WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:05.000 And then sweeping up the glory, the glory of Jesus, 00:05.000 --> 00:10.000 he was changed by a man called the Lord. 00:10.000 --> 00:15.000 He was a living, a proud, a real, a bright, a glorious man. 00:15.000 --> 00:20.000 He's a pharaoh, a chieftain found through my soul. 00:20.000 --> 00:25.000 Tell me the story of Jesus, 00:25.000 --> 00:29.000 right on my heart, in the world. 00:29.000 --> 00:34.000 Tell me the story most precious, 00:34.000 --> 00:38.000 sweetest that ever was heard. 00:38.000 --> 00:43.000 Tell how the angels in chorus 00:43.000 --> 00:47.000 sang as they welcomed his birth. 00:47.000 --> 00:52.000 Glory to God in the highest, 00:52.000 --> 00:57.000 peace and good tidings to her. 00:57.000 --> 01:02.000 Tell me the story of Jesus, 01:02.000 --> 01:06.000 right on my heart, every word. 01:06.000 --> 01:11.000 Tell me the story most precious, 01:11.000 --> 01:15.000 sweetest that ever was heard. 01:15.000 --> 01:20.000 Fasting alone in the desert, 01:20.000 --> 01:24.000 tell of the days that are past. 01:24.000 --> 01:29.000 How for our sins he was tempted, 01:29.000 --> 01:33.000 yet was triumphant at last. 01:33.000 --> 01:38.000 Tell of the years of his labor, 01:38.000 --> 01:42.000 tell of the sorrow he bore. 01:42.000 --> 01:47.000 He was despised and afflicted, 01:47.000 --> 01:52.000 hopeless, rejected, and mourned. 01:52.000 --> 01:57.000 Tell me the story of Jesus, 01:57.000 --> 02:01.000 right on my heart, every word. 02:01.000 --> 02:06.000 Tell me the story most precious, 02:06.000 --> 02:10.000 sweetest that ever was heard. 02:10.000 --> 02:15.000 Tell of the cross where they nailed him, 02:15.000 --> 02:20.000 writhing in anguish and pain. 02:20.000 --> 02:25.000 Tell of the grave where they laid him, 02:25.000 --> 02:29.000 tell how he willed the ring. 02:29.000 --> 02:34.000 Love me, that story so tender, 02:34.000 --> 02:39.000 clearer than ever I see. 02:39.000 --> 02:44.000 Stay let me weep while you whisper, 02:44.000 --> 02:49.000 love me the ransom for me. 02:49.000 --> 02:54.000 Tell me the story of Jesus, 02:54.000 --> 02:58.000 right on my heart, every word. 02:58.000 --> 03:03.000 Tell me the story most precious, 03:03.000 --> 03:07.000 sweetest that ever was heard. 03:07.000 --> 03:12.000 I would love to tell you all I know of Jesus, 03:12.000 --> 03:17.000 since I found him in the wondrous and strong and true. 03:17.000 --> 03:22.000 I will tell you how he changed my life completely. 03:22.000 --> 03:27.000 It is something that no other friend could do. 03:27.000 --> 03:32.000 No one ever cared for me like Jesus, 03:32.000 --> 03:37.000 there's no other friend so kind as he. 03:37.000 --> 03:44.000 No one else could take the sin and darkness from me. 03:44.000 --> 03:49.000 Oh, how much he cared for me. 03:49.000 --> 03:54.000 All my life was full of sin with Jesus around me. 03:54.000 --> 03:59.000 All my heart was full of misery and woe. 03:59.000 --> 04:04.000 Jesus placed his song in loving arms around me. 04:04.000 --> 04:10.000 And he led me in the way I ought to go. 04:10.000 --> 04:15.000 No one ever cared for me like Jesus, 04:15.000 --> 04:21.000 there's no other friend so kind as he. 04:21.000 --> 04:27.000 No one else could take the sin and darkness from me. 04:27.000 --> 04:32.000 Oh, how much he cared for me. 04:32.000 --> 04:38.000 Every day he comes to me with new assurance, 04:38.000 --> 04:43.000 for in Lord I understand his words above. 04:43.000 --> 04:48.000 But I'll never notice why he came to save me, 04:48.000 --> 04:54.000 till someday I see his blessed face above. 04:54.000 --> 05:00.000 No one ever cared for me like Jesus, 05:00.000 --> 05:05.000 there's no other friend so kind as he. 05:05.000 --> 05:12.000 No one else could take the sin and darkness from me. 05:12.000 --> 05:18.000 Oh, how much he cared for me. 05:18.000 --> 05:23.000 All the way my Savior leads me. 05:23.000 --> 05:26.000 I got her. I got her. 05:26.000 --> 05:28.000 I got her. 05:28.000 --> 05:30.000 I got her. 05:30.000 --> 05:32.000 I got her. 05:32.000 --> 05:34.000 I got her. 05:34.000 --> 05:36.000 I got her. 05:36.000 --> 05:38.000 I got her. 05:38.000 --> 05:40.000 I got her. 05:40.000 --> 05:42.000 I got her. 05:42.000 --> 05:44.000 I got her. 05:44.000 --> 05:46.000 I got her. 05:46.000 --> 05:48.000 I got her. 05:48.000 --> 05:50.000 I got her. 05:50.000 --> 05:52.000 Song 159. 05:57.000 --> 06:01.000 Song 159 for our first song this evening. 06:01.000 --> 06:03.000 Blessed be the name. 06:03.000 --> 06:08.000 Song number 159. 06:08.000 --> 06:11.000 Let's all sing that real loud together. 06:11.000 --> 06:17.000 All praise to him who raised above 06:17.000 --> 06:21.000 His majesty supreme. 06:21.000 --> 06:26.000 Look in his eyes, your land tonight, 06:26.000 --> 06:30.000 And in life can we be. 06:30.000 --> 06:33.000 Blessed be the name. 06:33.000 --> 06:35.000 Blessed be the name. 06:35.000 --> 06:39.000 Blessed be the name of the Lord. 06:39.000 --> 06:42.000 Blessed be the name. 06:42.000 --> 06:44.000 Blessed be the name. 06:44.000 --> 06:48.000 Blessed be the name of the Lord. 06:48.000 --> 06:53.000 His name above all things shall stand, 06:53.000 --> 06:57.000 In salt and more and more. 06:57.000 --> 07:02.000 And God the Father, who righted 07:02.000 --> 07:07.000 Your angel hosts adored. 07:07.000 --> 07:09.000 Blessed be the name. 07:09.000 --> 07:11.000 Blessed be the name. 07:11.000 --> 07:16.000 Blessed be the name of the Lord. 07:16.000 --> 07:18.000 Blessed be the name. 07:18.000 --> 07:20.000 Blessed be the name. 07:20.000 --> 07:25.000 Blessed be the name of the Lord. 07:25.000 --> 07:29.000 Redeemer, Savior, friend of men, 07:29.000 --> 07:34.000 Who are wounded by the fall, 07:34.000 --> 07:39.000 Thou hast been my salvation's friend, 07:39.000 --> 07:44.000 Who round hast died for us. 07:44.000 --> 07:46.000 Blessed be the name. 07:46.000 --> 07:48.000 Blessed be the name. 07:48.000 --> 07:53.000 Blessed be the name of the Lord. 07:53.000 --> 07:55.000 Blessed be the name. 07:55.000 --> 07:57.000 Blessed be the name. 07:57.000 --> 08:02.000 Blessed be the name of the Lord. 08:02.000 --> 08:07.000 His name shall be the counselor, 08:37.000 --> 08:43.040 Great singing, everybody. Let's open up the service now with a word of prayer. Lord, we 08:43.040 --> 08:45.600 love you and we thank you so much for all the wonderful things you're doing here and 08:45.600 --> 08:49.360 through us and with us. Thank you for all the souls that were wanted to you this afternoon. 08:49.360 --> 08:53.520 We just ask that you bless them and bless everybody here and bless the service and fill 08:53.520 --> 08:57.320 us all with your spirit this afternoon. And it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. 08:58.200 --> 09:01.040 Alright, for our next song, let's go to song number 289. 09:01.040 --> 09:11.160 We sung it this morning, song 289, Come, Send, or Come. I could tell it was new to a lot of us, 09:11.160 --> 09:17.560 but I think it's pretty easy to follow along. Song number 289, if you know it well, sing it out. 09:27.320 --> 09:45.720 Wow, we are great to be come, send her come. Now is the time to know if come, send her come. 09:45.720 --> 10:04.120 Are you too heavy-leaded, come, send her come. Jesus will bear your burden, come, send her come. 10:15.720 --> 10:35.400 Jesus will not defeat you, come, send her come. Jesus can now defeat you, come, send her come. 10:35.400 --> 10:55.080 Oh, hear the tender beating, come, send her come. Come and receive the blessing, come, send her come. 10:55.960 --> 11:14.760 While Jesus bears her true, come, send her come. While we are praying, come, send her come. 11:15.480 --> 11:27.080 Thank you for coming to St. Vas'Baptist Church. If you did not already get your 11:27.080 --> 11:30.440 bullets in and you'd like one, you can lift up your hand nice and high. On the front we have our 11:30.440 --> 11:35.400 Bible repassage, Romans 10, and then on the inside we have our service and soul winning times, as 11:35.400 --> 11:39.880 well as our church stats on the right, down below, and then on the right the expecting ladies list. 11:40.600 --> 11:45.560 Children's choir practice is going to continue tonight after the evening service. We have a 11:45.560 --> 11:49.880 Carthage, Texas, soul winning marathon on the 21st and the Azel soul winning marathon on the 21st. 11:49.880 --> 11:53.240 There's QR codes on the back if you'd like to register for that, that would help us out just 11:53.240 --> 11:58.520 for planning. Also we have a soul winning mega marathon April 4th. April 5th is Easter Sunday. 