express, hey, when you start to move, when you start to have, when you're going out there and you're camping, this family's gonna camp here, this tribe is gonna camp here. And he's telling them on the north side, on the east side, on the west side, this family by this family, he actually lays out, this is exactly how I want you to proceed. And when you stop, this is how you are going to camp. God wasn't just, Moses, go out there and figure it out. Just do whatever you feel like. Just go out there and we'll see how it goes. You know, planning and having a vision is very important in our personal lives as a church. It was for Moses, it was for God's people back then, he said, look, before we go any further, stop, count everybody, see what you have available, and then he begins to express the plan. Okay, now that you know how many people you have, here's how I want you to camp. Then he begins to express that vision and say, here are some more of the specifics. So that's really all I'm trying to do here in this series, is just to get people to pause and to think about where they've come from and where they are currently before we start to take the time to express of where we would like to go, what it is that we would like to see achieved in the coming year and in the years to come. You know, before we can really begin to express the specifics of the vision for 2023, we have to consider where we are in order for that to sink down. I could get up here and preach this whole series on what I'd like to see happen for this church in the next year, but it's gonna fall on deaf ears if people don't see the need for improving, of going to that next level. And look, I can't get up here and for more than just the sake of not being a jerk, I can't get up here and just start to name names and tell every individual, well, here's where you are, here's what you need to improve, and here's where you are. You have to take stock of that for yourself. All I'm trying to do is get you to see the importance of doing that in your life. And when people start to get to this point in their life where they think my service for God is good enough, it typically isn't. When they start to think, well, I've done enough for God, you know, what you'll stop doing is actually improving. And you'll actually start to decline. You know, there's no such thing as this plateau in the Christian life. You know, I've developed my skills this far as a soul winner, I've developed my skills this far as a church member, I've gotten so far, I've reached a certain level, and now I can just coast. You know, here's the thing about coasting is that eventually you slow down. You build momentum through, you know, accelerating, right? You build momentum by stepping on the gas and getting that forward momentum of getting things moving. But as soon as you start to take your foot off the gas, you know, as soon as you reach the bottom of that hill, you might be able to coast for a while, you're gonna hit the bottom and then you're gonna start to slow down. You have to constantly keep a vision of where we would like to be and constantly keep striving for that and constantly keep moving forward for that. And in order to do that, you know, you have to kind of take stock of where you are right now. You know, if we were to pull out the spiritual map this morning, it says you are here, where would that arrow point? Where would that arrow point when it comes to your Bible reading, to you, you know, your prayer life, to your church attendance, to your soul winning, to your service for God, to the things that you do in the church, where would it point? You know, no one in here could say, well, it says, it points right here at the end, arrived. You know, I'm at the end. Because, you know, the end is glory. You know, we're never gonna reach the end. The end is, you know, the promised land in the sense of heaven. None of us can say like, Paul, I finished my course unless we're ready to be offered. Unless we could say my time is at hand. You know, that's when Paul said, I'm done. That's when he said, hey, I finished my course. I kept the faith, you know, and I'm ready to part. The time of my departure is at hand. If that's the case, if you've arrived, if we looked at your spiritual map that said, you are here, you say, well, I'm at the end of the course. Well, let's, you know, let's go ahead and I'll say goodbye then. Let's all bid you farewell. Because that's the end of life. And what people do in the Christian life, and what can happen as individuals and in the church, is that they can get to a point where they kind of think, well, what I'm doing is good enough. What I'm doing is good enough. And look, I'm gonna get a lot more specific in the coming weeks. I'm just kind of priming the pump. And I'm being redundant on purpose. You know, I want this to sink in with people because as we start to talk about these specifics, I don't want to just waste my breath. Because I understand, you know, our current standing as a church has a lot to do with me. It has a lot to do with me as a leader. And don't think, you know, especially in the coming weeks that I haven't had to step back and when it comes to this idea of where we're going as a church, consider my role in all of that. And saying, what can I do to improve as a leader? You know, what is our current standing as a