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Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Alright everybody, welcome to Sherriff Foundation Baptist Church. If you could find your seats and grab your songbooks. And turn to page number 416. We're going to be singing as a volunteer. Song 416, let's sing it together on that first verse. A call for loyal soldiers comes to one and all. Soldiers for the conflict, will you heed the call? Song 416, let's sing it together on that first verse. A call for loyal soldiers comes to one and all. Soldiers for the conflict, will you heed the call? Will you answer quickly with a ready cheer? Will you be enlisted as a volunteer? A volunteer for Jesus, a soldier true. Others have enlisted, why not you? Jesus is the captain, we will never fear. Will you be enlisted as a volunteer? Yes, Jesus calls for soldiers who are filled with power. Soldiers who will serve him every day and hour. We will not forsake you, he is ever near. Will you be enlisted as a volunteer? A volunteer for Jesus, a soldier true. Others have enlisted, why not you? Jesus is the captain, we will never fear. Will you be enlisted as a volunteer? He calls you for he loves you with the heart most kind. To you his heart is broken, broken for mankind. Now just now he calls you, calls and accents clear. Will you be enlisted as a volunteer? A volunteer for Jesus, a soldier true. Others have enlisted, why not you? Jesus is the captain, we will never fear. Will you be enlisted as a volunteer? And when the war is over and the victory won. When the true and faithful gather one by one. He will crown with glory all there who appear. Will you be enlisted as a volunteer? A volunteer for Jesus, a soldier true. Others have enlisted, why not you? Jesus is the captain, we will never fear. Will you be enlisted as a volunteer? Amen, good scene. Brother Joe, would you open up some water prayer? Amen, our second song will be song number 335, if Jesus goes with me. Take a sip of tea if you need to. That song sounded a little bit higher than I remember it, but whatever. Straighten me up here. Song number 335, if Jesus goes with me. Song 335, let's sing it together on that first. It may be in the valley where countless dangers hide. It may be in the sunshine that I in peace abide. But this one thing I know, if it be dark or fair. If Jesus goes with me, I'll go anywhere. If Jesus goes with me, I'll go anywhere. Tis heaven to me, where'er I may be, if he is there. I counted a privilege here, his cross to bear. If Jesus goes with me, I'll go anywhere. It may be I must carry the blessed word of life. Across the burning deserts to those in sinful strife. And though it be my lot to bear my colors there. If Jesus goes with me, I'll go anywhere. If Jesus goes with me, I'll go anywhere. Tis heaven to me, where'er I may be, if he is there. I counted a privilege here, his cross to bear. If Jesus goes with me, I'll go anywhere. But if it be my portion to bear my cross at home. While others bear their burdens beyond the billows foam. I'll prove my faith in him, confess his judgment fair. And if he stays with me, I'll go anywhere. If Jesus goes with me, I'll go anywhere. Tis heaven to me, where'er I may be, if he is there. I counted a privilege here, his cross to bear. If Jesus goes with me, I'll go anywhere. It is not mine to question the judgment of my Lord. It is but mine to follow the leadings of his word. But if I go or stay, or whether here or there. I'll be with my Savior content anywhere. If Jesus goes with me, I'll go anywhere. Tis heaven to me, where'er I may be, if he is there. I counted a privilege here, his cross to bear. If Jesus goes with me, I'll go anywhere. Great five years, and obviously we were here for two years as Verity Baptist Church Vancouver. But five years, and I think that anniversary was actually on the 22nd, but who's counting? But anyway, well I think that was the ordination date. Anyway, but I just want to thank everybody for being at church today. Hopefully we have a great day at church, I think we will. Let's look at our verse of the week. It says, and he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. That's Psalm chapter 1, verse 3. It's a great scripture there. And we want to be planted in those waters as church members also. And we have a great church to go to, so hopefully you're thankful for that, because I sure am. And I just remember where I was before we started this church, before we started this church with Pastor Menes. And just the want to have to, the want to be in a great church, and just every time you go to church. I mean, who was in the old IFB before you came here? Pretty much a lot of people. Some people were saved just through the reachings out of other pastors and things like that, but it would get frustrating. Sometimes we forget how hard it was at some of these other churches to just have to deal with the constant. He could come back at any moment, and Jesus could come back at any moment, and the Israel flag-waving and all this other stuff. I mean, they pretty much worship Israel. And we're second-class citizens. We should be thankful that God allowed us to be graphed in or whatever. I am thankful that God allowed us to be graphed in, but we're definitely not second-class citizens as the church. But yeah, I mean, just everything from start to finish. I'm just thinking back on all the years, and we've gained a lot of people. There's some new people here. We've lost some people, but our church just keeps trucking on. And through persecution, through trials and tribulations, we have come to this point. And five years is like, if you work at a workplace or something like that, they give you some kind of a certificate that you've been there for five years. Who's gotten one of those before? Yeah, so when I worked at Walmart Logistics, they'd give you the five-year awards. And even when I worked at the city, they would do that, but they'd wait five years to give you the five-year award. It's the government, so they just take a long time to do everything, right? But it's a good milestone. And I don't plan on going anywhere. This church isn't going anywhere. We're going to continue to move on and do great things for God no matter what happens. So look at the service times. They're 1030 a.m. for the preaching service. Sunday evening is 3.30 p.m. Thursday evening Bible study is 6.30 p.m. The soul winning times are listed below. We do have soul winning today, and there's other times to choose from there. If you're going to go soul winning and you just want to meet in the auditorium, say you're not in the WhatsApp group or whatever, then just meet here in the auditorium. We'll get you a partner and make sure you get a map. But the WhatsApp maps are usually, they're posted in the WhatsApp. The maps for the soul winner are posted in the WhatsApp. So anyway, just make sure you let them know if you're running late too if you can. And so the praise report, you can see the salvations, baptisms, and attendance totals from last week. We had 85 in service on Friday. That's the missing people out sick. But still a great service. Pastor Matt has preached a really good sermon. I feel just worthless when it comes to how I preach compared to him. We're not supposed to compare ourselves. Obviously, he's a great preacher though. If you haven't watched that sermon, you need to go on our YouTube page and watch it. I think it had some glitches in it or something that needs to be fixed, but we'll get that fixed and put up there. That was a classic pastor a minute sermon. Anyway, today we're celebrating our five years. Yesterday we had a bounce house and mechanical bull. We had a nice barbecue. I just want to say thank you to everybody that pitched in and helped make that successful. And then you got to watch the LGBT terrorist. I've seen it a few times already, so I didn't stay for the film, but I hope you guys liked it. I thought it was really a great film. If you pair that with The Sodomite Deception, it's just like that's a good run to go on and just watch those two films back to back. But it was a mini documentary that was two hours long. If Pastor Shelley says, I'm going to preach a mini sermon, then you know it's going to be an hour and a half. But it was a great film, and I really appreciate them putting that out, because people need to know what's really going on in this world and who the real terrorists are. They want to call us domestic terrorists, but they're the real terrorists. I haven't showed up in any of their houses to protest with AR-15s, so just saying. But today we have, I'm going to be preaching the morning sermon, and then Brother Winfield Fisher, our evangelist in Surrey, BC, is going to be preaching for us today. It's great to have you here with us and your family. So looking forward to that sermon today. And after that service, we're going to have cake and ice cream. It's not just any regular old cake. It's Costco, right? Costco has good cakes. I always like debating, is it going to be the vanilla or the chocolate? And normally I like the vanilla-type cakes a lot better, but I just pick the chocolate. So anyway, my wife's been thinking about it for like five days or something. But anyway, we're going to have Tillamook ice cream, too. So if you have a favorite kind that you want us to get that's not weird, then I think all their stuff is good, though. So we'll have Tillamook ice cream, and that will be after the second service. So if you're wondering where the barbecue is, it was yesterday. You should have been here. So what's also coming up is August 3rd through 6th. So this week is the Toronto Soul Waning trip. So I'm going to be preaching there on Friday night in some undisclosed location that I cannot say. But it's going to be great. There's going to be Soul Waning every day and lots of events. And then September 30th, we're going to have the wedding for Ryan... I want to say it's Getz. Yes. I read it as goats, but he's not a goat. He's a lamb. But anyway, Ryan Getz and Amanda Van Buzkirk are getting married. And they're going to get married here at the church on the 30th. So that's at noon wedding time. And there's going to be a reception to follow. It's going to be potluck style. So if you want to sign up to bring any food, then we'd really appreciate that. I'm sure they'd appreciate it. So please sign up if you can bring something. And then the whole church, of course, is invited. So you're welcome to come. So if you would like to help with the wedding in any way, my wife posted something in the WhatsApp group about it last night. But if there's anything you can do to help, just please let Miss Amanda or me or my wife know. And they could definitely use some help with the decorating and stuff. I think Miss Ollie's