Didn't Brother George do a wonderful job this morning with that song of Gilead, and our quartet did a wonderful job. We've come a long way with their singing, and I thank God for that. I wish to sing. Y'all, you wouldn't have nobody to preach to, brother, if I was to start singing. Sound like an old Brahma. It's my privilege, honor to introduce Brother Rudy Holley. Brother Rudy was in North Carolina, if I'm not mistaken, right, brother? I pastored there. I lived in Florida. Florida. Now he's in Virginia, Richmond? Yeah, outside of Richmond. So, praise the Lord. You're going to be 79, you said, in December? 79. Still proclaiming the message, still going everywhere. bragging on Jesus. I told him if I looked as good at that age, if the Lord carries and lets me live, I'll be doing okay. But we're delighted you're out here, brother. And just give us the word of God, which I know you will. And brother, you'll notice there ain't no clocks around here. So don't worry about it. Yeah, I checked it out. I'll check it out. Okay, good deal. Come on. Hey, God bless you, pastor. Thank you. Well, it's my joy to be back at Lone Mountain, and it's been a while, been a while, but I appreciate the opportunity of being here. Let me kind of take care of a little bit, a few things, you can call it housekeeping, whatever you want to call it. First of all, I do have some books on the table out there. I do not stand out there and sell them. There are no price tags on them out there. But if you can help me with just a love offer, and if you want some of the books, I'd appreciate it. Let me tell you what's out there. When I was here for the first time, I preached on five lessons I learned from tragedy, which is my signature message, telling the story about when our son had a brain tumor and we kept him in our home for 26 years. He had multiple seizures every day. And my wife went back to school, got her BS in so we could keep him in our home. But anyway, she wrote a book telling the whole story of how we were able to stay in ministry, because even some of my closest pastoral friends recommended that maybe I take a job and just maybe preach on the side or whatever in order to be able to have better insurance and a better wage. But I felt the love of the Lord to stay in the ministry and God took care of us. And the cost of his medical bills was up in the millions of dollars. You can say, well, thank God you had good insurance. And I did. And I did. But if you think you paid it all, you're sadly mistaken. But God met the need and we were able to do that. But the book is back there. It tells a story from a mother's heart. And it is raw. She tells it just like it is. She didn't sugarcoat it. So if you'd like to have a copy of that, that's back there. I do a daily devotion every morning on Facebook. And it was read by a lot of people. I don't know if any of you read my Facebook. A lot of folks do. I go to churches and a lot of people do. And some of the people wanted me to put together a book of devotions. And so I did. And matter of fact, the card back there had a copy, had me to sign it. I don't know where he got it. Where'd you get that? Probably a national commission. Huh? Off of Amazon. All right, but anyway, he just had me sign it. He said he reused his ad for his devotions every morning. And there's 365 in the big book, and there are no days or years there, so you can use it any time. And just recently, I fell out of the Lord maybe to do another year. I've got about nine years of devotions. And so, Danny Jones is doing, does my publishing. Some of you, I don't know if the pastor knows Danny. Danny was a missionary. to Thailand is now the president of Emmaus College down in Florida. As a matter of fact, I was very honored preacher. He asked me what I do the graduation ceremony next week, but I'm preaching in preaching in San Leandro next week. So I couldn't do that. And I said, would you like me to recommend maybe a substitute? And he said, sure. I said, better than me. He said, well, who would that be? I said, why don't you call David Gibbs? And so he called David and David is actually doing the commencement ceremony for Emmaus College on next week. But anyway, he does my printing for me and I have two little books back there. There are three months of devotions in each and I got two more coming out. Danny's working on those. So he'll have them out in a couple of weeks and that will give me us two years of devotions that are in print. they're back there. As long as they last, you're welcome to take those. And there's a little tin cup back there. The lady who plays piano puts her name over it. at, uh, Jim's church. Uh, I can't remember her name. Uh, her husband leads the singing. She plays piano. Diane. Yeah. I couldn't remember that. My sister's named Diane, but nonetheless, she said, we've got some old 10 cups back there. We don't use you like to have them because I don't, I just put a reciprocal back there and you just put the money in and she can take, take whatever. And so there's a 10 cup back