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

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. Welcome everyone to Steadfast Baptist Church. If you can please find your seats and grab a song book. We will turn our hymnals to song 449, dwelling in Beulah Land. 449, dwelling in Beulah land. Song 449, dwelling in Beulah land. Far away the noise of strife upon my ear is falling. Then I know the sins of earth beset on every hand. Doubt and fear and things of earth in vain to me are calling. None of these shall move me from Beulah land. I'm living on the mountain underneath a cloudless sky. I'm drinking at the fountain that never shall run dry. Oh, yes, I'm feasting on the manna from a bountiful supply. For I am dwelling in Beulah land. 449 on the second. Now let's sing it out like you're saved. That was pretty weak, all right? On the second. Far below the storm of doubt upon the world is beating. Sons of men, now me withstand. Safe am I within the castle of God's word retreating. Nothing then can reach me. I'm living on the mountain underneath a cloudless sky. I'm drinking at the fountain that never shall run dry. Oh, yes, I'm feasting on the manna from a bountiful supply. For I am dwelling in Beulah land. Let the stormy breezes blow. Their cry cannot alarm me. I am safely sheltered here protected by God's hand. Here the sun is always shining. Here there's not can harm me. I am safe forever in Beulah land. I'm living on the mountain underneath a cloudless sky. I'm drinking at the fountain that never shall run dry. Oh, yes, I'm feasting on the manna from a bountiful supply. For I am dwelling in Beulah land. Viewing here the works of God, I sink in contemplation. Hearing now his blessed voice, I see the way he planned. Dwelling in the spirit here, I learn of full salvation. Gladly will I tarry in Beulah land. I'm living on the mountain underneath a cloudless sky. At the fountain that never shall run dry. Oh, yes, I'm feasting on the manna from a bountiful supply. For I am dwelling in Beulah land. Great singing. Let's open up with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this day and the opportunity to be gathered together with your people, to sing praises to you, just to hear the word of God preached. We thank you for our brother Duncan. We pray that you would do a great work through him, Lord, and that you bless this day. We love you so much. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right. For our second song, we'll go to song 439. Count your blessings. 439, count your blessings. 439, count your blessings. When upon life's billows you are tempest-tossed. When you are discouraged thinking all is lost. Count your many blessings, name them one by one. And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done. Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count your blessings, see what God hath done. Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count your many blessings, see what God hath done. Are you ever burdened with a load of care? Does the cross seem heavy? You are called to bear. Count your many blessings, every doubt will fly. And you will be singing as the days go by. Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count your blessings, see what God hath done. Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count your many blessings, see what God hath done. When you look at others with their lands and gold. Think that Christ has promised you his wealth untold. Count your many blessings, money cannot buy. Your reward in heaven or your home on high. Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count your blessings, see what God hath done. Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count your many blessings, see what God hath done. So amid the conflict, whether great or small. Do not be discouraged, God is over all. Count your many blessings, angels will attend. Help and comfort give you to your journeys end. Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count your blessings, see what God hath done. Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count your many blessings, see what God hath done. Good morning, thank you so much for coming to Steadfast Baptist Church. If you don't already have one of our bulletins, we'd love to give you one. Just lift up your hand nice and high and one of our ushers can come by and get you a bulletin. And we are in our Bible Memory passage, John 1-34. I bet I'm going to give a lot of ice cream away this Wednesday, but I'm ready to. So if you're ready, I'm ready. And you kiddos that are 18 and under can quote this verse for the week. You can get an ice cream treat. Even though it's easy, you still got to do it though, alright? So practice and memorize that. On the inside we have our service and soul winning times. One thing to take note of, our Saturday soul winning time that was meeting here as church wide is moving to a regional time. And so the Saturday times that we have are all regional. So you just need to get with the respective leaders for those times. So if you show up on Saturday morning, the soul winning time is probably going to be somewhere else. So you just need to get with that specific leader, Brother West or Brother Lugo. And I think he said he's been going near the Arlington area. That's, yeah, okay. But again, that could change. So just kind of get in his contact list and his circle, right? Didn't they have that with the cell phones? You're like in their circle or something? Get in his circle of friends or whatever. The other times still meet here at the building. If you'd like to go out soul winning, you can show up here. Our church stats, continue to send those in to your soul winning captain or your soul winning leader. If you don't know who that is, ask one of the ushers or myself and we'll make sure that you have someone that you're supposed to be reporting that to. Everyone that's a member of our church should be part of a tribe as it were. And you definitely want to make sure you get in there because there's free tribe parties and all kinds of fun stuff. That's going on with that as well. And also our tribe captains and lieutenants and stuff are praying for all their members and going soul winning with them if they want and stuff and stuff like that. So definitely want to get plugged in on the right. We have a list of our expecting ladies and our prayer list. Please email any additional prayer requests you have for the week to us via email. Also, our song leading and music class was this morning. We also have a couple more coming up July 24th and the 31st. It's there on the back. I'd highly encourage you to come and just participate. Learn a little bit. I hope that the class this morning learned some things and we just want to make sure that our our song leading is just getting better. And we have more song leaders because we're losing one today. And today is a special day. We're going to be ordaining Brother Duncan or Bannock to go down to Pure Words Baptist Church and be an evangelist for them. And so that's going to be happening immediately following me. As soon as I'm done preaching, I'll have him come up here and I'll do an ordination. And but he technically isn't going to be leaving for another week or two. He's planning on being down there. I think leaving the 20th. Is that still the plan? And then preaching for them his first service down there as their evangelist, the 24th. And so if you want to help him move or or or be like, don't let the door hit you, you know, you just make sure you get there. You know, the 20th, some sometime in that frame. And we're having a party today. So you made it. And we've got lots of good food coming in. So even if he dies in the middle of the service, we're going to still eat. And so, you know, it'll be awake or whatever I think is what they call that. But God willing, that's not going to happen. You know, we're going to get through this service. We're going to make it. I don't think the preachers killed anybody yet, at least in the building. We can always hope for outside the building for some people. And that's that's, you know, why we're here. One of the goals of our church is to send people out to do the work of the Lord. And that's a great opportunity for Brother Bannock down there. Pure Words is a great church. In fact, Pastor Anderson went and preached for them on Thursday. And they had 85 people for their Thursday night service. And the majority were like first time visitors to Pure Words Baptist Church specifically. And there's definitely a lot of people. Houston is very similar to here in the fact that it's about 8 million people in population. They probably have a few more undocumented. But, you know, those people are really great to preach the gospel to. Especially if you speak Spanish or you're working on Spanish and everything like that. And Pure Words is a great church, great, great group of people. I'm still going to be going down there and preaching on Thursdays for a little while. Just helping Brother Bannock kind of get acclimated so you can continue to pray that travel and everything go well. And then I'll kind of try to transition, maybe go to Oklahoma City a little bit more than I've been going. And then maybe eventually I just won't go anywhere on Thursday. So, God willing, that would be a huge blessing for me. But, we're really excited about this. If you have any questions or anything like that, you can always contact me or email me. And I like to make sure that everybody is up to date on any of that information. In preparation to today, I did ask a lot of people about Brother Bannock. And so, that is going to always be my policy is to try and ask a lot of people what they think. I didn't ask his brother, Ryan. But, I choose people carefully on who I'm going to ask. But, I honestly, I had 100% approval and support. So, I didn't have a single person that was like, no, or didn't like Brother Bannock, or didn't think he was a good fit. And I asked people from here, Oklahoma City, and in pure words, and it's probably close to about 20 different men. And all of them were singing his praises. And so, I knew I didn't want to ask his brother just in case. No, I'm just kidding. And so, we're really excited about them and their family. Definitely be praying for Brother Bannock and praying for his transition. And even when he's not here, continue to pray for him. He's been a big blessing to us. And he does a lot of work for us here, song leading. And he's done soul winning and everything like that. And so, it'll also give people opportunity here to step up and get more involved here as well. So, with that, we're going to go and go to our third song for this morning. Holy, holy, holy. So, it's in our separate handouts. Holy, holy, holy. It's not in the hymn book, but it's in our separate hymn books. All right, holy, holy, holy. Great song. Sing it out nice and loud. Holy, holy, holy. Holy, holy, holy. Lord God almighty. Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee. Holy, holy, holy. Merciful and mighty. God in three persons. Blessed Trinity. Holy, holy, holy. All the saints adore thee. Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea. Cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee. Which word and heart and evermore shall be. Holy, holy, holy. Though the darkness hide thee. Though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see. Only thou art holy. There is none. Perfect in power and love and purity. Holy, holy, holy. Lord God almighty. Shall praise thy name in earth and sky and sea. Holy, holy, holy. Merciful and mighty. God in three persons. Blessed Trinity. As the offering plates are passed around, turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 21. Acts chapter 21. We're going to read the whole chapter before the sermon. And you can follow along silently starting at verse number one. Acts chapter 21. The Bible reads in Acts chapter 21. And it came to pass that after we were gotten from then and had launched, we came with a straight course unto kohos, and the day following unto Rhodes, and from then sent to Patara, and finding a ship sailing over unto Phoenicia, we went aboard and set forth. Now when we had discovered Cyprus, we left it on the left hand and sailed into Syria and landed at Tyre, for there the ship was to unload her burden. And finding disciples, we tarried there seven days, who said to Paul through the Spirit that he should not go up to Jerusalem. And when we had accomplished those days, we departed and went our way, and they all brought us on our way with wives and children till we were out of the city, and we kneeled down on the shore and prayed. And when we had taken our leave one of another, we took ship and they returned home again. And when we had finished our course from Tyre, we came to Tommes and saluted the brethren and abode with them one day. And the next day, we that were of Paul's company departed and came unto Caesarea, and we entered into the house of Philip the Evangelist, which was one of the seven, and abode with him. And the same man had four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy. And as we tarried there many days, there came down from Judea a certain prophet named Agabus. And when he was come unto us, he took Paul's girdle and bound his own hands and feet, and said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles. And when we heard these things, both we and they of that place besought him not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? For I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. And when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, The will of the Lord be done. And after those days, we took up our carriages and went up to Jerusalem. There went with us also certain of the disciples of Caesarea, and brought with them one nascent of Cyprus, an old disciple with whom we should lodge. And when we were come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly. And the day following, Paul went in with us unto James, and all the elders were present. And when he had saluted them, he declared particularly what things God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry. And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord and said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe, and they are all zealous of the law. And they are informed of thee that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs. What is it, therefore? The multitude must needs come together, for they will hear that thou art come. Do therefore this that we say to thee, We have four men which have a vow on them. Them take and purify thyself with them, and be at charges with them, that they may shave their heads, and all may know that those things were of they were informed concerning thee are nothing, but that thou thyself also walkest orderly and keepest the law. As touching the Gentiles which believe, we have written and concluded that they observe no such thing, save only that they keep themselves from things offered to idols and from blood and from strangled and from fornication. Then Paul took the men, and the next day, purifying himself with them, entered into the temple to signify the accomplishment of the days of purification, until that an offering should be offered for every one of them. And when the seven days were almost ended, the Jews which were of Asia, when they saw him in the temple, stirred up all the people and laid hands on him, crying out, Men of Israel, help! This is the man that teaches all men everywhere against the people and the law and this place, and further brought Greeks also into the temple, and hath polluted this holy place. For they had seen before with him in the city of Trophimus and Ephesian, whom they supposed that Paul had brought into the temple. And all the city was moved, and the people ran together, and they took Paul and drew him out of the temple, and forthwith the doors were shut. And as they went about to kill him, tidings came unto the chief captain of the band that all Jerusalem was in an uproar, who immediately took soldiers and centurions and ran down unto them. And when they saw the chief captain and the soldiers, they left beating of Paul. Then the chief captain came near and took him and commanded him to be bound with two chains, and demanded who he was and what he had done. And some cried one thing, some another, among the multitude, and when he could not know the certainty for the tumult, he commanded him to be carried into the castle. And when he came upon the stairs, so it was that he was born of the soldiers for the violence of the people. For the multitude of the people followed after, crying away with him. And as Paul was to be led into the castle, he said unto the chief captain, May I speak unto thee, who said, Canst thou speak Greek? Art not thou that Egyptian which before these days made us an uproar, and led us out into the wilderness four thousand men that were murderers? But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city of Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city, and I beseech thee, suffer me to speak unto the people. And when he had given him license, Paul stood on the stairs and beckoned with the hand unto the people. And when there was made a great silence, he spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue, saying, Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the morning service and for our pastor. I just pray that you would fill him now with your spirit and enable him to thunder forth the message laid on his heart, soften hearts in the room, and minimize distractions so we can listen to the sermon, and also so that we can apply the message and walk out of the building better Christians, and also protect us as we go our separate ways. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. One announcement I forgot to mention is we were trying a new streaming service on our website. So if you go to sbckjv.com and you just go to watch live, you should be able to watch the service from there interrupted. Uninterrupted, I'm sorry. And so that's definitely something you could check out. Obviously you're here, so you don't even have to worry about that. It's very uninterrupted. And as soon as we're done, I'll give some instructions about how to proceed to food as well. I know that's what you really care about this morning. But we're going to take a moment to think about the spiritual food, the word of God, and think about what the Bible has to say. Look at verse number eight. The Bible says, And the next day we that were of Paul's company departed and came unto Caesarea, and we entered into the house of Philip the evangelist. Apparently everybody was really excited about it. And what I really want to preach about is this kind of title that's attributed or attached to Philip the evangelist. And so the title of my sermon this morning is The Evangelist, The Evangelist. And I want to kind of understand what that means or what we think about when we think about the evangelist. Because there's a difference between an evangelist and the evangelist and really just kind of the essence of the title, right? If you're called the pastor, that's kind of, you know, like you're the guy, right? You're the evangelist. You're the quarterback. You're the president. Whatever it is, it kind of has this title attributed to it. So if someone's the evangelist, you know, we want to understand why they're the evangelist or what is the evangelist doing often will also help us understand what this word means. Now the word evangelize or evangelist or any kind of form or variation is only found three times in your Bible. Okay? This is one of those three times. But there's a lot of Bible on this subject that we can kind of talk about and think about. And the apostle Paul in Acts chapter number 21, this is kind of the tail end of his ministry. He's already gone on many missionary journeys to all kinds of different churches. He's gone throughout the world preaching the gospel. He's been doing this for decades. And the guy that he brings up, Philip, is someone that was technically ordained and did work earlier in the book of Acts. So well after Philip just started his work in the early part of Acts or several decades ago, Paul is looking at it from a hindsight perspective and he's saying, here is Philip the evangelist. So we know that not only was Philip an evangelist for a brief amount of time or just one part of his life, it's kind of just become who he is. It's just Philip the evangelist. This is his ministry. This is what God has confirmed. And so if you want to learn a lot about evangelists, you know, Philip is your guy. Philip is really someone that you can draw a lot of information about and kind of understand this evangelist position. Now go over to Acts chapter 6. Let's go meet Philip in the Bible and let's kind of figure out where he started. And I have three points this morning and they're all going to start with E. All right. So we have the evangelist. And here's a really important point about the evangelist is that they're elected, that they're elected. Now I'll say this. Anybody who's saved should be an evangelist ever. And in fact, they all are. You're just either a good one or a bad one. OK. So it's kind of like a draft. A draft in a country, it's not that you wanted to be in the military. The government just selected you. They elected you to be in the draft. Well, once you get elected in the sense that you're saved, you've been elected by God, you've been chosen by God, you're put into his army. You are an evangelist whether you like it or not. And what you should do is be a good evangelist. But there is a person in the Bible that goes beyond just being an evangelist in their daily life and doing evangelism work to where they're the evangelist. OK. Just like the word pastor means to shepherd, guide, lead. And sometimes the Bible will refer to people in the Bible like Jeremiah was a pastor. OK. Now some people will say like, oh, well, Jeremiah didn't meet all the biblical qualifications. So I guess your 1 Timothy chapter number 3 and your Titus chapter 1 don't really make sense. But here's the thing. You can be a pastor without being a New Testament local bishop. There's a difference between these things, right? A husband should pastor his family. A husband should lead and shepherd and guard his wife and his children. And even beyond that, you know, a grandfather could still be shepherding his whole family, his grandchildren and all the other extended people of his family. You could have friends that are going wayward and you're trying to help pastor them or shepherd them or lead them. You could be a boss. You could be an employee somewhere and have the employees and you're pastoring those individuals. You could be a soul winning captain and you're going to do pastoring in the sense that you're going to shepherd them. You're going to lead them. You're going to be an example unto them. But there's a difference between pastoring someone and being the pastor. There's a difference between evangelizing and being the evangelist, okay? And so I want to make that a clear distinction. What is the clear distinction between these two? Well, one's ordained and one's not. One has been selected, one is not. One has been elected and the other is not. And when it comes to Philip, take no mistake, Philip has been ordained formally. It's not even just that God picked him or that he's just a good guy and fits the job description or he decided, no, he was elected by others. And it wasn't a voting machine. You know, it's actually real life blood people, you know, they cast their vote as it were. This is your election process in the Bible. Okay, now look at verse number one, Acts chapter six, verse one. This is kind of just a way of introduction into our sermon. But point one is that they're elected. Look at verse one, and in those days when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily menstruation. Then the twelve called a multitude of the disciples unto them and said, it is not reason that we should leave the word of God and serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom whom we may appoint over this business. Notice it also says the twelve. How do we have a number? Where does the number come from? Because these men were literally ordained. We have the eleven disciples that were ordained by the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Then we have the one replacement for Judas, but he was still appointed, he was still ordained by the other eleven. And it was different because they had two guys that fit the job description and then they cast the lot and they picked one of them to be different than the other. Notice that there was a special process. That does not mean that the other guy should just go home and just stare at the wall or watch TV or something like that. No, he should still go out and evangelize and preach the gospel and get people saved and do the word of the Lord. He was already doing that beforehand, that's why he was even on the roster. You know, that's why he was in the draft, as it were. Even though he didn't get drafted, he's still going to keep doing the same thing. He's going to still keep doing that kind of work. And the same goes with this number twelve is because there's something special about them. That's the point. This twelve is different. This twelve is unique. And the same comes with the evangelist is that he's a unique evangelist among all of us evangelists. If you're saved in here, hey, we're all evangelists. But then we want to take somebody and appoint them over some kind of what? Business. Because what does he say in verse number three? Who may appoint over this business? So what's the point of being ordained? There's a really specific job that needs to be taking place and let's pick someone to accomplish that very specific task. OK. Whereas, you know, obviously shouldn't be our all all of our goal if we're in Houston to go and preach the gospel in Houston. And it shouldn't be our old goal to go to church there. It shouldn't be our old goal to essentially help people grow in the Lord and do things. But we need someone to kind of lead the charge there or do the work there. And so we need to pick someone. And that's why they get ordained over that particular business. OK, here they have such a big church and they have so many needs. There are so many people that were just basically getting neglected and the leadership couldn't keep up. So they're like, we need more leadership. So we're going to appoint some more leadership, you know, myself included. I can't keep up with this church by myself. It's not possible. Now, fortunately, I have other avenues that I can take. I can hire an employee or I can hire services or I can have volunteers. And you know what? I use a lot of that to my ability. But it could potentially get to a point where our church would get so big that even tasks that need to be ordained tasks are just getting overwhelming. And so we need to literally ordain more people, add more people to the ministry. And currently, that's how it is. You know, we have a church in Oklahoma City. We have a church and pure words. And I can't be in three places at one time. So we could have someone show up on a Sunday morning wanting to get baptized at a place that I'm not at physically. And we're just not able to accommodate that request. Right. Something's getting neglected. So the best thing is that we could get someone that meets all the job description, is a faithful person. We could ordain them. And that can increase what? Baptisms. That can increase leadership. That can increase soul winning. That can increase all the work of the Lord that needs to be increased. And it can even just increase just needs. Right. Someone comes in and they just need something. In this particular case, it was the widows that just needed help. Maybe they need a ride to church. Or maybe they need someone to pray for them. Or maybe they need someone to call them. Or maybe they need someone to bring something to them. You know, again, I can't multiply myself into three different locations at one point. So it makes sense to have more leaders, more men that are ordained, more men that are appointed, and put in positions of leadership so that they can meet those demands. They can meet those requests. Now, in Acts chapter number six, this particular ordination, this particular appointment, is kind of more in lines with what we call a deacon. Okay. A deacon and your Bible, that is a title. That is a role. The word is very synonymous with servant. So essentially what a deacon does is they serve. It's interesting. Most churches, they kind of have it backwards where the deacons lead, where the deacons rule. They're like in charge of the church. And that's not a biblical model. So then in order to fix that, they just changed all the deacons' titles to elders. So then they have an elder board that basically, again, rules the church. And we see that in this particular situation, they did have a group that was leading. But at the same time, Peter's the one in charge. So even our church, if our church grew and God blessed us and we were running hundreds or thousands, we would probably have multiple, potentially pastors on staff. But here's the thing. Our structure would still be a top-down structure, a pyramid structure, where you'd have a lead pastor that makes all the decisions, and then you have assistant pastors that are helping with other tasks, and they basically are fulfilling that role. Then below them, you would have evangelists in some kind of a leadership structure. And then below them, you would have the deacon. So the deacon is like the bottom of the rung in the sense that the deacon is just kind of like there. He's the glorified janitor. He's the glorified guy to go around and clean up the place, help people, serve people, do all the menial tasks that the other leadership doesn't want to necessarily have to do. Because look what he said in verse number four, but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word. So notice he's contrasting these men with themselves and saying, we're going to study the Bible. We need to focus on the spiritual things. We need to make sure that we're preaching the right sermons, that we're putting forth the evangelism, we're getting the baptisms. Like, we're focused on that. You guys can focus on the building, on cleaning it up, on the tables, on the meals, on the events, on all the other superfluous stuff that it's nice to have, but it's extra. And when it comes to church stuff, I mean, it can get overwhelming. I myself neglect things at times. If you've ever come to this church for any length of time or tried to contact me or said something to me, I probably forgot at least once or twice, OK? Because you get a lot of requests, and then sometimes people give you a question and you're just like, I'm not going to do that, but it is what it is. So you just kind of have to manage those things, right? But at the point that you start realizing, like, I'm just not getting stuff done, I'm neglecting too much, that's when you kind of say, like, we need to put some more people and plug and play here. The problem is sometimes churches just don't have enough guys to plug and play. You know, you have the need, you just don't have the supply. And this is the supply chain issue, OK? We have supply chain issues in America right now that's causing all kinds of issues to happen. You know, we have supply chain issues in the ministry because the harvest truly is plenteous, but the labors are few. And there's very few men today that are going to say, I'm going to go to church three times a week. Every other time the doors are open, I'm there. I'm going to show up early. I'm going to stay light. I'm going to put in an extra effort. I'm going to separate myself by studying the Bible, by reading the Bible. I'm ready to do whatever I'm asked to do. I'm willing to just step in. I'm willing to learn new things. I'm willing to prioritize the Bible over myself, over my job, over my career, over my hobby, over my interests. You know, the most important things are the Bible, are the Word of God. If I have to move, I'll move to be close to church. If I have to drive, I'll drive to go to church. If I have to go somewhere to preach, I'll do it. If I have to spend my own money, I'll do it. I mean, there's very few people that are going to say, hey, here am I, Lord, send me. It's just very few and far between. So when you get someone like that, it's a rarity, it's a blessing, and we would like to have more of that, but I am not willing to just keep lowering the bar just so that we have people to fill the roster because what I've noticed is that when you keep lowering the bar to fill the roster, you end up causing yourself more work than if you had just waited. And in fact, a few people can do the work of 10 lazy people all day long. You know, I learned this in software development and programming. It's like there's companies, they have like armies of programmers, and then you could look at another company that has just a few, and the few always outperform the army, and you're thinking like how is that possible? It's because you'd rather have skill and understanding in people that work hard than just an army of lazy jerks. This is the same militarily. Think about some of David's mighty men. You have just a couple guys saying, hey, we're going to get water over here from this well, and it didn't matter how many troops they were fighting. They just broke through, went and got in the water like they wanted, and then came back because when you got a few guys that are skilled, they can just get everything done. And I'll be honest. The people that help with our church the most probably typically have the most going on in their own personal lives too. Like, I bet they work harder than almost all the other people in their secular job, and then they extra at church, and then they're like doing extra even beyond that. It's like crazy. It's like the people that are already doing so much and are so busy and have so many things going on, they're the ones that give you the most on top of that even at church. And then the people that are kind of the laziest and they don't have anything going on in their secular life and they probably have plenty of free time, they do like nothing. It's just like they're just in a pattern of basically doing nothing. It's like the people that just work hard, they just always work hard, and they're real efficient, and they're really good at it. I remember I worked for a company, a software company, and I worked with this guy, and he was an inspiration for me. He made me feel lazy because he worked so hard it was just mind-blowing. But not only did he work harder than me, like he would work like 80 hours a week. Okay, so, you know, my boss was telling me work like 50, 60 hours a week on a salary job, okay, not hourly. Both of us work salary, okay. And he's working 80 hours a week, and so I'm feeling lazy, you know, just because he's just working so much. But not only did he work 80 hours, some tasks that would take me about 10 hours to do, he could do in like 20 minutes because he was just that much smarter and just like experienced and like skilled. And you'll notice like people that are really skilled or good at their job, I mean, they just get it done like that. I'll brag on another person. It's funny, when it comes to plumbing, brother Jacob and Jared told me there's this guy they always like to work at with. His name's Cruz, and then like Cruz always gets done fast. And I remember they did some work for us, and he shows up like 9 a.m., so not like the, not getting started super early. And they had to do a lot of work. And it was like 2 o'clock, and he's like, we're done. And I'm thinking, what happened? And it's just because he just showed up and just got it done. Whereas other companies, they'll be there for days and weeks, and you're just kind of like wondering like, what are they even doing? Makes me think of highways. You look at the highway, and you'll see no progress