Good morning.

It’s good to see everybody here this morning.

I appreciate you being here and I appreciate the opportunity to come and spend this time

with you.

Brought your brought your original seminar to you just a few.

When did you guys go through the original seminar?

Aaron?

April.

So when he came and brought that to you, there’s a lot of information that you needed to

have at that time, but it would be too overwhelming to bring it all to you at one time.

In fact, I would probably pretty, I would imagine you would agree with me.

It was pretty overwhelming as it was.

He brings a lot of information and oftentimes I relate it to uh drinking from a fire

hydrant.

You have all this information coming at you and you learn the concept of it but you have

to figure out how to use it, how to put it into practice.

That’s what this continued education workshop is about.

So we’re gonna spend today the lessons, the three lessons, a little more congregational.

After this on Monday and Tuesday we’re gonna really get into the mechanics of it when

we’re out of the worship setting and we can do more question and answer, more role

playing.

It’ll be very informal so as we go through it if you have any questions at all Monday

evening and Tuesday evening please feel free to stop me and to ask questions as we go

along and we’re going to learn some valuable information.

It’s going to really help take your congregational evangelism to the next level.

But I want to talk this morning a little bit about what it costs to evangelize both as an

individual and as congregational and I’m not talking about what it costs monetarily.

I’m talking about what it’s going to cost you as a Christian.

how is that going to affect your life?

How is it going to change your life?

How does it maybe change your relationships?

How does it, uh it changes your whole thought process and it’ll take you to a place that’s

out of your comfort zone.

Evangelism is like a great big bright light, right?

We have spent probably 50 years that we have not been congregational evangelizing in the

United States of America.

Now there’s some of you that have probably led people to Christ and you spent time

evangelizing to the best that you could but you don’t know what you don’t know.

And so you’re trying to go through your walk with Christ, you’re trying to share it with

other people when you can, but you find it awkward trying to broach that subject in

certain situations.

It can be difficult to figure out how to get somebody actually into a Bible study, how to

bring up those gospel conversations, and sometimes…

with our family and our friends and our coworkers and our neighbors and those that we’re

closest to, it’s the most difficult to talk to them.

How many of you just, by show of hands, how many of you near have somebody in your family

that you love very much but they’re not a Christian?

Every hand should be up, we all do.

In fact, when we talk about Bible studies, I think it’s tomorrow night maybe that we talk

about how to close a Bible study.

I’ll share with you how to get them into a Bible study very effectively.

But we have, the reason we don’t,

speak to them about God.

We’ll sit at the Thanksgiving table with them and we know that if something happens and

they choke on that turkey leg, they’re probably not going to go to heaven.

But we don’t want to bring anything up about God because we don’t want to make it

uncomfortable or make it awkward.

We don’t want to cause any kind of…

We’re fearful of certain reactions from our family.

And it’s very natural.

It happens to all of us.

Once you learn how to congregationally evangelize and once you learn how to get into

gospel conversations and how to handle Bible studies,

It’s very, very easy.

It’s not uncomfortable.

In fact, you’ll probably find out that you’ll enjoy it.

So this morning I want to talk a little bit out of the book of Matthew.

Turn with me to Matthew chapter 10.

Matthew chapter 10.

So Jesus is preparing to send his disciples to proclaim the good news of the kingdom in

what we call the limited commission.

I hope from Matthew chapter 9 verse 36 that Jesus sends his disciples compassionately.

because the people were lost.

He said they were like sheep without a shepherd.

We also notice in the preceding verses that Jesus sent his disciples out fearlessly.

So I wanna focus this morning on chapter 10, verses 34 through 42.

So Jesus sends his disciples out and he knows they’re gonna be sent out like sheep going

amidst the wolves.

But he wanted them to understand that they shouldn’t have a fear for the.

for what’s going to happen or a fear for the situation that they’re going to be in or a

fear for the people that they’re going to be talking to, their fear needs to come from

God.

God’s the one that they need to fear.

God sees what’s happening.

Brothers and sisters, I want you to understand this morning that God greatly values his

disciples.

And what he’s asked you to do, what he’s commanded you to do, see I think that’s where

sometimes we get off on the Great Commission.

Matthew chapter 28,

is what we commonly look at in Mark chapter 16 as well.

But Matthew chapter 28 verse 18, Jesus says, all authority is given to me in heaven and on

earth.

Just a question for you, how much authority do we have?

Anybody?

None, we don’t

any.

Jesus says all authority is given to him and if Jesus has all authority in heaven and on

earth then he absolutely has the authority to tell us in verse 19, to go you therefore and

make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy

Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I’ve commanded you.

Brother Cain, you have to, does somebody have to know everything there is to know in this

book before they can become a Christian?

No they don’t.

Teach, baptize, teach.

They need to

about salvation.

They need to know about the gospel message.

What is the gospel message?

It’s a death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.

They need to understand that.

There’s a few things they need to know, but the rest of that we’re going to teach them

later on in a new convert class.

They’re going to learn it later on in an adult Bible class.

Now here’s what I love about the Great Commission.

Jesus doesn’t tell us to go do this and I hope it works out for you.

He doesn’t say good luck.

Here’s an idea.

Let me throw it your way and see what you can do with it.

He tells us exactly what he wants us to do, to teach, to baptize, teach, and then he says,

and lo, I’m with you always, even unto the end of the age.

That’s a beautiful promise that we can grab hold of and it can help comfort us as we’re

going out knowing that Jesus has equipped us for this work.

is not a suggestion, it’s not a recommendation, it’s a divine mandate.

We absolutely, and we have to get this into our minds, we absolutely are going to

stand before Jesus on the day of judgment and we’re gonna answer for whether or not we led

lost souls to him.

