Baptist Distinctives: The Role of the Church

If you wouldn't, your Bibles tonight turn to the Book of Colossians, chapter 1, verse 18. In fact, our purpose in life is to bring glory to God and to give him glory. A great message in this song.

Well, I had the opportunity yesterday or Monday to drive the bus with the juniors campers to Lake Texoma. I on the shuttle bus that I drove was all the girls. No comment. Yeah, let us pray. But I know Ms. Bercy kept saying, I'm sorry we're so loud. I said, I.

I get it. I mean, number one, they're junior campers. I mean, that's just part of the deal. And then just the girls. It was awesome. I actually enjoyed it.

I enjoyed hearing them back there just having a good time. And then the boys were on the van.

We got up to Lake Texoma there to the Texoma Baptist Youth Camp, and we had to sit in the bus for a while because they certain rules about filling out forms and all sorts of stuff. So anyway, we're just kind of sitting there, but right after we finally got off the bus and got him inside and I saw Archer come around.

Archer, everybody know Jantz's boy? He came around the side of that bus and I went to the back of the bus.

And as he came out from behind the bus, I just flattened him and him and I just rolled on the ground a little bit. It was awesome. Classic tackle technique, you know, the small little boy.

Anyway, he's not small anymore, but I'm so thankful we have a little fun and pray for them and pray they have a good week, that God protects them, that God would speak to their hearts and that they have a great time. They have a great time. So. And pray for our counselors. Amen. Colossians, chapter 1, verse 18.

Paul says here, and he that is talking about Christ is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence.

And it hasn't been too long ago, we preached on the book of Colossians, and we preached this verse reminding you that Christ is the head of the church. And for us, as we've been studying this, understand that Christ is the head of every church.

That the body of Christ is the church, is each individual church is the body of Christ. Because we know the Bible teaches a local, visible church only. No universal, invisible church, no universal, visible church.

The Bible implicitly teaches a local church only. And so Christ is to be the head of the church. Look at Philippians. You just Turn back a couple of pages. Philippians 1:1. A couple of pages back.

Philippians 1:1 says Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi. So again Paul is writing to Philippi. He's again addressing those that are there.

He says, with the bishops and deacons just showing that there was some structure.

There's again officers of the church and those who lead the church, the bishops, again a bishop, elder, pastor, are the same office, the same office in the Bible. Now turn with me to first Peter, chapter five and we'll one Peter chapter five.

Let's look at verse one, First Peter, chapter five and verse one through three. Peter says, the elders which are among you.

So he's talking to pastors, the pastors that are among you, the bishops that are among you, I exhort, who am also an elder and a witness of the suffering of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed, feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, not because you have to, but willingly, not for filthy lucre, not for money, but of a ready mind, neither as being lords over God's heritage, you shouldn't be a dictator, but being examples or ensamples to the flock. And that's what a pastor should do. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word and Lord, we thank you for the doctrines that are taught.

And I pray tonight that these would be very clear. Help me, give me wisdom as I teach them. And we'll thank you in Jesus name. Amen. The Baptist distinctives. This is our.

I don't know how many messages, but we're coming down to the end. We're on number nine and 10 tonight and there'll be 11 and 12. There'll be one more, one more message.

And so tonight is on the Baptist distinctive of self supporting, self governing, self propagating. The church is to be self supporting, self governing and self propagating.

Some of those are the last one's a little big of a word and we'll cover that in a moment. But the Baptist distinctives are a collection of biblical truths unique to Baptists.

And again I have to clarify because I've already had some who have questioned. Well, preacher, other denominations, other groups teach these. They teach some of them.

But what makes this list unique is that Baptists teach all of them and believe all of them. Historic Baptists believe all of these. It's unique to Baptists to believe this particular list of doctrines by the way. It's a Bible list.

It's what the Bible teaches.

