Elder Mike Montgomery | Primitive Baptist Association 2026 - Saturday Night 08/01/2026

I know it's Saturday night.

I know everybody's tired.

It's a good tired.

And a well-meaning and kind and compassionate minister who is tasked with preaching the Saturday night sermon should be willing to let the people know up front that he's only going to stand for a very few minutes.

I wish I believed that.

But I think I can, because I'm going to tell you right now, when the brethren don't put a little bit of water up here for you, they mean for you to stop in about 20 minutes.

That's what I message I get from it.

That's okay, brother.

That's all I don't do anything.

I'll already be three bucks after you get back.

It's been a great meeting.

I'm in a I'm in one of those terrible, silly uh situations, brother Jeff.

I gotta use one of these devices.

I promise I'd never preach from an iPad.

I promise.

But you know, I got an eye problem.

Brother Jeff knows what I'm talking about.

You just gotta do the best you can with what you got.

I'm thankful the technology's here.

Right.

So thankful we have streaming technology, and thankful we have this.

If the iPad could help me preach, I'd be happy.

But it's just the Bible.

And I mean that in a derogatory manner.

It's nothing but the Bible.

That's what I've got.

I don't have special preaching uh apps here.

Yeah, and if I did, I wouldn't share with anybody.

I'd keep it to myself.

Uh it would have cost a lot of money, and my wife would have not let me get it anyway.

So but it's good to have been here.

I didn't get to go to the cam meeting.

I really regret that.

I wanted to go really bad.

Uh as you can tell from my throat and from the coughing.

And if unless you've been very focused on the services, you've undoubtedly heard me cough a lot.

And I'm getting over about a bronchitis, and I'm gonna be okay, but it it it's a little haggard right now.

So just bear with me as we stand before you pray for.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you, brother.

He's the mostly that I like the best anyway, so thank you, brother.

Sorry, brother Jeff.

I'm sorry.

I love you, but I like him a lot.

So I know I hurt your feelings.

I didn't mean to do that.

Well, so can't take it back, it's already out.

I want to turn to the 17th chapter of John and just look at the last thing that the Lord gets to say, unfettered, to his disciples, to his apostles.

This is the real Lord's prayer.

Yeah.

A lot of people think uh the prayer that he taught his disciples back in the Sermon on the Mount in the sixth chapter of Matthew, when they asked him to teach them how to preach, and he said the words that we're all very familiar with.

It was a prayer said by the Lord.

But it wasn't this prayer, it was a model prayer.

And I don't mean to offend anybody, but he did not mean say these exact words every time you pray.

Right.

You should model your prayer after what he.

It's things to keep in mind as you pray.

But this prayer is unlike any other prayer that you'll find in anywhere in the Bible.

It's the Lord's prayer, it's his high priestly prayer.

It's the prayer that he prayed after talking to his disciples for the better part of these uh 14th, 15th, and 16th chapters of John.

I don't know how long that all of that took place, but he ends it all with this prayer.

It's as you can tell, it's several verses.

It's uh 20 uh 26, 26 verses.

I don't want to go into depth about the things he said, which probably is the right better thing to do than what I'm planning on doing.

But I want to point out something about the structure of the prayer.

Because to me, the structure tells a lot about the prayer itself.

It is a structured prayer.

And why wouldn't it be?

The Lord was He was a man of infinite knowledge and ability.

He was the Son of God, and He was the divine Son of God.

He prayed this prayer knowing that it was going to be recorded in his holy word and be read by his people in all the successive generations.

We're reading it tonight.

I won't read it all, but I want to first of all say about this prayer that it's in three movements.

There's three movements.

The first movement is uh 17.1 through 174.

This is the part of the prayer that deals with what's awaiting him immediately, the cross.

And he prays to the Father, not so much for help, but just to present and to proclaim, not just to his fathers, but to his disciples surrounding him, that so far as he was concerned, the work was done.

He'd done everything needed to qualify himself to serve as our high priest.