11:59.160 --> 12:03.960 We have our kids choirs performing that Sunday morning. We have the anti-Israel conference 12:03.960 --> 12:08.200 May 20th through the 24th. On the back is our prayer list. If you have any additional prayer 12:08.200 --> 12:14.040 requests just please email us and we'd love to receive those requests. That's really all I have. 12:14.040 --> 12:18.520 Let's go ahead and just sing our third song, Psalm 146. Psalm 146. 12:26.200 --> 12:32.680 All right, that was Psalm 146 in your binders or in your King James Bible. It's easier to 12:32.680 --> 12:36.520 follow along in your binders though. Psalm 146. 14:02.680 --> 14:17.480 And earth that seeeth all that there is in this, be the truth forever, which executes judgment 14:17.480 --> 14:26.680 for thee on freshness day and day. We prove the truth, the Lord, who sent the 15:26.680 --> 15:41.240 God of Zion unto all generations. Praise be the Lord, praise be the Lord. 15:41.240 --> 15:44.520 Great singing everybody. Now as the offering plates are being passed around, 15:44.520 --> 15:51.320 go ahead and open your Bibles to the book of Acts chapter 16. That's the book of Acts chapter number 16. 16:56.680 --> 17:13.400 The Bible says, then came he to Derbe and Lystra, and behold a certain disciple was there named 17:13.400 --> 17:19.720 Timotheus, the son of a certain woman, which was a Jewess and believed. But his father was a Greek, 17:19.720 --> 17:25.560 which was well reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and Iconium. Him would 17:25.560 --> 17:30.200 Paul have to go forth with him and took and circumcised him because of the Jews which were 17:30.200 --> 17:35.720 in those quarters, for they knew all that his father was a Greek. And as they went through the 17:35.720 --> 17:40.440 cities, they delivered them the decrees for to keep that were ordained of the apostles and 17:40.440 --> 17:45.320 elders which were at Jerusalem. And so were the churches established in the faith and increased 17:45.320 --> 17:51.640 in number daily. Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia and were 17:51.640 --> 17:57.400 forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia, after they were come to Mycea, they assayed 17:57.400 --> 18:05.080 to go into Bithynia. But the spirit suffered them not. And they passing by Mycea came down to Troas. 18:05.080 --> 18:10.520 And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. There stood a man of Macedonia and prayed him saying, 18:10.520 --> 18:16.840 come over into Macedonia and help us. And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavored to 18:16.840 --> 18:22.520 go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto 18:22.520 --> 18:29.640 them. Therefore, loosing from Troas, we came with a straight course to Samarthosia and the next day 18:29.640 --> 18:35.560 to Neapolis. And from thence to Philippi, which is the chief city of that part of Macedonia and a 18:35.560 --> 18:42.120 colony. And we were in that city abiding certain days. And on the Sabbath, we went out of the city 18:42.120 --> 18:48.040 by a riverside where prayer was want to be made. And we sat down and spake unto a woman which 18:48.040 --> 18:54.920 resorted thither. And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple of the city of Thyatira, 18:54.920 --> 18:59.880 which worshiped God, heard us, whose heart the Lord opened that she attended unto the things 18:59.880 --> 19:05.880 which were spoken of Paul. And when she was baptized in her household, she besought us saying, 19:05.880 --> 19:10.600 if ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there. And she 19:10.600 --> 19:16.360 constrained us. And it came to pass as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with the 19:16.360 --> 19:23.000 spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by sooth saying. The same 19:23.000 --> 19:28.680 followed Paul and us and cried saying, these men are the servants of the most high God, which show 19:28.680 --> 19:35.880 unto us the way of salvation. And this did she many days. But Paul being grieved, turned and said to 19:35.880 --> 19:41.560 the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same 19:41.560 --> 19:47.480 hour. And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas 19:47.480 --> 19:52.600 and drew them into the marketplace unto the rulers and brought them to the magistrate saying, 19:52.600 --> 19:58.920 these men being Jews do exceedingly trouble our city and teach customs which are not lawful for 19:58.920 --> 20:05.800 us to receive, neither to observe being Romans. And the multitude rose up together against them. 20:05.800 --> 20:10.760 And the magistrates ran off their clothes and commanded to beat them. And when they had laid 20:10.760 --> 20:16.520 many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailer to keep them safely, 20:16.520 --> 20:21.560 who having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison and made their feet fast 20:21.560 --> 20:28.200 in the stocks. And at midnight, Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God. And the 20:28.200 --> 20:33.160 prisoners heard them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the 20:33.240 --> 20:38.520 prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's bands were loosed. 20:39.720 --> 20:44.440 And the keeper of the prison, awaking out of his sleep and seeing the prison doors open, 20:44.440 --> 20:49.080 he drew out his sword and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been 20:49.080 --> 20:56.520 fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice saying, do thyself no harm, for we are all here. Then he 20:57.480 --> 21:02.520 called for a light and sprang in and came trembling and fell down before Paul and Silas. 21:03.400 --> 21:09.400 And brought them out and said, sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, believe on the 21:09.400 --> 21:15.160 Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved and thy house. And they spake unto him the word of the 21:15.160 --> 21:21.320 Lord and to all that were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed 21:21.320 --> 21:26.520 their stripes and was baptized, he and all his, straightway. And when he had brought them into his 21:26.520 --> 21:31.640 house, he set meat before them and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house. 21:33.240 --> 21:37.320 And when it was day, the magistrate sent the sergeants saying, let those men go. 21:37.880 --> 21:43.000 And the keeper of the prison told this saying to Paul, the magistrates have sent to let you go. 21:43.000 --> 21:49.560 Now therefore depart and go in peace. But Paul said unto them, they have beaten us openly, 21:49.560 --> 21:55.560 uncondemned, being Romans, and have cast us into prison. And now do they thrust us out privily? 