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

All right. That's all by way of introduction anyway, so we don't have to worry about that. Here we are in Acts chapter 8, and what I'm going to be preaching about this evening is the importance of scheduled door-to-door soul-winning and why it is extremely important. There's a lot of different methods that people use to go out soul-winning, but nothing should ever take the place of going out and knocking on every single door, setting aside the time to go out and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ in that method. So we're going to look at multiple things, and I'm going to start off just talking a little bit about a challenge that I've been doing for the past two years at Word of Truth Baptist Church, and it's an idea I came up with last year, and the concept here for the challenge, we do challenges every month, and it's designed to challenge you, to challenge people, to do more, to push yourself, to do a little bit more than you normally would, to get you a little uncomfortable, and the soul-winning challenge that we do is one where we take for an entire month, you're supposed to attempt to give the gospel to at least one person every single day without fail for the whole month. Now it doesn't mean you have to get someone saved, it doesn't mean you even have to go through the gospel with someone, it's just the point of it was to get you thinking, to get your mind set on every opportunity that you possibly have to be able to preach the gospel to someone, you need to seize that opportunity, you need to be thinking about it all the time, because unfortunately, too often, people pass up opportunities to preach the gospel just because you don't even think about it. You have an interaction with somebody, maybe someone's going to do some business for you, maybe someone's coming over to fix something at your house, whatever the situation may be. You and yourself in this perfect situation, you and another individual, you probably have a pretty good indication that they're not saved, you talk about whatever's going on, and they leave, and then you go, oh, why didn't I give the gospel to that person? I know I've been there myself, it happens. And one of the points of the challenge I do is to get us thinking so that we're training ourselves to constantly be thinking about it and don't let any of those opportunities pass you by. I've learned a lot of lessons the past two years from doing this challenge because I've completed it, of course, every time we've done this, and it's very good to be an everyday soul winner, where it's not something that you just set aside and go do, but it's something that you're thinking about regularly so that you go out and every single day an opportunity presents itself, you're ready, you're able to give the gospel. Any moment, you're prepared, you're ready to go. It's something that takes work, it's not something that comes immediately right away, you have to be able to study and go out and do some more practice and soul winning and get to the point to where you should be able to, at any moment, you have Bible verses memorized, you run across someone, maybe you're not well equipped, maybe you don't have a Bible with you, maybe you don't have your phone and your Bible app or whatever that you normally would have with you, but you are ready to go at a moment's notice, as Philip was here in Acts chapter 8. Spirit of the Lord said, hey, I want you to go down this way, Philip goes down that way, and then there's this chariot, hey, join yourself under this chariot, and he just goes, and immediately he's able to give the gospel to the Ethiopian eunuch. And that was another benefit, another lesson learned, just being able to do that, one of the goals of being able to do this challenge, and really helps us to be gospel minded. Now, our challenge was very effective at improving many areas where we can be better, we could do more, and I know it's helped me personally quite a bit, I never want to get to the point where I feel like I've just arrived as a soul winner, and I can never get any better, there's always room for improvement, always trying to do more, to get myself in a place to where I can be used of God even more. Now let's look at this story real quick, starting in verse number 26 here with Philip in Ethiopian eunuch, where we read some of these verses, the Bible says, and the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert. So notice, Philip is being sent here by the angel of the Lord, he's being sent out to go, and the angel of the Lord knows what he's sending Philip for, but Philip doesn't exactly know necessarily at this point. Verse 27 says, and he arose and went, and behold, a man of Ethiopia, and eunuch of great authority under Candacy, queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for the worship, was returning and sitting in his chariot, read Esaias the prophet. Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near and join thyself to this chariot. Notice how the Spirit is communicating with Philip both times here, it's mentioned twice that the Spirit's really prompting him and urging him, hey, go and join yourself to this chariot, I want you to go down this way, I want you to join yourself to this chariot. Verse 30, and Philip ran, he ran, he didn't walk, he didn't say, oh, I guess I got to go talk to this guy, no, he's excited about it, hey man, the Spirit's telling me to go join myself to this chariot, I'm running for it, I'm excited about it, I'm ready to go, and that's the way our soul winning ought to be. You ought not to look at soul winning as a drudgery, it's just something you got to check off the box, and I guess I got to do this today, I don't know. Be like Philip, man, run to the opportunity, let's get out there, let's be excited about it, let's get some souls saved. What more exciting thing is there than telling people about the free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord? It's life changing, it ought to be life changing, and we should be excited about it. And I could tell, you know, I feel like I'm preaching to the choir, as it were, because