if you're from Riverside I apologize for this and Josh I prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed today and I had a word from God and I lost it and I've got notes on it and it looks like the scribblings of a madman I couldn't make heads or tails of it and I figured out why so God kept leading me back to a certain passage of scripture that I have preached to you before I apologize to Riverside and Josh because Josh was there. So everybody else is getting something new. Y'all getting something. Maybe God knows you need it again. All right. Look, there was an old man who took a church one time, and I know y'all probably heard this story before, but he said he took a church and he kept preaching the same sermon over and over again, and after about the first month, a deacon come to him and said, Pastor, you've preached the same, it's a good sermon, but you've preached it four times, you know, four Sundays in a row. He said, yeah, when y'all start listening, I'll quit preaching it. So I'm not saying that this is the case here, But, to Daniel Town, I want to extend, yet again, a very big thank you for opening your doors, having a sin. Not many churches would have done it. It makes the power bill go up, but I'm just happy to be here. I tell you, I'm tickled to death to be in front of you again tonight. And, if you will, find your place in Matthew chapter 28. We don't have much scripture reading tonight, but, That's where we're gonna be at. I love the Old Testament. You gotta preach all that. It's all about Jesus, Josh. Every bit of it. Ain't a lick of it, not about Jesus. Look, if y'all will, again, this is gonna be real quick. Matthew chapter 28, verse 19 says, Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even until the end of the world. Amen. father god as we humbly come before you one more time this out of eternity lord I ask that you would decide me behind a cross lord that you would Lord, I ask that you would keep a hedge of protection around each and every person that chose to meet here tonight, Lord, and that you would bless each and every one of them according to what they need. And Lord, I love you, I honor you, and I praise you, Lord. We'll use each and everything you've done for us as a living testament to just how good you are, Lord. And it's through your holy bloodstained name, Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen. Now, if you sat through this sermon before, Or if you've ever been in a Baptist church at any given point in time in your life, you know what this is. This is the Great Commission. Kevin's wife, Jennifer, and their daughters, I don't know which ones exactly, but they actually sing a song that's called the Great Commission, okay? The Great Commission is a wonderful thing. It's go tell the world about me, okay? That's what he's telling us to do. That's what he told them to do. They said, what are we supposed to do without you here? He said, go tell the world about me. Go tell them what I've done for you, personally. Go ye therefore. These words, known as the Great Commission, found in Matthew chapter 28, verses 19 through 20, declare, go therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you all the way to the end of the world. Amen. We're gonna talk about this, we're gonna break it down, word by word. The Great Commission is a call to action. If you hadn't picked that up by now, the Great Commission is a call to action. It's not merely a suggestion, it is an imperative command. It was not just to me. It was not just to my wife. It was not just to the Gideons. It was to each and every person that has found salvation in Jesus Christ. I am telling you, I get sick and tired of having to repeat this, but I will continue to repeat this. God did not send His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on a cross, the most brutal death ever to be recorded in history, so that you could come in here and sit on a pew, and shout amen and throw your hand up and sing a couple songs and then walk right back out the doors and go back to living however you wanted to live. It doesn't fit. It does not plug and play. It is what you collect here that you have to take out there. I actually love that sign. I want one made, Deacons listen up. I want one made for Riverside. It says you are now entering a mission field. If you're not treating the world as a mission field, then what are we doing? Why do we have to come to church four weeks straight now? Why have we been in service this long? Was it so that we could have a place to meet and gather together and talk about each other or sing some songs? And I love every bit of it, trust me, I do. I've loved getting to know y'all on a personal level, the ones I didn't already know. But that's not what this is about. Especially because it was never about you to begin with. It was all about Jesus from the very beginning. Alright? So if we're not, Joey McIntyre, he's not here. Y'all know him, I love him, okay? But Joey McIntyre told me something Sunday, he said, you know, he said, we have to get outside of four walls if we ever intend to have true revival or anything else. And that's the, honestly, that's the God's honest truth. I agree with it 100%. I'm not gonna lie to you, mainly because Inside these walls already know about salvation. They've heard it for, what, 