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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 step up after the baby's born. So, that's the way that that works. So just keep that in your mind. She's due probably this week. So, and also just be an extra prayer for her as well. That her delivery goes well. Alright, and that's about it for our announcements this morning. So I'm gonna turn the service back over to brother Peter who will lead us in our next song. Alright church, you can open up your hymnals to song number 194. Song 194, since Jesus came into my heart. If you can stand for this hymn, it would be great. Join me in standing for this one. Song 194. Alright church, let's sing this out of the verse. What a wonderful change in my life has been brought since Jesus came into my heart. What a wonderful change in my life has been brought since Jesus came into my heart. What a wonderful change in my life has been brought since Jesus came into my heart. I have lied in my soul which was wrong, I had stopped since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. Felt the joy of my soul like the secret of love. Since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. I have ceased from my wondering knowing this way since Jesus came into my heart. If my sins were to ready our lost, lost will wait since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. Since Jesus came into my heart. Felt the joy of my soul like the Like a sea billows roll, since Jesus gave me to my heart. I'm gonna stress on the whole, and I'll stand fast and sure, since Jesus gave me to my heart. In the dark, clouds of doubt, down, down, down, way of storm, since Jesus gave me to my heart. Since Jesus gave me to my heart. Since Jesus gave me to my heart. There's a joy in my soul, like a sea billows roll, since Jesus gave me to my heart. There's a light in the valley of death, now for me, since Jesus gave me to my heart. In the veins of the city, beyond that good scene, since Jesus gave me to my heart. Since Jesus gave me to my heart. Since Jesus gave me to my heart. Floods of joy are my soul, like a sea billows roll, since Jesus gave me to my heart. I church on the last, very enthusiastically, on the last. I shall go there to dwell in that city I know, since Jesus gave me to my heart. And I'm happy, so happy, as onward I go, since Jesus gave me to my heart. Since Jesus gave me to my heart. Since Jesus gave me to my heart. Floods of joy are my soul, like a sea billows roll, since Jesus gave me to my heart. Amen. Great singing church. During the sound, I'd like to ask the ushers if you could stand up for them. In church, while the offering plates are being passed around, you can open your Bibles to the book of Acts, chapter 2. And as we do customary here at Stronghold Baptist Church, I would read the entire chapter, and quote a Michael Carter. Please. Amen, church. Once again, that is the book of Acts, chapter 2. Acts, chapter 2. The Bible reads, and when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place, and suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as a fire, and it sat upon each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. It began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem, Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noise abroad, the multitude came together and were confounded because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, behold, are not all these which speak Galileans? And how here we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born, Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, and Pontus, and Asia, and Persia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and the strangers of Rome, Jews, and proselytes, Crete, and Arabians. We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. And they were all amazed and were in doubt saying one to another, what meaneth this? Others mocking said, these men are full of new wine. But Peter, standing up with the 11, lifted up his voice and said unto them, ye men of Judea, and all ye that dwell in Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words. For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel. And it came to pass, in the last days, say of God, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. And on my servants and on my handmaidens, I will pour out in those days of my spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in heaven, above, and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Ye men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God, among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know. Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, he hath taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain, whom God had raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holding of it. For David speaketh concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved. Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad. Moreover, also my flesh shall rest in hope, because thou will not leave my soul in hell, neither will thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. Thou has made known to me the ways of life. Thou shall make me full of joy with thy countenance. Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of that patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulcher is with us unto this day. Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne. He seen this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. This Jesus have God raised up, whereof we are all our witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which he now see and hear. For David is not ascended into the heavens, but he saith himself, the Lord saith unto my Lord, sit down on my right hand, until I make thy foes thy footstool. Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom he hath crucified, both Lord and Christ. Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter, and to the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said unto them, repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, save yourselves from this untoward generation. Then they that gladly received his word were baptized, and the same day they were added unto them about 3,000 souls. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. And fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles. And all that believed were together, and had all things common, and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily, such as should be saved. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for the book of Acts. We thank you for the whole entire Bible. We thank you for this morning, and for the souls that have been saved recently in God, also the souls that will be saved in the future. And God, we thank you for the goals that have been set, and God, that you have done great works through this church. Thank you for all of the members of this church. Thank you for Pastor Burzins. Thank you for just being who you are. Allow for Pastor Burzins to speak with boldness, fill in with your spirit. Allow for you to be attended and minimize distractions. God, we praise you, and thank you for all that you do. We say this all in Jesus' name, amen. Thank you. All right, so this morning, I'm gonna be preaching a sermon called Learn a Foreign Language. Learn a Foreign Language. Just recently, Brother Devon preached a sermon about learning a musical instrument. And I made a comment, I think it was on Wednesday night, during my sermon then, about, you know, just the more I've been studying on various things, and I've been doing a lot of research into music and how it affects your brain and other stuff for other purposes, and I wanna, you know, I'll get into that another time, but one of the things that's come up in my studies is regarding, like, natural talents and abilities. And I don't wanna go too far in depth in this. I talked about it on Wednesday, but I'm not saying they don't exist. I think there might be proclivities for people to be a little bit more apt to do some things and other things, just in general. And I think that has a tendency to be, though, really closely correlated with things you enjoy doing or things you like to do, which one makes it through, you know, like, if you like doing something, well, it could be, you know, you start off liking it and then you become good at it because you like doing it, right? That would make sense, as opposed to just having that natural ability. Either way, one of the things that you find with people who are exceptional at whatever they do, when you call them talented, whether that be an athlete, whether that be a musician, whether it be someone who has, you know, what we consider to be talent, art, right? Artistic talent. The best of the best have all just