I was hearing the numbers given up during announcements time, and there is a lot of soul winning, and praise the Lord for the soul winning that's going on here. And hopefully, or as a result of this conference that's going on, the DBZ set that's going to be produced, people will just, that zeal, that fire will spread among the country, yea, even the world. All to the glory of the Lord. Let's keep reading here, as Philip runs to him, right, verse 30, and Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Isaiah, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest? And he said, How can I except some man should guide me? And he desired, Philip, that he would come up and sit with him. The place of the scripture which he read was this, he was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb, dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment was taken away, and who shall declare his generation, for his life is taken from the earth. Now, this is a golden opportunity, right, this isn't going to happen to you very often where someone's just like, they're reading their Bible, they're not saved, and they're literally on a passage that's talking about Jesus Christ, like there's a prophecy of him, and he has this great opportunity, falls in his lap, of course it didn't just fall in his lap, he was sent. He was already chosen. He was known by God that he is a worker. He is someone who's going to preach the gospel, so the Spirit leads him, he obeys, he follows, he doesn't say, Oh, I'm kind of tired today, oh, I stayed up too late, oh, I got up early this morning, oh, I'm kind of hungry, can it wait, I need to go get a snack. He didn't have any excuses. He ran. He got out there, and he preached the gospel, and of course there's this great opportunity. God knew this opportunity was going to be there. He directed his servant, Philip, to go and preach the gospel to this man, and verse number 34 says, And Eunuch answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this of himself, or of some other man. And Philip opened his mouth and began at the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus. What a great story. What a great example of someone in the Bible getting the gospel preached unto them and getting saved. And we know he got saved because he asks, you know, hey, here's water, why can't I be baptized? And he's like, well, if thou believeth, and if you read an NIV, you'll never know the answer of why he can't be baptized because it just simply isn't there. But thank God he's preserved his word for us today, and we can actually see the answer, if thou believeth with all thine heart, thou mayest. So we know that according to scripture here, that guy got saved. Philip preached Jesus Christ to him. He received it. He got saved. Amen. Let's turn to Acts chapter 10 just a couple pages over in your Bible. We're going to see another example of a divine appointment because this is a very unique case in Acts chapter 8. Right? I mean, Philip is, this guy is driving a chair, he's reading his Bible, and Philip is led by the Holy Spirit to go and preach the gospel to him. This is not an example of someone doing what we normally do of going out and just knocking on random doors. He's specifically led to a specific person. Now, I do believe that when we do go out and knock doors, it may seem random to us, but what God does is able to work out our path and our direction to get to these people that are in the same situation that this Ethiopian eunuch was in, in order to hear the gospel preached unto them as well. I don't know about you, but I can't even think of all the stories that I've had where people are just like, I can't believe that you're here. Did you know that just this morning I was praying that God would just help me to understand this or God would help me to do that? And here you are, this isn't an accident, this isn't a coincidence. I'm like, amen, you're right, it's not. But listen up, and how many times people get saved because you are right there at that moment and it is no accident God has led you to that person. Look at Acts chapter 10, we're going to see this other divine appointment, look at verse number 1, the Bible reads, there's a certain man in Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band, a devout man and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people and prayed to God always. Then Peter, excuse me, so this is, I don't want to keep going, I'm reading off my notes and that's great from the scriptures. This is the man Cornelius and Acts chapter 10 verses 1 and 2 are describing Cornelius and who he is, he says he's a devout man, he's one that fears God and gives alms to the people. So he's basically like this, he's a good guy, overall a good guy, but he's not saved. Jump down to verse number 34, because we're going to see Peter is sent to Cornelius to preach the gospel unto him and to tell him how to get saved. This is another example of someone who is seeking, who wants to know, who thinks they're doing the right thing, but they're doing it ignorantly, they don't really know exactly what they should be doing, but they have a genuineness about wanting to know who God is and God sends a minister to that person. Just like we saw in Acts chapter 8, the Ethiopian eunuch, he's reading the Bible, he's trying to understand it, he wants to know the truth, but he doesn't know it because the natural man cannot receive the things of the spirit, the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God. So he needs to get saved in order to understand it and he needs someone to guide him and to show him. Cornelius is the same exact example. He's someone who is unsaved and he needs someone to show him. He's trying to do the right thing, overall I call him a good man, right? He's giving alms, he's fearing God, so God sends Peter to go and preach the gospel unto him. Jump down to verse 34. It says, who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him and we are witnesses of all things which he did, both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem, whom they slew and hanged on a tree. Him, God raised up the third day and showed him openly, so