for like three months straight. And then the next week, it's all done. And you're like, why did they wait three months to just do this week of work that they could have done? You know, you're just kind of always wondering like, what happened? There's probably some bureaucracy, red tape, financing, budgeting. This is what, and in fact, this is what they really do. They go and start a project somewhere, and then just wait three months, and they're working on other projects. They go and start other projects everywhere else. And then they're just constantly bouncing around, and that's why it takes so long is because they're scheduling. But it makes sense because obviously in the construction business, you don't necessarily know all the jobs you're going to get. You just take every kind of job, and then things get delayed, and they're just managing their time. But someone that actually knows what they're doing is skilled can do things like that. Whereas people that have no skill, it could take hours. When I first started preaching to prepare for a sermon, I might spend four hours, five hours preparing a sermon. And I would look at my mentor, my pastor from Faithful Word, and I mean, this guy could just walk up, have never even thought about what sermon he's going to preach, just go like this. All right, I'm going to preach a sermon from here. And it would have been better than the sermon that I had prepared. And you're thinking like, how? Because he's been preparing his whole life. He's memorized hundreds of chapters of the Bible. He's read the Bible scores of time. He's filled with the Holy Spirit, and he's so good at it that it takes him like that to prepare a sermon. It takes him like, because he's just so much better. He's so much more skilled. When it comes to Acts, chapter number six, when we're looking for the, we're electing someone, we're not just looking for a heartbeat here. We're looking for someone that's going to actually do a good job. We're looking for someone that meets the bill. We're looking for someone that's going to have pretty much already proven themselves. And it's like, hey, I want to be the evangelist someday. Okay, we'll start being the evangelist now without the title. Start doing all of that work now. Start showing yourself faithful now, and then we'll just be like, let's just slap a label on that guy. We're not saying like, we're going to slap a label and hope you come, you end up showing up. You're going to show up, and then we're going to slap a label on you if you kind of understand how these things work. The same is with them. Notice that there are qualifications in verse three, men of honest report. So you already had to have a track record of being a very honest person. You want to be ordained in ministry. The worst thing you could ever do is just lie to the leadership or lie to anyone. Think about this, because they're going to ask everybody. If you're going around constantly gossiping, lying, not taking things seriously, then people are going to notice that. And one thing that just drives everyone up the wall is liars. We all hate liars. Liars are universally condemned. It doesn't matter if it's the left. It doesn't matter if it's Democrat. It doesn't matter if it's Satanist. They all hate lying. Now, of course, they do it, and they're hypocrites about it. But they'll say all day long they hate lying, and in fact they do. Because they'll have someone lie to them, and they don't like it. You know, thieves, they don't want to have people stealing from each other in their little band of thieves. You know, liars. You know, Hillary Clinton will lie all day long, but she doesn't want her chief of staff to lie to her. She wants them to tell her the truth. And the same goes with us, is we don't want to have a bunch of liars in this church, and we don't want to ordain a liar. We want someone of honest report. Someone that is a truth-telling person, someone that takes things seriously, is going to do work, and they're going to do an honest work. You know, there's a difference between doing the work and doing honest work. Now, again, this comes back, this makes me think of contracting, okay? Honest work would be the sense that you look at a job, and you say, that's going to take me an hour. It'll cost $100, but then you bid $1,000. Right? That's not honest work. Or you bid a job for $1,000, and it needs $1,000 worth of work, but there's this cheap substitute way. There's this kind of cheating way to get the job done. And instead of actually doing it right and putting all the effort, energy, and labor, you just do the duct tape approach. You just try to get in and get out as quickly as possible. You're not someone that's going to actually really do a good job. You know, the same would be with any area of our lives, that we want people that are going to do an honest day's labor and honest day's work. When it comes to the ministry, we don't want people up here faking it. We want them to have done the honest work. Like, here's an example. We want you to have read the Bible, actually. Not got the Cliff Notes version. Not just heard preaching tons of times. You could listen, here's the thing. You could listen to hundreds of hours of preaching and not know the Bible. Because there is no substitute for reading the Bible. And in fact, you know, that's why I even test the guys that are in our church that want to go into leadership or ministry. I'll test your Bible knowledge, and I'll come up with clever ways in order to figure out if you're sincere. And even if you had read it, I'll test your comprehension. Because let's say you literally just physically read it out loud 10 times or 20 times. But then you know none of it. What did Jesus say every time he ran to the Pharisees and they didn't understand doctrine? Have you not read? He didn't say, like, oh, well, did you read it 10 times? It's like, did you get it? Did you understand it? You know, if you want to become a pastor, it's not like, can I speed read it 10 times? It's like, can I get the understanding of having read it 10 times and comprehending it and meditating upon it and letting it marinate? Because some people may have read the Bible a lot more than others, whereas someone that's read it a lot less understands more because they're actually paying attention, they're meditating on it, they're saved, okay? Obviously, if you're not even saved, you know, that doesn't really benefit you. And I would even encourage you this. Let's say you read the Bible a whole bunch but you weren't saved. You need to start reading it a whole bunch while being saved. Because you were essentially, it was just probably like glazing over. A lot of it wasn't necessarily making sense. Now, you can still use it. Apostle Paul was very familiar with the Scriptures. And then when he got saved, it was like he already had that tool in his bag that he could use at his disposal. But, you know, we need ministers that actually have some real tools that actually know how to use their weaponry. They're not a fraud. They're not a fake. They're not just got like a suit underneath of muscles. They actually have muscles, okay? They're not just pulling the wool over our eyes. Now, go to Galatians 5 for a moment. Keep your finger in Acts 6. Go to Galatians, chapter number 5. It was talking about some of the qualifications we have for this evangelist. And it was, one of them was full of the Holy Ghost. Well, that's kind of a broad term. So how do I know if someone's full of the Holy Ghost? I think a good way to kind of approach this is to think about Galatians, chapter number 5. We have a list of the fruit of the Spirit. Now, some people would say that this is the evidence of your salvation. That is not true, okay? Now, I'll say this. If you're exhibiting the fruits of the Spirit, that could prove that you are saved. But the lack thereof does not prove that you're not saved. And typically when people are looking for proofs of salvation, they're looking for, I need a different Bible. Can someone lend me a Bible for a second? Sorry. My Galatians fell out of this one. I forgot. I know where Galatians is. You use these Bibles so much and it just falls out. Someone get him a Bible for me. He needs one too, all right? Galatians, chapter number 5. Look at verse number 22. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, against such there is no law. And they that are Christ have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vainglory, provoking one another, envying one another. Now verse 25 is your key. When this group of people says, oh, you have to exhibit the attributes of the Spirit to be saved, verse 25 is your just slam dunk how that's not true. Because he's saying if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Because let me tell you something. I'm alive by God's Spirit right now whether I walk in it or not. Hey, faith without works is dead, but let me tell you something. I'm still alive in the Spirit of God. I'm still alive in Jesus Christ. I've been quickened. I've been made alive by his Spirit. But because I'm living in the Spirit, I need to also walk in the Spirit, meaning that I need to actually do things in my life that model and work out the salvation that's in me, work out the Holy Spirit that's residing inside of me, not constantly grieving that Holy Spirit, but rather being filled with the Holy Spirit. And when you're filled with something, what's going to happen? It's going to come out of you. Okay? And what's going to come out of you? Well, he says specifically love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. So if we're going to ordain someone, what should we be seeing in their life? We should be seeing these attributes in their life. One of the things that I like about Brother Duncan and thinking about this list is gentleness, is gentleness. And you know, obviously we understand that being a Christian man, you're supposed to be strong, right? You're supposed to be rugged. But there's a difference between being a manly man, being strong and being rugged, and being gentle. You can have both. And what is the gentleness that's being attributed here? The gentleness is in the sense that in meekness, showing those that oppose themselves. Meaning, when I go out and I preach the gospel to someone, I'm not like, hey, if you were to die today, you know, are you heretic? Why don't you move the Bible? You know, not using roughness and callousness of someone at the door, but rather using gentleness at the door, trying to convince the gainsayer, trying to win people over. You know, when you preach, not necessarily just throwing everybody on the bus that's not at your level, but rather trying to use gentleness to help encourage people to come to your level or to build themselves up more or to encourage themselves more, not just trying to, you know, what would be the opposite of gentle is being harsh, critical, judgmental. That would be the opposite. Not being weak, okay? Don't get the wrong idea about gentleness. Gentleness is not saying you're weak. It's not saying you're soft. It's not saying you're effeminate. The opposite of gentleness would be harsh, critical, judgmental. And so, essentially, instead of allowing people to have grace in certain areas of their life, you're constantly criticizing them. You're giving them a hard time. You look down upon people. You're not approaching them with some kind of opportunity to correct themselves or get better. You know, this is where the gentleness comes into play. You know, and men, we need to learn this for our wives. As a husband, you need to have gentleness towards your wife, realizing she's the weaker vessel and, if she is, not talking down to her, not being mean to her, not looking at her as being lesser or of lesser importance, but rather approaching her with gentleness in the sense that you're encouraging her. You're coming alongside of her. You're loving her. You're not being overly critical. You're not being overly harsh. You're not being overly judgmental. You know, and that's easy to do when you're