put in a tremendous amount of time to get where they're at, like every single one of them. And even, like, when I was doing my study on music, there was, I forget, is it Mozart, who was like four or five years old or something when he made his first symphony, is that correct? Do you know, I got the right one, right? It wasn't Beethoven, it was Mozart. And in any case, right, so it was real young. And yeah, that kind of illustrates that there might be some talent there, but when you learn, though, that his parents, like, really just hammered that music into him, even from that really, really, really, really early age, you know, these child prodigies are often worked really hard, even, you know, where most people aren't doing that with their children, some people do that and then end up kind of creating these people who become very amazing at what they do. But my point is this. You always find tremendous amounts of effort behind the people who are talented. And I bring this up, because when I'm talking about learning a foreign language or learning to play an instrument, people give up, I think, too easily and want to use the excuse of just saying, well, I don't have that talent. I don't have that ability. I'm not good at doing languages. I'm not good at instruments. I'm not good at Bible memorization. And I think you're selling yourself short. And what you need to understand is that while some people can make things look easy when they do it, it doesn't mean it was easy to get to that point, right? So there's a lot of work that goes and gets put into it. And don't be discouraged when you start trying to learn, and no matter what it is, you start trying to learn something. I mean, even just simple and just Bible doctrine. You could be like, wow, that person knows so much. Like, I don't think I could ever, you know, like I'm always confused or whatever. I don't seem to understand so much. And they always just, it's because they probably put in years and years and years and years and years and years of study and listening and all that and just in building knowledge. So all of this kind of holds true. So I just bring that up as just a small point that not to get too distracted with thinking, well, I don't have the ability to do this, and then you forsake doing it. And the reason why I don't want you to break doing this is because one, I mean, especially in American culture, and I'll get to this a little bit more later, but American culture does not stress the importance of learning another language because English has become the de facto world language. So it's a language of doing business and people in other parts of the world will learn English as a second or third language for them. And they're taught that in school. So it's become easy for more Americans to be lazy at learning other languages because it's just expected. Oh, you don't know English? And I mean, it's kind of weird. I mean, the Americans just have this concept of going out and just expecting everyone to just speak, like, you don't speak English? Like just expecting that everywhere. And that not ought to be, you go to another place, you gotta learn to speak their language and communicate with people at that language. Don't expect everyone to speak your language. And look, there's so much value. I'll get into all the value of learning a language. It's great. But the number one value and what I'm gonna be primarily focusing on today is the evangelistic value of learning a foreign language, which is why I'm preaching on it from the pulpit today, why it's something we're going to the Bible to and we're gonna see this. And just to start, we start off here in the day of Pentecost where people were speaking all different kinds of languages. And that's where I start off bringing up talents and abilities because I wanna draw a distinction between the spiritual gift of being able to speak with other tongues as being a gift that was absolutely 100% given by God versus just learning a language on your own and doing the study and getting that knowledge not supernaturally. There is a difference when we look at the scripture between a supernatural spiritual gift that's given to you of God versus just you putting forth a bunch of effort and learning something. So what we see here in Acts chapter two was something that was supernatural. It was something that God gave through the Holy Spirit for the people then to be able to speak with other languages that they didn't study, that they didn't know, they didn't go and learn Arabic or any of these other languages. And we'll review this in just a second. But God gave them the ability to speak in those languages in order to communicate with the people that were present in Jerusalem at that time. So let's look here at verse number one. We're just gonna read the first 11 verses again. Bible says, and when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. It's talking about the disciples. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind. And it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as a fire and it sat upon each of them. This is a supernatural event. This is definitely something that's happening of God. There's these tongues like fire that are kind of resting on them and they're seeing this stuff. And this happens, there was about 120 of them. This isn't, when I say the disciples, it's not like the 12. It's the whole group of disciples after the resurrection of Jesus Christ that were coming together at church. Verse four says, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. So the Holy Spirit is the one that's providing this gift of them being able to speak with other tongues. And a tongue is just a language. And that's easily proven even from this passage alone. It's not something mysterious. It's not a word that Americans use or English speaking people use very frequently anymore to refer to languages. We just kind of use the word language. But tongue, in this context here especially, it's talking about the language that you speak. And unfortunately there's other movements out there that have completely got this wrong as far as what this gift even is talking about. And largely in Pentecostal churches, you'll hear people who will, they'll call it speaking in tongues. But they start just rambling and there's sounds and noises and maybe words coming out of their mouth. But generally speaking, it's a bunch of nonsense. It's words that no one knows except someone who claims to know to understand that language. But they're not real languages. It's just people kind of speaking out into the air and then someone else would have to just say, oh yeah, I know what they said and then say what they said. And that is not what we see happening in scripture ever. And we're gonna look at 1 Corinthians 12 also which covers this in just a minute. What we do see when God poured out his spirit and the gift of tongues was given unto people is we see God's disciples preaching the word of God, not in the church but going out and talking to people who speak different languages in order to preach the gospel to them, in order to explain the great truths of Jesus Christ and his resurrection because there were people getting, I don't wanna get too far ahead of myself, let's read it in the passage. Verse five says, and they were dwelling at Jerusalem, Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven. So at the day of Pentecost is a day where people come from all over the world and here it says out of every nation under heaven, people are all gathered together in one place. And isn't that alone just magnificent, the way that God's timing is so perfect for every event, especially the most critical event of Jesus Christ's death, burial and resurrection, that his resurrection happened, he's seen of his disciples and very shortly after the resurrection has just taken place, you've got the day of Pentecost and you've got people from all over the world who are now gathered in one place to be able to hear about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and then take that back home to every nation under heaven after having just heard about that great event of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So that alone is just fantastic, it's amazing. But the problem is that the disciples, most of them were just common folk, right? They weren't learned as we see in the book of Acts elsewhere where the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes are looking at these guys and going like, these guys aren't educated, they didn't go to the school, they didn't go to the Pharisee schools, how do they even know these things? They don't know letters, they don't know where, they don't know this stuff, they're fishermen, right? They're blue collar workers, they