church? Well, you know, our current standing is that we've got a leader and we've got followers. And you know, that's a great recipe, isn't it? But those are just the ingredients. That's not enough to make a church great. That's not enough to get the church where it needs to be to where it's accomplishing the mission that it needs to accomplish. And I'm not saying that we haven't accomplished anything, folks. We have. All I'm saying is I don't want to see this church get to the place where we just start coasting. And say, well, you know, we do some soul winning. You know, we've gotten some souls saved. We've got a few baptisms this year. We're doing more, and maybe we're doing more than we have in the past, but is that the measure of success? Is that our standard? Well, we're just not as bad as we used to, or we're not as backslidden as we used to be, or at least we're not as unfruitful and unproductive as we used to be. You know, our current standing as a church, you know, is we have the deacon. We have me. And again, you know, I'm including myself in all of this. You know, I have areas where I need to improve as a leader. You know, and that's something that I am working at. That is something that I'm trying to improve in. You know, I honestly, I don't really know a lot about leadership. I've always been the follower. I've always been the one out there that kind of just knows how to find my role as a follower and just fulfill that and do that. It's kind of different when you're the one who's got to lead the whole congregation. That's something that I have to learn. You know, what I'm learning is, is that people aren't going to just do things because you bark at them. You know, people need to be led by example. They need to be inspired. They have to be motivated. They have to want to do the things that they want to do, especially in a volunteer situation such as we're in. You know, I can't fire you from church. You know, if you want to volunteer and help in the church in some way, you know, consider that, you know, is your standard just, well, you know, I'm volunteering, they're fortunate that I'm even doing anything at all. You know, that's a poor attitude to have when it comes to serving God. And again, I mentioned that last week, don't do things for me. Do things here like you're doing it for God. Because people can get this attitude of like, well, I know, but it's just a Baptist church. It's just this little Baptist church that meets in a warehouse. What it is, is the pillar and ground of the truth. It's the house of the living God. That's what you're in this morning. You know, we don't have the stained glass and all of the fancy things. We don't have all the golden idols around. We're not gonna be burning the incense. I'm not gonna get up here in some ornate dress. You know, and have some, you know, overly elaborate ceremony to make you feel spiritual. You know, but we are still in the house of God this morning. And yeah, it's simple and it's plain, and it's not the most, the fanciest thing in the world, but it's still the house of the living God. And so consider that when it comes to your service in the house of God. You know, maybe it's good enough for you. Maybe it's good enough for what the deacon expects. But is it good enough for God? Why are you doing what you're doing? You know, and that's something I'm working on, improving in my area of service. Preparing and trying to get a vision and learning how to express that vision. You know, you might have caught on. I'm not real good at this whole series thing. Preaching series is not my strong suit. You know, and I've, believe me, I've considered already bailing out on this series. I'm only in part two of three. And just think, you know what, bad idea. Because I'm sitting here going, I got two pages. You know, I'm gonna preach this seven week series on the vision and all this stuff. It's like, I don't know about that, buddy. But you know why I'm sticking with it? You know why I'm gonna try and do it and improve in that area? Because that's what this church needs. That's what you need from me as a leader. And yeah, you know, I could probably just get up here and just preach another sermon on the Sodomites. Or I could just get up here and just preach against another false prophet. And look, there's a time and place for all that. Those sermons need to be preached. But that's not all that this church needs from me as a leader. So I have to have a vision for myself. I have to have a standard that I hold myself to do isn't just, well, it's good enough. It'll get a laugh. People might even say, good sermon. But is it what's going to get us to where we need to be as a church? That's why I'm sticking through this thing. And yes, I am. So you can all just grin and bear it with me, okay? Why? Because you know, if I start preaching series, you know, then we have something to promote out there. You know, if we know, hey, at the beginning of the year, Deacon's going to preach a series on finances or raising your family, you know, then we can start to make the invites to promote that series. That's something that other churches do. That's a great idea. I would love to see that happen. But then I had to step back and say, oh, that means I'm the one that has to preach it. Oh, I'm the one that has to sit down and look at a calendar and go, okay, when am I going