By the will of God, we come this morning to invite your attention again to Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians. In chapter 1, we want to focus our attention on verses 26 through 29. Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 1, verses 26 through 29. And in 1 Corinthians 1, verses 26-29, we find these words, For you see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men are for the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, And the base things of the world, and things that are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are, that know flesh and glory in his presence. This morning we want to think with you from this subject, the people that God uses. The people that God uses. As we have seen in our study thus far, DePaul has made it unsacredly clear that the things that are the wisdom of God is foolishness to the world. It's something that we need to accept as a fact, that our position as Christians, the gospel we preach, the doctrine we teach, as far as the world is concerned, is foolish. It doesn't make sense. They don't understand it. They'll never understand it unless they're enlightened by the Spirit of God. And so we need to understand that as far as the world is concerned, we are very, very foolish people. And Paul has told us already that The world by its wisdom knew not God, and it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching, that's foolish as they count foolish, to save them that believe. This text was a very good eye-opener to me many years ago. When I first went to college, I thought that somehow I could learn enough He showed people how becoming a Christian or believing the gospel was sweet reasonableness. Then I ran into this text. It's foolish. They'll never get it. Does that mean we don't preach it? No, it doesn't. We still preach the gospel. But we need to understand that as we preach the gospel, as we teach the truth, as we proclaim his doctrines, We are like Ezekiel in the valley of the dry bones. It doesn't make sense. But when you obey God, it works out as he intended. You recall that Ezekiel was in the valley of dry bones, and he said he looked around, and the bones were many, very many bones. They were very dry. And God asked the prophet a question, son of man, can these bones live? Now, presumptive would have said yes, and unbelief would have said no. But faith said, Lord God, thou knowest. And so God said, Department, I'll tell you what you do. You just preach to the bones. Now, you're talking about a foolish act. Can you imagine a man standing in a graveyard of bones, very dry, stigmified. They'd been there a long time. And he's preaching to the bones. They had no ears, they could not hear, no brain, they could not cogitate, they could not think. It didn't make sense. But his ego said, I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I prophesied, I heard a noise. The bones started moving and getting together, and then, you know, the story goes on to show how he stood up eventually as a great host. That, my dears, is the position that you and I are in. as we seek to proclaim the gospel, teach the doctrine, and articulate the truth of Christianity, it doesn't make sense, because the people we're talking to, to them, it's foolishness. But we ought to obey God, and when we obey God, somehow, the Spirit of God breathes upon those words, and those words will bring a life to people who are dead and trespassed and sinned. And so Paul says the Greeks The Jews require a sign, the Greeks seek out the wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. We know it's a stumbling block to the Jews, it's fruitless to the Greeks, but we just stay with it. And that's why I don't think I'm going to change and adjust for anybody. And all those folks who say we need to accommodate to reach this and do this for the young people, to do this for the college students, to do this for the intellectuals, to do this, I ain't going to do nothing. I'm going to just preach the gospel and trust God through his Holy Spirit to make it real, to even dead bones, and they can live. And Paul, as he continued in this, he says in 1 Corinthians 5, for the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. That's what the world would call foolishness as far as God is concerned, what the people would call God foolish. God's prudishness, as they call prudishness, is wiser than men. And then that which men would call weakness of God is stronger than men. And to illustrate this, Paul used something right where they were. He said, now, look around you in your church. Look at the folks that are in your congregation. He said, see in your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh Not many mighty, not many noble. In other words, you don't have a whole lot of geniuses sitting in your pews. You don't have rich and noble and mighty people who can move and shake us in society. You don't have any people of noble birth. What you have is a group of common, ordinary people. But as the world looks at them, it would say these are the weak, these are the ignorant, the foolish, These are those who can't