what is he doing? He's teaching the basics about Jesus Christ and who he was and what he did and how he died on the cross, how he rose again, this is the gospel, right? Verse 41, not to all the people but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead and he commanded us to preach unto the people and to testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the judge of quick and dead. So he's talking about judgment, he's talking about the fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross for us, rose again from the dead, we've witnessed it. He came back to life and here he's preaching it to Cornelius, verse number 43, to him give all the prophets witness that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins and there it is. What must I do to be saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and now shall be saved and he's preaching that to him, whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins. He gives him the gospel. While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word. Now these people got saved from Peter preaching the gospel unto them. It's very clear even in the next chapter and the reason why I'm bringing this up, I've heard people question this before and just wonder, oh, were these people already saved or how did this happen? Chapter 11 recounts, Peter goes over this same story again with the Jews about what actually happened when he went to this town because everyone was kind of freaking out, the Jews were just, they didn't understand. Even Peter himself, he needed to be shown in a vision that God wanted them to go and evangelize the Gentiles. He had this concept that even in this chapter it says that, well, you know that is not lawful to go unto the uncircumcised or unto the Gentiles. Now that is not in God's law that you can't keep company with someone who is uncircumcised. That was something that he thought was unlawful or that was set up as a law within the Pharisaical religion but that was not something from God's word and God had to show him, no, you do need to preach the gospel to people, these people do need to be saved and he gave them that vision and that's one of the reasons why this event even took place and he sees this, the Holy Ghost followed them, they're able to speak with other tongues, other languages and it's just evidence that, yeah, these people truly did get saved. So then he goes and recounts this story unto the Jews and in Acts 11, verse number 13, the Bible says, and he showed us how he had seen an angel in his house which stood and said unto him, send men to Joppa and call for Simon whose surname is Peter. So he's explaining what Cornelius saw, Cornelius had this vision and he was told by this angel to go and send for Peter and that's exactly what he does, Peter comes and of course we read that in Acts chapter 10. Verse number 14, he says, who shall tell thee words whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved. So that clears up any confusion or anything, did they really get saved here? Yeah, because that's what he was called to do, he was called to preach them exactly what they needed to know and Acts chapter 10, it just says that he shall tell thee things that you need to know or that you should do or something like that, I forget the exact phrasing in chapter 10 but in chapter 11, it gets a little bit more specific and tells us he shall tell thee words whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved. And that's exactly what we did, we see the words that he used, he said, whosoever believeth shall receive remission of sins. Verse 15, as I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on them as on us at the beginning, then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that he said, John indeed baptized with water but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost, for as much then as God gave them the light gift as he did unto us who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, what was I that I could withstand God. And they heard these things, they held their peace and glorified God, saying, then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life. And that's the repentance that is in regards to salvation, where you change your mind about whatever you're believing or trusting in order to be saved and go to heaven and you put your faith on the Lord Jesus Christ. That is repentance unto life. And that's what happened in this story, that these Gentiles, Cornelius and his band and his household believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and received the gift of eternal life. So another great example here of how God works in the lives of soul winners to lead people to Christ. And these are just a couple of examples, there's many more in the Bible, we're not gonna go through them all, I just wanted to bring up some of these, they're great stories we can learn a lot from, but they're not comprehensive on how all of the evangelism was done in the Bible. These are great examples, these are great stories, we learn a lot, but that is not how everything, it wasn't always just go here and talk to this person or go there and talk to that person, there was a lot more being done behind the scenes. These are kind of extra, these are things that were going on in addition to the regular evangelism that was going on. There's multiple ways, as I started off this sermon, there's multiple ways of evangelizing, some are good, some are bad, and some are just a total waste of time. Now I'm not gonna go into all the various methods that people use, we know that we don't go out and just, you don't just hand people a piece of paper and call that soul winning. So we don't practice just going out and passing out tracts. Now I'm not just anti-tract, okay, I think they have a place, we use, we call them invitations, but basically on the back it's got the gospel laid out, we use them, but we use them as a tool to help us preach the gospel to every creature, to open up our mouths boldly and let the Lord lead us into giving people the gospel of Jesus Christ and not just handing out a bunch of literature. Now I'm a little irritated with myself because I wanted