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

Tonight I want to preach to you a message, and it's having a hard time coming up with a title for this particular sermon. But if I had to call it something, I guess I would call it the love of money. And I want to show you several things about money, but then I'm going to take it into a whole other direction. Now, you know, Sunday night is the service where, you know, a lot of churches, they only have service on Sunday morning, for example. And a lot of people only come to church on Sunday morning, because that's traditionally the thing that you do. You know, you get up Sunday morning, you go to church with everybody. Sunday night is usually a little more of the serious Christians, a little more of the serious crowd who comes back on Sunday night, who comes back on Wednesday night. Not out of an obligation or a ritual, but because they want to learn the things of God. They want to grow, and they want to do something great. And tonight I want to preach this very important message. It's kind of a directional message, explaining the direction that we're going with this church a little bit, and why we do certain things the way that we do them. And it's a message that I think that if people would understand this, it would revolutionize Christianity. It would revolutionize our churches, and it would revolutionize missions, which is what we're going to talk a little bit about. But let me take you to another scripture besides this story. Turn to 1 Timothy chapter 6. If you have your Bible, turn to 1 Timothy chapter 6. And while you're turning there, I want to explain to you the story that we just read. Some of you walked in a little bit later, but I read this story in Acts chapter 8 about Philip. Now, it started out the chapter talking about how Saul, who later became Paul, was making havoc of the churches of God. He was going around persecuting all the Christians. He was taking people and having them arrested and taking them and getting them thrown in jail because they believed on Jesus Christ and he was an enemy of the things of God. Well, because of this persecution that Saul was bringing about, the Bible says that those that were in Jerusalem were scattered everywhere preaching the gospel. At first, they were all in Jerusalem just seeing thousands of people saved, thousands of people baptized in the early church there in Jerusalem. This persecution came about through Saul, and it was actually kind of a good thing because it ended up scattering them everywhere. And they went everywhere, the Bible says, preaching the gospel. Then this story takes us to a man named Philip, who was one of the deacons in that first church in Jerusalem. As they were scattered everywhere, Philip went to Samaria personally, and he went to Samaria and just started preaching. He started winning people to Christ, and amazingly, the entire city, the Bible says, turned to God. I mean, the entire city, almost every single person in this city got saved. It was just amazing. It was unlike anything that anyone had ever seen. These people just got saved, they were just growing, they were just accepting the word of God as amazing. Well, there was a man there named Simon the Sorcerer. Simon the Sorcerer was kind of a, I don't know, maybe he was like a televangelist type of guy. He was probably wearing a white suit and had white shoes on. And he was this preacher in town who people thought, man, this guy was just the power of God. But this was before they were saved, this was before they knew about Jesus Christ. And this man, Simon the Sorcerer, he actually ended up getting saved, and he believed on Jesus Christ. But I guess he still had some of his old habits with him, or some of his own mentality that he had before this. And so he's watching Philip preach, and he's watching him win people to Christ, and he's watching them lay hands on people, and they're filled with the Holy Spirit. And he says, can you, he says, listen, I've got a lot of money, I've been in this religion thing for a long time. He says, I'm willing to pay you that if you will give me the power of God that you have, where you preach and people get saved, I mean, where you preach and things happen, where you can just win people to Christ, and you want this whole city to Christ, I will pay you if you can give that power to me. And Philip Ansem has said, your money perished with you because you thought that the gift of God could be purchased with money. Now let me read to you another verse, and this is all just kind of foundation, I'm not really getting into the message yet, but 1 Timothy chapter 6, very famous verse, often misquoted, but the Bible says, let me get here, 1 Timothy 6, 10, the Bible says, for the love of money is the root of all evil. Now most people misquote this and say money is the root of all evil. But the Bible doesn't say money is not the root of all evil, there's nothing wrong with money. But the Bible says the love of money is the root of all evil. That means anything that's evil, anything that's wrong in the world, anything that's ungodly that's going on, you want to know where it came from? You'll always go back to someone who loves money. That's where it all comes from. Otherwise this verse isn't true. But God is saying that everything is about the love of money, that's the root of all evil. But I feel like this mentality of worshipping money as a god has crept into Christianity. It's crept into God's people. This whole chapter in 1 Timothy chapter 6 says, you better watch out if you're rich in this world, because they that are rich fall into temptation and a snare, the Bible says, because you didn't