do very much, they're not noble, they're not high-born. And Paul said, I want you to look around and see what's in you, because, in verse 27, he goes on to say, God has chosen. Now this morning, I think you know already, I'm never far away from the one thing that always lays heavy upon my heart, whether I'm teaching, or preaching, or singing, or whatever. I'm not one step far away from my full conviction. It is just like that first church that went down from Pentecostal prevy and turned the world upside down. But I think God can duplicate that. And that's been my concern ever since. And so I've come this morning to talk about the people that God uses. And this is our prayer that somehow God might scare us. that maybe you've been wrestling with something, you're concerned about something, and you've just been putting out there, well, I can't do this, I'm not able, or our church is too small, or we don't have enough money, or we don't know enough to handle this, and I'll just let it go. You might be stirred to do what you can do for God and leave the results in His hands. Because there are two things that that I see that stands in our way in terms of being the people God would have us to be and advances his kingdom in the world. Number one is we turn around the command of Jesus. Jesus said to the disciples in Matthew 6 and 33, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. Now, if I understand this plainly, and God says, make the first item on your agenda, not your job, not your family, not your friends, not your this, not your that, but the first item is the kingdom and its righteousness. What about my livelihood? Don't worry about that. He said, I'll take care of all of that. You do what I say, and I assume responsibility for the rest. But the largest thing, we turn that around. We say, well, Lord, help me to get all this straightened out and together like I want it, and then I'm going to really serve you like you want me to do it. We got, as the old folks used to say, the hand parts before. And so we don't do it, we put God first. And I know the fact because people will miss church for something else. They don't use the miss something else for church. You don't usually send a dedication around what's happening in church. They don't usually make the judgment out there so they won't miss the church and the things of God. It's always the least little excuse will hinder us from putting the kingdom first. But Jesus' words are still something. Seek ye first, uno, numero. Number one! The first item on every Christian's agenda is the kingdom! and the righteousness of God, and God has committed Himself to all the other stuff. I'll take care of that. That's number one. Then number two is that I believe that in that first church of Jerusalem, they couldn't have had more than 150 people who went down from a Pentecostal prayer meeting And in their lifetime, turned the world upside down. They did not have great cathedral-like structures. They did not have money in the bank. They did not have political connections with the power that be. They didn't even have what is called a trained clergy. But in their lifetime, because they were simple with faith, belief, they obeyed what God said. These folk went down and turned the world upside-downward. And even the enemies testified, these folk who have turned the world upside-downward have come down here. And I think there are some things that keeps us from doing that. It's always my concern that somehow God might speak to individuals, that we might capture the vision and realize that it's God's way or no way. Because the world certainly needs people today like the first church in Jerusalem. Now this morning as we look at Paul's words and walk about the church, Paul talks about three groups of people. First of all, the foolish as opposed to the wise, the weak as opposed to the mighty, and the base things and the things which are despised and the things which are not to bring the Lord things at all. And God does this with no fleshly glory. Now this morning what I want to do, as we walk about this table, I want to first of all do three things with each one of these points. Number one, I want to establish what Paul is saying. Then number two, I want to see if we can find a biblical illustration of what he's talking about and then see what lessons we can learn from our present situation. So Paul said, first of all, God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. Let's stop right there. God has deliberately chosen. It was no accident that the church had a lot of humble, low-account nobodies, if you'll allow me to say that. There's no accident. God made a deliberate choice. And so he says God has chosen the foolish thing, the thing that the world calls foolish, in order to confound the wise, confounding to bring to shame, to bring to naught, to render as nothing the things that are wise. As we think about this, I want to use the illustration from the Old Testament of a foolish situation that we find God engaged in. As a matter of fact, if you look at the whole lot of situations where you see God doing foolish