I said to someone actually twice today, I said if I didn't believe Baptists were as close doctrinally to what the Bible teaches, I would be something else. Whether that be a Lutheran or Methodist or whatever it may be or a non denominational. I said somebody tonight, non denominational.

There really is no such thing, their non denominational denomination anyway. That's a whole other discourse we can have together.

But understand that Baptists have historically believed these doctrines, these teachings, and they are, that's because they're found in the word of God. And so Baptists are a little unique. We're a little bit unique. That's a good thing.

Our theme verse for the study is again 2 Timothy 2:2 the things that thou has heard of me among many witnesses the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also. And I've told you you ought to circle the word in second Timothy 2, 2 the things that thou has heard and you ought to circle the word same.

The things that we have heard and we have learned and we've been taught the same we teach to others. And the greatest illustration of that, and I should have really emphasized this last Wednesday, the greatest illustration of that is baptism.

Because because there are so many who teach contrary to the Bible concerning baptism. Baptism does not save you. Baptism does not. Baptism is a picture of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And so there are the majority even of beliefs around the world is that baptism saves you. If you're not baptized, you're not going to heaven.

And sometimes it's a belief that baptism in a certain church or a certain that you have to be baptized in their church in order to go to heaven.

And so understand that it's important that we take what the Bible teaches, Bible doctrine and we teach the listen again, the same commit thou to faithful men. And that we don't deviate from what the Bible teaches and what the Bible says.

No matter what, you know, tradition may have or no matter what some man may say.

We teach the Bible, we preach the Bible and accurately and we interpret the Bible according to Scripture and the context of the scripture and so forth and so on. I can't be adamant about that enough. And I had that question last week.

Again, baptism is probably the best example of a doctrine that has not been the thing that was committed to them, has not been taught the same on down through the generations and generations. And so we have to hold the line. We have to teach the next Generation. All right, so tonight we have again, 9 and 10. Really, these go together.

Self supporting. The church is to be self supporting. In other words, it ought to be self supporting by the resources of its own membership.

All right, so a church, to be self supporting. A church is to be self governing. We've talked about this one a little bit. We won't cover this as much as some of the other points.

Self governing, it means controlled, directed by its own membership. Its own membership. And not outside authority. Not outside authority. I've lived a very, very sheltered life.

I was raised in an independent Baptist church. Been in an independent Baptist church all my life.

A couple of times I have been in a service of another denomination and I probably not been in another church that was not of, like faith. No less than five times. It just, just. I don't have any want to, to do that, number one.

So I just looked up today, what did Methodists, how does the hierarchy of the Methodist churches, how does that work? And it's pretty intricate the way the Methodist Church works and how they, you know, the congregations don't choose their pastors.

You know, the hierarchy chooses the pastors and they send them to churches and the hierarchy decides when that pastor leaves. And by the way, it could, in the Methodist Church, it could be a man or a woman pastor.

And so it's really, to me, that's just a foreign thought because nowhere in the Bible does it teach that. Nowhere. It doesn't teach it anywhere. And so that is a tradition that they have that they have installed within the hierarchy.

And so again, when we say self governing, we're saying that Heritage Baptist Church, its membership makes the decisions. Now somebody has said, well, then the church is a democracy. That's not true either. The church is really not a democracy. It's a limited democracy.

And by that I mean we have some rules to go by. I make the comparison to the United States. The United States is not a democracy. And I just love.

I read an article today about a liberal who was saying he rewrote the. Y' all saw that? Probably the, the filmmaker rewrote the Pledge of Allegiance and he put in there a democracy. America is not a democracy.

America is a republic. It's really a limited democracy. Why? Because we have the Constitution.

We have rules that we go by that don't change, doesn't matter what you think or I think.

Here are the rules that, you know, unless you can get all the states, four of them, 35 of them, to make the change, and that's difficult add to or take Away from the Constitution. So the Church is the same way. It is a democracy, yes, but it's limited in its scope because we follow the head of the church, which is Jesus Christ.

And how does Jesus Christ lead the church? He leads the church through his word.