bring anything into this world and you're certain that you're not going to take anything out. But that's not what the message is about tonight. The message is about this worshipping of money. God calls it mammon. When people make money a god, he has a word for that. He says you're worshipping mammon, you're worshipping money. What am I talking about? Well, the first thing I want to talk about is the modern day missions movement. Now I'm all for missions and we just took on our first missionary, his name is Barry Hoffman. He's a missionary to Korea and boy he's a great missionary. He's seeing all kinds of people saved. I've actually met some young men that he trained in his church. He wanted the Lord, he baptized them, he trained them and now they're going to the ministry and they're starting church. I met one of them and he was a phenomenal guy which said a lot about the church that he came from in Korea. He said a lot about this man Barry Hoffman. I talked to him and got some information about him and I was thrilled to take him on as our first missionary. We'll be taking on other missionaries in the future. But growing up, I always was taught this philosophy and I always had this philosophy that somehow money was the deciding factor about whether we got the world saved or whether churches could grow or whether God's work could be accomplished. It always seemed to be hanging on money and that bothers me and that's not what the word of God teaches by the way. I feel like this idea of worshipping money from the world has crept into church and so churches have become so money oriented. What am I talking about? I'm talking about just this constant hitting you up for money. Constant wanting money from people to reach in their pockets and give money. Now, let's talk about missions for a moment here. Is money the deciding factor why the world is not being reached with the gospel? I say not at all. God paved the street in heaven with gold. God owns the cattle on a thousand hills and the wealth in every mine. Do you think that God is short on money? Absolutely not. He is not short on money one whit. Now, I mentioned this before and I'm going to tell a little bit of personal stories tonight in the sermon because I've spent some time on the mission field actually. I'm a young man but I spent some time over in Germany. I won my wife to the Lord. She was born and raised in Germany right here on the front row. I went to Germany and I won her to the Lord and trained her and whatever. She's my convert from Germany and I've been to Germany and I've been to the mission field. I've lived in the home of missionaries for about four months and so I'm going to tell a few stories of things that I've learned. I'm going to tell some things that I've seen and I'm going to tell some things about the direction that our church is taking both with missions and with the growth of this church and just the battle plan so to speak. I want you to hear this. This is important. First of all, I've been getting calls from missionaries since I started the church about two and a half months ago. Missionaries have constantly been calling me. Literally almost every day they're calling me. They're sending me emails. I'm getting stuff in the mail constantly. Now, I just started the church two and a half months ago from scratch. I'm not receiving any support or anything but just constantly just this number all the time. Every day coming to me with their hand out. Now, some of these missionaries are great men of God who want to do something great like a Barry Hoffman and so forth. A lot of others are not. So I decided right away I said I need something just because I can't spend my life talking to these people and reading all those emails and mails so I'm not going to waste my time with all this. I need something just to kind of separate the men from the boys here so I can find some good missionaries to take on so that we can see people saved all over the world. I put a questionnaire on the website of our church because that's where most people were finding out about our church. I put a questionnaire on there. It just says missionaries click here. They go there and it just asks them a few quick questions. It just asks them if they're an independent Baptist because that's an independent Baptist church. It asks them if they believe the King James Bible. Just two questions just to get them in the ballpark. Then it asks three questions. It says how many people, and this is where people don't like this but this is the truth, how many hours have you spent out soul winning in the last month? How many hours have you spent out giving the gospel to people? You're a missionary supposedly. You're going to go to a country and we're going to be paying you full time to be winning people to the Lord, to be giving people the gospel, to be getting people saved. Look, if I'm going to pull money out of my wallet and give the missions, I want people to get saved. I want the gospel to be free. So how many hours have you spent out soul winning in the last month? A month is a pretty good cross section I felt like. Then I asked the question how many people have you won to the Lord in the last week and how many people have you won to the Lord in the last month? Just trying to get a feel for where these people are coming from. Now as soon as I put this out there, I want to say this, I put it out there and all of a sudden the calls and emails stopped. They stopped. It was like, hello, hello, is anybody out there? Because it says on the thing, it says we want to support missionaries, we love missions. Fill this out and send it to us with some information and we'll get in touch with