to preach that? What am I going to preach? What am I going to cover every Sunday? You know, that's something where I've had to improve as a leader. And look, that's not the only area. I understand that. But this is kind of, again, this sermon, I'm trying to make it just about where are we as a church, getting people to just kind of understand where they are now so that they can start to plan and see what they need to be and take the steps necessary to get there. And while we're kind of on the topic of why, we're talking about me and as you know, where we are as a church, as far as me as the deacon, you know, because every so often people ask me about this and people probably are wondering, you know, when are we going to go independent? When are we going to become in our own independent church? And you know, there are no immediate plans for that. You say, do you have a date in mind? No, I don't. And this is something, you know, and I've talked to Pastor Anderson about this, obviously. And it's been expressed to me, hey, if you want to go independent tomorrow, go ahead. I'll ordain you, you can be the pastor, you can change the title on the door, and you could be whatever church you want down there. And we could do that tomorrow if we wanted to. And look, it's not that I don't have a desire to be independent, I do. You know, but it's not, you know, I don't need that to get some kind of sense of validation. You know, I don't need that for us to feel like we're legit or something. I mean, we're legit. We're getting something done. I mean, so why not go independent then? Well, quite frankly, you know, if I'm just kind of, if we're all just kind of, you know, if I'm just being honest about where we are as a church this morning, it's because, you know, the church can't support me. And that's not a knock on anybody. Like, look, we typically, most months, enough money comes in to pay the utilities and the rent in this building, and that's it. And if you know, if you've been enjoying all the Juanitos lately, you've been enjoying all the, you know, the benefits lately, that's all, you know, thanks to the Tempe giving. It's all thanks that we are all sharing in that fund, that bank account, okay? And praise God for that. You know, you say, let's go independent. Okay, all right, I'll go get another job. And you know what? There will be no donuts on Sundays. We're gonna tighten up the belt, but hey, but we'll be independent. You know, yeah, but now I'm gonna have to save money to scratch those stickers off the door and put a different name up there. And then I'm gonna have to go find a job, which I'm more than willing to do it. Look, eventually at some point, you know, wherever this church is at financially, I am gonna go independent, at some point. You say when, I don't know, I don't know. That's not really the point. It's somewhere down the road. And I'm more than willing to go do that as needed. But here's the thing, if we do that tomorrow, if we do that today, we'll say, hey, next week, ordination service, we're gonna be whatever Baptist church going forward. We're gonna cut ties with Tempe. We're gonna cut the umbilical cord and be on our own. You know what they're gonna do? They're gonna hire a deacon. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna go look for a job. So it's like, it seems, so what's the point? You know, they're gonna need, they're still gonna need somebody to do everything that I'm doing for them up there. And it's not, you know, me being the deacon isn't just some technicality. You know, I do do things for Tempe up there. I go up there once a week, keeping books, making bulletins. You know, I have responsibilities for that church. So you know, so as, you know, your deacon, where he's at right now, is he's really wearing two hats. You know, I read in Acts, you know, chapter seven or six, where they're appointing deacons. They say, seek you out, you know, men full of the Holy Spirit, and make, you know, we can't, the apostles said, you know, it's not reason that we should leave the word of God and wait tables, and I know I'm paraphrasing. And I'm thinking to myself, but that's what I do. I'm wearing two, I'm wearing both those hats, and I'm glad to do it. You know, I am pastoring a church, but I'm also deaconing another church. And I'm, but I'm reading in Acts, I'm going, but man, it seems like that's two different things. Like if you're pastoring, you're pastoring, and you're giving yourself to the word of God in prayer, and then you have the deacons to kind of do, and it's like, yeah, that's typically how it goes. I'm not saying I'm overwhelmed, or it's not, I can't do it. Obviously, they were running 3,000 people. It's kind of a different set of circumstances. But it's like, but in a way, you know, again, I'm just talking this morning about where we are as a church. Obviously, I'm a major part of that equation. And I'm just saying, hey, let's take stock of where we're at. We have a deacon, you know, who's deaconing and pastoring, who's wearing two hats. And I'm glad to do that. And I'm thankful, and it's a privilege to be able to do what I do. I understand that. And I'm just, you know, just kind of shooting from the cuff this morning, folks. And you say, well, what do you have? Why not go independent? Why not just be the pastor down here? Well, because I'd probably just go