don't have the education that we have, so how can they even know these things? It's because they had spent time with Jesus and the Holy Spirit guided them into wisdom and truth and knowledge, but they still didn't have this knowledge of knowing a bunch of languages. But God wanted the message to get out. He wants all the people from under heaven to be able to hear this message. So he gives them this gift, this ability to be able to walk up to someone and speak to them and preach the gospel to them and tell them about the resurrection of Christ even though they don't know their language. So when they go to speak, in their mind they're just thinking, hey, I'm gonna talk to this person, but what actually comes out of their mouth is a foreign language. That that person that they're talking to knows native language, they're able to understand it, they're able to receive it. This is fantastic, this is incredible, this is great. Let's keep reading, it says, now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together and were confounded because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And this is where you could easily tie together a tongue as a language because they said they speak with other tongues and they heard them in their own language. That definition of the word here. But this news gets around pretty fast. And imagine, if that were to happen today where you've got this group, this religious sect, and all of a sudden they're just talking and there's people from all over the place and they're just able to communicate and people are just going like, how do these guys know this? And especially like in Deep South, you're in the country, you're in the backwoods, and you got a whole bunch of backwood rednecks out there speaking and able to speak with other languages and be like, who are you guys, what's going on? Now, someone's gonna comment, they weren't white. You gotta just listen to the word of God because it's not about white or red, it's about talking about white or black or brown. Don't care about that. Just an illustration, okay? So what's happening here? These guys are all from Galilee, right? Whatever color the Galileans were, they were from Galilee. And the Galileans apparently didn't have all of this ability to just know they were common folk. Didn't have a great education. But they still were able to speak to every man in their own language. Verse seven says, and they were all amazed and marveled, saying one another, behold, are not all these which speak Galileans? And how here we, every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born. And then it lists off all these various places. Parthians, Medes, Elamites, dwellers of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Crete and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. They can understand clearly, but these men clearly did not know all of these languages. The spirit gave them utterance, the spirit allowed them to, the spirit literally was doing the translation for them as they're preaching the gospel, as they're preaching Jesus to these people. And this is what we see, and this is consistent with the gift of tongues that we see throughout scripture. Turn, if you would, to 1 Corinthians chapter 12. 1 Corinthians 12 lists off some various gifts of the spirit that God gives to people. We're gonna start reading verse number seven, the Bible reads, but the manifestation of the spirit is given to every man to profit with all. For to one is given by the spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge by the same spirit, to another faith by the same spirit, to another the gifts of healing by the same spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another divers kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. But all these work at that one and the self same spirit dividing to every man severally as he will. Now, what I wanna point out here is that these gifts, I do believe that any of these gifts could still be given out today because God is mighty and he's able to do whatever he wants to do and he could bestow these gifts upon anyone to whom he pleases. A little bit outside the scope of this sermon, I do believe that certain gifts just aren't being given anymore because there was a purpose for the gifts to be given, which was especially these miraculous things, the miracles and the tongues, these greatly, largely visibly supernatural gifts were confirming the changes to the religion of serving the Lord with the changes between the Old Testament sacrifices and the practices of the Old Testament with the New Testament doing away as Christ fulfilled many aspects of the law. So in order to make these significant changes, God wanted to confirm this is of God. This isn't just some man, it's not just their own little denomination that's trying to change things up. No, God is ordaining, these things need to change. You're not offering a lamb sacrifice anymore. Let every man esteem every day alike and these various teachings were coming forth and they were being confirmed through these great signs and wonders that the apostles, the disciples were doing by the power of the Holy Ghost and it was just obviously visible to everyone. Just as Jesus Christ came healing and performing these other miracles, confirming He is the Son of God. It also confirmed, continued to confirm through the teaching of the disciples through that first generation or two of believers that followed. But again, going more in depth on that is kind of a sermon for another day. But these gifts, if it's given by the Spirit, these are all supernatural gifts, right? Even the ones that we could think of like wisdom or knowledge, that's all I hear, that the gift, excuse me, the Spirit has this gift given of the word of wisdom, knowledge. Now these are some of these things are things you could also learn and do on your own, right? But the Spirit is giving this extra gift that's supernatural. So tongues is what we're talking about today. People can learn foreign languages and I believe that the apostle Paul knew languages. He also was given the ability to speak with other tongues, but the apostle Paul was trained as a Pharisee, so he received more education than the other apostles received because they were more the common folk. He was a little bit different, different case, raised as a Pharisee before he got saved, before he converted and had this, already had this underlying education. So he already knew other languages and was able to speak with that level of education. But he also, as a parent in scripture, he also was able to speak with other tongues as well, even languages that he didn't know. And that kind of shows there's a difference between, okay, what does the Holy Ghost give versus what have you just been able to achieve on your own? Obviously, God is still with you and helps you with these things, but there's a very significant distinction between a spiritual gift and something that's not just given to you as the gift, but you have to work for it, okay? And just keep that in mind, especially as you study the Bible. Because I've heard people say this. So when we look at this about the gift of healing, for example, right? I've heard people say like, oh, well, since I'm a doctor, God's given me the gift of healing. And people like to apply these things to themselves. They go, oh, God's given me this gift, God's given me this gift. But that kind of takes away, especially for the supernatural stuff, that takes away from like the healing that like Jesus did, or even the disciples did. It's like, hey, this guy can't walk, they walk up to him and just touch him and he's healed. That's the spiritual gift of healing that was given to the disciples. It wasn't them going to med school for six years and getting their PhD, and then just applying splints and coming up with other contraptions to help people learn how to walk again or something like that. Not the same thing. Now, that's good. There's nothing wrong with learning all that stuff and becoming educated and becoming a doctor and helping people to heal and recover. But that's not the same thing when we look at the gift given by the Spirit. Anyone can learn to be someone that can help another person to physically recover. I believe anyone can do that. You don't have to have a special talent or ability to be able to do that. You just have to want to do that and study and work for it. And it's the same thing with languages. The spiritual gift was, hey, they were just able to speak with these other languages without having to study and God just gave that to them. And the same thing with this extra wisdom and the prophecy and this knowledge. God gave this gift to certain men of God because he's teaching a lot more. Look at all the