there. But anyway, there are two books of those back there. And so that's what's on the table. What's left there is all I had. I traveled this far. Of course, I know, you know, you're only allowed so many pounds per suitcase on the plane and without paying an arm and a leg. And I couldn't bring but so many. But whatever's back there, you're welcome to. And I hope you enjoy that. The second thing I'd like to do is I travel, a lot of my meetings are of representing National Center for Life and Liberty. That's David Gibbs III. We're a legal firm that comes alongside churches to help you be able to maximize your ministry with a minimum amount of risk. We also do a lot of legal representation and and litigation on the parts of, of churches. When I, I moved to Florida after I retired back in 2014, I actually moved there in 2015. I called attorney Gibbs. I knew him. I knew his father, uh, who was a founder of CLA. Um, and I was actually involved in that back in the seventies. And, um, uh, I called David the third because I had some questions about an organization that I had, but nonetheless, he asked me what I travel with him and, and be. and help do seminars across the East Coast, which I did for a summer. After we had done that, he asked me would I be willing to be the ministerial representative for National Center for Life and Liberty. After six meetings and a lot of discussion, I agreed to do that. And so everywhere I go, I tell people about National Center for Life and Liberty, and I encourage churches, whether it's National Center for Life and Liberty or whoever, please affiliate yourself where you have legal representation and advice in these days in which we live. How many of you know times have changed? And years ago, you never heard of a church being sued. Today, we are soft targets and lawsuits every week. When I started with NCLL, we were representing around 750, 800 churches. David III has just gone out on his own and started the organization. Today, we represent over 5,000 churches across the country. There was, to my knowledge, there wasn't one single ABA church that was affiliated with NCLL. And today, most of the churches in Florida and across the country, I don't know how many of our churches, many, many, many of our churches are affiliated with us. Uh, there's no charge, but they support us monthly so that we can be able to carry on the ministry as a missions, as, as a missions project. Uh, we have, we came alongside. Macedonia ministry missions, when Leon died, when Harold had died, Leon died and Brett Lane took over. All of the paperwork and all the legal work was all signed by Leon and Harold because they would have been the founders of the thing from day one. And so all of that had to be redone legally and restructured. And we, David and a couple of our attorneys actually went down, met with the board and helped them through all of that. Then whenever there was a time when our publishing house was having some issues and Dean Grigsby came on the scene and I was introduced to Dean, then the head of the missions. Brian helped me. Anyway, and he said he really needed some help with some legal matters. And we came alongside Bogart Press. and the Senate School Division and work with them. Since then, TBI has been in touch with us. We're not working with them officially as yet, but they've talked to me about it. And Robert Wallace has also been in conversation with our office. Then I was in Little Rock and the seminary there is also interested because everybody sees the need that you need to have legal representation to be sure things are right. One of the things I try to emphasize the churches, and I'm going to preach in just a moment while I'm finishing, if you want to turn to your Bibles, two passages, one verse, you don't even need to turn to, you know, will be Proverbs chapter 29 and verse number 18. And, but then you may have a little, take a little while to find the second one in Habakkuk chapter number two, Habakkuk chapter number two. I heard of a young preacher boy just getting started and I got up to preach from the back and called it Habaka Cup. That is Habaka. And we'll be looking at chapter number two in just a few moments. I encourage church leaders to affiliate and to partner. If you partner with us, we have many, many templates. There are so many things I could talk about. Your bylaws need to be upgraded every every couple of years because of the changes in the culture. Um, every two, three years, you know, when I went into the ministry preacher, we said in our bylaws, we said, we believe in marriage between one man and one woman. Well, that's not good enough today. Today. You got to say, we believe in marriage between one man and one woman as they were at birth. Transgenderism has changed a lot of things. And so there are so many things like that, that I can just talk about on my laws. We also, back in the day, back in the seventies, I traveled all over the state of Virginia and literally preaching, teaching, trying to discourage churches from