It's good to be in church tonight. Glad I'm here. I appreciate you for coming. I sound like I'm down in a barrel tonight. I got a cold starting or the flu or something. But I'm glad that I'm here. We started last week with, we were working on the qualifications of a preacher, weren't we? Is that what we were working on? Let me, before I go any further, let me read this to you. This is a card from Ronnie and Peggy. Greetings from Camp Joshua Scott. We're looking so forward to Christmas and our visit home. Things are coming along here. Thanks to love and prayer. We'll see you soon. Much love. Ronnie and Peggy and the kids. And then I have another Merry Christmas from the McClure's in Jamaica. Thank you for your love and care during our stay. We really appreciate the wonderful place to stay while on the road sharing God's work in Jamaica. Helped us as we traveled 12,000 miles in the last two months. You have a wonderful church. It's always great coming home to friends. Pray for our health and safety and God's provision for our mission trip in January. to put a roof on the mission home, Terry McClure and family in Jamaica. All right. Well, it's good to have our visitors with us tonight and those of you that are regular and off a cold night out there. Feels like January rather than December. But is today the first day of winter? It has officially arrived today? I thought I noticed that when I was out there early. Take your Bibles, turn to the book of 1 Timothy chapter 3. We have been studying the qualifications of a preacher, at least of a Baptist preacher. A lot of folks don't go along with these qualifications. Of course, a lot of folks aren't Baptists. But we get our qualifications out of the Bible. And we had already discussed there verses 2 and 3, hadn't we? had just got two, where we said a bishop there must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, or good behavior. You know, if they changed the laws in West Virginia, it'd be possible for a woman to do that for long, be the husband of one wife. Isn't that right? As the laws of man, does that affect the laws of God? Not at all. You can make a law in this land that says it's legal to kill unborn children. And everybody will just pat you on the back and say you were doing fine. But in God's sight, that's still a violation of the commandments of God. So we need to understand the difference between the laws of man and the laws of God. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. Blessed is the nation who governs their self after the laws of God. Blessed is the church that tries to govern itself after the pattern that we find in the New Testament. Now this says, did I talk about being apt to teach? Okay, that's where I stopped. Then it says, we'll just start in verse three, they're not given to wine. I think that goes along with the fourth qualification, they're being sober. That is, I don't think it's, I don't think it's correct at all. I think it disqualifies a preacher if he's a nipper. I remember one time, three preachers in a pulpit. I wasn't one of them. But one of them told me about it. Three preachers in a pulpit. Two of them were a pastor and his assistant and the evangelist. And the assistant pastor said, somebody in this pulpit's drunk and it's not me. Now, I just can't imagine a preacher being up there drunk, can you? But evidently there must be a regulation in the Bible against preachers that are given to wine. Wine is a malker. Strong drink is raging. He that is deceived thereby is not wise. No drinking. You're going to be better off. You're going to be better off completely if you'll just stay away from the bottle completely. Don't get you a beer on a hot afternoon after cutting the grass. Don't get you a hot toddy on a cold winter night after working all day. But you stay away from alcohol altogether. Especially a preacher ought to stay away from alcohol. And I'm thinking that if a preacher ought to do it, everybody else ought to do it. I don't see no point in putting a load on the preacher that you can't carry. Thank you. All right, it said not giving to wine. Then it said no striker. Now, that doesn't mean a union man, I don't guess. The Red Cross is striking now. But what that is, is not apt to hit somebody. Not really. You know, there are a lot of folks in the world that have just what you call just a short fuse. And they'll just punch somebody over nothing. Now, I really would have to honestly say that God has helped me with that. I am not an impatient man. Nevertheless, if you shove me far enough, I will punch your lights out. You need to understand that. Now, I'm not of that crowd that thinks you're just supposed to lay down and let them walk on me. I think we ought to extend ourself and overextend ourself and overextend ourselves. I don't think it's a right for a preacher to be running around striking everybody. Amen. I think you'd be much better off if you didn't do that. And I apologize for saying that if you shove me far enough, I'll do that. I'm just trying to be truthful. It's Wednesday, right? And I try to be truthful on Wednesday. I grew up on Campbell's Creek, had to fight my way into