Acts 13 — Jim Cymbala

Honored to be here this morning. Good morning to everyone. All is well. You got your business meeting done. And the rest of the time here this morning, we can concentrate on what the Lord might want to say to all of us so that we would be more efficient in what we do for Jesus Christ.

The Hand of the Lord in Antioch

You know, the verse just came to comes to me on how the church in Antioch that we're going to read about today, how it began. It says certain men from Cyprus and Cyrene, that's the Mediterranean and Northern Africa.

Certain men from Cyprus and Cyrene went to Antioch and the hand of the Lord was with them and multitudes turned to the Lord. I've often prayed and I express it to God all the time. I'd rather live just six months with the hand of the Lord with me than to live 10 years just struggling in my own strength.

Do I get an amen for that? Because when the Lord is with you, things happen. Lives are changed. The gospel shows its power. Otherwise you just circle the wagons and you hold onto the faithful 40 or 400 or whatever.

And that's not why Jesus Christ came, died, resurrected and then sent the Holy Spirit. So it's a real honor for me to be here and I have nothing to sell. I have no vision to impart to you. I have no formula because there is no formula.

There's only nothing works, but God, God works, nothing else works. And when we say something else works, we grieve the Holy Spirit because he was sent to glorify Christ, not a method or a church or formula.

So with that in mind, I'd like to direct your attention to the book of Acts to chapter 13, which is a kind of turning point in the book of Acts. A lot of things change once you get to Acts 13 instead of Jerusalem being the center of attention and the focus of what the Lord is doing.

It now goes to Syria in Antioch, which is where all these people are being killed right now in the civil war and unrest that's happening there. But 2000 years ago, another revolution was beginning. Chapter 13 of Acts verse one in the church at Antioch, there were prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, which means black.

He probably was a black man. Lucius of Cyrene, Manan, who had been brought up with Herod, the Tetrarch and Saul. Saul is not yet the apostle Paul. He's just Saul. And in fact, in this little story, his name is changed to Paul.

And while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I've called them. So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.

The two of them sent on their way by the Holy Spirit, went down to Seleucia and sailed from there to Cyprus. So we're in the Mediterranean now. This is by the way, the island where Barnabas came from.

When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. And John, that's John Mark was with them as their helper. They traveled through the whole island and they came until they came to Paphos.

And there they met a Jewish sorcerer and false prophet named Bar-Jesus, who was an attendant of the pro-council Sergius Paulus. That's a Roman government official. The pro-council and intelligent man sent for Barnabas and Saul because he wanted to hear the word of God.

Imagine that. He wanted to hear the word of God. But Elimes, the sorcerer, for that is what his name means, opposed them and tried to turn the pro-council from the faith. Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit looked straight at Elimes and said, you are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right.

You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop preventing the perverting the right ways of the Lord? Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind and for a time you will be unable to see the light of the sun.

Immediately mist and darkness came over him and he groped about seeking someone to lead him by the hand. And when the pro-council Sergius Paulus saw what had happened, he believed, no kidding, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord.

Facing the Church’s Critical Hour

Brothers and sisters, let's do something that they call in New York City in the streets. Let's do real talk. I want to talk just straight to you because we're at a very critical hour in our country. We're at a critical hour in the life of the Christian church across the board, the entire body of Christ.

My background was not seminary or Bible school, but I was a all city basketball player in New York City. Went to college on a basketball scholarship, played in the NCAA tournament school. I went to University of Rhode Island that I captained, beat UConn in a playoff.

So we ended up going to the big dance. As they say, there was a scoreboard up there. We didn't play by faith alone. We played by scoreboard and after eight or nine days, nine minutes of a game, if the score was 22 to nine, the other team, coach would call a timeout or signal to me and I would run over and call a timeout.

And we would go in a huddle and nobody would say like, wow, aren't our shorts nice and the gold trim on the, on the pants. And isn't this fun? We're exercising and getting a good workout. No. We looked up at that score and we said, we will turn this around.

We'll go to a zone press. We'll go to a man to man press. We'll speed the game up. We'll slow the game down. We'll go to a box and one, but we will do something because they have 22 and we have nine. We will change.

You know, Einstein's definition of madness is to do the same thing over and over again and think that there'll be different results. So in sports and in business and in everything else, the children of this world are wiser often than the children of light.