21:56.120 --> 22:01.560 Nay, verily, but let them come themselves and fetch us out. And the sergeants told these words 22:01.560 --> 22:06.280 unto the magistrates, and they feared when they heard that they were Romans. And they came and 22:06.280 --> 22:11.640 besought them and brought them out and desired them to depart out of the city. And they went out of 22:11.640 --> 22:16.360 the prison and entered into the house of Lydia. And when they had seen the brethren, they comforted 22:16.360 --> 22:22.680 them and departed. Let us pray. Dear heavenly father, thank you for this day. I thank you for 22:22.680 --> 22:27.880 all of the great works that this church is doing. I thank you for exposing evil. I thank you for 22:27.880 --> 22:33.000 Pastor Shelley being willing to preach the hard truths of the Bible. I pray that you would please 22:33.000 --> 22:36.680 bless him now and fill him with the Holy Spirit and help us to be attentive to your word. In Jesus 22:36.680 --> 22:44.360 name, amen. Amen. I want to look back at verse number 28. But Paul cried with a loud voice saying, 22:45.080 --> 22:51.880 do thyself no harm. Now that's the title that I'm using for this sermon this evening is do 22:51.880 --> 22:58.760 thyself no harm. And I believe this is a biblical principle that the Bible teaches that we should 22:58.760 --> 23:05.240 not do things that will be harmful to ourselves. Now in the context of this particular passage, 23:05.960 --> 23:11.240 we have the keeper of the prison in verse 27, waking out of his sleep and seeing the prison 23:11.240 --> 23:16.600 doors open. He drew out his sword and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had 23:16.600 --> 23:25.000 been fled. So this guy, foreseeing impending doom of his own life in his depression and his sadness, 23:25.000 --> 23:32.280 whatever, he's considering taking his own life. And the apostle Paul screams out, hey, do thyself 23:32.280 --> 23:38.920 no harm. Now the unfortunate reality is that a lot of people do harm themselves in this world. 23:38.920 --> 23:43.640 And not only is it limited to, you know, we're talking about taking your own life, but in many 23:43.640 --> 23:49.160 other ways. That's just one thing that I want to bring up in this particular sermon. Statistically, 23:49.160 --> 23:55.400 50,000 people die annually in the United States due to taking their own life. So this is actually 23:55.400 --> 24:01.640 pretty common. And that's out of 1.5 million attempts. So actually a lot of people are 24:01.640 --> 24:06.280 attempting and not necessarily successful. I don't know how serious, these are just statistics I 24:06.280 --> 24:10.600 looked up online. I don't know exactly what qualifies as an attempt and stuff like that. 24:10.600 --> 24:15.560 But just to give people some kind of an idea. Now here's the thing, almost everybody probably 24:15.560 --> 24:21.640 knows multiple people that are either someone that's gone down this road or even was successful. 24:21.640 --> 24:25.800 Unfortunately, you know, years ago I had a church member that did take their own life. 24:25.800 --> 24:31.240 And I talked to him on the phone hours before it had happened. I know a lot of people in our 24:31.240 --> 24:36.840 church have had loved ones that did take their own life. And we're talking about moms, dads, 24:36.840 --> 24:42.360 brothers, sisters, whatever. And look, this is not a fun topic to talk about. But at the end of 24:42.360 --> 24:47.800 the day, I think it's important to still address and bring up that, look, anybody can be tempted 24:47.800 --> 24:53.720 and go down a dark road and kind of have this negative feeling. But what you need to do is you 24:53.720 --> 24:59.880 need to do thyself no harm. And you need to reach out to people that love you and ask for help and 25:00.520 --> 25:06.120 try to talk to people. Because here's the thing, as long as you've got breath in your lungs, 25:06.120 --> 25:12.200 I believe God has a plan for your life. And for this guy, he wasn't even saved. And at the end 25:12.200 --> 25:18.280 of the day, even if you're not saved, God has a plan for you, get saved. And obviously we're not 25:18.280 --> 25:21.240 bringing up reprobates and stuff. We don't care about them. But I'm just saying in general, 25:21.800 --> 25:28.760 most people, hey, if you still got breath in your lungs, it's never too late, get saved. If you are 25:28.760 --> 25:33.720 saved, it doesn't really matter how bad you've fallen. It doesn't really matter how much you 25:33.720 --> 25:37.640 screwed up your life. Because no matter what, you can still always preach the gospel. 25:39.320 --> 25:44.040 For the most part, as long as you got breath in your lungs, you got an opportunity to preach 25:44.040 --> 25:51.320 the gospel. And even if you did, hypothetically, just screw up your life or cause lots of problems 25:51.320 --> 25:56.280 or you've done dumb things, you're going to have to suffer a lot of consequences, it's better to just 25:58.120 --> 26:02.520 allow yourself to go through that evil and yet maybe you can still get a few people saved. 26:02.920 --> 26:06.600 I mean, think about some people that go through some low moments in their life. 26:06.600 --> 26:12.760 How about Joseph? Joseph gets betrayed by all his brethren. They all turn on him. He gets lied about. 26:12.760 --> 26:19.080 His family doesn't even realize he's alive anymore. He's sold into Egypt. Then he kind of like had a 26:19.080 --> 26:24.520 moment of redemption, it seemed like. He's kind of being elevated in Potiphar's house. But then he 26:24.520 --> 26:30.440 just gets lied about by Potiphar's wife, thrown in prison. I mean, that could be pretty easy to be 26:30.440 --> 26:35.080 pretty depressed at that point in time. You feel like God may have forsaken you. You may have felt 26:35.080 --> 26:39.480 like everyone's abandoned you in your life. It felt like everything just goes wrong for you. 26:39.480 --> 26:45.560 But you know what? Praise God, Joseph didn't allow that to get him down. But rather, he kept serving 26:45.560 --> 26:50.440 God in prison. He was able to minister to people in prison. And not only that, he was then elevated, 26:50.440 --> 26:55.480 brought out of prison and then at least saved virtually the entire planet, virtually every 26:55.480 --> 27:00.760 person's life. He preserved them through divine revelation. And so, you know, you never know how 27:00.760 --> 27:07.000 God may use you. You never know what impact you can still have for God, even if you have screwed up, 27:07.000 --> 27:12.360 even if you had cause problems. I mean, David has a pretty low moment. He has a moment where, 27:12.920 --> 27:18.680 you know, he's basically left the country. He's fled into the Philistines. Even the Philistines 27:18.680 --> 27:23.960 reject him. And they travel off for battle. They come back. Every single person, every single one 27:23.960 --> 27:29.800 of his friends and all the guys that are his companions have lost all of their wives and their 27:29.800 --> 27:34.280 entire family and all their goods. And the Bible says they were so mad at David, they were going 27:34.280 --> 27:39.640 to kill him themselves. They were thinking about stoning him, as the Bible says. But the Bible says 27:39.640 --> 27:45.880 that he encouraged himself in the Lord and he didn't allow himself to get too discouraged to 27:45.880 --> 27:50.440 where he just either gave up or allowed himself to take his own life or allowed others to take his 27:50.440 --> 27:54.120 life, but rather said, you know what, I'm going to keep fighting. And then he turned the whole 27:54.120 --> 27:59.160 thing around. And you never know how God may turn things around. You never know how if you apologize, 27:59.160 --> 28:04.040 you ask God for repentance, you seek the Lord. You never know how your situation may turn around. And 28:04.040 --> 28:09.320 in many people's situation or case, they're usually upset about something that's fixable. 