school and fight my way out of school. But one thing about me that I can honestly say, I would rather just go ahead and get it on and get it over with and then go ahead and speak to the guy as I would the way Baptists do in this valley, get mad at a man and mad at him for 20 years. They're just as vicious and malicious. I just assumed they'd have punched me in the nose by a gun, got that over with, and we went on about to work. Do you ever notice, folks, they just don't wanna do that? Christian folks are some of the worst in the world about holding and harboring grudges against people. Somebody hurt my feelings or did blah, blah, blah. Oh, blow it out your nose, man. What you need to do, just go ahead and get the thing settled and go on about your business. Not a striker. Then he said not only that, but he said the fellow is not greedy, a filthy lucre. Now, filthy lucre is dishonest money. And I think there is a lot of preachers that what people think are making an honest living are making a dishonest living. Preachers that are greedy don't need to be in the ministry at all. If you're in the ministry to try to make money, then I'm thinking that you're in the wrong place. There's nothing I detest worse than a professional preacher. Preachers are called. They don't choose that vocation. They're called of God to that vocation. We'll deal with that more later on, but I'm saying if you're thinking about, man, I'm gonna preach so I can make a lot of money, it hadn't been my experience. Now, I know there's Jim Bakers and Jimmy Swaggarts and all those guys around that have made multi-million dollars, but I never was cursed with all that money. The crowd I run with just is not a money crowd for some reason or other. Money crowds, and man preacher, money crowds wanna manipulate the preacher. And if he's a greedy preacher, and whoever's got the dollar bill is the one that he's gonna listen to, and he'll preach so that he tiptoes through the tithers. Al Capone was probably one of the biggest crooks in America. But you know what he said? He said, I'm just giving the people what they want. Amen. I think that's what Jerry Falwell did when he had that bunch of queers down there for supper, just giving the people what they want. I don't give people what they want. I give people what God lays on my heart to give. And of course, you know, neither am I wearing them $100,000 suits either, driving them big Cadillacs or whatever. But a preacher, the qualification for a preacher is he's not greedy for filthy lucre. Then he said, patient. And not a brawler, and like I say, God help me, God help me not to deck a guy just because he gets on my nerves. I'd like for him to push him and push him and push him before I did that. That's mentioned twice, isn't it? That's mentioned twice. Up there where it said not a striker, down here it said not a brawler. So I mean, there may be a problem with that in some folks, in some instances. If you can't handle your temper, you can't control your temper, at least to a measure, then I think you probably ought to stay out of the ministry. Somebody said, well, you was down at the board meeting, you was just pretty well out of control. Now I know exactly what it's doing. I knew exactly what it's doing. I accomplished what I set out to accomplish. I knew when I went in there that they were gonna vote against me, so I just figured I might as well give them a sermon while I was at it. Amen? Now, a preacher does not need to be a covetous person. You know what coveting things is? Coveting is a legal sin. You see, if we go out here and commit adultery with another man's wife, that's an illegal sin. If we go out here and steal something, that's an illegal sin. If we go out here and murder somebody, that's an illegal sin. But we'll come in the church of God and sit down there and be in fellowship with everybody here and just whizzed and whizzed and whizzed if something had happened to that sucker so you could get his car. And nobody ever say anything about it. Covetousness. Covetousness is idolatry. Now, here I'm gonna go back on this husband and one wife. I want you to look at verse 4. It said, One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity. The reason is, verse 5, if a man won't do nothing to correct his own kids, then he's not going to do nothing to correct anybody else. Now I think we just disqualified about 90% of the Baptist pastors that I know. They'll just get up in the pulpit and just blast everybody about what they're doing and their kids are just mean as snakes. But this says the way you check a man out, now notice this. It says the way you check a man out is to see how his children behave. And if his children don't behave, he has no right to tell anybody else's children to behave. But if his children behave, then you probably ought to take a leaf out of his book and ask him what he done to have those children to behave. Thank you. Hey, hang around, I'm not finished. I'm saying that according to that, now it's really, that said children, and that really bugs me, and I dig his stuff out when it bugs me. And I looked that word up and the idea there is that those that