And so we have Paul especially writing in his epistles, and others writing Peter and others writing epistles that help us know how the church should function and help us know how the church should be led. And so we follow the head of the church, which is Jesus Christ. And the pastor is the under shepherd. And that's why I read First Peter, chapter five.

I just want you to see that, that the pastor is there. He is exhorted to lead the flock. He is exhorted to do so willingly and not for money. And to be of a ready mind.

He's there to not be lord over the, the heritage. In other words, he's not to be a dictator, but he's to be a shepherd and lead the flock. Lead the flock. And we'll cover that some more in a moment.

But again, self governing, self supporting. So again, the membership supplying the resources that the church needs.

Self governing, controlled directly from the congregation according to the Bible. And no council of bishops, no general conference, no judicial council outside the church. It's all inside the church.

And then lastly, self propagating, propagating, propagating. It's a big word. Reproducing, reproducing, replicating. It's the church's purpose to propagate the gospel. We are to spread the gospel.

And we ought to that, and that is our primary purpose. Churches birth churches. And we see this in College Station with Brother Jonathan Moore. As we birth that church, our church is birthing that church.

Again, the word church means called out assembly of baptized believers carrying out the Great Commission. Again, carrying out the commands of Christ. That's the purpose of the church. The purpose of the church.

We have it up, you know, we have our purposes up on the, on the wall here again, loving God. We ought to love the Lord with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind. We ought to worship him as a congregation.

We ought to worship him individually. We ought to love him. He ought to be supreme in our life. You know, he is the one we focus on. Number two is growing together.

We ought to grow together through discipleship, through the ministries of the church. And then we are to serve each other and we're to serve our community.

But if you put anything, you put above all of that, we know, number one, the purpose of the Church is to spread the gospel, the church governance. There are various ways in which churches in America and around the world govern the churches. One is Episcopal.

It means it's run by officials and has a headquarters. In other words, it's through hierarchy. That's kind of like the Methodists and the Episcopalians and many of the others who have hierarchies.

The Catholic Church especially is the best example of that one where the local assemblies make some decisions, but are very limited in what they can do. The bishops and the cardinals and everybody above them make the decisions. Then there's a presbytery.

And this really kind of goes back to a convention. In other words, some churches are a part of a convention where the convention does have some say.

And those pastors, those presbytery, those pastors of that convention will have some say. And that would be the Southern Baptist Convention and some others, American Baptists.

There's many different conventions in America, and all of them have their place. But I would say to you, it's not found in the Bible either. You say, well, we're part of fellowship. There's a difference.

Sometimes guys in fellowships forget that. Me and Brother Stone could have a conversation about that. But we're independent. We're independent. I love Worth Baptist Church. I do. I love brother Dr.

Barber and brother Weaver. Now Brother Gillett. That's a great, wonderful sister church. But we're independent of them.

I'm thankful that I can go to and get some advice from Brother Gillett and some of the members that I've known over there for years and years. Victory Baptist Church in Weatherford. I love that church, but we're not a part of a convention. And we're not everybody. Good.

We'll describe this some more in a minute. And then again, what we just described was a limited democracy led by the pastor of the churches of the church's own choosing.

So led by a pastor of the church's own choosing that you, as the congregation, get to choose the pastor. You've had one for a while. So sorry. Maybe we ought to put it. No.

Every church is to be independent and autonomous, functioning as a limited democracy following one head. That's Jesus Christ under the leadership of a pastor and under shepherd, directed by the Holy Spirit. That is the biblical church. Somebody say amen.

Help me out. Okay, good. Thank you. Let me say that again, then. Every church biblically is to be independent.

That means autonomous, functioning as a limited democracy following one head. That's Jesus Christ, through the word of God, under the leadership of a pastor who is an under shepherd directed by the Holy Spirit. That's it.

That is a biblical. Thank you. Appreciate that. Biblical governance of the church. Of the church. It is to operate by freewill offerings of its members.

