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believe about any certain doctrinal question because I have the Bible in my hand, the very words out of the mouth of God, the answer to every question. I can open up my King James Bible preserved in 2006, the very words of God, and find out exactly what you think about anything. And God, I just pray that you would help us to see within its pages this morning what we need to see. And in Jesus' name I pray, Amen. Now throughout the Bible you'll see a principle and an idea coming up over and over again that God wants us to be better than we were before. He wants us to be growing. He wants us to be increasing. He wants us to be doing more. Don't ever get the idea that you think you've arrived in the Christian life. So many churches and so many Christians, they feel like they've come to a point where they're doing everything that God has asked them to do, and boy, they've arrived. They're there. And so if they can just continue at that level that's all they need to do. No, my friend, God is constantly admonishing us to do more. Look if you would at the chapter that we were just looking at. Look at 1 Thessalonians 3 right at the end, verse number 12 there. The Bible reads, And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another and toward all men, even as we do toward you. And then look if you would at verse number 1 of chapter 4. Again this comes up. Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more. And then look again at verse number 10 of chapter 4. And indeed ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia. He says, I know that you're doing this, and I'm asking you to do, but we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more. You see, the Apostle Paul here is writing in 1 Thessalonians to a great church. If you look at the first chapter of 1 Thessalonians and the first chapter of 2 Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul is just praising this church for how great of a church they are. He's telling them how wonderful they are, how they're such a blessing, how everybody around the world has heard of what a great church this is. And that's why he's writing them over and over. Don't think that you've arrived. He says, I want you to increase more and more. I know you're doing a great job, but I want you to do more. I want you to do better. I want you to be getting greater. Like the song says, I'm pressing on the upward way. New heights I'm gaining every day. Still praying as I'm onward bound. Lord, plant my feet on higher ground. You see, that's the theme of the Bible, and that's especially the theme of this great book in 1 Thessalonians. I'm going to point out to you this morning several areas where I feel like God wants us to be always increasing, where I feel like God wants us to be doing more and abounding more and more, as the Bible says. Number one, I think we need to increase in our love for church. And I'm going to show you that in the Bible here. Look, if you would, at 1 Thessalonians 3, 12. We just saw it. And the Lord, he's writing to the church of Thessalonica again. And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another and toward all men, even as we do toward you. He said, I want you to increase your love for the church, for this group of people here. Look, if you would, at the book of Hebrews. Just a few books toward the end there of the Bible. Just go forward in your Bible several pages to the book of Hebrews and look at chapter number 10, verse number 25. Hebrews 10, 25. Just about three or four books forward there from where you are. Hebrews 10, 25, the Bible reads, actually look at verse number 24. The Bible says, and let us consider one another to provoke unto love unto good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another and so much the more as you see the day approaching. You see, God says, in the local church, I want you to increase and abound in your love one to another. And he says, then I want you to increase and abound in the fact that you don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together. He says, as you see the day approaching, as you see that we're approaching the second coming of Jesus Christ, as you see that we're in the last days, if you will, God says, I want your church attendance to increase. He says, I want you to be so much the more faithful to church, not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together. You see, right now, in 2006, it's more important for you to be in church than it's ever been. It's more important in your personal life right now for you to be in church right now than it's ever been in your life. You see, we're living in a day where churches are cutting out the evening service all around us. Everywhere you go, you'll see the signs, service times. Service times, and it's like Sunday morning, one service. Or maybe they'll have the contemporary service and the traditional service. That way they can kind of play both sides, if you will. They can keep grandma and grandpa happy at 8 a.m. and then at 1130, they can have a rock concert for all the young people who want a jive for Jesus. Now look, we don't need to be eliminating a Sunday night and a Wednesday night service. This church will never eliminate the Sunday night and Wednesday night service. I promise you that. Because if anything, we don't need to be having less church, we need to be in church more. We need to be so much the more as we see the day approaching. We need to be coming to a place where we can assemble together with people that believe like we believe. With people that love us, and with people that love the God that we love, and love the Bible that we read, we need to be so much the more increasing and abounding with love one toward another and with not forsaking this assembly of ourselves together. This church is important. Being in church has never been more important. I was thinking about just how wicked our country is becoming and how wicked the world around us is becoming. All you have to do is just look at the news every day, and it's just like they're pushing it just a step further every day. Every day. It's almost like an ocean where the tide comes in a little bit, and then, you know, it goes back a little bit. But it seems like every time, they just push it a little further. And maybe they're pushed back a little bit here and there, but it's like two steps forward, one step back. They're destroying America, just pushing it a little further. The television pushes it a little further. The billboards are always just pushing it a little bit further, it seems like. Politicians with their wicked laws pushing it further and further. So much the more, church is important, so much the more you need to be able to come to a place where you can get something that will clear your head a little bit from all