I'm working Buttons over is it on? Okay. Can you hear me now? All right. Good. Good. Good First thing you do when you're building a ship You lay down the keel The keel has to be laid down. What's the keel? That's the backbone of the ship the backbone of the ship The backbone of the ship runs the length of the ship. And then everything else is attached to it as you build the ship. Now, there has to be material that's gathered, first of all, even for getting the keel prepared. So you have to have what's called a procurement officer. That has to be someone who is in charge of procuring the material. Procuring the material. So the Lord Jesus, He chose to use John the Baptist as the procurement officer. And the Bible tells us that thou art Peter upon this rock, upon this keel, I will build my church." Now, we find in Acts chapter 1, verses 21 and 22, some key words. First of all, it says, beginning from the baptism of John. Beginning from the baptism of John. The Lord used John to procure the material for the church. And those that were baptized were set in the church. And that's what you do with the ribs of a ship. They are set into the keel. Upon this rock, the keel, I will build my church. And then we read here, in Acts chapter 1 and verses 21 and 22, beginning at the baptism of John. And then we find in 1 Corinthians, and God has set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts, healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues. The Lord has set some in the church. So We have the keel, now we have some ribs that are set in the church. Ephesians 2 and verse number 20 says, about the apostles and the foundation concerning the church, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being what? What? chief cornerstone. He is the keel. He is, and that's the chief part of any ship. You say, oh my, it must be the kitchen. No, you won't have any place to put a kitchen if you don't have a keel. If you don't have a cornerstone, if you don't have that rock for the ship, you must have it. That's the most important part of the ship. And it is to that keel that everything else is built upon that keel. Started with the apostles, and then those that were added to the church, as it says in Acts 2, 41, and verse 47, then they that gladly received his word were baptized. Baptized in deep water. There was a pastor in our area who used to hold people under until they bubbled. He wanted to make sure that Brother Leske let it. He would just hold them down and say all the words that you say. He wanted to make sure they had good baptism. Baptism does not save you, but I believe you are to be baptized in deep water by the hands of a New Testament church. You can't just get somebody to take you down to the bayou and baptize you. in deep water. It's not baptism. When I was eight years old, I was baptized into the organized church of Latter-day Saints of the latter days, Josephite, Mormons. All I did was get wet and my feet got muddy. But then, after the Lord graciously regenerated me, I was baptized at the hands of a New Testament church. a New Testament church. So the baptism has to be in deep water and listen to this. They that gladly received his word were baptized and the same day they were added unto them. About 3000 souls. Praising God and having favor with all the people and the Lord added to the church such as should be saved. I don't believe there's a better foundation. I know there's not a better foundation. There's not a better keel than our Lord Jesus Christ. And we're added to that. Now, I do believe in the church, the body, and the kingdom. I believe in all of that. But I believe a church is a local visible thing. I don't want to be sailing out in the Gulf and this invisible ship hit me. You got me? Understand what I'm saying? No, it's a visible thing. It's visible. Visible. And Christ is that foundation. I love what it says in Isaiah 28, verse 16, Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion a stone, a tried stone, a precious stone, a sure foundation. He that believeth shall not make haste. For other foundation, it says in 1 Corinthians 3.11, and no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. So do you get the picture? I just want to make sure you get the picture that you have to have a keel, you have to have that which to build upon. And Jesus Christ is what we are to build upon. This church is built upon the Lord Jesus Christ, built upon him. 1 John 3, 16, hereby perceive we The love of God, because He, Jesus, did what? Laid down His life for us. He is the Lamb of God. The Lamb of God. Laying before the foundation of the world. Now, after you have everything procured, then everything is built, put together in the ship, and There has to be a launching. I've been able to go to a number of launchings through the years living on the coast being down by the water and they set a day and people come and years ago they would take and break the bottle on it and they still do that. And then the chains that were holding the ship on the way where it had been built. They would bust those chains and the ship would slide into the river. They do it a little different now, but it's the same concept. They build it in a big trough type thing and then they float water in it, but they launch it. It has to get into water. What good's a ship if it never goes anywhere? What good is a ship if it doesn't reach out and carry a message to the world? What good is a ship if it doesn't carry cargo? It's not much good, is it? So you need to get the gospel out. Go ye into part of the world. No, go ye into all the world. You say, preacher, you're redundant. Well, I'd rather be redundant than just dumb. I mean, redundant. Get it out of there. So the ship, the ship is launched