89 is when y'all were built? I mean, they've heard it this long. You think they need to know it? The pews don't need to know it anymore? But for whatever reason, we have to be told time and time again to go there for teaching and baptizing in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Go ye therefore signifies an active movement. I repeat the word active for a very specific reason. We're not meant to be lazy about it. There has got to be some activity behind what we do for Jesus Christ. I don't care if you want to get lazy at your job. I don't care if you want to get lazy in anything, if you're lazy in your family. I don't care about it. But you're not gonna be lazy about your service for Jesus Christ. That's why I'm gonna make a statement. I'll tell you a secret. I'll do it right now. If you're actually in the Word of God and you're doing this the way it's supposed to be done, you're not gonna be lazy at your job and you're not gonna be lazy with your family. Because it's strictly forbidden. I would actually make a, I will make a very strong statement here and I've told the people that I preach to seven days a week this time and time again, because you're a Christian, that should give you that much more option to do each and every one of your tasks to the best of your ability so that God can be glorified through it. People should look at you and they should wonder why does he have, why he wants to do the jobs that nobody else wants to do. It's because Jesus Christ told me to do it. I don't know who spoke. It could have been spoken in these revival services. I don't remember. I could have heard it on the radio, but they were telling a story one time about a woman that cleaned toilets at the nursing home. Cleaned toilets at the nursing home, and she would shine them toilets up real good, and a man actually told her, had come in, whoever it was telling the story, said, It's a toilet. What are you doing? She said, yeah. She said, but I love these old people and God told me to clean them toilets to the best of my ability. She said, I might not be able to give them nothing else, but I'll give them the gospel of Jesus Christ and a clean commode to sit on. You better be doing what you're doing for the cause of Jesus Christ. He'll add to you everything else. I've preached that before to you during the revival. He's going to add everything else to you, but you better have the cart behind the horse where it belongs. And go, therefore, and teach all nations. There's a song, if somebody calls me out for saying I love this song, I'll throw it right back at you. There's a lot of songs I love. I say that a lot, I know. But Phillip Jolly used to sing a song at Brooklyn Baptist Church. He'd do it a cappella. I don't think anybody could find the key he sang it in. I wanna die on a battlefield. And buddy, that's exactly where I want to be at. I'm going to die with my boots on in a battlefield if I have anything to say about it. Because I'm going to be doing the commissioning of Jesus Christ the entire time. I don't care if it's inside here, if it's out there, if it's on the phone, if it's on the streets, what little bit we have of them here, I'm going to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. If y'all quit coming to Riverside, so be it. As long as I'm voted in as pastor there, I'll preach to the four walls and to the stained glass windows until they fall out. Because God told me to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's what he told me to do. He didn't tell me to do it to people. He said to preach. Now, we are not called to remain stagnant or complacent in a spiritual journey. Instead, we are called to step out of our comfort zones and venture into the world and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. Now, teach all nations. The command to teach all nations extends beyond geographical boundaries. It encompasses every race, culture, and creed. I'm going to stop here for just a moment. We're going to need to pump the air brakes just a little bit. Take it out of the big hole, Mark. When he said teach, nations that did not mean that you need to pack your bags and go to Africa or go to Iraq or go to do you know how many different nations live in Rutherford County alone see I've preached this before we come to the altar and we'll leave people here you know we forget about the discipleship and people but what the biggest problem I see with leaving people at the altar, or going into a mission field, as we forget about our hometown. I'll tell you, see, I mean, listen, this is, physically, what gets me about the whole thing is, it wasn't eight months ago, we went through one of the worst natural disasters to ever hit American soil. Not just North and South Carolina, one of the worst to ever hit American soil. And then we have certain people within our own, in the same county that it took place in that haven't done anything for it. I'm not pointing fingers at y'all, I'm talking about organizations right now that claim to be about missions. But yet, my family's still up there cleaning up Lake Lua. I'm serious. If you don't believe me, I'll give you my cousin's phone number. He sits on a dozer and he sits on a pontoon boat every day, sitting up there digging out that lake. That's where they've been at since the moment it