to have a big chart, I've been doing all kinds of things lately, those of you who don't know, I'm a programmer by trade, a computer programmer, so I've been thinking a lot in terms of functions and everything else, and I was gonna put this thing together, but I didn't think it would necessarily resonate with everyone. I know we've got a lot of computer people here, but I'll try to summarize it real briefly what the concept that I was trying to get across. You can be very efficient in giving the gospel as far as the number of salvations versus the number of people not saved, that ratio of saved and not saved. You can have a very high efficiency if you only give the gospel to a very, very, very small number of people and you spend a lot of time with those people, right? You may have very good success in terms of how many are saved versus how many don't end up receiving the gospel of Jesus Christ. But that is not the goal of soul winning, it's just to get the highest ratio. The goal is to get as many people saved as possible. And the reason why I'm bringing this up is because there's different methods that people will use, and we need to consider these things, and I'm gonna get into it in a minute, lifestyle evangelism is the first one I'm gonna hit on, because that's the example where you may get some people saved over the course of your lifespan. That might be from a result of them getting to know you, and becoming friends with you, and being able to open up unto you, and building that relationship, and then one day the perfect opportunity arises, and they're able to receive the gospel and get saved. You know what, praise the Lord for that, but that's not even a soul winning method. That's just something that should be part of your life, it's not you going out to win souls. So you may have this great ratio and be like, man, everyone I've ever given the gospel to got saved because it was one person. But that's not the success we're talking about. The more people that you're going to approach and give the gospel to, the more your ratio is gonna go down. Now it is gonna level off, because there's gonna be a certain number of people in any given area that will be receptive to hearing God's word, and a whole bunch of people that won't be. But we also don't want to get too far on the spectrum of just distributing a bunch of pamphlets. You could reach tons and tons and tons of people, but you're not spending any time with them at all. Because you're just distributing literature. That's not gonna get the job done either. We need to find the right balance of spending an appropriate amount of time with people and getting as many people to talk to as possible. And that can only be done, that balance is met, the perfect balance is met through door to door soul winning. That's where you're gonna get that. Now one more point on the lifestyle evangelism, don't be fooled by this. And what I mean by that, in case you don't know what it is, I kinda alluded to it a little bit, but lifestyle evangelism, people will think that you don't approach them, you just make friends with them and get them to a point to where they feel comfortable with you, and you hang out, and you go bowling, and you do whatever, you make as good friends as you can with them, but don't bring it up, you wait, you just keep living this life and they're gonna see how happy you are, and they're gonna see how everything is great in your life, and they're gonna be like, man, what is it that you have in your life that I don't? I need what you have. And it's funny, but this is what people teach. Now the reason why people just love this so much, one, it makes you feel like you're so great. I got everything together, look at me, I'm so good. It lifts yourself up, and it relieves any responsibility from you having to actually go out and do something, because you're relying on someone else to come to you instead of you approach somebody else. And this concept is so easily debunked from scripture, just think about it for a second, who is the best example that we could possibly use in the Bible for how we ought to live? Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ grew up in a family where his earthly father here was a carpenter. So if that method is the method that God would want us to use, that would be like Jesus living his life as a carpenter, doing work for people, building things, build cabinets, build shelves, and then just wait for people to see his patience and his loving smile. And just over the years, wow, Jesus, you just, you have a spirit like none other. What is it about you that's so special? Well actually, I'm the son of God. We don't see him doing that. He didn't do that at all, right? The Bible says in Luke 19, 10, for the son of man has come to seek and to save that which is lost. He didn't come for men to seek him, because he knew there wasn't anyone seeking him. He went to seek them, to seek them out, and to save them, that's the model that we have in Jesus Christ, the perfect example. The lifestyle evangelism method, it's not effective because it usually takes a lot of time and the results are very small, and that's not what we're looking for. Now the daily soul winner, as I like to call it, is similar to the challenge that we introduced at World Truth Baptist Church, this idea of trying to get people, you know, at every opportunity you can. And I'll tell you what, it is work, it is definitely a lot more work than lifestyle evangelism, and it keeps you thinking about these things, but one of the problems with that method, this is one of the things I learned, is that while it is good, while we did get some fruit from that, while there's definitely people that got saved as a result, that wouldn't have normally gotten saved if we weren't thinking about this in our day-to-day activity, our day-to-day life. It definitely was good, but there was still some limitations on it, because the goal of that was just, I mean, you don't always come into contact with people, I had to force myself literally to go out and come in contact with people, because at the time I was still working and I was working from home, so like, I didn't