are born to him, not necessarily the plural, I'm not against the plural, but those that are born to him, those that belong to his house are in subjection. Now, I've only got one child. So I've only got one shot. I mean, that's the way I see it. If Molly's disobedient, if Molly's unruly, and Molly doesn't walk like she's supposed to walk, then I disqualify myself from telling you how to rear your children. But, let me look here now. Molly Gale's 28 years old now. She's not my responsibility anymore. I mean, she's an adult and makes her own decisions, buys her own cars, tints her own windows, does whatever she wants to do with it. That's her business. But you'll have to say that she was reared in this church and Molly Gale never was a disobedient child. And the one reason why she wasn't a disobedient child was because she had the fear of God in her daddy. Whenever her daddy snapped his fingers, she knew that if she didn't jump, and I'm not telling you to be in terror of you, but she knew that if she didn't jump, the next time he wasn't gonna snap his fingers. You don't have to tell them, but one time. You tell them one time, and if they don't do it, you take you a switch, and you wear their little behind out, and you'd be surprised what that'll do. Nobody wants to use the switch. They're afraid to get the welfare department on. Amen. And the welfare department is the worst child rearers that America's ever saw. And we're raising up a generation of kids that have no patience. We're raising up a generation of kids that just wants to run the place instead of being ran. Everything in our house is run by switches but the children. He controls his children. And, all right, now look, let's go back again. All right, what if a guy ain't got no children? Then I believe, honestly, you can't make a judgment on him. Because you don't know what he's going to be like. So I would really, if it was up to me, of course, most of the time I'd keep my mouth shut, just like on that there twice married guy. I'd keep my mouth shut, because I don't want to offend the Baptist brethren. But most of the time, I'll sit right there in an ordination, and sometimes I'll just deliberately dodge them, because they'll ordain a boy that isn't married, or they'll ordain a boy that's married and doesn't have children. And if he doesn't have children, you don't know what he's going to do. The specific reason for it being that, was that you'd know how he ruled his house, and if he ruled his house, then he could rule God's house. Moving right along. Most of them that they ordain in that place, not only do they not get that qualification, but they don't get the next one. The next one says not a novice. You know what a novice is? A novice is somebody who don't know what to do. A novice is a beginner. A novice class, when you go down to Golden Gloves, they have a novice class. That's where you get them boys swings, them haymakers. You know what I'm talking about. Just come out there, just closing their eyes and just slugging at anything they can slug at. That's novice, because they're beating the air. They're fighting the air. They don't know what to do. But the problem with this is that the devil kind of, it seems to me like God allows the devil to kind of cause that fellow to prosper long enough for him to get kind of proud of what he's doing. And then whenever he gets puffed up and proud of what he's doing, then kaboom, that pride lifted him up and the devil just cut him down. It would be to his advantage if you didn't put him in there if he was a rookie. Then the last one there, and I'm moving right along because I want to talk about some more things. The last one, he said, a good report of them that don't go to church. Now, I know that a preacher of the gospel is going to have enemies. I know if you read the Gazette, you'd think that your pastor was one of the most horrible men in the world. But I'm thinking that if you go on the job or you go in the community where a preacher lives, that in that community and on that job, he ought to have at least a reasonable report. And you don't know how many times people say, well, he's a preacher, so he ain't worth much. I never did one talking about me like that. I'd go ahead and do things that I didn't have to do just so to keep their mouth shut off of the preacher. We need to have a good report of those that are without. Now, secondly, let's get off the preachers and go to the deacons. I can preach better there. Kenny Hoy is a coward. You tell him, Phil. Verse eight said, likewise must the deacons be grave. Now that word grave is like sober. And then it said, not double tongue. Now that word is dialogos. And you know logos is word, right? That's the translation for in the beginning was the word. That's logos. That's the Greek word. And it's the, uh, uh, logos is a, uh, like a logo, you know what I'm talking about? That's a word, you see that word and the whole thing stands for that word, right? Now, how about R after it says registered, this is our logo and you can't use it, Coca-Cola. You can't make Kool-Aid and sell it for Coca-Cola because Coca-Cola is Coca-Cola. But this word