Gospel of Mark chapter 5, if you would. While you're turning, a lion met a tiger as they drank beside the pool. Said the tiger, Please tell me why you're roaring like a fool. That's not foolishness, said the lion with a twinkle in his eyes. I'm called the king of beasts because I advertise. A rabbit heard them talking, ran home like a streak. He thought he'd tried the lion's plan, but his roar was just a squeak. A fox came to investigate, had lunch in the woods. The moral is when you advertise, be sure you got the goods. That's why I tell people, I'm just a dumb old Kentucky boy that ain't so very smart, and when I talk, I get mixed up, my gears are hard to start. It seems I don't have many brains like other folks I know, and when it comes to society, my dumbness there I show. But I found it don't take brains, my friend, the best in life to gain. It's not your wealth or what you are, prestige you might obtain. It only takes just simple faith, eternal life to find. No matter where you stand, there's grace for all mankind. I went down to the jailhouse once to witness for the Lord. I told them how the Lord saved me. They sure looked mighty bored. They nudged each other and they smiled. They thought that I was dumb, but they stayed in and I walked out when leaving time had come. So I'm still just a dumb old Kentucky boy and I hope I'll always be just smart enough to trust the Lord for all eternity. So I'll just keep traveling on a few brains and not real smart. I'm just a dumb old Kentucky boy with Jesus in my heart. What a thrill it is for my wife, Ms. Judy, and I. Ms. Judy, if you'd just raise your hand. On August the 1st, we were married 58 years. I told our church it's not a record, certainly, but above average. She told me she married me for my brains. She said it's the little things in life that count. But we've been there for 58 years. Our oldest daughter, LaDonna, is sitting next to her. And her grandson, I can't believe that my daughter is a grandmother. Her grandson is here and her husband, Robert. Robert and Steven. I'm glad they're here. What a privilege it is to be at Calvary Baptist Church for your anniversary, the 25th anniversary of the Helps Ministries. I had the privilege of being here on the 20th anniversary, and I certainly appreciate Brother Brohill inviting us back, and just to see this place, and to see the crowd here on a Sunday night, what a blessing it is. Brother Furnell, when you was talking about your pastor, Sinefa Pointe du Jour, Sinefa Pointe du Jour at one time might have had the largest black church in America, or the world, in the world, at one time, in the world, Sinefa Pointe du Jour. And a godly, godly man. And he influenced you, you got a good influence on your life. Brother Brohill, I was talking to Brother John Jarrell. We had him up at our church just recently. John Jarrell's down in Guyana. And Brother Brohil came up and he just raved about Brother Brohil being down at his church in Guyana. And he's looking forward to him coming back. So I don't know whether Miss Lori goes with you or not, but they sort of like your pastor down there. So you better treat him good up here. And what a good spirit you have in your church. I'm thankful for the Helps Ministries. I'm thankful for Brother Scotty Drake, Brother Scotty and Miss Barbie is back here. I wish you could hear the story of how God stirred in his heart when he went to Mexico up in the mountains and he was so stirred. And he said, I wish we could bring our churches up here and see what they're doing. And God laid it on his heart. He could not take the churches there, but he could bring some of those men to America, and he did. And I want you to know that the Helps Ministries Missions has rejuvenated Winkler Road Baptist Church missionary program. At the present time, Winkler Road Baptist Church supports 213 missionaries. We never set out to do this, but I suspect the sun never sets on the ministry there. And a lot of those are helps ministries. They brought a new enthusiasm to the service, and people gave, gave to them while they were there, and our missions went up and up. And what a blessing that is. And Brother Chan McMillan. was like a co-founder with Brother Scotty and Barbara and Brother Cham. I talked to him on the phone yesterday, and he so wishes he could be here. And he wanted me to give you a greeting. And he said, remind them that in just about two months, there will be eight billion people in the world. And most of them have never heard about Jesus. And then Brother Ron Cole was such a part of that. He and Susie was such a part of the Helps Ministries and what a blessing they have been. And then Brother Tom Knickerbocker. And Barbara joined the team at the Health Ministries. And what a blessing. Each of those men had different gifts. And they all were godly men. And God used those men to grow Health Ministries. And you'd have to probably talk to Iran to see how much influence they do have and how many they have. under their support. They don't support them, but they bring them in so that they could be a blessing to churches. And what a blessing that is. And you pray that the Lord will bless this conference. You know, there's four reactions that you could have to a missions conference. When