leading that up or something. Yeah. Hey, hey, hey. So she's kind of our events coordinator when it comes to stuff like that. So anyway, and then further on down the line, we've got the Steadfast Baptist Church Fire Breathing Baptist Fellowship. So if anybody wants to go to Texas when it's a little more pleasant, then that would be a good conference to go to. And then November 8th through 12th is the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe Missions Conference. So they haven't had one since, I think, early 2020. So it's been a few years. And that's going to be a great conference. So if there's something you're itching to do before you haven't got to go to any other conferences, those are some good ones to check out. Of course, we're family integrated, and you all know that. Please make sure you're utilizing those rooms for your convenience. And you guys know all this stuff. But if you would, just silence your cell phones. And if you need anything, just be sure to ask the ushers if you need any assistance with anything. All the given information is at the bottom there. And then I don't think Ethan's here, but happy birthday to Ethan. And I think that's all I have for announcements. Let's sing another song, and then we'll receive the offer. Let's sing it out loud, all right? All right, our next song is going to be a psalm, Psalm 81. You guys can grab those folders in front of you. The psalms are in order in there. Psalm 81, or you can look it up in your Bible, obviously. Psalm 81, let's sing it together there on that first verse. Sing aloud unto God our strength. Make a joyful noise unto the God of Jacob. Take a psalm and bring hither the temporal, the pleasant harp with the psaltery. Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed on our solemn feast day. For this was a statue for Israel and the love of the God of Jacob. This he ordained in Joseph for a testimony when he went out. Through the land of Egypt where I heard a language that I understood not, I removed his shoulder from the burden. His hands were delivered from the pots. Thou calls, then shall one eye deliver thee. I answered thee in the secret place of thunder. I proved thee at the waters of Meribah. See law here, O my people, and I will testify unto thee. O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me, there shall no strange God be in thee. Neither shalt thou worship any strange God. I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt. Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it, but my people would not hearken to my voice. And Israel would none of me, so I gave them up unto their own hearts lost. And they walked in their own counsels, O that my people had hearkened unto me. And Israel had walked in my ways, I should soon have subdued their enemies. And turned my hand against their adversaries, the haters of the Lord should have submitted, should have submitted themselves unto him, but their time should have endured forever. He should have fed them also, with the finest of the wheat and with honey. Out of the rocks should I have satisfied thee. Out of the rocks should I have satisfied thee. May it be seen, Father Robert, would you bless the offering for us? My Father and Lord, we just thank you for the chance to gather in your house here today, Lord, and just ask you to bless the preaching here today, Lord, to sing it. And we just ask you to bless this offering. Lord, help us give this trip our heart, Lord, and love you, Lord. Thank you for all that you've given us, all the many blessings. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. I go ahead and open your Bibles to Philippians chapter number 1, Philippians 1. If you don't have a Bible, there should be a Bible under the seat in front of you. Philippians 1, the Bible reads, Paul unto Mothius, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons. Grace be unto you, and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making requests with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ, even as it is meet for me to thank this of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as both in my bonds and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, ye are all partakers of my grace. For God is my record, how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ. And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment, that ye may approve things that are excellent, that ye may be sincere and without offense to the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, and of the glory and praise of God. But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happen unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel, so that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace and in all other places. And many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife, and some also of good will. The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds, but the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defense of the gospel. What then? Notwithstanding every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached, and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice. For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also, Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor, yet what I shall choose I want not. For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better, nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you. And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith, that your rejoicing may be more abundant in Jesus Christ for me by my coming to you again. Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ, that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel, and in nothing terrified by your adversaries, which is to them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation and that of God. For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake, having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now here to be in me. Brother Bill, will you pray for us? Holy Father, thank you for this fifth anniversary service just contained in the blessing of our church. Because it's pretty great, two pastors, four of those, it's awesome for us to be able to do that. Amen. Amen. Well, we're in Philippians chapter number one, but I'm going to have you turn to Acts chapter 16 before we get into the main text here. And the title of the sermon this morning is The Best Is Yet To Come. The best is yet to come. So go ahead and turn to Acts chapter 16, verse number 12. I'm going to pray. Lord, we thank you so much for this great five-year anniversary service. I pray, Lord, that people would be opened to hearing what you have to say through the scriptures to them today. Lord, I pray that we would apply these things in our lives, Lord, that we could continue to be a great church far into the future, Lord. I just pray, Lord, that you'd help us to have a unity within this church. And, Lord, not that everybody has to believe exactly the same on everything, but, Lord, that we'd be united in our purpose, that we'd be united in our doctrine, and we'd be united through our fellowship. And we pray these things. I pray that you just fill us with your Holy Spirit this morning as the sermons preach. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So I was thinking about the churches that Paul started and how some of them started. A lot of them started through adversity. And you're like, well, I don't think our church started through adversity, but it actually did. It started through when Pastor Menes got, you know, he preached that viral sermon. You know, he started this church and planted this church when he was going through heavy persecution where there was hundreds and hundreds of protesters just raging and freaking out. I mean, Pastor Shelley has longer, you know, protesters than he's had, a length of protesters, but Pastor Menes was kicked out of his building. He made the worldwide news because of what he was preaching. And then we came along and were like, hey, you want to start a church? And it really was bad timing for that to happen, but we all met. Like, Pastor Menes talked about how we had this delegation of the people from Washington, and we showed up big at that Red Hot Preaching Conference, and we kind of had this meeting of where we were going to have the church and all that stuff, and that was kind of the birthing of this church. We started out with, I believe, well, we started doing some services on the sly in September, and our official first service, I think, was on October 3rd, I think, of 2016. So, but we started with 22, basically, coming to church, and then, of course, a lot of people from Washington State were driving down and things like that. But anyway, I was just thinking about all the things. Like Pastor Jones, there's another church. Pastor Jones used to be part of our church and preach for us on Sunday nights, and it's just been great. There's people that were going, and there's people that moved here that are here today. There's a lot of people that weren't sure whether it was all going to work out. I know that Pastor Jones got kicked out of his church just for coming down to our first church service. So that's adversity. I mean, a lot of people were shunned by other independent Baptists because they even came to this church. There's people that I've baptized that, like, they didn't want it public because if it was public, their pastor would kick them out. So there has been adversity, and the adversity that we had to go through to start this church, it was really, the brunt of it was on Pastor Jimenez. But he was trying to do a great work, and he had preached a sermon, and he was preaching, I think, through Titus. And I heard the sermon, it was before we ever started anything, and he said something to the effect, well, in the next ten years I'd like to start a church. And then, so I called him a little bit later, I was like, how about now? And he was like, yes, let's try it now. But anyway, so I'm picking the church at Philippi here kind of just as an example as to how churches can just start in a controversial way, but then do great things for God later on because there is a book called Philippians, and that was the first chapter we looked at. But let's look at the story of how Paul started the church at Philippi. Look at verse number 12, the Bible says, And from thence to Philippi, which is the chief city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony, and we were in that city abiding certain days. Now, I don't have time to go through all those scriptures, but, you know, it just started off as one person getting saved, and that was Lydia. Lydia was saved, and then she was baptized, and her whole family got saved, and they were baptized. So Paul, the apostle, he just traveled to