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

you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you The Bible reads, The Bible reads, And even things without life giving sound, whether pipe or heart, except they give a distinction in the sounds. How shall it be known what is pipe to heart? For if the trumpet give an unknown, uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself into the battle? So likewise ye, except be utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? For he shall speak into the air. There it may be so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification. Therefore, if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me. Even so, ye, for as much as ye are zealous for spiritual gifts, seek that ye may excel to the edifying of the church. Wherefore, let him that speaketh in an unknown tongue, pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also. I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also. Else when thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that occupied the room of the unleart say, Amen, at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest? For thou verily giveth thanks well, for the other is not edified. I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all. Yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue. Brethren, be not children in understanding, how be it? In malice be ye children, but in understanding be men. In the law it is written, with men of other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people, and yet for all that will they not hear me, saith the Lord. Wherefore tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not. For prophesying serveth not for them that believe not, but for them which believe. If therefore the whole church be come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad? But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all. And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest, and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth. How is it then, brethren? When you come together, every one of you have a psalm, have a doctrine, have a tongue, have a revelation, have an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying. If any man speak with an unknown tongue, let it be by two, or at the most by three, and that by course, and let one interpret. But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church, and let him speak to himself and to God. The prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge. If any thing be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace. For he may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be comforted. And the spirit of the prophets are subject to the prophets. For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, and in all churches of the saints. Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak. But they are commanded to be under obedience, as also say of the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. What? Came the word of God out from you, or came it unto you, unto you only? If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord. But if any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant. Wherefore, brethren, covet to prophesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues. Let all things be done decently and in order. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for the whole entire Bible. We thank you for the words that we have read. And God, we thank you for just being who you are. Thank you for the souls that have been saved, and the future souls that we will save, God. Fill past the birds with your spirit. Allow for him to preach your boldness. Allow for ears to be attended to your word, and that we can take notes and be able to meditate on the words that are said today. We praise you, and we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, before I start preaching my sermon for this morning, I forgot to announce that we are going to have a baptism after the church service, so if you'd like to stick around for that, we'd love to have you be here for the baptism and if you are here and you're saved today and you've never been baptized, and I'll say biblically baptized or scripturally baptized, I encourage you to get baptized today. There's no reason not to. There's no reason to hesitate. And when I say scripturally baptized, I mean it's by full immersion, not just a sprinkling. I know me, for one, I was baptized as a baby where I had some sprinkling on my head, and that doesn't count. That's not a biblical thing. I mean, people do all kinds of things to the children, but the baptism demonstrates your belief in Jesus Christ. Little babies can't put their trust in Jesus. So if that's the only baptism you've ever had and you're saved today, I encourage you to get baptized. And then the other thing I just bring up too is that some people actually did get a proper baptism, but it might have been before you were saved. So the condition that we see in Acts Chapter 8, when Philip was speaking to the Ethiopian eunuch, and the Ethiopian eunuch says, hey, here's water. What doth hinder me to be baptized? So he asked him, why can't I be baptized with water right here? And he said, if thou believeth with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And he baptizes him. So I would just say this, is that the prerequisite for getting baptized is you have to believe. And of course, that is the saving faith. When you put your trust in Jesus Christ, he saves you. It doesn't make sense to get baptized prior to that. I mean, I know people do. I get it. You know, sometimes people think they're saved and they get baptized. But just to make sure everything's settled, it's a great idea. Just get baptized after you get saved. And we are happy to do that for you. You can do it today or any other day that you'd like to just talk to me about that and let me know. But we've got everything. It's going to be all set up right after service. And we've got a change of garment for you as well. So that all being said, let's get into the sermon. I don't know where I set my backup recorder down. Someone could find that recorder for me, one of the ushers. Maybe you could find that recorder for me. I appreciate it. Not that big of a deal. We started off in 1 Corinthians chapter 14. 1 Corinthians chapter 14 is a chapter that is it talks a lot about the gift of being able to speak with other tongues. Thank you. And that's not what this sermon is about. But I'm going to be focusing in on just the last verse of this chapter that says, let all things be done decently and in order. And that sums up this whole chapter because it's talking about you know, hey, there's, you know, people are given the gift of being able to speak with another tongue. It means they can speak with another language. Okay. It's not just a bunch of gibberish or people just saying a bunch of random stuff that no one really knows what they're saying. It's another language. Okay. It's a gift that God gave to the apostles to be able to do this and to reach more people ultimately. But what's happening then and as churches are being established and you have people who are able to speak with other tongues, he's setting in order the way things ought to be done. And the principle that we get from this is from that last statement there. Hey, this is the house of God. So everything needs to be done decently and in order. And it's okay if there were more