It’s the only mission he’s given us.

We call it the Great Commission, it’s the only mission.

If you can find another one, please point it out to me.

We mentioned a ago the Limited Commission, but that wasn’t for us.

That was for them going to the Jewish people.

But for all of us, this is the only mission.

Any veterans in here, by chance, anybody here in the service?

When you’re in the service, you may have been given some missions that were

crazy important, like critical missions that you may have been sent on, but you’ve never

been sent on a mission like your Lord sent you on.

This is a great commission.

This is a mission to go out and to lead others to Christ because they’re gonna lose their

souls if we don’t.

We don’t want anybody to lose their souls.

Now, why don’t we evangelize?

Because we don’t know how.

I get that.

Brothers and sisters, I was that way for many, years.

At Coetah, was sharing with Brother Aaron a while ago, at Coetah we were about 20 to 22

members.

Like it or not, shouldn’t be this way, but on Easter we would bump up to about 30 because

people would invite their family members.

throughout, fact, when Rob came, we were talking about that, we have a picture where it

was 22 members on the board that Sunday morning when Rob was there.

And then I think, actually I think that was the week before was 22.

I think when Rob was there we had like 24, 25 just because a few people that don’t come

regularly came to hear Rob speak that day.

We went from that, three years later we were at 70 members.

What’s the difference?

What happened?

We learned how to evangelize.

We didn’t know what to do before.

And you don’t know what you don’t know.

But that’s not an excuse not to do it.

Because we have the resources, and we have the training, we have all the information

available to us, so we need to learn it.

And that’s what you’re doing here today.

I’m so thankful to your eldership and for having us come here because that means that you

guys want to learn how to do what our Lord commissioned us to do.

I always say that Jesus never asked for 10 talents from a two talent person.

And what I mean by that is this, if he’s commanded you to go out and to make disciples of

all nations, you better believe he’s given you the talent to do it.

That doesn’t mean all of you are going to be Bible, you know, go sit down and do Bible

studies.

I think everybody should be able to do one.

And if you have any questions, and we’ll see as we go through it this week, but if you

have questions on how to do a Bible study, I’m happy to help you with that.

I’m here all day every day, you know, uh this week on Monday and Tuesday.

If you want to spend some time studying or doing some one-on-one training, I’m happy to do

that.

But you’re going to have certain people, that’s their job, right?

There’s certain ones among you that your job is, and ladies, you’re not off the hook,

because you ladies can sit down with other ladies and go through and have Bible study.

So there’s going to be certain people in this room that that’s going to be where your

talent falls.

You’re going to be great at having a Bible study and closing a Bible study and leading

people to the waters of baptism.

Some of you, your job’s going to be, I mean, really it should be all of our jobs, sitting

down filling out compassion cards.

In fact, if all you do in evangelism,

is fill out compassion cards.

You can stand before Christ knowing that you fulfilled a great commission.

We get more baptisms off compassion cards than anything we do.

Now you’ve got to do the follow-up visits along with that and we’ll talk about that later

this week.

I think we do that Tuesday night that we’ll talk about transition visits, but compassion

cards are vital to the success of congregational evangelism.

Maybe what you’re able to do is to bring a contact.

You know, you have a list of people, you have one of these bookmarks like this right here,

and you’re able

write down ten names of people that if you that you know if they died tonight they

wouldn’t go to heaven.

That’s evangelism.

You may not have the Bible study but maybe you can facilitate it right maybe you could

have a have them over for a meal and invite Aaron over for a meal and they can get

together and build a relationship and so you’ve helped facilitate that.

In I want to just ask you right now and I don’t want you to answer but I you to think

about this.

In the last five years how many souls have you had a hand in leading to Christ?

If you’re like most Christians that I’ve met in the United States of America, it’s maybe

one or two, maybe none.

I talked to a lady in Ohio.

We worked with her.

She was able to, when we were doing American Mission campaign, to get into a Bible study

from a visit that Jamie and I had with the lady at the laundromat.

This woman knew that lady, and so we put them together, and she was able to do a Bible

study.

She told me, she said, Keno, I’m so nervous to do this.

And I said, well, it’s nothing to be nervous about.

We’ll help you.

I’ll give you some pointers, some tips.

She said, you don’t understand.

was 65 years old.

I became a Christian when I was 15 years old.

I’ve been a Christian for 50 years and I have never done a Bible study with someone

before.

And I said, know what?

Don’t feel like you’re alone.

That’s probably the bulk of the church.

Used to it was very common to do Bible studies with people.

But now we have a couple of generations of young people that have grown up in the pews and

they’ve never seen their mom and dad have a Bible study with anybody.

And so we’ve got to get back into that.

We’ve got to get back to that’s what the church does.

It’s who the church is.

I don’t know if you remember that.

Hatton Church of Christ in Town Creek, Alabama.

Brother Ben Phillips works with their youth group down there.

They’ve got probably close to 30 teenagers.

Half of them have been led to Christ by the other half.

They have trained their youth

evangelists and those young people, it’s in their minds, that’s who we are as the church.

We’re evangelists, we grow, we teach, that’s what we do and they’re leading so many young

people to Christ.

Brothers and sisters, if we train our young people to think like that, look at what the

church is going to look like 20 years from now.

We’re not going to be shrinking anymore, we’re going to be growing again where we used to

be.

So let’s talk about what this means for us as we go out and we evangelize to the community

around us.

Let’s look at Versa.

Let’s start out in Versa.

34 and let’s read down through verse 49 of Matthew chapter 10.

Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth

I didn’t come to bring peace, a sword.

For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a

daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man’s enemies will be those of his own

household.” You know what he’s saying right there?

He’s saying those of your own family could end up being the ones that turn against you on

this.