That's why over the years we haven't. We will use fundraisers for. We'll do anything for the youth department. I mean, that's like we'll do weird stuff for the.

I mean, we're going to raise money. We're going to do it for the youth department.

But I've had people ask over the years, well, why don't we have this sale or do something like some of the other churches do? Like if we have a yard sale, it's for the youth or if we have a car wash, it's for the youth.

We're not going to raise building funds and general expense funds by having garage sales. That's not what the Lord intended. The Lord intended for us as members to support the church in order for it to function as it needs to function.

And God's been so good to Heritage Baptist Church over the years and you have been so faithful to give it is to. Again, it's to operate under the freewill offerings of its membership. It is to fulfill its purpose to evangelize, baptize and disciple.

All right, so number one, it's to be self supporting. Self supporting? The church is to be self supporting how? By way of the tithes and offerings of its membership. Of its membership.

It's not the world's responsibility to finance the church. I've been very reluctant over the years. I have yet to go outside of the church and try to raise money from, you know, local businesses and so forth.

Unless we're again, for the youth department would do anything. I don't know why that's true. Maybe what's good for the youth to get out and work for their money, you know, and bake sales, whatever we do.

But been reluctant over the years. I think there is, there is a time and place for that. If we ever did the community building over here, that's on the master plan.

That community building, I believe could be under that kind of designation where if the community is going to be using it and there's many different various ways in which we could use it, that we might raise money outside the church. But I'm telling you, the Bible makes it very clear. The church is to function and operate with the offerings of its membership.

It's God's people who are financially obligated to carry out the work of God and to do so through their giving. Well, I don't know how many times I've had this. Somebody say to me, well, preacher, you know, the tithe was Old Testament. That was Old Testament law.

And because it's Old Testament law, the New Testament tells us that that's been done away with wrong. The tithe was before the law. The Mosaic Law was, of course, given to God, to Moses, to the children of Israel when they came out of Egypt.

And before that, we had Abraham, who gave tithes to Melchizedek.

And you can go throughout and see that the tithe has always been around, even back to the Garden of Eden, where where they made sacrifices and so forth. And so the tithe is the Lord's. That is a new test, Old and New Testament principle. The tithe, again, is the Lord's.

The tithe was before the Mosaic Law. I love again. And we got to attend Dr. House's birthday party here a few weeks ago, and I miss him. I do.

He taught our Story Stewardship conference every year. He really did educate our church family and the core of our church family on giving. And we're going to miss that.

And so from time to time, we're going to. We have different speakers now. Brother Weatherby or Brother Knickerbocker, maybe others. But I just remember Dr.

House saying over and over and over again, I ain't got no stuff. I just love that. I love the way it's worded. It's eloquent, very eloquent. Dr. House was always eloquent. He was never to the point. I ain't got no stuff.

It's not mine. It never was mine. My stuff ain't my stuff. It all belongs to the Lord.

Psalm 24, verse 1 says, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein. I am simply to be a steward of the resources God has given me. And again, it's God's stuff. I'm not going to turn over there.

But one of the greatest scriptures in the Old Testament in regards to understanding that we don't have no stuff is actually King David. It's found if you want to look it up later. First Chronicles 29 and read verses 2 through 14.

And there David is raising some funds and doing some things, and he makes this statement. He says, of thine own have we given thee. In other words, all we are doing, David's saying, is giving back what you gave to us.

Even King David understood that. King David understood he ain't got no stuff. He probably didn't say it just like that, but he ain't got no stuff.

I'm thankful God's blessed us with stuff. I enjoy the stuff. All the great gifts the Bible says comes down from above, from the Father of lights.

And we, and we are to enjoy the stuff God's given us, but understand it's not ours. We only give back what he first, what he first had. We understand and know that the tithe belongs to the Lord.

And if you are a growing Christian, if you're a new Christian and you're a growing Christian, encourage you to step out by faith and start tithing 10% before the government gets their hands in it. And I promise you, based upon the scripture and the promises of the Bible and that if you will do that, God will bless you.