have a reason to leave the house at all, or to come into contact with anybody outside of my family, so I had to literally just go out and go to gas stations, or go to Walmart, or just go out somewhere in order to run into somebody and give them the gospel, and that's fine, I mean, it's great for this type of challenge, it really gets you motivated and thinking about it, but what I found is that in a lot of these situations, that I would just go to try to run into someone, people were pretty busy, you know, at the gas station, you're filling up your car, you don't want to be bothered with someone interrupting you, and look, I'm trying to get out of here, man, you know, whatever, and I ran into that quite a bit, now, I still did come across people that would be willing to listen, you know, and praise God for that, but that's why the daily soul winner, that's something that should be in addition, that's something you add on to your life, that should be a part of you, that's a very good thing to be a part of you, but it's not what you should just be relying on, because let's just say I just did that and just say, well, you know what, I am a soul winner, and praise God for that, right? Praise the Lord for being any kind of soul, or leading people to Christ, but we don't want to settle for just mediocrity, we want to strive to be the best servants that we could possibly be, and look, I'm not going to just be a total down on the mouth on people, if you give the gospel every chance you get, great, and you know, especially for ladies, they have a lot of children, this may be some of the best that you're able to do, depending on how your family dynamics work, and what your husband's going to allow you to do, and you know, maybe you don't have the opportunities to go out and preach the gospel, and this is what you're able to do at this point in your life, praise God for that, I'm not trying to be down on you for that, because this is still good, but it's not the most effective, it's not going to see the most results as far as the total number of people saved. The only way you're going to get those great results is by going out and using the method that we see multiple times in scripture, like in Acts 5 42, where the Bible says, in daily in the temple and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. Now turn, if you would, to Luke chapter 10. Door to door is the most effective model that we have. It maximizes the number of people that you reach, because you're hitting everybody in town. I mean, everybody lives somewhere, and when you're done knocking on the doors, find the homeless camps, I mean, everybody has to lay their head somewhere. Or start off with the homeless camps, I mean, whatever, you know, just do, make sure you're reaching everybody, so you're getting everybody out of the way, it maximizes that number, you know, the Bible says preach the gospel to every creature, not just the ones that go to the marketplace, not just the ones that you can find at a gas station, but every, all of them. And the only way you can do that is by actually approaching home. Do you know how many people are shut in? I mean, I don't know what the numbers are here, there's definitely a lot, I've run into it when I was living here and going soul-winning here, but up where I live in Prescott Valley, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of older people that don't get out. And they don't go to the store. Maybe they have other people come and deliver to you, to them or whatever, but we have to hit all the doors to make sure we're reaching all the people. Nothing can replace door-to-door soul-winning, nothing should replace it. Having the dedicated time to go out and preach the gospel is of utmost importance because it makes you put a priority on it. When you know that there's a soul-winning time, there's a location, there's other people coming, when you know there's other people coming, for one, that's going to be encouraging. It's going to help motivate you to be a part of what everyone else is doing. It's good, it's a good thing. When you're just doing the day-to-day thing, you know, there's, not that people are out just looking to judge you or something like that, but the way that I think about this is like you would with a personal trainer. If you want to work out, you just want to get your physical health better, get in shape more. When you're just relying on yourself to go and do that, can some people do that? Yes, they can. Some people can be very disciplined and go out and every single day they can do their exercise and do their workout, but even more so as you're just starting something, it's a good idea to have somebody else to go and work out with. Why? Because when you know that there's someone else there, say they're waiting on you, you're waiting on them, when you start to feel lazy and you're like, yeah, I don't really feel like doing this today, you're thinking, well, my buddy's going and I don't want to let them down, so, okay, yeah, I'll go, and you kind of force yourself to go. And it works, you know, it's edifying for both people. The soul-winning time does that. If you're just thinking, well, you know, I'll just give the gospel to someone I run across today, but then maybe you're in a bad mood. And I'll be honest with you, you know, the challenge that we had, the only reason I did it is because it was a challenge, because I said I was going to do it, because the goal was every single day, so I made sure not one day went by, but if we didn't have that challenge, I would not have pushed myself to even go out and do that, and I was doing that just for the sake of the challenge. Similarly, you would push yourself to kind of be there for other people and to help encourage other people and, you know, to gain that extra strength to go out and do it, because let's be honest, we still have this flesh. And sometimes you just simply don't feel, maybe you're in a bad mood, you don't feel like going out soul-winning. That's why we have to have these scheduled times, churches have to have these scheduled times established. How can you expect the people in a congregation to go out and just