incorporating. Today, I'm going around saying, please incorporate. because of the way the lawsuits are designed. And it protects the deacons and the pastor and the membership could possibly. And so they're just some of the things that we deal with. We deal with things like building use agreements and things that you need to have in that to protect yourself from that. What about liability release forms whenever you go to camp or you're going on a trip? And by the way, some of those things even apply if you are picking up on a regular basis somebody and bringing them to church in your own personal car. If, if you're doing it on behalf of the church and having a, having a liability release form, I was in one of our meetings, one of our state meetings, I attend many of the state meetings and I go to the national meeting every year. And I was talking to a group of preachers and one, one gentleman, well-meaning good guy. He said, he said, well, we have, we have that. I said, that's great. Who wrote it? He said, one of our youth directors did a phenomenal job. I said, where'd he go to law school? He said, well, he didn't. I said, well, let me, let me give you a, a made up story to illustrate my point. What if I had a brain tumor, but I had a friend who was one excellent heart surgeon. And I think I'll get him to operate on my brain. He said, well, you're crazy. I said, no, but you'll get a real estate attorney or somebody that's never done any training to write all these, these agreements for you. And then think they're going to stand up in court. These are just things I just throw out to get you to think a little bit, because these are perilous times. And these are the days when Satan is trying his best in America to keep the gospel within four walls. And eventually, if he can keep it within four walls, those four walls will collapse because the church will cease to be. And I see that happening all over the country, preacher. Right now, in the ABA, our sister churches, I'm sent out by the 30th Avenue Missionary Baptist Church in St. Petersburg, Florida. And I'm telling you, I go all across the country, I preach in churches every week, and most of them are ABA churches, not all, but most of them are. And I'm telling you right now, we've got more churches looking pastors, and we have pastors to fill the pulpit. If you look at the national statistics around the country, all over, all denominations included, some surveys say 2,500 a month, some say as many as 10,000. I think 10,000 is an overstatement, 2,500 may be an understatement of pastors who are leaving the ministry every month. 4,000 missionaries across the board come home from the mission field every year and never go back. So we need to protect our churches and keep doing what we're doing. And then we need to get a vision to do more. That's how I lead now into my sermon. I'll flip that hat off and I'll put on a preacher's hat. All right. And when you look at Proverbs chapter 29 and verse number 18, and almost all of us can quote that, where there's no vision, the people perish. And that's where we always stop with the reading or the quoting of that verse, but it does not stop there. And he says, where there's no vision, the people perish, but he that keepeth the law happy is he. In the book of Habakkuk, we find the word vision used again, but it's used in a different way. In verse number one, Habakkuk was writing, he said, well, I'll stand upon my watch and I'll set me up upon the tower and I'll watch and see what he was saying to me and what I shall answer when I am reproved. And the Lord answered me and said, write the vision. Now there's that word vision again, but it's used in a little different context and the content of its message is totally different. And I'll talk about that in a moment. He said, write the vision. He said, and make it plain upon the tables that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie. Though it tarry, wait for it, because it shall surely come, it will not tarry. Behold, his soul, which is filled up, is not upright in him, but the just shall live by his faith. If the Bible says something one time, we ought to take note of it, don't you think? But what if the Bible says something four times? Four times in the Word of God, the Word of God says, and the just shall live by faith. It is said here in Habakkuk chapter two and verse four, it's again mentioned in Romans chapter one, verse 17, again in Galatians chapter 11, and then again in Hebrews chapter 10 and verse number 38. Four times the Lord says that we are to live by faith. Now, I thought about, well, what is faith? Well, I then remembered that in the book of Hebrews, in chapter number 11, in verse one, we have faith defined. It is said that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the things not seen. I can recall, preacher, when I was a young student of the word and in Bible college, I heard preachers preach on that verse, and I read that verse, and I studied that verse, and I kept thinking, what in the world does it mean? How