My dad taught me and I believe it 100% because the Bible teaches the principle that God, if you are a Christian, a born again child of God, that you can do more with the 90 than you will the hundred, you just will. Because in giving and tithing and giving as God has commanded you and in obedience to him, then God will bless you. God will bless that.

God will bless it. I've heard preachers say, you know, step out by faith, start tithing and if it doesn't work for you, we'll give your money back. Maybe.

But I promise you it will work. Every time I've had people come to my office and say, preacher, we, you know, we're broke and we do the Dave Ramsey thing around here.

And if you are broke, you don't have your act together, encourage you to sign up. They're fixing to get started here in a week or two. Sign up for the Dave Ramsey course.

It's a biblical based on biblical principles, how to manage your money. But if you're in a. Most people are in a bind as Christians, notice I'm saying as Christians, a lost person, it ain't going to affect them either way.

It's still God's stuff. But now I'm a Christian, now I'm a child of God, I want to obey the Lord, I delight in his law. Amen. And so I'm going to give and God will bless that.

Every time I've had people come to my office and say, preacher, I'm broke and if I was to tithe, I couldn't pay my water bill. What should I do? Tithe. First thing. That's the first check you write.

Since we don't write checks anymore, it's the first thing that comes electronically out of your bank. Account. And it ought to be the first thing number one on the list. Before my car payment, before my house payment, everything. It's number one.

It's just to me, it's a no brainer. I never even give it a thought. Just going to obey the Lord because I know, I've experienced it, I've witnessed it, the blessings of God.

Now, is he going to TV evangelist you? If you give a thousand, God's going to give you 10,000. No, that's, that's, that's malarkey. Bible doesn't promise that.

That's just, that's Joel Osteen and the guy out here about the lake, Mr. Copeland, you know, he ought to just come on. He ought to come on TV and say, you know what? You give a thousand, God will give you 10,000.

If God doesn't, I'll give you 10,000. Wouldn't that fix it? That would, that would be awesome. He wouldn't do that because he knows it's not true. He ought to get people's money.

All right, I feel better about the whole thing. Oh, and I know we have some visitors and things here, so let me clarify. Jesus Christ pointed out people.

He called the Pharisees and Sadducees, vipers and snakes. And I think as a pastor, I have. I have no problem calling names when it's, when it's the right thing. When it's called upon to be a shepherd.

Watch out for those wolves in sheep clothing. Amen. And I again encourage you, if you're going to listen to people on TV or podcasts or whatever, make sure it's a pastor most of the time.

These evangelists who are on TV and radio, man, they're messed up. And some others are too. All right, I got distracted. Distracted. Tithing again belongs to the Lord. Abraham paid tithe to Melchizedek. Again.

The New Testament never addressed the setting aside of the tithe. In fact, it infers and it. Jesus Christ watched them tithe and he never said, no, no, they shouldn't be doing that. No, he endorsed it.

And so we are to tithe and give an offering. The tithe belongs to the Lord. The offering is my love gift, my freewill offering. That's my mission given.

That's other areas in which I can be a blessing to pay for a child to go to junior camp. I appreciate some of you doing that. What a blessing. The temple in the Old Testament was the center of Jewish life. Church, our church.

The church is our spiritual temple and ought to be the center of our Life. And by that I mean your family's life. It's where your friends ought to be. It's where life happens. Amen. It's where I get to give.

It's where I can serve. It's where I can worship. It's where I can have life.

I was reminded this week again of what the blessings of heritage that literally your child can come to our school, meet and have friends there. The same friends for the most part that they're going to have on Wednesday night and Sunday, I promise you.

And I can look back on 30 something years now and I can tell you that is a wonderful benefit. That is not a detriment. I know some people have said, well we're just up at the church all the time. All the time. Hallelujah.