happened. Garrett Logan. They were one of the ones cleaning up before anybody was getting paid for it. They were trying to clear roads to get in there to help save people. I got a really close friend that my daddy actually grew up with him. I grew up with his kids. He left here and went to Florida, but Dale Justice had to come up from Florida because he's got these mule teams. They were hauling supplies by mule up the side of a mountain, trying to get people. On top of the mountain. But where are we at? We're over in Africa. We're in Iraq. We're not doing anything for the cause of our own hometown. That's it. If we had some good godly men, That was just, and I'll tell you what, I love that Jason Weiss is here, and I don't mean to call people out from way up here. I'm not used to preaching in a church this big. He's way back. I can barely see him, but I'll tell you, he's here, and I love the work of the Gideons. I do, I love it. But mainly because when I was in fourth grade, I remember coming out of the halls in Folk Central Elementary School, and one of them, rich down, he had what looked like a funny-looking hat to me on, and he stuck a Bible in my hand. He didn't know I was a child of a preacher, but it didn't matter. They were there giving them to people that needed Bibles, okay? See, I'm not as old as these other men, but I do remember when the Gideons would come and hand out Bibles in schools I remember these things because guess what? We have men that are dedicated to doing the work in the hometown here, in the home field, at the home front And that's where we're needed at, because guess what? The people in Africa, they know more about Jesus than we do now. Mainly because since the 1960s, we've been sending people over there on a mission field and we forgot about her. How many times have we ever looked? Listen, do you know how upsetting it is? And I'm telling you, I may have preached this over there, but I'm telling... Me and my wife was doing something called DoorDash about a year and a half ago. Okay? We were, and there's some people in here that probably do it, I'm not gonna knock on it, but I will tell you this, you spend more in gas than you make in money. Jordan and I got hurt at work, so we needed the money. We were doing door dash. I went to these back streets over here, and I'm driving around, and there's, I kid you not, there was a horse that walked out in front of us at one point. And it looks like they're abandoned millhouses, but they're not abandoned. You look through these busted glass windows, and you see kids run. I mean, when I'm talking about the slums, I mean the slums. I know we're alive, and I know there's people here that probably live over there, and I'm sorry if it's offending you, but I'm telling you that that's not how you're supposed to live. I understand that's how a lot of people have to live. But there's so much of a better way. And I see these things, and I know that what happened was, is a little thing called NATO happened. I'm not getting political. If you think I am, I'll step over here. But a little thing called NATO happened, and it gutted the very heart and soul of Rutherford County. OK? They packed up everything we ever knew, and they shipped it to Mexico, and they shipped it to Japan, and they shut down. And guess what we're left with? Nothing. You know what moved in in its place? Dope. We had crack. We had pills. We had Oxycontin. I'll tell you something that most people won't tell you. Listen, the Sackler family is going to go down in history as saviors. But because of a little thing called Oxycontin, I hope they burn in hell. Because of what they did to my hometown. I can't stand them. They did it because they wanted more money and they marketed a pill and said that it wasn't addictive. And then come to find out it's the most addictive pill that's ever been made. Time release. And all you had to do, don't ask me why I know this, I said it was time release, and again, don't ask me why I know this, but all you had to do was set that thing up underneath your tongue for about a minute and a half, and that time release coating was gone. You got the full effect. I'm trying to tell y'all that we've been wounded here. Almost gutted. to say the least like Creighton loves the Civil War you know I'm sure they thought they were saving a lot of lives and they started cutting off limbs but that's what they did to us they took the very heart and soul out of this community and I tell you this because I was driving around back there and I got really mad and I got upset because I'm passing these houses and I see some of the most the biggest most beautiful churches I've ever seen in my life I'm talking about hundred thousand dollar church buses sitting in the parking lot I said, now where? I said, this is their community. What are they doing? Shadow of the steeples. What is going on here? Yeah, we got real hung up on go therefore into all the nations, and we did, we sent them all out here. They said, we're good, we don't need it, get them out of here. And then, little did I know that in December, I would become the pastor in this very same county. Almost, almost like God said, put your money where your mouth is, boy. You want to talk about everybody else, how about you do something about it? Again, little did I know that I was