He admitted every challenge, every temptation, every uh trick or subtlety of the devil, even the betrayals of his own disciples, and he'll speak about one disciple in particular that was going to betray him.

Man just say the difference between Peter's denial and Judas' betrayal is just that.

There's a big difference between denying and betraying.

And that speaks to the motive and to the heart of the man who does the betraying.

And that's why I feel no problem in saying the Lord knew what he's doing when he picked Judas.

Judas was a his role was prophesied.

And uh that's all I want to say about that.

So as he there's a couple of interesting things in the first movement.

The second movement starts with verse six, and it goes to verse 23.

That's a big block.

But in that one block are two sections.

This block is about the church.

He prays for his church.

The biggest part of that prayer is to pray for his apostles.

Now think about that.

Jesus prays for his church, for the flourishing of his church, for the perpetuity of his church.

And he spends the most of that prayer for those things praying to his father on behalf of his apostles.

That should make a lot of sense to us.

Because these men, how did Paul say it?

The foundation of the apostles, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone.

These men, it's not because they were superhuman men, they were just as human and mortal as you and I, but they were chosen to a role, to an office.

It was a gift and an office.

The gift of the apostle that was to only last for as long as these men, and I'll add the Apostle Paul, and when they passed from the scenes of this life, they will have done the work that only that office could do.

And everything that we are today, and everything we hope to be and state of be should be, must be built upon the doctrine of the apostles.

And John, who wrote this, lets us know that if we want to have fellowship with God, we must have fellowship with the apostles' doctrine.

It's a triangle.

It's us and the apostles and the Lord.

If we have agreement with the apostles, if we preach the apostles' doctrine, Brother Jeff, the Lord's going to be pleased with us.

And he's going to fellowship with us.

And fellowship is something that cannot be manufactured.

It is not a social gathering.

It's not a family reunion, as good as those might be.

It is spiritual.

And it is a unique facet, a unique identifying mark of the New Testament church is fellowship.

I know what from Brother Mike and others about how the Lord's blessing you down here.

It's a great encouragement to me and to all of us back home at old school.

But I hope you, I want y'all to know too, that the Lord is very merciful.

He's been merciful to us as well.

And not just to us, but it gives me courage.

It encourages me, Brother Jeff, that the Lord is not through with this church and that he's not through with the primitive baptism.

And the thing that I love about how things are going is there seems to be a commitment among the ministry to not preach themselves.

To sublimate our ego, check our ego at the door.

And put the cause of Christ first, Brother Ron.

I see that with y'all.

I see that with y'all.

I hope I'm not lying when I say I see with us.

If we want to see our churches grow, the best thing we can do, really the only thing we can do, is pray to the Lord who added to the church daily such as should be saved.

He hasn't lost the ability to do that, Brother Jeff.

We don't have to be, we don't have to develop programs or you know, cold calling or putting leaflets out.

If you want to do that, okay.

But you you don't want to build the church the way the world would have you build the church.

It won't be the church.

You have the wrong people in the church.

What we want is what who the Lord wants in the church.

That's not to say that there is an elect within the elect.

I don't believe that.

I wish every born-again child of God could hear the gospel and believe and rejoice in what I think I've been blessed to rejoice in.

To have that rest and that peace that comes from knowing that Jesus Christ saved his people from their sins, and there's nothing that can be done to that or taken away from it.

And that there is a place on this earth for those people that he saved by his death to come in out of the cold and sit at the warmth of the fire and talk to their family in Christ.

The biggest block of this prayer is the prayer of the Lord for his church.

He says he does that.

He says, I pray for them.

Imagine this.

The smaller block within the second block is for you and me.

The church that exists since the time of the apostles.

Now I've tried to do some digging into the history of our people.

I'm going to be very candid with you.

There is no paper trail.

You can try.

And if you find it, please let me know.

But I don't think it's there to be found.

And I think there's a reason for that.

It's the same reason why we don't have the original autographs of the Apostle Paul's letters.

Because we'd make an idol out of them.

What we have to remember is the succession and perpetuity of the church is not our power, it's the Lord.