So look at verse 37.

He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.

And he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

And he who does not take his cross and follow after me

is not worthy of me.

He who finds his life will lose it and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.” So

Jesus is showing us some stuff.

Now, if you went back to verses 21 through 23, Jesus made the point that sometimes the

gospel will cause divisions.

It’ll make conflicts.

And so this is what he’s talking about.

And he’s honing in on some of those.

And the first one that he talks about is, we cannot love family more than the Lord.

And there’s gonna be a great temptation to do

that because we should love our family right?

We have a responsibility to our family.

There’s a certain way we’re to treat our family.

Our family is very precious, very special to us and we should love our family but the

problem is sometimes there’s a temptation to love our family to the point that they come

before God and we can’t do that.

I know a lady that I used to know when I was younger.

If her family came to town, you didn’t see her at services.

Her husband might come to services, but she wasn’t coming.

She was staying home to cook for the family.

So she would miss services to spend time with her family and to cook a meal for the

family.

I knew a lady one time that stayed home from services to cook for the

when he came and she thought well I’m gonna stay home so I can have this great wonderful

meal for this visiting preacher and forsakes his family to do so.

There’s times that we you know we might put things like uh sports

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen members that they’ll take their kids and they’ll

miss a service to go to a soccer tournament.

You know, when I was a kid, and a lot of you and your kids, there was no sports on Sundays

because everybody knew that was God’s time.

But it’s not like that anymore.

And now they’ll have all these sporting tournaments on Sundays and the coach will put all

the pressure, we got to have your kid there, we won’t win if your kid’s not there.

And the parents say, okay, they were late and they take their kids.

What if they just taught their kids?

They’ve just taught their kids that God’s important unless something else

comes along that’s more important, right?

Sometimes our sports become our idols.

Sometimes the Super Bowl might become our idol.

Sometimes our jobs become our idols.

Sometimes our hobbies and our vacations will never miss a service until we go on vacation

and then we’ll take a week off of our vacation.

It doesn’t make sense.

Jesus says you can’t put family above Him.

And I don’t even know why we think sometimes that family has to come at the sacrifice of

God because they could be very well worked together.

What if we have family that comes to town

and we invite them to come to worship with us if they’re not Christians.

I remember when I was a kid growing up, I had an aunt and uncle who used to come visit.

We lived in Texas, and they would come up from New Mexico and visit.

They weren’t Christians.

And they would come up and visit and every time they would come in, I remember on Sunday

mornings my dad would say, okay, we’re getting ready to head to services.

And I can remember my uncle saying, we’re not going to go.

We’re just going to hang out here.

And dad would say, okay, well make yourself at home.

We’ll be back in a little bit.

But we’re not, we never miss services to spend time with family.

God always comes first.

He has to come first.

There’s no other way.

Family time should be going to worship together.

Family time should be praying together, reading the Bible together.

I had somebody ask me the other day, said, how come everything that we read in the Bible

doesn’t come true or isn’t accurate?

And I said, well, what do you mean?

He said, Proverbs 22, 6, train up a child the way they should go and when they’re old,

they’ll not depart.

And I said, well, that’s an interesting question.

Let’s think about when that was written.

When that was written, they weren’t sending their kids to Gentile schools.

When that was written, they were writing the laws of God upon the hearts of their

children.

Now here we fast forward to America and we have our kids in worship on Sunday morning in

the Bible study on Sunday, on Wednesday evening, and we think that we’ve done right.

them and we haven’t.

We need to time, family time together.

We need to have Bible study time every evening with our kids.

We need to write the laws of God on the hearts of our children.

Let’s make our family time God time.

Maybe back off the social media and the television and all other things going on in our

kids’ lives and just a few hours throughout the week let’s focus on teaching our children.

I read a deal just this morning.

It was a denominational person.

from some Christian school.

And he’s a principal there.

And he said that he got to seeing that.

In fact, I can’t remember how it came to him, he started calling and surveying people that

had been grown up in this Christian school.

He said, we’re taking $15,000 a year from these kids’ parents.

These kids are in chapel every morning.

They’re doing all the Bible training, the Bible reading.

They’re hearing all the different accounts that happen through the Bible, which a lot of

people refer to as stories.

I don’t like using stories.

and characters, I think it makes people think it’s fictional.

But let’s talk about Bible accounts and the people in the Bible.

And he said, we went through all of this stuff and these kids get out and the rate is 68%,

they’re falling away from Christianity.

And he asked him why and one of the guys said, know what, here’s why.

Because when I got to college my professor asked me why.

He said, whatever I talked to him about, something had happened in the Bible.

And he asked me why, where’s the evidence for that?

And he said, I couldn’t give him any evidence.

I didn’t know.

He said, I knew all the Bible stories, he said, but I had no clue why those things were

true.

And so the guy was making a case for it.

We need to start teaching apologetics.

We need to start teaching our young people how to defend the Scriptures.

They need to know.

You you think back when Jesus was getting on to the Pharisees for following after

tradition?

What’s the difference between that and us if we can’t articulate why we believe what we

believe?

If we just, we may be doing everything right, but if we can’t articulate why we’re doing

it, then we’re just following after tradition too.

Our faith’s been handed to us by our parents or our grandparents.

Let’s spend family time studying the Bible with our families.

Let’s do godly things during our family time.

Family time and spiritual time can coexist.

They don’t have to be separate and apart from each other.

Let’s look back down at the next thing he says.

He says that we can’t love ourselves more than we love the Lord.

And it’s in this context of the mission to reach the loss that Jesus says in verse 38,

we’re not worthy to follow him.

Take up our cross.

If we can’t put our personal comforts aside and set Jesus before them, we’re not worthy to

be called as disciples.