than one person that wants to preach. There's people who have things that maybe God's revealed to them. God's laid on their heart. And they want to be able to speak. But you can't just have people just speaking out of turn and just kind of having a free for all when it comes to the service. There needs to be order in the service. Things need to be done decently. It needs to be done in order. Now, I'm going to segue from that just with this principle in mind and teach what I want to teach this morning. And I'm speaking primarily to the members of our church. Okay, if you're visiting, you can still gain a lot of truth from this sermon. But I want to speak to the members of our church. And if you've been coming here for any length of time, if you got put this way, if you consider yourself a member of our church, you're a member of our church. We don't keep membership roles. Okay, this is a body of Christ here. It's made up of born again believers. So if you are here today as a believer in Jesus Christ, obviously you're a member of this church right now as we gather together in the body of Christ. But primarily for things being done the way they're done, I'm going to be speaking to those of you who consider yourself to be, you know, members of our church because I want things to be done decently and in order within our church. Turn if you would to 1 Timothy chapter 3. Now, I also want to say this because you know, the way that I preach sermons, it is thoughtful and I want you to understand that too. When I come up here and prepare a sermon and preach a sermon, there is a lot of thought that goes into it and even how I'm going to deliver a particular sermon I'm going to preach. And oftentimes when I preach on sins, especially certain particular sins, you might see me get more animated and more angry about those sins and that is it's not an accident but it's also not unnatural. Like it's not a fake, it's not a circus, it's not a sideshow where I'm up here trying to pretend to be angry about something. But I'm allowing the anger towards sin to come forth and just be revealed. And I think that's an appropriate response for various subject matters. Right? As the Bible says you know, hey, stamp aloud, cry aloud, stamp with my foot, you know, and preach and show my people their sin and show Israel their sin. There's other verses in Scripture that talk about that style of preaching, that type of preaching, but it's not for every single sermon, right? Like you're not always just going to be up here ranting and raving and screaming and stuff. And also when it comes to teaching, you know, you don't always teach that way either. You want to warn when something is very egregious, very, you know, I was ranting and raving about fornication. That's a really, really serious sin. And that's something that like, you know, hey, when you see how angry that makes me because of how bad of a sin it is, because of how destructive that sin is, you need that to hit home. It needs to be, have that much force to be like, whoa, okay, this is a little bit different, right? You need to see that. And I think that's an appropriate way of teaching. But what I want to teach about today isn't that like as serious in that regard, okay? And I'm not going to get all angry about this. And also what I want to preach on is with keeping the order within the church, I don't want people to do this because they would be worried that you're going to make me angry or something. So this truth is not about me or me being angry. It's about I want everyone to do their best individually. And I'm careful with this the way I'm wording things because I love everyone that comes to our church. And I want you to come and I want you to keep coming and I want you to grow. Okay, ultimately. And individually we all have our own areas that we struggle with and we're trying to improve and we're trying to grow and we're trying to do better. Right? Hopefully you are, right? I mean I know I am. I'm always trying to do things better and trying to improve. And I think having that same spirit here collectively we all want to do better. We want to improve even as a church. Right? I have a vision of our church where I want our church to be the most excellent, the best church just in the world. Right? Like that's what I would like to see. Now how is that going to happen? Well the church is collectively it's you and me. I mean there's a lot of things that go into a church being awesome. Right? Being the best church. Being one that man I am proud to be part of that church. I love this church. There's so many things I love about this church. And I want that to be shown in all of our actions. And even in the most basic things. Right? Now we don't force people to do anything in this church. And I don't even want to make it sound like, well you say you don't force it but you really do force it. You know what I mean? So it's not like that. Okay? We have ministries here and you can choose to serve and to do and to help and to do all the things that we need to get done here. It's still all up to you. I mean people who play instruments I'm not forcing anyone to play any musical instruments here. But you know what better is everybody when people are playing. Right? I love having the piano and the guitars and the flutes and every other instrument that people are offering up their time and serving here. I think it's wonderful. I think it's great. Now of course at the end of the day I'm the administrator of all of that so I'm going to try to make sure everything, even with the music is done decently and in order and is going to be presented appropriately. Right? But it's still up to you individually to just choose if you want to do that. And there's many other things that we do as a church even down to just the basic cleaning. Right? And again with that that boils down to if you choose to help out or not. No one is forced to do that. No one is forced to do any of the work that you do here. So I don't want to make you think that you have to. However we are here to serve God. We are here hopefully to improve and to be the best people that we can be. And as I've been going through kind of this series that's like this, it's not an official series but it just seems to be these different subjects keep coming up in my mind at least while I'm studying scripture and figuring out what I want to preach on of characteristic traits and things that maybe aren't always taught at home but I think should be taught at home. Right? Basic I call them basic but it doesn't have it's not always in every home having proper manners and having good work ethic and having this type of an attitude that could make you a very upstanding not just an upstanding person or an upstanding citizen but an upstanding Christian. Someone that could be a good ambassador for Christ that is going to be very reflective of the qualities that the Bible puts forward as being a Christian, as being a person of God as being a child of God. You want to be representative of our Holy Father in heaven. And so when I see things within the church I like to preach on them because it's an opportunity for us to get better. And this is an area where like I said, I'm not like angry about it and I don't want people to feel compelled that you have to do something good or else Pastor Burns is going to be mad about it. That's not the spirit in which I'm trying to put forth this message about this subject. I'm going to cover a