Pastor Roehl said, we're going to have a missions conference. Now it goes up to another level when he says that our theme is going to be for His glory. When you bring the Lord in, you change the dimension, you change the logistics of all of that, and it's for His glory. And when you have a missions conference, there will always be somebody who will have sympathy. They will say, well, pastor, that's nice. I hope you all have a good meeting over there. They're not opposed to you, they're not really for it, but they have sympathy. It's nice. Somebody ought to probably go reach the heathen. And of course, the heathen are those people live next door. and down the street, but they have sympathy. And then there are some people who have apathy. You're having a what? A missions conference. Well, who cares? It's like the guy was knocking on the door and he's trying to find out the big problems in America. And he said, sir, what do you think are the two biggest problems in America? He said, well, I think the two biggest problems is ignorance and apathy. He said, that's interesting. I'm going to write that down. What can we do about it? He said, I don't know. And frankly, I don't even care. Well, that's the way we are with missions conferences. They're going to have a missions conference. Now, you folks obviously care. You're back on Sunday night. But there are some people who say, I don't care. It doesn't bug me one way or the other. And then there are the crowd that has antipathy. They are against the missions conference. Pastor, why are you going to take money that we ought to have here at Calvary Baptist Church in King, North Carolina, and send it off to the mission field, send it out of our country? Why are you going to do that? Well, the Lord told us to preach the gospel to every creature. And you know, the Bible says in Romans 5, 9 and Romans 7, there will be people out of every nation, tribe, tongue, and people. How are they going to get there if somebody doesn't go tell them? And that's why you have missions conferences, but there are some people that are opposed to that. And then there's a fourth emotion, and that is the people who have empathy. Now, if someone says to you that they have sympathy for whatever you're going through, that's one thing. But if someone says, you know, I empathize with you, what they're saying is I'm entering into how you're feeling. And there will be somebody who's going to enter into what you're doing at Calvary Baptist Church. And pastor, you can count on me, I wanna be a part of this. The guy who has empathy is the guy who's gonna take the faith promise card. Miss Judy and I started Faith Promise years ago. I pastored in Lexington, Kentucky for about 15 years. We started there. And then when we went to Winkler Road Baptist Church the last 35 years, we've been doing Faith Promise there. And we tried to stretch it out. And I certainly did not start out giving what we ended up giving. But then there's a number of variables. Our kids grew up, we didn't have as much expense that way, and we were able to give some, and just to stretch a little bit. And I would that you would take it in your heart and say, Lord, what would you have me to do? And let the Lord stir in your heart. And if you were to stretch just a little bit, you'll be amazed. You know, the Bible says, given it shall be given unto you good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall men give unto your bosom. God's going to see to it, because he said he would, that he's going to take care. I thought maybe that came off or something. He's going to take care of it because he said he would. And that ought to be good enough for all of us. And these men here, I'm sure we support some of them. Do we support any of you guys? One? And we've had a number of the helps ministries in our church, and what a blessing that they have been to our church there. And so you want to make sure you enter in with empathy, with what you're doing here, and ask the Lord what part you would have. And I asked pastor, I said, What is your goal for this next year? And he mentioned a figure. And I hope that the Lord will honor his faith and what he wants to do to lead this church into conquering new ground. Not backwards. Don't stay the same. Go forward. Stretch. Do a little more than you can. You know, you don't get money for a credit in heaven for money you lose. in the stock market or wherever, you only get credit for what you give. And some of you folks remember Black Monday when a lot of people in America lost a lot of money. That could happen again. And if you lose it, you don't get credit for it. You only get credit for what you give. And so I hope that, and thank the Lord for those who are tithers. You know, a live church is full of tithers and a dead church is full of tippers. You know, a live church is full of Noisy boys and girls. Rent I hear a while ago, that was good. And a dead church, they don't have any noise. You know, a live church is by faith pushing forward and a dead church is, how did we used to do that now? You want to make sure that you are a live church. The church that Jesus Christ built, up on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. You want to make sure that Calvary Baptist