the garbage that's out there in the world. You've got to be able to come somewhere where you can hear somebody stand up and tell you, thus saith the Lord, that it's like a breath of fresh air to hear something that's true and right as opposed to all the garbage that we hear out there in the world. I was thinking about a guy, a guy called me a couple days ago from Brazil. A man called me on the church number, he called me from, I couldn't really understand what town he was from. It's a little difficult to understand his English because he spoke Portuguese, but he spoke very well English. But he's telling me what's going on down there in Brazil. And here's what he told me. He said that every Baptist church that he knows about in Brazil is part of this big denomination in Brazil. It's like a big convention or they're all yoked up into this, some national Baptist convention or whatever, this in the country of Brazil. And he told me that just this week they voted, and in Brazil they voted to allow women to be pastors of Baptist churches in the country of Brazil. So in the country of Brazil, all the Baptist churches get together in their little convention, their little fellowship, and they voted and they all decided, yes, we will allow women to pastor Baptist churches in the country of Brazil. And he's telling me just how ridiculous this is to him because he's been, I was a young man, he's 24 years old, and he's just a church member. He's not a pastor or anything. He goes to this church and his best friend's dad is the one who wrote the decision of why women should be allowed to be pastors. Now, that's so contrary to God's word. I mean, it's not even funny. We're not even going to go into it this morning, but there's so many scriptures saying that a woman should not be standing up and preaching in church and leading a church. It's not even funny. It just shows a radical departure. And I told him, I said, well, if they're letting women be pastors, they're probably wrong on a whole lot of other things too, I can just guess. Because as liberal as Baptist denominations are in America, even the Southern Baptists have not sunk to that level that I know of. It could have happened last week for all I know the way things go. But it's just a trend that's going on down there. And he told me this. He said, you know, I've been listening to your sermons. He said, I listen to about two of your sermons a week. And he said, right after I heard about this, he said, I went home and I listened to your two sermons from the 10th of September, which is two weeks ago. He said, I listened to the one on soul-winning versus evangelism. And I listened to the one about women's roles in society, like right after he heard about this. And he said, that sermon is exactly the problem that we're having in Brazil. He said, this is what happens. We go to church. Nobody teaches us how to win souls. And you know, I mean, you have to understand this guy's got a broken heart. He's reading the Bible. He's in a country. He can't even find an independent Baptist church. He's just struggling to learn the Bible on his own to study the Bible. And here he is, he says, nobody teaches us how to be a soul winner. He said, and he said, when you come to church, he said, all they teach us is just bring people to church, just bring people to church. And he said, we bring people to church. And the only thing that's ever preached from the pulpit is the gospel. Like that's all that's ever preached is just the plan of salvation. And he says, so you can't learn the Bible in church at all. You know, you don't learn the things of God. You don't learn right and wrong. You just don't learn the Bible. He says, if you want to learn the Bible, and I'm just telling you exactly what he told me. He said, if you want to learn the Bible, you have to go to the seminary put on by the denomination, you know, the big Bible college. He said, cause you're not going to learn the Bible in church. The church is just, they get up and just present the gospel and have a bunch of rock music and stuff. And he says, you can't even learn the Bible. So he says, the only way that you're really going to learn things and be taught the Bible from a preacher is to go to this seminary, to go to this Bible college. And it's put on by this liberal denomination. And so he said, and if you want to pastor a church in Brazil, you have to just spend years in the cemetery and they'll just corrupt your mind. He said, they teach that, you know, only the modern Bibles are right. Cause you know, the Portuguese language has an old Bible, you know, from three or 400 years ago, that's very similar to the King James, but no, they're promoting all the new Bibles. They're telling them that that wrong, that old Bible is wrong. Don't use it. He said, he's being persecuted in his church. People harass him for even having, you know, the old Bible, you know, for bringing it to church and for reading out of it. People harass him in his own church. He said that every pastor in this country has spent years at this liberal seminary just having their faith in the word of God shaken by some professor that doesn't believe the Bible. He believes in the modern, you know, new Bibles that come out and change things. He believes that women can be pastors, you know, he's telling the guy to use rock music to reach people and that's how they're going to get people saved. I'm going to tell you something, that's the future of America. That's a glimpse into the future of America. That's what's going on right now in America. And I felt so bad for this guy, I just wish I knew what to tell him. I wish I could tell him, well hey, you know, there's a great independent Baptist church in your town. Somebody's there in your town in Brazil standing up and preaching the Bible. You don't have to go to some liberal seminary to learn the Bible. You can go to an independent Baptist church like you're supposed to and be there Sunday morning and be there Sunday night and Wednesday night and go learn the Bible. He doesn't even have that opportunity. And I was thinking how, besides we take for granted the opportunity that we have in America, that we could go to at least a church that preaches the Bible. Turn if you would, right after I talked to him, I got off the phone with him, this was a couple nights ago, and I went to read the Bible to my children before bed. This is what I read. Look at the book of Haggai. This is the third book from the end of the Old Testament. I had just gotten off the phone with him, I just had this conversation, and it was kind of sad talking to this guy. I mean, he really wanted to know what was right for him to do. He knows he needs to be in church, but these churches are just liberal, they're yoked up in denominations, he doesn't know what to do. He's searching for a good church there. He was even saying that he believed that God wanted him to preach and be a pastor, but he doesn't want to go to this seminary and have his mind filled with garbage. This is what I read after I got off the phone with him. Haggai, everybody find the book of Haggai? Anybody having trouble finding it? Okay, it's in chapter 2 of Haggai. Look at verse number 11. This is what I read after I got off the phone with him. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, ask now the priests concerning the law, saying, If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt do touch bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any meat, shall it be holy? And the priests answered and said, No. Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean. Then answered Haggai and said, So is this people, and so is this nation before me, saith the Lord. And so is every work of their hands, and that which they offer there is unclean. Let me explain that to you a little bit. Here's what he's saying. He said, God's telling Haggai, I want you to go ask the priests. If they take something that's holy, if they take something that's clean, if they take something that's set apart to God, and if it touches, like let's say it touches somebody's clothes, or if it touches a blanket, or if it touches the wall, does that become holy? And they said, No, of course not. And he said, Okay, now, if you go and take something, and you go rub it up against a dead body of an animal, and so now it's unclean according to God's laws in the Old Testament, he says if you do that, and then you brush it up against somebody's clothes, you brush it up against their food, it said, pottage, if you brush it up against the wall, is it unclean? And they said, Well, yeah. They're spreading the disease. And what God is trying to teach us here, he said, that's exactly what this nation is like. He said, it's a combination between good and bad. You're putting something holy, and you're putting something that's unclean, you're putting them together. And he says, What do you get? Have you sanctified that which is unclean by putting it with something that's holy? No. He says, When you put something that's holy and something that's unclean together, it's all unclean. That's what he said. He said, That's the way this nation is to me. He says, What they offer to me in church is unclean. That's what Haggai is teaching here in chapter number two. And so that's the problem with this type of structure that they have in Brazil. They've yoked all these churches together into a convention. You know, it's their little fancy word for a denomination because they don't want to admit that it's a denomination. They got their little convention, their little fellowship, their little conference, their little denomination. And what happens? You get a bunch of Baptist churches together, the lowest common denominator, the unclean, perverts everything. And now it's like they all have decided that women can be Baptist. Do you think that everybody, do you think every Baptist in Brazil thinks that a woman should be preaching? No. Yet they're all part of a denomination now that says it's okay. And so now they're all sending their little students and little Johnny grows up and he goes to a college where he's taught that that's okay. You see, that's what happens when you put things together that are unclean and holy, it all gets unclean. That's why you have to be separated from this ungodliness that goes on and be an independent Baptist church. That's why this church is independent. That's why we're not receiving money from some denomination somewhere. That's why it's somebody in some other distant city in some office somewhere isn't calling me on the phone and saying, hey, Pastor Anderson, you can't preach that. I'll preach whatever I want because my orders come from the office that's up in heaven from Jesus Christ. And guess what? I already got all my orders. They're right here in my hand. I just have to take the time to read them and figure out what they say. And so church is more important than it's ever been. I'm talking about the local church. We're living in a day where people are destitute across this nation sometimes and across the world. They're searching for a church that will preach and believe the Bible. This church is important. You are part of this church. It's not me. It's a church. It's an assembly of people. We must band together and see to it that this church goes on and makes a great impact for the kingdom of God, that we see many people saved, that we thunder forth the truth that not everybody is willing to change. Not everybody is willing to give in to the world. Not everybody is willing to give in to these power players of the Baptist, fundamental Baptists who think that everybody has to drink the Kool-Aid and go with their liberal music and their liberal preaching and their liberal doctrine and send their students to their liberal Bible college. No, sir! This church, I don't care if I'm the last person breathing air, is never going that road. And we've got to stand up. And one man's not going to do it alone, let's face it. We've got to stand up and say, we will build Faithful Word Baptist Church. And it's going to be a lighthouse for the truth. It's going to be a lighthouse for the gospel. And it's going to be a lighthouse for not changing, for drawing a line in the sand and saying, this far and no further. We're not moving. We don't care what Arnold Schwarzenegger says that we're supposed to not preach against the queers or we'll lose our tax-exempt status in California. I'm glad I'm not in California, praise God. But I'm sure that our governor, Janet, I'm sure that she's not too happy about what I'm preaching this morning either and what I've been preaching the last few weeks. Hey, I don't really care because I answer to a higher authority. I'm subject under the higher power of Jesus Christ in heaven. And so we must stand firm and we must say, Faithful Word Baptist Church is important. The local church is important. Let's love the local church. Let's love this local church. And let's take it seriously like God takes it seriously. But number two, not only do we need to increase in our love for church, not only do we need to increase our love for one another. And before I move on to the next point, actually, I was thinking about this. Think about the city of Sodom and Gomorrah, the most wicked city that's ever lived in the face of the earth. And here's Sodom and Gomorrah. And did you know that God said that he would spare Sodom and Gomorrah, the judgment of God, if there were 10 righteous people in that city? So I wonder, out of the 300 some million people in the United States, how many people are there going to have to be? You say, we can't turn this whole country around. There's no way we can stem the tide. We don't have to