in a leadership position is to just kind of not have gentleness, to just be harsh, critical, and judgmental, whereas we need to learn and model having gentleness. And that's what I like about Brother Duncan. You know, there's a reason why I think all of my kids, I don't know why, but they all want to quote the memory verse to Duncan. And I don't know why. You know, they just like Duncan. But this is what I think. I think that children inherently can discern gentleness. And they want to go to the person that's the least intimidating in a negative sense. And that's what they like about Duncan. He's very approachable. He's very gentle in the sense that you don't feel like if you came to Duncan and told him there was an issue, he would scream your ear off. He would yell at you or bite your head off or get mad at you. And you know what? That's an attribute of the Spirit. Because the flesh, when someone comes and asks you a dumb question, what do you want to do? Yell at them, scream at them, tell them how dumb they are, how foolish they are. And people that, you know, they get confused about preaching, there's a difference between preaching and your real life. I'm not necessarily going to always be gentle from the pulpit, although I do try. And I think that it's good to have that at times. But in my personal life, you know, I try to be really gentle with people. People come and ask me all kinds of dumb things, have mistakes, have issues. And I'm not trying to jump down their throat. I'm not trying to be mean to them. I try to use and exercise gentleness. And that's one of the things I like about Brother Duncan is he seems to have a real gentle spirit that's coming from the Spirit of God. And isn't it great that all these spirits are coming from God? They're coming from Jesus Christ. And think about how gentle Jesus Christ has to be with us in how stupid and foolish we are, and how sinful we are, and how much we screwed up, and yet Jesus is still willing to talk to us and love on us and be compassionate with us. You know, another thing that I like in this list is in verse 26, it says, Let us not be desirous of vainglory. You know, one of the things I like about Duncan is I don't feel like he cares about vainglory at all. And the thing about all of these attributes is you have to put them on every day, okay? Now, being in the church, it's a little bit easier to do that. When you start getting elevated in positions of authority, sometimes this can creep in, where there tends to be this prideful desire to want to get all this recognition or glory or look at me or Duncan, the evangelist, you know. It's like you don't want to get this type of air about yourself, this kind of desire for vainglory. Start preaching things for vainglory. I'll tell you what. If God wants you to get recognized, you'll get recognized. Everybody will find out about what you said or what you did. God will make sure you get taken care of. You just don't seek it out yourself. And often the people that are really striving to seek it out themselves, they end up getting embarrassed and looking like the fool that they are for having sought that vainglory anyways. And they constantly do weird things to get that kind of glory. You know, we don't want to do that. Faith. You know, when it comes to Brother Duncan, what I really like about it is his faith, because think about, you know, and a lot of you have done this. A lot of you have modeled this. But going through this church and still being so committed is a lot of faith. And you know where that faith was? The faith was in this. The faith wasn't in me. You know, people always want to be like, oh, how could you follow a pastor? You know, he's horrible or whatever. It's like, who cares about me? You know, going to church and getting plugged in is about Jesus. You know, even if I'm a terrible pastor, you could still serve God. Even if I'm the worst pastor, you know, within the boundaries of the Bible here. I'm not saying like the worst. I'm not talking about Joel Osteen here, OK? I'm talking about, let's just say, of saved people that are qualified, I'm the worst of the preachers. I'm the worst at shepherding. I'm the worst manager. Whatever it was, all of the worst categories, you could still be 100 percent plugged into that church and still serving God, because that's who you're there to serve anyways. And even when the church is going through all kinds of turmoil and you do have leadership issues, which this church does have leadership issues, you know, you see Brother Duncan just still plug and play. You know, he's still showing up every time the service times are there. He's still offering to get involved in the soul winning. He's still offering to do the song leading. He's still offering to travel and preach. He's still willing to just get in there and do something. And that just shows he has faith that the Bible is true. He has faith in the promises of God. He has faith in the gospel message. He has faith in church itself. You know, so many people, they believe the gospel, but they have no faith in church. They say, oh, I don't like religion. I'm a believer, but I'm against organized religion. I'm against institutionalized religion. Well, you know what? You're against the church which Jesus Christ bought for with his blood. And you know what I like about Brother Duncan is he has faith in church. Now, that's a good attribute if I'm going to pick someone to be a leader of a church somewhere. You don't want someone not believing in the institution of church leading church or questioning the ideas of church. You know, you want someone that's going to be in there. And it also shows, you know, his long suffering and temperance, being willing to put up with difficult situations, just continuing to be faithful, constantly doing it. You know, you really have to really commend both of him and his wife's long suffering and temperance when it comes to their marriage because they got married. How long were you guys married and separated? A year and a half, 18 months. That's a lot. And you know, a lot of people, when they're separated from their spouse that long, divorce, they are unfaithful, they decide they don't like each other. You know, there's a lot of things. You know, they say the distance makes the heart grow fonder. That's a dumb idea. And notice that no company in America, no marketing company ever believes that. They're not like, having too much McDonald's? Give us some distance for a while. You know, anything, everything you basically start liking more, the more you're around it. Like, now, that can get to an insane point, right? You don't want to be attached to your spouse at the hip. But you want to have a little bit of the separation, okay? We're not Siamese twins here. But at the same time, if you want to enjoy your spouse, you've got to spend time with them. You know, you're going to start enjoying the things that you do, you spend time with. You say, I don't like church. Well, come more. You'll start liking church more. You know, your friends, you want to like your friend more? Spend more time with your friend. You want to like your spouse more? Spend more time with your spouse. You want to like God more? Spend more time with God. You say, hey, I have a hard time liking the Bible. Read it more. You would think like, oh, I don't want to read the Bible too much. I'm going to get burnt out. No, no, no, no. You'll not like the Bible when you're not reading it. You'll like the Bible when you read it. The people that love the Bible the most read it the most. The people that like church the most come to church the most. The people that like your spouse the most are you because you spend the most time with them, your children, because they spend the most time with them. And they have to have a long period of time knowing what's on the other side, knowing that it's good, knowing it's the blessing of the Lord, realizing that this is a temporary situation, not necessarily knowing how long. But they have exercised a lot of long suffering and a lot of temperance to get through that difficulty. And you know, I believe that God can use that in their lives to help them when they go through another difficult situation where they have to wait on the Lord. Because now it doesn't matter, does it? I mean, they don't feel... Now that they're together, none of that even matters. It's all gone. It's immediately just over. And so a lot of times in our lives, there's a situation where you're just so frustrated with but if you just exercise some long suffering, you just exercise some self-control, you exercise some temperance in that area, eventually you'll get through that storm and it'll be like it never happened. And you get to enjoy the fruits of not compromising. You get to enjoy the fruits of being faithful and showing that temperance throughout. Just like a diet. You know, in a diet, which we're not exercising today, okay? After today. When it comes to a diet, you know, you're not gonna see the pounds shed overnight. It takes a lot of long suffering, it takes a lot of temperance, it takes a lot of skipping meals or skipping parts of your meal, takes a lot of exercise to see it through to finally get to that end goal that you had desired. And that's a lot of long suffering and temperance. This is anti your flesh. Your flesh wants everything now, wants to satisfy itself. So when you're seeing a man that's full of the Holy Ghost, what are you seeing? You're seeing someone that's gentle. You're seeing someone that has faith. You're seeing someone that has temperance. You're seeing someone that has long suffering. Go to Proverbs 11 for a moment. Go to Proverbs chapter 11. So if we're gonna elect the evangelist, if we're gonna elect an evangelist, what do we wanna see? We wanna see the Holy Spirit in their life. And we wanna see someone that's full of the Holy Ghost. Another attribute it said is full of wisdom, right? Full of the Holy Ghost and of wisdom. So we see there's three different criterion in this list of things, someone of honest report, someone that is full of the Holy Ghost, and someone that's full of wisdom. Now, when it comes to this one, there's a lot to it, okay? There's a lot to wisdom. And really, you know, I've preached on this a lot of other times, but when it comes to these, there's three words in your Bible, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. And they have a lot of similarities and a lot of overlap, tons and tons of overlap. But there's a little bit of distinction, I believe, when you understand these three words. Knowledge is being familiar with something. So knowledge would be like, I know that John 3.16 is in the Bible. I could find it for you, and I could quote it for you. So you could have the knowledge of John 3.16. Understanding, though, is that you actually understand that knowledge. So a lot of people could quote for me John 3.16, but then I ask them, okay, so what does that thing you have to do to be saved? And they say, go to church. That person doesn't understand that text, because the Bible says, whosoever believeth in him should not perish but everlasting life. The Bible says it's by faith alone. So, of course, you could have the knowledge without the understanding. You could have the knowledge without the wisdom. So step one, knowledge. Step two, understanding. But here's step three is wisdom. Wisdom is applying the knowledge and understanding that you have. So you could ask someone that knows John 3.16, you could ask someone that knows and understands John 3.16, but what if they never do it? They're not a wise person. Would you say, hey, I know this guy. He can quote for me John 3.16. He told me what it means. All you have to do is believe in Jesus, and you go to heaven. But he's a God-hating atheist, and he's not going to do it. Would you call that person wise? No. So what is the wise person? The wise person takes the knowledge that they've gotten, they understand it, and then they apply it. So wisdom, if you want to attach a word to the word wisdom to help