things, it just doesn't make sense to human wisdom. It didn't make sense for God to send Moses, a shepherd, to the palace of Egypt, the greatest empire in the world, with a staff talking about, God told me to tell you, let my people go. It didn't make sense. It didn't make sense for God to take Gideon's army and wheel it down the 300. It doesn't make sense. It didn't make sense for Gideon, the Progenitor Brother, to walk around the wall seven times for seven days. It just didn't make sense. And yet, throughout the Bible, we found again and again, God usually doing these nonsensical things, these foolish things. But this morning, I want to look at briefly the situation of David, the giant killer. Now you will recall that when Saul was king of Israel, David was still a separate boy. And one day his daddy said to him, son, take this cheese and see your brothers in the army and give this to their captain. And when David got down there, it turned out that it was just the fortieth day when Goliath had been struggling and passing, challenging Israel to give him somebody to fight with him. Nobody was able to stand and fight with the giant. So all the great men of war were sat in their chimney in their boots, and here comes the shepherd boy. But the first time David heard the giant's challenge, he was stirred on the inside. And this is what he says, For who is this uncircumcised Philistine to defy the armies of the living God? And you know the story of how David went on and got permission from Saul, and went on with his slingshot, and Dr. John Dow put his head off and won a great victory for Israel, and went on to become great. Now that was foolish. For a shepherd boy with no military training, when all the mighty soldiers were standing there not able to take the challenge, for the shepherd boy to go out, it was a fool's errand, a fool's mission, humanly speaking. And yet God used this shepherd boy to save the day and advance his cause in Israel. And this shepherd boy David went on to grow great and become a great king. Now if you think about this whole episode of David, this is just one of the many, as I said, situations where we find God doing foolish things and using weak people. Now it did make sense, we all would agree to that. As a matter of fact, they told him outright. As a matter of fact, they said, David, that's all right. We appreciate your patriotism, but don't worry about it. You just go on back home. It'll all be all right. We'll take care of it. But David did not back down when they said that. He said, look, no, a lion came and took my father's seat, and I didn't let him get back. A bear came and took his seat, and I didn't let him get back. And this child shall be just like the lion and the bear. He was able to answer fear with faith. But I think this illustration tells us a number of things. As we think about David and God's source of him and how he won the victory, one of the things that's outstanding about David is the way he saw the situation. Everybody would say, as a matter of fact, the soldier who said to him, have you seen this giant come to defy Israel? But David didn't see it that way. David, to hear, defied not Israel, but God. His concern that Zion had insulted God's honor. And because he was wrapped up in God's honor, he was concerned that it would not stand. He had to take up the challenge. I think the lesson that we ought to learn from this, number one, is that no matter how small and insignificant we may be, if we focus on our concerns, that's important. Well, where is your vision? What's your desire? What's your concern? What turns you on? What motivates you? David was this man who had insulted God's honor, and he could not let that stand. He felt he had to go out and take up the challenge, believing that God would help him. My dear, as we look around us today and we see the giant stalking the land and so many things that are happening, and I believe, I believe, this is, I don't know if this theology caught on the board or not, but I just believe it, that, you know, God has given the church to be the light of the world and the salvation. As I said this morning, we were talking about it, how that, you see, what we're dealing with is not just flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, and rulers. Spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. And this is the problem that we're facing nowadays. They're backed up by spiritual forces. And here are people who don't know anything about God. They don't believe in the devil. And they're trying to solve the problem. It won't happen. And the only people that can deal with it of the people of God, but I feel somehow that the church of God does not see, we don't see, we just, somehow we've been lulled to sleep. Somehow our vision has been circumscribed, and we think God's power is just to make me happy, meet my needs, help me when I'm sick, take care of my loved ones. God's power can do all of that, but beyond that, God's concern is His own glory and advancement of His kingdom in the world, and your responsibility, and my responsibility is to advance His kingdom. So how we