Everyone's making adjustments and changing because they want to be more efficient, but it's very hard in the church often to bring about any kind of real substantial change. Many years ago when my wife and I first came to downtown Brooklyn and had less than 20 people in the church and the first offering we took was $85 was the total tithes and offering.

So she had to get a second job. I got a second job. It is what it is. It was what it was. And uh, here we were surrounded in downtown Brooklyn by no crack cocaine then, but a lot of heavy duty heroin, a lot of alcoholism, prostitutes, trolling the streets a block and a half either way.

When you walk down, what a perfect place to see the power of the gospel operate. But I had been around people who a lot of times, uh, growing up in and around church, I wasn't a strong Christian in high school or college, but I've been around church enough to know that there were certain people who lived off of what God did in the past and they were all talking about what God did in the past, the great awakening, the second great awakening, the Welsh revival, what happened at Azusa street.

And they would harp on that and tell wonderful stories which are inspirational and true and have their place. But I noticed that some of them went 20, 30, 40 years seeing very little fruit in their lives.

Didn't baptize 10 people in two years and yet sinners abounding. Other people lived with the far off future where before Christ comes again, there's going to be a great outpouring of the Holy spirit. And the last days I'll pour out my spirit upon all flesh, which really began on the day of Pentecost according to Peter.

But I noticed that they too saw a very little fruit, but we're always talking about this far off day and I'm all for those things. They have their place. But, but I mean, here I was in downtown Brooklyn surrounded by God knows what, no Bible school training.

And I had a Bible and I knew about the Holy spirit. So what do you do to see a change? What do you do to make converts? The hand of the Lord was with those men. They had never been to seminary. The hand of the Lord was with those men in Antioch and multitudes turned to the Lord.

Their lives were changed. They were transformed. They were lost. Now they were found blind. Now they saw lost steeped in sin and now being sanctified by the Holy spirit as they put their faith in Jesus Christ.

So how does that happen? How do you do that? More importantly, how did Paul do that? How did the book of Acts get written? How without any new Testament being written, you can't hand out any literature with no buildings owned by the Christian church.

They didn't own any buildings for 300 years, no literature, no money, no connection with the government, no, no morality in the Roman empire. During the book of Acts, men like Caligula and Nero were the emperors.

Read about them. They were perverts, degenerates, amoral, madmen, crossdressers. And Jesus said, pay taxes to those characters. And yet you never see anywhere in the new Testament that Paul lifts up his hands and say, what are we going to do?

I mean, look at Nero's in charge of this thing. Never says a word about it. It's just like, let's get this on. Let's preach the good news of Jesus Christ for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is the power. The commentators are not sure if he spent even three months, some of them in Thessalonica and he founded a church and ordained elders. How'd he do that? Haven't you ever wondered about that?

We're complaining about a hundred different things and he's just rocking and rolling for Jesus in Thessalonica, turning the world upside down. So we got to do real talk, get away from all denial and all rationalizations and face what is.

It is what it is. Why this moment is so critical is that in a recent book called the great evangelical recession, the author whose conclusions I don't agree with, but his data at the beginning is irrefutable.

Five major polling agencies, three Christians, two secular, one is Pew research. Barner is one of the Christian ones. They did a survey in America of how many people are really Christian using a definition of not right wing, uh, conservative, uh, flag waving things or, uh, or, or born againers who now that phrase has become part of the culture.

It's people who believe it wouldn't matter. Jesus or Buddha or whatever. I'm just born again. I had an experience, some emotional experience, not Protestantism, but people who have been born again claim that Jesus Christ believe he's the only way of salvation.

No other name is given whereby we must be saved. They, they regard the Bible as the only rule of faith and doctrine. They go to church regularly, practice prayer, and they all came five of them. So you know they're on target within four points of each other.

The high number was 9 the low number was 6 that's in America. No, that is what it is. It's not faith to talk fantasy. Faith never deals with fantasy. You face what it is. This is what's happening in our country, in our cities.

Major, uh, Christian denominations in America have been in a numerical decline for the last 10 years. The, the largest denomination in America, I just recently spoke in a couple of their gatherings are in, uh, decline over the last 10 years.

And this is after nine 11. This is after America has been put on notice that life can be disappear in a second. Now has God lost his power? Has the gospel lost its power? It's ridiculous to talk about secular humanism or demonic powers and principalities or the white house or Obama or Bush or the Democrats or the Republicans.