di-logo, now the prefix di, D-I, it means two. So what we got here, he said, well, the deacon, Edmund, the deacon ought to say the same thing behind the pastor's back that he says to the pastor's face. And not double time. Now I've got good deacons and I'm not preaching about them, but I know good and well that this valley's full of Baptist deacons that'll say one thing to the preacher's face and something else to somebody else behind his back. They kind of manipulate things that way. Then it says, not given to much wine. Now, much implies degree. I've saw them use that to say, well, he can drink a little bit. Not given to much wine, see? It could also be used to imply what has happened to the wine. Either the wine is pure, like it comes out of the grape, or much wine has got alcohol in it. Watch out now. Never thought of that twist, did you? Not given to alcoholic wine. Thank you. Now, for those of you that want to use cough syrup, all right, I'll go along with it. Go ahead and take you some cough syrup if you want to. This guy too doesn't need to be greedy. What? A Baptist deacon greedy? Man, I know of them in this valley that'll sit there and push their chest out and say, our church has got $30,000 in CDs. And I'm thinking I ain't even got a CD player. They've got stocks, they got bonds, and some poor man come to their door and ask them for a, amen, ask them for a meal, and they, well, let him go out and work. The Bible said he ought to work. And sitting there on 70, 80, 90, and $100,000, and controlled by the deacons, not the pastor, controlled by the deacons. I think about that guy that gave Oral Roberts that money. Crook. Wasn't he a crook? One fellow told me, he said, well, what if I win the lottery and I win a million dollars and what if I give the church some? I said, I'll take it, but I'll hate myself. I don't want your million dollars. I don't need your million dollars. I don't want, that's a million babies that had to go without supper so you give me a million dollars. I don't want to have to give account to those million babies. But this deaconcy, since God seemed to know in advance that they were gonna get in a position where they'd have an opportunity to accumulate wealth, and he said, don't put a guy in there that's gonna make a loan business and set her out of the church. One verse nine that acknowledges and understands the faith, and then it said they proved him, that is, they tested him, checked him out. We call it setting him aside. We'll say we need a deacon or whatever, and we'll say, well, I think Clinton will make a good deacon. So the church will elect to set Clinton aside for a period of time to prove him, to see if he's going to stay with it personally. Personally, I'm thinking that Clinton wouldn't need any proving. I don't believe he's going to go anywhere. I think he's already proved himself. But if we were gonna get somebody as a deacon, you see what I'm talking about? That we need to make sure, be as sure as we can in our heart and our soul that they're gonna be there whenever we need. Prove them. Deacons elected by the body to assist the pastor. Now I wanna help you tonight if you'll let me. You need to get the blow gum out of your ears. You need to listen to what I'm going to say here in the next few minutes. A deacon board, whenever you look up deacon board, the dictionary definition is not a tool with which to spank the pastor. But everybody thinks it is. Everybody thinks, I've got trouble with my pastor, I'll run to my deacons. I want to tell you something. You're putting that deacon in a position that God never called him to fill and you're putting a load on him that he's unable to carry. He's not a pastor. He's a deacon. He's not a minister. He doesn't know anything about the ministry. He's a deacon. You say, well, what's the difference? Well, let me show you. Look in the book of Acts chapter 6. Acts chapter 6, and I'll show you where Deacons came from. While you're at it, get the book of Numbers chapter 11. I'll go back and give you an Old Testament lesson here too. Numbers chapter 11. There's a parallel in these two stories, and I'll show you in just a minute. In Acts chapter 6, are you there? I lost it. Okay, so in those days when the number of disciples multiplied, alright, the very first thing you're going to have to have is a lot of people before you need another deacon. Amen? The number of disciples multiplied, there arose a murmur of the Grecians against the Hebrews because the widows were neglected in the daily ministration. Then the twelve called them all to disciples unto them and said it is not reason that we should leave the word of God and serve tables. That's the purpose of the deacon, to serve tables. Not to make decisions about what the church ought to do, or what the church ought to buy, or what the color of the carpet ought to be, or how much raise we ought to give the pastor, or how much we ought to take away from the pastor, or whether or not to buy a parsonage, or whether or not to, no, that's not the deacon's job. His job is to serve tables. So far we were, there's three tables that I'll, if I get time, I'll talk about. But