going to meet these two men, that this revival was going to take off, that things were going to happen. I didn't know that. But there's still so much displacement, so much hurt, so much agony that's going on right here. And then we wonder why people don't come to church. We'll sit around and we'll ask it. Well, you know, the attendance numbers is down. It's because my mom and grandpa done died. They're tired of hearing the same old people tell the same old lies from the same old pulpits and not ever put the money where their mouth is and do nothing about it. These people are fed up. They're sick and tired. And guess what? If this is the interpretation of Christianity they got, I'll take full responsibility for it, but I don't blame them for hating Jesus. I don't blame them. We did it. It's our fault. If you can't put that at your own front door, you might want to step out because it might be about to get real. We have to step out of our comfort zones. Venture out, not only into the world. Go talk to your neighbor. I don't know where y'all live at, but I'm sure you have neighbors that you can go talk to. You know what? Again, I've prayed for my brother to come to church for a lot of years. I hope he's watching on live. He's not friends with no churches on there, so I know he's not. My brother that I, listen, I love him to death. And I'm not being partial when I, yeah, I want everybody to come to Christ, but it landed at my own front door where my own brother cussed me out for inviting him to church. Okay? And I love my brother. If it's between, I'm gonna be honest with you, if it's between y'all and him, I'm pulling him out of the fire before I pull y'all out because he's my blood. He's my family. I love him. But he told me one of the saddest things I've ever heard. He bought a house directly next to a church. I'll not call the name of the church, but he bought a house that's the next door neighbor to a Baptist church in this county. And I asked him one time, I said, hey, why don't you go? I know him. I said, why don't you go down there? Yeah, you know him, too. We grew up with him. He said, you know, I've lived here for a year and a half now, Jordan. He said, that man's never come and knocked on my door once. They said he's never come up here and asked me anything. He's never introduced himself. He didn't know that that's who bought the house. And I got mad at first. I said, Landon, it's not about that. It shouldn't matter. It's about Jesus. And then it really stuck with me and it hit me, you know, maybe if he would have walked up there, my brother wouldn't. And look, people are going to use any excuse they can to not go to church. That's not what this is about. But at the same time, maybe if he'd have walked up there and knocked on his door and said, hey, brother, on the pasture right down here at the church. If you'd like to, this is the service times, you can come to it anytime you'd like. I'll be honest with you, I felt like a failure because it took a young girl having a seizure and her mama that's sitting in here tonight to pull across the church parking lot looking for people to help the little babies for me to finally introduce myself to her. I felt like a failure. After all the times I've mowed grass and seen her husband out there and I didn't stop and I didn't say, hey brother, I'm the new pastor here. It's upsetting to me, because we live in a county that needs so much, but yet we do so little about it. Yeah, I'm going to Morning Star, I'm going to Riverside, I'm going to Daniel Town, but we forget the olive. Hey, why don't you get in the car and go with us? We're having a meal tonight. How many times, okay, that is one of the biggest problems, and I will step on toes gladly here. If your biggest thing about inviting people to church when we're having a meal at church is that we might not have enough food, then we might need to not have meals at all. If it's only to get something to eat, get them to church. We'll worry about everything else later. Get them to church. I don't care what their original intention was. Let's get them to church. Let's put a word of God in their hand and maybe, maybe he'll do exactly what he said he would do and he'd break the hearts. Again, I'm not saying this goes out to anybody sitting in here, but it encompasses every race, culture, and creed. I do not care if somebody does not look like you. I don't care if they are a different color than you. I hope y'all understand that my grandfather was wrong, and he was very wrong. There's not going to be partitions in heaven. You think you're going to Catholic heaven, or Presbyterian heaven, or Wesleyan heaven, or Baptist heaven? You're wrong. You're going to heaven. It's all heaven. That's it. If you saved, you are a family bought by blood. That's what we are, okay? And I'll take it a step further. I don't care if they're smelly, stinky, don't have a house, or drunk. That's my biggest problem. Do you know how many people walk these streets every night? How many times have we drove past them when we say, oh man, that was a homeless man. Like a nothing. That's somebody's child. And I'll be honest with you, the very thing about this nation that draws people to come here is this is the only nation in the world where you can do two things right and be a millionaire, but