you and we're looking forward to hearing from you soon, soon, soon. And there's nothing. I've gotten a few responses. Let me read to you some of these responses that I got because I just want you to know the reality of what's going on in our world and I just want to show you that money has nothing to do with why the world is going to hell so to speak. I'm going to show you in the sermon why it's going to hell and I'll show you what we can do to stop it. Let me read this for you. This is the first response that I got. This is actually the thing right here, I'm holding it in my hand. This is the first one. First it was just like, hello, hello. But then I got this one. This is the first one I got. Are you an independent fundamental Baptist? I'm not going to read any names or anything, don't worry about it. Are you an independent fundamental Baptist? Yes. Do you believe the King James Bible is the preserved word of God? Yes. How many hours have you spent soul winning in the past month? Question mark. How many people have you won to the Lord in the past month? Zero. How many people have you won to the Lord in the past week? Zero. Now I just don't understand how somebody has the audacity to send this to me and say, Hi, my name is Jimmy and I'll take all you give me, why don't you send me money every month to go be a zero? Now I don't understand, it just blows my mind but then it gets even worse. This is what he says. I don't keep track of numbers. This is what he's saying here. I just do what the Lord tells me to do. I do a radio program twice a week and an inmate newsletter. And I visit the inmate. So he doesn't keep track of numbers, right? Remember, this is the guy who doesn't keep track of numbers. He just does what God tells him to do. Okay, well let's see this. This is his letter to me telling me why I'm supposed to support him, right? And I'm not going to read this whole thing, obviously I just highlighted the parts that are applicable. Let's listen to what he's talking about. Thus the second chance Christian newsletter was born. It started with my testimony in a four page newsletter, that's the first number. And grew to a 63 page booklet. It says from May 2004 to April 2005 we have mailed out 814 Sunday School lessons. And almost 50% completed and returned. From January 2004 to April 2005, 1073 Bibles and Bible related books have been shipped throughout the United States and Canada. During the first 10 months, the website had over 175,000 hits. Wow, this guy doesn't keep track of numbers at all, does he? He's telling me how many people have clicked on his website, 175,000 clicks on his website. And I passed out 813 Bibles. How many people did you win to Christ, sir? Missionary that's supposed to be winning the world to Christ? I'm paying you to preach the Gospel, not to mail somebody a Bible that they can put on the shelf. You know, the Ethiopian eunuch had it right when he had the Bible in his hand. He was riding in the chariot in Acts chapter 8. And Philip walked up to him and said, Sir, understandest thou what thou readest? He said, do you understand what you're reading? How can I, except some man should guide me? I don't know what I'm reading. I need somebody to give me the Gospel. And what did Philip do, the great man that we just read about in Acts chapter 8? He preached him the Gospel. He preached in Jesus Christ one on one. The man got saved. He went away rejoicing. He went back to his country of Ethiopia and won hundreds and thousands of people to the Lord, as history tells us. People don't like to keep track of numbers because it's not very fun keeping track of zeros. It gets boring after a while. You know, just writing zero, zero, zero. Yeah. I wouldn't get excited about that either. You know, I'm reading this guy. It says here, this is from his pastor. This is pastor's recommendation that he send me to show me why he's so away. He has a burning desire to see souls saved. Wow. The only thing that's burning are the people in hell that he didn't preach the Gospel to because he's lazy as hell. That's what's going on. Now, this is number one that I got. And I hope you don't feel like this is a negative sermon, but I want you to know that we just started this missions program. When you throw money in that plate, it's going to get people saved. It's going to somebody who's doing something, not somebody who's sitting around. This is number two response that I got. Are you an independent fundamental Baptist? Yes. Do you believe the King James Bible is the preserved word of God? Yes. How many hours have you spent soul winning in the past month? 12 to 16. Okay, so this guy's going soul winning at least. This guy's doing something. How many people have you won to the Lord in the past month? Zero. How many people have you won to the Lord in the last week? Zero. You're missionaries to Mexico. Not my missionaries, sir. I mean, that makes me mad. I don't know about you, but that makes me angry. Let me tell you, when I was 17 years old, I started giving to missions when I was 17. I worked at Round Table Pizza, and I started giving to Faith Promise Missions. I said, I'm going to give X amount per week. And I was excited about it, and I was giving money to missions, and I thought, boy, people are getting saved all over the world from this money I'm putting in the plate, going to missions. People are getting saved, churches are getting started, and I have a part of this. I'm involved in this. That makes me mad that somebody's taking money, and they're being lazy, and they're wasting God's money. No, I don't think money's the problem at all. Let me give you one more example. I don't want to belabor you with this, but