here they were with us, right? And the with us were crying and saying, hey, we're getting left out. And the preacher said, it's not me for us to leave the Word of God and go around here looking after the community. And everybody thinks the preacher's the one supposed to look after the community. Everybody thinks the preacher's the one that's supposed to visit them in the hospital. And the unpardonable sin in a Baptist church is for somebody to be in the hospital and the pastor not visit them. But nobody ever says anything about the deacon visiting them, and the book of God says that's the deacon's job, not the pastor's job. Thank you. He said, it's not meet for us, not reason that we should leave the Word of God and serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost of wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. I want you to notice that the congregation selected them and then the pastors set them in office. Do you see that? You look them out. The congregation was told, you choose them and then bring them to the pastor for the pastor's approval of. I hope you can see that now. Then he said in verse four, but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word. And they're saying please the whole multitude and they chose the first deacon board, Stephen and those following. Now look in the book of Numbers chapter 11. And I want to show you something here. Just read a couple of verses here. The deacon's office was never an office that was called by God. The deacon's office was an office that was selected by the church and appointed by the pastor. But the deacons were never called of God to be a deacon. The church called the deacons. God called the preacher. Now, look at Numbers chapter 11. I'll try to explain this to you if I can. Look at verse 11 to start with. And Moses said unto the Lord, Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant? And wherefore have I not found favour in thy sight, that thou layest the burden of all this people upon me? Here's the same complaint. Moses said, I can't do it. Right? I mean, they got all these people coming out here and they're griping because of this and griping because of that. So Moses goes to God and says, God, I ain't able to handle this load. Now, he had, what, something like six million. All right, look at verse 14. I am not able to bear all these people alone because it is too heavy for me. Moses said, you are wearing me out. And I say, amen, Moses, I've been there, done that, and got a T-shirt. You are wearing me out. I am not able to carry this load. I can say that with 50 people. You imagine how he felt with six million people. Now here comes the clincher, and I want you to look at verse 17. And verse 17, God's talking to him and he said, God talking, and I will come down and talk with thee there. And I will take of the spirit which is upon thee and will put it upon them. And they shall bear the burden of the people with thee that thou bear it not thyself alone. Now I want you to notice this. I want you to notice that there was no more spirit. But the Spirit that was on Moses was distributed now. You see what I'm talking about? They didn't everybody get the same amount that Moses had, but just the Spirit that was on him was distributed to these 70 elders. So what I'm saying is, look here, what I'm saying is, as far as doing the job, God had enabled Moses to do the job by himself. But because of Moses' complaint, God spread it out, but he didn't give any more power to get the job done. Numbers don't get the job done any more than anything else. It's the Spirit of God that gets the job done. And he said, I'll take the Spirit that's on you and put it on them. But I won't give them one and this one more and this one more and this one more, but they all have the same amount. Now what are you saying? I'm saying as far as God is concerned, a church can operate with a pastor and no deacons. But whenever we grumble around and complain around, God allows us to set up a deacon board, and that deacon board doesn't have any more power than one man operating by himself. Can you see that? Look here, the church will never get any bigger than its pastor. The church will never be any stronger than its pastor. I don't care if you've got 15 million deacons, the church will never believe the Bible any more than the pastor believes the Bible. It hangs, it lays, it lays right every bit of it, every bit of the problems, troubles and trials that Esther Baptist Church has are right on my shoulder. Someone said, won't you let my cousin preach? He's a Pentecostal. He won't hurt you. And I said, no, I'm not letting your cousin preach because I'm responsible for what goes from this pulpit. God doesn't say, well, the church called him. God said, you're the pastor. Why'd you let him in there? We got all these folks that says, well, you know, the deacons are supposed to make the decisions. Do you ever notice how folks are all ready to cut somebody off? They say, well, we ought to church them. I mean, we'll church this and church that for what? The problem about churching people is you're churching yourself. Did you know the Bible said, if