can I internalize what that verse really means? So I came up with a Rudy definition. How's that? Let me give it to you. Maybe to help you understand it, it did me. By living by faith, what we're saying is we believe and are sure of things that are not yet a reality. We'll see and are assured of things that are not a reality. Now, let me go to our text and spend a little bit of time doing some explaining of what the verses mean. In the Proverbs and chapter 29, verse 18, that word vision comes from the Hebrew word Shazon, C-H-A-Z-O-N. What it means is God's revelation. When I started preaching, I used to preach soul winning sermons in that verse. I used to preach, if we don't go out and win souls, they're gonna perish and go to hell. Well, that is true, but that's not what that verse says. So when I really began to study and got a glimpse of the verse, I said, well, if it doesn't mean that, oh, I better know what it means. It means that if we who are Christians, if we don't go out with a vision and serve the Lord, we're going to miss out on what God has for us and we'll perish as far as reaching, not go to hell, but in reaching God's intended purpose for our lives. Well, I got to thinking, no, I don't really mean that either. And I began to study and I understand that what this verse is saying is, if you don't get a glimpse of God's revelation, if you don't know what God has revealed for you to do, you are never going to accomplish what God wants you to do. Now, the second part of that verse speaks of keeping the law. You remember that? It says, but he that keepeth the law, happy is he. How does that fit into the context of where there's no vision that people perish? Simply it is. How do you get God's revelation? You get it from the law of God. You get it from the word of God. You see, what we see to do as a church ought to be in accordance with what has been revealed to us in the word of God. That's the vision we ought to have, God's revelation. To know the will of God, you must know the word of God. But when you know the Word of God, then you're expected to not only to live by the Word, but carry out the commission of the Word. Thus we come to Habakkuk and his use of the word vision. The word vision in Habakkuk chapter number two has a different connotation. It is seeing something and being assured of that thing that has not yet happened. Now, to understand that, you gotta know a little bit of the context of Habakkuk. Habakkuk was a prophet in the days of Judah, when Judah was away from God. They were living in sin. They had gone to whoring after false gods and all manner of things. Habakkuk comes on the scene and he sees that, and if I can use an old North Carolina term, he was aggravated with God. He was angry. Now, if you doubt that, you can look in verse number one, chapter number one, rather than verse number four. He said, the law is slack and judgment does not never go forth. In other words, you aren't judging them for their sin. You can read all through those verses and you see very clearly that Habakkuk is upset. God says to him, he said, well, not yet. Now, it doesn't say that in the King James, but in essence, that's what he is saying. I am going to give you a vision and let you know that I am going to judge Judah for their sin. He even tells him what the judgment is gonna be. Verse number six, for lo, I raised up the Chaldeans, that's the Babylonians, that bitter and hasty nation which shall march through the breadth of the land to possess the dwelling places that are not theirs. Several years after this prophecy and this occasion, Babylon did come through, Judah was taken into captivity, and they did pay the price of the judgment of God because of their sin. But up until this time, it had not happened. And God says to Habakkuk, all right, I'm gonna give you a vision now. I want you to write it and I want you to make it plain. I want you to put it on the tablets so that the men can run. You say, well, what in the world does that mean? Well, now, you young folks, I got some news for you, you folks. In the days of the writing of Habakkuk, they didn't have cell phones. They didn't have social media. They didn't even have telephones. So when they wanted to get a message out, they did so through runners. And they would write out the message and the runners would run it and pass it throughout the country. That's what he's talking about. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. You haven't seen it yet, but you're going to see it. And you need to see it by faith. And I want you to write it and I want you to pass it on. Now, if I had a title for my message, it would be this. And before you leave here in the next 20 minutes, every time you see me, you'll say, oh, Lord, there's that guy, that priest. You gotta see it before you see it. You gotta see it before you see it. What you see has to be according to God's revelation. Yes, it does, according to the word of God, within the will of God. But you gotta see it before you ever see it. Let me give you a personal illustration of that. I'm standing here speaking to you and I'm looking at you. You say, well, yeah, you ought to be, you're preaching to us. Yeah, but I preached for years, never looked at the congregation. I preached to the back wall. I never knew whether they were getting it or not, and if they were sleeping, I didn't know it. I didn't even know when he got up and went to leave. I preached to the back wall, and I preached like a Gatling gun. Because when I was in high school, in the upper grades of elementary school, I wouldn't even give a book report. I was scared. I took zero. Then one day God called me to preach and I went forward that Thursday night, gave my heart and life to Jesus to do whatever he called me to do. And I knew it involved a matter of preaching. Went back to my dorm and thought to myself, oh my goodness, what have I done? I gotta stand up in front of people. So I would stand and preach to the back wall. An English teacher, in a Christian school that we had started in the first church that I planted. Jenny Shelton was her name, came to see me one Monday morning. She said, can I see you privately in the office? And I said, sure. We went in, she had a seat and she said, she said, Brother Rudy, why won't you look at us when you preach? I said, because I'm scared. She said, you could do much better if you just looked at us. From the day that I began preaching, preacher, I would get up, and I did this morning the same. I don't do the same as I'm talking about doing, but I still get up early on Sunday mornings. I get up early every morning, matter of fact. But nonetheless, I would get up real early. I would take the few notes that I had back then. I would go into our spare bedroom. It didn't even have a bed, but it did have a dresser and a mirror. I'd stand in front of that mirror, and I'd preach every word that I was gonna preach on that Sunday. I would preach it, I mean, intently. I mean, it was just me and Jesus, man, but I really preached it. I'd look in that mirror and I'd see people coming down the aisle, coming to get saved. Now, I'm gonna tell you something, and I'm not boasting, God knows I'm not, God did it, and I know it's a different day today, but in 1977, I never preached a Sunday we didn't have somebody come down the aisle. We baptized over 300 people that year. Yes, that was in the day of the bus ministry. Yes, you can do all the yeses, yeses, I know, I know, but I don't care what the buts are. I saw it in that mirror before I ever saw it in that church. You gotta see it before you see it. I was preparing this sermon. And the Lord brought to my memory a time in my life. I grew up, I was saved at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in a revival meeting with Lester Roloff, who was a Texas evangelist. Brother Roloff and I were good friends. Dr. Falwell and I were good friends because I lived three doors down from him as a teenager. He ate more chocolate pie and collard greens at my mama's table than you can imagine. I knew him well. And I knew him in the days whenever the church was running a couple hundred, three, that's when our family became a part of that church. I watched it grow. In 1970, maybe 71, I went to see my mother. And when I would go to Lynchburg to see my mother, I would sometimes go by and see if I could visit with my pastor. And I did that day. And when I walked in, we talked about, he asked about how my mom was and my son and so on, yada, yada, yada. And then you lean back. My given name is not Rudy. My given name is Rudolph. I don't like it. I used to get in fights every Christmas when I was growing up because they wanted to know where my red nose was. But anyway. But Dr. Falwell was a real tease. So he always called me either one of two things, Rudolph or little Rudy, because my dad's name was Rudolph. I didn't like either one of them, but nonetheless. We had finished our howdies. He leaned back in his chair, folded his hands and he said, well, Rudolph, I guess you know we're starting a college. I said, well, Doc, I heard that, but why? And I started naming all the Bible colleges and everywhere, you know. He said, well, I believe God lets me live. We could build a college here of 50,000 students. I said, Lord have mercy. He said, I like to have a college that would be the fundamentalist, fundamental college of, be the Notre Dame fundamental college, like as Notre Dame is to the Catholics. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, he said, I like to have our students in the forensics areas of debate. and public speaking, be able to compete with the Ivy League schools, Harvard, Princeton, those schools. I thought, wow. And then he grinned because he was quite an athlete. He said, I'd like to have an athletic program playing Division I. I got up and left and got in my car and was driving back to Roanoke where my church was. And I thought, Pastor, that's just a dream. That's crazy. The whole population of Lynchburg at that time was 60,000. So when I was preparing this message, I vetted. Liberty University, which is what it's called now, started out Lynchburg Baptist College. Liberty University, whether you like it, dislike it, agree or disagree, that's not my point. My point is you gotta see it before you see it. They do not have 50,000 students. They have 103,000. They're the largest online program in the world. While I was preparing, I had finished my study. I was surfing, you know what I mean? No water, I was surfing with the kennel, you know. And I came across a football game, and guess who was playing? Liberty University! Guess who they were playing? Virginia Tech! Division I. They competed in every major athletic, Discipline in Division One. They are involved in the forensic debates and all that with Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. And by the way, they won two years in a row. I checked that out. I could go on and on. You say, what's your point? Are you bragging about liberty? No, I don't care whether you like liberty or not. I'm not even too sure I like what they do. But then the point, that's not the point. The point is he saw it before he saw it. You gotta see it before you see it. Now I wanna ask you a question. How do you see your life? What do you see your life accomplishing? Well, I'm gonna just do the best I can. Okay, I know what that is. Nothing. Not for God. Well, as the Lord leads. He has already led. He's given you his revelation. He's told you in the book. Here's what you ought to do. You ought to say, I see myself as a servant of God. Everything I do is in service of the Lord. If I go to work at the factory, I go there to be an example of godly living. I go there with a testimony on my lips for the Savior. I'm a servant of the Lord. We ought to see ourselves as Christians, as stewards of the gospel. God has entrusted the message of eternal life to us. We ought to see ourselves as the stewards of that message. If we don't see ourselves as servants, we don't see ourselves as stewards, we won't be doing what the word of God has revealed that we ought to be doing, going to all the world and preaching the gospel to every creature. but you gotta see it before you see it. How do you see yourself? Walter Van Brom was one of the leading scientists in the early days of the space program. Walter Van Brom, and I'm gonna read it so I get it exactly right, made this statement. He said, there has never been any great accomplishment in history without faith, without seeing and being sure of something that not is, but is sure to be a reality. I had a man in my church, his name was Ben Halls. Ben came forward one Sunday and he said, preacher, I want God to use me to be a soul winner. We'd kneel up and pray. He said, he said, I want to try to win the soul of Christ every week. Well, he didn't. But he did lose 35 souls of Christ that year and walked them down the aisle and saw them go into the baptistry. You got to see it before you see it. If you don't see yourself being used of God, you won't be used of God. Church. How do you see yourself? How do you see the church? I don't wanna be ugly, but I'm gonna be direct, all right? You've got a beautiful building. That sign back there says that you can seat 254. Probably put more than that if I didn't know anything about the way they figure name seating, most building inspectors. But if God gave you this building and God gave you these pews, wouldn't you make an assumption that God intended for you to fill it? I just did a series of Wednesday nights. I taught through the entire book of Nehemiah. If I was out on Wednesday night preaching, then my pastor would take over, but I did that. But I came to the 11th chapter and saw something I had never seen. Nehemiah went to Jerusalem and the walls needed repair, needed to be rebuilt, and the gates needed to be repaired. He did all of that. Ezra preceded him and built the temple. In 52 days, Nehemiah built the wall, repaired the gates, everything was good. Then if you read the next chapters, they had a dedication service. Ezra went and got the Bible, the word of God, the Torah, and came back and read the scriptures. Then they had singing, that's what it says, and praising God. And then they had a confession of sin and their own personal sins and the sin of the people. And then you come to chapter number 11, they've got the walls, they've got the gates, they've got the word of God, they've got repentance, they've got all of that, but they needed one more thing. And 11th chapter says that they went outside the wall and compelled one out of every 10 people to move within the city. You see, God's interested in reaching people. He wanted people that are populated. God wants his church filled with people that have known his son as their savior, who have been spiritually baptized, who have been disciples and glory in the Lord, and who had recognized themselves to be his servants and his stewards of his gospel. But we've got to see our churches that, or we'll never see it. You gotta see it to see it. I'm gonna close with four statements, all right? I don't know