As long as he exists as the head of the church, his church will survive to the end of time.

And in this prayer, he is praying for his apostles.

Why?

Why would he pray for his apostles?

They were fallible men.

They could and they would make mistakes.

Peter made mistakes.

He was not infallible.

He made mistakes.

He may have been the first among equals, but he was still a human being.

And they needed the Lord's intercessions on their behalf.

They needed special grace, I think, to do the work that God had given them to do.

And we are what we are today because of what God blessed them to do in their lives.

And what they sacrificed to do the work that they were called to do.

They had to be an eyewitness of the Lord from the very beginning of his ministry till his death, resurrection, and ascension.

They had to see that with their eyes because nothing's more powerful than an eyewitness.

Even in the courts of law, an eyewitness is the best witness.

And these apostles, they not only saw the things that we read about, but think about all the things that weren't written about the Lord.

How much of what the Lord said and did is recorded in the Gospels?

1%?

Probably less than 1%.

All I know is God made sure we had what we need.

I'm satisfied with what we got.

We have what He says it's good enough for us to have.

There's other things to know that only God knows.

And I think only He is supposed to know.

The rest of it is supposition on our part.

And you know what supposition does?

Start guessing about what if Adam hadn't said, you know, what have God had done.

You know, stop doing what we like talking about those things, but it's all folly.

Just stick with what the Lord was pleased to leave for us.

So the church is obviously due to the very the percentage of territory that it occupies in this prayer is very important.

He prayed.

Two-thirds of the prayer was devoted to the Lord's church.

Actually, tell us what he how he thinks about his church.

He said more about the church than he did his own work on the cross.

Isn't that something?

Now, we the church would be anything if it weren't for the cross.

Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

And yet he spends two-thirds of this prayer praying to his father on behalf of his church.

Well, that tells me he loves his church.

And I tell you what, dear friends, we need to treat the church with respect.

Because you're messing with the Lord's bride.

He loves his bride.

He's a better husband than I'll ever hope to be.

And because he feels so deeply and movingly and strongly for his church, we ought to know without being told that if we treat his bride with disrespect, we will suffer the consequences.

I don't mean to scare or intimidate anybody, because I think everybody here loves the church.

And God bless you.

Thank God for that.

Because the Lord put so much care into this prayer for his church.

And he prayed for you.

He didn't mention your name, but he prayed for you.

He prayed not just for the disciples, but for them that would believe through their word.

Now, a lot of people say they're believers.

But I wonder, are they believers of the apostles' doctrine?

Are we apostles?

Are we believers, Brother Jeff?

Do we even know what the apostles' doctrine is?

We better.

If we claim to be the church of Jesus Christ, we better be preaching and practicing the apostles' doctrine.

I'm convinced that our people, not I'm not going to go so far as to say we're the only people.

But I will say I'm convinced with what I've seen that the Lord is pleased with us to be called his church.

And that's all I can say.

If you don't feel that way, you're in the wrong place.

You need to be where you really feel like the Lord is pleased to call that place his church.

Now, I say my church a lot about old school, I say it's my church.

I have gotten in trouble with some certain ministers, and they're good friends of mine, who love to find me saying something that they can use against me in a court of law later.

And I say, that's my church.

I love my church.

And they say, it's not your church, it's Jesus' church.

And they're right.

They're right.

But they're also not quite as right as they think they are.

And the Apostle Paul said something to the Romans in the second chapter.

He says, according to my gospel.

That's right.

Well, whose gospel is it?

Paul?

Is it yours?

Or is it Jesus's?

Yes.

It's both.

It's Jesus' gospel.

He gave it to Paul.

And God gave this church to you.

So it's your church.

Own it.

Own your membership.

If you want your church to do well, in whatever way you want to define well, it ought to be based upon the written word of God and humility and love for the cause or for the sake of the cause of Christ.

Then own your membership.

And don't wait for the pastor to do something or for the deacons to do something.

Right, boys?

Brother Mike is not one, he's a lazy pastor.

He wants everybody else to do stuff.

But I do have a madness in my method.