minimize God, we reflect upon His honor and His glory. You see, just like if you had an uncle who was a visionary. You say, Uncle, I've got to make an appointment to see you. Okay, let me wait through my schedule. Let's go in the office after this is private. And you go in the office of private and say, look, anybody listening? Uncle, I need $2. What? That's how you pay God. He's not serious. And how we won't act like it's important to get a couple of dollars if somehow we understood that God deals not out of His grace, but according to His grace. You see, if I got a billion dollars to give you a nickel, I gave you out of my fortune. But if I gave you according to my riches, how about I give you something, make you a millionaire, two times over, three times over, you see what I'm saying? When you think about that magnificent power of God, and what God can do, and has done, and is still doing, that God doesn't need anything but somebody to trust Him, and believe Him, be concerned about His honor, and it does not appear. We don't have to sit around and think, Oh, us and the world is just running over us and winning over our heads. No, no, we're on the winning side. We've got the power. We just don't see it. We're like the soldiers. We're looking at the obvious. But it takes time to say, like David said, no, he's insulted God. It's God's honor that's at stake. And nope, there's only one boy, one shepherd boy, and he went out. He was the catalyst. He started the movement and the army got incurred in him, and they chased those first down, came back on. And if we could capture the vision, there is nothing we cannot do. Anything that God wants done, we can handle it. Why? Because the resources are not ours, they're divine resources. Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit. But if all you want to do is build a nice pretty church, okay, well, if I can do that. But there are giants talking tonight, and somehow we need to engage the giants. And it is somehow my prayer that somehow God would stir us up on the inside, that we cannot be satisfied with just coming to church, having a good time, and doing routine things. But somehow he would enlarge our vision, help us to see beyond the obvious, beyond the surface, and realize that the real need today is spiritual men and women who can see what's really concerned. That's what God needs today. And so God is still choosing the foolish things of the world to confound the things of the wise. I say this, and I say it again, and I say it with conviction. I do not believe, and this is not disrespect, that politicians are going to solve the problem. They're part of the problem. I don't believe that educators will solve the problem. They're part of the problem. Because the impression is given that you can learn enough, you can be smart enough, you can have a program that's sufficient, there's enough money that can solve it. When you're dealing with spiritual realities, it won't happen. You need spiritual people who can dynamite the prison wall with fire. and bring God's power to bear, and that's the only thing that will work. Homes are being torn asunder. You think some psychological conflict can do it all, when the devil is behind it? No, you need somebody to know God in their business. Amen? And so God took the food. One thing people, certain people God uses the food is to confound the wife. God has chosen weak things of the world to confound the things of the mighty. God deliberately again, He's doing this deliberately, no accident. He's taking into no account nobody and insignificant things and people and using them to the pain of His glory. To turn around, to hold and shut, put and harness the things that are mighty. What Old Testament illustration should we use? Let me use one of my favorite prophets. Elijah of Tishbite, you remember him? He lived in the day when Jadab was king of Israel. Jadab not only wicked himself, but he married a foreign pagan prince. Jezebel was the queen. And I remember she brought 850 prophets from her land over to Israel to indoctrinate them in their false religion of which you are barred. And they were going with this program, and we discovered later on that all the prophets of God were either dead or on the ground. Nobody was walking around talking for God. God's cause was lost. Yet, there was one man, Eliza, who changed the whole situation. This is what I said earlier. If there's something bothering you, if there's a concern that you have that keeps reoccurring, don't whine off and say, well, I can't do that, we can't, nobody can help me. You should keep praying about that. Because this one man in poverty, Elijah, he changed the day, but he didn't change it like we normally see change come. He did not have a march on the Capitol. He did not get petitions signed. He did not do anything like that. The book says he just prayed. And if you allow me to imagine, I can imagine that, Lord, this thing is on me now. I just can't get out of it. And it seems like the false prophet of Baal has taken the day, and Israel is going down with ruin. But Lord, something's got to be done about this. And