lot about some of the little things but there's a lot to take forward and even in the small things there's teaching that will apply broadly. And oddly enough I didn't have this in my sermon notes but I believe it's in Luke and I just quoted I just had to preach on this not that long ago that if you're not able to handle the smallest of matters like if you're not faithful in that which is least the Bible teaches hey who's going to give you that which is great? Like if you can't even handle someone else's stuff then who's going to give you your own? Right? And this is the principle that the Lord uses He looks to see how people work how you are, how faithful you are in even the smallest of matters to then determine am I going to give this person more work to do? Now here's the thing like as a believer, as a child of God we should want to do, hey I want to do the greatest work for God that I can. I want God to be so pleased with me. I want God to be so happy for me. I want to be able to earn a lot of rewards also in heaven. I want to have Him say when I when I enter into those pearly gates hey well done now good and faithful servant. I would love for that to be the case for me personally well how are we going to do that? Well you got to start humble and you start small. And you have to have the right mindset and the right attitude towards doing work even on the smallest of matters. Even on the little things. Because if you can't be faithful in those little things then why in the world are you going to be entrusted to do anything more? Right? I mean does that make sense? But if you can show yourself faithful like hey this guy, he'll do anything. I mean if I just ask for anything to be done it gets done. It gets done well. I don't have to go back there and redo the same work that they did or whatever. You know people can show themselves faithful in that then you're going to be promoted to be doing more work. And this is something that we ought to also be teaching our children. And start them early. And I try my best and you know again none of us are perfect. I try my best with my children at home to when you do something do it good. Do it right. Don't just be in a haste and in a hurry to just oh mom said I got to do this and then I'm done and I move on. Right? We want them to do it right. And often times doing things right might take a little bit longer. But everything that we do we ought to be doing it as if we're serving the Lord. And I'll get to that verse in a little bit that's coming up a little bit later in the sermon. But I had you turn to 1 Timothy chapter 3. Verse number 14 the Bible reads these things write I unto thee hoping to come unto thee shortly. But if I tarry long that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God which is the church of the living God the pillar and ground of the truth. And there's just a few points here out of these couple verses I want to just highlight. And that's one the holiness of church right the sanctity of church itself and the importance of church is that he says look you need to know how to behave yourself in the house of God. And look this is New Testament he's not just talking about like the Old Testament temple or tabernacle he's talking about the church of the living God which is what the next phrase clarifies even further the house of God is the church of the living God which also is by the way the pillar and ground of the truth. So this is the church is the place where people ought to be able to come to and say hey this is the pillar this is the ground of the truth you want to come and hear the truth come on into church. This is a place that should be ready to distribute the truth to people and you know what though we need to be able to know how we ought to behave ourself then because this is also the house of God. I mean if you were to go over to someone else's house right and we should be raising our children you go over to a guest's house you go over to someone else's house there's a certain level of behavior that's expected out of them right. Now at home things might be a little bit different you're more comfortable you get away with some more stuff you kind of let your hair down a little bit and the kids are able to do some more things maybe be a little bit more wild and whatever at home in that setting that's appropriate. But when you leave your house and you go to someone else's house there's a different behavior pattern that's expected and again I know for many of you this may be like why are you even saying this I'm saying this because it needs to be taught in church because unfortunately often times it's not taught at home and in the family or sometimes we forget about it and we become slack in our responsibilities as parents on how we ought to be raising our children and when you come to church we should view church as the house of God. Okay we're coming into God's house now no matter like if you're invited to someone else's house you'll probably have a different level of behavior depending on how you view that person as well right. I mean if you get invited to like I think of me as a man to just a friend's house you'll be more comfortable the way that you behave is going to be different than say when I get invited to my boss's house at work right I have an employer I work for a CEO of a company so when he invites me over to my house I'm going to behave a particular way because of who he is and it just makes sense or if you were get invited to some you know maybe maybe someone that has some other type of status or whatever you're going to go or someone who's just more of a stranger to you and isn't as close you're going to be just really making sure you got your good manners and you're and you're appropriate and all that you say and do well we ought to look at our church while it is a church family here and I love the feeling of family that's great we ought to have that we're brothers and sisters in Christ and we ought to be comfortable with with one another and love one another and be there for one another but don't forget that we come in as a church though we're coming into the house of God right so this is God's house and it's not it's not about the the paint in the walls and that that stuff right we're not it's not about this building but the church is the house of God and we need to remember that we come here we sing praises to the Lord we bring forth the truth of God's word it is a serious thing that we're doing right and it's something that's we're guiding our life and we ought to have the reverence and respect when we come to this place and treat it as if you're walking in the house of God because that is what the church is here the church is the people but at the same time we're gathered together this is a church so we ought to be doing our best to say hey let's you know for example pick up after ourselves I'm in the house of God now we may feel real comfortable here because we are we this is literally a family and I love that about it that's one of the best things about our church I think is how much and how close people are within our church and again if you're visiting hopefully you you feel that and understand that and it's not just a click and we're not just looking at visitors going like look I've been to churches like that everyone just knows each other and you just feel like the oddball out and like okay well I'll just go now right that's not how this church is I mean people are real