And that’s easy to do sometimes when you’re talking about evangelizing.

It’s uncomfortable when you first start doing it.

Listen, if you do it and you start making this who you are and what you do, it won’t be

uncomfortable.

I’m the same way.

When I first started doing this, it was so uncomfortable for me.

It was so uncomfortable to sit down and talk to somebody about the Bible.

It was so uncomfortable.

Why?

Because most people

scared that they’re going to ask you a question that you don’t know the answer to.

Rob should have covered that and I’m sure he did when he was here.

You don’t have to answer their questions.

In fact, you shouldn’t answer their questions.

Jesus didn’t answer people’s questions.

Once you start answering questions, now they control the Bible study, not you.

We’re not going to not answer their questions because we don’t want to, but they can’t

comprehend what we’re trying to talk about.

If they don’t know about the first coming of Christ, we don’t need to be having a

discussion about the second coming of Christ.

We don’t need to talk about 666 and Mark of the Beast and the battle of one again and

speaking in tongues and dwelling in the Holy Spirit because all of that takes the focus

off what you’re there to teach them.

Well we need to teach somebody that’s not even familiar with Christ, we need to teach them

who Christ was, where he gets his authority, we need to teach them about the church of

Christ, and we need to teach them about salvation.

All the rest that comes later on.

But in John 16 verse 12,

He says, there’s things you need to know but you can’t handle it right now.

You’re not ready for that.

You’re not ready for those things yet.

Well when we sit down with somebody and we’re evangelizing and the first thing we do is go

straight to Acts chapter 2 verse 38 and 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 21 and Romans chapter 6

verses 3 through 5 and Colossians chapter 2 verses, you know, start about 14 down and we

go to all these, you know, Acts 22 and Acts 8 and all these baptism verses, well that’s

fine and dandy, but for a person that doesn’t even know who Jesus is, they’re not going to

be interested in baptism, folks.

Yes, baptism is where we find salvation.

But they gotta know who Jesus is first.

They gotta know what he did for them.

They gotta know about the church that he died to establish.

When you look at Acts chapter 8 verse 12, what are the three things that Philip, the

inspired evangelist, taught?

He taught the name of Christ, he taught the kingdom of God, which is the church of Christ,

and he taught salvation, he baptized them.

So we can’t go in there and try to put a roof on a building that we’ve never built any

walls and we’ve never laid a foundation for.

So when we teach somebody, we’re gonna start, we’re gonna lay a foundation first.

That’s the authority.

of Christ.

They’ve to know these are the words that we’re going to be judged by in the New Testament.

I would venture to say, and if any of you have ever done a Bible study, you could probably

back me up on this.

Most people, especially people in the world that have no religious affiliation, but even

most denominational people have no earthly idea that we’re not under the Ten Commandments.

In fact, I saw an article today on the news that said that some federal judge ruled that

it’s okay to have the Ten Commandments in a school.

Now, we adhere to nine of the Ten Commandments, but it’s because they’re restated in the

New Testament.

We’re not bound to what took place with the Law of Moses.

That was given to the Jewish nation.

We have plenty of scriptures in

and Colossians and Hebrews and others that tell us the old law is done with, we’re under

the new law.

Most people you study with don’t know that.

Most of them don’t know there’s a difference between the Old and the New Testament.

So you gotta teach them that.

They gotta learn that.

They gotta learn where Christ got his authority, right?

They gotta learn where the apostles got their authority.

Have you ever heard somebody say, well, yeah, but that’s written in black.

That’s not written in red, so do we really have to listen to it?

Yeah, they’ve gotta learn that.

And we’re gonna teach them that when we go through Lesson One and back to the Bible or

whatever scriptural Bible

study you’re using, we’ll address that.

Then they need to know about the church.

Why do we have elders and deacons?

Why don’t we use instrumental music?

That’s a big one that’s going to catch most people.

The first thing that a denominational person is going to notice when they walk through

those doors is there’s no instruments on the stage.

And so we’ve got to address that.

We need to teach them that.

I remember when I was growing up, I always heard preachers and always heard elders talking

about that and they’d say, well,

We just better off to be safe than sorry.

Well, I’m sorry, but that’s not a good enough explanation.

If I’m a denominational person and I’m asking you why you don’t use instrumental music,

that’s not going to cut it.

I need something a little more than that.

So we need to be prepared to go in and teach them why we don’t use instrumental music.

We need to teach them about the name that’s on the front door.

Is everybody in the Church of Christ going to heaven?

I don’t think so.

Not according to Matthew chapter 7 verse 21.

says, not everyone says to me, Lord, Lord, is going into the kingdom of heaven, but he who

does, why?

the will of the Father.

Who’s going to get to heaven?

Those that obey the will of the Father.

Now can we call it the Church of the Evergreen Tree?

Can we call it the Church of the Buffalo or whatever else we want to call it?

No, because that’s not giving glory to Christ.

And so we need to know, they need to know why we call it the Church of Christ.

They need to understand that that’s possessive name, it’s not a proper name.

It just means that a group of Christians that are doing what the first century Christians

do, they worship here.

They come together and assemble here.

They need to understand and know that.

They need to know, there’s a lot of…

get to baptism.

But once they understand that, then we can take them to scriptural salvation, to what the

scriptures tell us how we’re saved.

But we’ve got to build a case for it first.

Here’s the problem.

We get out of our comfort zones and we don’t want to go through all that.

We don’t want to take time to do all that.

Well, what the Lord’s saying right here is, if you’re not willing to get out of your

comfort zone and put your own wants and your own needs and your own desires aside for

mine, then you’re not worthy to be called my disciples.

That’s powerful, folks.

I think sometimes

we forget that the God that we serve right now is the same God that struck down Nadab and

Abihu in Leviticus chapter 10.