And it is this I love to see God's people love the church.

I love to see God's people love the Lord and love his church.

And if your number is low, and all of our churches could be, compared to the others, they call themselves churches, we're nobody.

We're insignificant.

We don't matter.

Yes, we do.

You may be five.

I used to preach to five down in Harlington.

Some of the best services I ever had, the best preaching I ever did was to five people.

And then I get in front of 200 people and I freeze, you know?

Well, whenever you meet in the name of the Lord to worship him, you go read that 12th chapter of Hebrews.

You know what you're going to find?

You've come to Mount Zion.

And you synchronize with a worship service that is going on all the time.

And guess who's in that worship service?

Angels.

The Lord?

And the spirits of just men made perfect.

You know who that uncovers?

The redeemed that have died in God.

Do you have some, have you lost some of your relatives to death?

Did you believe they were part of the redeemed?

I'm not saying they're looking down on you and saying, oh good, they came to church today.

That's not my point.

My point is we are worshiping God along with a whole lot of other people.

And so how many people are in worship service when we meet?

Oh, I count five.

I tell you what, if the Lord's there, you're synchronized with an innumerable company of angels.

Amen.

You are.

You are.

That's part of what Jesus is praying about.

It's powerful, friends.

The church is powerful.

It's as powerful as the gospel is.

So Jesus did his work.

We believe that.

That's one of our key fundamental beliefs.

What will we be without that belief?

What will we be without the idea that Jesus finished the work he was sent to do?

We talk about the finished work of Jesus Christ all the time.

I know I try to, and I believe it.

And I want to hear it preached time and time again.

I never get tired of it.

It's the greatest thing, it's the greatest story ever told.

And may I say, this is not bragging, on our people.

But there's not anybody else I know who professes the Christian faith, who teaches a doctrine that eternal salvation is secure and cannot be lost by the failures of the people who are saved.

Because it's not theirs to lose.

It's stored, it's kept in God's hand, and no one can get to it or take it away.

So that salvation is secure.

But here's what distinguishes our belief, and this is serious, is we also believe that God saves his people in time.

That the people who are saved eternally have available to them a salvation timely.

Now I think it's all wrapped up in the gospel, in the power of the gospel, what the gospel should do.

Whenever you see the word salvation, and then you see works to be done by us for that salvation, that's time salvation.

I don't care how eternal it sounds, it's time salvation.

That's the rule.

Any salvation that shows all of God and none of us, that's eternal salvation.

That's the rule we were raised to believe.

That's our rule.

It's in our articles of faith.

And it's not something that we use just to wave over difficult texts and say, well, here's how I explain it.

That one's temporal because I don't like it.

It's too hard.

That's not the way we do it.

Maybe we have done that, and if we've done that, shame on us.

Because what I just told you about the two salvations is solidly taught in God's Word.

It's not make-believe, it's not a rationalization to get us out of difficult text.

It is the truth.

And it's a precious truth.

It opens up doors on difficult letters, like Galatians, like Romans.

I don't know about Revelations, but I know about the rest of them.

It really helps.

When he gets to the end of his prayer on the church, he says this.

I'll start with the 18th verse.

As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.

Who's them?

The apostles.

And for their sakes I sanctify myself.

I can't get into the explanation of this, but it's powerful.

It takes Brother Mike at least three sermons to get through it.

Probably take me five.

That they may also be sanctified through the truth.

There's a sanctification through the truth.

The gospel.

It sanctifies it.

Like Brother James Conley said, sanctification means to be set apart to holy use.

Well, there is a sanctifying grace to believing the gospel and to belonging to the church.

Water baptism is not what puts away the filth of the flesh.

It didn't take away sin.

But it is the answer of a good conscience towards God.

That Ethiopian eunuch was just as much the Ethiopian eunuch after he was baptized by Philip as he was before.

But I'll tell you what he had after that he didn't have before.

He had a clear conscience.

He went on his way rejoicing.

He'd gone up to Jerusalem for the worship.

And now he's out in the backside of the desert all by himself in his chariot, and he's got Isaiah 53 open.