get another, I'd have to go get another job that's not gonna be anywhere near as flexible as this one. You know, my current boss, you know, leaves my Sundays open. You know, he doesn't have any objections to me being in church on Sunday. In fact, he'd have a problem if I wasn't. You know, he's all for me doing things in the church. You know, if I go out and get another job just so I can call myself pastor down here, you know, that might not be the case. My notes said to briefly explain all that. I don't know how brief that was. But you say, when do you have plans to be independent? I don't have any in the immediate future. I don't have a date set on it, and it's not something I put a lot of thought into after I've kind of settled that. And so what does Pastor Anderson think about that? You know, his words to me were, and I'm sharing this because I think this is important for you to know. It's important for you to know where we are as a church. You know, before we start to express where we would like to be. Because honestly, I would like to be independent. You know, I would like us to get to that next level. But here's the thing. You know, Pastor was, hey, I'm fine with the status quo as long as it takes. In his mind, this church is a success. He's expressed that to me. He said it's been a success down there. But he's also realistic and understands that Tucson is gonna be a slow burn. And this is kind of what I'm getting at, is that, you know, this mentality of we're just gonna put faithful word Baptist church and people are gonna learn that we're associated with Pastor Anderson, and they're just gonna flock here. No, they're not. You know, we've squeezed all the listeners out of Tucson that we're gonna get. You're it. You know, if you're here, because you heard the preaching of Pastor Anderson, praise God, I'm glad you're here. You know, and I'd take a dozen more if I could get them. But here's the thing. That well is run dry, folks. And there's even been people here, I know that, listen, that are never gonna darken the door here. You say, how do you know that? Because there's people in Phoenix that are like that. They've, I've had people come to me and I'm not trying to disparage anybody. I'm not naming any names. I couldn't remember the guy's name if I tried. But he came to me and he's, I got an email, you know, last year. Hey, I need to pick up my, I need to get a giving statement for my giving over this last year. He said, all right, you know, and I looked at the name and said, I don't know who this is. So I'm asking Brother Chris, you know, and the other staff member, like, do you know who this is? Is this a church member? Because I know sometimes, you know, there's the Sunday morning crowd. I'm not their Sunday mornings. I don't, you know, I go up there, I see new faces all the time. So I don't know who that is. So then I find out, you know, long story short, without going into a bunch of, you know, pointless details, it was a listener. It was just somebody who listens online, who lived like half hour away from church and actually even tithed to the church, but had never even been to the church one time. But I said, hey, I'll be there on a Wednesday and I can hand it to you. And the guy showed up, that was the only time he was in that church, was to get his giving statement. And I'm not down on the guy. I mean, he should be in church, obviously. But I just said, here you go. Thanks for coming out. I'm saying all that because look, we can't just coast on that. We can't just as a church sit back and say, well, it's just a matter of time until a bunch of, you know, Pastor Anderson listeners come flocking through the door. That's already happened. That happened when we first started. That's happened gradually over the years. And I'm sure as more people find the preaching and more people discover this church and other churches and they'll start to learn about this church, I get that, that'll happen. But let's not just take our foot off the gas and just say, well, just wait to be independent. We'll just wait till we get enough people just from all the preaching that's online. That's not how it's gonna work. And we have to take stock where we're at. And we have to understand, look, we've got the ingredients for a great church here. And in many ways we have a great church. I don't want this come as cross as disparaging. We have a great church. Why? Because we have all the ingredients here to actually get something done in the city and to do even more than we have done already. You know, we have people with a burden for the lost. We have people who wanna go out and preach the gospel. We have people who love the King James Bible. We have people who love hard preaching. We have people who wanna hear sound doctrine. We have people who read their Bible and know what it says. We have these elements here. We have all the ingredients to have a great church. All I'm saying in the coming year is let's get to bacon. You know, let's get the mixing bowl out. Let's get a measuring cup out. Let's see what we have. Let's see what we don't have. And let's make something happen in 2023. You know, and you say, well, what are the specifics? What's the recipe? Well, that's what's coming in the coming weeks. Unless I decide to bail on doing series. Which I'm not going to. I'm toughing it out and I gotta get better at