you do two things wrong and you're homeless. So by, just statistically speaking, by the numbers that's in this congregation, that could be your child that's out there. That could be yours. Think about that one for a second. And then think about the fact that what if somebody had stopped on the side of the road and said, I know it ain't much, but this might help you. I know it's not much, but you can find some answers here. I get mad at my wife sometimes because I get in a hurry, I get sidetracked, you know, I want to be places on time, but we worry more about getting to the house of God on time than we do about talking to the people in the stores that we go to. We went through the Burger King drive-thru not long ago and she looked at me and she said, there's a man sitting in the office and he's a black gentleman, he's drunk most of the time, he throws his hands around everywhere. My wife looks at me and said, why don't you go pray with him? I kinda looked at her, it was 10 o'clock at night, I said, look, I don't wanna get out and it's raining at that. He's eating Chick-fil-A at a Burger King, that just throws red flags at me. Okay? I walked in to get her some extra ketchup and I walked out, God pulled on my heart. He ain't talk to me the same way he talked to her. I had to walk in, you know, that was the calmest I've ever seen that man. I didn't say nothing to him. I just walked up behind him. I grabbed him by the neck. I figured if he was going to turn around and cut me or stab me, I could push his head down on the table. But I grabbed his neck. I said, I'm going to pray with you, brother. And I prayed with him. And then he turned around and he hugged me and he thanked me. You know why? Because he felt like somebody loved him, that he wasn't overlooked for just a moment in time. May God have mercy on our souls. We're worried about the pygmies over in Africa right now. That's it. Pygmy's in New Guinea. That's what we're worried about. Now, I'm a Baptist. I'm sorry, I gotta kind of skim over this part right here. Baptism. I know what y'all are thinking. It rained a lot. Don't you be trying to drown people out there in the mud puddles, Mark. Don't you do it. I've met some people that need a slow baptism. Baptism is not where you find your salvation. It is an outward symbol of an inward transformation. When we baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, we acknowledge the triune nature of God and the new identity of a believer. Baptism signifies a dying of the old self and a rising to life in new Christ. I explained this when I preached Romans at Morningstar. Baptize, it's baptismos, it's a complete immersion. It's not rents prosos. I love what Creighton says when it rains, he says, we're not Methodist, it's not gonna, that sprinkle ain't gonna get you when you come into church, but, and, y'all about to get separated, listen, in Rome, when they What did Rome do? They dyed cloth. That's what they did. And that happened to be a very, very beautiful color, purple, that they did this. And where do you think he got his purple robes at? But that is what, that signified the change. That's what it was. It was a change. They would take this cloth, they would baptize it in this dye. And when they pulled it out, it was a new color. This is the only way we had to describe it to the people that never understood. How can I be born? He asked, he said, how can I be born again? I'm already born now. He said, no, you got to be born of the spirit of the water, okay? But it is not where you find your, again, I'll preach it to the day I die, y'all are gonna be able to quote it as good as I can. Oliver B. Green said, if it's in the water, praise God, we'll get the fire department, we'll do it at Town Square, and we'll do it by the thousands, okay? We'll get them all at one time. That's it. Teaching them to observe. Our responsibility does not end with conversion. That is where we like to leave it at. Led somebody to the Lord, but I ain't talked to them in 25 years. I ain't never called and asked them if they needed help. I ain't never called. We get them to the altar, we pray for them. Oh man, they got help tonight. When's the last time you picked up the phone and called? I'll take it a step further than that. When you bumped into them at the gas station, did you turn around and walk away from them? Again. Look, if people are going to call us hypocrites and we have to wear that badge of honor because we created the narrative. That was us. That wasn't nobody else. That was us. We are called to disciple and nurture believers, teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded. Not just come down here and give your life to Him and I'm going to get you a gospel track and I'm going to send you down the road with it. Don't worry about it. Don't call me. We meet at 11 o'clock if you want to talk. That's not how this works. Man, I wish Bobby was here. I have a very close friend, because of Michelle, coincidentally, and I have forgot his last name. Willis, Bobby Willis, lives over there at Cherry Mountain, right behind Cherry Mountain Baptist Church, as a matter of fact. We were riding down the road, because he doesn't have his license. I went to pick him up for a church service, and I'm driving him back, and he said, you know, Jordan, I would rather stand at the