I want an instrument in your hand to do this. Lord, help me. Can you imagine God ignoring a cry like that? And so the book tells me this man, this prophet, was certainly outgunned. He was over his head. One lone prophet going against the king and the queen, plus 850 false prophets in the land. But all the godly prophets under the ground are dead. He was outgunned. Common sense, as we think about it, would have said, look, fold up your chin, go somewhere else and live the deed. Don't bother yourself with that. It wouldn't have been the attitude of our Lord, look. But no, he stayed right where he was and talked to God. One day in talking to God, God said, Elijah, ask what you want. Elijah took the key of prayer, locked up the word of the heaven, put the key in his pocket and told the king there won't be no rain, shall I say so now. And then one pocket brought a laser to their knee and turned them back to God. And what did he do? He prayed. You know, when I first read that, I thought, boy, I wish I could pray like that. But see, reading the Bible is dangerous. I read over there in Jane's head, but Elijah wasn't nobody special. You know, I wish that I could pray like Elijah. He said he was a man of life after. He had ups, he had downs. He got hot, he got cold. He fell on the ground, but he prayed. And as a result of his prayer, he locked up heaven and there was no rain. until he said, let the rain come back. And this one lone prophet turned the nation around. Now, what does this tell us? What does it say to us? First of all, it points out the power of prayer. The prayer of one man, and not anybody special. He didn't have any special prayer, you know, credential. He passed a twelve-lesson step, self-step lesson on how to get stuff from God. You know, all that kind of stuff you see in bookstores. He was just out of genuine, real-life concern. He saw the situation in his day. He was happy with it. He knows there's something to be done about it. He took it to the one who could. Now, if you follow this man's career, you see that he got hot and he got cold, too. But when Jezebel said she was going to have his head off, he ran clean out of the Promised Land. He didn't walk three inches off the ground. You don't have to sit there and say, oh, I wish I could pray like that. No, he was a man like you. But he prayed. And he raises the question everybody must consider, what might God do about the matter that concerns me if I really prayed? What might God do? He was outgunned. He couldn't do anything. He didn't try to do any of those normal things. He just told God about it. I remember years ago in the Civil Rights Movement, when everybody was in the demonstrating movement, a friend of mine, here's a guy, Brady. He was going to be with the Lord. He was out in a little town called Pembroke Township in Illinois, around near Kankakee. And there were some crookages that brought him to town. And he wasn't part of the demonstration, so he just wasn't into it. It's a lot of radicals and rebels get in that stuff and get caught up with people you don't want to be involved with. He said, no, we're just going to pray over here. He and his church prayed. And as a result of that prayer, they discovered something under the city hall that embarrassed the mayor and brought a great exposé and all of God's office anyway. Not because they marred, not because they were superstitious, but because they prayed. I tell you, God has an answer. God has a solution. Do you dare to lay hold to the haunted altar and say, Lord, I'm concerned about this? I need you to use me to do this. I need you to straighten it out. And what do you need me to do? Just let me know. That's how he prayed. That simple. And this one man locked up the window of heaven, turned the nation back to God. He prayed. God took the weak things of the world to confound the things of the mighty. Who would have thought of bringing the nation back to God with Ahab on the throne and Jezebel sitting right next to him? It doesn't make sense, it's foolish. And yet it was accomplished by one man. What might happen? You just have to imagine, let's imagine he's wrong on this. What might happen if a church got together and prayed? If they would have really accepted anything Jesus said, what might happen. Do we have any concerns that concern us enough? Do we have any problems that are serious enough to merit our concerted prayer and consistent I'm not good at conducting experiments, but I wonder oftentimes what would happen if we got together and just decided upon something that was central in our concern, in our community, in our city, whatever, and decided we were making a matter of prayer to see what God would do. And then let God use this as a teaching tool for us to realize that we can accomplish more through prayer. And a lot of other folk can be talking, you know, I get called and let us go down to the city. I'll go to this meeting. I ain't going. I don't believe in it. But I think we can use the weapons of our warfare, the mightiness of God to put it down on stronghold, because what we're really dealing with is spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound, to pull down, to bring to naught the things that are mighty. And then he goes on to say, and the base things of the world and things which are despised has God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught the things that are. God has taken that which appears to be nothing, it is nothing, it's base, it's despised, he's going to use it to bring to naught that which things that are. And for this illustration, I want to use the New Testament church. That little insignificant rag-tag man of disciples who Jesus left when he went back to heaven. When you think about it, the church. In the day of megachurches, it's hard not to see it because the people are looking for crowds and numbers. Big crutches and crowds of folks with all of the pioneer worship and all of the uptake music and everything. But the church didn't start like that. When Jesus left, he had a hundred, he had twelve, ragtag band of disciples, and he had about, I guess, a hundred and fifty altogether. And these folks went down from a Pentecostal presidency, as I said before, And in their lifetime, they turned the world upside down. But before they got to that, they were charged with the people. They say, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine. We told you not to preach in his name. What have you done? You filled Jerusalem with his doctrine. Do I need to say any more about that? Just think about it, okay? I don't want to appear to be hitting on the head, but I think about it all the time. Well, what's the lie with the corruption all around us? My sister made some brochures. I'm committed. I got them all run off. I'm going to fold them tonight or tomorrow. And I'm going to go across the street from the middle of the school and just pass them out. Something needs to be said. Something needs to be did. When I heard Cheryl say in this prayer meeting the other night, she said, you know, we got girls 8, 9, 10, and 13 recruiting for lesbianism. You want us to steal and say nothing, do nothing? Ain't it a shame? No, no! I've got some material I want to be able to depend on. Really, Jerusalem, all of the things out there, the lies, lies, the crippling, destroying our children, our family. My name, we need whatever material we can get to disseminate it. And one of my brothers told me they met some people who passed out tracts out at the mall, and they were willing to pass out some of our tracts. I said, well, OK, we need the tracts we got to go in our little folder, but we're going to get some more, and we'd be happy to give it to them. Hey, if they're going to pass them out, that's all right with me. But there's something that needs to be said. The cause of the crisis is not spoken about at all. The real concern, every time I, well, let me leave it alone. I don't need no publicity. We got churches doing everything else, except what the Lord said, what the early church was doing in Jerusalem. They were filling Jerusalem with the doctrines of Christ. They would turn the world upside down and say, there's another King Jesus. But nobody hears unless we have some special program I don't want to go any further with that because I don't want to seem to be criticizing anybody, but I get letters all the time. In the mail, I got one just the other day. They invited me to the Coalition for Faith-Based Initiatives. That's important. That's just what I mean, the meeting at the Coalition for Faith-Based Initiatives. I don't care if I never go to a president's breakfast, or governor's lunch, or mayor's, whatever. I don't want my picture in the paper with none of that. I ain't going to nobody but Jesus. I know people like it, like, oh, I saw you, you're with so-and-so. I ain't going. All we need to do is do the work. Do the job. We need to be doing a good job in the ministry. We need to be more effective. We need more people on the street. We need more people willing to mail out checks. We need more people. Somebody needs to go with me in the afternoon when middle school gets out to help me out. I'm going to stand across the street from the school. We've got to do it. There's a need, there's a concern that's on my mind for a long time. Lord, I ain't got nobody. I'm going by myself. They filled the room with their doctors, so the people cried out, you filled the city. And can you imagine our children being seduced with homosexuality? We sit down just like, well, I ain't sure what to say. At least we can say it's a lie. It's a damn lie because you're going to hell and damn for that kind of stuff. That's what God said. We cannot be silent any longer. And they're trying to pass hate speech laws all around, and pretty soon they'll be putting a hate law on us, and we can't even suppose to say this. Now when that time comes, I don't know what you're going to do. You may have to get another pastor. But I ain't going to stop talking about what I'm talking about. Because in the whole history of the church, people suffered, bled, and died with PRISON FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS! And if we have to pay the price, it's ours. We don't have time