and then it's commissioned. And it's a big ceremony, a commissioning ceremony, when they commission the ship. Luke 16, 13, and when it was day, he called unto him his disciples, and of them he chose twelve whom he named apostles. They were to carry the message out. A commissioned ship is given orders, is given orders. I was at the commissioning of the USS Mississippi, a big nuclear submarine, and they gave orders to the ship. Do we have orders as the Lord's churches? Now, there are lots of ships. Right now, there are over 60,000 ships on the sea. over 60,000. So there are a lot of churches that believe the truth, and I'm thankful for that. So we're talking about the churches of the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Orders are given What are the orders? Well, we call them the Great Commission. Matthew 28, verses 18-20, Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things, all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And, lo, I am with you always, even and to the end of the world, even to the end of the journey, I'm with you. I'm with you all the way to the end. Now, the most important person on the ship is the captain. He's the captain. Now, to me, the cook is real important, but the captain's more important. I've eaten a lot of stuff. I mean, I love groceries. I do. I love eating, and I hope you like to eat at least, because we have to do that. We have to be fed, amen? And that's why we have the churches of the Lord preaching and teaching and feeding the saints of God. So there's a commission that is given, and those ships have a job to do, but they've got a person who is the head of that ship. He's called the captain. He's the captain. 2 Chronicles 13, 12, and behold, God himself is with us for our captain. Jesus is our captain. Who is Jesus? He is God with us. Is that what the Bible says? God with us. Jesus is God with us. He's our captain. As individual churches spread the gospel, he is our captain. He's the one that we take our orders from. Captain gives an order, friend, you better get with it. You better do it. I've met a lot of good captains. I've met a few that weren't worth blowing up. But I've met a lot of good captains, most of them are. I was talking to our brother here about a captain that I met who is from England. He's a good Christian man. He loves the Lord. And we were talking about the church. And when we say the church, we're not talking about that big invisible thing. There's no such thing. We're talking about the church that Jesus built. And I asked him about where he went to church. He said, I go to a church in such and such a place. He says, but We're down to just a handful of people. And he said it won't be long until we'll have to close. He said my salary basically keeps it going along with a few others. And we see that situation all over. We need revival, Brother Michael. We need and we're praying for the power of God to come down. Praying for the Lord to do a work in hearts and in lives and that captain was heartbroken. I was on another ship and the captain's a kind man, a nice man, and I asked him, some of the ships have a little library, especially if they're a big ship like a pipe layer, they'll have 130 men on board or 130 crew members, you'll have some ladies, women that are on board there. And we got to talking and his name is Ross, And I said, you've got a library here. I said, I don't see too many books about the Lord. He said, well, we just don't have them. And there's a church in Alabama that did a wonderful printing of the Pilgrim's Progress. Beautiful, beautiful. And I got several of those to hand out. And so I brought one for the ship. He says, I've read about him. I've heard of him. I said, now you can read his book and then read the book that he talks about the Bible, the Bible, the word of God. He was excited about getting pilgrims progress. And most young people have never read it. It's a wonderful, wonderful analogy, a wonderful book. It is. A ship is commissioned for service. And he said, go ye into all the world, preach the gospel. The captain is Jesus. And you know something? The journey goes better if the captain is at the helm. The helm. I know some churches, and I may wade out in deep water, But I can swim. So there are some churches that the pastor thinks he is everything. But brother, we need the members, amen? We need the members. We gotta have a crew. We gotta have a crew. We gotta have folks to work with and working with them and they working with us. That's what we gotta have. That's the idea here. The ship has to have a crew. It has to have a crew. has to have those who will be helping along the way. And I want to say more about that crew in just a moment. But one thing about the captain is this, that everything goes better when the captain is in charge. I can remember being out on the boat and we had shrimped all day, but we did catch some fishies and caught a lot of shrimp, and that's what we were looking for. And I was young, about 12, 14 years old. Matter of fact, my papa, he came to the Buena Vista Hotel where I was just playing around with a bunch of young teens and just about ready to mess up. And he wasn't very tall, about the height of my wife. And he was skinny, but he looked like Popeye. And he came up in that motel, and I was with those boys. He said, son, you come with me. You know what I said? Yes, sir. And he said, I'm gonna save you from a lot of trouble. And he said, you're gonna be on the boat And I worked all that summer and other summers with him on that boat and learned from him. I'm glad there was a captain who loved me. And he changed my life. I know the Lord saved me. But if you trust the captain, your life will be changed. Your life will be different. You won't