this is another missionary, and I'm not going to say where he's going, but somewhere in Eastern Europe. This isn't the prayer letter that he sends out to all the churches that are giving him money. This is a personal email that was sent out to all his friends. And it says, this is his wife talking, it says here, February 5th marked our one year anniversary of living in such and such the country. I don't quite know how an entire year flew by so quickly. I'm a bit encouraged when I think about all I've learned and adjusting to my new culture. I'm a bit overwhelmed when I think about all that there is still to learn. I have enrolled in language classes at the university at which so and so has been a student. I will be going to school full time for an entire semester. You know, my husband will be watching the boys in my absence. Okay, so here's what's going on. Here's a guy who's been on deputation. And for those of you who don't know what deputation is, this is where missionaries go around and get support. And they get money, you know, they get churches signed up to support them and so forth. Well, this guy's been going on deputation for two years, which is actually very fast for missionaries to be done in two years these days. He went around in two years, got everybody to support him. And so during that two years, he's receiving support from these churches. You know, we're talking what, forty, fifty thousand dollars a year coming in or whatever to support this missionary. So, so far a hundred thousand dollars has been spent on this guy, right? Just while he's on deputation. Then, he just went to the country where he's going to be serving as a missionary. He's not one, one single person to the Lord. He's not had one person saved in the last fourteen months that he's been there. When he first got there, he went to language school for a year. Just go to language school and then just comes home and just sits around, you know, just sitting down. Supposedly learn the language so he can win people to Christ, start a big church, whatever. He went for a year, now he stays home with the kids and he's the mommy. And he watches the kids while his wife goes to the, you know, just to the state university and just learns the language. While he's sitting at home, while he is sucking up a paycheck of forty to fifty thousand dollars out of church people's money that they threw in mission plate expecting it to go to get people saved. This is the truth. This is the facts. I got them right here. Listen to this. Here's the next, here's the next email. Although my husband and I are thankful for the opportunity for my studying the language, we will both be glad when this short phase of our lives comes to an end. One day I came home to find the living and dining room furniture piled in the front room. My husband had put them there because he was mopping the floor for me. He is doing a wonderful job potty training. He is diligently teaching so and so how to use the potty as well. I'm so glad you're teaching me how to use the potty with missions money, with God's money. That's ridiculous. That's insane. That's ludicrous. And you say, well you're mean. Well you know what? That I'm mean, but I think it's mean to let people go to hell and to suck up a paycheck and not do anything for God. That's what's mean. That's what's wrong. Here's the positive, let me give you the positive side of the coin. Here's our missionary Barry Hoffman that we just started supporting. He's given his information here in this recent prayer letter. He just had a record service. He started this church 8 years ago when he went to Korea. He just had a record service of 288 in attendance. This year his people that he trained to win people to the Lord and himself included have won 642 people to the Lord this year. You know him and all the people that he's trained in his church. 39 of them were baptized. They've had 420 first time visitors. And you know what he's saying? He's saying man a year to do better. He's saying let me tell you about my plans for next year. How we're going to go even bigger. How we're going to do even more. I'm telling you there really just aren't that many people out there in the world, in the United States or anywhere that are a real bonafide soul winner. I mean a real person who actually wins people to Christ. That is the honest truth about it. That's why the world's not safe. That's why churches are dying. That's why churches get smaller. They don't grow. It's because there's not a soul winner winning people to Christ. I want to show you this and I've mentioned this before but I just have to mention it again because it's just so... I mean every time I see it I'm just convicted by it and it just boggles my mind. But it's this thing of you know I love math and so I printed this out on Microsoft Excel today. And this is the thing where let's say I'm the only Christian in the world and this of course is not true. There's many many people that are saved and Christians all over the world right? Millions of people that are saved. Let's say I'm the only person that's saved right? Just for grins. I'm the only person in the whole world that's saved. And let's say today I say I'm starting Faithful Word Baptist Church and it's just me. I'm the only person. I don't have a family. Nothing. And I say this year I'm just going to win one person to the Lord. That's all. Boy that's a pretty small goal right? I mean the whole year long I'm just going to get one person saved. I'm just going to open my Bible and show one person the gospel of Jesus Christ and pray with them and win them to the Lord. One person I'm going to win to the Lord. Well at the end of