gates of hell and keep him out of there than I would get him into a church. Those are words of truth right there. If you are worried about building your attendance or anything else other than preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, you don't need to be doing it at all. I do not care about attendance numbers. I don't care about an offering plate number. I care about the rose in heaven, the Lamb's book of life. God will provide every other aspect to this. But we were told to go out teaching and doing the work of Christ. That's what we were told to do. Not anybody else. Not the next man down the road either. Not the next Christian to get it. I do this every so often. I tell a story that I really don't like to tell because it makes me very uncomfortable. A lot of people look at me like I got 12 heads when I do this. I worked for a long time with a man that I consider to be my best friend. His name is Matthew Frady. I love this man probably, look, if you worked 18 hours a day with somebody, two, three years, they become your brothers, all right? And in becoming your brother, I mean, I'm talking, he's welding one side of something, I'm welding the other, and we're faced, like, literally hanging by our feet up underneath stuff, done stuff that should have killed us 90% of the time. And we worked and we worked and we worked, there was a lot of times I can't, if I could account for every grease and oil stained sandwich or piece of pizza I'd eat with that man at 12 o'clock at night because somebody went out and got us pizza so we could finish the job we were doing. And then we parted ways and you know how friendship is, they're still your best friend but you don't talk to them every day. He had talked to me a little bit, I knew his stance on God. And I was still running from a call to preach. I drank more alcohol with the man than I ever quoted scripture to him, because everybody else was trying to beat him up with scripture, and I thought, that's not my place. And then I get the phone call from his wife that he died. He crawled off over in a tank to get in there and make a wield. They hadn't cleaned, said the tank was clean. They hadn't cleaned the tank. He got in there and he struck an arc and died. He left three children sitting at home. And I pleaded with God after the fight, I said, because I knew his heart. I said, please give some type of peace just to know that somebody did the work that I didn't do. Because now one of my brothers is burning in hell on account of me. Because I didn't stand up and tell him, hey man, Jesus loves you. He gave his life for you. I'm not, it's on them to make the decision. But I was in positions that I very well could have given the gospel and I never did. I tell people a lot, don't go to bed with a conscience like I've got. Because it's not about the ones that you get to the Lord, it's about the ones that you can't. I would almost, I mean to be honest with you, I love some people so much that if I could give my salvation to them, I would. Because that's the way they believe, that's the way they've been taught, the way they've been beat up on. But if we would just do what God told us to do, think about that for a minute. Somebody that you talked to yesterday, and you talked about everything else, you know where they're at, their stance in life, and then you get a call that they've died. All of a sudden, to talk about the grass being too long, or what was wrong with your car, or what was going wrong in your life, isn't that important, is it? Because you could have talked to them about where they were going to spend eternity. This is where we get that you can be so heavenly minded you're no earthly good. That's the part when I talk about that I'm better because of that. It's not that I'm a holy roller and I just want to tell everybody about Jesus. No, that's the only topic I have to talk about. But that is the best topic that I have to talk about. I want to know where you're spending eternity at. I don't really care about what the weather's doing. I'll be honest with you. That don't depict if I had a good day or not. I had a little bit better of a day if the sun was shining. But if the sun's shining, I don't want to complain about how hot it is anyway. So who cares if the sun's shining or if it's raining? I want to know where you're going. Are you going to heaven or are you going to hell? Do you know the truth about the man named Jesus Christ? The promise of presence. He says, and lo, I am with you always, even into the end of the world, amen. This promise of Christ's perpetual presence is a source of great comfort and assurance as we fulfill the great commission that we are not alone. Jesus, the good shepherd, walks with us, guiding us and protecting us and empowering us. A lot of people think that that took a hard left turn to end out the chapter. This is where it gets hard. Because those conversations may very well may end your relationship with a lot of people. Those conversations may drive a wedge between you when you tell somebody the truth. People don't like the truth, okay? But guess what? The man that got kidnapped when he was over there preaching the gospel, thank God he's fine. We serve a mighty God. But he was telling them the truth. They didn't like it. And guess what? even low I am with you even