be what you used to be. You won't be what you used to be. And early in the morning, we'd put the troll down sometimes four or five o'clock in the morning and drag until after daylight. And he knew I was tired. And he would say to me, and I'd be at the helm and he'd say, son, let the captain take the helm, take the wheel. He said, no, you're tired. He said, get up in that bunk. What does the captain give us? when we're tired, come unto me and I will give you rest." I know what it is to be loved by the captain and find rest because of his order and obeying his order. Now, these modern ships Ain't got electronics on everything. I mean, I could show you the pictures of some of the giant ships and they've got this massive console of buttons and things to push and things to pull and all of that to make sure they don't run into a bridge. You know what we had? We had an old-fashioned compass in a oak box. We didn't have any of that stuff. We had an old compass. And I liked that old compass. And I like this old compass. I don't need a new compass. I don't need newfangled. I just need the word of God. I need it. to guide me in the sea of life forever. Oh, Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light into my path. And I'm thankful for that. If you're going to stay on course, you've got to have the compass. And some of these things that have happened in these big ships have been failures electronically. and they've lost their way. But if you've got a good compass, even if it's in an old box, are you with me? Huh? It'll guide you home. It'll guide you home. No doubt about that. To stay off the sandbar, You need the compass. September 22nd, 1993, there was a tugboat called the Marvilla that was going up the Mobile River. Willie Odom was at the wheel. It was a foggy, foggy night, and they were using only electronics. That's what they had. Well, in the fog, do you sometimes lose Connection with your internet Have you ever lost connection? Well, it was so foggy they couldn't get what they needed and Willie was at the wheel he Hit something and he thought well, I've run up on a sandbar here in the river. No, he had made a wrong calculation and had gone up the big canoe by you and And it hit a train bridge. Because he didn't have a compass. That was any good. Had electronics. A train was coming out of Mobile. Called the Sunset Limited. And when he hit that bridge whenever Willie hit the bridge he didn't do anything except move that bridge a little bit. I mean, it's a railroad bridge, but he did connect the emergency, he disconnected the emergency signal button. And the train was coming, but it was too late. That train hit that bridge and it went off into the mud. Maybe some of you remember that. It was a bad wreck. There was a fire. 47 people died. Why? Because of not having a compass. Is the Bible important? Yes. It's important to have the right compass. You can have all this electronic junk, but you need an old compass. R.C. Sproul was on that train. He survived, thankfully. But he was on that train, but others died in the fire. Ships need fuel. You've got to have fuel. What does the Bible say? But ye shall receive power. You receive power. Somebody asked me one day, how many miles per gallon do those big ships get? And I said, well, if it's not bad weather, they get about 43 feet per gallon. I mean, whenever they, what they call bunker a ship, they'll either bring a big barge up or they'll bring several of those big tanker trucks to get it ready for the journey. Sometimes they just need to be topped off because, but topping off for them is not like topping off for us. So you have to have fuel. And we have the fuel of the Holy Ghost of God. But ye shall receive power. And then it says, 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. Well, that's what ship-to-shore missions is all about. That's what New Hope is all about. That material back there has gone everywhere. It's gone all over the world. That's what we do, don't we? We get the gospel out. So we need fuel. Fuel. And friends, listen, when a ship loses power, it's in bad, bad, bad trouble. Hurricane Joaquin was a bad hurricane. And there was a ship out there called the El Faro. Denise and I many, some years ago, visited the Massachusetts Maritime Institute. And some of the men and one lady from the institute was aboard that and were crew members on that ship. But they lost power. You always face a storm. You don't ever turn sideways in a storm. You face a storm. But they had lost power, and what happened was they were swamped, and the ship began to fill, and the ship went down with the loss of all hands. And when we visited the institute, they had a monument there, not only to those crew members, but to crew members of other ships that got sideways and sunk. You say, well, that never happened to us. I've seen it happen to a lot of good churches. I've seen them get off into some of this craziness. Be sure you've got power. Be sure you got a compass. Be sure you've got that fuel to keep going. Amen. That's what we need to do. And then you need a crew You need a crew You need a crew every crew member Needs to do his job Every crew member needs to work Everyone has a job to do the men on the ships are designated as crew members. I There are oilers, there are bosons, there are captains, there are cooks, there's all kinds of crew members on a ship, and they know what their job is. If they don't do their job, things go wrong. The church has crew members, people with responsibility, and if they don't do their responsibility, it doesn't work like it ought to. Some people don't want any responsibility. Do you know people get kicked out of the military all the time because they won't do their job? We're in the Lord's Navy. Okay. I know the little song says the army, but anyway, we're, we're in the Lord's Navy and we need to be doing our job. We need to be doing our job. Sometimes people get, anyway, crossways. That's the way it works. So every crew member needs to do his job, and you have to have that to keep things going, to carry out the work of the ministry. In Romans 12, verses four through eight, it talks about this. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office. Well, I think I know. We don't have the same office. So we, being many, are one body. That's not a universal body being talked about. It's talking about a local, visible body. All. We don't have the same office. So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and everyone members, one of another, having gifts. That's why this is a local church. It has gifts that help this church. What kind of gifts are there? Well, there is gifts differing according to the grace given, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith, or ministry, let us wait on our ministering, or he that teacheth on teaching, or he that exhorteth on exhortation, or he that giveth. Let him do it with simplicity. I like that. Well, I want you to see what I'm putting in the box. No. Do it with simplicity. It's nobody's business. It's between you and the Lord. Amen! And that's what he's talking about here. With simplicity. simplicity he that ruleth with diligent he that showeth mercy with cheerfulness all those things are gifts that are given to the church have you ever been in a restaurant and the waitress dropped something I mean I've been in restaurants where back when they did this and would carry a tray and where the tray dropped where maybe she stubbed her toe or something and she lost her balance or whatever, and the tray fell, and the order for a church group was on there. Church groups ought to be Christian. Amen? Should be. But let's just look at this as a church group that had different gifts. Well, a church group ought to have different gifts. Well, one had the gift of prophecy. And the one with the gift of prophecy said, what can you learn from this? What did you do wrong? Prophecy points out and says, what did you do wrong? You need to get that right. The one with ministry says, let me help you pick it up. Let me help you pick it up, pick this mess up. The one that has the gift of teaching, and the Bible says there are those that have the gift of teaching. The one with the gift of teaching says, let me show you how to handle that. Now, you got to get that wrist just right. Now, if you don't get that wrist right, if you have it like that, that's what you did. You did it wrong, but I love you, and I want to teach you how. Amen? I want to teach you. The one with the gift of exhortation says, it's not time, do it right or you'll never be a manager. Okay, okay. The gift of giving. The one with the gift of giving goes up to the cash register, says, I'm gonna, excuse me for a minute, I'm gonna go, and then they think he's headed to the restroom, he heads to the registers to give me the check. And says, don't tell any of them. That's the gift of giving. not saying I'm paying for it but he had the gift of giving so he gave and then you've got the one that is the ruler has administration and the one with the administration says brother Michael you get to mop miss Fayard would you see if they've got some extra cloths Brother Scott, I need you to go and see if there's anything with a dustpan. Let's do that. That's administration. There are those that have that. And then there's the gift of mercy. After the one with the gift of exhortation said, you get right with it. The one with the gift of mercy goes over to the gal and she's got tears and says, it'll be all right. It's going to work out. Don't worry about it. You're young, you'll grow. You'll learn as you go. Listen to what they had to say, but I just want to let you know that I love you and the Lord loves you. Do you see that? How that we ought to have that in the church? I mean, we ought to have those gifts in the church working together. Working together and then and I'm rushing on here, but the ship has cargo What good is an empty ship? I? Mean you gotta have cargo You ever hear a trucker say I don't want a dead head. I Don't want a dead head there. In other words. I don't want to go with an empty trailer. I Mean, that's that's wasting fuel Well ships don't want a dead head either They want to broker a load everywhere they're at. They need that load. We have a load to carry. We have a good load to carry. It's called the Gospel. It's called the Word of God. And we need to get that out. That's what we're seeking to do, is get it out to all the world, and getting the Bible out, and getting it out in different languages, and getting people to see The need. For I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Amen. For it's a power of God into salvation to everyone that believe it to the Jew first also to. The Greek. And then. It says for our gospel came not. Under you and word only but also in power. It's not just mumbling some words or saying some words We need to have the power of the Holy Spirit upon us We need to pray. We need to listen. We need to grow And we need to preach the gospel. What is the gospel? It is how that christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and how that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures and we need to emphasize that we need to preach that and A lot of churches never hear the gospel. We need the gospel. If you're not in the old ship of Zion, look to Jesus. If you're in this ship of Zion, or in another one of the Lord's churches, take heed to the message. You're a crew member, and Jesus is the captain. Brother Michael?