Church is alive. Now what if Calvary Baptist Church was just as much alive as you are? What if the secret to Calvary Baptist Church was you? And the truth is it is. You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, all of us. That would be the secret. Some years ago there was a little a little Christian school, college. And they had a lesson there. It was called New Testament Survey. And the people liked the New Testament Survey class because for 25 years, they never had any pop-up quizzes. They didn't have any special quizzes, except one quiz at the end of the semester. And for 25 years, the test was the same. It had never changed. And the test was this, discuss the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul. Well, they signed Meathead up. Now, with a name like Meathead, that already tells you something, doesn't it? He was the star football player. Maybe he got too many hits on his head or something, but they signed Meathead up because they thought it would be an easy course, and they gave him a tutor. And so he started learning about Paul's missionary journeys. He learned about Paul and Silas, and Paul and Barnabas, and he learned about the first missionary journey, and they started at Antioch, and they went over here, and they did this and this, and he had all of that down. He was ready to go. He went into the class, last class for that lesson. And papers were laying there. The teacher said, now when I tell you, I want you to turn the paper over, put your name in the upper right-hand corner, take the test. When you finish, you can turn your paper in and leave. you may begin. And when they turned that paper over, there was a gasp. I mean, they sucked right all the air out of that room. For the first time in 25 years, they changed the test. The test this time was critique the sermon preached by Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount. They had this blank look on their face. They knew this was not going to work. And so everybody wrote their name down, turned in a blank paper, knowing they were going to get an F. Well, that is everybody except Meathead. Meathead started writing. And about halfway through that, most of the other people had turned their tests in, and the little stack had grown, except Meathead. He's still writing. When the hour was up, he turned his paper in. This stack got Fs, this one guy over here, Meathead, got an A+. And someone said, Meathead, what did you write on? He said, well, I just put down, who am I to critique a sermon preached by Jesus? Instead, let me just write about the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul. Maybe he wasn't such a meathead after all. In Mark chapter 5, where I had you to turn, we learned that our God is bigger than most of us think. He is the God of the impossible. There is a man in this chapter who is so mean, he's uncontrollable. until Jesus showed up and controlled him. In this chapter, there is a woman who has had an issue of blood for 12 years. She had gone to this doctor, that doctor, every doctor that she could go to, spent all of her living and was nothing better. And Jesus came and she touched him. And immediately she was healed. Jesus said, somebody touch me. I perceive that virtue has gone out of me. And that woman, falling down, trembling, said, it's me, Lord. See, he didn't want that woman to think that it's some kind of hocus pocus on touching his garment. He wanted her to know that he did this. He went from there to Jarrah's house, who was a ruler in the synagogue, whose daughter, his only daughter, was dying. And when he sent to Jesus, she was still alive. And when he stopped by that lady, she died. And he's going on and somebody comes and says, you don't have to go there, she's dead. But he didn't listen to them. So he goes in, he takes her mom and her dad and Peter, James, and John. And he said to this young lady, Talithi Kumai, maid, I say unto thee, arise. And she arose. And he said, give her something to eat. And he went on his way. Here is somebody who was uncontrollable until controlled by God. Here is somebody that disease had conquered until the conqueror of diseases came. And somebody who was dead. Jesus is Lord over the demonic. He is Lord over all diseases. And he is Lord over the dead. That is our God. Now the story that I want to bring to your attention is the first guy. This story is told by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Matthew gives seven verses to this story. Luke is the second. He gives 14 verses to this story. And Mark gives 20 verses to this story. So he gives a whole lot more. But you need to read, especially Mark and Luke, to get the whole thrust of what I want to mention to you this evening. When Jesus had gotten off of a boat, he'd just got out of a storm. The storm was so bad that the people came and said, Master, we perish. And then one of them said, Master, save us, we perish. And then another one, maybe Peter, who said, Master, carest thou not that we perish? Of course he cares. And that storm was nothing to him. He rebuked it, and he came over, got off the boat, and immediately on the shore of this place, of the Gadarenes, there met him out of the tombs a man, a man with an unclean spirit. The Bible in this chapter mentions