the year how big is my church? How many people do I got? Two people right? Because I won one to the Lord. Yeah here we go. This is the only mathematician in the room. Everybody's like one plus one is one. But anyway we got two people. Now pretty small church right? I mean come on get rolling but let's keep going with this. Let's say I train that person to be like me. Let's say I say listen you're going to be like me like we're both soul winners man. We win people to Christ and this year we're going to win one person to Christ each. And he says yeah you know I'm going for this. And I teach him to be like me. I reproduce myself. Well then the next year we each win one person to the Lord. How many people we got now? Four. Okay so our church is now two years old and we got four people. Now let's say we go out the third year and us four man we're going to do the same thing. I mean we're just going to win one person to the Lord okay? This isn't some major you know we don't have all the TV stations and big deal. Exciting fun you know no this is just this four of us we're just going to go win somebody to the Lord the whole year. 52 weeks. Well at the end of the third year how many people we got now? Eight. Okay. Same thing again only eight people after three years come on. Okay after the fourth year how many people do we have? Sixteen. After the fifth year how many people do we have? We're just one on one person to the Lord folks come on. But everybody's getting involved that's the key right there. After five years we got 32. Six years we got 64. Boy it's still really not anything to write home about but. Boy after ten years you know you'd have 1024 people in that church who all win souls. I mean who all are a bona fide soul winner who knows how to win somebody to Christ. 1024 people. After eleven years boom you're at 2000. This church is getting pretty big now. After twelve years you got 4000 people. Now we went from just being a backwoods little couple of people right. I mean eight people after three years. All of a sudden after twelve years man we got 4096 people in our church. Thirteen years we got 8192. I mean we've long become the biggest church in Arizona by now. Right. And this is old we've only been around for. For thirteen years and we've just blown every other church in Arizona it's just small potatoes now. Okay. Fourteen years now we're up to 16,384. Now we're starting to be one of the biggest churches in America for sure. Boy fifteen years 32,768 people would be in this church. This is not including children. This is talking about adults. Just adults who are soul winners who will win to be the Lord. Let alone all the children, all the visitors, all the teenagers. Now we're like the biggest church in the world. Okay. After fifteen years. After sixteen years we're up to 65,536. Definitely it's time to look for a new building. Okay. Seventeen years go by. Seventeen years. I mean is seventeen years that long? Man in seventeen years I'm going to be in my product. I'm a young guy. In seventeen years we have 131,072 people. It's a pretty big building that we have. Okay. Eighteen years. 262,000. This thing's getting big isn't it? Nineteen years. 524,288 people. Can you even imagine a number? You can't even comprehend that. You've never even seen that many people in one time anyway. What about on our twenty year anniversary? What do you say we have a big service on the twenty year anniversary? Because we've got 1,048,576 people in our church who all win souls. I mean do you see that this is not the answer? This is what the world does. Whenever there's a problem in the public school or something just throw money at it, right? More money for the public schools. More money. More money. Money is not the answer. The whole text of our sermon that I showed you in Acts chapter 8. He said, listen, the things of God can't be purchased with money, Simon. You can't buy the things of God. You can't throw money. Now listen, I'm all for giving to missions, man. I put money in the plate on Wednesday night because I knew it was going to somebody who was winning souls. Praise God. And I want to give more and more to missions. And I want to support all kinds of missionaries who are doing this kind of stuff. Who are winning people to the Lord. But here's the thing that blows my mind. And keep in mind, we're only starting with one Christian. I mean, there's a lot of Christians in the world, right? We're starting with one. Well, after 32 and a half years. After 32 years, we've got 4 billion people in our church. After 32 years. 4.2 billion people. And then after 33 years, we would have 8.5 billion people in our church. And there's not even that many people in the world. So that would mean every human being would be saved in 33 years. Less than 33 years. Now what does that tell you? I mean, aren't we starting with... I mean, only God knows how many people are saved. But let's just say only 1 million people are saved. We know there's more than that. But let's just say there's only 1 million people that are saved. Well then we could start right here at 20, ok? If everybody just won one person to the Lord per year, then we would win the whole world to Christ in 12 years. 