That's totally irrelevant to the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Come on. Can we say amen to that by putting our hands together? If they built churches, if they built churches in the book of Acts in the circumstances I just mentioned, what possibly could stop us if we do this the right way?

The problem is never with the culture. The problem is the church has to be the church, which is what I want to lead us to pray about today. Brother Wood has been kind enough to invite me, which is an honor.

And, and I want to, I want to do some, I want, I want to pray with you. I want to call on God with you because God said my house shall be called, not a house of singing, not a house of preaching, but my house shall be called what a house of prayer.

The disciples never asked Jesus once teach us to preach, but they did say, teach us to pray. As Spurgeon said that his weekly prayer meeting was the engine that drove his church. So looking at this story, what do we learn about this account of this turning point in the book of Acts?

Because now from chapter 13 on, almost exclusively the focus of Luke is going to be on the apostle Paul going out with Barnabas on his first missionary journey, then coming back to Antioch reporting to the church, resting up then going out on his second missionary journey with Silas coming back.

No more Jerusalem. Judaizers have got in there, have got in there. And legalists were spoiling a lot of the work that was done by the apostles in the early days. No, it's now Antioch, which is the first place also where you have both people mixing.

Christianity at first was thought to be a Jewish cult and offshoot of Judaism because Jesus was Jewish. All the apostles were Jewish. But now in Antioch you're getting Gentiles and Jews mixing together, worshiping together, having a new life in Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit’s Direction in Ministry

First thing we find out from this story is this. Here's a meeting. Wouldn't you like to been there? The drama of it, the spiritual emotion of it. A meeting is going on and they're seemingly have shut things down and they're just fasting and worshiping the Lord.

You know, sometimes it's good in our churches just shut everything down and seek the Lord. Because if preaching would done it by itself, we would have already seen it done. We have multiple translations of the Bible.

We got a lot of positive things, new praise and worship courses every day, but still there's something about just reaching out to God and saying, God, open the heavens and come down. While they're worshiping the Lord, ministering to him and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, almost certainly through the gifts of the Holy Spirit in a public meeting.

Imagine the drama of it. Names, two people in the meeting. Imagine if that happened today. Two names were picked out. Separate me Barnabas and Saul, Saul of Tarsus. Been a Christian just a number of years, less probably than five or six.

Separate me Barnabas and Saul to the work that I've called them to do. And then they lay their hands on them and they sent them out. And then it says being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they started on this journey.

Notice the indefinite nature of the command that spirit gave. Notice the personality of the spirit. Separate me Barnabas and Saul to the work that I've called them to do. Notice where, when, how long will it last?

I got to, you know, get this in my calendar. No, there's nothing. Just go. Yeah. But what will happen? Just go. You'll find out when you go. If we're control freaks and we want to control them, every service and every facet of the church, you can control it, but you won't have the Holy Spirit guiding you at the same time.

You cannot control the mic and have the Holy Spirit move at the same time. Come on. Can we say amen to that? There has to be direction. There's leadership. There's words of exhortation and teaching that are needed.

But if you're so organized, I was recently at a conference somewhere. So they had me in the green room, a large conference. And they said, so pastor Jim, so here's the deal. And they had the script of the meeting.

So they're going to have praise and worship for 14 minutes. And then they're going to have, uh, uh, announcements in a video about a missions project. That's going to go seven minutes. Then the choir is going to sing two songs.

One's four minutes and 15 seconds. The other one's three minutes and 40 seconds. And they got it all lined up like that. Then they're going to take the offering. A lady's going to come up and sing that offering.

We'll take a minute to set up a minute and a half. And then the offering, her song is three and a half minutes. And then a guy's going to come out and introduce you. Uh, do you want us to introduce you in any way, certain way?

No, whatever. Just say my name. I'll walk out there. No, the introduction will take about a minute. Okay. Then you're going to preach for 22 minutes. Then you got to turn it back to us because don't lead the people to pray.

Uh, we don't do that here, but we had a patriotic number. That's going to last four minutes and 10 seconds. And then we dismiss. Is that right, Bobby? Is that right, Bill? We got this down. Okay, so here, let's go into the meeting now.