turn the whole country around. But if we can at least just have enough righteous people in this country standing for God, loving God, to where God would withhold his judgment, from this country, and let us continue to live in peace as we live right now, and let us continue to raise our families for the glory of God, let us continue to have the freedom to go to the church that we want to go to. How many is it going to take? Where's that number? You see, look, if it was only 10 in Sodom and Gomorrah, I don't think God's really looking for that much, but we've got to make sure that the 10 is there, because the 10 wasn't there in Sodom and Gomorrah, and God rained down fire and brimstone and destroyed it. But if we want to stem the tide in America, no, we can't turn around our liberal government and no, we can't turn around all the Baptist movement. Hey, but you know what we can do? We can win as many people to the Lord as we can, and we can have a righteous remnant of people that love God in this country that would stand up and say, we love God, we stand by the Bible, and God will say, you know what, I'm not going to destroy America for the sake of the few that are still standing for me and loving me. So there is something that we can do. But number two, not only our love for church needs to increase more and more, our love for each other, our love needs to increase and abound, but right directly correlated to our love is we need to increase our holiness, is what the Bible says. Look if you would at 1 Thessalonians, back where we started the sermon. Look at 1 Thessalonians chapter three, and look at verse number 12. And I'm going to show you this correlation that God, God makes this parallel throughout the Bible many times, but in this chapter it especially stands out. Look at verse 12 of 1 Thessalonians 3, and the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another and toward all men, even as we do toward you. Look, this is the reason why he wants their love to abound. To the end he may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. See, he says here that if your love abounds, the end result of that in verse 13 is that your holiness will abound, your unblamableness before God will abound. This is what we were talking about on Wednesday night, where Jesus said this is the greatest commandment, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might. And he said and the second is like unto it thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. He said on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. And so he said if you would get your love right, I mean if you would love God like you should love God, if you would love your neighbor like you should love your neighbor, he says the result of that is going to be personal holiness, where you're living unblameable before God, where you're keeping God's commandments. That's what he's saying here. Look at chapter 4 verse 1. It says, Furthermore, then we beseech you brethren and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so you would abound more and more. For you know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus, for this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that's talking about you being made holy, your sanctification that you should abstain from fornication. Verse number 7, For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness. And you see the direct correlation here between he goes back and forth, because then in verse number 10 and 11 he's talking about your love again. And so he's going back and forth between this idea of, I want you to increase and abound. Your love, I know you're a very loving church, but he says it's not enough. I want you to do more. He says, I know you're a clean living holy kind of church, but I want to be more. And he goes back and forth between those two ideas, because they're one and the same. The person who's living an unholy life is not a loving person, period. Don't tell me that they are. Don't tell me, if you're shacked up with your boyfriend or girlfriend, hey, don't tell me that you love God, and don't tell me that you love this church, and don't tell me that you love the people of God, because you're part of the problem. You see, when you're out just living in sin, and whatever your pet sin is, you know, fornication is the one that's listed here, but whatever your lack of holiness is, your lack of separation from the world, your indulging in the world's entertainment, the lust of concupiscence is mentioned in verse number 5, lusting after, that could be lusting after the home shopping network, you know, lusting after the commercials where you feel like you just have to spend and have everything and all the toys, and you're living your life for money instead of serving God, or it could be the lust of physical things, like a man looking at filthy pictures and so forth. Hey, look, when your lust and your holiness, when the lust is superseding the holiness, don't tell me there's love there. See, everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love. See, love comes from God, and the more you walk closely with God, the more that you walk in holiness and righteousness, the more loving person you'll be. That's why most people in the world don't love you. Have you figured that out yet? Have you figured out, have you ever had friends, I mean, I can just think of all the friends that I've had growing up that I thought, man, it's my best friend, you know, lifelong friend. Where are they now? You know, as soon as something goes wrong, they're gone, because they don't have love for you. They just want to be your friend because you have something to offer them maybe, or they can get something from you, or they can use you some way, or they, you're fun to be around. But you know, not everybody's always fun to be around. Nobody's fun to be around all the time. Sometimes you're not fun to be around at all, and that's when you find out who your friends are, right? And so, hey, the people that love you are the people who obey God's commandments, and that love God, and that know God. You say, who do you love more? Do I love God more, or do I love my wife more? I love God more than I love my wife. Who do I love more, my children or God? I love God more than I love my children. But I still love my children more than the guy who loves his children more than he loves God. Because when you love God supremely, you have an increased capacity for love. I mean, you learn what love really is, and your love can go a lot further. And so the person who puts other people and their love for things and their love for other people before God, that person has little or no real love. You see, love is when you're willing to lay down your lives for the brethren. Love is like first you, then me. You know, let me prefer others better than myself. That's