your eye offends you, pluck it out, right? But you know what happens then? You don't have an eye. Are you aware of that? We got this idea, we run around here, come and chop off somebody's head. Hey man, we're just waiting for somebody to violate some pharisaical principle that we got so we can excommunicate them and we don't understand that whenever we cut off our hand, then we don't have a hand. So I say, if it's gonna cause the whole body to die, cut off the hand. But man alive, if you get by cutting off a finger, cut off a finger, don't cut off the whole hand. Deacon's office is not presented as an office of God, it's presented as an office of men. And the thing that runs a Baptist church is supposed to be that it's run by the Bible. Now, in the book of Philippians, chapter 1, verse 1, we find we've got a plurality of deacons and we also find, now watch this, we've got a plurality of pastors. Now, I know we got this idea of a senior pastor, an associate pastor, and all like this, but the New Testament plan was a plurality of pastors. Pastors were people that God called. Thank you. Deacons are people that the church called. I hope you can grasp that. And I mean, you know, if God calls a man, I want to deal with that after a while. We got time? Oh yeah, we'll have time. I'm going fine. If God calls a man, then if you believe, whenever you voted your pastor in office, if you believed you was going to have to go back and correct him and correct him and correct, why in the world did you put him in there? But I've seen so many of them. And you know yourself that the going price in Kanoa Valley is three years. The going price for the average pastor in Kanoa Valley is three years. The first year is, right? The second year is, and the third year it's, get him out. Way to go. And the reason being is that they operate on these old principles of man and not the principles of God. If God called the man to pastor, God called the man to pastor. Now, Biblically, the church speaks as a body. In Matthew 18, verse 17, it said, let them hear the church. And to the best of my knowledge, the best hunting that I can do, I have never, I have never in the entire history of the New Testament church, have I ever saw the church body vote on anything. If you know where it is, I'd like to know scripture, chapter and verse, please. Can you bring it to me? Does anybody know right off quick? Yeah, I remember where they had a business meeting and everybody voted to do it this way. Nobody remember it? Maybe you can find it the next week. In a matter of judgment, I can understand that the church is supposed to pass judgment. And the only way I know that you could pass judgment would be to vote, isn't it? I mean, if I'd say, well, do you think this ought to be done? And you say, well, this is my judgment. And then Billy would say, this is my judgment. Don would say that. Wouldn't that be voting? That's the only way that I know you could do that. But in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 5, the apostle Paul said, surely you got somebody in the church that's smart enough to judge between his brothers. Whenever you have a problem in the church, whenever you have trouble in the church, surely there's somebody, surely, maybe if it isn't the preacher, surely there's some Christian that's got enough sense to tell you whether you're doing right or doing wrong. I mean, you don't have to come in here and just blabbermouth everything to the whole church. Surely you can go to somebody and get the thing settled without having a big disturbance on the church floor. In 2 Corinthians 8 and 19, it talks about the church choosing people for certain tasks. If they're going to make a choice for something, I guess the only way that I know you could do that would be say, well, what do y'all want to do? And they'd say, well, we want to do this. And somebody would say, how many of you want to do this? And they'd say, oh, we want to. And how many of you want to do this? That would be voting, wouldn't it? But you know what I find in the Bible? I find out that 90% of the time, the majority is wrong in the Bible. Whenever they went over there and spied Canaan out, And they brought the report back. There was 10 spies that said, man, we can't take it. Majority vote, we can't take it. There was two fellas that stood up and said, we can take it. Now voting, and I know we still vote, and I haven't ever, I'm telling you how I feel about tonight, right? I still let you vote, I still have business meetings, and I still get your input and all that, and I'll continue to do that. But I'm saying there is another way that the book of God teaches that the church ought to be right. Turn, if you will, to the book of Acts chapter 13. Acts chapter 13. Now they were in the church that was at Antioch, certain prophets and teachers, alright, as you preachers, Barnabas and Simeon, it's called Niger, and Lucius, and Cyrene, and Manium, which had been brought up and inherited the Tetrarch, and so, as they ministered to the Lord and fasted, The Holy Ghost said, separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. Now here is a decision that the