Get You Down Thither

In this sermon the preacher uses the Genesis story of Jacob’s sons seeking grain in Egypt as a springboard to challenge listeners to stop making excuses and become self‑starters. He paints Jacob as a model of initiative, contrasting his determination with the laziness of his sons, and argues that modern Christians often fall into the same pattern of waiting for handouts rather than taking action. Throughout the talk he emphasizes that success requires desire, a willingness to pay the price, and persistent effort, citing examples from sports, business, and personal experience to illustrate each point. The speaker then offers four practical steps: cultivate a strong desire aligned with God’s will; be prepared to sacrifice and work hard; keep your eyes fixed on the ultimate goal, drawing on Philippians and Hebrews for biblical support; and start immediately, refusing to postpone. He concludes with a call to prayer and an invitation to commit to Christ, urging the congregation to apply these principles in their own lives and in the life of the church.

What is Houston's First Baptist Church?

Houston's First Baptist Church is a relevant biblical community where we gather our hearts, grow our souls and give our lives as we seek to fulfill the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20). This podcast provides weekly messages from Pastor Gregg Matte and others. Visit us at HoustonsFirst.org to learn more about HFBC, and visit us in person the next time you're in Houston!

Now, the title of my sermon is simply, Get Ye Down Thither, which sounds like a rock group, doesn't it? Let me rephrase that and just say, get on with it. That's the title of my sermon today, get on with it. Go ahead on, get moving. A lot of folks in this world that just have trouble getting started. They want to be successful. They want to accomplish. But they have great difficulty trying to get ye down thither. Now, I read but the first two verses of this chapter, 42 in Genesis, and it so captivated me that although the rest of the story is an exciting and important one, I could not but preach to you on it this morning. There are many wonderful stories from here to the end of Genesis, but they are all basically built around Joseph. Joseph the serpent, the serpent, the servant, I think it's my hundredth birthday. The servant exalted to become the ruler. A wonderful picture of Christ, and all of his brethren must come down and buy from him. He is the exclusive means of salvation. Now, yonder in the homeland of Jacob, the father, and these other boys, the famine was spreading as well. Not only in Egypt, but in their land was there poverty and hunger and disease and famine. And one day, this wise, old, good, godly man, who was approaching a hundred years old himself, and had learned a lot about life, that there are no easy roads, who had learned about life, that the life is not one big handout, and you do not get something for nothing. You might get some things for nothing, but not that that is of real substance of life. Looked, I think, in disgust at a bunch of lazy sons and said to them, Jacob, having heard that there was corn down in Egypt, said to his sons, Why do ye look on one another? Why do you sit here and look one upon another? What are you guys sitting around looking at? You think you're going to get fed by staring holes to each other? What's the matter with you? Why don't you get a job? Why don't you go to work? Why don't you put out a little effort? Why don't you get started? Why don't you go down to Egypt? He said, Behold, I have heard that there is corn in Egypt. Get you down dither. Get up and get out of this land and get down there. Peggy Lee has a song, Get Out of Here and Get Me Some Money Too. Well, that's good. He was saying, Get out of here and get us something to eat. Go down and buy for us from Vince that we may live and not die. What a shame for a man to have a bunch of lazy sons. Now, Jacob had that wonderful value that I appreciate so much in the lives of people. He was a self -starter. He was a self -motivator. He was a doer. He was a high roller. He was an accomplisher. He was a reacher. He was a possessor. He was an achiever. While others only talked, he did. And he could not comprehend that attitude of laziness. The New Testament calls being slow bellies or sluggards in his sons that were willing to sit there and stare holes at each other and die of starvation when they could go down and do something about their problem. And he said, I think, with absolute dismay and disgust, why sit ye here and look one upon another? Get out of here and go get some corn. It is available. There are two kinds of folks in this world, those who make excuses and those who make things happen. The basic personality of all of us wants to be successful. Everybody wants to do better than he does. We all want to be among the accomplishers and the doers, but there is something about our handout society that has made us a lazy kind of people. Oh, I hear it thousands of times every year. If I only had so -and -so, or if only my my circumstances were different. Well, I don't think the Christian has to live under the circumstances. I get tired of hearing under the circumstances we're doing as well as we can. The Christian with the power of God at his disposal ought to be living above the circumstances, not under the circumstances. May I say to you and share with you a bit of my heart, it has always been a personal philosophy of mine that I would rather do than talk about doing. I used to think that I didn't like preachers, but I discovered that I really do like preachers. I love preachers, and they're my best friends. But for years, I deceived myself, and I thought I really didn't. And then I discovered that what I really didn't like was to go to preachers' meetings and listen to folks sit around and talk about how to do and what to do. This world knows how to do and what to do a whole lot more than it does. My personal philosophy is, let everybody else talk about how to do it. I'd rather go out and do it. I have always tried to build men around me in a staff that were self -starters and self -motivators. And