figure it all out on their own and just do their own soul-winning if the church isn't sending them, if they're not establishing time for people to meet together? I mean, why do we come together at church? Because there's an established time. There's a time that's set up. Everybody knows when that time is, you come here to go to church. Well, we need to have the same exact thing for soul-winning. I know that you guys do here, but it's of utmost importance. We need to be able to set the time aside, and when you have the schedule, you know it's always at this time. So when other things are coming up, you can say, oh, I don't want that to interfere with my service for the Lord. So I'm just going to block off this time right here, because I know this is important, it's something I want to do, and it's something that when you're feeling right with God, you can get that established and set up and be like, you know what, this is what I'm going to do. For me, it started off making that commitment early on when I got in a good church, Faithful Word Baptist Church, over 10 years ago now, 11 years ago, I don't remember exactly when, at that moment I decided, you know what, church is important. I'm going to be in church every time the doors are open. And thank God there was a schedule. It wasn't just, well, whenever we feel like getting together, we have church. No, Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. So I said, hey, this is important, I'm going to start doing this. And not very long after I made that decision, I realized how important soul winning was. You know what, I should be doing this too. I didn't want to do it, but at first, in my flesh, I didn't want to go out and do it. But spiritually, I knew it was the right thing to do. So I had to make that commitment as well, because I decided it was a priority. I decided it was important. I can see what the Bible says about that and how it ultimately is what we're supposed to be doing. The scheduled times helped me to do that. Because now I can say, I know when soul winning is. I don't have to rely on myself to figure out how I'm going to do this, when I'm going to do this. It's right there. Oh, Saturday morning at 1030 or whatever, you know, Sunday afternoon at 1pm, whatever the time may be, there's a time there. And now I can say, well, I know there's something I do. Hey, here's an opportunity for me to do it. And now it's just a matter of me showing up. You need to have a time where you have it scheduled or else it won't happen. Now, the only downside to this method, and it's not really downside, but only downside, the reason why people don't use this method of door-to-door soul winning and the scheduled times is because it requires work. It's work. Right? It's not that easy. Now, I don't think it's that difficult, honestly. And people have been going soul winning for a while, you know it's really not that hard. It's not that hard. But it is work. You do get exhausted. You do have to sacrifice your time. You do have to not do other things that you might normally do because you're going to go out soul winning. It does require dedication, commitment. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this regularly. You're in Luke chapter 10. We're going to see one more example here of how Jesus sent out his disciples. They were being sent out by Jesus. They're being sent out by twos and groups of twos that go out into each city in order to preach the gospel. Now, just because you don't see them, the scripture of saying, where does the Bible say that you have to knock on a door? They're sent into every city. And Jesus Christ had to preach the gospel to every creature. We've already covered that not everybody goes outside of the house. So let's use a little bit of brainpower here and say, well, if he's sending them into the cities and he's sending them out two by two and he wants them to preach the gospel to every creature, how are they going to do that? Daily in the temple and in every house. Public meeting areas where people are willing to talk about the Lord. Great place. Especially when a lot of people are unsaved like the temple, the synagogue. If they're willing to listen, then go there. But how many times did apostle Paul say, I'm done with you? Forget it. I'm going to the Gentiles. More than once. That's for sure. Luke chapter 10. We have this example. Look at verse number one. The Bible reads after these things, the Lord appointed other 70 also and sent them to and to before his face into every city and place, whether he himself would come. Therefore said unto them, the harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few. Pray ye therefore, the Lord of the harvest that he would send forth laborers into his harvest. And we see there it's, it's work. He wants workers. He wants people going out and doing the work. Now I've heard people pull verse seven out of context as a way to justify their own laziness for not going soul winning at the scheduled times. Verse number seven. You want to look at that real quick says, and in the same house remain eating and drinking such things as they give for the labor is worthy of his higher going out from house to house. The CC look right there. The Bible says, go not from house to house. So you guys going out, knocking on doors and preaching the gospel to people, you're not supposed to be doing that because the Bible says, go not house from house. Ridiculous. Let's get the Bible in context. And you know, even this verse should be enough to let you know that that's, that's not talking about preaching the gospel house to house. But when we read this in context, you'll see, he's saying, when you go into a city because they're being sent away from home, they're being sent out into other cities in the cities where they live. And in order to knock all the doors, it's not, they're not getting it all done in one day. They don't have cars. They're not driving around. They're not driving their quads up and knocking on the door and going to the next place. It takes time to knock all the doors in a city. So they have to stay there for a little while until the job gets done. So what this is teaching