what time it is, but I'm sure some of you have already checked it. I won't because I'm afraid what it might say. We need a vision of what the church is to be. How do you see the church? Do you see the church as a rest home? Or do you see it as a hospital for sin sick sinners? Somebody said to me, I used that illustration of having so many saved in 1977. They said, how did you do that? I said, we brought sinners in. Every service I knew I had sinners sitting in front of me and a bunch of them. We'd have revivals, we'd have people saved. J.L. Smith preached one of the last revivals I had at that church. J. Harold Smith is one of the most powerful preachers I've ever seen in the pulpit. And he preached Sunday morning. God's three deadlines was his signature message. 22 adults came saying, I need to trust Jesus Christ as my savior. But we had probably 40 or 50 sinners in the crowd. You know what our problem is? We don't see people being souls that have bodies. Our streets are full of street people. I know we'd have to be careful, but maybe we ought to go out and bring some of them in and see them get saved. You know, God didn't clean up a mess, did you know that? He did in my life. I was 18 years old, but I was a mess. I don't have time to go into what kind of mess I was, but I was in a mess. but we don't go after sinners. I'm gonna take a Liberty preacher and take a few minutes longer than I meant to, to tell a story. It's a true story. It's a story that breaks my heart. Our church was growing and God was blessing it. I had a dear lady in my church and she could not read nor write. She had been left a widow. Her husband had been killed on the radio, on the radio, on the railroad. She had four children. One of which was a lady who was very much involved in sin. She married, but she was into drugs and alcohol, and so was he. He left her and the children. She became a lady of the streets. They came and took her children. They were placed in homes outside the city, the two that were younger. He knew not where, neither did the grandmother. One day she was caught in an illicit activity with some police officers downtown Roanoke, Virginia. All over the paper, all across the news, her picture and the story. One Sunday morning, I walked in and I looked back and on the back seat, there she sat. I went back and greeted her and welcomed her. I was walking back down the aisle, one of my deacons met me. He said, do you see who's on the back row? I said, yeah. He said, do we really need folks like that in our church? Now, I didn't say this, preacher, because, well, I didn't, but I probably should have. I should have said, well, more of them and less of you. She left after the service and never came back. Years later, I went into evangelism for several years, and then I took a Baptist church up in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. One day, my wife said, honey, come quick. My wife is in heaven. Hey, come quick. I thought something was wrong with our boys. I went around and said, what is it, honey? She said, look at TV. And there on one of those talk shows was that lady. Another younger lady sat beside her. And this interviewer said, ma'am, would you tell us what happened, your story? She said, well, I lost my children to the welfare and they put them in foster care and put them outside the city. My life was wicked. And so they took the children. She said, but I went to a church one day and they loved me. They want my church. They want a Baptist church. He said, and I got saved. This is on a talk show. She said, I've been living for the Lord ever since. She said, and I got a job working in a convenience mart. She said, and this young lady kept coming in every morning, getting coffee. And we, we, we started talking. And I asked her why she was there. And the lady started, she said, now, young lady, would you tell your side of the story? She said, yes. She said, I grew up and told the town is about 250 miles away from Roanoke. And she said, and I knew that I heard that my mother lived in Roanoke. I came to Roanoke looking for my mother. And one morning when I came by, this lady that had waited on me every morning said to me, said, what brings you to Roanoke? And she said, I told her I was looking for my mother, my biological mother. And she asked me my name. And then she asked me, did I have a brother? And what was his name? And then she looked at me and said, I'm your mother. You say, well, why are you telling that story? Because that should have been, her testimony should have been, she got saved in our church. But you see, we didn't see it. We didn't see how God could change lives. We didn't see how God could make clean that which is dirty. We didn't see that God could really do a work in lives. We didn't see it. Thank God another church did see it. You gotta see it before you see it, preacher. How do you see your church? Do you see your church, number two, do you see your church as being relevant to today's culture? Or do you see it as a place to relive the past? Now don't