It’s the same God that struck down Uzzah when he’s just trying to stay.

All he did was just trying to steady the Ark of the Covenant.

Well if they’d been carrying it like they were commanded that would have never been an

issue.

The same God that struck them down is the same God in the New Testament that struck down

Ananias and Sapphira.

So right now we’ve got to understand that God hasn’t got

and lacks on Americans all of a sudden in the 20th century.

He’s just as serious about his commands now as he was then.

The God that we read about at Mount Sinai is the same God that we’re dealing with now

today.

We can’t just slack off and say we’re not gonna do his commands anymore because surely

he’ll understand we’re God’s chosen people.

We are the United States of America.

United States of America is not God’s chosen people.

have people that will, I know people that will argue with you on that.

There’ll always be a remnant.

In fact, I had a man at a congregation in Kansas that told me that.

He said what you’re teaching cannot be true.

There will always be a Church of Christ in America.

I haven’t read that in the Bible.

There’ll always be a remnant of the church, but it doesn’t mean it’s gonna be in the

United States of America.

And folks, we’re going in the wrong direction.

You go back 50 years ago, one out of every 84 citizens of the United States was a member

of the Church of Christ.

Now it’s one out of every 300.

We’re going in the wrong direction.

We can turn it around.

We’re not at a point of no return, but we’ve gotta learn to put Christ ahead of our own

wants and desires.

We cannot be loyal to ourselves before we’re loyal to Christ.

I’m not sure that when we talk about carrying the cross,

we always let that sink into our hearts.

think usually we talk about carrying the cross and we’re thinking about temptations and

trials, but he’s also talking about our personal comforts.

He’s talking about setting that aside for him.

Let’s move on.

Look with me at 2 Corinthians.

I’ll hold your place in Matthew, but look with me at 2 Corinthians, what Paul says about

this.

2 Corinthians chapter 4, and we’re going to look at verses 10 and 11.

And look at how Paul describes what’s taking place here.

He says, always caring about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus that the life of

Jesus may also be manifested in our body.

For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ that the life of Jesus may be

manifested in our mortal flesh.

Friends, we have a decision that we have to make.

And all of us gotta make it.

We need to make it right here, right now this morning.

Are we gonna live for this life that we’re in now, or are gonna live for the eternal life?

Because if this life is the life we’re living for, we’re doing it at the expense of our

eternal life.

We’ll lose our eternal life if this is the life that’s important to us.

If that’s the life, if the eternal life is the life that’s important to us, then we gotta

be ready to die to self in this life and start living for Christ.

You know, go to Romans chapter 12, verses one and two.

uh

Paul’s making a statement about being a living sacrifice.

He says, I beseech you therefore, brethren.

How many you, Aaron, when’s the last time you said I beseech you in a conference?

I beseech you to add this kind of wiring into your sound system.

We don’t do that.

I saw a lawyer on a commercial in Tennessee, of all places, the other day that said that.

said, I beseech you to call this number.

Most people have no idea what he’s probably even talking about.

We don’t use that, but what Paul’s saying is,

You know, he could have commanded this, he’s wanting them to do this of their own

volition, right?

I don’t want to make my kids, when my kids were little, I didn’t want to have to make them

go to worship service.

I want them to want to.

I want them to come alongside me understanding what Jesus did for them and to want to do

this.

Now, I made them until they learned that, until they were trained and they understood

that, then they were made to go.

But after that, I didn’t have to make them.

They would get up on Sunday mornings, they were ready to go.

How many of you woke up this morning and thought, man, is there anything I can

to get out of services this morning?

None of you did that.

You’re here because you know this is what we do.

We’re Christians.

I had a preacher down in Alabama tell me, he said,

He said he was talking one time and he told the congregation, said, I think some of you

men get up in the mornings and you run into your daughter’s room and you say, daughter,

did you sneeze last night?

no, dad, I feel fine.

Son, did you cough last night?

no, dad, I feel fine.

Wife, do you have a headache?

No, I feel fine.

Well, I guess we’ll have to go to services this morning then.

That’s the way a lot of people are.

But you’re not like that or you wouldn’t be here in a Bible class this morning.

You’re the strength of the congregation.

Any congregation, the ones that are there for Sunday morning Bible class and Wednesday

evening Bible class, that’s the core

of the congregation.

You’re here because this is who you are, this is what you do.

So Paul says, beseech you therefore by what the mercies of God.

Why would you do that?

Why are you here this morning?

You’re here because you understand what your Lord did for you.

You guys ever sing the song when I survey the wondrous cross?

Right?

I love the last verse of that song.

He says, the whole realm of nature, if I could take all of creation and hold it in my

hands and offer that to God,

to Christ as a gift, it would still be a present far too small.

Because when you understand what Jesus did for you, how much love that took to give his

life on the cross for you, that demands my life, my soul, my…

It demands that I give everything to him.

That’s conviction, folks.

I don’t think it always happens at the same time as conversion.

It should, but I don’t think it does.

That’s conviction.

That’s when you don’t miss a service.

That’s when you would do anything.

That’s when you wake up in the morning and you don’t say, what do I have to do?

You say, what can I do?

Well, I was there one hour this week.

That’s all technically I have to do.

Who cares about have to?

I feel sorry for a lot of people whose minimums are going to end up being a little bit

less than Christ’s bare minimum.

When you’re convicted and you understand what Christ did for

you say, what can I do for you Lord?

How can I serve you today?

Lord, please put people before me today that I can teach and lead to you so they can

experience what I’m experiencing.

So they can have the same thing that I get when I, that I’m gonna have when I leave this

life.

That’s conviction.

He says you do that by the mercies of God.