12 years. You see what the problem is? I'll tell you what the problem is. The problem is the individual Christian doesn't win souls. They don't win anybody to the Lord. They don't get anybody saved. It stops with them. This church is the training ground right here. If you're not here, this isn't entertainment. I mean, good night, man. Go watch a movie or something. It's a lot funner than this. Go watch one of these swab guys. Go watch that stuff, man. Go to IMAX and things will explode. And your seat might even vibrate or something. I don't know what they do. But it's going to be exciting. It's going to be fun. This church is not entertainment. This church is not where we go to have fun. This church is where we go to get our marching orders. This church is where we get trained how to win people to the Lord, how to serve God, how to get people saved. Let me ask you something if you think that money is what we need so much of. Oh, we just got to have more money. You got to put more money in the offering plate. That's all we need. If you think that, let me ask you a question. How much money has it costed to start this church, Faithful Word Baptist Church? Anybody want to guess? Because it didn't cost a thin dime because nobody supports me at all. I mean, I was sent out by a local church and my pastor sent me here with his blessing to come here and start this church. And he laid hands on me and prayed for me and said, I want you to go to Phoenix. I want you to start this church. I don't receive a dime, not one dime. Let me ask you a question. I don't know how to express this to you, but how much does it cost for you to walk across the street and give the neighbor the gospel? How much does that cost? It doesn't cost anything. How much does it cost to take your Bible and talk to somebody at work and say, listen, let me show you how you can know for sure that you're going to heaven when you die. How much does it cost to win people the Lord? How much does it cost for me right now to walk out this door and go knock on somebody's door and ask them if they're saved and give them the gospel and win them to Christ? It doesn't cost anything. It costs nothing. Money is not the answer. The answer is for each and every one of us to say, I'm on this earth for one reason. I might as well go to heaven. I mean, I'm saved. I'd rather be in heaven than here on earth with all the sorrow and all the misery. But God has left us here for one reason, and that's so that we can win people to Christ so that we can get people saved. Well, I was so, I was so pleased here. You know, Mrs. Scaggs is here. I was so pleased to hear that she was telling my wife about this, you know, talking to different people and her relatives and friends and family, people that she tried to win to Christ and won to Christ. That's it. That's what I, hey, that's the most exciting thing that I could hear because I am not the only soul winner in this church is what I want you to know, everybody in this room. You know, I've been to so many churches and this is the way I grew up. We would try to bring unsaved people to church constantly and say, man, if we could just bring these unsaved people to church, sit them down. The pastor is going to preach that phenomenal sermon on heaven and hell and on the gospel and on the blood of Jesus Christ and something's just going to happen and they're going to come down the aisle and receive Christ as their savior. You know what? I brought, I brought probably 30 people to church like that and I never had one of them get saved. Not even one time. And I'm not saying they don't. You know, many people do get saved in the church service where they come down the aisle and they get saved. I've never, ever had any of my visitors ever get saved. But boy, how many times, how many times have I, have I sat down with somebody and just took my Bible and showed them how to be saved? I mean, hundreds of times, over a thousand times have I sat down and showed somebody the gospel and won them to Christ. And that's, that's, that's God's plan. Look at Jesus throughout the Bible. Look at Jesus in Nicodemus in John chapter three, one on one, he's winning somebody the Lord. Look at it. Then John chapter four, boom, the woman at the well, he's there. He's giving her the gospel one on one. He's winning her to Christ one person at a time. You say, Jesus, come on, you're the son of God. Why are you wasting your time with this one person? You could be preaching to the multitudes because Jesus said, one person is everything as we saw. One, just one per year is everything. Now, obviously, I mean, obviously if I can win 10 people Lord per year and a hundred people Lord per year, that's even better. But you know how much, how much money does it cost to start this church? None. How much money? Okay. So far since we started this church, 95 people have been saved. Okay. How much did that cost of people putting money in the offering plate and giving money? It didn't cost anything. It costs nothing. How much did it cost to get this zero right here? This zero that I'm holding in my hand. This isn't the zero. This is the good guy, but you know, this zero that I'm holding in my hand, this guy sucked up, you know, so far over three years of people supporting him full time and he's got a big zero, big goose egg. So you can spend $150,000 for a big zero or you can go out yourself and be the hero and win somebody to Christ yourself. You know, it reminds me of the story in the Bible about AI and hopefully you're familiar with the story, but in the book of Joshua, they fight the great battle of Jericho. Every single person marches around those walls and they blow the Trumpets on the seventh day, of course, and the walls come down and they win the battle of Jericho. But you notice in the next chapter they're going to the next battle, the second battle, the battle of AI. And they say to themselves, let's not make everybody work. They said, let's not all the people labor there. They said, look, AI is smaller than Jericho. Let's just send like 2000 people to this city and let's not make everybody do it. And then only like two or 3000 people