love. Love is where the Bible says, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. See, love is where I do something to express my love by putting someone else before me. And you see, the love that's in the world is not God's kind of love. And so if you love God supremely, then you're keeping his commandments. If you love your neighbor secondarily, then you're keeping God's commandments because you don't want to hurt other people. There's no man liveth unto himself and no man dieth unto himself. When you sin, somebody else always gets hurt. When you don't show up for church, somebody else could be negatively affected by that. Did you know that? Somebody could be discouraged because they're looking to see you there and you're not there. You discourage them. Or how about when you get into sin and you say, hey, I'm not hurting anybody. You know what? You know who you're hurting when you get into sin? When you watch a program on TV that you shouldn't watch, you know who you're hurting? You're hurting all the people that you could have won to the Lord, but you're going to end up screwing up your life because you filled your mind with trash and you didn't be a soul winner like you should have been because you were so into the world. You know who you end up hurting? You end up hurting your children when you're not the godly righteous parent that they need to have. See, whenever you sin, you're always hurting somebody else. Always. God teaches us that throughout the Bible. Think about the men who tried to cast Daniel into the lion's den. They lied about Daniel. What happened to them? They got thrown in the lion's den themselves and their family and their wife and their children. You say, that's not fair. Well, God's not the one that did it. I mean, it was the king. It was king Darius that threw them all in there. But hey, God's just trying to show us when you sin against God, other people get hurt all the time. And so if you love people, if you love the city of Phoenix here, if you love the state of Arizona, if you love the United States of America, if you love your fellow man, if you love God, then you will sell out for God and say, I'm going to live for God. I'm going to love God. I'm going to be in church. I'm going to read my Bible. I'm going to pray. I'm going to have stain from the filthiness of the flesh, and I'm going to live a separated, holy, clean life. Because that's the best thing you can do for everybody. That's the best thing you can do for your family, to make your family happy, to make your family blessed by God. That's the best thing that you can do for America by winning people to Christ and stemming the tide of wickedness in this country. That's the best thing that you can do for anybody. And if you don't do that, it's a lack of love that's not motivating you to increase your holiness. Why in America in 2006 are Baptist churches everywhere decreasing the holiness? Look at the music of today. Look at the music five years ago. Let's see which one's more holy. Look at the clothing standards. And obviously we don't have a rule about the way that we dress here, of course. We don't have any rules about it. We just preach what the Bible says. But let's look at just what people are wearing to the Baptist church and what's being preached from the Baptist pulpit as far as clothing. Let's see if it was...do you think it was more holy like 30 years ago, or you think we've increased the holiness, right? No, we haven't. No, we've decreased the holiness across the board. See, it's wrong. It's a sin. God says, I want you to increase more and more. But not only should we be increasing in holiness, not only should we be increasing our love, and those two go hand in hand. But number three, I have to skip a little bit of this for sake of time, but number three I had down was that we need to increase our faith. I love the attitude of the disciples in Luke chapter 17 verse number five where it says, and the apostles said unto the Lord, increase our faith. They said increase our faith. We're not satisfied with the level of our faith. Now what does faith mean? Faith is when you believe God's word. That's faith. You believe God's word and that causes you to see something that you can't see with your physical eyes, but you can see what's going to happen because you read it in God's word and you know it's going to happen, you believe it. See, faith is not something where you just say, well, I just believe by faith that God's going to bless me. It's like, okay, well show me in the Bible where God's going to bless me. Now faith is where you say I've done this and so that God told me to do in the Bible and so I know God's going to bless me. See, faith is always based on God's word and so God says that we need to be increasing our faith. We need to be having constantly more faith, more times where we just step out and do what God told us to do even though it doesn't make sense, even though we can't see how it's going to end up good. We just do it by faith. But anyway, I'm kind of skipping that one because I ran out of time. But number four, the Bible says that we need to increase our praises to God. Psalm 71, 14, and I'll just read this for you. But I will hope continually and will yet praise thee more and more. You see, God says more and more as we go through our life, we need to be praising God more. We need to be increasing in our praise. What does that mean? Does that mean that we get together and wave our hands and have some kind of a praise service? No, here's what it means. Praising God is when you tell God how great he is, when you tell God how wonderful he is. Did you know that the command that's given in the Bible more than any other command is this word, praise? You know, if you look at imperative sentences in the Bible where God tells you, you know, thou shalt do this or pray without ceasing or preach the gospel, you know, those are imperative commands like you preach or you pray or read the Bible or study the Bible. The number one command given in the Bible is praise. Did you know that? Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times, God is telling you to praise him. See, God is longing for you to praise him and acknowledge how good he is all throughout the book of Psalms. Praise the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever. Oh, praise the Lord with a loud voice. Praise the Lord on an instrument of ten strings with everything that has breath. Praise the Lord. You see, God is worthy of our praise. You say, boy, I'm just so depressed, I'm just so down. I just struggle to even make it to church this morning and I just want to throw in the towel. Hey, you need to be praising God more and more. The only way you're going to increase in holiness, the only way you're going to increase in your church attendance and in your love for church is when you're praising God more and more because that's what's going to give you the strength you want. You say, what are you talking about? Look, if you sat down and said, you know what, I'm going to spend five minutes right now just praising God. Well, in order to praise God, you're going to have to think about all the good things that God has done for you. You're going to have to think about the greatness of God toward you. You're going to have to think about the greatness of God and the things that he did in the Bible. Boy, you start thinking along those lines, you know, instead of just complaining to God and telling God all the things that he didn't do for you and the prayers that he didn't answer. But when you sit down and get on your knees and just say, God, you've been so good to me, God, you saved me. I was, look at the road that I was on. If I hadn't been saved, I would have gone to hell. But not only that, just look at the way my life was going, look at the mess that I could be in and God, you've given me some direction in my life and you've taken me out of the mess I was in and you've made me a child of God, that you've made me a soldier in the army of the Lord, you've given me a purpose and a cause and something that's worth living for. And God, you've forgiven all my sins, you're never even going to mention them to me again? I mean, what would you give to never have anything you've ever done wrong brought up to you again? Boy, that's phenomenal. And so when you start thinking about the fact that God is never even going to mention to your sins to you when you get to heaven, boy, that ought to have you shouting and praising God saying, glory to God, what a great God. And then you start to think about how the world's been around for 6,000 years approximately, 6,000 years. And in the last 6,000 years, how many people had the whole Bible in their hand? Not a whole lot, right? I mean, before Jesus came along, they didn't have the New Testament scriptures. And even after Jesus was there, you know, they were still compiling them and putting them together. It was still being written for about, you know, another 70 years. And so many people throughout history have not had access to the Bible. So many thousands of years went by and Jesus said, he said, take heed what you hear. He said, for many prophets and righteous men have desire to see those things which ye see and have not seen them and to hear those things which ye hear and have not heard them. He said, do you understand that the people in the Old Testament would have loved to have known the whole story from Genesis to Revelation? I mean, they would have loved to have known that Jesus Christ was going to come and exactly how he was going to die on the cross and exactly what he was going to preach and how he was going to be buried and raised again from the dead and they'd love to read the book of Revelation about his second coming and they would love to know that they have every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Hey, when you get that idea in your head that we have the whole Bible. We're living in 2006. It's in 7-11. You can buy this thing. You can buy it at the Dollar Tree. But I have me praising God. Praise the Lord that I'm born in 2006. Praise the Lord I can read the whole Bible. Praise the Lord. I can walk outside that door if I want to and go knock on the door and win somebody to Christ and change their whole eternity and take somebody who's on their way to hell and bring them up out of the pit that they're in and they can be saved and born again and blow up. You say, why went so many and nobody got saved? Hey, praise the Lord that we even had a chance that somebody might have got saved. I mean, what kind of an opportunity is that? I mean, what kind of an opportunity is it if one person gets saved a year? That'd be phenomenal and way more people than that get saved. But tell me, what's that worth to you if you save one soul a year? Praise God. I mean, that person's whole eternity has changed for the next billions and billions of years from hell to heaven. That's a big deal. And so, I mean, we go on and on in that category. But see, instead of thinking about all the things that are bad, if we sit down and think about all the good things, all the good opportunities, you say, oh, 2006, it's such a wicked society. Hey, what about all the good opportunities we have like the whole Bible? Like the freedom to go knock on doors without, you know, getting thrown in jail? Like the freedom to have this church service this morning? Yeah, you could go on and on. And then not only that, that's one aspect of praising God. But then we could go to the whole aspect of just going through the whole Bible, all the things that God has done in the Bible and just telling them how great they are. God, that was so great. The way that you parted the Red Sea, the way that you pictured baptism. When you parted the Red Sea, it says that the children of Israel were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea. And it's so great, that picture, how you took the people out of the land of Egypt and the bondage and slavery that sin brings. You applied the blood to the door of their house and they were saved and born again. And then they came out of that place and they went across the Red Sea into the wilderness where it was hard, but on the other side of that wilderness was the Promised Land, the land of milk and honey. And you say, God, what a great book. What a phenomenal story when I read the Bible. See how you just praise God? See, I think that's what we need, to be praising God more and more. If we would praise God more, it would revolutionize your life. It's the number one command given by God the most amount of times. He's just begging you, praise me. You say, boy, isn't that kind of self-centered of God? Yes. He is the center of the whole universe. I mean, he has the right to demand, let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Let every animal and every plant and every human being of things in hell and in things on the earth and in things up in heaven, he says, are going to bow one day and confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. He said, I want to be praised by everything that breathes. Look, let's praise God more and more. Boy, you could probably get on God's good side if you did that. If you were praising God, you could get on his good side. He might do something for you. And not only that, it'll change your whole attitude because you'll start focusing on the good things that God has done. And it'll so overshadow, I mean, you think about never having your sins mentioned to you again, that's going to overshadow some of the things that you're going through in your life. It's going to overshadow some of the pain that we go through in our life when you think about the fact that