When you understand that, then you present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

That’s kind of different talk.

We usually think of sacrifices as dead things.

But you’re dead to your old self, and now you know we wake up in the mornings and it’s not

about being self-focused, it’s about being God-focused.

It’s about saying, God, what can I do for you today?

When you get that mindset, that’s when you start leading people to Christ because you

understand how important it is.

Have any of you ever gone to a really good movie and you call somebody and tell them about

it afterward?

You gotta go see this movie.

It was amazing, it was great action, it was funny, was whatever it was, you gotta go see

this movie.

food.

I recommend food places all the time.

I was going down to Northern Oaks Church of Christ in San Antonio, Texas and Rob’s best

friend Mel Hutzler is the preacher there and one of the elders.

Rob said, Keno, when you get to San Antonio you have got to go to Lupe’s Tortillas, a

Mexican restaurant down there.

I said, well if you say I’ve to do it, I’ve got to do it.

I said, I’m going to do it.

So I called Mel and I said, Mel, we’ve got to go to Lupe’s.

Rob told me I’ve got to go to Lupe’s when I’m here.

And Mel said, don’t worry about it Keno, we’ve already got it planned.

There’s a group of us we’re going to go.

soon as you get into town and you call us and you let us know you’re here, we’re going to

Lupe’s Tortillas.

And we did.

It was a great time.

Cody McCoy come from Victoria over there.

was a group of people came and we had a great meal that day.

So Jamie and I were in uh Garland, Texas a few months ago in early December and they had a

lupes tortilla right there in Garland and so we went to it and it delicious.

So I told the preacher at the Centerville Church of Christ, said, have you ever gone to

lupes?

He said, I’ve never been there Keno.

And I said, you gotta go, it’s the best fajitas you’ll ever eat in your entire life.

So about a month later Rob was there at the same congregation, Rob the one that told me

about it in the first place and the preacher at Centerville said, Rob you gotta go to

lupes tortillas, it’s the best

food you’ll ever eat in your life.” Rob said, I’m gonna go and he went.

Why in the world is all this going on?

Because we love what we had and we wanted other people to experience the joy that we

experienced.

Why would you ever tell somebody about what you read in here?

Why would you ever tell somebody about the hope and the peace and the comfort that comes

from a relationship with Christ?

Because you want them to experience what you’re experiencing.

It’s an amazing feeling when you see your friend or somebody you study with go down in the

waters of baptism knowing that they’ve

They’ve been ripped from the clutches of Satan and now they’re a brother or sister in

Christ.

I always tell people, if you want your young people to stay in the church when they grow

up, teach them how to save their best friend.

There’s no greater feeling than seeing your best friend go down in the waters of baptism.

This is what Paul’s talking about right here.

We die so that Christ can be seen in us.

The mission is to sacrifice ourselves completely.

Now you notice one more picture that he gives here in verse 39 and it’s important to think

about how Jesus presents this picture.

Grabbing onto this life and making decisions for this life means you’re gonna truly lose

your eternal life.

If you’re gonna make decisions for this, so we have to make our minds up.

What’s more important, do we want what this world has to offer?

That’s so temporary, it’s so fleeting?

Why do you think the drug addiction and the alcohol addiction rates are so high in

America?

Why is gambling and pornography addiction so high in America?

Why is the suicide rate so high in America?

Because people have this gaping hole inside of them and they’re trying to find something

to fill it with.

They’re trying to fill it with devices of this world.

But the problem is,

Those things only offer very temporary satisfaction and then it’s gone again.

You have what they need.

You know what they need to know, but they don’t know it.

And we’ve gotta take it to them.

We’ve gotta share that with them.

We’re gonna talk a little bit about that more in the next class, or in the lesson this

morning.

Let’s wrap this up for a run out of time.

Let’s look at verses 40 through 42.

Matthew chapter 10, verse 40.

He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him, rather.

Let me start that all over.

He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me.

There we go, verse 41.

He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward.

And he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a

righteous man’s reward.

And whoever gives one of these little ones only a cup of cold water in the name of a

disciple assuredly I say to you that he shall by no means lose his reward.

So Jesus is talking about a reward that’s gonna be given to those that receive God’s

messengers.

This is what we just talked about while ago.

If a person listens to somebody that’s teaching, somebody is bringing them an evangelist,

at that time maybe an apostle or a prophet, we know those were limited offices that no

longer exist after the first century.

But even a righteous person, if a righteous person brings that message and they listen,

they’re going to receive the same gift that we’re going to receive.

Sometimes we put all the emphasis on, I need to do this because I got to make sure I get

to heaven and this is a command that I

and teach and so I gotta make sure that I teach so that I can get that home in heaven.

But Jesus flips that, he doesn’t even focus on what we’re gonna get by doing the teaching,

he focuses on what they’re gonna get by receiving the teaching.

They’re gonna get to experience the same thing, they’re gonna get the same reward we are.

They’re gonna get the same promise that we are, it’s an amazing promise, it’s a comforting

promise, so Jesus expands that idea in the opposite direction.

But second, notice what he says there in verse 42.

Whoever gives a cup of cold water because he’s a disciple will not lose his reward.

Friends, even your smallest efforts matter.

Even the smallest we think, well, all I did was came up with some names.

I didn’t really do that much, but that matters.

We don’t have evangelism.

When you look at the model, the six-step model, you’ve probably got it somewhere around

here on a picture or a poster or something.

It says contacts, prospects, Bible studies, baptisms, new converts, and growing church.

When you look at that six-step model, somewhere there’s a place for you in it.

And if all you do is write down some names on this bookmark right here, and then when one

of the men comes up on Sunday mornings and says, in fact, let’s just do it right now.