go to this battle. Everybody else just stays back and relaxes and they were just beaten back terribly. Part of it was because of the sin of Achan, of course, but God makes it very clear that they're saying that only we're only going to send two or 3000 people. You notice after Achan is exposed, God says everybody is going to go. I mean, he makes it very clear in that passage. You read that up in Joshua. He says, I want everybody to fight this battle. Everybody. See, when everybody gets involved, the work gets done. When one person's the big shot. Yeah, Pastor Steve Anderson, man, that guy's a soul winner. That's not going to get the job done. You think I can't win 131,000 people? Lord, I'm never going to do it. The only way that I'm going to win 131,000 people, Lord, is when everybody in this church learns to be a soul winner. When everybody says it's my job, you say, well, that's not my gift. You know, I've never seen in the Bible a gift of winning people to Christ. I've never seen it. I mean, I've seen different gifts that God says. He gives some people a gift of prophecy and gifts of exhortation and, you know, all these different gifts where he gives somebody a preaching ability maybe, or he gives somebody an ability of teaching and so forth. You know, these gifts that God gives. Nowhere does God give a gift of winning people to Christ and getting people saved. It's a command. It's not a gift. It's a command. Go ye therefore into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. It's a command. It's not a gift. Well, you say, Pastor Anderson, I don't have your people skills or whatever. That's nothing to do with it. I can go out there and I can be smooth and polished, but you know what? Unless God does it, nobody's getting saved unless it's the power of God. And you know what God said? He said, with stammering lips, he said, and with a stammering tongue, he says, is how I'm going to get people saved. I forget the exact verse, but in the book of Isaiah, he says, I'm going to bring somebody to you who can't even preach. I mean, he can't even talk right. He's tongue tied, but I'm going to put my power on him and he's going to get people saved. You know what? God said, who made the tongue? Moses said, I'm not eloquent. When he stood at the burning bush, I'm not eloquent, neither heretofore nor since you've been talking to me, I'm still not eloquent. I don't know how to speak. How am I going to go to Pharaoh and say, let my people, how am I going to preach to the children of Israel and convince them to go with me and cross the Red Sea? I'm not eloquent. And God said, who made the tongue? I made your tongue and I will give you a mouth that they won't be able to gain Satan or resist. He says, I will give you the words to say. You know, I've been soul winning with people who just, I mean, I'm, I'm, I was like embarrassed and you know, I'm, and I'm admitting this. This isn't right to me. I was almost embarrassed being with them, listening to them talk because they're just, they were just stammering and studying like what they were saying didn't even really make sense. You know, there's, they go to this verse and then they go to this other verse and I couldn't even follow it and I'm saved and they're going through this and I've watched that person get saved and say like, I see it, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm a sinner. Jesus died for me. You know, I just need to believe on Jesus Christ and he'll save me. I just need to accept a free gift from eternal life and I've seen them bow their head and trust Christ. I was amazed. God's not looking for the big shot. God's not looking for, you know, the Bible says there's few that are called that are, that are wise, few that are mighty. The Bible says God's chosen the foolish things of this world to confound those that are wise. God doesn't pick the one that's talented because if God picked the one that's talented, then the man would get the glory because you say, well, look at this guy, man, wow, look at this soul and look at this preacher. But if he picks somebody who's a little bit backward, maybe, maybe he picks somebody who doesn't have all the talent, doesn't have all the ability. Maybe pick somebody with kind of a weird background. Maybe pick somebody who's, who's ugly or shy or awkward or whatever. God's got to get the glory for that because you stand back and say, this isn't done by man. It's done by God and God gets the glory, but I've seen preachers, I've seen churches where the pastor just had no charisma and I heard the guy preach and I literally was just trying to stay awake and he had like 2000 people in church. Why? Because the guy had the power of God. He was, he was a soul winner because he loved God because of this. He knew how to get people saved. It's not for the talented, it's for everybody, everybody, everybody in this church needs to be a soul winner. Your job is to come here and get the preaching, learn the word of God, get fired up, learn about, you know, what's right, learn about what's wrong and then to take it out of here and say, now I'm a soldier and I'm going to go fight the battle and I'm going to win people to Christ. You say, pastor Anderson, where are all these people? You know, you hear people that are critics of what I'm talking about. There are people who are critics of winning people to Christ, of soul winning, going door to door and so forth. Where are all these people, pastor Anderson? Where are the thousand people that you've won the Lord? You want to know where they are? I can start telling you where they are because I can tell you about the ones that all the ones that got baptized, which is like more than 