28:09.320 --> 28:13.720 They're upset about something that's not even real. They kind of make things worse than they 28:13.720 --> 28:18.760 really are. And if you reached out for help, if you talk to people, you know, always the better 28:18.760 --> 28:24.600 approach. You know, do not harm yourself. That's a biblical principle. That's what Paul is saying 28:24.600 --> 28:30.040 here. And I believe it thoroughly. Now go to Proverbs 31. I'm not going to dwell on that point, 28:30.040 --> 28:36.360 but I'm just saying if you ever feel like this, please, please call someone. Please talk to 28:36.360 --> 28:40.920 someone. Of course, you know, you can always talk to your pastor, but you don't have to talk to me. 28:40.920 --> 28:45.640 Talk to your spouse, talk to your dad, talk to your mom, talk to loved ones. You know, do not allow 28:45.640 --> 28:50.280 yourself to go into a dark place and be alone. That's where the devil wants you to go. The devil 28:50.280 --> 28:54.120 wants you to get into a dark place. The devil wants you to get really sad. The devil wants to 28:54.120 --> 28:59.240 get really depressed and contemplate harming yourself. And the Bible says that, of course, 28:59.240 --> 29:04.600 hey, do not harm myself. Do thyself no harm. It makes no sense. It's against a lot of biblical 29:04.600 --> 29:08.440 principles, but I'm not going to dwell on that. What's another thing that people may do though, 29:08.440 --> 29:12.840 is they may not necessarily want to take their own life, but they kind of want to drown their life or 29:13.000 --> 29:19.640 their sorrows in drugs and alcohol. We see this happen as a common thing in the world. Proverbs 29:19.640 --> 29:24.280 31, look at verse number seven. The Bible says, let him drink and forget his poverty and remember 29:24.280 --> 29:30.360 his misery no more. Now, this is sarcastic or it is kind of like hyperbolic. This is not like an 29:30.360 --> 29:38.280 actual good idea. The Bible's not saying like, hey, you want to just forget how much your life 29:38.280 --> 29:44.520 screwed up, drink alcohol. No, but that's often the excuse many people use to drink alcohol. 29:45.480 --> 29:53.160 In fact, I was looking it up, 20, anywhere from 20 to 60% of alcohol addicts admit to basically 29:53.160 --> 29:58.840 being depressed is the main reason why they're drinking. You kind of wonder why is every country 29:58.840 --> 30:04.520 music song so screwed up. It's because they're basically just a bunch of drunks. And so, you 30:04.520 --> 30:08.360 know, why do you go to the bar and it's a bunch of country music because people are going to the 30:08.360 --> 30:13.880 bar because their life sucks. And look, the bar sucks. The bar smells bad. The bar is expensive. 30:13.880 --> 30:20.280 Everybody there is just basically a loser in their life at that point. And instead of, even if you 30:20.280 --> 30:26.680 are a loser, don't hang out with more losers. Nothing good is accomplished at the bar. 30:27.560 --> 30:34.120 Nobody turns their life around at the bar. No one meets that really good significant other at the 30:34.120 --> 30:42.280 bar. You know what they meet at the bar? Their next ex-wife, their next one night stand, their next STD, 30:42.840 --> 30:48.600 their next just ruining of their life and relationship. Look, the bar is where you go 30:48.600 --> 30:53.560 to destroy your life. It does not fix your life. It does not help your life. This is not going to 30:53.560 --> 30:59.640 do anything good to yourself. Do not hang out at bars. You know, maybe you could be a single guy 30:59.640 --> 31:02.840 and be like, I'm just tired of not meeting women. Don't go to the bar. 31:05.720 --> 31:09.160 Especially in foreign countries, it may not even be women that you're talking to, okay? 31:09.160 --> 31:14.920 You got to be real careful. And, you know, when you're drinking, anything's on the table. 31:15.720 --> 31:20.120 Like a sober person won't do certain things. A drunk person will do literally anything. 31:22.520 --> 31:28.760 That should scare a saved Christian. That should scare a normal person. What you might do, because 31:29.080 --> 31:34.680 I'm not joking. People that drink a lot of alcohol, or they drink enough, they can get to a point where 31:34.680 --> 31:38.520 they don't know where they are. They don't know what they're doing. I mean, let's read it in the 31:38.520 --> 31:44.360 Bible. Go to Proverbs 23. Unfortunately, I went to college. I was around a lot of people that 31:44.360 --> 31:49.800 drink alcohol, and I saw people blacked out drunk constantly. And let me tell you something, they 31:49.800 --> 31:54.040 had no idea where they were, and they were constantly harming themselves. I remember one 31:54.040 --> 31:58.360 person just like ran into something and like almost killed themselves because they were just 31:58.360 --> 32:02.520 blacked out drunk. And I was just thinking like, man, this is dangerous. Like this is a bad idea. 32:02.520 --> 32:07.160 We shouldn't be around these kind of people. Like this is not something that's good. If you're 32:07.160 --> 32:12.440 in a public atmosphere, sometimes people even go into Chili's or going wherever, people can get 32:12.440 --> 32:16.200 drunk. You go to a baseball game, you go to a football game, somebody can get drunk. You want 32:16.200 --> 32:22.760 to get away from those people. Those people will hurt themselves and anyone around them. And you 32:22.760 --> 32:27.480 know what? It's a bad, bad idea. It's a bad move. Proverbs 23, look at verse 29. 32:28.600 --> 32:34.200 Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath babbling? Who hath wounds? Notice this, 32:34.200 --> 32:40.600 without cause, who hath redness of eyes. You know, drinking alcohol can cause you to have wounds 32:40.600 --> 32:46.120 without cause. It says, they that tarry long at the wine, they that go to seek mixed wine, this is 32:46.120 --> 32:51.000 what the people go into the bars. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveeth its 32:51.000 --> 32:55.320 color in the cup, when it moveeth itself aright. So the Bible differentiates between juice, 32:55.880 --> 33:01.800 fruit juice, and an alcoholic beverage. And of course the Bible used the word wine interchangeably, 33:01.800 --> 33:07.400 so therefore there's confusion and some people want to believe that alcohol is good. These people 33:07.400 --> 33:13.480 are basically justifying wicked sin. And again, how do they reconcile passages in the Bible that 33:13.480 --> 33:19.080 clearly say not to look at the wine? Oh, that's just drunkards. Yeah, but really, I mean, there's 33:19.080 --> 33:24.280 virtually very few people that are these moderate drinkers anyways, so, you know, why don't we just 33:24.280 --> 33:29.320 go ahead and just realize we should just never drink? And I mean, the Bible doesn't ever paint 33:29.320 --> 33:35.160 drinking alcohol in a positive light ever. It's never positive. I believe that it's a sin in any 33:35.160 --> 33:41.960 capacity. And just because the Bible warns about drunkenness doesn't mean the process getting there 33:41.960 --> 33:48.840 wasn't wrong. Just like the Bible warns a lot about adultery. There was a lot of things probably 33:48.840 --> 33:54.520 before you literally committed physical adultery that was also bad. It doesn't mean like, oh, well, 33:54.520 --> 34:00.840 I didn't commit physical adultery, so therefore it wasn't bad. No, it could be really bad. And some 34:00.840 --> 34:06.120 people's definition, it's not even, it's like Bill Clinton's definition of what's adultery is different 34:06.120 --> 34:10.360 than other people's definition of what adultery is, you know? So you never know what people are 34:10.360 --> 34:16.760 even meaning anymore. But, you know, at the end of the day, hey, just because murder is wrong and the 34:16.760 --> 34:21.720 Bible clear on that doesn't mean I can beat someone up. Doesn't mean I can just start punching people 34:21.720 --> 34:28.200 in the face and be like, well, the Bible doesn't say anything about that. In fact, there's a passage 34:28.200 --> 34:34.840 in the Bible where the prophet says smite him. So I could just punch people. That's like the same 34:34.840 --> 34:39.240 logic as saying, oh, the Bible has this positive mention about wine, so therefore I can get drunk. 