tombs twice. You know what that is? It's a graveyard. It's a cemetery. Cemeteries, every town has one. They're in all communities. They used to be by churches. It's a reminder that those of us that are alive, we're on the way to dying. It's appointed unto men once to die, and after this, the judgment. You want to make sure that when you die, you die saved and not lost. Jesus one day had a crowd of people with him, and he was going into the city of Nain. While he's going in, there's a woman, who was a widow woman, who had a son, and her son just died, and she's on her way now to the cemetery. Now here is an interesting meeting. Jesus and his crowd is on the way into the city, and this woman with her crowd, both of them had much people. She's on her way out to the cemetery, and they meet. And Jesus stopped this procession. And his heart of compassion went out to this woman. And he touched the beer. And he raised that young man from the dead and presented him alive to his mother. And the Bible says, and this rumor of him was spread throughout all the country. You know, if you ever want to start a rumor, that's a good one to start. Start a rumor that Jesus is alive. Jesus cares. Jesus is available. Jesus is waiting on us. And so here's this man that came out of the tombs. He was a wild man. He would cry. He would cut himself. Emotionally, he was disturbed. Mentally, he was deranged. Physically, he was destructive. And spiritually, he was demonic controlled. I do not know how that started in that man's life. But I do know this. I will guarantee you that Pastor Broyhill has said to you on probably more than one occasion, Friend, sin will take you further than you want to go and make you stay longer than you want to stay and make you pay a whole lot more than you want to pay. That's this man. But I have good news. The Lord can take you further than you ever thought you could go. And help you enjoy staying there a whole lot longer than you thought. And the rewards that he has in heaven are out of this world. And so this man, how he got to this condition, I don't know. But the Bible tells us in Luke's gospel chapter eight, he had his own house. So somewhere along the line, this man lost his family. He lost his wife. He lost his children. He lost his respect. He lost his dignity. He didn't wear any clothes, the Bible tells us. And he's crying and he's cutting himself. They would go chain him. They would bind him. And under the power of those spirits, he would break those chains. Those fetters were like nothing when he was controlled by those entities. And this man was one unholy terror. I suspect that this man, if you read the story, I probably should read the story to you. I'll pick it up in a moment. If we should read this story, at the time of this story, there probably wasn't one person in the world that loved this man. Not one. His family didn't love him. The people didn't love him. Who cared for this guy? They all wanted to avoid him. He lived in the graveyards, sometimes on the mountains, screeching and crying and cutting himself and bleeding and one unholy terror until Jesus got off that boat and he saw him. The wild man saw him. And he said, Jesus, thou son of the most high God, what are we to do with thee? Are you come to torment us before the time? And Jesus said to this young man, what is your name? And he said, my name is Legion, for we are many. It wasn't just one spirit. There were many spirits. And there were 2,000 swine in a herd that these evil spirits asked, prayed to Jesus, would you send us into those swine? And he granted that. So there must have been numerous of these creatures. You know, sometimes people say, why do you want to send missionaries over to those countries? They got their own culture, they got their own religions, and they're all pretty happy with their own lives like they are. People who say that usually are tourist people. Tourist people who've only been there a week or two or three, not very long, and they really don't understand what the culture is like, and they really don't understand what the religion is like. There have been religions that when a man died, they killed his wife. It's part of the religion. That was true in India. When a man died, they put him on a funeral pyre and killed his wife, and she burned up with him. Anybody in America, any woman in America would like to trade places with that religion? Well, if it's not good for you, it's not good for them. And there are people that are under control of religions, witch doctors, and they do all kinds of things that would scare most of us half to death. Make your hair probably stand up on end. To think that they all love all that they know. They would love to know what you know. They would love to know a God who loved them, who would give himself for them, who paid for all their sins, who was buried and rose again the third day. If they could just hear that story, a lot of them would believe it. And so they think, why you do that? Because the Lord wants us to do that. So Jesus said to this man, what's your name? Legion. And he cast those devils out of him. And then the Bible says, if you would, let's pick it up at verse 15. And they come to Jesus and see him that was possessed with the devil