Who does that?

And then the Lord sends, or miraculously gets Philip running alongside that stagecoach.

I can just see how that would have looked on I-35 or I-45.

Some station wagon is hobbling along, and the driver is reading it.

Isaiah 53, and some pre-Priminal Baptist preacher says, comes up by him and says, you know, knocks on the window, roll it down.

Understand it's not what thou readest.

Things like that just don't happen.

You think they're crazy for doing it.

But that's kind of what happened.

That's what happened with Philip.

Would you have done what Philip did when the Lord says, go join thyself to that church?

Well, I hope we would.

You never know.

The strange circumstances of our life sometimes work out to the furtherance of the cause of Christ.

Now, he says, uh, neither pray I.

Now, this is where, I love this verse.

I love it.

Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word.

A couple things to notice.

Shall.

They haven't, these people don't exist yet.

The apostles haven't even gone out to start preaching, so there's nothing for them to believe yet.

But there's going to be.

And there's going to come times, generations down the road, 2027, and there's going to be some of the them that hears the same gospel that those men preached.

And the Lord prayed for you.

He prayed for you.

Think about that.

I can't go into all the whys and wherefores of that.

Brother Mike, I'll leave that to you.

But at least it has to do with this.

In the furtherance of the cause, he prayed that those who hear his word would believe it and commit themselves to it.

That doesn't mean his prayer was that they will automatically believe and stay faithful, but that in the prayer that he prayed for you and for me who are believers, there is a special blessing, a special fellowship.

And 1 Timothy 4.10 proves it.

That God not only saves all manners of people out of every kindred tongue of people, but he is especially the savior of them that believe.

And that's powerful to me.

He has a special sense of you and you, of him, and that is like having a special pass to God.

I don't know how else to put it.

That's probably a bad way of putting it.

It reminds me of Disney World.

My wife got the unofficial guide to the Disney World.

And it really kind of helped, I guess.

It showed us where to go when everybody else wasn't, and where not to go when everybody else was, and how to get, you know, stay late, come in early.

And I'll never forget we were at uh magic handing.

And I didn't like any prize or the job.

So James, I except I did like that magic bound or whatever that was that one.

It's like a it was fun.

And we say late, and we got to take that.

We get off of it, we get back in line, we are back on it in five seconds.

May I say, is it that's a poor poor thing, brother?

That's what I'm about to say.

You believe, and God is there, he's always there, but he's especially there for those who believe.

That's what Paul tells today.

That's why we go and preach.

That's why we suffer what we suffer.

We want as many gods and people as can to believe because of what they get from the belief.

Okay, now he's through.

It says that they all may be one.

Jesus wants his church to be united, unified at peace, and we ought to want that too.

And we ought to be willing to do everything morally and ethically responsible and possible to maintain the peace of the church.

Because without peace, the church is going to falter.

A local church will falter, I'll put it like that.

That they all may be one as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee.

They also may be one in us.

That's beautiful.

Isn't that beautiful?

That's to us in the church.

It just means there's something you get in the church you won't get anywhere else.

And it's special.

And he says that the world may believe that thou hast in me.

Now here's where I'm going to step on my toes.

The single greatest impact that the church has is on the nation in which the church is founded.

A nation is given, I think, grace.

I think history will prove that.

That when the church was in Great Britain, for instance, and flourishing, that kingdom flourished too.

And the United States has had the church, and I believe it's flourished, not only, but certainly partly because of the presence of the Lord's church.

And she is protected in that area.

To believe means more than just knowing.

You can know God.

You can know who Jesus is.

You can even say, I know he's the Savior.

You can even say, I know he's my Savior.

But that's not believing.

Believing is something finer than knowing.

That we may know and believe.

Believing in the way of the time of the 1611 Bible, when the 1611, 1611, the word believing didn't mean a guess.

It didn't mean an opinion.

Like we use the word today.

I believe I'll do this, I believe I'll do that.

That's not the way the word believe was constructed originally.

It meant to hold dear.

To hold, to cherish something.