34:39.880 --> 34:45.160 It's like, dude, that has nothing to do with drinking alcohol. The positive mentions of wine 34:45.160 --> 34:51.080 in the Bible are fruit juice. It is not talking about an alcoholic beverage. Yeah, if a prophet 34:51.080 --> 34:56.760 is begging you to punch him in the face, then you got the green light, okay? What is that? That's 34:56.760 --> 35:01.560 basically like consenting to boxing, right? Yeah, if you're consent, if you're both consenting to 35:01.560 --> 35:06.680 fight each other and you're doing a boxing match, then okay, take him to task, right? But don't be 35:06.680 --> 35:12.360 Mike Tyson and bite off his ear now. And at the end of the day, just because the Bible is warning 35:12.360 --> 35:17.000 against murder doesn't mean that anything short of murder is somehow on the table, 35:17.880 --> 35:23.080 okay? In the same way that, oh, okay, well, I'm not just getting blacked out drunk. No, 35:23.080 --> 35:28.680 how about you just don't even get on the train? Don't get on the Coors Light train, okay? Just 35:28.680 --> 35:35.160 stay far, far away from all the alcohol, all the drugs. It doesn't help. It doesn't benefit anybody. 35:35.160 --> 35:39.160 There's not all these stories of like, man, my life was in shambles and then I started drinking, 35:39.160 --> 35:44.520 got way better. I couldn't get a job. Then I started drinking, tons of jobs. 35:45.720 --> 35:49.400 I couldn't figure out how to invent the light bulb, started drinking, invented the light bulb. 35:50.440 --> 35:54.840 You know, doesn't happen. Oh, I couldn't find a wife. Then I started drinking and got a great wife. 35:56.040 --> 36:01.640 This stuff doesn't happen. It's not real. It's fake. Oh, well, but I saw this TV commercial 36:01.640 --> 36:05.880 and everybody's skinny and drinking, you know, alcohol. It was probably watered down tea in the 36:05.880 --> 36:11.320 commercial. They probably weren't even allowing the model. If the model actually showed up drunk, 36:11.320 --> 36:18.520 they wouldn't have allowed them to be in the ad. The ad's a lie. It's fake. It's not real. 36:18.520 --> 36:23.720 And let me tell you something, drinking alcohol is poison. It is doing yourself harm. You shouldn't 36:23.720 --> 36:29.240 even touch the stuff. Why in the world would you want to sit here and drink poison? The ad 36:29.240 --> 36:34.920 sounds less cool when you say it that way, right? What if you just, ethyl alcohol, alcohol, alcohol, 36:34.920 --> 36:42.200 drink ethyl alcohol? No, it's cool. Who's light? Budweiser. Dude, this, it's just, it's just a lie. 36:42.200 --> 36:48.440 It's a scam. It's not real. Not only, not only will it make you just get blacked out drunk and all 36:48.440 --> 36:53.960 this stuff, you know, if you drink a lot of alcohol as a male, it'll actually like make you more feminine. 36:54.840 --> 36:59.960 It has like all kinds of chemicals in it that'll make you like more feminine. It'll give you a nasty 36:59.960 --> 37:05.880 beer belly and it'll give you like a giant nose and it'll destroy every organ of your body. 37:06.680 --> 37:11.240 That's what alcohol really does. You know, people that drink a lot of alcohol, I mean, you've seen 37:11.240 --> 37:17.400 that guy, he's got the skinniest legs you've ever seen and a belly like Santa Claus. And you're 37:17.400 --> 37:22.840 thinking like, how, how does someone look like that? And I'll tell you exactly how they look 37:22.840 --> 37:27.800 like that. They drink eight or nine beers every day. And you don't realize that a lot of these 37:27.800 --> 37:32.440 beers, why is it Coors Light? It's because beers have a lot of calories and you know, people that 37:32.440 --> 37:36.920 drink alcohol for some reason, they can just, they just drink so, they just consume so much. 37:36.920 --> 37:41.720 You know, if you're drinking a beverage that has 200 calories and you're drinking eight, nine, 37:41.720 --> 37:47.400 10 of those, that's an extra 2000 calories to your diet, let alone all the food that you're 37:47.400 --> 37:51.960 going to be consuming. And of course that's why you're going to get giant. You're going to get, 37:51.960 --> 37:56.360 you know, extremely overweight and you're going to carry that weight in a really awkward way. 37:57.000 --> 38:02.920 You know, you're doing yourself all kinds of harm. You know, these guys go to the football game, 38:02.920 --> 38:07.560 they wouldn't even be able to run from one end zone to the other. They're so out of shape and 38:07.560 --> 38:12.360 just drinking the alcohol has caused them so many problems. But drinking alcohol is the worst, one of 38:12.360 --> 38:17.080 the worst things you can do for yourself. You should just stay far away from it. Don't even look at 38:17.080 --> 38:21.800 it. And what does it say in verse 32? At the last, it bite it like a serpent and sting it like an 38:21.800 --> 38:22.200 adder. 38:43.720 --> 38:47.640 It's just saying you can literally harm yourself and you don't even feel it. 38:47.640 --> 38:51.720 That's why many people are constantly hurting themselves way worse than they realize when 38:51.720 --> 38:56.920 they're drunk, when they're doing alcohol, when they're doing drugs, let alone the consequences 38:56.920 --> 39:03.080 of the drugs and alcohol themselves. People taking, you know, all kinds of street drugs these days, 39:03.080 --> 39:09.880 fentanyl and marijuana usage, it's just like crazy. Just people are just doing all kinds of insane 39:09.880 --> 39:16.040 things. It's harming yourself. And when you become addicted to drugs, it can permanently ruin your 39:16.040 --> 39:23.400 life. You can get to a point where the only thing you can think about is drugs. Just every thought, 39:24.280 --> 39:32.520 food doesn't even taste good anymore. Nothing is good anymore. God's design of marriage isn't even 39:32.520 --> 39:37.880 satisfying anymore. You just get to a point where you just want to hit the button for drugs and you 39:37.880 --> 39:43.960 basically have, you can't, your body can't even function. Your body can literally shake and hurt 39:43.960 --> 39:49.320 and you can break out, you can break out in hives because you just aren't getting whatever drug 39:49.880 --> 39:55.880 substance that you have. You say like, that sounds horrific. How do I not get that? Just don't ever do 39:55.880 --> 40:02.440 drugs. Just never do it. Say like, oh, but it's cool to try things once or, you know, it never 40:02.440 --> 40:07.240 harmed this guy. Look, there's so many people that are killing themselves inadvertently through drugs 40:07.240 --> 40:13.640 and alcohol usage, whether that be through a drunk driving accident. I mean, this kills a lot of people, 40:13.640 --> 40:18.600 a lot of people are dying through driving a vehicle and just killing themselves through 40:18.600 --> 40:25.800 some kind of a vehicular slaughter, taking drugs that are bad, overdosing, just all kinds of horrible 40:25.800 --> 40:29.480 things. And you know what? As a Bible-believing Christian, we should avoid this kind of stuff. 40:30.840 --> 40:37.000 We should stay far away from it. We should never try it. And look, children, if someone ever entices 40:37.000 --> 40:43.000 you to do drugs or alcohol, you tell your parents. Tell your parents. And you know what? I am a safe 40:43.800 --> 40:48.120 person to tell to. You know, if my kids or anybody, they kind of, it's not like you're going to get in 40:48.120 --> 40:53.800 trouble. Just don't do it. Just tell us, just say like, hey, this person's doing it. Even if it's 40:53.800 --> 41:00.120 like, well, uncle so-and-so is offering me a beer. We went over to the family reunion and so-and-so is 41:00.120 --> 41:06.040 in the backyard and uncle so-and-so wanted to give me a beer. Tell your mom and dad, don't disguise it. 41:06.600 --> 41:12.440 Don't hide it. Stay away from it. Don't drink with your cousins. Don't drink with your uncles. 