understand in your life, application. Apply. Okay, so the only person that can be considered wise is the person that's applying the knowledge and understanding in their life. You can't have wisdom without the knowledge and the understanding, though. That's why it's a three-tiered system. You get the first, the knowledge, then you get the understanding, then you can apply that, and that's your wisdom. So if we're looking at Brother Duncan, and we're saying, okay, we want to see if he has wisdom, we're not looking for just a head knowledge. We're not just looking for an understanding. We're looking for an application, okay? Now, what does Proverbs 11, verse number 30 say? The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he that win his souls is wise. So if we want to find someone that is full of wisdom, here's an attribute that is going to always be coupled with that, a soul winner. That's why we would never ordain a non-soul winner. And you look at a lot of churches today, that is not something that they're looking to, is it? Maybe they have an understanding. Maybe they know John 3.16. They have an understanding of John 3.16. But here's a question. Are you going out and preaching John 3.16? Are you actually saved? Are you actually evangelizing? Are you actually doing the work of an evangelist? I mean, that's a really big question that we should be asking when we're going to select someone. What is this person wise? And of course, Brother Duncan, he's led soul winning times. He's been a faithful soul winner. People that have gone soul winning with him really like his soul winning. And that's a big question I ask when we talk to people about someone. Tell me about their soul winning. It wouldn't make sense, obviously, to ordain an evangelist if they can't even evangelize, right? Go back to Acts chapter number six. Go back to Acts chapter number six. Now, I'm using Acts chapter number six as kind of an understanding of the election process because there isn't really a lot on evangelists as an official title, as an official role. We don't have a First Timothy 3 that outlines these qualifications or anything like that. But if we have an evangelist who was ordained and these were the qualifications that they had for him, even though his role may have been more similar to a deacon at the time, I think we should apply the same standard, especially since at my pyramid scheme, what do we have? Lead pastor, assistant pastors, then we have evangelists, then we have deacon. So if the deacon has to meet this bottom rung threshold, then we sure as bet or sure as need to make sure that the evangelist is meeting that same threshold. Now, a deacon technically has a few other requirements that we go to in First Timothy chapter number three that are similar to being a pastor, having children and basically being faithful with them. Duncan doesn't necessarily meet that requirement yet. He could one day. But for me, an evangelist doesn't even have to be married because we have the Apostle Paul and we have other men going out. Now, Philip is in this example because I think he was ordained as a deacon and then kind of became an evangelist. But one thing's for sure, he was ordained. And so the people that we're going to call evangelists are going to be officially ordained and formally ordained. Here's the requirements from me is right here. They have an honest report, they're full of the Holy Ghost, and they're full of wisdom. That is my requirements. And we are going to see the evidences of that throughout the congregation in their daily lives. And that's what I would need for someone to have to be an evangelist. Someone could be a single dude and meet all those requirements. And we may send people out. There could be a guy in the future that doesn't want to get married but just wants to go to a foreign country and just be an evangelist there. We could do that. We're not going to hold back on that, but they're not going to become a deacon. They're not going to become a pastor. Urbanic, in my regard and based on what I've heard from the congregation, meets this. And one day, maybe he could even transition into a deacon or a pastor if that's what he desires. His goal, though, right now is just being an evangelist of pure words. And so we're learning why we're picking someone, how we're picking someone. And then we're going to learn what he's going to do. It says in verse number four, So the congregation approved of these guys. These guys meet the three requirements. And then they appoint them. They officially ordained them. The 12 are the ones who are laying hands on them. This is mentioned in lots of places, the laying on the hands of the presbytery. Presbytery is only mentioned one time in the Bible, but that's kind of like elders or the leaders, in essence. Notice he also said that they were going to point in verse number three. Keep your finger and go to Titus chapter one. Go to Titus chapter one. And I want to show you that the word appoint is synonymous with the word ordain. And we kind of see this brought up in Titus chapter one about a goal for Titus himself. Now, I believe that what that's even saying, it's not just saying, I picked you to do this job. He's saying, I want you to ordain these guys like I appointed you, like I ordained you. OK? So it's actually used in a synonymous sense. Paul appointed slash ordained Titus. Titus ordains other men. OK? Go to second Timothy. Just flip back. Second Timothy chapter one. I'll prove to you that those two words are interchangeable in places in your Bible. Second Timothy chapter one. Look at verse 11. Wherein, too, I am appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles. So the apostle Paul said he was appointed a teacher. Now, go back to first Timothy chapter two. We're going backwards here. First Timothy chapter number two. And look at verse number seven. So earlier, he said he was appointed a preacher. Look at verse number seven. First Timothy 2, seven. Whereunto I am ordained a preacher. So notice, he uses the exact same wordings about himself. He says, a preacher, an apostle. I speak the truth, and why not a teacher of the Gentiles and pain and severity? So he had said, I am appointed a teacher. And then he said, I am ordained a preacher. And then later in his list, a teacher as well. So he's using these words interchangeably. Appoint, ordained. Because they just mean choose. Chosen, elected, selected. All these words are essentially the same. And we want this ordination process, though, to be formal, like we saw in Acts chapter number six, where we had a congregational approval and then we had the leadership approval. And the leadership is the one that lays hands on the next leadership, and we see this kind of passing down ordination process. Go if you would to Acts chapter eight. Acts chapter number eight. So I spent a long time on that. I'm just going to spend a few more minutes on what he should do. And it's real simple. Point one is that the evangelist is elected. Now, what do they do? They evangelize and educate. They evangelize and educate. Now, it should make sense that an evangelist evangelizes, but you'd be surprised out there. Some churches, some groups, have these quote unquote traveling evangelists, and they don't do evangelism. You know, when's the last time you saw Sam Gipp out knocking doors? When's the last time Sam Gipp went around preaching the gospel? When's the last time Sam Gipp went to a foreign missions trip just to preach the gospel to people? And in fact, many of these guys, they just travel to church to get a paycheck. It's not even about the evangelism. It's about just a living. They're just trying to collect a paycheck from being a preacher, but they're just not qualified to be a pastor or they're not good enough to be the pastor or something like that. And instead of just being an assistant pastor or humbly serving somewhere, their desire is a vainglory, so they have to go around and they have one sermon that they can deliver. And they just travel around and preach that one sermon to everyone. And I'm not joking. These traveling evangelists, they literally have one sermon, and they just preach their one sermon from church to church to church to church to church to church, and they're the evangelists. And of course, there's nothing wrong with traveling to churches and preaching. There's nothing wrong with even repeating a sermon, especially before the internet. I mean, think about it. Jesus Christ preached the same sermon over and over. That's why you have in the Gospels similar sounding stories or similar sounding sermons from Jesus, but they're a little different. And you're like, well, did he say it this way or this way? He said both. Because at one point, he was in one town, and then the next time, he was in another town. Or one time, he was preaching the gospel to one guy, and the next time, he was preaching to another guy. Or in part of the story, he's talking to one leper, and then the next story, according to him, talking to the other leper. But Jesus Christ is obviously going to go out and say the same thing. I mean, if you just recorded every interaction I ever had at a door, soul winning, and then you compared them all, you'd be like, these are 95% similar. You better believe it's 95% similar, maybe even higher. So it makes sense that you're going to repeat messages. But here's the thing. Where in the Bible do we see this traveling circus-riding preacher? That doesn't really exist. What did Philip even do? Well, look at verse number five. Acts chapter number eight. Look down in your Bible at verse number five. Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ unto them. So we see him traveling to a foreign area that he's not from and preaching the gospel. It says in verse number six, and the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. So notice, they're hearing the gospel. What does an evangelist do? He preaches the gospel, a clear gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ, his testimony, not our testimony, the Lord Jesus Christ, and he's going to all kinds of unreached areas. You know, one of the biggest things about an evangelist is going to unreached areas. And let me tell you, an unreached area is Houston, Texas. That area needs the gospel of Jesus Christ. That area does not have a good Baptist church on every corner. Now, they might have a missionary Baptist church on every corner. They might have a weird Baptist church on every corner, but they have a lot of weird stuff going on down there. They're absent, you know, this area, honestly, if you had asked me, like, do you want to plant a church in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, even though I love the area, I would have said no, because there's literally dozens of soul-winning churches in this area. There are dozens. You could go to 12-plus churches right now in Dallas-Fort Worth area, and you could go show up at one of their soul-winning times, or go soul-winning with some of the people there. But I'll tell you something. When I looked at Houston at the time that I was thinking about planting a church down there, I couldn't find one. And I was thinking, like, well, what area needs a soul-winning church more, the area that has zero option or the area that has 12 options? And albeit, maybe the church isn't the greatest church on the planet, but let me give you a little secret. No churches except for one. And I don't know which one that is, and it's vain to even figure it out. But if you're going to say, this is the greatest church on the planet, that could only be one church. And if it just happens to not be in your area, so be it. That church could be in the Philippines, for all we know. You're not going to get down there any time soon, so why not try the second-best option, or the third or the fourth, or, frankly speaking, if it has the Word of God and they're preaching, you know, some truths there, just show up and sit down and shut up and start worshiping God with your life. But I'll tell you something. Houston needs a