look at me like I'm some young upstart preacher just came out of Bible college or Bible seminary. I've been around. I don't like change. I sit in the same chair. I have my chair. Y'all know what I'm talking about? My wife don't sit in my chair. Nobody sits in my chair. That's my chair. I'm gonna sit in my chair. I don't like change. I've been around long enough to know the only thing that really never changes is in the graveyard. We gotta understand there's a culture out there that's different. There's a drug culture out there. There's wickedness out there. There are young people who grow up with influences in their life that you and I never knew anything about. How do you see your church? Reaching? Becoming the church? that's relevant to the culture of the day? Or are we gonna just keep doing what we've always done so we can always be what we've always been? You gotta see it before you see it. You gotta see it before you see it. Number three and I'm done. Do you see the church as a rescue mission or do you see it as a place for relaxation? I go to churches all the time, you know, and I walk in, I know you're a pastor, but I walk in, I don't know the pastor, and they'll say, oh, we're so glad to have you, you'll love our church. We're just one big happy family, we love each other, and we're just a real close-knit, and that's good, that's good, I'm not critical of that. And then I say, well, how many baptisms did you have last year? We got a wonderful fellowship. I mean, by saying, well, you know, the Lord's got to build His church. He does, but I've often noticed that every time God wants to do something, He does it through people. He does it through people. You know, we preach on stuff and don't ever finish it. You know, Peter and John were going into the temple. Remember that? And there was a guy laying there, lame, you know, and he was begging for alms. And Peter said, well, silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I unto you. And the guy rose up and began to walk. You remember that? Read the next verse. And with the right hand, Peter lifted him up. Yeah, God will build a church, but you reckon you might be looking for a few right hands. I'm just saying. You got to see it before you see it. Yes, we want a wonderful fellowship. Yes, we want to love each other. Yes, we want to pray for each other. Yes, we want to be a body and a family and we want to be all of that. Oh, my dear friend. Let's not relish just in that. Let's have that vision, that God revelation that is given to us in the book of Acts as to what the New Testament church ought to be. It began with the Lord Jesus and 12 disciples, and then it grew to 70, and then it grew to 120, and then it grew to 3,000, and then it grew to 5,000, and then it grew to 5,000 men, and then it filled Jerusalem with its doctrine. Are we really a New Testament church? but you gotta see it before you ever see it. What I've given to you tonight is a universal truth. It isn't just about spiritual things, it's just a universal truth. Let me give you two quick illustrations and I'll pray. When an architect is going to be hired to develop the plans for the building of a building, whether it be a building like this, or it be a high rise, whatever it may be, he must see that building in his own mind. Now, years ago, he would go to a drafting board and take his drafting tools and begin to draw. Today, he goes to a computer screen. And with a mouse, he goes and he designs and he sees it before we ever see it. When he finishes, he puts all that he has seen on the paper. He hands it to a contractor, and the contractor looks at it. I've built several buildings in my life, been there as a pastor. I've looked at several plans. They look like a bunch of scribbling and chicken scratching to me. I don't know what all them lines are and all this stuff. I don't know what he gets out of that. to the contractor, he sees a building. He sees four walls. He sees a foundation. He sees a roof. He sees the beauty. He sees the masonry work. He sees the paint. He sees it all. He sees it. He sees it before he sees it. I'm a country boy. You walk up to the farmer. He's standing there with a handful of corn in his hand. And you say, oh, you got some corn kernels in your hand. He said, oh, no. This is a field of green. A field of green. Yeah, I'm gonna put these beneath the soil. And all of a sudden, it'll sprout forth and it'll grow into just a sea of green. And on every stalk, there'll be two, three, four sometimes ears of corn. And he sees it before he sees it. Hey, by the way, that's where you get saved. If you don't ever see yourself as a sinner, you'll never see yourself in need of a savior. You gotta see it before you see it. If you never see the savior as a savior, you'll never see heaven, but you gotta see it before you see it. And Christian, God's got a work for you to do. Serve him, be a steward of the gospel, but you gotta see it before you see. the rewards of it. Church, God's got a plan for you, but you got to see it before you see it.