epistles. Look at all the new doctrine that's been coming out in the New Testament. It's because God through the Holy Spirit gave these men this wisdom and this knowledge and these spiritual gifts in order to fulfill his will ultimately. And the will with the language was to preach the gospel, to preach the resurrection to people from every nation so that they can take that back home with them and be able to communicate with their nation these same truths that they heard in their own tongue. Turn with you to 1 Corinthians 14. And one of the things that's gonna stand out right away about 1 Corinthians 14 is that while the spiritual gifts are great, it starts off saying even just right at the very first verse is that it's more important to prophesy. It's talking about prophesy. The word prophesy is very frequently interchanged with preaching. It's something that we would know as something that's preaching. It doesn't necessarily have to be something that's like this future event that hasn't happened yet. Because with the futuristic aspect of prophesying is the wisdom or the knowledge of knowing, hey, like if I were to tell you, if you get involved in this sin, bad things are gonna happen to you because the Bible says all of this. So you're in a sense prophesying the future, but it's all based off of knowledge that's just given right here. Does that make sense? It is, if you don't put your faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, your soul is gonna go to hell when you die. That's prophesying. But it's not something that's like, because people will often look at this and think like, oh, it's something that no one else has ever been given before, and you're saying something new about the future. That's not what that word means. Now, I mean, it could have meant that if something was given at the time, but that's not inherently just that definition of the word. That may, hopefully that helps. But let's keep reading, verse number one. Follow after charity and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that you may prophesy. For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God. For no man understandeth him, howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries. But he that prophesyeth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort. He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself, but he that prophesyeth edifieth the church. I would, means he wants, that ye all spake with tongues, but rather that ye prophesy. For greater is he that prophesyeth than he that speaketh with tongues, except he interpret that the church may receive edifying. And in this chapter, he's talking about the spiritual gift of being able to speak with other tongues, okay? He's saying like, yeah, it'd be great if everyone can just speak with other tongues. Like that's good, it's a spiritual gift, that would be great. But what he's saying is what good is it gonna do? So if you have a church, you have a group of believers, and you all pretty much speak the same language, right? But then someone comes up and they're gonna preach, and you know, we've got a bunch of English speakers here, maybe some Spanish speakers, right? I don't know if there's any, maybe another language here or there that someone might know. But I'm pretty confident, do we have anyone that speaks Chinese today in the auditorium? I don't think so, you do? Mandarin? Okay, so if I come up and just preach a sermon in Mandarin, no one's gonna know what I'm talking about, right? And let's say, you know, God's given me that spirit, I didn't have to learn this, I've got the spirit of tongues and I'm able to come up and just preach his whole sermon in Mandarin. It's gonna do nobody any good. He's like, it's better that someone could just come up, you know, you could just sit down. Hey, God bless you, you got that great spirit of being able to speak with other tongues, but how about we get someone up here that everyone could hear and be edified and learn from and hear the preaching of the word of God? Right, that's more important within the church especially. So, and that's what he's talking about in this setting, he says that the church may receive edifying. Look at verse six. Now, brethren, if I come unto you speaking with tongues, what shall I profit you? Except I shall speak to you either by revelation or by knowledge or by prophesying or by doctrine. And even things without life, giving sound, whether pipe or harp, except they give a distinction in the sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped? For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? For ye shall speak into the air. And this is, you know, with communicating, keep it simple, right? Let people understand what you're talking about. And this is why I'm against pastors getting up and using all this great vocabulary of words that's uncommon to man, that's very specific to some field of study and not breaking it down and saying, hey, look, this is what this means at the very least. But if you're gonna give what it means, then why even use the word at all, generally speaking? Now, obviously, there's some times we might wanna let people know what a specific word is or what it means. But oftentimes, what it boils down to is people who want to, they like being in that position. They like people looking to them and kind of being wowed at their vocabulary. And they like to be in that position of Dr. So-and-so, right, and the ones that really wanna emphasize, no, no, no, it's not David Burzins, it's Dr. Burzins. There's people out there, right? Like, we know that exists. And that's kind of a proud heart. And it's people that are more interested in the glory of their own intellect or their own studying than it is just, hey, let's preach the word of God. Let's get the meaning out there. This is what people need to know, this is what they need to hear. We don't need to talk about every single theological term for the soteriology and eschatology and the hermeneutics and everything else. Like, look, you wanna study that stuff, great. But that's not what ought to just be coming across the pulpit. People need to just understand like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? Who cares about those terms? So use language easy to be understood. And that's why it brings up, like if a Trump gives an uncertain sound, you know, they'd use Trump for battle calls. Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, you know, whatever, that's probably not a battle call, but I guess like, wake up call, whatever, right? I'm not familiar with all the trumpet sounds. But if it's just going like, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. Like, what was that? Was that a duck? Is that the trumpet? Like, what are we supposed to do? Different sounds have different meanings, right? And when it comes to language, right, of course. So when we're speaking, the words have different meanings and we wanna use words that are easy to be understood and everybody can understand. So there's no point in getting up and speaking a language that people can't understand. You wanna just speak the common language where people know, where people can understand and use words that people can understand as well. Look at verse number 10. There are, 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. Now, when I'm, you know, again, going back to the point of the sermon and I'm gonna get a lot more into the practicality in just a minute. Learning a foreign language, when you've got two people that can't communicate with each other, you're just like a barbarian to them. You're just like, you're just gonna be speaking something and you're gonna be like, I don't know. And the other guys will be speaking and you're like, I don't know, right? You're just kind of both standing there like, I have no idea what you're saying. You're like a barbarian to me. I don't know what you're talking about. You're making weird sounds coming out of your mouth. But we have a job to do when it comes to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have a job to do when it comes to preaching the word of God. And we're commanded to preach the gospel to every creature. We wanna go out and this is good news and we wanna make sure people could know this and learn this, which is why it's so important that we're not gonna be barbarians of people. So that we can, when we run across people that don't speak our language, we can still reach them. And this is the ultimate goal and this is why it's so important to take it upon yourself and put in the extra time and put in the effort to learn a foreign language. And if you're really interested in reaching the maximum number of people in this area, I would recommend learning Spanish as far as the number one other