and had the Legion sitting and clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. That's worth reading again. And they come to Jesus and see him that was possessed with the devil and had the legion sitting and clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. See, a while ago, he wasn't in his right mind. But he met Jesus who said, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. What's amazing to me is that the people of Gadareh prayed Jesus to leave. You see, for that crowd, this didn't start yesterday. If you went back to the book of Numbers chapter 32, when God was taking his people out of Egypt into the promised land, while they're in the wilderness, there were some people, two and a half tribes, they said, Moses, could we stay over here? And the Gadites was one of those tribes, and they said, could we stay over here? It is a good place to raise cattle. Well, what are they raising now? Hogs. How do you go from heifers to hogs? Because Leviticus 11 had something to say about animals that were clean and unclean. They were not allowed to eat hogs. Now, since Calvary, all of those dietary laws don't apply. You know, now the things that you eat, it's sanctified by the word of God in prayer. So if you still like a little ham, a little pork, we had it last night. And we did pray. That has all changed now. So how did those people who started out they're going to raise heifers end up with raising something that would be unscriptural? You see, sins like that, they'll take you further than you want to go. They never thought we'd be raising pigs, but that's where they were. And when Jesus healed this man, the people, they came out and they prayed him to leave. If we let this Jesus stay here who did that to this man, what would he do to our businesses? You think of all the sin businesses that Jesus is not into. You think of all of the gambling and the liquor and the drugs and the whatevers, that people make a lot of money off of other people's vices. One of the reasons I'm against the lottery, I'm against gambling, but one of the reasons is you're gonna afford your educational system with other people's vices. They talk about X number of dollars won, but they never talk about the X number of dollars plus lost. Before somebody wins it, somebody loses it. But they make it attractive. So these people are raising pigs. And they pray Jesus to leave. So Jesus, you might wanna read the story again and see how many times somebody prayed to Jesus. And the ones that he answered and the ones he didn't answer. Some prayers he answered, some prayers he didn't answer. You probably haven't lived a long time as a Christian until you have come to the place that you're grateful that God didn't answer all your prayers. Now, I'm not a Garth Brooks fan. I don't know if I ever heard a whole song by him, but I know he sang one song. And he sang a song called, Thank God for Unanswered Prayers. And he sang a song about some guy when he was in high school, found this little old young lady that he thought he couldn't live without. He begged God, Lord, please let me have this woman for my wife. Please, Lord, let me have this woman for my life. Well, he didn't get her. And on the 25th reunion of his high school, He took the wife that he did get, and he went back to the reunion, and he saw the woman that he begged God to have that he didn't get. And when he saw her, he said, thank God for unanswered prayers. Now, that's a two-way street, too. That could go the other way as well. There are some prayers that got answered, some prayers that didn't get answered. Now, this man is going to pray a prayer that God doesn't answer. This is the guy who was sitting, clothed, and in his right mind. You know, I thought that'd be a great position to be in, just to be sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in your right mind. And they just prayed Jesus to leave, and he's going to leave. The Bible says in verse 18, and when he was coming to the ship, he that had been possessed with the devil prayed him that he might be with him. Please, Lord, let me go with you. Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, go home. to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee. And the Bible tells us in Luke's gospel, chapter eight, verse 39, same story, but here's how it's worded. Return to thine own house. And show how great things God hath done unto thee. And he went his way and published throughout the world, the whole city, how great things Jesus had done unto him. Here's the ultimate show and tell. Go tell them, go show them. And where do you start? I told Pastor Brohill that when he invited me to speak at this conference. The first thought that I thought about was this passage. You're in a missions conference. You've been involved in missions for years. Where does it start? You know, there's foreign missionaries and there's home missionaries. And some people believe that every Christian is a missionary. And some churches have a piece of a sign out on the property before they leave, you are now entering the mission field. Did not Jesus say, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature? We are to go into the world and make disciples, and baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." Just