until the end of the world I'll guarantee that that pastor knew that Jesus Christ is with him when them men wanted to kill him we have to have that assurance because guess what buckle up buttercup this is where the road gets bumpy this is where the rubber meets the road and we really figure out what you're made of and they gonna take about nine pounds of flesh Jason said something the other night and I've never Never thought about that. They said that you got a lot of bad harvest you're reaping. Don't worry, it's gonna get over because you're gonna start reaping that good harvest. We still got a lot of bad we're trying to reap right now. Empowered by the Holy Spirit. The fulfillment of the Great Commission is not by our strength, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. In Acts 1, verse 8, Jesus promises, But ye shall receive power after the Holy Ghost has come unto you. And ye shall be witness unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. It is the Holy Spirit who equips us with boldness, wisdom, and perseverance. It's not in a seminary school. It's not in a... Look, I preach this the same way I've always preached it at the Dean of Admissions Church, the school I go to. You do not have to have a formal education to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. A lot of people... Look, it was only by the grace of God I was able to go. I'm dead serious with you. By the grace of God. Two different people donated money. They told me their name, but they wanted to remain anonymous. They didn't know me from Adam Southcat, but they gave the money for me to be able to go to college. If you want to know education, you open this Bible, and you allow God to speak to your heart, and He will tell you how to effectively preach His gospel. It's not the seminary school's gospel. It's not Harold B. Seitler's gospel, and it's not Creighton Lee Lovelace's gospel. It's Jesus Christ. And it's only Him. When you tell me that some, oh well, He hasn't been to school, He's not qualified. Who qualifies? God does. And nobody gonna take that qualification from you if God qualified you. It's His qualification, not yours. Not to mention the fact this is where this whole concept of I can't understand the King James Version Bible comes from. Education comes from Jesus Christ alone. Okay? He's going to tell you what He wants you to know when He wants you to know it. Now, living after Great Commission. Living out the Great Commission requires intentionality and commitment. It means engaging in personal evangelism, supporting mission work, and being a witness in our daily lives. It involves embracing a mission mindset. Wherever interaction, every interaction is an opportunity to reflect Christ's love. I often ask, when I preach in Revelations, I ask you to view yourself through a mirror. but don't see yourself through that mirror. Equivalently at yourself, and I know I messed that word up, it's all right. If you'll look in that mirror and instead of seeing Mark Fowler or Dwayne Price or anybody else, just look in that mirror and say, this is the face of Riverside Baptist Church. This is the face of Morningstar Baptist Church. This is the face of Danieltown Baptist Church. And ask yourself if you wanna go to church with you. Would you wanna walk in there and sit on a pew with you? That's a hard question, isn't it? But every interaction you ever, even on your bad day, that's where it needs to be. Because guess what? On the bad days where they're watching, they really don't, I'll be honest with you, they really don't care about your good days. They wanna see if you got your grit and a crawl on them bad days. They wanna figure out what you got. And see, if you're not giving them anything to be envious of, challenge to the church as a body of believers we must ask ourselves are we actively participating in the Great Commission is this something we're doing or is it something we're merely teaching are we reaching out to the lost disciple and new believers and supporting global missions and again I said this Sunday ooh man I'm about to say it again oh man y'all have a treasurer at Morningstar okay she ain't here is she Okay, my treasurer is here and I'm about to upset her if I say this too loud. Listen, my treasurer is here. Okay, I'm gonna tell you something. I would rather you tithe your time than I had your money. If you think that missions work is dropping money in a plate, you got it wrong. I don't care about how much money you put in that offering plate or what you're counting off on your taxes. If you're not tithing your time, it's worthless. Again, there was a disclaimer there for a reason. I don't pay the bills at the church. I'm not telling you to quit paying your tithe. But, if that's what you're equating, the missions work. You got it wrong. Yeah, your money can go a long way. And yeah, the church probably knows how to spend your money better than you do. I'm sorry, they probably do. But guess what? More money equal more problems. If you just show up and say, hey, how can I help? That's not something we get a lot of. I promise you. You go to Kevin, you go to Creighton, you say, hey, pastor, how can I help? and they're gonna find something for you to do. I promise you they'll find something for you to do. Or you could be like Big Scott sitting over