It was a word used when a man pledged fealty to his feudal lord.

To believe means you take your knowledge and you pledge yourself to the source of that knowledge.

You pledge your loyalty, your allegiance to the Lord who has professed to you that you are one with Him and He with you.

Believing is powerful.

It is an application of knowledge.

And then he says this.

I gotta get down to the 24th verse.

Oh, he's praying for the church.

You know why the church exists?

Because of that first part of the prayer.

But you know what proves the first part of the prayer happened?

The church.

The church exists.

It proves that what Christ prayed in that first part, it happened.

What does that mean that it happened?

What is it?

Okay, Mike, what are you trying to tell me?

I hope I'm not just trying to tell you what I'm telling you.

That means this next thing is going to come true.

It hadn't happened yet, but it's going to.

Listen to it.

In the 24th verse.

Father, I will that they also, these are more than the ones that believed.

This is a lot more than I think.

This is the black family of God.

For they also, whom thou hast given me, doesn't say anything about believing.

All that says they were given to him.

They also whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am.

Where is he now?

We heard it.

He's at the right hand of God.

And Riz is coming back to take us back to where he belongs.

Where does he belong?

At the right hand of God.

And that is the throne of God.

Unless I'm very much mistaken, the throne of God is in the real heaven.

The celestial world.

We're not going to some remade earth.

The earth is going to be melted with fervent heat, and the very elements will dissolve.

It will go away.

And all the works thereof shall be burned up.

It's not going to be like the flood.

The flood was destructive.

And the new heaven and new earth that came out of that survived to some extent the flood.

But the the this fire that's coming, nothing's going to survive it.

Where else are we going to go?

There's only two places to go.

And they're both as real as the other.

One is the hell.

The other's heaven.

If we say one is not real, we really can't say the other is real.

We've had a problem with people like that that preach no hellenism.

You know what they're basically saying is there's no heaven.

That's the logical conclusion of that.

So Christ has prayed for his work on the cross.

He's prayed for his church, and he's prayed for all those that they will be with him where he is.

So, what did I say?

The second part proved?

It proved that the first part happened.

And if the first part happened, then this third thing is going to happen.

And the real proof of the third thing is the fact that the church is here.

They are interconnected.

And because the church exists, I have the strongest possible reason for hoping in the world to come.

Because this is the pledge of God throughout the ages of time, since the ascension of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, that we are going to go be with him one of these days.

This prayer proves that, brother.

This prayer is what Jesus prayed for you and for me and for all that the Father gave him.

And because he was successful, because that first module is proved to have happened and did happen, and the proof of it is in the existence of his church for 2,000 years has existed on the face of this planet.

What other organization can say or lay claim to that?

It must be because the Lord is the head of it.

And he's sustaining it by his own power.

And because the church has proved time and time again it's impervious to the gates of hell.

That the gates of hell have not prevailed against it.

And the gates of hell will never prevail against it.

They can try.

Satan can try, but he cannot extinguish the church.

It's been through far worse than what it's going through today.

And we should take consolation and comfort in knowing that the church, where we are right now, not this building, but us together, for the purpose to which we have joined ourselves, is proof positive that Jesus did time on the cross.

That he did finish the work that he said to do, that he is coming back for us.

And that makes my life better.

Thank you, God bless you.

I do love that thought that our Lord, our Savior, and our high priest, also the head of the church, he finished his work, he ascended, he's on the throne, and the church, the kingdom that he gave us, is proof of that truth and proof of the coming truth that we'll be with him forever.

I really love the realization that what we do when we gather together here, we do with him, and we do with them.

Those that are around the throne of God right now, really, really in heaven, in the real place, and they are praising him face to face.

We're praising him with them when we're in the kingdom of heaven.

It's heaven on earth.

It's a little bit of what we'll get forevermore.

If you ever wonder what is heaven going to be like, well, if you've ever felt the spirit of God in the church while we praise his name, you got that taste.

And that was the substance, that was it.

And it didn't last very long here.

It'll be forever there.

But it was the same thing.