all these places preaching the gospel, and if you notice the epistles of Paul are written, a lot of them are written to churches. And so Philippians is written to the church at Philippi that Paul started just by coming into town, giving the gospel to a lady that was a seller of purple, and then right after that happened, a demon-possessed damsel attached herself to them, if you remember that part of the story. And she was, you know, just following around and being all weird, and then they cast the devil out of her, and then the people that were getting gained by her psychic powers or whatever, her demonic powers, were mad. And they got mad, and then they rose up and beat them. They beat them and threw them in prison. Now, Paul the apostle started this church out of adversity, didn't he? So he does two great works. He gets his family saved, he casts this devil out, and then the opposition comes. And so any good church is going to have opposition at some point in its history. There's a lot of churches out there today that are not getting any opposition at all. That's the church you should be leery about attending. If they never have persecution, nothing ever goes wrong, and it's just this country club where there's no soul winning, all they care about is choir, all they care about is the Jews in Israel that aren't even saved, if all they care about is the pre-Trib rapture and all this other doctrine, they don't want to even preach the whole counsel of God, that would be a church that I would avoid. I spent years in churches like that, and I don't want to go back. But look at what happens here. So the jailer gets saved. Of course, there's that famous story of the Philippian jailer, and let's pick it up in verse number 27. The Bible says, And the keeper of the prison, awaking out of his sleep and seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled. So here's another great work that Paul does. Not only does he cast this devil, he gets Lydia and her family saved, he casts this demonic spirit out of a damsel, and then he gets beaten for Christ. He gets beaten for what he believes and what he's teaching, and thrown in prison, and it's the inner chamber of the prison. So then he saves this guy from killing himself, because in the Roman society, if you were a jailer and you let the prisoners escape, it was the death penalty for that person. So he's ready to just fall on his sword and kill himself, and in verse 28 it says, Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm, for we are all here. Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, and brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? So this church at Philippi, we tell this out soul-winding all the time. What must I do to be saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. That's what it says, right? Verse 31, And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved in thy house. And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house. So you have two major families in the beginning of this church, and it wasn't even necessarily a church yet. He's just in this colony in Macedonia, and this place called Philippi gets two big families saved. I assume they're big, but then he's doing all these great works, and he's getting adversity because of it. But later on, we see in the book of Philippians that he's writing to them, encouraging them, helping them, because it's become a church. And so it's born out of adversity, but also born out of the great works that Paul was doing. Look, churches aren't going to start unless people are out preaching the gospel in these different places. And this is a big philosophy of our church, is that we want to go out and we want to start churches. And you're like, yeah, I know, we got a lot of them. Yeah, well, so what? That's great. I think it's great. I think the people that go to those churches think it's great. And people can mock about it all they want to, but there's people in other places in this world that need to have a church and want to have a church, and they're happy that they have a church to call home. We had Brother Wynn come down not too long after the ordination, and they came and they preached and they brought a delegation down to the church. And then we decided to just take them on as a satellite of our church or a church plant. And here they are today. The church is still going. There's still people going to it. They're still getting people saved. They're still going soul winning. They're still preaching the Bible without compromise. And they're in a place that's not exactly like the Bible Belt of Canada, right? Is it the Bible Belt there? No, it's the Sikh Belt of Canada. It's the Hindu Belt of Canada. But Wynn was blown away by all the homo flags that we have around here. He said they don't have that up there. So I was like, that's surprising because their president sure likes them. He sure likes those flags, I think. But anyway, so what I wanted to try to just get across to you this morning is that we're a new church. We're still in the eyes of man and in the eyes of God, a new church. And I believe that our best is yet to come. And Paul proved that you could just start something just out of one little spark, just a couple families getting saved, and that can spark a great church being planted in an area. And that's exactly what happened. So their church was born in great controversy and adversity. Pastor Jimenez and the Sodomites, that whole fiasco. But what happened is that a great work came out of all that. Even though he's getting persecuted, even though he couldn't find a building to rent to him for months, he's still stuck by us. And I think back to that and I think, man, did I really empathize enough with Pastor Jimenez? I mean, he said every day for months and months and months he was looking for a place to rent to him. And that's scary when you have a church of 225 people. People left his church. People were too scared to stand with them and a lot of people left that church. And now they're a little bigger than they were at that time, but that controversy was a big deal. And he's still being persecuted over that today. And our church started off with a bad name. We thought that they were just going to come at us from day one. The first service that we had, there was across the street in an upper window a completely naked woman casting spells on us. It was so weird. I was just like, this can't be real. We thought that there was a bunch of protesters were going to come, but they never did. So obviously God was giving us mercy from the get-go. But people hated our church downtown, didn't they? People still hate our church. I mean, I got a nasty voicemail from one of the people's doors we knocked yesterday. You know, calling me every name in the book and whatever. But you know, I don't care. That's what we do. We're going to keep knocking doors no matter how mad people get. And obviously if they say don't come back, then we will try not to come back. But they never want to give us their address so that we can put them on the list. So I don't know what's up with that. They're afraid that we're going to do something. It's just weird, but not true. But just as God did great things in Philippi, he did great things here in Vancouver, Washington. And I believe that God's going to continue to do great works for this church. So let's look at our text in Philippians chapter 1. And we're going to go through some of these verses in Philippians chapter 1. I just was thinking about how Paul started that church in Philippi. And then his letter to them is really interesting. Look at verse number 3. It says, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine, for you all making requests with joy for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now. So what is he talking about? From the first day until now. He's talking about that day that he got Lydia saved. He's talking about that time that he was at Philippi. And that church was lasting. And I don't know how many years it was after that he wrote this epistle. I'm not 100% sure about that. But the church moved on. The church formed. The church stayed a force to be reckoned with. Look at verse 6. Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Now, did the Philippian church make it to the day of Christ? Well the day of Christ has not happened yet. So what is he talking about? I believe it's talking about that the great work that was done in that place lives on in other places. And just like, you know, churches beget churches, pastors beget pastors, saved people beget saved people. Their works live on because they probably had a missions program of some sort. They probably went to other places to preach the gospel. They got other people saved. And that lives on in generation after generation. The just shall live by faith. It's faith to faith. And so, how is Paul saying this? That he'll perform that good work in you until the day of Jesus Christ. Well, there's dividends that we don't think about of the things that we do. And you might not think that things that we do in this church really mean something. We had six salvations yesterday, which is a good day around here. You know, the law of diminishing returns is a fact and, you know, we used to get more people about double the people saved that we do now. But if you're going around to the same places and things like that, it's going to happen. But we've traveled to all these different places. We've traveled all around the world. We've traveled all over this country. And those things make a difference. I preached in New Jersey last year around June. And Brother Josh Tapp kind of just put a message on there saying, hey, you know, you guys are welcome in Kentucky or whatever. And then I just kind of looked them up and we started chatting and things like that. And now their family has moved to our church and they're a great blessing here already. But had I never gone to New Jersey to preach the gospel, and look, a lot of people got saved at that soul winning trip too. It was kind of like a new IFB mini conference over there or something, me and Pastor Jimenez. But great things happened. People got saved there. I can't remember what the total number of salvations was, but I think it was like 70 or 80 people got saved during that New Jersey trip. That's just one trip. We've gone to Detroit and gotten hundreds of people saved. We've gone to Hawaii and gotten hundreds of people saved. We've gone all over the place. We go to Kelso and get people saved all the time in Battleground, in all these different surrounding areas, and those dividends will be far reaching, more than we could ever possibly comprehend. But, you know, when we have the mind of Christ, we'll probably comprehend all those things when He tells us all