language that's spoken by people that don't speak English. However, that's probably very closely followed by a few different Asian languages. Korean, Vietnamese, okay? There's very strong large population centers in Gwinnett, in our area here of these people, okay? So it's a great mission field to target and to reach. And we've all been there, I've been there, all of us have. You knock on the door, someone goes like, no English, right? And the only other language that I could even speak somewhat well is Spanish. So I'm just like, habla español? And if it's no, or they're just looking at me like, then I just gotta go, sorry, bye. Or we got those cool cards. I don't have one in my pocket right now, but we got those cards that are over the bookshelf, little business cards, okay? And we could give those to people, which is great. It's a great, here's a card, thank you, Brother Michael. Looks like this, it's got a QR code on there and it's got the website on the bottom in case they can't scan with the phone. And this has a gospel presentation in multiple languages on this website. So it is something, right? Because we don't, like we wanna do as much as we possibly can to help people get the gospel, right? That should be where our heart is, so that whatever we can do to help someone hear the word of God, help someone get the gospel, that's what we wanna do, which is why we have things like this. And we've had people dedicate their time to build things like this, and other people who have put forth the time to record these videos, to put them out there so we have these resources available because we have this love for people, we wanna hear them, get them to hear the word of God. But nothing is going, a video, while I do believe some people might get saved by watching a video, nothing can replace speaking to someone and having a conversation with people. Okay, because oftentimes, people might have questions, they might not understand something the first time they hear it, or just the way that one person is explaining it. So we need to be able to have these conversations, and you should know this if you go soloing in English, or in your own language, I just say, whatever your own language is, you go out soloing and you talk to people, people get hung up on different things, different doctrines, things they've heard, things they've learned. Some people don't understand what hell is, so if you just use, and that's actually kind of not very common, but normally when you use the word hell, people know what you're talking about, but not everybody does, and especially some of the younger people, they don't even know what you're talking about. Some people don't even know Jesus Christ at all, like I've talked to some kids, unfortunately, teenagers, young teenagers, and they know nothing about Christ, nothing. So with those people, you're gonna wanna go a little bit more in depth on who Jesus is. Thankfully, most Americans know who Jesus is in the sense of, yeah, he's the son of God, you know, he died for the sins of the world, he died on the cross, he was buried, he rose again, you know, like a lot of people understand that, which is great, it's phenomenal, but a lot of people don't, and we need to be able to communicate with people when we speak another language especially to know what they know, to know what their hangups are, and to have that conversation with them. Let's keep reading here. Verse number 12 here in 1 Corinthians 14. I'm gonna try to blow through most of this because I'm taking up a little bit more time than I intended on at this point. Verse 12, even so ye, for as much as ye are zealous of 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. And this goes to that, you know, people say, well I pray, it's my prayer language, I've heard people say this before, but the Bible's saying right here, if you don't understand what you're saying, it's unfruitful even for you. Like if you have this gift of being able to speak with another language, and you don't know what you're saying, he says, what is it then? I'm gonna pray in the spirit, I'm gonna pray with the understanding also, right? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also. So what does that mean? I'm not gonna pray in a language I don't know. If God's gifted me with the ability to speak another language, and I don't really know that language, then I'm not gonna use that language to pray in. Because I don't really know what I'm saying, right? I can't, it makes no sense. So you know, even people want to say, oh I've got this prayer language, I don't, you know. No, pray with the understanding. Know what you're praying. I will sing with the spirit, I will sing with the understanding also, else when thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest. For thou verily give his thanks well, but 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 10,000 words and an unknown tongue. I mean, you could preach the best sermon, 10,000 words, you're preaching all this great doctrine and everything, but no one understands it because it's an unknown tongue to people. Like, I don't know that, no one knows it. He's like, there's no point, I'd rather just speak five words. It's way more valuable to the people in church that can understand those five words. Brethren, be not children understanding, howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men. And the law 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. And just one more point here is that this is also a fulfillment of the law as we see here in verse 21. Well, why did God do the speaking with tongues? Well, we saw there's a quotation in Acts chapter two from the book of Joel that points to the fulfillment of that prophecy as well as this prophecy 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, because of this, because of this verse, I was just quoted from the Old Testament from the law, wherefore tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not. So this gift of tongues was given as a sign to unbelievers. But prophesying serveth not for them that believe not, but for them which believe. So what does that say? If the tongues are for a sign to unbelievers, why would we be doing that in the church then? Using this spirit of the tongue in church among a bunch of other believers, that's going literally against what he's saying here. No, the sign was for the unbelievers. That's why they went out at the day of Pentecost. They went out to people who speak these other languages. And then that sign, people are going, wow, this is amazing. These people are speaking this language that I understand and I can communicate with. That was the sign. But coming together with a bunch of people who already are saved, who already know about the resurrection, there's no point in that at all. So that's just confusion. Prophesying serveth for the believers. The preaching of the word of God, the deeper truths, getting the meat of God's word, you don't serve that up to the unbeliever. That's what church is for. Verse 23, if therefore the whole church become together into one place and all speak with tongues and there come in those that are unlearned or unbelievers, will they not say that you are mad? And this is what happens, especially in the Pentecostal churches. You got people piping up all over the place and speaking all this stuff coming out of their mouth that no one understands and someone just walks in, they're going like, you guys are crazy. That's what the word mad is. Not mad as in angry, but mad as in crazy. You guys are nuts. And it's gonna look nuts if people are just speaking all these just random languages, just kinda like, why? It really is nuts. But, verse 24, 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 the secrets of his heart may manifest and so falling down on his face, he will worship God and report that God is in you of a truth. So when they could actually come in and understanding people are coming up and preaching and preaching the word of God and they could hear the word of God, then they could understand, wow, God is in you because they're hearing the words that you're preaching and it's cutting to the heart. The word of God is actually reaching them and understanding what's going on, understanding what you're saying. And then he says they're gonna have a report that God is in you. How is it then, brethren, when you come together, every one of you have a psalm, at the doctrine, at the tongue, at the revelation, at the interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying. And if any man speak in 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 into God. All of that, turn if you go to Acts chapter 21, all of that was really heavy on the spiritual gift aspect of language. There were some good