friendly and opening and warm and I love that it's great and we ought to have that but it needs to also be balanced with we can have this great communion together we can have this great fellowship and at the same time still have the proper behavior and you know be able to keep things decent and in order turn if you would to Ephesians chapter 5 please okay and I'm not going to get super detailed and all the trivial things that could come up okay that's not as important as the mindset right I'm not going to point out some you left this water bottle over here and I kicked it over and it made a big you know like like that's not and that actually didn't even happen so for anyone thinking that no that didn't even happen I'm just making stuff up right like it's not it's not about these little the little details specifically but it is about the details just personally right so so how am I going to do things better in church now and there's many areas it's not just about cleaning it's about everything okay cleaning is the smallest of the matters though like if we if we can't keep our place you know looking decent and in order and visitors come in what's it going to look like to the visitor I mean you can't even like like is this church really being done decent and in order doesn't look like that that script of a church even if it's just some of the the the smallest things but like you know you got trash all over the place and there's crumbs everywhere and things are sticky and you try to turn you know it's like come on what we can do better than that right but above that too you know we want to be able to do well by one another and have have good relationships with each other here too right Ephesians chapter 5 look at verse number 14 the Bible says wherefore he sayeth awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead and Christ shall give thee light see then that ye walk circumspectly not as fools but as wise redeeming the time because the days are evil and I'll get into the relationship thing again just a little bit later I was getting a little bit ahead of myself but in Ephesians 5 verse 14, 15, 16 it's bringing up the fact he's saying look awake thou that sleepest right first of all we shouldn't be lazy sleeping like not doing anything he says you need to walk circumspectly you know you need to be aware you need to be upright not as fools but as wise this is redeeming the time and man especially this week attending two funerals we really need to redeem our time we don't know what a day is going to bring and you know sadly this week both of those funerals were for people that really did not live out their days as we might expect normally on this earth ok they were both cut short ok now thankfully both have a testimony of salvation so they have eternal life so they're never going to truly die they've passed on and they're with the Lord so that's obviously very good news but for those of us that are here well hey when I pass on I'm going to just be happy I'm going to be full of joy right now all the aches all the pains all the stress all the grief the sorrow anything that goes along with this life is gone so I'll just be happy right but the people that are left behind you know you have to to still do things right and as much like the apostle Paul said hey for me to live is Christ and die is gain right brother Logan just quoted that to me this morning you know it's a great verse to live by but he says you know I'd rather depart here and be with the Lord it's far better it's far better to be with Christ but it's necessary for you to be here right so we all have a mission we all have a job from the Lord to do work here so because of that we we ought to be say okay hey look I'm gonna be mindful I'd much rather just just die and go to heaven but God's got work for me to do and it's to serve others because that's Christ's mission where we Christ like Christ lived here on this earth to serve others literally his entire ministry was about serving others and with the ultimate sacrifice of course of himself dying for the world so we have a mission to serve we have a mission to do for others not to accumulate a bunch of wealth for ourselves here on this earth to live for others that is our goal and knowing and being aware hey our time is short still God's got a lot of work for us to do but the time is short we need to redeem that time we need to redeem it and often times you know we end up wasting time and wasting opportunities when you could be doing more and maybe you just didn't plan maybe you know all kinds of different reasons maybe your flesh is just going hey don't don't do that and you kind of give in to the flesh but you end up wasting opportunities to do good and I would say you know to get real specific here there's one area that I've seen probably the most wasted opportunity and again don't take this the wrong way I'm not trying to beat anyone up here but when you make a whole day out of coming to church because many people do you'll come in the morning and you'll stick around for the evening services and I love that it's great and I'm happy that you're doing that but there's often times a time in between where you may not feel like there's much to do right a lot of people just end up hanging out and just hanging out and talking and sitting around but in fact there's a lot of things to do in that time it's up to you to do it right I'm not saying that you you have to do anything but if you're going to dedicate a day to serving the Lord to me it just makes sense that maybe you should also think about hey what else can I do and what can I do to serve and what can I do to help the cause of Christ and to help this church to do its function right and many people have very good reasons why they stick back here and there's often times a lot of younger children and things like that like it makes perfect sense like I'm not trying to judge you for sticking back but you know we do have a soul winning time that takes place in between the church services which would be one very good use of time if you're able bodied and there's no reason not to go I would encourage you just to consider that and think like hey maybe I'll start doing this like this would be a great use of my time instead of just sort of wasting my time and just kind of hanging out and really doing nothing I'm just sitting here anyways you might as well go out might as well join us I mean that's a great use of time but also like I said I understand and maybe not everyone wants to and I'm not going to never force my children really every once in a while make them go out with me just to get the experience but you know that's something in my family that I want that to be an individual desire to want to go and serve the Lord and want to go soul winning because your heart has to be in it you can't get like if you force someone to try to come out with you like that's not going to do them any good your heart's got to be there you got to want to do that so instilling that desire is much better I'm just throwing this out there and saying hey are you really redeeming your time when you just kind of sit around and do nothing is that really the best use of your time and sure there's always time to fellowship but you know what you can fellowship those of us that go out soul winning we do some fellowship we were fellowshipping just last week right we had lots plenty of time to talk and and talk about things that matter and also go out