things. But don't think that your labor in the Lord is vain here. You're like, well, it's just not very receptive in Vancouver. Yeah, well, that's just where we live. You chose to live here. But we do go on all kinds of trips where you can recharge yourself and go to a place that's more receptive. But people are still getting saved here every single week, and yeah, maybe they're not jumping all in the boats and stuff like that, but there's still receptive pockets of this area and places in Portland that we haven't even touched, places in Gresham that we've barely touched. There's places in North Portland and Northeast Portland that we've barely touched, and our best is yet to come. That's what I believe. And I believe that the good works that we do and the soul winning that we do, loving our neighbors as ourselves like we do, God's going to perform a good work in us and through us till the day of Jesus Christ. If I just said, you know what, I'm going to move to another church and never decide to be the pastor here, there wouldn't be a church here like this. And I'm not trying to toot my own horn. I really was skeptical about whether I should even do it or not. I was ready to move. And then, you know, just that idea came up of me just becoming the pastor or just leading a church, and then here we are. So, took a lot of hard work by our whole church. We've done a lot of great things, and our work will be... It says about Philippi. Philippi, this is 2,000 years ago, right? Or around 2,000 years ago when this happened. But Paul's saying for your fellowship in the gospel from this day until now. So whenever he wrote the letter, and then not only that, but being confident in this very thing that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. He's going to continue to perform things in this area because of this church. So don't take it for granted the times that you get to labor in this church and to do great works for God and to come and learn doctrine and be involved in a church where we're all in one hope for the gospel. So Paul is looking... To me it seems to be saying that Paul is looking into the future of what that small work from the first day until that day and even in the future is still going to continue to do in Philippi of Macedonia. And I believe that God's going to perform great works for our church and the seedlings that are to come. See, when we go all these places, we start little seedlings also. And does every place get a church? No, not every place gets a church. But some places do. Look at what's been done in Yakima. We have a church there now, and we start out just... I just was just thinking, hey, what's the biggest Indian reservation around here? And then I just kind of had this idea to go and preach the gospel in Yakima, and I kind of put it off a little bit. It was the goal of our church, though. I was looking at all the different places where a church needs to be, and we kind of got the corners painted now in Washington. So we got the tic-tac-toe going on, and we're on all four corners. Well, I guess Yakima's kind of in the center. We need one more in the corner over there at some point, but not right now. But how did it start out? We just went on a trip up there and just preached the gospel, and a bunch of people got saved. And you're like, well, where are they all at? Well, there's people in that church as a result of us going up there. We have natives that go to that church that were reached through our soul winning in Wapato. We have a family, and he's got all of his nephews coming. He's inviting brother Paul, and his last name is Long Time Sleeping. And he preached his first full-length sermon like a week ago, or a week and a half ago, and he said, that's the longest sermon I've ever preached. I was like, so your new nickname is Paul Long Time Preaching. But there is a direct seedling. Yeah, not all those people go to our church. But you know what? Through what we did as a church up there, there's now a church up there that people can go to, a lighthouse that we can send people to in Yakima. And not just the Indian Reservation, but also the people in the city of Yakima, and in the city of Union Gap, and SELA, and we've just begun to do the work there. But for the last few years, we were going up and doing, you know, we've done several trips there, and they've been very fruitful. Very fruitful. Cody and Alicia Chandler got baptized, I believe, at the first trip that we ever did there. And guess what? They go to that church. They have a church to go to. And so just those little small things that we did up there, they're not small. They turn into bigger things. They turn into great things. They turn into great churches. Look, if you have faith in what God's program is, it's going to make a huge difference in not just our lives, but in other people's lives, and those dividends are going to be paying off to us later on. You're like, well, how do you mean? Rewards in heaven. How do you figure it? I don't know. God's got it all figured out. He's the best mathematician that there ever was. There wouldn't be math if it wasn't for God. So I'm sure he knows how to calculate all these things. At the same time as answering everybody's prayers. At the same time of causing all these miracles to happen. At the same time of starting all these churches. At the same time, God can just do everything at once, whenever he wants, however he wants, and he's going to continue to do great things. And I feel like we lack faith sometimes, and we're just like, I don't know if this is going to work. It's going to work. Have faith. With faith, all things are possible. So look at Leviticus chapter 19 verse 23, and I put this in the bulletin, this last verse here in the bulletin, on Friday for our service, because I was just looking up verses that said, you know, after five years or whatever, or in the fifth year, because we're in our fifth year. We're starting into our sixth year now, but we've been in that fifth year. But look what it says in Leviticus 19, 23. It says, And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised. Three years shall it be uncircumcised unto you, it shall not be eaten of. But in the fourth year, all of the fruit thereof shall be holy to praise the Lord withal. And in the fifth year, shall ye eat of the fruit thereof, that it may yield unto you the increase thereof. I am the Lord your God. In seven years, we've had seven churches started. And we're in the fifth year, and obviously I'm not looking to start another church, so please don't email me. Please don't text me. We need to get some of these guys, we need to get people as pastors in these churches. And I'm not trying to start an empire at all. You know, that'd be like saying Paul was trying to start an empire in the book of Acts. It's like, how many churches did he have? Like, lots of churches, lots of plants, lots of people he was training, lots of people he was helping. And I'm definitely not comparing myself to the apostle Paul. I'm just saying that is it unbiblical to have a bunch of church plants? Well, when you've planted all manner of trees, you know, those trees are going to come to fruition. Some trees die. Some trees go away, but some trees thrive. And, you know, if they're in a great environment and in all the right situations, they're going to bring forth an increase. And we've seen that at our church. And God's not done building this church. God's not done doing great things through this church. And we are just now getting to the ripened fruit. You know, we're young. We still have these seedlings all over the place. But we're going to push forward and still continue to do great works for God. It's not like we can just rest on our laurels. We should never feel that way. We should never feel that it's time to just rest and chill. Unless you're, like, old and retired, you know? But we've got a guy that's, like, in his 60s here that goes to every single soul wedding. He's trying to redeem the time. He's trying to, you know, make up for the time that he lost, you know, in idleness and whatever, just, you know, not getting saved until later in life. But I like that. That encourages me to want to do more. When we have people in our church that are really zealous, and we do have a lot of people in our church that are really zealous, but we also have people that have lost their zeal. And you know what? Today I want to encourage you to try to get back that zeal that you had when you first started coming here, when you first started coming to church. I want to see our church be fully united in the hope of the Gospel and the hope of great doctrine. And don't forget the reason why you are here. It's not to serve ourselves or for all the great children's programs or whatever. We have all that stuff, though. We have homeschool field trips. We have all kinds of events that we always do, and sometimes I feel like maybe I'm just doing too much when people don't show up to them. I'm just like, what am I doing this for? But I'm still going to do it because I want people to come. I want people to be enjoying the fact that they have a great church to come to. I think that sometimes we just become spoiled little brats about things, myself included, but I don't want us to be spoiled little brats. I want us to enjoy and be thankful for what we have, be thankful for the church you have, be thankful for the opportunities that you have to serve. It's like, oh, pastor's asking me to preach again. Be thankful for the fact that you're able to serve. Oh, pastor's got another soul winning thing going on. Be thankful for the opportunity to go soul winning and to reach lost people. And you're like, well, I haven't got to open my Bible in a long time. Go to a missions trip. Go to one of the trips we have. Go to one of the conferences we have. We have soul winning at all those conferences. I mean, what's the point of a missions trip at Faithful Word? So that we can get encouraged to do more missions work. Encouraged to do more things for the kingdom of God. And that's what I want our church to just be united with. This is our five year anniversary. Let's get fired back up again if you're not fired up. I'm not saying everybody's not fired up. I'm just saying, if you're not, now's the opportunity, you know, a just man falls seven times and rises up again. And everybody gets tired. Everybody gets complacent. Everybody can get calloused to the things of God. I preach about this at Faithful Word that we can get calloused, you know, a human being gets calloused when they overwork certain parts of their body. If you wear steel toed boots every day for nine years, you're going to get calloused on the little insides of your big toes. I had one that just formed that was just like a huge callous