41:12.440 --> 41:18.200 Don't go off and do drugs with your friends. Just stay far, far away from these things. And 41:18.200 --> 41:23.080 if you have family members that are involved in this kind of stuff, don't go to the family reunion. 41:23.880 --> 41:29.960 Don't go to the Christmas party. Don't go to the Quinceañera. Don't go to whatever it is. Just stay 41:29.960 --> 41:36.200 away from it. Stay away from it. Don't go near it. Don't have these relationships. Just don't do 41:36.200 --> 41:44.200 thyself harm. It's not worth it. It doesn't benefit anybody. It's hurting so many people 41:44.200 --> 41:46.920 and it's so frustrating. Go over to Leviticus chapter 19. 41:50.280 --> 41:55.640 You know, you are of value. You're of great value and God doesn't want you to harm yourself in any 41:55.640 --> 42:01.160 kind of way. He wants us to prevent harm from ourselves. And you know, another thing that 42:01.160 --> 42:07.080 people will do is they will purposely harm themselves. Unfortunately, this happens. People 42:07.080 --> 42:12.200 will literally cut themselves. You know, people are doing this through tattoos even. And again, 42:12.200 --> 42:16.600 let me tell you something. Tattoos are cutting yourself. You're permanently altering your body. 42:16.600 --> 42:22.120 You're permanently harming yourself. And the Bible forbids this. Look at Leviticus chapter 19 verse 42:22.120 --> 42:28.120 28. You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you, I am 42:28.120 --> 42:32.520 the Lord. And again, some people say like, oh, well, it wasn't for the dead. Look, the principle 42:32.520 --> 42:38.440 is still there. You just don't cut yourself. Obviously, we're not talking about cutting your 42:38.440 --> 42:42.280 fingernails. We're not talking about cutting your hair. We're not talking about legitimate 42:42.280 --> 42:49.640 dermatology related issues. But look, if you have no reason to discard some part of your flesh, 42:49.640 --> 42:54.120 then you know what? You need to just not harm yourself. And everything that I'm basically 42:54.120 --> 42:59.240 saying is dead flesh anyways. Cutting your fingernails is already the dead. It doesn't hurt 42:59.240 --> 43:03.640 to cut your fingernails. It doesn't hurt to cut your hair. It doesn't hurt, you know, these things 43:03.640 --> 43:10.040 that are already dead flesh. Obviously, sometimes you need a medical necessity when it comes to 43:10.760 --> 43:14.840 some kind of cutting off of something. But at the end of the day, that's not harming yourself. That's 43:14.840 --> 43:20.600 helping yourself. Manicuring yourself. The Bible forbids getting tattoos. It says not to get marks 43:20.600 --> 43:25.320 on your body. Go to Proverbs 21. And look, you really are harming yourself. You're harming future 43:25.880 --> 43:33.960 job prospects. You know, I'm not saying that someone that has tattoos is a bad person. 43:34.520 --> 43:38.440 I'm not saying that they're not someone that you would, you know, you can't consider marrying and 43:38.440 --> 43:43.160 whatever. But I'll just be honest. As a young person, if I was dating my wife and she had a bunch of 43:43.160 --> 43:49.080 tattoos, I would have never married her. And look, I'm not saying that, you know, you have to follow 43:49.080 --> 43:53.160 that example. I'm not saying someone that has tattoos, I wouldn't, you know, I would forbid 43:53.160 --> 43:58.200 someone from getting married. I would say like 50% of our church probably has tattoos. And I'm not 43:58.200 --> 44:03.320 trying to throw shade on them. What I am trying to say is this. You should think about that. You could 44:03.320 --> 44:09.640 potentially be saying no to a specific spouse without realizing it. You could be saying no to 44:09.640 --> 44:14.840 a specific job without realizing it. You could cost yourself all kinds of problems and issues. 44:14.840 --> 44:19.240 You're only harming yourself. You know, there's just not those people out there that are like, 44:19.240 --> 44:25.480 man, I would have hired you if you had a tattoo. I was really thinking about marrying you, 44:25.480 --> 44:31.560 but your lack of tattoos was a red flag for me. You know, like that's not going to harm you. 44:31.560 --> 44:37.400 And again, I'm not I'm not saying this because I'm mad at anybody. Frankly speaking, if we asked for 44:37.400 --> 44:41.480 raising hands, probably more adults raising their hands in this room than less. But you know, at the 44:41.480 --> 44:46.360 end of the day, I've always been against it. I hate it. I think they're gross. I think they're 44:46.360 --> 44:50.120 disgusting. And why do I say this in such a negative way? Because I don't want you to get 44:50.120 --> 44:54.440 another one. Now, look, some people, they have tattoos. They're like, Oh, I'm thinking about 44:54.440 --> 44:58.280 getting removed. I don't I personally this is my personal opinion. I wouldn't even do it. 44:59.080 --> 45:05.240 I if I had it, I just wear it, you know, whatever. Okay. I'm not asking for anybody to try and harm 45:05.240 --> 45:09.960 themselves again. They're trying to get that thing removed. Because let me tell you something. If you 45:09.960 --> 45:15.000 thought getting a tattoo hurt, getting it removed is 10 times worse. At least that's what I'm heard, 45:15.000 --> 45:19.880 you know, and I believe it. And many times, it all it does is just makes the tattoo look bad. 45:20.920 --> 45:25.480 It doesn't even get rid of it. It just makes it look bad. Which then it's just like now, 45:25.480 --> 45:30.520 now it's the worst of both worlds. Not only did you not get rid of the tattoo, now it just looks 45:30.520 --> 45:37.640 screwed up. Now look, obviously, if you had some kind of a blasphemous tattoo, or some satanic 45:37.640 --> 45:42.920 wicked thing, I've seen people like get it redesigned so that it was like less blasphemous 45:42.920 --> 45:47.080 or wicked. Hey, I'm not even gonna fight you on that. But you know what, how about just don't get 45:47.080 --> 45:52.760 in the first place? How about just just avoid these things and don't harm yourself. I mean, 45:52.760 --> 45:59.560 Proverbs 21, look at verse five. They shall not make baldness upon their head, neither shall they 45:59.560 --> 46:04.520 shave off the corner of their beard, nor make any cuttings in their flesh. You know, they like to 46:04.600 --> 46:10.040 say, oh, it says for the dead. Okay, what about this one? This one says not to make any cuttings 46:10.040 --> 46:15.000 in your flesh. It doesn't even bring up the dead. It just says, hey, just don't even do it. Okay, 46:15.000 --> 46:18.920 obviously, it's saying bring up for the dead. And there's one passage because that's a common reason 46:18.920 --> 46:24.920 why a lot of people are doing it. At that time, a pagan practice, that's kind of their justification. 46:24.920 --> 46:29.080 But you know what, it's just wrong anyways. It's just something you shouldn't do. I don't think 46:29.080 --> 46:33.800 you're continuing to sin to have it. It was a one-time sin. It's over now. But you know what, 46:33.800 --> 46:41.400 I don't want for the next generation for that to be 50% tattoos too. And oh, that makes some 46:41.400 --> 46:45.320 people feel uncomfortable. Okay, well then be uncomfortable. Because you know what, I don't 46:45.320 --> 46:50.440 want the next generation to do likewise. And you know what, we've had an escalation in tattoos in 46:50.440 --> 46:56.120 our society. It's just like astronomically growing and just more and more people keep getting it and 46:56.120 --> 47:02.040 keep getting it. I want it to go down, not go up. And it's like for some reason in the Calvinist 47:02.040 --> 47:07.000 circles, they think it's super cool. I don't know why. It's like even Mark Driscoll at one point was 47:07.000 --> 47:13.000 having a tattoo, like free tattoos at their church. And I'm just thinking like what in the world? 