here and just show up and start doing stuff and don't tell nobody. Yeah, he's getting glory tonight, he don't know it. Man showed up and just started cutting grass. Didn't nobody ask him to do it. Didn't nobody tell him to do it. I'm surprised he remembered that the grass needed to be cut. He said he saw it, it bothered him, he went over there, he broke his lawnmower out and he started cutting grass. Yeah, half the community was worried about who was at the church, but we got that figured out. I'm telling you that if you're not... I don't care about your money. Yes. You have a purpose. You were called for a purpose and on purpose, and it's not your purpose, it's His purpose. He told you what to do. Those letters are in red for a reason. not just to make me feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. It's because they're the truth, they're the living, breathing, infallible word of God, and that's each and every, I don't care if they're red or black, it's all the word of Jesus, okay? Now, I wrote down several practical steps, I'll end with a little bit of a story. And yeah, I did it last time I preached this, but, oh man, I got a history buff in here tonight. James Kilroy. I love this story, okay? If you've ever served in the armed forces, then you know of a little thing called James Kilroy. And it's a little bitty dome-looking feller, and he looks like he's looking over a fence that says, Kilroy was here. So the legend of James Kilroy has spanned from World War II all the way in the present day. And nobody actually knew where it came from. It was just this odyssey. They say that there's tribes in Africa that have never encountered anybody other than the people on that island, but on trees. So Kilroy was here. There was a commode that Gorbachev tore down this fall. I'm sorry. Yes, they constructed a port-a-john out there because the dictator over there at that time said he wouldn't use the bathroom behind an American. He had his people build it. Said he cut, nobody had ever been in it before. Said he come out of the commode and said, who's Kilroy? Somebody done got in there and put this on every bunk, on every base. The story actually comes from James Kilroy who worked at a shipyard up north where they were building battleships. And his job was to count the rivets. He'd come through, and he'd count rivets, and he'd put his QC marks next to this rack of rivets, and whatever that count was is what you got paid for. The problem with that being was he was using a chalk marker. And on up into 10, 15, yeah? We have more money in war than anything else. People thought nobody would notice that certain people were tackin' on. They'd go behind and they'd erase that four and they'd put a eight. They were gettin' paid for extra rivets. Well, you build identical battleships time and time again, you start to figure out how many rivets is in that battleship. Well, they brought it to Kilroy, because he's the lead QC man, and they said, James, we got a problem with payin' out more on rivets, and it's because you're not properly QCin these marks. Well, as he should, he took offense to it. So he went in there, he crawled up in the very back of them boats, anywhere where he put that mark at, and it was just a little picture, said Kilroy was watching you. Kilroy was here. Had that little man looking over. And suddenly, people quit tacking on extra numbers to what he was doing. So it fixed the problem, right? Because one man was accused of not doing his job. James Kilroy, or Kilroy was here, is now the most far-spreaded joke that ever was. You ask people from other countries, they know the joke. You ask people in other militaries, they know the joke. You can go to all four corners of this earth, and they know the joke. What if we treated that like Jesus Christ? If one person sitting in here would get offended tonight and go out here and actually do the Great Commission, we might, we'd reach the people that need to be reached. We can do it for a simple joke. And it's been going since World War II. This has been going a whole lot longer than that. So, we could get a piano player. Again, I'm not used to this part, so I forget. But if we could just get a little bit of fence. Just put a little bit. If that's the motivation you need to get mad about something, then get mad about it. But take it personal that there might be somebody on your street that don't know Jesus Christ. Take it personal that your mama and daddy might not know Jesus Christ. That your son or daughter might not know Jesus Christ. I don't know who's on their Facebook page. I think you said it was Jennifer. She put on Facebook earlier today, said if our kids don't get to heaven, then none of it was worth it. Think about that. You should take offense that there's people that don't know the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is not yours to gatekeep. It is not yours to hide. Especially not when He told you what to do with it. Go ye therefore into all the nations, baptizing and teaching. I'm going to challenge you tonight. Get up. Get educated. and take it and put it where it needs to be. Again, outside of these walls. If you think Josh ain't saying amen, pray for him, lead him to Jesus, but he's already getting it. He's getting it more than you are probably. That's all I got for you.