soul-winning church. Houston, Texas needs people. And let me tell you something that's great about Houston. You know, virtually no one has ever moved there for the church. Now, there was somebody that, like, internally moved one time, but outside of that, like, people aren't flocking to that church. It's like local, homegrown people that want to live there, that want to be there, and they need someone to come alongside them and lead the charge going soul-winning. And as an evangelist, it's your job. I mean, your number-one emphasis should just be soul-winning. Like, if there's one thing the evangelist is, like, good at, it's soul-winning. If there's one program the evangelist is making sure that's thriving at the church, it's soul-winning. If there's one task that I get to pick on all the lists of what I'm going to accomplish, it's soul-winning. And, you know, there's some bad ideas out there. A previous evangelist for a steadfast Baptist church didn't even go soul-winning virtually, didn't lead a soul-winning time, was telling other people, oh, don't worry about doing the soul-winning, worry about the preaching. No, no, no, no, no. Let me tell you something loud and clear. Our evangelist's number-one goal is preaching the gospel. At any point that that is not the number-one goal, there's problems. You're called an evangelist. You better be evangelizing. Now, of course, there's other things that are important. You know, our life isn't just one thing, but that is the top, that is the premiere. You know, and we see in verse number 12 even, he's getting hard to get people saved, saved. Verse 12, but when they believed Philip, preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women, and then Simon himself believed also, and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip and wondered the only miracles and signs that are done. So not only is this guy getting people saved, he's getting baptized, and that's another good important distinction between why we have ordained evangelists and then all of us are just evangelists. You know, a lot of churches I've seen lately, everyone in the whole church baptizes. Like, anybody who wants to get baptized, the dad baptizes or some random person baptizes, does whatever, but I don't see that in Scripture. I believe it's ordained leadership that baptizes, and there's nothing wrong with your dad baptizing you if he's ordained, but I don't think that you should just have a smorgasbord. You know, we're not going to let a little girl get saved yesterday who's five years old and start baptizing the rest of the church, okay? That's just kind of improper. It doesn't really make sense, and so I put the line and boundary at ordination, and the only people who see baptizing are ordained. That's not a coincidence. That was a given instruction, okay? All the men are either an apostle, a pastor, or an evangelist or a deacon or some variation, some kind of a formal ordination. They're doing the baptisms in the Bible. Also, you never see a woman baptizing, which if it wasn't formal ordination, why wouldn't you see women baptizing, other women? Like, why wouldn't you see grandmothers baptizing their granddaughters or mothers baptizing their daughters? Because wouldn't it be special for them? If I never see that, there's a reason. And also, sorry, not gonna let the men of the church baptize their child unless you're ordained. Then I don't care. Go for it. You know, have fun. But I'm just saying, like, we have, this is a specific role, so we need more baptizers. We need Brother Duncan. We need other men like Brother Fur up in Oklahoma City to help Great Commission to not just get people saved but also to baptize them, and that compels them to do what? To learn all the Bible. In this chapter, he goes and he runs the guy and gets him saved. Again, emphasis on soul winning. Go to Acts, or go to Ephesians 4, the last place I'll have you turn. And I'll wrap up. So I know you and I both want to eat, all right? But this meal is more important, all right? And it tastes just as good, okay? Slow cooked, slow roasted, all the fixins. I mean, you're like, oh, there's so much Bible. That's all the fixins, right? All the mashed potatoes and the rolls and the beans and the fruit and everything else. I don't know about the green drink I saw over there. I don't know how to relate it to here, but it's in here somewhere, all right? Look at verse number 4. The Bible says, there's one body and one spirit, even as you're called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all. But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. So he's saying, hey, there's one church body, okay? Now, of course, here we have a local body, but eventually we'll all be in heaven and we'll be one body, okay? And we're all plugged into the Christ body. But the essence of chapter number 4 is that when we're in the local church that we're all in unity and that we are one body, okay? Because it's not that there's not multiple bodies out there. It's that we don't want to be multiple bodies in here. We want to be one body in here. We want to have one faith in here. We want to have one baptism in here. You know, that's why it's a church for the safe. We can't let Muslims and Buddhists and everybody just stay here and just, you know, well, they're not going to eat the meat because they're a practicing Hindu or something like that. No, no, no, we're all going to eat the meat. Hey, it's one brisket, you know? One body, one faith, one spirit, one brisket, one meal. Okay? Now, if you're vegan, I'm not trying to rip on you, okay? You can still eat with us. But I am saying that we don't want it because of a spiritual sense. We don't want it because that's a false doctrine. We don't want it because of, you know, a doctrine of devils here. We want to have unity, and we're talking about the church, and God gave us stuff for the church. He says in verse 8, Wherefore he saith, when he ascended up on high, he led captive to the captive, and gave gifts unto men, now that he ascended, what is it, but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth. He that descended is the same also, that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things. So think about this. Obviously, the church is kind of being kicked off by Jesus Christ. The New Testament church is his institution that he built upon himself, but he went back up into heaven. So in order for the church to thrive, in order for the church to still exist and to still do great things, he gave us some gifts, okay, is what he's saying. Well, what did he give us? Well, in verse 11, And he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the slight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. But speaking the truth and love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working and the measure of every part, make it increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. So the body edifies itself. Now, think about this. Your body literally is a self-healing unit. Now, there's some extremes to this, right? If I chop off my arm, another one's not going to grow. Okay? If I chop off my privy member, I don't turn into a woman. Okay? And there's a lot of things that can be permanent. But think about it. If you get cut, what happens? Your body will literally heal that cut. Now, you might have a scar, but you can do a lot of damage. You get sick. I mean, think about it. God made our body to kind of heal itself. It's kind of like a building itself. You can also work out, and you can build yourself up. You can eat, and, you know, you can basically make yourself better. You have a lot of capabilities, right? As a church, we can make ourselves better. And one of the things that makes us better is the people that he gave us, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. So the goal also of an evangelist is not just to evangelize, it's to educate. It's to educate the church. It's to help us grow and learn the Bible and know all things. Notice he had said in verse number 15, grow up into him in all things. That means that evangelists should preach all of the Bible, because we also see another group of evangelists that they only preach the gospel. They'll show up at a church, and it's just going to be a simplified gospel message. But they won't touch Leviticus. They won't touch Deuteronomy. They won't touch Jeremiah. They won't touch any of the other parts of the Bible. Well, I'm not called to that. I'm called to be an evangelist. Well, wait a minute, buddy. The evangelist is called to grow up people in all things. So the evangelist should know all the Bible, too, and he should preach all the Bible and should edify the church and build up the church and grow the church. This is an important role, and not every church gets everything. Notice what he says in verse 11, and he gave some. Some people got apostles. None of us got an apostle. You know, none of us got the greatest apostle, the chief apostle, Jesus Christ. He's an apostle. He's the bishop of our souls. Some people literally, they got to train under Jesus Christ himself. Talk about a pretty good experience. Talk about a pretty good mentor. Talk about someone that's not going to screw up too much. Talk about someone that doesn't even need a Bible in hand. They are the Bible, okay? If Galatians falls out of their manuscript, they're like, I'll just tell you, you know. They haven't all memorized perfectly, right? But then some people literally got Peter. Some people literally got Paul. Some people literally got John. Some people literally got some of these other great men, you know, but some. And then some got prophets, you know, and even in the past, you know, the prophets of the Bible, great preachers of the Bible. Some people get evangelists. Some get pastors. Notice not everyone gets a pastor. You know, as much as I would love for every church in America to have the greatest church and a soul-winning church and a pastor that's on fire, it's unrealistic. It's unrealistic because it's never happened. And think about it, though. If every city, and I mean, I don't know how you're quantifying city. You know, are you saying 100,000? Are you saying 5,000? Are you saying 10,000? I mean, if we had every city, let's just say like 10,000, every city above 10,000 people had a church just like ours with a pastor just like ours, we would never usher in the Antichrist because we would have so much salt. We'd have so much light. We would be tripping all over each other to give the gospel because we would be constantly going everywhere. I mean, think about it. Our church existing in a group of 10,000 people, we would give them all the gospel every year. And then we would go into every other town and people would be getting the gospel so fast. And you know what happens when people get the gospel over and over and they reject it? They become a reprobate, okay? It's an unsustainable society. Nowhere in history do you have a great church everywhere, okay? And why is it in the Bible that it says like, okay, well, there should be a great church everywhere that we declare ourselves the United States of America as this arbitrary lines in the sand in the world, but, you know, China doesn't and India doesn't. I mean, when do you think that India, China, and North Korea are going to get a new IFB, Fundamental Baptist Church in every single city? That's pretty unrealistic if you really think about it, okay? So some people need to stop getting this idea and this vision that like it's going to exist everywhere and start getting plugged in now. Now here's the thing. There's nothing wrong with someone saying, I want this kind of church where I'm at or I want to go evangelize that area or I want to bring this to some area. Please do that. Please believe that. Please have the faith for that. But you know what? Don't sit there and do nothing and hope that it happens. Get plugged in now. Start serving God now wherever you're at. Go to the best church in your area now. Don't just sit on your hands and say, well, I'll start serving God when it shows