47:13.000 --> 47:18.520 Like, you know, this is just weird. Okay. So, you know, again, this is to me something that you 47:18.520 --> 47:23.400 should just avoid. Go to 1 Corinthians chapter 9. I had six points in my sermon. That was point 47:23.400 --> 47:27.960 number three. So point number one, we should never take our own life. Number two, we should not do 47:27.960 --> 47:31.880 drugs and alcohol. Number three, we should not do cuttings in the flesh. And again, that's not 47:31.880 --> 47:36.920 just tattoos. That's, you know, sometimes people just literally cut themselves or harm themselves 47:36.920 --> 47:42.360 on purpose. You know, that's usually like a satanic practice. It's what people do that are demon 47:42.360 --> 47:47.160 possessed, like falling into the fire and harming themselves. And, you know, someone that you know, 47:47.160 --> 47:51.640 like maybe young people that were doing this, we need to try to get those people saved if they can. 47:51.720 --> 47:58.920 You know, hopefully, but I think even a saved person could get confused or get influenced by bad 47:58.920 --> 48:03.960 people or try to do these things. You know, God doesn't want you to harm yourself. He likes you 48:03.960 --> 48:09.800 the way you are. You know, God doesn't want you to change your appearance. Isn't it interesting 48:09.800 --> 48:17.080 that the LGBT try as hard as they can to hurt themselves? I mean, men getting surgeries that 48:17.080 --> 48:22.040 are harming themselves. Look, cutting off parts of your body doesn't make you a woman. 48:23.240 --> 48:29.720 Okay. And gluing stuff to your body doesn't make you a man. You know, I can cut off a tree branch 48:29.720 --> 48:35.480 and glue it to myself and I'm not a tree. I can cut off dog ears and put them on my head and I'm 48:35.480 --> 48:44.040 not a dog. Okay. And so in some ways, it's like hurting yourself. Is it going to be good? Women 48:44.040 --> 48:47.720 that have this beautiful, I mean, there's women out there and it's like the saddest thing you've 48:47.720 --> 48:53.160 ever seen. There's women out there have super nice, beautiful, long flowing hair. And then they become 48:53.160 --> 49:00.680 like a liberal and then they just cut it all up in this pixie cut. It's disgusting. It's like, 49:00.680 --> 49:06.360 God gave you this beautiful hair. What are you doing? You know, it's like women that just harm 49:06.360 --> 49:12.360 themselves, just, just mutilate their bodies, just do all kinds of weird stuff. You know, it's like, 49:12.360 --> 49:19.160 look, the way God made you, you need to embrace it. You know, embrace how God made you. You need 49:19.160 --> 49:25.320 to not hurt yourself. You need to not do drastic things. There's people out there doing this looks 49:25.320 --> 49:33.640 maxing where they're doing weird stuff. I saw this guy, he's like chewing gum, like nine to 10 hours 49:33.640 --> 49:38.760 a day so that he'll have like fat, like cheekbones or something. Cause he thinks it makes him look 49:38.760 --> 49:45.320 more masculine. He looks like a freak. Okay. He's just like, like, she can look like a chipmunk or 49:45.320 --> 49:50.840 something like that. And it's like this quote looks maxing. Like all you do is you look weird. 49:51.560 --> 49:54.840 People cutting their flesh. I mean, people cut their flesh and do weird stuff with their 49:54.840 --> 50:00.680 eyebrows and their forehead. I mean, plastic surgery is just so common now. People are doing 50:00.680 --> 50:07.720 all kinds of weird stuff. I mean, look at Joyce Meyer. She looks like the Joker. She doesn't look 50:07.720 --> 50:13.560 good. Look, you think, look, it's not just like, oh, these, these goth people are cutting themselves. 50:13.560 --> 50:18.360 Look, tons of Hollywood celebrities are cutting themselves through all kinds of plastic surgery, 50:18.360 --> 50:26.280 going under the knife, doing weird stuff. There's guys getting calf implants. Just work out. Okay. 50:28.520 --> 50:35.000 Like, you know, your risk, I mean, I can't imagine a woman, you know, finding out like, are those real? 50:35.000 --> 50:39.640 You know, it's like, no, they're calf implants. It'd be like, she's out of there fast, man. 50:40.600 --> 50:46.520 Well, woman's like, dude, those calf implants look good. You know, if you're a woman, you don't need 50:46.520 --> 50:51.720 plastic surgery. You don't need cosmetic surgery. I mean, did you get burned in a fire? You don't 50:51.720 --> 50:58.280 need plastic surgery. Okay. Yeah. I think cosmetic surgery and plastic surgery should be limited 50:58.280 --> 51:05.080 to victims of burns, you know, situation of burn victim or some kind of a chemical spill 51:05.080 --> 51:11.080 or some kind of a def, deformation at birth, you know, hey, I'm for that. I'm not against those 51:11.080 --> 51:15.960 kinds of things, but you know what? When you're healthy and you're cutting yourself open, it's wrong. 51:17.400 --> 51:21.880 God doesn't want that. God's not for that. We shouldn't be cutting ourselves and harming 51:21.880 --> 51:26.200 ourselves and doing all this weird stuff. Look, if you want to have big calves, go run. 51:26.520 --> 51:35.000 Okay. Run. Do some exercise. You can get some giant calves and do the StairMaster or whatever. 51:35.480 --> 51:38.840 But, you know, at the end of the day, even if you did that, I mean, if you just do the StairMaster 51:38.840 --> 51:44.520 all day and you never lift any other weights, you could look weird still. You just have giant calves 51:44.520 --> 51:49.960 and you have these tiny little T-Rex arms or something. And usually it's the opposite, right? 51:49.960 --> 51:55.080 It's guys that are just like super buff with toothpick legs. It's like, you know, anytime you 51:55.960 --> 52:02.360 just overindulge in one area, it can be weird. And again, cutting yourself, getting these plastic 52:02.360 --> 52:09.480 surgeries, guys breaking the bones of their legs to try and get taller so they can walk around like 52:09.480 --> 52:14.200 a stork or something. It's just, or a, you know, baby giraffe. It's just not worth it. 52:15.000 --> 52:21.880 Okay. Embrace who you are. Don't do yourself harm. Okay. You should be healthy. And again, 52:22.840 --> 52:26.360 we could go to the extreme of like literally harming yourself, 52:26.360 --> 52:30.840 but there's other ways that you could just be unhealthy. And I would say, hey, as Bible 52:30.840 --> 52:33.960 believing Christians, we shouldn't try to do ourselves harm. We should try to be healthy in 52:33.960 --> 52:36.680 general. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 9 verse 24. 52:51.880 --> 53:11.640 So a principle that's being laid out here in the text is temperance so that you yourself will not 53:11.640 --> 53:17.560 be a castaway and keeping your body in subjection. And again, there's so many areas that we need to 53:17.560 --> 53:23.640 keep our bodies in subjection mentally, physically, and spiritually. And I believe that all three are 53:23.640 --> 53:28.600 very important. Okay. And sometimes people are great and maybe two of those areas and then they 53:28.600 --> 53:33.640 struggle in one, but then work on that weakness. Right. If you're struggling mentally to keep that 53:33.640 --> 53:38.360 in subjection, put some accountability in your life or fix that. Right. If you're struggling 53:38.360 --> 53:44.520 physically, I think you should work on being more physically healthy so that you know what, hey, 53:44.520 --> 53:49.800 you're not doing yourself harm. You can harm yourself by thinking about things you shouldn't. 53:49.800 --> 53:55.720 You can harm yourself by just not being physically healthy. You can harm yourself by also not keeping 53:55.720 --> 54:01.800 your spiritual walk in check. And again, we should try to keep ourselves in subjection and be healthy. 