It was the foretaste of glory defined.

It was the earnest of your inheritance.

That kingdom of heaven that is um that we have, that kingdom that he's the king of right now, and that we've entered into uh when we come together and he's with us and we worship him.

In Luke chapter 16, verse 16, Jesus said, That kingdom is preached.

Luke 16:16

It says, since John, the kingdom of heaven is preached, and every man presseth into it.

Um that obviously does not mean every man in the world presses in.

It means everyone that gets in there got there by pressing in.

Um, Jesus has taken you and translated you.

Your Savior has translated you from the darkness into his marvelous light.

That means he picked you up and he put you there into his eternal family.

But to get into his kingdom, he says you have to press.

Now, Brother Mike brought up Disney World, so it made me think of Disney World.

This is my best analogy of this pressing.

Um, and what I'll uh close this service with as I encourage you to each and everyone press in.

Not once, but every time.

Um the word pressing means to crowd yourself.

Now, when I went to Disney World, the first time we ever I ever went, first time I ever went was with the first time Kaylee ever went and Aubrey ever went.

They were very young, and we Ann and I took them to Disney World.

And we went to the parade, and everyone was there at the parade, and the parade's walking by.

And I want to see Mickey Mouse.

I mean, that's that's who I came to see, right?

Well, we're there to see the parade, and here come the floats.

And I am not a tall guy.

As uh these preachers who have been here, and my children pointed out to me, it gets really apparent when Brother Mike is here preaching, then I come up after and it's like, whoa, brother.

So I am there with my daughter, and we want to see what we came to see, who we came to see.

But there are a lot of people in front of me, and I can't see that well.

So I put Kaylee on my shoulders, and she's the only child I have that'll let me do that.

Um, none of the others will let me put them on my shoulder.

But put her on my shoulder, and she can see a little better, okay?

But I we you what do we do?

We pressed in.

You know, we moved in, moved forward so we can get a better view.

Now, here's what I did.

I got far enough and I wasn't willing to go further.

I said, this view, this is good enough.

But the front row, they had the best view, right?

If I had pressed further, I would have had a better view.

Now, I want to see my Lord.

I want in his kingdom to see him.

And to do that, I need to press.

I need to continue.

That's diligence.

Now, how do you do it, Brother Mike?

You say, how do I press?

Well, it's not that crowded.

It's not about the physical.

I'm not saying you have to come sit on the front row of the church, but I am saying that's a diligent effort.

You want to press into the kingdom?

You got to come.

There's the first step.

If we had not even gone to the parade, we would have saw nothing.

You do have to come and come often.

Come all the time.

Do you know what?

You've got to come and be present.

You've got to be attentive.

You've got to be singing with the fervor that you sang this week, and you've got to be praying.

And that means not listening just to the prayer that's being spoken out loud by someone.

It means you're actually praying.

You know that prayer you give in your heart, in your mind, while a brother is praying is just as vital, just as real, and just as heard by your Savior as the one that's out loud.

Maybe more so.

Actively praying.

And then when preaching is happening, you are attentive, you are listening, you are praying, and you are feeding on the word.

You know, it doesn't stop there, though.

You want, you don't just press into the kingdom when you come together at church.

You go home, you meditate on these things, you think on these things, you discuss these things, you read your Bible, you pray to your Lord because He is 24-7, attentive to your prayers.

And then you come again, having prepared yourself to press in to the worship service again.

It is a diligent, it's a constant, it's a pressing, and it is a glorious and blissful joy and privilege to be in the kingdom with the Lord.

The first step is to come.

And if you are not yet a member of the Church of Jesus Christ, the primitive Baptist Church, if you believe that your Lord finished the work, and if you believe the church of the Lord and the apostles' doctrine is proof that he did, and if you believe that someday, because of the church here, we know that we will be going there, then press into the kingdom.

And if you haven't joined, you come forward and let us know that you want to walk and press in the kingdom with us.

We'll have Brother Mike come forward to stand and sing a hymn.

Brother Owen, do you have a number?

290.

Number 290.