on my right big toe. I don't know if it was the boots I was wearing or if it was just one of my toes bigger than the other. I don't know. But they start to hurt after a while. But what is the point of your body making calloused? It's callousing to stop it from hurting, right? But people can get calloused hearts when they go to a church like this and they're always hearing hard preaching, they're always being encouraged to do more, they're always being encouraged to get sin out of their life. This church can be just like any other church. And we've had people that left our church and went back to the old IFB. Do you think that they're really happy, though? I don't think they are. But I think that some people just get calloused and they don't want to fight anymore and they don't want to battle anymore. But that shouldn't be something in our hearts. Because through adversity, we get better. Through trials, we learn patience. And through adversity, great churches are started. And churches do great things and you're like, well, there's just always some kind of drama going on. Look, there's all kinds of drama going on in the Bible. Like, what did you think? It was just going to be drama-free? We're on pillows of ease? That's the old IFB. They want you to feel like, oh, you're going to be on your pillow of ease as you're doing nothing for God right now. I'm not saying all old IFB churches are like that. I'm just saying a lot of them are, though. They scale back to soul winning. They scale back to preaching. You know, Jeff Owens preached the hardest sermon against the Sodomites I've ever heard in my life. Where he's like literally saying, you know, we should stop burning flags and start burning fags. It's like, I've never said that before. You know, shoot him with the scatter shotgun. He was Hiles Anderson. And then years later, Pastor Anderson like uploads his stuff onto YouTube and everybody, the Sodomites hear it and they freak out and rage against him. And then instead of just saying, yeah, I said it, he says, I apologize for that, sir. I didn't even believe those things when I said them. It's like, what? I was just a young, immature Christian. He was the vice president of the biggest Bible college on earth and the biggest church in the country at the time. Oh, but he was just immature? No, he just has grown callous. He's grown weak. But, you know, obviously, you know, I believe he saved. I just think that, you know, he couldn't handle that pressure. You know, when we get into an easy style life of Christianity and we don't have to endure any hardness as good soldiers, it can have a bad effect on us. And look, you can go to a church like this and become callous to God's word. And why do you get that way? Because you don't want the hurt. Because, you know, I don't know the Bible verse by heart, but when it talks about, you know, the words of God are like goads and like an ox goad for the masters of assembly. Like the pastor is supposed to get up, the master of assembly is supposed to get up and poke you sometimes. And people don't like to get poked. Do you think cattle like to be poked? They don't. And nowadays we have a modern, the modern goad is a cattle prod. Have you ever heard of a cattle prod before? It's like got volts of electricity and when you hit them with it, it's like, you know, and their flesh shakes and they're, you know. I don't know if they're even legal anymore, but when I was a kid, I know that the people that raise cattle around us have those things, but we need to get hurt sometimes. We need to get our toes stepped on sometimes and sometimes I bring up things that are very uncomfortable. But you know what? We need to hear those things. I'm not doing it to hurt you. Don't get callous over the words of God. Don't get callous because I'm trying to encourage you to do more. Don't get callous because I'm saying, hey, listen to the preaching. This is how you should raise your kids. This is how your marriage should be. This is how we should live our life. Don't get callous to those things. Nobody's going to be perfect. I get that. And I'm not perfect either. But you know what? My job is to get up here and preach the word of God. And don't get callous. Rip that callous off. You know what I did to that callous on my toe? I ripped it off. And then it hurt more. But your body does that to protect you. You know, God over and over again says, don't have an uncircumcised heart. What is this circumcision? It's cutting away the flesh around the sensitive part. That was a symbol of being circumcised in your heart. Cut that flesh away from there and let your heart be bare unto God. And still be tender to the things of God. And don't get a callous over your heart. That's how we're going to keep moving on in the Christian life. If you have to reinvent yourself somehow. If you have to just change up your life the way you're living it right now. And just mix it up. Sometimes mixing things up helps. But that's what we need to do to move forward and for our church to continue to move on and do great works for God. Go ahead and turn to Revelation chapter 2. I'm going to read Proverbs 11 verse 30. Proverbs 11 verse 30 says, The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he that win his souls is wise. Behold, the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth. What does that mean? Given the things that they have coming to them. Right? You're going to get what you've got coming to you. The righteous are going to be recompensed with great things. You're wise if you continue to go soul winning. You're wise if you're continuing to go and plant these seedlings everywhere and to get people saved. But it says much more the wicked and the sinner. They're going to be recompensed for the things that they do too. But they're not going to like their recompense. We're going to like our recompense. But if you have no works, then what are you going to get recompense for? Now, here's a warning. Here's a warning in Revelation chapter 2 verse 1. So, the best is yet to come, but let's remember some things that we need to remember here. Unto the angel of the church at Ephesus write, These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlestick. Remember that Jesus walks in the midst of this church. He is with us now today. And it says, I know thy works and thy labor. I know you're getting some stuff done. I know you're laboring and doing hard work. And thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil, and thou hast tried them which say that they are apostles and are not and hast found them liars, and hast borne and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast labored and hast not fainted. Hast not fainted. Nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee because thou hast left thy first love. Our first love is supposed to be God. And sometimes we can get into the habit of doing things and just being here because we're expected or being here because, but your heart's not really here. And we don't want to fall into that trap where we're just here because we're out of duty and we won't be able to talk bad about us if we stop coming to church or whatever. But what you should be concerned about is what's in your heart. You should be doing the works because you love God. And sometimes I think that we forget that we're doing all this work for God. It's good to do work, but if you're not doing it for God, then who are you actually doing it for? Some people are to be seen of men. We've seen those bozos come and go with the video game numbers and all that stuff. And this whole movement as the new IFB, quote unquote, has really gone through a lot of different purges. Oneness bozo purges. Video game number purges. Holier than thou purges. Just a bunch of different things. And really it's kind of balanced out with less weirdos. Have you ever noticed that? Our church doesn't have a lot of weirdos? Well, we don't. And I'm glad. But it took time for the quote unquote new IFB, I'm just saying churches that believe like us, to see that fruit also. And Pastor Anderson has been pastoring for 17 years. And they're doing great work for God. Their church is doing great. But they've had a lot of fights. Every church is going to go through adversity in a different way, some way, shape, or form. But look what it says. Nevertheless I have something against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Our first love is supposed to be God. And it says, Remember them from whence thou art fallen and repent and do the first works. Or else I will come unto thee quickly and remove thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent. So what's he saying? Do the first works. You'll get your first love back. If you've stopped going soul winning, if you haven't gone soul winning in a long time, why don't you choose today to get back out there? Don't wait. Don't say, well next month I'm going to do it. How about today? Let's move forward today. And yeah, we have a lot of people that go soul winning every week, multiple times a week. But you're not everybody. There's individuals in this church that have gotten out of soul winning and look, I'm not trying to beat you up. I just want you to do better. I'm just trying to encourage you to get back in it. Because what does that show? If you've quit soul winning, it shows that you've lost your first love. I'm not saying you're not saved. I'm just saying you've lost your first love. Your first love is God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, with all your strength, and to love thy neighbor as thyself. These two are the greatest commandments. So if you're not doing one, you're not doing the other. And if you're not doing either one of those, then you're failing in your Christian life and you need to get it back together. So it says, yeah, repent and do the first works. It says you're fallen if you've lost your first love, if you've not done the first works. And he says he's going to come quickly and remove thy candlestick. So for a church that quits soul winning, they're in danger of them not being a church anymore. That's what the danger is. But what do you think the danger is for the individual? It's going to be punishment. You're like, yeah, I just can't handle going through all these persecutions that the church is going through and all this stuff. I just can't deal with it anymore. Well, you know what the alternative is? To handle the punishment. So what would you rather be? Punished for not doing God's will. Or doing God's will and being persecuted and getting rewards. I mean, either way, it's pain. But the pain isn't always. We don't always have to deal with freaks outside of our building and circling us around like they did that one day and like they've done other days. That's not every day. We have a lot more good days than we do bad, hopefully. But if we're out of the will of God, then if we're not doing the first works, then God's going to remove the candlestick. I preached that at a church and literally the church burnt down. Like two weeks later. And, you know, my place to challenge. The pastor let me preach a sermon and I said, hey, if we don't start soul winning, then God's going to remove the candlestick from this church. I said, if you want to learn how to do soul winning, come show up Saturday at 10 o'clock and we'll go soul winning. Nobody came. And then the church burnt down. So like the candlestick. But to them, to me, I feel like God just destroyed that building because that's what they loved. They loved the building. And you know what their focus was on? Rebuilding that building. That's all they cared about. Give more money so we can build another building. And that church is dead as a doornail. They've lost all their ministry as far as soul winning goes. And, you know, they're just not a very friendly church. So, we don't want to ever get into that state. So, what is another way that we can continue to, you know, that we can have our best days to come? Well, look at 2 Timothy chapter 3 verse 10. 