before Jesus, he ascended, and then two men stood by and said, Jesus said to them, but ye shall receive power. After that, the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. That's not how most people read that story. They read it, he wants us to first go to Jerusalem, then Judea, after that, Samaria, last of all, uttermost part of the earth. Now, if you read what the Bible says, He shall be witnesses unto me both at the same time in Jerusalem and Samaria, Judea, and Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth. It's the connecting conjunction and. You go to all of them at the same time. Some people think, well, you go to Jerusalem, and after you've evangelized everybody, then you go to Judea, and after you've evangelized everybody, you go to Samaria, and same thought to the uttermost parts of the earth. The Lord never said that. You go and maybe establish a beachhead. You remember one time the people had been with Jesus? And he said, you know, if we send them home, they'll faint by the way they've been here three days. And they said, Lord, what are we gonna do? He said, you feed them. They said, Lord, we don't have anything to feed them with. If we had 200 pence and there was some place to go buy all this, where would we do it and how would we do it? He said, well, what do you have? And they found a boy with five loaves and two fishes. And he gave his lunch to Jesus. And Jesus said, now, I want you to make all the company. And the Bible says there was 5,000 men, not women and children. I want you to make them sit down in groups of 50s. And that's 5,000. So you had 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, and then you got another row. Now, what would you think? Let's say you're sitting back there. And He blesses, breaks it, and He gives it to the disciples. And they run over to this crowd, and they give them here, and they run down through here, and they give this crowd, and they give this crowd here. And when they get to the end of that crowd, they start back again. Anybody else need some more? They go like this and this. And we're gonna wait till all these people get full before we go anywhere else. Well, the people back there say, hey, what about us? Hey, hey, we don't have anything to eat. Come over and help us. Come over and feed us. You see, if you're gonna satisfy all these before you give to the next, there's gonna be a whole lot of people not gonna be satisfied. But the Scotty showed me a picture on his phone. He was just in India and there were 10,000 people that came to the meetings. And he said, we give out Bibles. And he said, they fight over them. We don't have enough. Chan MacMillan, who is praying for this meeting, he was called a quarter man, because he'd raise quarters, put them in his pocket to buy Bibles. And he was in Winkler Road Baptist Church, and he'd been in our place, and our people would take those little cards and fill them up with quarters and give them to him. He was down to, I don't know, somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 for the first $1,000,000. I said, Brother Cham, we're going to take care of that here. And we made a big production out of it. We made out a check. It was yay big and yay tall, and it was paid to the order of Helps Ministry $1,000,000 for Bibles. Now, we didn't give him $1,000,000. That's how much he had raised. And he said when he was in the Philippines, And some of those people had never had a Bible. And they got a Bible, they'd kiss it. For now, when I took your pastor, Sanofa Point de Jour, to see a doctor when he was at that place, my doctor friend gave him a Bible. And we're riding back that afternoon, I'm driving, Brother Joseph at Point de Jour is sitting there. He said, precious Bible, precious book. And he leaned over and he said, precious book. But the champ said in India they'd fall at his feet, they'd hug his feet because they'd never had a Bible before. Though the cover's worn, the pages are torn, and though places bear traces of tears, yet more precious than gold is the book worn and old that can shatter and scatter my fears. When I prayerfully look in the precious old Many pleasures and treasures I see. Many tokens of love from the Father above, who's nearest and dearest to me. This old book is my guide. It is a friend by my side. It will lighten and brighten my way. And each promise I find soothes and gladdens my mind as I read it and heed it today. To this book I will cling. Of its worth I will sing. Though great losses and crosses be mine, for I cannot despair of those surrounded by care while possessing this blessing divine. If you knew you could never get another Bible, what would you take for the one you got? He said, I want you to go home. Return to thine own house. Picture this man, probably the last time his kids saw him, he's a wild man. Naked, screaming, screeching. And when one of them said, Daddy's coming. Man, you could see they were scattering for the hills. They didn't want them to get beaten by him. And then one of them said, mama, look, he's got clothes on. And mama, he doesn't appear to be a raven maniac. Mama, he just looks different. And when he got there and embraced his wife and children and said, don't be afraid of daddy anymore. You've