and give people the gospel I think you could do more than one thing at a time I'd say similarly you know if you're sitting back here in between the services you can also fellowship and hang out and maybe help straighten things up so that way when people get back from soul winning the same people putting forth the labor out there don't have to come forth and then do even more labor here to make sure that everything's getting done right I mean to me it just makes sense and again I'm not trying to beat anyone up but just I just you know often times and here's the thing if I don't point it out you you might not even think about it I mean there's so many times where I've just been like I just you do things you don't even think about it then as soon as it's brought up it's like oh man yeah I do do that or maybe I could improve this area so this is why I bring it up it's not you know it's not just beat you up but just you're thinking about it right and also with the children right it's a good opportunity to train children if you're sticking back because you have children it's an opportunity to train them a little bit it doesn't have to be this big intensive thing for hours on end but it's a great opportunity to say hey look we're in we're not at home you've been playing here now you need to pick this up and you need to take care of that right and teach them to take care after themselves and the Bible says train up a child in the way you should go and when he's old do not depart from it I believe that firmly and it starts with you being diligent especially as parents to teach your children in second Corinthians chapter 9 there's a concept here that that is going to be loosely applied I'll admit it to what I'm preaching on this morning but I think it's still fair in second Corinthians 9 what we're going to see we're going to read a significant portion of this chapter is the support of those who are ministering the word and in the context here as you'll see this is referring to some physical support of like like like monetarily right this is them giving to help support a ministry that's being done to preach the gospel okay but supporting those who do the work can go beyond just a financial gain a financial benefit to be given right there's plenty of ways to be in support of those who are doing that and why am I even bringing this up well because as I mentioned in the announcements you know this is the soul is the biggest and most important effort that our church does it is the lifeblood of this church we care about this the most and I would say this even those who for whatever reason right choose not to go out on a given day but you have all this time how about you spend some of that time in prayer and pray for the soul winners that are out there and going forth and put forth the work hey not everyone and you know sometimes there's people of different physical conditions and other ailments and other things you know there's all hosts of reasons right and I would never ask someone individually hey why aren't you going like that's none of my business it's none of my business okay and I won't look down on you either that's that's totally up to you this sermon is just meant to to push you a little bit maybe to think about and say hey is there something else that I could be doing can I be doing more can I be helping more however I'm using my time am I making the best use out of it or am I really just wasting it all together and this is something that in children you have to teach this to them and kind of instill this mindset stop wasting your time stop wasting your time your time is valuable your time is precious we need to redeem our time and I'll tell you what and because unfortunately for me I've wasted a lot of time in my youth lots of time lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of time I'm not just talking about when I was like real it I'm talking about into adulthood I wasted tons of time in adulthood just with vanity the vain things just spending hours days and weeks and months and years ultimately just kind of living for fun and living for myself man I love to get that time back but you know what about time you can't get it back and then when I finally click you start doing things like man I need to get I'm trying to get more done then you really realize how little time you have when you actually start trying to do something it's like man I got these goals I want to get this I want to get this done oh good night and then the older you get it seems like the less time you have and the harder it gets so look it is a valuable thing and we need to be teaching our children to make the most and to redeem their time now in 2 Corinthians 9 let's start reading here because this is in support of the soul winners the Bible says for as touching the ministering to the saints it is superfluous for me to write to you for I know the forwardness of your mind for which I boast of you to them of Macedonia that Achiah was ready a year ago and your zeal provoked very many yet have I sent the brethren lest our boasting of you should be in vain in this behalf that as I said you may be ready lest happily if they of Macedonia come with me and find you unprepared we that we say not ye should be ashamed in this same confident boasting so if you didn't follow all of that basically what he's saying is concerning touching the ministering to the saints so that they're helping the saints he's like I don't even need to write this to you and he's exalting the church at Corinth he's saying like you guys have been great you're awesome you've been very supportive in fact I've been boasting about you to the church of Macedonia I've been telling them how great of a church you guys and you guys are really supportive you support missions you do all this stuff you're great and he's like I still sent some people there just to make sure you're ready you know that we're coming and that I've been telling them how great you guys are at supporting right so when we get there you're willing you've got things to help us with and you're ready to support us when we get there right because then it would be pretty embarrassing we show up and we've just been talking you up you've been oh yeah man these guys are great they're they help out with anything they can and then we show up and they're like well we don't really have anything for you right this is this is my you know my my version of this passage here my giving my understanding here verse number four um or verse number five excuse me therefore I thought it necessary to exhort the brethren that they would go before unto you and make up beforehand your bounty so this is their what they're gonna give right they're they're giving so they're gonna take up a collection they're gonna take up an offering for the saints that need it they're doing the work where have you had noticed before that the same might be ready as a matter of bounty and not as of covetousness but this I say he which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully and this is just a simple truth right he's talking about so you know sowing seed if you're gonna sow just a little bit but don't expect to reap much and the only way you're gonna be able to reap a lot you gotta sow a lot right so what they're doing though here is we're gonna see in just a minute is their support is basically helping to supply the seed and to supply all the materials and the resources for them to go out and sow the