applications that could apply to just learning it on your own anyways because when you're speaking a language, you're speaking a language, whether it's given to you as a gift or whether you had to study it out on your own and learn it for yourself. But it's important to understand that distinction. And I really wanted to make sure I covered that so that people don't just be like, oh yeah, I don't have that spiritual gift. Okay, well, I don't either. I don't have that spiritual gift. I don't know anyone who does either. I don't know anyone that could just open up their mouth and start speaking some other language like on command that never learned it, that didn't know it, that didn't take time to study it. Now, what we're gonna see here in Acts chapter 21, and this is now we're gonna start getting a little bit more practical onto the importance of learning a foreign language is that, and I'll testify to this because the amount that I, when I go out soldering and I speak Spanish with people, I'm not great, I'm not that good. I could carry on a little bit of a conversation, but I definitely have a lot more room to improve. But one thing that I have noticed, and I don't know if this is just culturally, but I don't think it's just cultural. I don't think so. And you could decide for yourself what you think. But what I've noticed is that when I am someone as an obvious, not native speaker of the language, you look at my blonde hair, you look at my blue eyes, you look at my pale skin, and I start speaking Spanish, it doesn't fit right here, especially here in America. People look at that going like, and I'll tell you this much, I've had people who have told me they don't speak English, and then I start speaking Spanish, and I think I see some disappointment in their face because they weren't expecting me to be able to speak anything to them. But then there's other people really happy. But here's my point with this, and it's just kind of funny the way that that works because I think some people do actually speak English and they'll tell you that they don't. Just because they don't want to talk to you and they don't want to say they don't want to talk to you, it's an easier way to get you to go away. Which is why they get disappointed when I actually start speaking Spanish, they're like, oh. I've even had people then start speaking English after I started talking Spanish with them, it was really super funny. Like, I thought you said you didn't speak English. But here's the point I want to make, and when we look at Acts 21, look at verse number 40. The Bible says this, and when he had given him license, Paul stood on the stairs and beckoned with the hand unto the people, and when there was made a great silence, he spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue, saying, men and brethren and fathers, hear ye my defense, which I make now unto you. And this is in the story, the apostle Paul was about to get torn in pieces. The Romans come in and they take him, there was big turmoil, and they kind of save Paul out of that, but they're trying to figure out what's going on, they're thinking like, what did Paul do? And he's kind of getting carried away, and he's like, well wait, give me a minute to speak unto the crowd. And when he begins to speak, he speaks to them in Hebrew, so he's speaking to the Romans, like in Greek probably, right, he's speaking their language to them, to the soldiers, but then he's gonna address the crowd, and the crowd is a bunch of Jews, and they're mad at him, right, for being the apostle Paul and preaching Jesus Christ, and they're mad at him, they think he's a heretic, so he opens up and he starts to speak unto them in Hebrew, and look at what the Bible says there in verse number two. And when they heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue to them, they kept the more silence. So they paid even closer attention when he chose to speak unto them in their native tongue. And what I've noticed is when I go forth and try to speak to people, if their native tongue is Spanish, because that's the only other language I know, and I try to speak to them, and that generally speaking, by and large, people will give me a lot more time and will be patient and will listen closely to what I have to say because I'm trying to communicate in their language, and there's even some compassion there, and it opens up a door that may even be better than a different native speaker trying to talk to them about the Bible, because they're seeing, oh, hey, look, this person has learned my language. And here's how you think about this, and this is why I don't think it's just cultural, is if you've ever run into someone like on vacation or a visitor from another country, and they speak really broken English, don't you also, I mean, I know I do, don't you also just kinda like listen carefully and, oh, okay, and try to help them or try to understand what they're saying to communicate whatever it is that they might be looking for or asking for something. You kinda stop and listen a little bit more intently and go, oh, okay, because their English may not be that great either, right? Like they might be a little bit broken, but you can still get the point across, and this is why I preach the gospel. Even though I'm not fluent in Spanish, I know enough to get the point across. I could use the word of God. I got the Bible in Spanish, they could hear the word of God that's perfect, right? They could hear that. Well, I'm not relied on to get that perfect, right? But then my explanation can go far enough to where, I'm always asking people, entiende, like, do you understand what I'm saying? Because it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's okay. Because I know that I'm not conjugating my verbs right all the time. I'm not using the appropriate tenses all the time. I get mixed up with some preterite tenses on different verbs, or, you know, like, I may use the usted version instead of the tu version as someone who's younger or something, you know, whatever. Like, I'm not following all the rules the way that the language is designed to use it. But people understand what I'm saying, okay? And this is the great thing about when you start to learn a language even, you can put it to use early on and it can still do good. Now, the goal is to get fluent, to fully communicate with people in their language. But until you get to that point, you can start practicing on this right away. And you could memorize verses. That was one of the first things I did when I got, because I learned my Spanish in high school, but never put it to any use whatsoever until I got plugged into a good, soul-winning church. And that's when I got serious about it. And here's some things that you can do if you're interested in doing this. And this is what I recommend. This is what I actually did. I wrote out a little script all in Spanish. Basic questions, basic, starting with, hey, do you know if you were to die today if you'd go to heaven, okay? And what you would normally say in English as just basic questions and basic explanations, get those translated into Spanish, okay? And carry it around with you. I carried around a printed piece of paper. For a long time, I had English and I had Spanish. And obviously, you want to learn the pronunciation. You want to learn these things. You need to learn them because you can't just say, like you need to learn how to pronounce the words in order to communicate. Otherwise, there'd be that trumpet that's given a very uncertain sound. Learn the vowel sounds, learn the consonant, learn the sounds and put them together so you can at least speak the words. But as you continue to learn, you can put it into practice and use and people will listen to you. And I think they'll listen even more when they hear that. And the last scripture I want to turn to is Matthew 28. And the good thing about learning languages in our day and age right now is that it's become much easier. And it's become a lot cheaper. You can get education now for free, all practically for free. I mean, if you have an internet connection, if you have the ability to access this stuff, you can literally get an education for free at the comfort of your own home on your own time. There's so many resources out there to do that. There's so many apps you could get on your phone to help you to learn these things. And if you want to spend just a little bit of money, hundred bucks, couple hundred bucks, you can get other programs that have been developed that have been tried and true and used for many years now that help people to learn languages. And they even are making it kind of fun. It's just like education with the apps and on a computer and stuff, it's pretty fun. It can almost get addicting to