2 Timothy chapter 3 verse 10. The Bible says, But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience. That's the apostle Paul speaking. Persecutions, afflictions which came unto me at Antioch and Iconium and Lystra. What persecutions I endured, but out of them all the Lord delivered me. Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution, but evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. What can we expect? Well, we can expect God to deliver us out of our afflictions also. We can expect that we're going to suffer for being godly in Christ Jesus. We can expect that evil men and seducers are going to wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. Like this is the Christian life, folks. This is what happens. And obviously there's good that happens. There's blessings that happens. Our children, our wives, our families. We can serve the Lord with our families and reach that next generation. But let me guarantee you something right now. If you get out of church, you're going to lose your kids. You're going to lose them. And you might not think so now. You're like, well, I can just go to, you know, Hoity Toity Baptist or whatever, and, you know, it's going to be just a comfortable, easy trip. We can just have friends. We can do the Taco Feast. We go to camp every year, whatever. And it's just like, okay. But even so, you're going to lose your kids. Because you know what they want to do? They want to put your kids in a youth program. And, yea, they might like it, but is that, just because kids like something, does that mean it's the best thing for them? My grandkids like candy. But do you think that's the best thing for them? I mean, obviously, in moderation, it's okay, I guess. But, look, they don't want what's best for your kids necessarily. They might say that. But I've been a Sunday school superintendent. I know exactly the dropout rate. It's nearly 100%. Of all those teens that grew up, it's like I wasn't responsible for all that. I just kind of came in at the decline. But I was just like, what is wrong? Like, why isn't this working? Why are they not staying in church? Why aren't they getting married? Why are they going off to the military and getting tattoos and coming back? And fornicating. And marrying people that aren't saved. Why is this happening? It's because they're fed the candy church. The candy Kool-Aid cookies church. The crazy kids song church. Yeah, it's real fun. But you know what? We can have fun and still be right with God at the same time. And your kids in this room, they stay and they pay attention and they listen. And maybe they're not sucking everything in. Maybe not everything is getting into them. But things are reaching them. They're being reached. And watching Veggie Tales in a classroom with an old lady with short hair isn't going to get them any closer to God, folks. It's just not. And I like the Father Abraham son. It's a very biblical teaching. And I'm okay having fun songs every once in a while. But if your kid is stuck in some nursery and then Sunday school classes and all this other stuff, they're going to learn how to be a Bethel church member. That everything is fun. Everything is a contest. Let's swallow a goldfish. Swallow a goldfish Sunday. And mile long Sundays and all this other stuff. It's just, look, it shouldn't only be just fun, fun, fun all the time. Because if that's what you think church is, if that's what your kid thinks church is, and then they come and sit in big boy church, they're going to go, what? I'm bored. Where's my laptop? Where's my screen? You're not going to get that at this church. This church is important. It's important for the next generation. So don't drop out of church. Dropping out of church is the worst possible thing that you could do for your family. So it says in verse 14, But continue thou in these things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of. What does it say? But continue. When things are happening, continue. Don't stop. Don't cease. Don't quit. It says, Continue in the things that thou hast learned and been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them, and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. See, Timothy, from a child, knew the scriptures. How do you think he knew that? Well, his grandmother, his mother, taught him the Bible. And you know what? We can do those things. This church emphasizes on teaching the Bible to your children, to homeschool your children, to chasten your children when they're doing wrong, to love your children, to love your husbands, to love your spouse. Not to divorce them because they looked at some other woman or something. These churches out there will allow divorce over anything and then they'll remarry those people who are divorced. That's wicked! And what I'm saying is to continue in the things which thou hast been assured of. Let's continue. We're not stopping at five years. We're going to continue. We're going to continue to teach the truths of the Bible. Turn to Philippians chapter 1 verse 27. Philippians chapter 1 verse 27. We have a great responsibility. And that great responsibility is to serve God. That great responsibility is to have a good marriage. That great responsibility is to raise your children in the ways of the Lord. And our great responsibility is also to strive together for one purpose. Look what it says. Philippians 1 verse 27 says, Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ, that whether I come and see you or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that you stand fast in one spirit, with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel. One spirit. We're all one team. That's the purpose of a local New Testament church is that we would have one big team working together. And Pastor Mendez kind of mentioned this last in his sermon about how two horses can pull 24,000 pounds, one horse can pull 8,000, the other one by itself 8,000, but when they pull together, they have that synergy, right? But we want to have that synergy too. If we're all together, headed for one direction, headed with one spirit, and that spirit is the spirit of God working in us, and one mind, we all think the same things are important. Not that you agree on every single nuance of the Bible, but that your mind is together, like what's our purpose to get people saved? What's our purpose to learn great doctrine? What's our purpose to raise great families? So, we need to be, in order to have the best yet to come, we need to learn that we've got to continue striving together for the faith of the gospel. And turn to Galatians 6, 7. Galatians 6, 7. It says in Galatians 6, 7, Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Look, I mean, this is just a principle of God. Whatever we sow, the things that we do, those things are what we're going to reap. So, if you're sowing good things, and good seed, and good doctrine, you're going to reap great benefits from that. It says, For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. So, if we live a worldly life, if we just forsake the things of God, you're going to reap corruption. That's what it says, right? But he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. That's not saying that if you're spiritual, that's the only way to get everlasting life, but when you're sowing the gospel, it's going to cause everlasting life to fall on somebody else. It's going to fall on somebody else, isn't it? It's going to fall on other people, and then you're going to get the reaping of that. You're going to get the rewards for it, and it says, And let us not be weary in well doing. What is being weary? Being tired. I'm tired of soul winning. I'm tired of hard preaching. I'm tired of this militant Christian life, or whatever. Your life isn't that bad. Quit whining. Quit complaining. Be hard. Get tough. It says, As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith. Don't be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not. So yeah, you might be tired, you might be weary, but don't faint, because fainting is when you fall out, right? People faint sometimes, when they're tired, when they're in heat exhaustion, and all different types of things, people will faint. But God's saying, hey, don't be weary in the well doing. You might need to throttle it down, but don't quit. Look at 2 Corinthians 4, verse 16. 