And as long as you as a mom and dad are leading the way and serving with your kids and not just pushing them out there, but you're alongside and working with them and doing and singing. No, no, no. They're going to look back on it like I do.

I'm thankful my dad drug us to church and I'm thankful he we served and we went soul winning and all the things that we did as kids and it was amazing. Life was church and church was life. Good stuff. I need to move on. Number two, self governing churches. I'll spend two seconds on this.

Christ again is the head of the church through his word and again under the earthly leadership of a pastor. The under shepherd directed by the Holy Spirit. And we've spent time on that on another section a few weeks ago and so I'm going to go on past it.

Number three, self propagating church. And we got about five minutes here.

So I just wanted to tell you I'm so burdened about church planting and about missions and the need to spread the gospel. I'm telling you it's amazing.

Number one, it's amazing the opportunities out there and that people for the most part will respond if we get out there in love and kindness and give them the gospel. And there's so many areas now that the population has exploded and that need a church, need a church so badly.

I could not believe that College Station and Brian down there had, did not have an independent Baptist church anymore. I'm like how does 200,000 people in population and 80,000 students and there's not an independent Baptist church.

And what a blessing it is to plant one there. What a blessing it is for us to get to birth a church there. And Brother Moore's doing a Great job and Ms. Edith and the kids and just pray for them.

But that's it. We need a revival of church planting. We need revival of church planting and understanding what that is.

Again, we are commanded to preach the gospel to every creature. That's our purpose as a church, to spread the gospel.

In Acts, we know that we are to spread the gospel and again in Haslett and in Texas and the United States and then to the uttermost around the world. We're to reproduce ourselves as much as possible as we can. Understand that the early church was given the command to spread the gospel.

And for the most part, early on, they did not do so. They did not spread out past Jerusalem. And guess what happened? Persecution.

And because of the persecution, they got spread all over the place and churches started popping up, Churches were planted.

Then you had Paul come on board as Paul was persecuting the church and of course the Lord slapped him around and he got saved and he began to, you know, serve the Lord and he began to plant churches, him and Barnabas, out of the Church of Antioch. So remember this too.

If you go back and you read Acts, chapter eight, you'll see where Barnabas and Paul were called out of the Church of Antioch to go and to plant churches. They made their first missionary journey. They come back and they report to the Church of Antioch.

That's the biblical pattern and that's what we do here. We support the missionaries that are in the hallway here and all the letters are up. We support them.

And then from periodically, from time to time, they come back and they report to us, let us know how things are going. They give us letters supposed to every two or three months anyway, and you can go read about it. That makes them accountable.

But they're our representative there. They're planting a church in Honduras. Brother Parade has planted many churches in Honduras and we had a part in that. Around the world.

We're planting churches right now in America, we're planting churches right now. Brother Martinez up in Colorado and again, Matthew Gage and there's so many other church planters.

We support the church plant that we supported in Georgia, McLaren, what's his anyway, McElreath. They're this close, this close to buying a beautiful building. And they've been around three years now. We supported them three years.

And a investment banker, a real estate man who became. He's going around and if you're inner city churches, he's buying inner city churches for independent Baptist churches.

If you'll plant a church in the inner city, he'll buy a building for you. And that's fixing to happen to the church there. Isn't that amazing? And we do need to reseed the inner cities, man.

A lot of the inner cities, man, the church has left. And so there is a revival of people going back into the inner cities and reaching the inner cities. So again, planting churches.

We are self propagating again, starting churches and reaching the gospel around the world. And we preach this all the time. But I'm just reminding you that the church ought to be planting churches. Now.

In the past, we planted two or three and we've learned a few things. We're just never going to give up. We keep planting churches. People getting saved, people getting called to preach.

Josh Herrera, me and Brother Stone just had this conversation. Josh Herrera wouldn't be in the ministry, humanly speaking, if the church in Corpus didn't exist.

And I believe God's going to use Joshua in a great way. I'm telling you, there are opportunities all over America and Texas to plant churches.