these. You know, what I'm trying to get you to do this morning is to ask, you know, where you are. What plans, what vision do you have for yourself? If you have one at all, do you have a plan of where, if you were to look at that spiritual map and see where you are, do you even know what direction you're headed spiritually? Do you have a goal that you're shooting for when it comes to these spiritual things? And again, I don't want to steal my thunder from all these, from the upcoming sermons because I'm desperate for material. But you know, that's the point of this sermon this morning. Get you to think about where you are right now. Where are we as a church? You have to make it personal because of the fact that a church is an assembly of what? Of believers, of individuals. It's not these four walls. It's not, you know, some, you know, title on a piece of paperwork somewhere. The church is you. You know, and what I'm trying to get people to do by taking inventory where they are is so that they can decide where they want to be. And I think every single one of us, if we thought soberly, as we ought to think, and not thought too highly of ourselves, we would probably take stock of where we are and say I'm not where I need to be. Even if we could look back and say I've done this and I've done this and praise God for all that. But the truth is we never really arrive in this life. The problem with that is is that people can just say, well, I know I'm not gonna arrive, but I've gotten to a certain level and now I can just coast. That's not what we want to do. Because what happens when other people start to coast is that, you know, we have to drag you along. It slows everybody else down. What we want as a church and where we are as a church is we have a lot of potential for people. Instead of just kind of having to drag along with the Christian life, they can actually come alongside and get involved in the labor and start to be an asset to the church. That's what we need. What I'm trying to get us to understand this morning is that there's this space between where we started and where we're gonna end up, right? That's where we are, wherever you are on that map. There's where we started and there's the end. There's a space there. And that space, you know, that distance that we have to cross in this life demands what? Demands, you know, patience. We have to patiently work at getting better. We have to be persistent. It requires also this. It requires that people take a very sober accounting of where they actually are in life, and specifically spiritually this morning. Where are you in your Christian walk? Where are you in your service for God? As a church, we're in a good spot. As a church, we have very firm footing. We're on very good ground. We're off to a great start. And this is something, because I get it, people can get discouraged. You know, we have our low days. I mean, we just had one Thursday. There's 13 people here on Thursday night. And I get it, not everybody can make it. But I'm just being honest. As discouraging as that can be for some, just consider the fact that 13 on your fourth year in a building would have been huge for some churches. There's other people that in their fourth year were still meeting in their living room. And they would have given anything to have 13 people besides their family, and that's what we had. My family was sick. We had 13 people, and my family was at home. And we could go, oh, that's it? That's all we're accomplishing? That's all we've done? And I get it, you know, that's a great attitude. We wanna do more, but at the same time, we're still on good footing. We have to remind ourselves of that. You know, hey, we might not be where we want to be as a church, or we haven't accomplished everything that we want to accomplish. That's a good thing. Because it means there's opportunity for us to go out and get something done for God. But you know, you have to take that accounting. You have to take, where do you fit in that picture of getting something done? We have a firm footing, don't we? We know where we're at, hopefully. But you know, I'm preaching all this because we still have to understand that as a church, on that map, there's a lot of what? There's a lot of mountains out there, spiritually speaking, and there's a lot of valleys. There's gonna be a lot of highs and lows. And what I'm trying to get people to do this morning with this sermon, hopefully I'm accomplishing, is are you prepared for the journey ahead as a church? Or is it you're just gonna hop on somebody else's back and we're all just gonna drag you up the mountain? You know, and then you could come in and say, oh, look how great the church has become. It's like, well, what part did you have in it, though? I don't wanna be the one that just gets dragged to the top of the mountain and then stand there like I got myself there. You know, I wanna be the one that's putting in the pickaxe, the one that's digging his heels in, the one that's trying to get there so when that flag gets planted, I can feel like I had something to do with it. Because this church is going to accomplish great things. I believe that. Does it have the potential to fail? Sure. Well, what church doesn't? But I believe that it has everything it needs to accomplish great things in the coming year and the years to come and I believe