2 Corinthians 4, 16. The best will be yet to come if we don't faint. Look at 2 Corinthians 4, 16. It says, You know what? If you fail today, get up tomorrow and do better, because the inward man is renewed day by day. When you wake up in the morning, it's a fresh, clean slate. So, don't beat yourself up over everything that you did yesterday. Just say, I'm going to be better tomorrow. I'm going to do better today. And it says, See, the Bible says it's our light affliction. Paul is beaten by rods, shipwrecked, you know, stoned and left outside the city for dead. Beaten, multiply. He said that's a light affliction. Maybe he's just talking about them. I don't know. But it says, So, what does that mean? You're going to get more glory. You're going to get more rewards just going through the light affliction. More exceeding. What is exceeding? You're going to get more stuff and eternal weight of glory. So, it says far more. So, when you go to a church where things are a little harder, the serving is a little harder, the sermons are a little harder, the soul winning is actually being done, so it's harder, and you're not in the most receptive area in town or you're not in the most receptive city, but it doesn't say we're going to lack rewards because we're in a less receptive city. I think that we're going to get more, possibly. And when you go on the mission trips, that can be, you're like, Hey, fish on! It's kind of like a vacation from being in an unreceptive area. But look at Isaiah 40, verse 29. Isaiah 40, verse 29. And I believe that this is the key for us when you're faint, when you're ready to quit, when you're ready to give up. It says in Isaiah 40, verse 29, He giveth power to the faint. Does He give us power? Yeah. And to them that have no might, He increases strength. You're just like, I don't know, my body's giving out on me. I just don't know if I can do it. He gives us strength. He gives us power not to faint. It says, Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, and shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint. And I was thinking about a story that Pastor Mendez was telling us the other night at dinner. And he said that the dodgeball competition, it was just, it got ugly. And what happened was, it was boys against girls, which is always a bad idea when it's dodgeball, right? But I think that they didn't go, like, I think they did eventually face off, and they, like, put a couple boys on our team. But when the young men, the teen boys and all the boys went against the men of the church, they got obliterated. Because no hair-legged man that's 40, 50 years old is gonna let a teen overtake them like that. And, like, they said that, he said that they were throwing the ball so hard that there was a dent in the wall from one of the dodgeballs. They were just, like, winging it! Whee! And I was thinking, this verse, it kind of reminded me of that, because it says, even though you shall faint and be weary. You know, with these mighty men of God, they're like, oh yeah, you think you're gonna beat us? Just... But even as an older saint, you could still outwork anybody else out there, because God is the one that causes us not to faint. God is the one that renews our strength. God is the one that lifts us up when we're weary, and when we're tired, and when we're faint. And he says, hey, you're gonna mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not be faint. God is our strength. God is our high tower. God is our buckler and our shield. He's our savior. And you know what you have to do? You just have to ask. God, fill me up with your spirit. God, give me strength to keep going. God, I'm weary. Give me strength. And you know what? He will do it. God, give me some wisdom to deal with the situations I'm dealing with in my life. God gives it to everybody liberally. All you have to do is ask. That's it. But don't be weary and say, I'm gonna quit. Go, God, I need your help. God, I need your strength. God, I need your mercy. God, teach me the way that I should go. And, you know, if our best is yet to come, we also need to keep our eyes on the prize. Look at 2 Corinthians 4, verse 18. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 18. It says, While we look not on the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. Where should we be keeping our eyes? You're like, well, how do you see the things that are unseen? It's called faith. It's called hope. Faith is the... Let's turn over to... Good night. I can't quote the verse right now. I hate when that happens. Okay, Hebrews 1. I'll just read it for you. It's in Hebrews 1. I know that. Good night. Huh? Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. That was in Hebrews 1. Sorry. You probably know the verse. You're like, pastor, what's wrong with you? I'm getting old. Oh, yeah. Faith is the substance of the things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So, that's what faith is. We hope for something we've never seen. It is the reality, the substance, of the things that we hope for. Listen, if you say you believe the Bible, then you know those things are true. You don't have to see Jesus to believe in him. But we know he's true. We know the Bible's true. We know people get saved when we go out and preach the gospel. That's not fake. We're not doing fake signs and wonders at this church. We're going to doors and saying, hey, if you died today, are you 100% sure that you go to heaven? And if they want to hear the gospel, then we preach them the gospel, and they get saved. And what's the Bible say? When people hear the gospel, they're going to get saved. So, we live the Bible. We know that the Bible's true. And we should keep our eyes focused on the things that are not seen instead of the things that are temporal. What is temporal? Things that have an end. Temporal. It's temporary. Things that have an end, right? Your tea sets, your china, your couch, your television, whatever it is that you have in your home, your clothes, all that stuff, it's temporal. It's not going to last forever. It says, but the things which are not seen are eternal. That's where our focus should be. Look, keep our eyes on the prize if we want to have the best years to come. Look at Philippians chapter 3 verse 13. Philippians 3 verse 13, the Bible says, Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before. I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. You know, the apostle Paul has given us a very great truth here, that we always should be pressing forward. We should always be goal-oriented, pressing towards the mark. What's the goal, though? The prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. That's the goal. That's the mark. That's what we should be pressing towards. We should always be self-reflecting. We should always be analyzing ourselves and say, hey, am I pressing towards that mark? Am I doing better this year than I did last year? Am I doing more sowing or at least maintaining the same as I did before? Am I applying the preaching to my life? Because, look, if you're a forgetful hearer and you're not a doer of the work, you're like a double-minded man. You're double-minded and you forget the manner of man that you were. You see that perfect... When you look at the Bible and it smites you, you're looking at yourself, the bad things. You know, because most people, they look in a mirror and they want to make sure they look good, right? Your hair's all did. Nails are all did. Not guys. But, you know what I'm saying? We look in a mirror to see what we look like. But when we look in the perfect law of liberty, we look at the Bible, it's going to show us the ugly moles that we have and the place where we need to cover some blemishes. But if we don't take those things to heart and say, hey, I need to do something about this. You know, and in the case of a mirror, I need to do something about how ugly I look right now. I got bags under my eyes. My hair's not done. You know what I mean? So God's helping us with that picture to show us that we need to look into that law of liberty and not forget what we saw, not forget what we heard, but that we would apply those things in our life and then it says be a doer of the work. Because you can listen and say, great preaching, great sermon, whatever, and then walk out and be like, you can't even tell me what the sermon was about three hours later. That's because you're not taking it and applying it to your life. We need to do that. We need to constantly be pressing towards that mark. And we have pressure every day. You'll put pressure on yourself to do all manner of worldly things, won't you? Why not put pressure on yourself to be more spiritual? You want to make sure you've got gains and your weightlifting and all this other stuff, guys. What about your spiritual gains, though? You can squat 620 pounds, but can you read the Bible through in one year? You maxed out on your bench. 350, brother. Ugh. And then you're just like, did you go soloing last week? All I'm saying is that we'll put pressure on ourselves. We'll try to put pressure on ourselves for how we look, what we look like, the things we do, the things that we want. But if you're not putting pressure on yourself for the spiritual things, then you're failing. Look, I'm not trying to be mean here. I'm trying to help you and make you better and admonish you to do well. I look at myself constantly and try to fix things that I know are wrong with me. And that should be what everybody does. And does it always work? It doesn't always work. We're humans. We fall back into our habits really easily. But does that mean we should just give up? No, you still just keep putting pressure on yourself. Maybe someday you'll be better in that area. But I wanted to give you some stats from our church for the last five years. Now, I'm not counting anything that happened under Verity Vancouver because I can't find those old documents. But I think they're on a flash drive that needs to be fixed. But I just wanted to give you some stats of things that our church plants and our church has done. Yakima so far, they've only been in existence for one month as our church. But for the whole year, this is what they got for the whole year. They have 59 salvations for the whole year. And I don't know if you know this, but we lost some people there when I took over as the pastor. And one of the people that was going there was a first-degree pedophile. Like, had slipped through the cracks all these years. But, you know, he's going around trying to turn everybody against me at the church and try to turn all the church members against me. And he's in the books, on the sheriff's website, pedophile, first-degree. It's the worst charge you can get in Washington. He's no longer welcome at our church. Jerry Lester Berryman was his name. And now he's Jerry Lester the Molester. The legal I was thinking about, yeah. He'll forever be Jerry Lester the Molester. So, look, I mean, but that church is doing well. We had like 24 in church on Wednesday when I was up there. And, you know, it's going great. About 59 salvations. Seattle, 85 salvations since we started in May. Or, excuse me, late April. So, in three baptisms. They're doing good. They're fired up. They're like zealous up there. And they're just out beating down the doors, getting people saved. SFBC Winnipeg's been under our banner since October. They've had 52 salvations and six baptisms. You're like, well, how come so little? Well, have you been there before? It's like, you know, it's the great north, but it's not like super receptive. But they still are doing the work and getting it done. So, SFBC UK. 2,210 salvations since they've existed. And 131 baptisms. I don't know if you guys ever saw where Ian was baptizing. He did like 60-something baptisms in a row. He had to almost put it on fast-forward. Just like... That was impressive. But anyway, they're doing great. And they opened up their new building today. And so Ian's done three remodels since he's been the evangelist there. And they lost the first building. Then they went to the other one. Then they got an opportunity to go back to the place where they first started. And they had their first service today. So, he's remodeled three full buildings already. But they got the lease for a long time now, so they're doing great. But they're doing great works over there. And Ian's going to get ordained very soon. So, then SFBC Spokane. 