frankly, if there's anything that just gets on the bottom of my list, it's somebody that you have to drop a nickel in their ear and wind them up and point them and then wait for them to come back and make excuses why they couldn't get the job done. When Carlos Morris, the chairman of the pulpit committee, interviewed me, he asked me a question. He said, Preacher, how do you get a staff to work? I said, well, that's 90 % of your problem right there. I don't want a staff that you have to get to work. I want a staff around me that you have to slow down. And God has given us that kind of people. I remember when I was talking with the committee, and you'll pardon this personal reference, but I'm trying to bear something and share something with you. Marge Caldwell, majestic, bombastic Marge, was talking to me, and we were discussing the auditorium. And I said, How many attend? How many are coming? And I asked, How many does your auditorium seat? And she said, About 2 ,400 or 2 ,500. I immediately, I didn't, I wasn't trying to impress them. My immediate response was, Can you make it hold 3 ,000? She said, Oh! She said, That's what I've been wanting to hear. She said, Everybody we've talked to has said, Can you cut it down to 1 ,500? Well, that's not the way I think. Some people see a glass half full. Some see it half empty. When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade out of it. When there are problems, turn them into victories. Look on the bright side of things. Be a self -starter. Be a positive thinker. This man was disgusted with these boys who did not have the initiative, the self -starting achievement power to get up and even go get some corn. They sat around and talked about it. And this man said, Why don't you get up and go do something about it? Last week, I was in Dallas, and I drove by in a taxi going to eat dinner by the county courthouse. And there were about 30 or 40 of the fattest, laziest -looking slobs, black, red, yellow, and white, I'd ever seen. There were people out there with cameras and movies taking pictures of them for the evening news. They were on some kind of a crusade. And they were all holding up signs that said, Fight Hunger! Fight Hunger! Well, the guy I was with stuck his head out the front window and said what I was thinking. He said, If you guys want to fight hunger, why don't you get off of your seat and go get a job? That's a good way to fight hunger. That's the way I fight hunger, and that's the way I believe hunger ought to be fought. Now, I don't know what they really had in mind, but I doubt seriously that they were going to put any food in anybody's stomach by holding a sign saying, Fight Hunger! But that's the kind of world that we live in. A world of the big handout. A world of laziness. A world of mail -order sufficiency that says there's an easier way. Don't do it. Somebody will do it for you. How I take my hat off to the man in California who, with seven children, was working for $550 a month, but could have lived on welfare and not worked and made $700 a month. When asked why he worked, he said, Because I am a Christian, because I am an American, and because that's the kind of man I am. Our society is moving toward a four -day work week, and they project well before the turn of the century a three -day work week and retirement at a younger and younger age. Something for nothing has become the philosophy of our generation. Two kinds of folks, those who control circumstances and those who live under the circumstances. I guarantee you that Mrs. Phillips did not live to age 100 by sitting around and expecting people to do things for her. We have God's help. We have God's word. There are 365 fear nots in the Bible, one for every day of the week. There are 3 ,000 promises, 10 a day. We have God's presence in Jesus Christ. The disciples on the road to Emmaus were thrilled when they learned they didn't even know he was with them. It was later that they learned that Christ was with them in his very presence and they knew it not. Our church used to feel that our lack of parking facilities was our greatest liability. We do not own a nickel's worth of parking. Sure you have to wind around a few floors. Sure you have to ride an elevator. But I ask you in rainy, rainy Houston, where can you park cars for 3 ,000 people 100 feet from your front door, all enclosed under covered parking? We've got the best, not the worst, the best parking in the whole city. What a shame that these boys sat around and majored on their minors and augmented their difficulties and magnified their problems. Now you say, preacher, I'm kind of like that. I've got a million dreams, but I'm a dreamer, not a doer. I'm a thinker, not an accomplisher. I don't want to be that way. How does a man go about getting himself down the earth? How do you get up and move and accomplish and motivate yourself? Four or five things I would suggest, and many of us would do well to write them down. Number one, desire. Your desire and your attitude are synonymous. What you want to do, you can do. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. Everything in our life tends to gravitate toward the accomplishment of those things we think about. I was going to Florida last month to preach to the evangelism conference for the state of Florida. I was seated next to Daryl Royal, coach of the Longhorn football team. We'd talked for three hours. I said, Daryl, I'd like for you, before we get off, to put into one word your philosophy of success. You've taken mediocre men and have beaten better football teams. Before we got off, he said, Preacher, I'll tell you what that word is. It's desire. You can do what you want to do. How many times have I heard a sportscaster talk about a shortstop or a third baseman who had made the team and beat out the better man because he had the desire to do it? Make up your mind. Are you going to be an achiever or a talker, a winner or a loser? You can do in life what you think you can do and what you expect to do. Most people aim at absolutely nothing in life and hit it right on the head. Where are you going? What is God's will for your church and will for your life? What do you