get on there and do that. I know one of my daughters is always telling me her streak on Duolingo. You still got that streak going, Ab? What number are you at now? 70 something, so there you go. I mean, it's just, but it's fun, right? It's one of those things and you get it in your mind because they build it that way to make you want to keep doing that. Oh, I don't want to break my streak, so I need to go at this. And that's how you're going to learn. You're going to learn a little bit day after day. You're not going to be fluent, but you get started. Now, in Matthew 28, verse number 19, of course, this is the great commission that Jesus Christ gave. Verse number 19 says, go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world, amen. The command is to teach all nations. Well, how are you going to teach those nations if they don't speak your language? You got to learn their language, but the command went to the believers, teach all nations. I mean, he's talking to his disciples here. Now, he equipped them with the gift of being able to speak with other tongues, right? So they got a headstart, they were able to do that, but there was a greater need. Things were just getting off the ground with the resurrection of Christ and all the changes that were made, right? So they needed that extra help. And you know what? I believe that God will help you. You got your heart right, just like God will give you wisdom, as it says in James, you know, if you, actually, I always misquote this verse, so I'm just going to turn there, James chapter one. I already told you that was going to be the last passage. I'll just read this one for you. But we saw that a spiritual gift was the gift of wisdom and of knowledge, right? We saw the spiritual gift, but the Bible also says in James 1 five, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering, for he that wavers like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and toss. So God wants you to be wise. God wants you to learn languages. God wants you to teach all nations. This is a godly thing. So if you want to do that and you say, well, I don't know, I'm not that good at learning, ask God to help you. Now, he may not give you the spiritual gift of just being able to open your mouth and say it without putting in all the time and effort to learn, but he could still help you to learn. Okay, and I do believe that. And we know it's the will of God because of what Jesus said. Now, practical tips, practical things. I would say this, learning foreign languages, as I already mentioned, America does not have the importance that it should. We also stress homeschooling a lot here and parents being responsible at the very least for the education of your children, right? So however you choose to do that. I believe homeschooling is the best, but if you don't do that in your family, so be it, that's your decision to make. But you are still responsible for your child's education. Whether someone else is helping you do that or you're doing it yourself, however your child is getting educated, you're responsible of making sure your child has an education. And I would say this, if however you're educating your child doesn't have a foreign language in curriculum, I highly advise you to add it to the curriculum. There are many other benefits that come with learning a foreign language that you won't get if you only know one. Learning a foreign language can even help you, in many cases, to understand your own native language with some words, especially if you're learning a language where the root of your language, like English, has some words in our language that have Latin roots and you're learning another Latin language, like you can start seeing a little bit more depth to the word that you use in English when you start learning this vocabulary in another language. And you can pick up on these things. You understand how translations work. You understand how you can have different word orders, but it doesn't change what you're saying at all. You're conveying the same truth, you're conveying the same concept, but it could just have different rules completely, but you learn these things. So why do I even bring this up? Because I don't want your faith ever being shaken in the word of God either. I mean, I literally hear from people pretty frequently, oh, the Bible's been translated so many times. Who's ever heard that one? Oh, I don't know, the Bible's been translated so many times. Like, not really. You're talking about it's been more copied than it has been translated. But it's one of those things that people go, oh, it's just been translated and who knows what the real meaning is and stuff. Look, we do know, God's preserved his word. We know that God used other languages for people to hear the gospel. If God is involved in the translation, then it's gonna be perfect. God, and let me put it this way, God did not put the miracle of the other people being able to hear Greek and Hebrew. He gave the gift of being able to speak in the other languages, which means that God's not bound by any language, right? And just because there may be some differences in language or some renderings might be a little bit more difficult to communicate, we already saw that every nation under heaven was able to get the word of God translated by the Holy Spirit back in Acts chapter two. There's no reason why it can't today. But the more you learn about language, the more you learn about how languages work, we learn another language, you'll be able to see for yourself and kind of gain more wisdom and understanding about these things. And it is valuable. So learning languages, choosing a language to learn. I already mentioned a few that are probably very practical for here. But even if you choose not to do one of those, I mean, learn Greek or Hebrew. And I don't say that because you need to know those languages in order to understand the Bible, you don't. But when you have your faith in the word of God, I do believe it's very valuable to be able to defend the word of God and defend the translation of the King James Bible against the attacks of people, the scholars that are going out there and studying the Greek and Hebrew, and they're coming from a totally different perspective. They're coming from a whole different philosophy, even on the Bible translations and stuff. But we need people who can answer and defend the right positions of God's preservation of his word and there being unity behind one word of God, because when you have contradiction, right? I mean, there's so many arguments for joining together, uniting under the word of God and not having multiple versions of the word of God when they're saying different things. I mean, that should just be common sense. But going and learning some of these underlying languages can also be beneficial, if for nothing else, to still be able to defend the translation that you use, right? Fluency is the goal. Don't get discouraged because it takes a while to become fluent. So just keep at it. It takes a lot of time, it takes effort. When it comes to, so I already mentioned this, create a cheat sheet of things to say. And then I would also, once you create your cheat sheet, whether if you're using Google Translate or you're trying to study, I think it's better to try to do it on your own. Like, don't just go to Google Translate because it's always gonna be kind of funny. They're getting better at this stuff, which is great. But do enough of your own study of the language to try to come up with the sentence on your own. But then go verify it with someone who speaks that language. Find someone and ask them, be like, hey, is this right? Did I make, does this sentence sound right? Or does it sound weird? Is it technically right, but people are all gonna laugh when they hear it? You don't wanna say that then. You wanna get the right words to use, the right sentence to use, and then ask, why is what I wrote not right? Like, learn, get the education. And continue to grow with that. Consult a native speaker for advice and with the pronunciation too. Say it then. Practice saying and say, am I saying this right? What do I need to say different? So you can sound the best for the person who's hearing you. It sounds like work, it is work. But you can do it. And just remind yourself, look, this is important. Christ said to teach all nations. And I don't know, I get sick of going on doors and then having to walk away from people that we can't talk to. It drives me nuts. Sometimes it's entire communities. And we go, we blow through entire complexes, entire apartments, and can't really talk to anybody because they speak other languages. Man, it's discouraging. Like, how many people would listen if we just could reach them with their