Just raise your hand if you know somebody within 30 miles of here that has cancer, raise

your hand.

Anybody know anybody that has cancer?

Of course you do.

It’s everywhere we go.

There’s five or six people out there.

If all you do, you people just raise your hand, if all you do is give that information to

your elders or to Aaron or whoever your coordinator over evangelism is, if all you do is

do that, you have fulfilled a great commission.

You’ve helped lead somebody.

When that person go down in the waters of baptism, it’s going to be in part because you

gave their name.

Bible studies is not the most important part of that model.

Baptisms is not the most important part of that model.

Contacts is the most important part, because if we don’t have contacts, we don’t have

anybody to

with.

We don’t have anybody to baptize so we gotta have contacts.

If we don’t have them, we don’t have evangelism.

We gotta have contacts so if all you do is able to do that then what about, does anybody

here know anybody’s lost a loved one in the last few weeks?

Anybody?

Several of you?

Quite a few of you.

Look between those two questions right there you got at least 10 to 12 contacts.

Now we can take those contacts down, we can put it on a contact card so you know whoever

does this, do you guys do this on a regular?

You all read these?

All right, so you do this and then you should have probably a deacon or somebody with a

contact card that’s gonna hand that contact card to those people that raise their hands.

So they raise their hands.

Now we need that information back ASAP.

Tonight would be great.

Wednesday night is imperative, but we need it back because next Sunday we’re gonna fill

out compassion cards for this person.

So Bob Smith, he has cancer and we’re gonna fill out compassion cards for Bob Smith

tonight.

Either this evening or next Sunday evening.

And we’re gonna mail those compassion cards out.

Everybody needs to be writing compassion cards.

Men, that’s not a ladies job.

I see it so often the men don’t want to do it.

You need to do it too.

But guess who else needs to do it?

Everybody.

If they could physically hold, we had some kids, we got a four year old who was doing

compassion cards last Sunday night in our congregation.

Somebody had to help her hold the deal and she colored a picture.

Imagine if you got cancer.

Or you just lost a loved one and all of sudden you get a card from a four year old saying

I love you with a heart colored on it.

What would that do for you?

It’s amazing how comforting that is.

You will get more from compassion cards than anything you do.

So we’re going to mail those compassion cards out for two or three weeks and then

somebody’s got to be assigned to go to a transition visit.

So maybe I’m going to go to Bob’s house, I’m going to knock on the door and I’m going to

make a transition visit.

We’re going to go through that Tuesday night in depth what to say and how to make that

effective.

But these things have to happen.

So that’s very small.

Doing a compassion card is very small.

Doing a door knocking is very small.

But what you understand is that all these small things make something big.

I think a big reason we haven’t evangelized in the last 50 years is because we look at

this big, huge,

machine called evangelism and we don’t know how to conquer it.

It’s a great big huge animal we don’t know what to do with it.

Let’s just break it up into small, what Miro say, how to eat an elephant?

One bite at a time, right?

We’re going to break it down into little bite-sized pieces and all these small things make

big things.

What about the baptistry?

We need somebody, I’m sure you got it, but you need somebody that can just make sure the

baptistry is ready.

Maybe that’s how they fulfill their role in the Great Commission.

They make sure the baptismal garments are laundered.

They make sure the baptistry is ready to go.

Friends, I have been in congregations, the baptistry looked like a farm pond.

I think there are lily pads and frogs and stuff in there.

Water hadn’t been changed in 35 years.

I’ve been in congregations, I’ve looked over in the baptistry and it’s bone dry and they

got mop buckets and boxes and probably all their evangelism supplies all stored in the

baptistry.

doesn’t work.

God’s not going to send people your way and you’re not even ready to help them, right?

We need to be ready.

God will use you, but you have to be ready to be used.

So we need to have art.

We need to have everything in place and ready to go.

We need somebody that can go down to the Christian bookstore.

and get a Bible and put somebody’s name on it.

You know what we do?

We take a Bible, we use the Polyjet Express Bibles, you can get them very, if you buy like

30 of them, they’re $7 a piece, or if you want the tabbed ones, they’re $8 a piece.

If you buy at least 30 of them, you can’t get any Bibles cheaper than that, and they’re

great Bibles.

The little personal size Polyjet Express study Bibles.

Pass that around the congregation, at least in the Bible class, nothing else.

So somebody got baptized during the week, next Sunday morning pass that Bible around,

everybody write a little note in there, and put your phone number in it.

Then Aaron can invite that person that’s just been baptized up at the end of the service

Sunday morning.

Maybe if it happened during the week, we’ll show it on the projector so the whole

congregation can take part of it and celebrate with it, be excited to see this person’s

been baptized, and then present them with that Bible.

New converts love Bibles with their name on it.

But here’s what’s more important, when they can open

that Bible and see all those phone numbers in there and you tell them, you know what, the

first thing that happened to Jesus after he was baptized was what?

He was led into the wilderness to be tempted.

And you’ve never been on Satan’s radar, but now you’re smack dab in the middle of his

radar and he’s gonna come after you with everything that he has.

And you got a whole list of family in here with their phone numbers now.

When you’re tempted to go buy that drink or when you’re tempted to get on that website or

when you’re tempted to do whatever it is that you’re tempted with, start calling these

phone numbers.

somebody will answer day or night somebody will answer we had a guy we baptize him as a

young guy struggle with alcohol use he had a DUI he had a lot of problems from alcohol

abuse

And so I told him that very thing and then the next thing you know he got in trouble again

drunk And I said I said brother.

Why didn’t you call me you got all these phone numbers?

Why don’t you call somebody?