to have a lot of steel now on the books. Why don't you have an opportunity? We ought to give all we got to publish the Word of God and the truth of God. People need to be safe. Homes have been thrown up. Children have gone astray. Homosexuality has been pushing the land down our throats. And when my little girls started hustling each other to become lesbians, I mean, that's the bottom line. Something needs to be done. You see, this church went down from a Pentecostal prayer meeting. Now you had the whole Jewish establishment, the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Edses and all those folks. God had written Ezekiel right across the door. Their house was bankrupt. God was no longer there. This is God's whole new thing. And it didn't look like very much. It was not very impressive. And they were given a commission to disciple the nations. Now get this. As I understand this, They didn't say, go with all of the nations and try to find one here, one there. No. Disciples, the nations, the whole nation. Digging under my division, my thoughts, my ideas. That's a Herculean task. And most of these boys, no doubt, had never been out of the Promised Land. And yet they had a world where they didn't say, oh, we can't do this. Gee, this is too much. You better get somebody else. They started where they were. And it went on, and on, and on, and we're here today because somebody picked up the ball and kept on going. And I tell you, whether we move or not, it's going to move. God always has somebody! Because this church that Jesus started one day will triumph, and the kingdom of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. And he shall reign forever, and we shall reign with him. But the challenge today is, where we stand, what will we do? God has chosen us. Not much money, not too smart, but we're smart enough to know what the Bible say. Simple enough to believe Jesus and all the rest of it isn't here, that's all we need. And God is doing it this way for a purpose. That no flesh and glory in His presence. No flesh and glory in His presence. How many times have I thought about, Lord, if we had enough money, we could have a print press and just print stuff and just publish it just for free and give it away. And tonight God said, no, I don't want to do it that way. I want to go the simple way, the individual route. I want you to get people who can stand up to put themselves on the line and not just put it in the mail. Can you take the time to see to it? He don't want any flesh to go over in his presence, and we'll be able to say, Lord, we did a heck of a job for you. Now we go out sowing seeds with weeping, and he comes, brings us back rejoicing, bringing in the sheep. We heard, remember we heard this here in the psalm, a story once about some officers were standing together to discuss an order they'd just received from the headquarters And as he talked, one officer said, if we go out on this, we won't come back. One officer finally said, we don't have to come back, but we have to go. We don't have to come back. We don't have to be successful, but we have to go. When we go, God goes with us, and his purpose is accomplished. And even though it may seem like we failed, humanly speaking, when we stand in an awful tribunal, We'll see all the glorious gods. And we won't be able to bow to nothing. We say, thank God. You did it all. My dears, I wonder, I hope, I pray, if you can capture the vision at the power of the Spirit of God, this is what God is about. He's letting the great and the noble, He's just got a few of those, not many of them. He's taking no account of nobody. Simple people like you and me. This is what He's always done. just plain folk to advance the kingdom. Let's not let him down in our generation. Let's tear the banner and hand it on to the future generation. Tell our children this is authentic Christianity, not just having a little program now and then and having fun and games. Well, O God, our help in the ages past. Thou art our only hope in time to come. We look today, Lord, because we need your help. We realize that we are part of that group of no-account-nobodies. As far as the world is concerned, we are foolish, we are weak, we are as nothing. But you say in your Word that this is the material that you use to advance the cause, that no flesh will grow in your presence. Become just now, Lord, willing to be nothing. that you may be everything. Willing, O God, to give our all, that you may be our all in all. Let that word be found in our hearts. Steer us up, give us a broader vision, and a willingness to lay aside the weight as well as the sin that doth so easily set us, that we might rise up, O God, 2008, as a small people but a mighty people, large in vision, large in commitment, large in dedication, large in willingness to pay the price necessary for kingdom advancement. Now guide us and direct us, and oh God, if there's somebody present who does not know Jesus Christ, Somebody who is willing, oh God, to lay aside the weight of sin and come lowly to the throne of grace. Let them rise and come now. For in Jesus' name we pray, amen.