10% of them and I can tell you about the ones that are in church right now. I can tell you about the ones who've had their marriages put back together. I can tell you about the people who were talking to the attorney in many cases about divorce and now they're back together and their family's back together. I can tell you the name of the church that they go to. I can tell you where they are. I can tell you about the other ones. Hey, listen, they're out there, friend. Where are they? I'll tell you where they are. Some of them are in this church. You know, winning people to Christ works. The critics are the zeroes. That's the people who criticize and say, well, you know, you're going out and winning people to Christ, but they're not really getting saved. You know what? That's a zero talking because I'd match up, let's say I'd match up my numbers and then take 10% and let's say just 10% of them even meant it. The ones who came to church and got baptized and had their lives turned around, I'll match that up against 100% of the zero. And so the purpose of the sermon tonight is don't get wrapped up in this thing of money. Don't ever think that money is the answer. Don't ever think that you can put money in a plate as a substitute for you winning people to the Lord yourself, you being a soul winner yourself. You know, coming to this church doesn't mean that when you stand before God, you're going to get the reward in heaven for the people that you didn't win to the Lord, for the people that got saved because of the influence of this church. You're going to get the reward for who you won the war. You're going to get the reward for what you did. You're going to be all by yourself in that day and obviously it's not going to be a negative time at all. It's going to be a completely positive time, but when you're standing before God, it's just going to be you and God's going to say, what did you do? And you're going to give an account for the things done in your body and God's going to reward you according to what you've done. You know, I remember when I was in Germany and I went to Germany when I was 18 years old and I spent four months over there just staying with different missionaries and I stayed with one missionary who worked. I mean, who actually did anything. I mean anything. I stayed with one guy and man, this guy worked, you know, 70, 80 hours a week. And when I was there, man, he made me work 70 to 80 hours a week. I was begging the guy to go to bed at night. I was so tired from working with him and this guy knew how to work. And when I went back to Germany the second time, guess who I went to stay with? The guy that worked me like an animal. That's who I want to stay with. But the boy, the first time I was there, you would not believe, you would not believe the missionaries that I saw. You know what they did? They did all their wife's housework for them. I mean they're mopping the floor, they're sweeping up, they're gardening all day and then they drive across town and make some hospital visit. And then they drive all the way back across town and then they go to the grocery store and then they, you know, fix something around the house and boy these guys were just housewives. And they're sucking up these big paychecks and it makes me mad. And I'm going to tell you something. You put any money in the plate for missions, you know, which is up to you, of course. God says every man as he purposeth in his own heart, let him give. And if you, I just want to guarantee you as the spiritual stockbroker of this church, when you put money in that plate for missions, it's going to get people saved. It's going to somebody who's winning people to Christ. It's going to somebody who's tearing it up, who's getting it done. Money is not the answer. You being a soul winner is the answer, everybody in this room. He that goeth forth and weepeth, the Bible says, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. I want everybody to bow their heads and close your eyes. And I just want to, I want to ask a few questions that I like to ask at the end of each service. I just want to ask quickly, is there anybody here today who's not a hundred percent sure that if you were to die and go to heaven, I'm not going to embarrass you or anything. If you'd slip up your hand and say, I'm not a hundred percent sure. I'd like to know that, but I don't really know for sure. All right. And then I'm going to ask another question. Is there anybody here tonight who would say, you know, pastor Anderson, some of the message spoke to my heart. It wasn't really an eloquent message, you know, it was just kind of a lot of yelling and ranting and raving, but some in the word of God just spoke to my heart and you know, I see the need that I need to be the soul. I need to be a soul winner. I need to win people to Christ. Would you slip up your hand if that's you tonight and say, I need to win people to Christ. I am the hope for America. I am the hope for the world. Boy, God, you see those hands, father and God, I just pray that you bless this service and that you would use this service for years to come. God in people's hearts, that they would be for life starting tonight, they would enlist in that great army, dear God, the few, the proud, the army of those who are soul winners who win people to Christ. Hallelujah. Wouldn't that be fantastic? Dear God, if just one person in this room could get ahold of this thing and just one with it for the rest of their life. Think about the soul. Say, think about the life change. Think about the excitement. Dear God. Father, we love you and thank you so much for bringing us here tonight and in Jesus name I pray. Amen.