church made. I want you to notice that number one, the pastors of the church, the teachers of the church, were supposed to go about ministering to the Lord. That is, they were there trying to be a servant of the Lord. Now you go around these big schools and they'll talk about, well, God's called me into service. You know, they'll say, God's called me into full-time service. Every Christian that ever lived has been called into full-time service. Since when was you supposed to be in part-time service for God? And you say, you know, they'll have these big camps, and I've been out there, jack houses and all those other places, and they come out there and they put this big appeal on. These guys coming down here and said, well, I want to serve the Lord. Well, who you been serving? They say, I've been saved for 15 years, I want to serve the Lord. Well, who you been serving for 15 years? They minister to the Lord. Second thing they do is they fast. That is, the preacher, when he's about to make a decision, he needs to do some fasting along with his prayer. What's fasting, preacher? Fasting is doing without. It's not necessarily doing without food, though food's a very good thing to do without. That'll get you in on fast real quick. But you can do without a whole lot of things. It would, hey, you could do without TV for one night. Thank you. and pray, then they ordain. And I want you to notice, I want you to notice that it's the pastors through the direction of the Holy Spirit that makes the decisions for the church. They didn't call them together to vote on it. They didn't say, well, you think about it, the pastors under the ministry of the Lord with their fasting and praying said, this is what I think a church ought to do. Remember I said it all depends, it all hangs on that pastor's shoulders, whatever he does. So you say, now wait a minute, you're trying to be a dictator. No, I'm trying to let the Holy Ghost dictate. Now, since we believe, since we believe that the pastor is the called man, that's got the call of God on his life, and since we readily admit that we don't have, then how come we want to challenge what the pastor says about something? How come we know so much more about it than the pastor does if he's the one that God called and more the one he didn't call? Now, There's a lot invested in that, so how then we gonna know about a cup? We need to know whether we're called of God or not. First I think, and I think the thing that has kept me at it, is the necessity that's laid on our heart. The necessity that's laid on our shoulders. If I am a firefighter and that building is on fire, and I know how to rescue people, I cannot sit idly by. and watch it burn out. There is a necessity that's placed on that man that knows the gospel and knows the world's going to hell. 1 Corinthians chapter 11 verse 1, the apostle Paul said, follow me as I follow Christ. There's the trick. There's the trick, you can check him. You can check him and I invite you to check me. Follow me as I follow Christ. The Bereans, whenever there was preaching time, they would search the scripture whether these things be so or not. You wouldn't be fooled so much if you'd go home and say, well, I'm going to find out whether they voted or not. You wouldn't be fooled so much if you say, well, I'm going to go home. I'm going to find out whether it's the blood of Jesus. If you search the scriptures, you'd be surprised that the pastor would be a whole lot righter than you think. I invite you to check me out. I invite you to look in the Bible and see if what I'm preaching is in the Bible. The necessity of the call. And then, uh, uh, I think, uh, the, Specifically, God calls people. The Bible said in the book of Hebrews they called Abraham. It specifically said that. And God calls sometimes over objections. God called Moses and Moses said, hey, I can't do nothing. I can't even talk. I stutter. You know why God uses so many introverted people? You know why that somebody told me the other day that my brother Billy didn't have enough courage to stand up in front of a class and give a library report, but he can stand on the street of Charleston? You know why? Because Billy knows that without God, he couldn't have done that. Now, see, if you've got some kind of an oratorical ability, if you're already some kind of a fancy speaker, then you can do it without doubt. But if you are not, if you're just a common orator, I gave Gideon a miracle. Elisha was called after years and years of service there to Elijah. God said, it's your turn now. Isaiah said, who will go? So I see then you got an inward pressure on you. I had an inward pressure on you. Woe be unto me if I preach not the gospel. A necessity is laid up on me to do that. Then I see you got a word from the scripture. God will just about always work his circumstances of scripture to put you where you should be. I remember whenever I was struggling with the call to preach. I remember one night at my bedside, and I'm not telling you to do that, I'm just telling you what happened in my life. I knelt there and I said, Lord, I love you and I want to do what you want me to do. And I opened