sowers are going forward and sowing but we want to be able to get the seed to them we want to be able to get the whole the whole supply chain for them to be out on the field doing the work right that all needs to be there so that they can have the most seed to sow and everybody that's involved in that process will be blessed and God will recognize the work that you do in in all of that area not just the sower but everyone that's involved in that whole process is is it's valuable verse 7 every man according as he purposeth in his heart so let him give and look this wasn't a requirement look you decide for yourself just understand this concept hey if you you know if you sow sparingly you're gonna reap sparingly but you know whatever whatever you want to do as you purpose in your heart so let him give not grudgingly or of necessity for God I love it the cheerful giver and this is the way that I try to approach all of these matters in our church with whether it be soul winning or giving or anything like that look you want to help out our missions program great but don't do it like you have to do it because you want to you want to go out soul winning you know now we are the bible does say that that we are you know we are to go soul winning this is something that God has called for us to do and he's entrusted us with that and that is a work that God has ordained to be done but it's not something that I command the bible commands that the Lord commands that right you choose just like any other commandment out of the scripture you know I don't demand you to do things you choose what you're going to be what you're not going to do in scripture but I digress a little bit let's continue here verse 8 God is able to make all grace abound toward you that you always having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work as it is written he hath dispersed abroad he hath given to the poor his righteousness remaineth forever now he that minister a seed to the sower both minister bread for your food and multiply your seed sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness so that's the person who's ministering the seed to the sower that's the guy who's supplying them right and he's talking about the blessing there the multiplying of the seed the increasing of the fruits of your righteousness verse 11 being enriched in everything to all bountifulness which causeth through us thanksgiving to God for the administration of this service not only supply at the want of the saints but is abundant also by many thanksgivings unto God whilst by the experiment of this ministration they glorify God for your professed distribution unto the gospel of Christ and for your liberal distribution unto them and unto all men and by their prayer for you which long after you for the exceeding grace of God in you thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift so we see there in second green sign as I mentioned you know he's talking about bringing a bounty to them but the people involved in making sure that that ministry goes forward and successful all play a very important role and it's all going to be helpful to bringing forth the most fruit and even here you know if we have to cut things short from if the sowers have to cut things short from preaching the gospel because they know that when they come back hey we still have the house of God here to clean up and to and to get in order and make it all decent and ready to go well there's that now it's taking back from the work whereas other people can say hey you know what they're going out and doing this maybe I could stick back and do this and you know a few other maybe common issues with a large group of people in general but we oftentimes see is you might have only one or two people doing a lot of work and a lot of people doing nothing and again you know I understand people are going to get burned out and just realize that too that the one or two people that are always doing everything they might get burned out and they might choose not to do it anymore well how about we support those people by not requiring them to do all the work all the time and that becomes apparent real quick when one or two people are always doing all the work and then those people aren't here it becomes very obvious and I'll just say this it has become obvious in the past couple of weeks so I encourage you to help where you can Acts chapter six we're almost done we're almost done and I'll reiterate this as well there's many different reasons to do things I think the best reason is just to be the best Christian that you can be the best worker the best example the best you know teach your children the best way to say hey look we're going to make the best use of our time everywhere and not even just here at church but like everywhere right every day of your life let's make the best use of our time I'm not saying there's never a time to just have fun and we have fellowships here we have fellowships within church where we all gather together and we'll have a fellowship and say hey we're gonna we had a movie night we're gonna come together we're gonna watch this this film on creation and you know we're gonna hang out we're gonna enjoy each other but then it's okay now it's time to clean up and get everything put together right so there's time and a place for everything but there's so many moments in your life that you could end up just not making the most effective use of and you could get a little bit out of bounds and out of balance with the amount of work that you even do right everything isn't just always about having fun we ought to be concerned about the work that's being done as well and what we see here in Acts chapter 6 is that the church grew you know our church is growing but not near what the church of Jerusalem is growing during this time especially early on in the book of Acts where I mean thousands of people were being added to the Lord and the church is growing tremendously by leaps and bounds they have multiple things saved and these churches are growing and we pick up here in verse number 1 the Bible says and in those days when the number of the disciples was multiplied there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration so this was kind of a new thing because there's so many Greeks now these Grecians that were getting saved and joining the church which really wasn't happening en masse prior to the disciples being sent forth and just preaching the gospel to every creature as they started to in the book of Acts after the resurrection of Jesus Christ and now you've got a whole bunch more people the church is growing and they're saying hey we've got widows now yeah we're new to church or whatever but now there's all these people that could use help is what they're saying we've got these widows that could use the help of the church and this ministry of helping out the widows they were like our widows are being neglected here so this becomes an issue verse 2 says then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them and said it is not reason that we should leave the word of God and serve tables wherefore brethren look ye out among you seven men of honest report full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom whom we may appoint over this business but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word what they're establishing here is that look they've got a particular function they've got a job that they need to focus