language? Make use of all the tools you can. Make use of the time that we live in and getting all the tools available. Get a right Bible translation. You could get them on your phone. I've got a Reyna Valera Gomez, 2010, on my phone. On my phone, it's great. And again, that's just for Spanish. You could get other things. Translator apps that allow you to speak and then they translate. Now look, these things take a lot of time at the door. I'm not fully convinced of how time worthy that is. When you're getting to the point, let me say this. If you don't know a language at all, I don't recommend using the translator apps to try to give the whole gospel to someone when you don't know the language at all because you don't know then what that app is gonna even say. If you don't know, I mean, you're just hoping that it does the right, it says the right thing. You know what I mean? And we wanna be careful because there are subtleties in what you explain about eternal life and the gift of God that you don't wanna get wrong when you're preaching the gospel to someone, right? So there are tools I think they're best used when you already know some of the language but maybe you don't know a certain word then you can hear it and be like, oh yeah, okay. And you know, you can kind of confirm that that yeah, that sounds right. As opposed to doing something 100% trusting in some other technological device to be able to do that for you. If you don't know a language at all, it's better than just to leave them with a video or even play the video for them, right? I've done that before, I'll ask if they're able to understand enough to be like, hey, can I show you a video? If they're still not understanding, I'll just start playing it and like put my phone out there and there are some people who have different African languages that we have gospel presentations for on our app where I've sat there for the 10 minutes or whatever and just played it for them while they listened because I care about them, right? I don't know how to speak their language but it's something and if it's even just planting a seed. But now I'll also say this, the spirit of wanting to get people saved is great, it's why we're doing this. But when it comes to us kind of like recording salvations, we're always very conservative on this. And when I say conservative, what I mean is that if there's doubts, we don't count it. If people, if you go through the whole plan of salvation and someone will say like, yeah, I believe that but then they don't wanna pray and like call in the name of the Lord, we don't count that. Okay, we don't do that in English. I've had people where I've gone through and I prayed with them but even still, I've just kind of felt like a little like, I don't know if they really got that, I'm still kind of uncertain, then I don't count that. And that's fine, look, that's just our record keeping. But definitely, if you don't know a language at all and you just see someone pray and they're praying in an unknown tongue, yeah, they listen to the video but you have no idea what they actually believe, right? So we don't count that either. But it doesn't mean don't do it, it doesn't mean don't play it for them, it doesn't mean don't try, it doesn't mean don't put forth the effort, right? It's just a means of, okay, let's use our time wisely. And this is why I also don't like just completely going back and forth. I've done it once and I realize there's a big waste of time where I've passed the phone back and forth and I'll say something and then they hear it and then they say something and then I hear it and then we kind of just go back and forth and back and forth. And I spent probably an hour talking to someone like that because there's a big delay. I mean, it's funny because you don't think about it when you're just talking, when you have a conversation with someone how fast you can actually get through subjects and concepts when you have to just wait, it needs to hear and then it needs to repeat and you just keep going back and forth. It takes a tremendous amount of time and our time is short. It's not that the soul isn't worth it, every soul is worth it, absolutely. But it's better to learn that language and then go back to them and be able to be more productive with your time or send someone else who does know that language while you can focus on investing your time with people you could understand. So I would recommend not trying to play that like these methods that take a tremendous amount of time, hey, give them the video, right? Let them hear that and move on from there. But whatever you choose, even if it's just a little bit, I encourage you to learn, try learning a language. Try to incorporate that into your schedule to learn some language. Choose one that you think is best for you, for your area, for what you wanna do with it. You will be blessed by it. But we see in the scripture, we are burdened with the gospel, but we're also burdened with trying to bring this truth to every nation, okay? At that time, the nation that was the Jews, it was Judea, it was the people in that geographic area that were the oracles of God were given to them, right? But when the nation as a whole rejected Jesus Christ, God now has been using other nations and people of other languages and other tongues to preach the truth and to preach his word. So that burden falls on us here, specifically a Strong Old Baptist Church as believers of God. Hey, this command applies to us. So let's do everything we can to try to reach people of all nations and get that out there and communicate that. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Dear Lord, we love you. We thank you so much for the Bible. We thank you for preserving your word for us. And God, I pray that you would please help us to learn, help us to grow, help us to gain more understanding and knowledge and that you would, excuse me, help us to take advantage of the time that we live in with the availability of resources that I don't think have ever really existed to the extent they do today. And to whom much is given, shall much be required. Lord, we know that truth is in the scripture as well. And I pray that you would please help us to truly do everything in our power to reach as many people as possible in this community. And Lord, specifically, I wanna pray just an extra prayer for our church that you would help us to get other ministries started that will completely target other languages of people who live in our area that we could just build more, excuse me, churches where people, where everyone's gonna be able to hear the word of God in their tongue. And God help us in this endeavor. We love each in Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. All right, we're gonna sing one last song before we're dismissed. Brother Peter, would you please lead us? All right church, if you can open up your hymnals in Psalm number 422. Psalm 422, thou didst leave thy throne. Not a very familiar Christmas song, but I just wanna give a little bit of guidance on this song. For that last verse, you see there at the bottom down at the last stave, it says, my heart shall rejoice, Lord Jesus. That portion is sung with the last verse. The oak come to my heart, Lord Jesus, there's room in my heart for thee. That's verses one through four, okay? We're gonna get it. We'll get it. We sing it once a year, so we're gonna sing it some understanding. Psalm 422. All right, let's sing it on the first. Thou didst leave thy throne in thy kingly crown without jenness to birth for me. But in Bethlehem's throne was there found no room for thy holy mentality. Oak come to my heart, Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for thee. Heaven's arches ring when the angels sing, proclaiming thy holy plea. The holy work is the home to earth, home to earth in great humility. Oak come to my heart, Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for thee. The foxes rest in the world's nearness in the shade of the forest tree. But the cows took the son of the son of God in the deserts of Galilee. Oak come to my heart, Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for thee. Thou cameest the Lord with a living work and she set thy people free. But the mocking storm did well, and the Lord gave them glory and glory. Oak come to my heart, Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for thee. On the last, when the heavens shall ring and the angels sing, and I come into victory. Let thy voice call me home, singing, there is room, there is room at my side for thee. My heart shall rejoice, Lord Jesus, without promise made cause for me. Amen, so it was great seeing you. Thank you so much for coming, you guys. You are dismissed. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.