Let's, and then they pray. Holy spirit come down and move among us and blow like a mighty wind where, how there's no time for him to get in there. Now listen, now listen, I know where there's multiple services.

Sometimes you have to watch the time of his service. We have nine, 12 and three o 'clock services, about 10 ,000 people coming every Sunday to our church, but we space them. So when we're not crunched as best we can.

But the reason that meetings have been shortened is not multiple service is that a lot of pastors have figured out that folks don't want to be there for very long. They don't mind if the NFL game goes into overtime.

No better. And they don't mind that the movie they rent or watch, they don't care how long that is. But church, you got to keep it shorter. Folks are going to find another place to go in the house that going to look when you're running less than you were running last year.

That's the way the game is played. You know it and I know it, but that doesn't know when that bother us, when that bother you, if you were a pastor in his presence, there's fullness of joy, but folks don't want to be in God's house.

Why would they want to go to heaven? If there's nothing up there, but his presence, just think of that. Wouldn't it, wouldn't that, wouldn't that affect your preaching? Wouldn't that keep you awake at night?

Folks who come and sit under my ministry don't want to be in the house of God for a long period of time, but other things in this world, they don't give a hoot about how long it is. Wouldn't that just stop you unless you're living delusionally, unless you're in some kind of denial?

If they really know Jesus, why wouldn't they want to be with him? Why wouldn't they want to be hearing the word of God? Why wouldn't they want to wait in his presence? This is not dinosaur talk. This is not new school, old school.

That's silly. People say, no, I'm doing church the new way, the old way. There's no new way. There's nothing new under the sun. The Bible says, if it's new, it's not true. And if it's true, it's not new, for there's nothing new under the sun.

It's not new school or old school. It's Bible school. We got to look in the Bible and say, can you imagine when Peter is preaching, someone saying, no, we got to go. The chariot races are beginning. We got to get out of here now.

Can't be watching all this, wasting time in church. Minister of a very, very, very large church in Dallas told me when the Cowboys are playing early on the East Coast, even if they're serving communion, the folks are walking out, he told me.

They're walking out. They're going to see their boys play. They're going to see those Cowboys play while you're serving communion. Would that be anything to do with the religion of this Bible? Does that have anything to do with Christianity?

Have we created an American hybrid, something that is so far removed from the Christianity, handed down to us that we're not even recognizing it? Here's the first thing we learn. Let me do this. The first thing we learn about this, as the Holy Spirit sends out Saul and Barnabas is this.

You can't conduct church work unless you're led by the power and the person of the Holy Spirit. You don't follow marketing tactics. You don't invite business people who don't know God to dictate what you do.

We're not selling computers. We're preaching the good news of Jesus Christ. And the Bible still tells us that without the help of the Holy Spirit, we're hopeless. Samuel Chadwick, the old Methodist preacher in England said, Christianity without the Holy Ghost is hopeless.

That's not old school. That's true. It's not new school. Without the Holy Spirit's help, how are you going to do this? When Jesus said, it's better for you that I go because unless I go, I can't send the Spirit.

But when he comes, it'll be a better day than me here physically. Because I've been with you, but he will be in you. This is why Jesus chose 12 disciples who would be fishermen and tax collectors and zealots.

Why? He could have chosen 12 rabbis who knew how to reason biblically and were gifted in rhetoric. No, he chose losers like Peter and James and John. Why? Because when they started, they would have nothing else to trust in, but the power of the Holy Spirit and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That's why he chose them. On the day of Pentecost, if you had just denied the Lord three times 50 days earlier, who would you be depending on when you preached? Think of that. We wouldn't even have Peter come and preach in our meetings.

I could see me introducing him at the Brooklyn Tabernacle. So folks, let's give it up. Peter's in the house and he walked with Jesus for three, three and a half years. And recently he denied the Lord three times and cursed the third time he did it.

But everyone has days like that. So let's give it up for Peter. Come on, he's going to come and bless us. And yet they were pricked in their hearts when he spoke. Why? Not because of his eloquence. Read the sermon.

A first-year Bible seminary student could do better than Peter's sermon in Acts 2. What's that? Quoting a bunch of verses and telling people about Jesus. We've made it into an art form. We've made it into cleverness and stand-up comic routines.

But who's that going to change? Who is that going to change? I'm asking you, who's that going to change? Look at the decline in Christianity. We're living right now in the largest decline in Christianity in our country's history.