765 salvations. 23 baptisms. So, praise God for that. We start off with like 10 people there. And we've had some ups and downs there. But they're still going strong. They're still being faithful. They're still going soul-winding, serving the Lord. SFBC Surrey, that's the first church plant we had. 1418 salvations. And 41 baptisms. So, great job. I mean, and yeah, there's going to be different variances in the numbers just because of how receptive each place is. But, we also support a missionary, Matthew Stuckey, who had over 11,000 salvations last year. And so we support Brother Stuckey every month, and he's going to be ordained soon. And he'll be Pastor Stuckey. But we're still going to support him. And they have a missions trip coming up in February. You want to go on a big missions trip? Well, go over there. Get some people saved. You want them to jump in the boat, they jump. And then they'll want to take a picture with you after it's done. But we also support Pastor Paul Warringa. And he messaged me last night. In the last couple of years, they've had 1,500 salvations and 23 baptisms. He's always baptizing people, it seems like. And in South Africa, we have a soul-winning group that is getting weekly salvations. They had 86 when Brother Ian visited down there to preach. They had 86 salvations. And then they just had 15 in a soul-winning marathon, but they've had 147 salvations since May. These are all directly connected to this church here in Vancouver. Lots of, thousands of salvations. Hundreds of baptisms. And Hawaii, which we ended up having to close down, when Brother David Kiefer took over, they had 77 salvations. But total salvations for Hawaii was 1,636 that I counted in a few baptisms. So it's not like our work over there was in vain. People still got saved because of the work that was done there. And so also in our church, 2018, we had 790 salvations and 32 baptisms. 2019, we had 821 salvations. And then, actually it was 852, excuse me, and 45 baptisms. And then 2020 is when the COVID thing happened. And we had 401 salvations and 10 baptisms. And then 2021, we had 543 and 57 baptisms. 2022, we had 303 and 97 baptisms. 2023, we had 351. That's to date. So we're way above what we did for the whole year last year now. And 36 baptisms. So the total for Vancouver's salvations that I counted, not the Verity Baptist portion, but the Schur Foundation, we've had 3,240 salvations and 77 baptisms. And all time, with all the churches, 9,465 salvations. And then, again, 2016, 2017 is not accounted for. 277 baptisms, including all the other church plants and things like that. So praise God. I mean, we've done a lot of great work. We've gotten a lot of people saved. And I still think the best is yet to come. We've been having a great year in soul winning, and we haven't really done that many big trips. But we're still getting people saved. The more you go, the more you're going to get saved. The longer you go, the more you're going to get saved. And so we definitely have goals to meet and to reach. And I'm excited about what our church is going to do from here on out. And we had some goals. I was just looking back at some goals to start a church in Seattle. Done. And to also start a church in Yakima. Done. And then, obviously, I wasn't expecting starting some other churches, but we're still starting them. Not everything is planned to the T. It's like we planned on 2020 being our best soul winning year. And it's like, sometimes there's other plans that you can't help. We lost that church in Hawaii, but that's not forever. I'm still planning on going back there. So I just need to have someone that's one of the lead. So anyway, we've had soul winning trips all over the world. To Yakima, Detroit, New Jersey, Cincinnati, the Philippines, Blaine, Washington, Ellensburg, Royal City, Richmond, B.C. Which the richest place in all of Vancouver was not receptive. But Bellingham, Kelso, Longview, Surrey. And just like, there's probably lots more that I'm not even thinking of. Yelm, what else? Does anybody know any other ones that we went to? Ellensburg, yeah I said that I think. Huh? Longview, Kelso, Wapato. And just, we've gone to a lot of different places. And we've seen a lot of people saved. But, you know, don't let anything take you away from serving the Lord. Don't let the enemies of our church take you out of this fight. Because look, I said this at Red Hot, but these people lie professionally. One lie that they told about steadfast, I know I've got to be done here, but they said that all the kids came out after church and lined up in a line. And then flipped the bird, if you know what I mean, to the protesters. And then did the Nazi salute afterwards. That's what they said. And they even went to, I just heard this morning, they went to city council and told that piece of trash lie. You know, I watched the video where the person was saying it and I didn't see any kids flipping anybody off and I didn't see them doing the Nazi sign. A black guy pulled up to the protesters and said, he said, hey what's going on here? And one of those faggots walked up and said, yeah, they're teaching that black people can't be saved unless they serve us as slaves in heaven. So, I mean, you can't put anything past these people. They will lie about anything and everything and it's just, that's just how it is. But don't be gullible. You guys have been going to this church for long enough to know, don't believe everything that you hear. Don't just trust all this stuff that people are saying because that's what they like to do. They're like monkeys throwing crap at the wall, they just want something to stick. Seriously. You know, they're just ridiculous. We'll close here on this version, Philippians 1.28 says, and nothing terrified by your adversaries. LGBT terrorist is the movie that a lot of people just watched yesterday, it's going to be out tomorrow. Look, our adversaries are constantly trying to terrorize us and stop us from being in the fight. This is their job. This is what Satan has sicked them on us for in the first place. Which is to them an evident token of perdition. Look, some people have left our church and they are sons of perdition. They are wicked. They are reprobate. Because why? Because if they are the people trying to terrify you and trying to destroy this church, it's an evident token of their perdition. What does that mean? What does perdition mean? What does the son of perdition mean? A child of hell. That's what it means. Look, I'm not just saying it, the Bible is saying it. If you see that evidence, just know that that's what it's talking about. It's a token. What does that mean? A picture of something, right? And when they terrify us and try to do all these things to stop us, that just shows that they are unsaved. And not only that, but they are workers of iniquity. But see, to us, we are saved and that of God. For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his name's sake. So look, it's all one package folks. If you are going to be in a church that is high energy, high yielding, trying to strive together with one spirit and one mind for the gospel, there's going to be opposition. There's going to be hard times. There's going to be lean times. There's going to be times when you feel like quitting. But don't quit. Don't be weary in well-doing. Go to the Lord, ask him for strength to keep carrying on. And don't make up excuses as to why you're quitting. If you're going to quit, then just quit. But don't make it somebody else's fault. I've just noticed that people do this a lot. It's always somebody else's fault why they gave up, why they quit. But really, the only time you fail is when you do quit. Isn't that true? If you quit, you failed. It doesn't have anything to do with one person or another. Don't make an excuse for why you're giving up. Just do it and just walk away and don't be weird. Anyway, but I want to encourage you with this. I'm just going to recap, sorry, real quick. So the best is yet to come, and how do we know the best is yet to come? Well, just realizing that our enemies are always going to be among us. That's a fact. We've got to keep our eyes on the prize. We've got to not faint. We've got to strive together. We've got to continue in the things that we've learned and remember the warnings of growing cold, because we don't want any of those things to happen. So when we take those things into account and think about those things, then hopefully that will help you when you feel weary, when you feel like giving up. I hope that it encouraged you to want to stay in the fight and stay in the faith. Yeah, we've got five years, but what do we want to do? Get five years more. More than five years, but it's great. It's a great milestone for us, and the best is yet to come. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for this great church. Lord, I thank you for all the people that showed up today in support, and just pray that you would just bless each and every single person and help us to not grow weary and faint, and that, Lord, we would always be reaching forth and pressing toward that mark and the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Lord, help us not to be weak. Help us to be strong in you. All these things in Jesus' name, amen. Song number 160, Crown Him With Many Crowns. Let's sing it together on that first verse. Crown Him with many crowns, the Lamb upon His throne. Hark how the heavenly anthem drowns of music but its own. Awake, my soul, and sing of Him who died for thee, and hail Him as Thy matchless King through all eternity. Crown Him the Lord of love, behold His hands and side, rich wounds yet visible above in beauty glorified. No angel in the sky can fully bear that sight, but downward bends His wandering eye at mysteries so bright. Crown Him the Lord of life who triumphed o'er the grave, who rose victorious to the stride for those He came to save. His glories now we sing who died and rose on high, who died eternal life to bring and lives that death may die. Crown Him the Lord of heaven, one with the Father known, one with the Spirit through Him given from yonder glorious throne to Thee be endless praise, for Thou for us has died. Be Thou, O Lord, through endless days adored and magnified. Amen. Good to see you. Brother Brandon, would you close a word of prayer? Amen.