He I didn’t want to bother somebody and I said listen you are never a bother I promise you

my phone is on 24 hours a day seven days a week And I know a lot of you are the same way

especially if you own your own businesses You’re that way right your phones always on call

those numbers somebody will answer and we’ll stay on the phone with you Or we’ll come to

your house if we need to or you can come to our house if you need to but we’re

to spend time with you till you get past that point of temptation.

That’s how you help a new convert to grow.

We’re going to talk about that more in depth, I think tomorrow night or the next night.

So what I’m trying to tell you is don’t focus on the big huge machine that is evangelism.

Focus on all the little bitty teeny tiny steps.

And if we all do our job and we all do the steps that we’re able to do, then everything

falls in place and together we can congregationally evangelize.

You can send five or six of these men out into this community and they can make a little

bit of a difference.

But if this whole congregation gets involved, now you send an army out into this

community, think what a difference you can make.

You could absolutely change the culture of this entire city.

For sure the culture of this congregation.

It’s an amazing, amazing, to see what happens when a congregation is serious about

evangelism.

And look, I don’t know, how many people can y’all hold in here?

250 probably?

This is no joke, if you guys get serious about this and really put into practice what

we’re going to talk about the next few days, you absolutely could fill this building

within five to six to seven years.

Ten percent growth is easy to do.

You can hit twenty percent without a whole lot of effort.

If you just be serious about it, if you’ll go through the steps, if you’ll stick with the

model, you gotta stick with the model.

Not because it’s Rob’s model, not because it’s my model, not because the School of

Evangelism model, because it’s Jesus’ model.

The last lesson we’re going to

on Tuesday night, you’re gonna see Jesus at work in every single aspect.

If you’ll be serious and you’ll follow this model, I promise you it’ll work.

I’ve talked to a congregation in Alabama called me a while back and he said, this preacher

said, Keno, it ain’t working like you guys said it would work.

It’s not working.

I said, tell me what’s going on.

I said, he said, we’re not having any baptisms.

I said, well, brother, how many Bible studies are you having?

He said, we’re not having any Bible studies.

I said, well, let’s go back to the first of the model.

How many contacts do you have?

They’re 200 members.

He said, well, that’s the part I didn’t want to talk about.

I said, well, since you called me, let’s just talk about it.

How many contacts do you have?

And he said, well, I know we need 20, but we’ve only got two.

I said, 20?

You need 2,000, brother.

If you want this to work, you need 2,000 contacts.

That’s not hard to get.

If you guys have 50 people here, we can get 500 contacts easy.

we’re going talk about that in the next lesson.

You can get them easy, but you just got to do your part.

You got to be serious about it.

You get 500 contacts, you’ll end up with about 500.

to six baptisms in a year.

That’s 10 % growth.

If you grow by 10 % every year for seven years you double in size every seven years.

It’s very easy.

The math works.

It works all over the country.

We’ve seen it at congregations all over the country.

So Jesus wants our loyalty to be greater to Him than to our family.

He wants our loyalty to be greater to Him than our own comforts.

Jesus wants our loyalty to Him to be greater than our own desires for living in this world

and for the life of this world.

If we’re strong, if we’re loyal to Christ, if we put Him above all else, and if we make it

our mission that we’re gonna share that with other people, not only will this congregation

grow, but the kingdom will grow.

We grew from 22 to 70 in three years doing just this.

And then we had about 16 people move away, three families that made up 16 members moved

away.

But you know what, they’re faithful where they’re at.

And so the kingdom is still growing.

The kingdom’s much bigger.

than this congregation in Collierville.

The kingdom is much bigger than the congregation that I attend in Cahuita, Oklahoma.

As long as we’re kingdom growth, that’s what we’re looking for.

I know congregations, you know, we’re losing a congregation about every three days in the

United States.

We lose 150 congregations a year in the United States of America.

I know congregations that say, we’re growing, we’ve doubled, we’ve tripled in size in the

last five years and haven’t baptized the soul.

All they’re doing is cannibalizing all these congregations that are shutting down.

If you’re not having baptisms, the kingdom’s not growing.

That’s what we’re here for is kingdom growth and I’ll study with anybody in this entire

world I don’t care where they’re at as long as they become a Christian and the kingdom

grows It’s nice when your congregation grows and it’ll happen, but we’ll work.

We’ll do whatever we have to do to see kingdom growth I hope that you’ll stick with us on

not only through the rest of the day today But I hope you be back tonight and or this

afternoon, and I hope you’ll be here Monday Tuesday Monday Tuesday We’re gonna really get

into the mechanics of it.

We’re gonna have some role playing we’re gonna talk about one of the lessons we’re gonna

talk about

is how to close a Bible study.

If you’ve ever done a Bible study and you get through the end of lesson three or whatever

study you’re using and they don’t respond, what do you do?

It’s gonna be a very, it’s a vital lesson for that next step that you take to get them

into the waters of baptism with a very high effective rate.

So you’re gonna wanna be here for that.

Please join us on Monday night and on Tuesday night as well.

I thank you for your time this morning.

Before we pause for our worship service, let’s go to our Lord in prayer.

Dearly Father, we thank you so much for this congregation here at Collierville, Father.

We thank you that we’ve been given the opportunity to come here and to work with them,

Father.

We thank you for their desire to evangelize.

thank you for their desire to reach out to lost souls and to lead others to you.

And Father, we do this because we understand how important it is for our salvation and for

the salvation of others.

And we understand what a blessing it was that Christ was willing to give his life to

sacrifice himself on that cross for us, while we were yet a sinful people.

And Father, I just pray as we get ready to end this Bible class and prepare for our

morning worship that you would help us to keep our minds focused on you and solely on you,

that we would dismiss all the things of the world from our minds, and that we could take

this opportunity to learn how we could better serve you.

your son’s blessed and holy name.

Thank you all.