got a brand new daddy right now. He went home. You know, I got saved when I was 19 years old serving in the United States Navy. One of the first things I did was I wrote a letter home to my dad and my mom. And my dad wasn't saved yet. My mom was. And I told them about getting saved. And I thanked my dad for the way he raised me, for every spanking he ever gave me. I can't believe I said this, and you actually missed a few opportunities. But I wanted them to know that I had gotten saved. It starts at home. Do you have anybody at your house that you've never told what God's done for you? Now, he didn't say go home and argue with them. You know, that arguing is probably one of the things that slows down evangelism. I was reading where at one time Northern Africa was a hotbed for Bible Christianity in churches. And had they been going with that same spirit, they probably would have evangelized Africa, and Africa may have sent missionaries this way. But what they did was they started arguing theological things. It's like these groups of theologues, they got to talking, and the more they talked, they got to talking about Calvinism and predestination and free will, and it got hotter and hotter. They divided up into two groups, the Calvinists and the free will. And this one guy, he said, well, I don't know what to do. This is all new to me. And so he went over in the Calvinist group, and they said, why are you over here? He said, well, I came over here of my own free will. Free will, you get over on that side. So he went over on that side, and they said, why are you here? He said, well, I was told to come over here. If you didn't come of your own free will, he couldn't fit in anywhere. So you can see how that kind of thing happened. And when you get to arguing, you're not evangelizing. When you think about all the churches in America, and some of them split over the smallest, mindest little thing. Now, I'm not saying that the things are not important, but there have been whole movements have been started over some little thing. Not necessarily some big thing. But he said, I want you to go home. And then he said, I want you to go to your friends. Go home to thy friends. Everybody's got a friend. And when you go to your friend, our time is running and so I want to be careful about here. When you go to your friends, what you do is you tell them, he said, go tell them how great things the Lord has done for thee. Missions, you start where you are and tell what you know. If you've been saved, you can tell how that happened. Well, one Sunday I got invited out to Calvary Baptist Church. And the pastor's name was, I can't remember his name, but I know he got my attention when he spoke. And he gave an invitation for people to come forward, and I went forward. And somebody took a Bible and showed me how I could be saved. And I did what the Bible said, and he changed my life. Well, see, if that's what you know, that's what you tell. You get in trouble when you go beyond what you know. Just go tell them what you know. And you start at home, then you go to your friends. And then the Bible said in that passage in Luke 8, 39, that he went his way and published through the whole city. He's telling everybody. And back here in this passage, that he went to publish in Decapolis. And Decapolis is 10 cities. Now see, here's how mission work got started. Jesus came, did something for the man, found him sitting clothed and in his right mind, and he said, I want you to go home to your friends and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee and hath had compassion on thee. And he went home, told his friends, went to the whole city, then went to ten cities. And by that time, you may learn a little more, and you may learn what the Great Commission is, and you go to the next place. You know, Jesus was healing people, and they could have brought people in, but they didn't. So the next morning, he got up early and went to pray, and they came, and he wasn't there. They said, where is he? So when Peter and James and John found him, they said, all men seek for thee. He said, I gotta go to the next cities. That's why I came. I'm going to the next cities. We're not just gonna stay right here. We're gonna give everybody a chance. Would that be fair if everybody had a chance? We have people in America who've had chance and chance, chance squared and tripled and so forth, and still haven't believed it yet. And there are some people in the world, if they could just hear it one time, they'd embrace it. It changed their life. Jesus said, I want you to go home to your friends and tell them how great things the Lord has done for thee. He said, go tell him what God's done for him. He went and told everybody what Jesus had done for him. You know why that's true? Because Jesus is God. Sometimes you and I talk like that. We talk about dear Lord, dear God, dear Jesus. We're addressing the same one. Just go tell him what God's done for you. Now maybe you're here and God hadn't done anything for you. You've never been saved. you can be saved. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Our pastor dealt with that this morning. Somebody is sent so they can preach, so somebody can hear, so they can believe, so they can call.