We're down to 9 or 6 of the population. Every month in America, 1500 pastors leave the ministry. 50 a day. Today, while you're meeting, 50 are going to quit and it's cross-denominational. More than 50 of all the ministers who are in the ministry, no matter how they pound the Bible in the pulpit and put on the minister routine, more than 50 of them, Barna tells us, would leave the ministry next week if they could only get a job that would pay the bills for their family.

So imagine the level of discouragement. I did a district meeting in one of the states of the United States. And great men and women and went to the altar and saw men 30, 40, 50 years old crying and broken.

And I said, how can I help you? I had preached and how can I help you? How can I pray? How can you help me? I haven't baptized 10 people in the last two years. Had Pentecostal distinctives, but no fruit.

Just because you speak in tongues doesn't mean you're automatically going to have fruit. Am I correct or not? I'm all for speaking in tongues. I'd love to be able to say I speak in tongues more than all of you.

I believe that, practice that. But I've been too many places and so have you, where if you think that's the magic wand, you're wrong. But we can't go on without the Holy Spirit leading us, helping us to make decisions.

How did Barnabas and Saul go on that missionary journey? Because the Holy Spirit said, go. Think of the decisions we make. Think of the paradigms that pastors are following today. It's as if God is dead.

It's as if God is dead. And I'm talking about all denominations. It's as if God is dead. They follow these paradigms of churches that are spiritless. No Bible being preached. Jesus not being exalted. No mention of sin.

And that's what you're going to follow? How could that possibly be? There's almost like a madness. Blanketing the body of Christ, a madness. My son-in-law, Pastor Al Toledo, just recently went to a church in a southern city to one of these church growth gurus.

15 minutes before the meeting began, it started with 15 minutes of secular music. Great band, good singers, secular music, no mention of Jesus. Because you know, you got to relate. You got to make people feel comfortable.

I don't find that in the Bible, but this is the reasoning. But it's like what Jesus said about the Sadducees. You neither know the Scriptures nor the power of God. You neither know the Scriptures nor the power of God.

How would the Holy Spirit be invited in if you're not singing about Jesus? Then praise and worship. Well done, but about, he guessed, one or two percent participation. Brothers, pastors, listen. You got to be careful of praise and worship.

It's not a concert. You got to get everyone to sing. It's not about somebody doing a gig up on the platform. It's all the people are supposed to sing. Most of the people are just standing and watching.

That's so typical, isn't it now? Nobody's singing, nobody entering in. But they're all hyped up on the platform and doing their songs and the key changes and the whole thing. And that's great. But if the people aren't singing, what are we doing it for?

God is the audience in praise and worship. We're not the audience. So wait, wait. I don't have that long. Wait. So then the guy got up to preach, who everybody runs. You know, got to hear what this guy said.

And he's doing a series after the offering. He's doing a series on, wasn't it stupid how we grew up in church? That's the series. You know, like when the preachers would say the purpose of prayer, the power of prayer, and they'd rhyme everything with P.

It was so stupid. Remember that lady would get up and sing and her vibrato would be, you know. And this guy's father is pastoring in the same city. You would think he'd be embarrassed. And this is who they're flocking to.

No mention of the Bible for the first 20 minutes. My son-in-law promised me no mention of the Bible. And then a remote little reference to the word of God. And then no mention of Jesus or the presentation of the gospel.

And if you want to know more as we dismiss, because I know you got more important things to do. And then as we dismiss, if you want to know more, visit our website. And like, yeah, boy, we did church.

That's sad. You neither know the scriptures nor the power of God. This is why ministers are quitting. I know this. I've been doing nothing but pastors conferences the last five or six years. I've done my own anecdotal study on this.

You know what the guys do? They do Willow Creek for a couple years. They follow this other guy for a couple years. Then they tried this for a couple years. And then when none of it works, they go, you know what?

I must not be cut out for this. I'm out. But they don't try Jesus and the word of God. They don't try the power of the Holy Spirit. They don't get on their faces before God and say, God, either use me or take my life.

Listen, when I was, I'm not saying this for melodramatic reasons. When I came to the Brooklyn Tabernacle and was in this so dismal situation, it was so depressing. I didn't want to go to the church and I was in charge.