my book and the very first verse of Scripture I saw was John 21, 17. He said, if you love me, feed my sheep. I think compassion will necessitate a call. Whenever you look on the fields that's white to harvest and there's nobody to harvest those fields, I think that compassion will constitute a call. I think an older believer can notice the stirring of God in your life. I think the encouragement from someone that's already in the ministry, the Apostle Paul in the 16th chapter of Acts, he said, man, I went over there and I found old Timothy, and I think he'd make a good preacher. And that encouragement put Timothy in the ministry. Providence. Providence is where a door opens or a door shuts. And I'm so bad about it, I'm so horrible about that. God will shut a door and I'll get down with a crowbar and try to pry that thing open. If God shuts the door, you can't open it, you might well quit. Robert E. Lee was one of the greatest soldiers that America ever produced. He was in charge of the Confederacy. And at Appomattox, he looked at his men and he said, if you beat, you might as well acknowledge. How many people won't do that? If you beat, if you've lost, you might as well accept that I've lost. I'm not gonna be able to do that. I can't get through that door. If God shuts the door, I don't care how much you thought it oughta been open, if God shuts the door, the door's shut, buddy. Circumstances of life, I've had him just slam one in my face and open another over here. Prior service. In Acts 13, 2, they were busy. They were busy about the service of the Lord. And he said, well, we'll call them out. Now here comes one. Turn with me to the 18th chapter of Acts. Acts chapter 18. I'm going to, just for about five minutes, I really want to give you some things on my heart here. Acts chapter 18, verse 1. After these things, Paul departed from Athens and came to Corinth and found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome, and came unto them. And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them in Rome. For by their occupation they were tent makers. The Apostle Paul was what you'd call a part-time preacher. The Apostle Paul made tents for a living. And he preached for eternity. I'm going to be honest with you tonight. I've been here for 22 years. I've been full-time and I've been part-time. I've been up and I've been down. But it absolutely looks to me like that every time I try to take it on full-time, I just get more trouble. It seems like, and those of you who've been here with me know I'm telling the truth, it seems like if I go ahead and drive a coal truck I go ahead and work in the mines or something that I get along with. William Carey was the founder of the China mainland mission, wasn't he? He was a cobbler, a shoe cobbler. He said he'd make shoes for a living if a preacher returned. Sometimes I struggle over and over and over in my soul. I think this last raise was just a faith raise. I don't think we really prospered that much. I appreciate you fixing my automobile as a faith step. What are you saying, Preacher? I'm saying that when God opens a door, He opens a door. Whenever he shuts the door, it's just shut. And I've had, I've had whenever I was, you know, supplying for my own family. It's not so much now, but whenever we first started, we struggled with it. Just come just that close to going hungry, so I could be a full-time preacher. I wanted to be a full-time preacher so much. I still do. That's my desire. But sometimes I struggle with, is that what God wants me to be? If God wants me to be a preacher that works on a job, don't you think I'd probably be better off if I'd go get me a job? He wants me to be just, you know, a pastor. Sets the field on fire. How come the field's not on fire? How come I'm on fire? Paul was a tent maker. The greatest preacher that ever lived. Didn't preach for a living. He made tents for a living. I know what America says. America says, you know, this professional ministry, that's the only way to go. And I admit, I admit that, man, it's so much easier on you whenever you've got folks that are in the hospital or something, you know, and you can have some freedom to go. But I also have to admit, if nobody else messes it up, it's like I'm messing it up. I think, and I'm just telling you this, maybe for five minutes, I'll tell you my heart. I want you to pray for your pastor. Let him do what God wants him to do. I know that there are people here, like the Apostle Paul said, if it's possible, you can take your eyes out and give them to me. I know that I've got people here that are that way. But I also know that I got potential trouble, man. Potential just another fight, another church split, another. Folks, I can't stand it. They say the average Christian can't take two church fights. The average preacher can't take three. But we done had two pretty biggins since I've been here. And with the carnality of people, I can see a third one coming unless the Lord intervenes. Dear God in heaven, have mercy on us, the Baptist Church. I don't want to miss the will of God. And I don't want my people to miss the will of God. Let's bow for prayer.