up on my front doorstep. No, no, you go find God and you start worshiping him there. You travel to Jerusalem if you have to. You go wherever the work of the Lord is. You know, when Jesus came into town, it wasn't like you got to just have him show up at your house. You had to go follow him. You had to go find him. He's saying like, hey, let the dead bury their dead. Come and follow me. You know, and so how can you have that same attitude with the attitude of like I have a new IP church three minutes from my house? It's like, give me a break. Well, I want to have a pastor. What if you have an evangelist? You know what? Praise God. Instead of being mad at the gift that God gave you, why don't you embrace the gift that God gave you? And even if you don't have an evangelist, maybe you just have teachers. You know, at Oklahoma City and Pure Words and even here, we've had a lot of just men of the church teach. In fact, our Spanish service is all teachers. It's appointed teachers. Because we don't have an ordained person that's good enough to preach in Spanish right now. You know, I'd love to get there, and I'm working on it. I'd love to be able to preach a sermon into you, but it'd be so gringo, you know, that I would have to be like Brother Tony where I break out in tongues a lot. And so, you know, and I don't know if that's the spirit or just my lack of training, okay? But we need more men to rise to the occasion. I get that, and I want that, but let's be realistic. You may not always get everything at the highest level. You may not always get the biggest church. You may not always get the greatest soul-winding movement. You may not always get the best pastor. You may not even get a pastor. But, you know, when you get something, you've got to realize this is a gift from God. Duncan wanting to go to Houston and be the evangelist from Pure Words is a literal gift from Jesus Christ himself. And people should look at him as a gift. And, you know, I get all kinds of hate for saying that or saying things similar to that, like pastors and evangelists are gifts or whatever, but let me just double down. They're gifts, and they're not just gifts. They're wonderful gifts. They're amazing gifts. There's nothing greater than having a man devote his life to the ministry of the Lord and to the people of God and saying he wants to serve God. I mean, this is the high calling. And you know what? It takes a special man to devote himself to the Lord, and it takes God's will to allow men to go into the ministry and to work for the Lord. And you know what? We need to appreciate those men. We need to esteem them in love for their work's sake and say this is a big deal. You know, especially coming from this ministry, you know, he might get a little bit of persecution. I don't know if he's anticipated that could happen. But I'm telling you that when you decide to do something big for God, the devil finds out about it. And the devil tries to attack you, and the devil is going to come after you. And it takes us to stand alongside those men and be there to encourage them and to pray for them and to support them. And when they preach that hot sermon, when they're teaching all things, not say like, oh, what are you doing? Are you supposed to evangelize? Isn't there other things in the Bible to preach? Oh, Duncan, why did you have to preach that, you know? Oh, Duncan, why can't you just focus on John 3.16? Because he's doing all things. Because he's going to educate God's people and he's going to edify God's people with the Bible. And you know what? I don't want him to go in hamstrung thinking he can't preach the Bible. You know, he should preach everything in this book, all the truths in this book, not hold back on anything. We need people to be liberated to preach the Bible, not hamstrung. Not like, well, YouTube doesn't let me say that. Okay, well, get a new platform. Well, I can't say it online. Well, then just preach it in person. You know that church existed before YouTube? Do you know a church existed before the internet? Well, how did anybody ever find out about it? They went out and they actually preached the gospel to people up and down the streets. And you know what? It worked really great. In fact, the largest church in America at one time was Jack Heil's church, without all the advents and the special giftings of the internet and everything like that. Al Gore hadn't even thought of it yet, okay? That's a joke, all right? Some of you don't get it. It's okay. I'm telling you that the old-fashioned way works. We're going to ordain people. They're going to go out and preach the gospel. We're going to preach the whole counsel of God, and people are going to still show up, especially for the meal, okay? Especially for the brisket. But that's okay, because you know what? Jesus brought a lot of people in with food, and he preached it to them, and then when the meal ran out, the people ran out, and that's okay. But you know what? You be spiritual, and you come back with a spiritual meat, and you stick in it, and you pray for Brother Urbanic, and you pray for Pure Words Baptist Church, and you pray for the work of the Lord, and you know what? We're going to decrease so that they can increase. It's not about building a temple here. It's about the temple of the Lord and getting people saved. And so let's close in prayer. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for this morning. Thank you for this opportunity to preach the Word of God. I thank you for giving us evangelists. Thank you for giving us pastors and giving us ordained leadership so that we could learn how to behave ourselves in the house of God. Thank you for giving us the church. What a wonderful institution where we can learn the Bible, where we can grow spiritually, where we can be comforted. I pray that you would just bless this congregation from the leadership that you've given us, that we would come alongside our leaders and that we wouldn't resent them, that we wouldn't be bitter against them, that we would love them back, that we would encourage and support them, that we would stand with them, and that we would be the hands and the feet to the ministry and that we would help not just the leadership, but we'd help everyone, and we'd try to bring as many people into the body of Christ as possible. And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Now, before we get to our last song, I want Brother Duncan to come up here, and I'm going to lay hands on him, and I'm going to pray for him, and I just ask that you just pray with me silently in your hearts. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for Brother Duncan or Bannock, and thank you so much for his wife, Argy, and their children. I pray that you would just strengthen him right now and encourage him as we appoint him over a big job down in Houston, Texas. And I pray that you would just fill him with your Holy Spirit even more than he is right now. I pray that you would just give him even more wisdom and understanding than he's ever had before. I pray that as he reads the Bible, the Holy Ghost would just enlighten him and enlighten his eyes. I pray that you would just use his voice to just be carried out through the entire city of Houston, through the entire state of Texas, through the entire world, that people would come to the Lord Jesus Christ, they would get saved, that people would be baptized, that people would be encouraged to not only do that but get plugged in at church to learn how to become a soul winner, that you could use Brother Bannock to convert many people and turn them to righteousness, that you would just allow him to just edify that church and to build up that church, and that we give you more honor and glory, that all the works that are done would just be pleasing in your sight, that the Lord Jesus Christ could just be glorified and we could be a bright and shining light in such a dark world. I pray that you would just help him through the persecution, that you would remind them of things in the Bible, and I pray that you would just help strengthen the men's hearts and the women's hearts and the children's hearts of pure words and that you would give it to Brother Bannock and that they could just be used mightily to do a great work for you, and in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen. Applause. Make sure to congratulate Brother Bannock and also immediately after we're done singing, I'm going to ask you to please try to get up and then form a line. If you're one of the men that doesn't necessarily need to get a line right away, can you help us? We're going to transform all these chairs into table sections as much as we can. We have a bunch of tables back here and we're going to put tables in that room and here and a couple other places. Brother, the ushers should be able to help you kind of know what to do, but if the men want to help us with that, we'll kind of get up. Now, the line is going to go this way, so it's going to start over there going enter and go wrap around towards the front and then come all the way down here and then like here. So if you see the line, it should be a big snake or whatever, and then you'll exit, come back out this way to enjoy your meal and everything like that, okay? There is a lot of food out there, so don't think that you have to get everything. Just say like, I like that, okay, and then I like this, and they'll be like, ooh, who made that? That's interesting. What's in that? Okay, yeah, maybe, you know, just come on. Just get something on your plate, just move down, just keep going, and please, parents, help your children. No child is self-sufficient, okay? So help your children, assist them, and we'll go through this direction, and I think that's pretty much it. I'll say a quick word of prayer for the food, too, so you're not worried about that, all right? Thank you, Heavenly Father, for this great time of fellowship. I pray that you bless this food, you keep us all safe, that you'd help encourage us as we go out so early this afternoon, and bless the evening service. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Let's go to our final song for this morning. 323, Brother Duncan, or Evangelist Urbanic is going to sing for us, all right? It's going to be 323 more about Jesus, and by the way, we did break the attendance record, so we hit 200 today, so thank you all for coming. I know it wasn't for me, I know it was for the barbecue, okay? And I'm not offended either, so I would show up, too. I just want to say it's been an honor and privilege, you know, being here with this church and serving with you, it's been a privilege. I just want to thank Pastor Shelley for allowing me to go there, you know, and that's going to be my mission, you know, fall alongside him and get the gospel to Houston. So we will get the gospel to everybody there, and I'm not too far, so this won't be the last time you see me, but next service next Sunday, that will be my last service here. So yeah, let's go ahead and sing 323 more about Jesus. More about Jesus, what I know, More of His grace to others show, More of His saving fullness see, More of His love who died for me, More, more about Jesus, More, more about Jesus, More of His saving fullness see, More of His love who died for me, More about Jesus let me learn, More of His holy will discern, More of God my teacher be, Showing the things of Christ to me, More, more about Jesus, More, more about Jesus, More of His saving fullness see, More of His love who died for me, More about Jesus in His word, Holding communion with my Lord, Hearing His voice in every line, Making each faithful saying mine, More, more about Jesus, More, more about Jesus, More of His saving fullness see, More of His love who died for me, More about Jesus on His throne, Riches and glory all His own, More of His kingdom sure increase, More of His coming Prince of peace, More, more about Jesus, More, more about Jesus, More of His saving fullness see, More of His love who died for me, Amen. Great singing. You are dismissed. . .