And we need to be tenacious about it and never give up, never surrender, don't turn back, keep planting churches and keep on keeping on. Amen. I believe that. I do. God's going to bless that. We need a church planting mentality at Heritage Baptist Church.

We've always kind of had that because we are a church plant and we need to continue that. We are to plant churches, by the way. Churches plant churches, not man. So Jonathan Moore is not planting a church. Actually, we are planting a church.

And John Moore, Jonathan Moore is our representative. Amen. We had that discussion about ordination too. You know, the Presbyterian, the pastor don't ordain.

The church ordains the power and the authorities in the church. Churches planting churches. I'll conclude with this. The church finances are provided by its membership through the tithes and offerings.

I want to encourage you, be faithful, be faithful. Utilities have to be paid for. Aren't you thankful for air conditioning?

But because we're kind of the core here tonight, we do have a couple of visitors. But I kind of remind you it's good every once in a while to be shocked at how much the electric bill is here. You know, it runs.

Our utilities run about 70,000 a year. 70,000. That's not just electric, that's water and everything. I'm going to spill the beans here. Our building insurance is $45,000 a year.

We just got noticed this week it's going to 60. Yeah, yeah.

I was down in Houston with all those pastors on Friday with the 30 by 30 Church Planting Conference and each one of them was talking about their insurance. I'm telling you, it's crazy. I know one church that they had to drop their insurance. They have buildings, just.

In fact, they have more buildings than we do. And they had to drop it. They couldn't afford it. I'm just telling you, there are bills to pay. But more than that, there's local outreach, man.

There's tracks to be bought, you know, there's new move in bags to be purchased and brochures to be printed. Amen, man. Opportunities we have around here to reach our community with the gospel, man. What a worthy investment. A worthy investment.

The school, the daycare, all these hooks in the water. But they all require and necessitate the giving of the membership. I want to encourage you again, what better investment can you make?

I believe we at Heritage Baptist have kept our focus on reaching people. And as long as that's there, God's going to bless that. By the way, God's got plenty of money and he's always provided for us.

And then number two, church control. Remember again, that's local. I'm so thankful for our deacons. I'm thankful for our finance team. I'm thankful for our trustees.

I'm thankful for our pastoral staff. I'm thankful for you. We don't need somebody outside of here telling us what to do. And that's not biblical.

We under the leadership of the word of God, which is Jesus Christ. The church functions and then lastly the church plant planting churches.

Our primary, primary purpose, reaching people with the gospel of Jesus Christ to give them the gospel to baptize them and then disciple them. That is our purpose, our primary purpose. I'm thankful we get to minister to others too, by way of caring for them.

And yesterday that was our Lady's terrific job in feeding the family and all the things that go on with a funeral. And brother Elliot would testify to that. What a great church family we have. You guys are amazing.

And that is part of it, but primarily is to give the gospel, tell the good news of Jesus Christ, to keep going, to keep on. Never surrender, never give up, keep on, keep on till Jesus comes, right? We're to work till he comes. Amen. Let's all stand. We have a verse invitation.

Have thine own way, Lord. Maybe tonight you need to come down and just pray. And maybe you're not tithing and giving an offering. Maybe you need to come down and pray.

Lord, help me. I want to make that commitment and I believe he will bless you. Maybe tonight.

Again, just thinking about why we're Baptists and why we're self governing and having that knowledge and understanding from the Bible. If you need more scriptures, I encourage you. There's the 12 Baptist distinctives are on the back, back there by the bookstore. Just a paper.

And it gives you a lot of references you can go through and you can look up a lot of these biblical references on your own. And then again, given the gospel.

Heavenly Father, we thank you again, Lord, for our church family and what a blessing it is to be a part of this wonderful church. And I pray God that you would continue to have us focus on the main thing of reaching people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Lord, if there's someone here tonight who does not know you as their Savior, Lord, I pray they get saved tonight. In Jesus name, Amen. As we sing have Thine Own way, Lord.