that it will because I know that there are people here that want that for this church. I'm just speaking to anybody out there that might kind of feel like maybe they're just gonna get dragged along and I'm just saying, look, you don't want to get to that point where we celebrate 10 years and it's just like, well, where's the pictures of me doing all that work? Where we put the montage together for the 10 year anniversary, the video, the tearjerker, you know, that we're all gonna look back when I had less gray hair or whatever and we see all the kids grow up and it's gonna be like, well, I mean, I didn't see much of me in there over the last 10 years. Don't let that be you. You want to have some sense of accomplishment in what we achieve in this church. Look, I know it's kind of, this sermon's kind of all over the place and I'm rambling but what I'm really just trying to get across to people this morning is that you need to take a sober accounting of where you are spiritually. So when the specifics begin to get laid out about what it is we're trying to do, you could see how you fit in or what you need to improve upon or how you can do more. And never, you know, when it comes to where you are in your service for God, never develop this attitude of good enough. You know, I saw a great meme the other day. It was this quote of this ancient Greek philosopher and the quote was, eh, good enough. You say, who was the philosopher? It was Mediocrates. Mediocrates is famous for having said, eh, good enough. You know, that's how you end up being mediocre in life, though. That's how you end up mediocre in your service for God. Eh, good enough. You know, you're gonna get to heaven and say, well, wasn't it good enough? God's gonna be like, no, it wasn't. What was wrong with it? You could've done more. You could've been better. You could've improved. You could've accomplished more for me. You could've improved this area. You could've gotten better at that. You had so much potential but your attitude was, eh, good enough. You know, and that's how you're gonna have a mediocre reward in heaven. You know, that's not what I'm in this for. That's not what I want. That's not the vision that I have for this church. Well, we got to 40. Good enough. We got a few souls. We've got almost a half dozen baptisms this year. Eh, good enough. And look, I'm not trying to put that all on you. I understand that I have a huge part to do with that. I understand that everything rises and falls in leadership and I'm not just gonna use that as an excuse for why this church is the way it is. Well, I know it rises and falls. Yeah, well, that's not an excuse either for me. You know, I understand that I have a role to play, a huge role in what this church accomplishes. All I'm doing right now with this series is trying to prime the pump because I don't want to express that vision, take the time of writing all those sermons and making all those plans and doing the specifics for people to just go, yeah, well, you know, I'm not that interested. Why bother? Things were good enough the way they were. You know, well, why can't we just coast on the way we're doing things? Because that's how you end up slowing down and eventually coming to a complete standstill. And there's, you know, there's a whole lot more road ahead of us. There's a whole lot more to accomplish. So that's the point this morning. Go ahead and just, you know, walk out of here and ask yourself, where are you right now on that map? Where are you? What's your point? What's your frame of reference? What's your trajectory? You know, what are you aiming at? What are you gonna accomplish? You have to take it, you know, into account where you currently are to know where it is you need to get to. Let's go ahead and pray. Dear Lord, again, thank you for this congregation. Thank you for these people that are here. Lord, I thank you for a willingness, Lord, to serve and to glorify you. Lord, I pray you'd help me, Lord, in the coming weeks to express a vision to this church that will ultimately lead us to seeing souls saved and to seeing the word of God going forth and to lives being changed and to broken people being healed. And Lord, to you being glorified through all that we do and accomplish in this coming year and the years to come. And Lord, I pray that you would just bless this church. Bless us as we go, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, we'll go ahead and sing one more song before we go. Let's turn our head over to the song of 63. The song of 63, what a day that will be. The number 63. The number 63. on that happy, lonely shore. What a day for me still that will be. What a day that will be when, by Jesus, I shall sleep. And I look upon His face, the One who saved me by His grace. When He takes me by the hand and leads me through the promised land, what a day for this day that will be. There'll be no sorrow there, and no words to bear. No more sin, there's no pain, no more body over there. And forever I will be with the One who died for me. What a day for this day that will be. What a day that will be when, by Jesus, I shall sleep. And I look upon His face, the One who saved me by His grace. When He takes me by the hand and leads me through the promised land, what a day for this day that will be. Amen. Thank you. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.