And that's never a good sign. One Tuesday, I was walking back and forth in the afternoon in the front, in the altar area, knowing that there'd be three or five or seven people in the prayer meeting. I mean, I was so burdened.

I was so conscious of my weakness, my inefficiency. I was just like, you know, the worst nightmare to me is to be a phony preacher. To me, that's the worst to me. That's my, like my ultimate nightmare.

Be just changing my voice and acting, praise God. Hallelujah, praise God. Not care about the people, not be close to God. And walking back and forth there, I said to God, God knows this. I said, I don't know how the words came out.

They hadn't been thought through, but it did come out of my soul. I said, God, if you're not going to use me, then take my life. Carol and I had one child, my oldest girl, Chrissy. She was little. Take my life because I knew God would take care of Carol.

I knew God would take care of Chrissy. But the thought of just being futile, the thought of not seeing a breakthrough, I couldn't take that. Just use me or take me home because I'm going to live forever anyway.

Brothers and sisters, what's the point? We're New Testament Christians. We're not living in the old covenant where living a long life was a big thing. It's better to live a short life and be effective than live a long life and just be hanging out.

Because we're going to live forever. How many are planning on living forever with Jesus in heaven? All right. So you got it? We're living forever. So while we're here on earth, what's the point? A long life or an effective life for Christ?

Bearing fruit or just hanging out? We cannot do this without the Holy Spirit. You know, part of the problem today that's brought us to six to nine percent is that the answers are the problem. The answers we've been fed for the last 10, 15, 20 years, they're the problem.

Most of them are coming from spiritless people who are technicians and are getting their ideas of leadership from Forbes 500, not from the Bible. They want to copy CEOs of Apple and whatever, AT &T, GE.

They're not, God, use me like you use those men. That's like passe. Hey, Jim, what are you, nuts? That's for another day. Isn't it interesting that in the last 20 years, we've had more conferences on church growth than in the history of Christianity?

And the decline has been precipitous in America. Wouldn't somebody stop and say, time out? What's that all about? More conferences, more books on church growth in the last 20 years than in all the history of America before that.

And the church is going like this down. There's more books about leadership, more conferences on leadership. More like, you know, 10 ways to organize your ministerial life. Here's how you preach through the Bible.

More computer printouts and software to help us. And ministers are leaving at 1 ,500 a month. A leader of the largest denomination in America told me, Jim, the truth is we have more empty pulpits than in the history of our denomination.

Burnout, personal failure, just despondency, discouragement. I'm trying to talk the way it is, brothers and sisters. Faith talk and hype doesn't change anything. That's like going into the huddle and it's 22 to 9.

And you look up and the coach says, look at the score. And you say, I don't receive that. I'm not really receiving that. No, I don't receive that. Hey, yo, yo, it's 22 to 9. You can receive it or not.

It's 22 to 9. So, so a major church in the city where I'm in, you know, I just learned of this through someone coming asking counseling for me because they were leaving that church out of discouragement.

Good pastor, godly guy. But the church had that malaise, offerings down, attendance down, no converts being made, people not reproducing themselves, sheep not bearing, bearing sheep. You know, that, that feeling of like something's wrong, but what do we do?

You all know that feeling, don't you? Oh, come on. So, you know, that malaise, something's wrong. So, so they went out and everybody, we're all going out to Montana, North Dakota, wherever there's some new paradigm.

They know how to do church. So they all haul out there. The woman tells me with her husband, they all haul out there, you know, five, six years ago and they're going to implement this because now you're going to do church.

They have small groups. That's the answer. You don't even have a church unless you're doing small groups the way they do it. They got DVDs. They got study guides. Hey, so he comes back. Everyone's hyped up.

He casts the vision. Have you ever thought about this? People come up to me. Pastor Jim, what's your vision for the Brooklyn Tabernacle? I have never had a vision for the Brooklyn Tabernacle. I don't have a vision now because it's not my church.

It's Jesus's church. Why would wait? Wait a minute. Don't don't don't say a thing. Why would I have a vision for someone else's church? I don't read that you died on the cross. I thought he did. As my friend Warren Wisby said, Jesus never said, I will build your church.

He didn't ask you to build his church. He said, I will build my church. And if you work with me, we'll we'll see my name glorified on the earth. That is really crazy. People are getting visions for their church, which now depart from the Bible.