expect to do? What do you dream to do? What do you want to do? You can do what you plan to do. Two shoe salesmen went to Africa. Before they left, they had each turned in an order for 5 ,000 pair of shoes. They'd been there three days and they discovered that nobody wore shoes. The people went without shoes. One of them sent a wire home and said, Cancel that order. The people don't wear shoes in Africa. The other one sent a wire home and said, Double that order. Everybody needs shoes over here. That's the kind of man that's going to get ahead in life. Number two, be willing to pay the price. And if you're not willing to put out some effort and pay the price for accomplishment, then forget it. Jacob's sons had to make an effort. There was some distance to be spanned. There was some ground to be covered. They had to get where they were not. They had to put some dirt between themselves and that food down there in Egypt. There was a lot of ground to be covered, a price to be paid. I guess a hundred men have talked to me and have said, Preacher, 1 ,200, 1 ,300 folks baptized, 4 ,001 to Christ. Sunday school tripled and doubled. Spirino, that was great. The city affected. And let me say to you, ladies and gentlemen, that we are getting results back from a survey that show that 90 % of the converts are effective serving Christians that are active in churches in this city and they are carrying their Bibles to school and witnessing for Christ. It's made an effectual impact on this city for Christ. I've got a hundred letters in my file. Tell us about Sparino. We want to have a Sparino. And I start telling them how the staff took off, how we closed down everything else, how the staff visited from nine in the morning till 10 at night, two days, two weeks. I tell them how the people of God gave over $50 ,000, how Ben Loring spent eight months going in every school in town, how hundreds came in the impact. And they stand there and look at me like a calf looking at a new red gate. We want corn, but we want it to grow in our backyard. Oh, we didn't know you had to put out like that. You talk about putting out. Our people put up money and blood and sweat and effort and tears. Sure. They came barefooted. Sure. They came. Yeah, they were, they were wild. You bet. Thank God. The more they are, the more they need to be in first Baptist church. Let's get one thing straight. We're not a showcase for saints. We're a hospital for sinners. And the worse they are, the more they need to be in the house of God, where they can be won to Jesus Christ. There's a price to be paid. There's an effort to be made. We talk about winning the world, but some of us mean as long as we only win our kind. We talk about revival, but some of us mean revival that won't change anything. You have to pay the price for success. Jesus Christ said, if you're not willing to follow me and you're not willing to forsake your family and friends, you can't be my disciple. He said, he that puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God. He said, what man sits down and goes to war or builds a building and does not count the cost first? 90 % of, of the sales in this country and insurance are made by 30 % of the insurance salesmen. 70 % make only 10 % of the sales. And that successful force we find makes most of their calls, their sales on the third contact or more. Far too many people start and give up. 5 ,600 people joined our church in Dell city in just under five years. And 90 % of them came on the fourth verse or more. Most of the time we say, we'll sing three verses and quit. There's when there's, when there, when the spirit of God is moving, when there's work to be done, take the time and pay the price. We dream of building a car, but very few are willing to start putting it in a nut and a bolt at a time. When I was in high school, my parents owned a hatchery. I used to go down every evening from four to seven, five days a week and staple together by hand, a hundred chicken boxes to put baby chicks in. I hated it with a passion. I used to drink Cokes. I used to read magazines. I used to make excuses and theorize how I could keep from doing it. And one day it occurred to me that I was, I could have half of those boxes done while I was figuring out how to keep from doing it or a shortcut for getting it done. There's no excuse to just jump in and get started. I preach to preachers all over the country and I tell them that there are no little pink pills you can take to build a church. You can't win the world of Christ playing solitaire with the prospect cards. You can't sit in your office and analyze the prospects. You can't mow the grass by analyzing the anatomy of the grass. You've got to get on the mower and get started. There's no substitute for hard work. Number three, keep your eye on the goal and stay with it. Listen to what the Bible says in the book of Philippians. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended. I haven't already made it, but this one thing I do, I'll tell you one thing. For getting these things which are behind and reaching forth under those which are before, I press forward toward the mark of the high calling of God which is in Christ Jesus. I stay at the task. Keep working day after day, day after day. Keep your eye on the goal and stay with it. The world is filled with people who used to work, who used to be in seminary, who used to go to school. I've tried to build a mind filled with knowledge. For years, each night, I've tried to read a book. It's amazing how quickly you can read a 200 -page book when you learn to do it and to stay with it. The church is filled with deacons who used to deke and don't anymore. It's filled with tithers who used to tithe and singers who used to sing and teachers who used to teach. The dropouts and poop outs and pop -outs of life are filling our churches with a periphery of straw that has no direction, no motivation, makes no contribution, and no intention in winning the world of Jesus Christ. They are the has -beens and the used -to -bees of life. When General Goebbels, who was in charge of building the Panama Canal, had the thing three -fourths dug over two and a half years, one