them is that when you go into a place, find someone who's going to lodge you, who's going to feed you. Because when Jesus sent them here in Luke chapter 10, he sent them with nothing. He says, don't take any money. Don't take two coats. Don't take anything with you. You will be provided for because you're doing work for the Lord. And he is going to make sure that they were taken care of. So he's like, when you go in there, just find a place and stay with them the whole time you're there. And when he says about going out of the house, you don't need to go, okay, I slept here last night. See ya. Now I'm going to find someone else and go stay with them and stay with them and stay with them. You're going to be wasting a bunch of time that way. Just stay put in one place. Have one home base to work from and then move on. And let's see what the Bible says. Look at verse number 4. He says, carry neither purse nor scrip nor shoes and salute no man by the way. They're on a mission. They need to get to work. Verse number 5, and into whatsoever house he enter, first say peace be to this house. And if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it. If not, it shall turn to you again. And in the same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give, for the laborer is worthy of his hire, go not from house to house. And into whatsoever city ye enter and they receive you, eat such things that are set before you. And heal the sick that are therein and say unto them, the kingdom of God has come nigh unto you. But into whatsoever city ye enter and they receive you not, go your ways out into the streets of the same and say, even the very dust of your city, which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against you. Notwithstanding, be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God has come nigh unto you. And notice how many times it says city, whatever city you enter into. And in order to go into the city, they're going to be knocking on multiple doors seeing, can you lodge us? Preaching the gospel, but when they're finding a place and look, if no one's going to receive you there, go to the next city, shake off the dust of your feet and just be like, all right, well, the kingdom of God came real close to you. It's come real close. We're here. But now we're just shaking off the dust of our feet. We're moving on. And you know what? This is the way God operates. You're not always going to get a thousand chances to hear the gospel. You might only get one. We need to do the work. The scheduled soul-winning times are there for a good reason. We need to have those scheduled times and we are there to do the work. In Philippians 4 verse number 3, turn if you would to 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, we're almost done. Philippians chapter 4 verse number 3, the Bible reads, and I entreat thee also true yoke fellow. Help those women which labored with me in the gospel with Clement also and with other my fellow laborers whose names are in the book of life. This is the apostle Paul kind of signing off of Philippians chapter 4 and he's referring to people as yoke fellow, people getting in the yoke with him, working and laboring with him, laboring. And he says labored with me in the gospel. It's work. It's not something that you wait for people to approach you about. It's something that you go out and do and approach other people on. And he calls these people as fellow laborers. These are not people all doing their own thing. This is not people who are just, well they're all doing their soul-winning all on their own time. They figure out how they're going to evangelize all on their own and you just let people do it the way they want to do it. No, they're all coming together. They're joining together as a team. They were working together. They're putting on a yoke together and they were going out in force in mass and preaching the gospel to every creature. First Thessalonians chapter 2, look at verse number 8, the Bible says, so being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you not the gospel of God only but also our own souls because you were dear unto us. For you remember, brethren, our labor and travail for laboring night and day because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God. And I love this passage. It really gets to the heart and the soul of the soul-winner. And if this doesn't describe you, work on that. As I mentioned at the beginning of the sermon, we don't go so in to check it off the list. We're not like the Jehovah's false witnesses that drag their feet and they put in 59 minutes and 59 seconds because someone told them that that's exactly what you need to have in order to be in the kingdom on earth or whatever they're working for. Whatever it is that they're trying to achieve through their works, that they're doing the minimum of what they think they have to do and they don't have a desire to give anyone the truth. I was sitting at home the other day and someone slid a paper like through my door. They didn't ring the door but they didn't knock on the door or anything. I was just like, what was that? I was eating lunch or something. It's like, oh, it's the Jehovah's false witnesses. They're too scared to even knock on my door. Probably for good reason. If they're not going to hear the gospel, they're going to get chewed out. That's what they receive when they come by my house, at least. And don't tell me I'm not loving. Go ahead and read the Epistles of John and see what John says about that, about not receiving someone who brings another gospel into your house. Or Galatians chapter 1, let them be accursed. Now, I do try to get them saved but they usually don't come to your door seeking how to get saved. If they ever listen, then praise the Lord. But if not, they're getting chewed out. But anyways, when we go out soul winning, when we go out bringing the truth, this is the attitude we ought to have. First Thessalonians 2, look at verse number 8, we're going to read this again a little bit more slowly. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you not the gospel of God only. We're saying we're not just here. We came to preach the gospel but we're willing not just to preach the gospel but also our own souls. We're imparting our own souls unto you. We care about you. We love you. This is why we came out. We actually do care. We're bringing you the truth. We're not just saying, you know, and be careful of this. I've seen it happen before. People get real haughty and get full pride because of the knowledge that they've gained about scripture. And they start thinking they're super righteous and better than everyone else. And they go out soul winning because they don't need to go soul winning and they think they're super spiritual but they go out with an attitude. And they talk down to people. Oh, you think that, you know, whatever. That is not why we go out soul winning. It's not to show how smart you are. It's not to win any arguments with people that are in a cult. It's because you have a desire and you're willing to impart not the gospel of God only but also your own souls. That's why the Apostle Paul went out. That's the spirit he went out in. Truly, Karrick says, because you were dear unto us. For you remember, brethren, our labor and travail. You don't sacrifice. You don't work hard. You don't travail for people that you don't care about. You're putting forth the effort. You're sacrificing. You're working because you want to make sure that you can become all things to all men so that by all means save some. Because you're focused on the lost and getting them saved for laboring night and day. And was this a lot of work? It sounds like it. Sounds like the Apostle Paul went through a lot of efforts for the people in Thessalonica to come to Jesus Christ. He labored night and day because we would not be chargeable. He didn't even want to receive of them for doing the work that he was doing. He was being an example but that means he took on extra work himself. He says, I'm not even gonna, I'm not gonna take your food. I'm not gonna take anything from you. I'm just gonna do this work and I'm gonna do work. I'm gonna feed myself. I'm gonna provide them for myself and show you that you know what this is possible and what a great example is for us. This is possible. It doesn't matter how much money you make. It doesn't matter what kind of house you live in. Everybody can breathe. It doesn't matter how busy you are. You want to talk about people who are busy. Talk to, if you go to the conference in Detroit or you've met any of these pastors from these other churches, talk to them about being busy. You say, I got too much stuff going on in my life. You don't understand. I don't have time to preach the gospel. Why don't you talk to some, talk to some of the people that go out and do it because you know they don't get up and brag about how busy they are. They're not trying to make a point and bring glory on themselves but sometimes it's necessary to bring us up as Apostle Paul did here just to show this is possible. Don't give yourself an excuse not to go out and preach the gospel. Anybody can do it if you have the desire. If you are willing to impart your own soul, you'll find a way to make it work. You will find a way to make it work. The reason why people don't is because their priorities have put soul winning down here and have put too many other things in front of it. 1st Corinthians chapter 3, last place we'll look at tonight. you you you nope fill in the blank whatever excuse you have is that God's fault not God's fault he appointed you to be the minister now he explains here about his work look at verse number six I have planted Paulus watered but God gave the increase so then neither is he that planteth anything neither he that watereth but God that giveth the increase now he that planteth and he that watereth are one look at this and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor the rewards there there's a payoff put in the work it's worth it it requires faith you don't see the rewards on this on this earth you're not going to be like you know we don't preach this this prosperity gospel oh man you're right with God he's gonna give you a boat he's gonna give you a mansion you know not in this life you don't get it here in fact you're gonna get the opposite the more Christ like you live well look at what they did to Jesus if they call the master of the house Beelzebub how much more they have his household don't expect it here but when you have the faith to know that God is true to his word and God has promised us to say I'll pay it and one of the reason why God pays us because salvation is a free gift you're not working your way in heaven at all God's already got that covered and paid for so anything work that you do down here is God's gonna pay you for that I don't watch you I'm looking I'm looking forward to that day make sure you don't faint it's work stay in a good soul winning church you need it you need the scheduled time you need the people that are gonna encourage you and edify you and keep you going because sometimes it gets hard but when you got other people there around you they're gonna lift you up they're gonna help you through the difficult times it's about right it's that word of prayer dear Heavenly Father Lord we thank you so much for the amazing gift that you've given unto us Lord it is exciting it's good news I pray to you please stir up our spirits tonight stir up ourselves Lord if there's anyone here that doesn't normally go so and God I pray to you please just just speak to them personally and and help them to get their priorities straight dear Lord and all and and all the people that do normally go soloing God I help us to to push each other and to push ourselves to do even more to keep the main thing the main thing and a focus on on just doing as much work for you as we can help us to use the right methods Lord I pray to please help us to be able to add and just do do more to make our sewing more efficient and and add other areas where maybe lacking but to never to lose sight on the the scheduled sewing times we're actually putting in the hours and hours and hours to go out and reach the most number of people to lead the most people to you dear Lords in Jesus name we pray Amen