every sin's been forgiven, you're never going to be punished for your sins, that Jesus was punished for you. Wow. So that's what God admonishes us when he says, we need to praise God, those three words, more and more. You say, I'm already praising God. Praise him more and more. You say, I already love this church. Love it more. You say, I'm already living a clean and holy life. Hey, be more holy. See what you can do to be more holy than you are right now. You say, well, I have a lot of faith. I mean, I step out of it. Hey, have faith more, God says. Increase your faith. Hey, number four, increase your praises to God, it'll change your life. But number five and lastly, we need to be increasing in our utterance. You say, what does utterance mean? Well, let me show you what it means. Look at 2 Corinthians 8. This is in the New Testament, Acts, Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 8, verse number seven. So you have Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 8, and look at verse number seven. And this comes up so many times in the Bible, this idea of increasing, of growth, of doing more. Look, if you would, at Acts 8, I'm sorry, 2 Corinthians 8, 7. Therefore, as ye abound in everything, he said, I want you just abounding and increasing in everything. As you abound in everything, in faith and utterance and knowledge, he says, I want you to keep learning more and more about the Bible, no more. And in all diligence and in your love to us, look at this, see that you abound in this grace also. He says, I want you to be increasing in your utterance. You say, well, what does utterance mean? Well, flip over in your Bible just a few books toward the back, Ephesians 6, 19. And this word utterance is only used a few times in the Bible. I think it's used about, I don't know, off the top of my head maybe like four or five times. And it's always talking about the same thing. Look at Ephesians chapter number six, verse 19. The Bible reads in Ephesians 6, 19, and for me, this is Paul speaking, that utterance may be given unto me. And then he explains what he means by that. That I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the Gospel, for which I am an ambassador in bonds, that therein I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. Here's what he's praying. He's saying, look, I'm in jail for preaching the Gospel. That's what he's saying in Ephesians chapter six here. Paul is writing this from jail. And he says, I want you to pray for me. Here's my prayer request. Did I get out of jail? Is that what he said? No. Here's my prayer request. You know, it always cracks me up like missionary prayer letters. Pray for us that we get $3,000.543. You know how we're like? They give you these exact dollar amounts. It's like, what they really mean is like, send us the money. But they're like, just pray for us that we get $3,573.45. But he says, no. He says, I want you to pray for me that utterance may be given unto me. And he says that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the Gospel, for which I am an ambassador in bonds. He says that's why I'm in jail. That's why I'm in bonds. That therein I may speak boldly as I ought to speak. He's saying, well, just pray for me that because I'm in jail, I don't get intimidated and stop preaching the Gospel boldly. Can you imagine that prayer request? I mean, he's already in jail for preaching. He says, just pray for me that I don't tone it down just because I'm in jail. That I don't lose my boldness. But what is he talking about utterance? Well, he said right there that he may open his mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the Gospel. He says utterance is talking about him uttering words out of your mouth is when you speak. And when the Bible talks about utterance, it's talking about you speaking the Gospel to somebody else. It's talking about you opening your mouth and giving somebody the Gospel. He says I want you to unbound and increase in utterance in 2 Corinthians 8.7. And then in Ephesians 6, we saw what that means. Look at Colossians. This is just a few more books toward the end. Two books over. Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. Look at Colossians 4.3. And we'll see this again. With all praying also for us, Colossians 4.3, that God would open unto us a door of utterance to speak the mystery of Christ for which I am also in bonds. That I may make it manifest. Manifest means I can make it plain. I can make it easy for people to see and understand. That I may make it manifest as I ought to speak. He says pray for me that my utterance would increase and not decrease because I'm in jail. He says I want to have more opportunities to preach the Gospel. I want to have more opportunities to see people saved. You see, God wants us to increase in our utterance. Now, what's the difference between utterance and maybe preaching the Gospel? Well, from my studying this, because I was looking at all the times the word utterance was used, it seems more like preaching the Gospel is going out, knocking doors, or finding people and getting them saved. But utterance is kind of a door that God opens for you where you're with somebody and maybe a friend, maybe a loved one, maybe a coworker, and you have that opportunity where maybe it's just you and them alone. And that's always the best opportunity. Whenever you're alone with somebody, you should be giving them the Gospel if they're not saved. You know, I understand sometimes they're in a group and everything and there's people around and working and stuff's going on. But whenever you're alone with somebody, just as a rule of thumb, just remember that I said that, that that's the time for utterance. That's the time when you open your mouth and start telling them the Gospel. You know, you're driving down the road with that coworker, perfect time to start talking about it. You say, well, I don't feel comfortable. Hey, that's where the boldness comes in. That's why Paul said, pray for me that boldness will be given me in all utterance to make known the mystery of the Gospel. See, when you're driving down the road, when you're with that loved one, with that relative, hey, open your mouth and make known the mystery of the Gospel. You've got to increase in that. You say, well, I've just never been good at that. Well, push yourself, move forward, higher ground. Become a better Christian where you're opening your mouth boldly, making known the mystery of the Gospel. See, if you go out soul winning, then you'll learn how to do it better, you know, because you'll get more experience preaching the Gospel. God's going to bless you and he's going to open that door of utterance for you. He opened it for the Apostle Paul because the Apostle Paul had been faithfully preaching the Gospel for years. That's why he said, all the saints salute you, especially