on and it makes the most sense for the apostles to give themselves continually to prayer and the ministry of the word so the great spiritual matters that the word of God that needs to be expounded and taught and preached that is something that not everybody has the skill capability to do right they've been blessed with these gifts from God to be able to do this and there's only so many hours in a day right so the best use of their time is to do that skilled work as opposed to just go and help feed someone maybe or help support those who are need and they're not saying that those jobs aren't important of course they are and in fact that you know they still have a good criteria on the people they want doing that work they say look let's find seven men of honest report right so good people good honest people they're upright people they're full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom right they're not just just some you know just random person who's like hey come in hey you want to just help take care of our widows yeah thanks you know like no this is this is important we want to get the right people we want to get people that are wise we want to get people full of the Holy Ghost but then they can be appointed over this business and make sure it gets done properly and they can care for the people in this important job but there's this and again the bigger organization gets the more you need to have these you know people kind of segmented doing these various tasks and why do I bring this up well I bring this up because at the end of the day as a pastor of this church I'm responsible for everything everything everything that gets done here I am responsible for all of it and I'm happy to take on that job I like that job that's why I became a pastor right and I actually like it more as the years go by I love I love pastoring a church and I'm not complaining about it either like it's fine but it's important to understand that when things don't get done I have to do it like there is no there is no well it can't get done well no I'm not going to allow it not to be done because I need to make sure also I'm responsible make sure everything's done decently in an order in this church so not getting done is not an option for me and that's not the way this church is going to be presented but I do bring it up just to be thoughtful about it and say hey do we want Pastor Burzins having to worry and focus on the menial tasks here because the more of that I have to do the literally the less time I have to prepare the sermons and do other work for the church there's only so many hours in a day and this is what's being expressed here in Acts chapter 6 and I would express the same thing here as well and as I mentioned before even with people going out soul winning you know if there's if other people are willing to use tasks amen I'm glad for that but the more we all come together as members and the Bible talks about every single person you have value everybody does you can help in so many different ways and look I don't especially for people coming visiting we have so many people that help out in so many areas okay this is not like we have a bunch of lazy people that aren't doing anything here no there's tons of people that invest their time this is just this is something that I noticed that I just want to make sure everybody's on board everybody's thinking about it and that we're aware of what's going on around us to get the most done and to and to think of yourself hey look I love this church I care about this church I'm a member of this church I'm going to do what I can to serve right and and I think the one of the ways we have the best church is when we can have the most people who come here not thinking hey what is this church going to do for me what do you got what programs do you have for me what are you going to give me what are you going to you know that's not going to make the church flourish when you got a whole bunch of people with that attitude but the opposite though saying hey what can I do to give what can I do to support what can I do to help right what can we do to get to get the work of God done that's what's going to make this church awesome and flourish and look as people grow and people are new Christians there's going to be people in all different walks of life and they're not all going to have the same attitude and whatever and you know what that's fine and we're going to support the weak as the Bible says that we should and we're going to comfort the feeble mind and we're going to help people along their way and their path and help them to grow and not everyone has had the same upbringing not everyone has had the same values taught to them and not everybody you know knows all these things and it's fine to not know them but we want to help you to grow and help you to learn and help you know just give that guidance anything that's been missed out of the wisdom of the Bible the wisdom of scripture we're going to try to help people to grow and as I said it's not like I love that everyone that people come here and I'm glad they feel comfortable enough to come and I want you to come and even if you don't you know serve in some way I still want you to be able to come back to church and I want you to learn from the preaching of God's word I want you to be edified by the fellowship by the people around you and I want you to grow and just become a better Christian overall so again there's no requirement on what you have to do it's just to get you to think and choose what you want to do if you want to help or not and finally because I think these two topics are a little bit related turn if you would to 1 Peter chapter 3 I bring this stuff up but I don't want there to be any resentment or bitterness or gossiping or backbiting within the church ok we have a lot of different personalities here and like I said you get more people in together there's bound to be friction at times and there's going to be people who say things that you think are rude and there's going to be people who do things or not do things or whatever that's going to be easy to take offense at and we ought to have here the right spirit of long suffering forgiveness and being able to just endure and I would say this hey sure people say rude things people say rude things to me sometimes regularly it's ok but we need to grow and look spiritual maturity and growth you need to be able to allow that and suffer that and say ok and not give a tit for tat not give a oh you said this to me now I'm going to say this to you or can you believe what this person said about me like look we don't need that and the Bible says that stuff is wrong the gossiping, the busy body the talking about other people and back and forth it's not going to do anyone any good it doesn't so if people have their own issues and their own problems and maybe they're not doing something or maybe they're causing a little bit of issue here or there you know what we need to be able to kind of look past that give a little bit of grace and just keep doing what we know is right now there's always ways of dealing with people and interactions and you know it's a good idea if someone is causing a problem with you to talk to them personally about it if you have a problem with them but here's the thing if you have a problem with someone you don't talk to anyone else about them you talk to them about the problem you don't need to be talking to someone