night there came an awful earthquake and millions of tons of dirt fell back in the canal. It seemed that all was wasted. He was interviewed by a reporter. The reporter came out and said, General, now what are you going to do? General Goebbels thought a minute, pulled out some tobacco and stuffed it in his pipe, took a few drags, and as the stood there and watched as the smoke curled up and looked at the reporter in disgust and said, Do? Man, we're going to dig it out again. What do you think we're going to do? Number four, start today. Don't live in put -off town. There are some things in life about which successful people need to have a good understanding. Number one is that nobody's going to do it for you. The handout philosophy only goes so far. Number two, the brevity of life. Number three, the longer you wait, the harder it gets. And number four, the fact that the increasing hesitation lessens your potential for accomplishment. Vince Lombardi, the greatest all -time football coach probably in the history of the world, said that in every football game, a football team has between 10 and 15 chances for victory. 10 or 15 critical, crucial plays. And if you make the right decisions and call the right plays, you can win, you can achieve, you can have success. But he added that every time they miss, everyone they fail to captivate and decreases the opportunities and the chances of success just that much. The other night, our deacons were talking about the fact that we need some more money. Let me say very frankly to you, we need about $10 ,000. We're behind to catch up on current bills. Now, some of you have thought, well, preacher, we have the budget pledge. Yes, but it's not all coming in. Some of our people give all at once. We need to give faithfully. You say, I'll join a small church. They don't need my money. We do need your money. I guarantee you that this church is making an impact for God in this city and in this country. And we talk, what shall we do? Shall we cut out TV? Shall we cut out some radio? Shall we cut out buses? Shall we cut out advertising? Shall we cut secretary? Shall we cut out staff? And it was the unanimous agreement of the men that the program to which God had led us and God had committed us must not be changed. But the answer was we needed to press on, but inform the people who always come through when they know the facts that we need to keep giving more and more money. As always, Jesus Christ is our example and our power. In closing, I want you to turn with me over to the book of Hebrews, please. Chapter number 12. Very quickly. I think it would inspire us to just read it together. If you will, the book of Hebrews, chapter 12, verse number 1. Follow along as I read. Verses 1 and 2, Hebrews 12. Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, because so many are watching, not only on earth but in heaven as well, so much is at stake. Let us lay aside every weight in the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience. That means endurance and consistency and steadfastness, the race that is set before us. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, listen, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross. He was willing to despise the shame and is now set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Jesus Christ is now the honored, exalted, beloved Son of God. But before resurrection, there was a crucifixion. Before Easter, there was Calvary. But he had his eye on the gold. He is now honored because he paid the price. He never wavered, though he was tempted a thousand times from going to the cross to provide for the salvation of the world. And he is not only our example, he is our sufficiency. Many years ago, a very rich man died and left his son an inheritance of millions of dollars. The boy enjoyed it for three years. He was not broke, but he was disgusted with not having to work and do anything for himself. He was not happy because life had been handed to him on a silver platter. He forsook it. He gave it away to charitable institutions. He relegated himself to the realm of near abject poverty and enrolled in college. He went through college and med school and graduate school and internship. One day as he was lecturing on the peace of mind, the joy that had come to him because of the accomplishment of becoming one of the world's great brain surgeons, a young man came up to him that he had known in college and said, Bill, I'd give the world to have what you've got. And he said, man, that's what it cost me. There is a price to be paid. There was a price to be paid for what Christ did in his life to give us salvation. And there's a price to be paid to be an achiever. And in a day in which there are so many of us that are sluggards and lazy and not self -starters, we're always dreaming and hoping and wishing and thinking. I say to you that if you start today and pay the price with the help of God and the power of the indwelling Christ, you can climb that unclimbable mountain. You can reach that unreachable goal. You can dream and achieve that impossible dream if you'll start today and pay the price and depend on God to help you. May we stand and pray. Our Father, we all get discouraged and defeated and depressed and become pessimistic and negative and depressing and depressive. And Lord, we realize that we have a thousand things we'd like to do, a thousand unfulfilled promises, a thousand unreached goals and unmet possibilities. Help each of us to commit and dedicate ourselves anew to Christ. And by his indwelling power, start out this day to achieve those things that are good and godly for thy glory that we ought to do and can do for thee. In Jesus' name, amen. We're going to sing but three verses of invitation. It'll take 90 seconds. The hour is late. As we, Gerald, may we sing just as I am, I'm going to ask you to make up your mind to come right now on the very first verse to join First Baptist Church to dedicate your life anew to the Lord to receive Christ as your personal Savior. Upstairs, down, either side, wherever you may be. Come, we're waiting for you who will be the first as we sing. 90 seconds. Come, right now. Thank you.