they that are of Caesar's household. He said, when I was in Rome and I was writing to the Philippians, he said, when I was in Rome in jail, the wicked king of the whole empire, Caesar, Nero, one of the most wicked men who ever led, he said, I won some of his family to the Lord because I took advantage of every opportunity to win people to Christ. He said, while I was in jail, I won people to the Lord. Now they're saints of God. People said, I won to the Lord in Caesar's household of all people. Good night. He took opportunity whenever he could to preach the Gospel. They don't just restrict your soul winning to when it's time to go knock doors, and that's great, but let it carry over into every area of your life where you're just constantly ready to give an answer to every man that asks you concerning the hope that you have in Christ Jesus, as the Bible says. Look at Philippians, just one book previous. Look at chapter number one of Philippians. Still on this point of increasing our otherness, increasing our soul winning. It says in Philippians chapter one, verse number nine, and this I pray, that your love may abound. We see that again. Yet more and more in knowledge. Again, knowledge abounding. He said, be increasing our knowledge constantly. You don't know it all. You don't know the whole Bible. Keep increasing your knowledge. And in all judgment, that you may approve things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ. That's the holiness. See how these points are just all side by side in all these different scriptures? They all go hand in hand. He says that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ. There's your holiness. Here's the soul winning. Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God. You see how all five points of the sermon were in those two verses. Did you catch that? We've got the praising God. We've got the living without offense before God. That's the holiness. We've got the love. We've got the knowledge. We've got all of it. Because God says, I want you to increase and abound in your preaching of the gospel because I want you to be filled with the fruits of righteousness. The Bible says the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life and he that win its souls is wise. The fruit of righteousness when you bring forth other righteous children of God that you want to the Lord. Hey, he says I want that to increase. He said I want you to be like a fruitful vine. I want you to bring forth people into the kingdom of God more than you ever have in your life. You see, now, right now, in 2006, on September the 24th, let's push a reset button and say, hey, I was a soul winner before. Now I'm going to be a better soul winner than I've ever been in my life. You know, I used to open my mouth and talk to friends and relatives, but now I'm going to do it more than I've ever done before. You know, I read the Bible up to this point. Now I'm just going to attack the Bible and read it like I've never read it before. You know, I praised God a few times once in a while when I thought about thanking God for something, but now I'm just going to make it a part of my life to be praising God on a daily basis. You see, today is the day to increase and abound. Today is the day to reach for higher ground. Today is the day to put aside any excuses of your life why you don't live the holy life you're supposed to live and just say I'm going to increase and abound by the grace of God in all five, six areas that God is admonishing me to push myself in. So what's the conclusion? Well, let me read a few great verses for you in conclusion. Proverbs 4.18, But the path of the just is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. The way of the wicked is as darkness. They know not of what they stumble. And then Psalm 17.15, the Bible says, As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied when I await with thy likeness. David said, I'll never be satisfied in my life until I wake up one day and I'm just like Jesus Christ because I'm in the image of Jesus Christ. And that's going to be when I get to heaven, is what he said. He said, I'm never satisfied. I'm always pushing forward. I'm always moving forward for more, more, more. And here's the encouragement. I'm going to close with this. The only way that you'll ever fail in the Christian life, and believe me, there are failures in the Christian life. There are people who are all washed up. My whole life I've seen people wash up. They live for God for a little while and they wash up. They fall by the wayside. There's only one way to fail, and that's by quitting. That's the only way. The Bible says a good man falls seven times and rises up again. And so the only way to fail is by quitting. Look, you're not going to be the greatest Christian in the world tomorrow. You're not going to be super-Christian and be like Jesus Christ tomorrow. But I'm going to tell you something. You can be a little better tomorrow than you were today. You could increase this week a little more than you did last week. Can't you do that? I mean, nobody's asking you to be perfect tomorrow, but you can increase and abound, can't you? And you say, well, it took me 20 years to get to where I want to be in the Christian life. And then I'm still not where I want to be because I'm not like Jesus. Hey, look, if it takes 20 years or 30 years or 40 years, maybe you're a slow learner. Maybe you're slow at this thing of Christianity or you're slow to get people saved. Hey, that's okay. But as long as you're increasing and abounding, just make this your prayer. God, can I just be a little bit better than I was yesterday in these six areas? Not just one of them. I want all six. And I want to just be a little bit better in these areas. And not only that, but as I'm going better and better and better and better, just, hey, just don't quit. If you don't quit, trust me, over time you will increase and abound as long as you don't quit. The people who get washed up are the people who throw in the towel and quit. But as long as you're just making little steps forward, even if, you know, hey, big steps are great, but as long as you're increasing in some way, as long as you're abounding in some way, as long as you're doing more than you were last week, hey, just keep on going. Don't quit. But if you start moving backwards, that's just a downward spiral. You're not going anywhere. And if you stagnate, you will go backwards. You will fail. You will quit. You must increase and abound more and more. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. God, I thank you so much for the Bible, the encouragement here, God. I thank you so much that my faith is not based on just conjecture, but I can actually look and read a written account of times when you actually came through for people. And it's a factual account, and I know that...