else that you have a problem with someone else you just deal with that deal with that yourself and do it in a Christian way right? because we want to have good relationships here with everybody we're brothers and sisters and in all households I know this I've got six children so brothers and sisters don't always get along as much as we'd want them to especially when they're young and immature you know a lot of times as you get older the siblings that didn't get along that well when they're younger tend to get along better when they're mature and you know what Christians are the same thing a lot of times you get people who Christians say they've been Christians very long they haven't been saved very long they haven't known a lot of things very long and they might be a little harder to deal with then people are more mature but nonetheless we need to have the right spirit look at 1 Peter chapter 3 verse number 8 the Bible says this, finally be all of one mind having compassion one of another love as brethren be pitiful be courteous just common courtesy be courteous of people it's a real simple message how would you like to be spoken to or addressed do the same for them courtesy respect show that amongst one another if someone has a problem with you do you want them going around and talking to a bunch of people about it no, do you want them to tell you about it because again often times brother Jared we were talking about this yesterday no brother Jess sorry, I talked about this yesterday it was brother Jess often times there's like people have this impression or false understanding based on nothing so the situation we were talking about was like one person thought that they weren't really welcomed over here and then the other people felt like oh they never want to be around us so like there's this friction that literally just came from no communication and like people kind of have this stuff worked up in their heads about how other people think about them and how they feel about them and there was really nothing there at all and they both were just thinking about the other person thinking like oh I don't think they really want to be around me it's like that wasn't true at all that was you brother Jess exactly so we want that not to happen as much as we can so we need to be able to communicate be pitiful, be courteous love his brethren verse 9 says not rendering evil for evil or railing for railing someone rails against you accusing you falsely of something back around now and say well I'm gonna you know well you know they blah blah blah like you don't do that but contrary wise blessing knowing that ye are there unto called they should inherit a blessing last place to turn Colossians chapter 3 and I would say to kind of dovetail on that you know remember none of us are perfect whatever people do to annoy you, you probably annoy someone else with something that you do right not because you necessarily want to or try to but because we're not perfect so be mindful of that so that you can be courteous and you can have grace and long suffering towards those that you know maybe and maybe honestly just behave that the way they shouldn't but hey we're brothers and sisters of Christ here we need we're here for common goal we're trying to work together in unity to get the most work done right and if there's problems we need to just work through them Colossians chapter 3 though and this is this is the last mindset I'm going to leave you with because as I mentioned before I would love I think our church is excellent and I want the churches to get better and better and better and I want the people to know especially visitors especially people that we we meet for the first time that we take our faith seriously and we take our faith seriously in all areas right not just that it is our faith is seriously in Christ as our savior but also like in the Bible itself right so while we aren't perfect and we do have failure and we we will end up showing hypocrisy in some area of our life because we're not perfect by and large though we should still be marked as people who do care about the word of God and are continually striving to improve and make the changes necessary to get us more in line with God's word more conform to the image of Christ and doing what we ought to be doing Colossians 3 verse 22 the Bible says this servants obey in all things your masters according to the flesh not with eye service as men pleasers but in singleness of heart fearing God and whatsoever you do do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men knowing that of the Lord you shall receive the reward of the inheritance for ye serve the Lord Christ we're all servants of Christ I'm not speaking to you today as your master and you serve me and you have to worry no we're all servants of Christ you and me together we serve the Lord and we ought to think about that and look our whole life belongs to him and the Bible says that we ought to be profitable servants and that really we ought to present a living sacrifice which the Bible says is a reasonable service to him I mean we owe everything to the Lord he bought us and paid for us with a price with the blood of his only begotten son Jesus Christ we owe him everything so we should happily serve but also just keep in mind as we go about our life it's not only in church it's not only in one particular time or setting he owns our whole life our whole being so let's be honorable let's be faithful and show our faith to the Lord and in everything that we do everything that we do let's just do whatever we do as if we're serving Christ himself anyways because ultimately we really are so even if you work for someone else even if you have other jobs you should do your work that's representative of being a child of God as if you're just serving God directly and you know with that mindset with that at the forefront of our minds you know we will succeed we will succeed let's bow our heads have a word of prayer dear Lord thank you so much for all the truth and the wisdom that we could find in your word and I pray that you would please help us to redeem our time and to use it to the best of our abilities dear Lord and to be mindful of our service to you and God I pray that you please just help our church to continue to grow you've blessed us tremendously help us to reach more people with the gospel of Jesus Christ which is the biggest efforts that we're putting forth here help us to get that other church planted so we can continue to do even more work in another area dear Lord and just reach that many more people we need you we need your power we need your spirit to guide us and to lead the way Lord we love you and I thank you so much for our church here in Jesus Christ's name we pray Amen Alright we're going to sing one last song before we're dismissed and I'm going to ask brother Austin if he'd please lead us Alright church if you guys could grab your hymnals and turn to song 37 Again that is song 37 There will be no dark valley Song 37 Alright on the first There will be no dark valley when Jesus comes There will be no dark valley when Jesus comes There will be no dark valley when Jesus comes Together is love one's home Together is love one's home Together is love one's home There will be no dark valley when Jesus comes Together is love one's home There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes There will be no more sorrow when Jesus comes Thank you for watching!