54:01.800 --> 54:09.240 You know, eating good foods, exercising, these things are very important. And we all have all 54:09.240 --> 54:14.200 kinds of different temptations and struggles in this life. And our world wants us to be set 54:14.200 --> 54:19.000 and tarry. Our world wants us to be lazy. Our world just wants us to hook up to the metaverse 54:19.000 --> 54:23.720 and just get plugged in and just basically do nothing. You know, I think we should avoid that. 54:23.720 --> 54:28.360 I think we should try our best to be physically healthy. And of course, soul winning is a great 54:28.360 --> 54:34.200 way to do that. Just literally getting some walking in. You know, our society and our culture, 54:34.200 --> 54:42.120 especially in America, overindulges. We have more food than we know what to do with. We eat several 54:42.120 --> 54:47.480 meals a day and meals in between. I mean, there's basically a meal time at every second. You know, 54:47.480 --> 54:52.600 there's like before breakfast and breakfast and brunch and then lunch and then a mid-afternoon 54:52.600 --> 54:57.400 snack and then there's early dinner and then there's late dinner and there's late snacks and 54:57.400 --> 55:03.960 there's ice cream and there's treats in between. I mean, I remember working at one place and the 55:03.960 --> 55:10.040 food was just like nonstop. It's like you would show up and they were just, someone had brought 55:10.040 --> 55:15.480 bagels and then like sometimes then someone else would also bring donuts. So it's like at 8 a.m. 55:15.480 --> 55:24.200 donuts and then it's like 9 a.m. bagels and then of course in our kitchen they had unlimited snacks 55:24.200 --> 55:30.040 that were just there 24-7. Just like every like fig bar and fruit bar and granola bar. Then they 55:30.040 --> 55:36.040 had like one of those candy dispensers that's like M&Ms and just all kinds of things. Just free. Like 55:36.680 --> 55:41.400 you didn't have to turn the knob. Then they had a fridge that just had sodas, just 55:41.400 --> 55:48.040 endless free soda, endless free cokes, endless free. It's just like, and this is what's so funny, 55:48.040 --> 55:57.400 is the company was called like Remarkable Health. Okay. But it's like, and you know, 55:57.400 --> 56:01.080 you looked at certain departments, they were definitely in better shape. The sales department 56:01.080 --> 56:04.920 usually is in pretty good shape. But it's like the development department, you know, it's different 56:04.920 --> 56:10.760 okay sometimes. But you know, that's a lot of temptation that's out there. The temptation 56:10.760 --> 56:16.680 to not be healthy in America is at an all-time high. Okay. When it comes to just, you know, 56:16.680 --> 56:22.280 not eating healthy, not exercising, not doing these things. You know, we as God's people, 56:22.280 --> 56:26.760 I think should be temperate. We should be careful. We should keep, you know, in subjection because 56:26.760 --> 56:32.520 overeating, doing these things, it does thyself harm. Being, you know, unhealthy causes yourself 56:32.520 --> 56:37.080 a lot of problems. It can shorten your lifespan. It shortens the quality of life. You know, I don't 56:37.080 --> 56:41.880 think God wants us to do that. I don't think God wants us to harm ourselves through overindulgence 56:41.880 --> 56:48.280 and he wants us to be healthy. Let's go, if you would, to 1st Corinthians 6. My aim in this sermon 56:48.280 --> 56:53.240 is to offend everyone at least once. Okay. So FYI, if you haven't gotten there yet, hopefully I can 56:53.240 --> 57:01.720 get there soon. Okay. 1st Corinthians chapter number 6. Here's another way I think the Bible 57:01.720 --> 57:05.080 teaches that we should be careful not to harm ourselves. Is that a fornication itself? 57:05.720 --> 57:10.200 Fornication according to the Bible is a self-harm. It says in verse number 15, 57:11.720 --> 57:15.640 know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of 57:15.640 --> 57:23.000 Christ and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. What? Know you not that he which is joined 57:23.000 --> 57:28.520 to an harlot is one body? For to say he shall be one flesh, but he that is joined in the Lord is 57:28.520 --> 57:33.880 one spirit. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body, but he that comitteth 57:33.880 --> 57:39.960 fornication sinneth against his own body. This is what the text clearly says that committing 57:39.960 --> 57:46.600 fornication is self-harm. I didn't say that. God said that. And so, you know, do thyself no harm 57:46.600 --> 57:52.040 by just avoiding fornication. You know, if you're a young lady and you commit fornication, 57:52.040 --> 57:57.880 you're going to damage your value on the dating market and you're going to damage 57:57.880 --> 58:04.680 yourself only. No man that is not willing to wait is interested in you. 58:06.520 --> 58:12.120 If you say, hey, I want to go to the altar of pure and he's like not going to date you, 58:12.120 --> 58:18.200 he was never going to marry you. So you're only harming yourself. And of course, by, you know, 58:18.920 --> 58:24.360 committing fornication, you're only lowering your value to the guy that you actually want to get 58:24.360 --> 58:29.320 married to. Okay. And you're just harming yourself. You're causing yourself all kinds 58:29.320 --> 58:35.560 of serious problems. Not only that, as a man, it's not going to help you. No lady wants this 58:35.560 --> 58:41.000 otherwise. Okay. And there are plenty of women, there are plenty of girls out there that if the 58:41.000 --> 58:46.680 guy they're dating has slept around, they won't marry them. You know, I know that we typically 58:46.680 --> 58:51.880 try to think of this other way. The reverse can be true just as much. You know, it's important to be 58:51.880 --> 58:55.960 pure. It's important to keep yourself from these things. You're only harming yourself. You're only 58:55.960 --> 59:03.160 harming your future options. That's just one aspect. There's also just another layer that if 59:03.160 --> 59:08.520 you have multiple partners, you're going to regret that for the rest of your life. You're going to 59:08.520 --> 59:14.760 have a mental and emotional damage that will probably never leave you. You'll always carry 59:14.760 --> 59:21.560 that burden in some way. And you're going to regret it. You're going to regret, you can regret it on 59:21.560 --> 59:25.880 two ways. You could regret it in the sense that, man, I enjoyed that and now I'm missing it. Or 59:25.880 --> 59:30.200 you could regret it like it was awful and I wish I hadn't done it. But either way, you're just going 59:30.200 --> 59:35.480 to carry this weird burden along with you for the rest of your life that was completely avoidable. 59:36.200 --> 59:41.560 And you should just stay far, far away from it. And of course, the devil will use that to attack 59:41.560 --> 59:49.000 you, to cause you more problems, to just irritate you, to cause you to just be upset and frustrated. 59:49.000 --> 59:53.960 And look, I'm not saying that God can't heal things and I'm not saying that God can't improve 59:53.960 --> 59:59.160 things and hopefully you can force your mind to not dwell on negative things of the past. 59:59.160 --> 01:00:05.400 But I'm telling you, it's real. I'm telling you that it's actual damage and there can be scars 01:00:05.400 --> 01:00:14.360 there and you just want to try to avoid it. Now, again, praise God. I have only ever had a 01:00:14.360 --> 01:00:18.760 relationship with my wife. Praise God. So I don't know this from personal experience, 01:00:18.760 --> 01:00:23.960 but I do know that it screws a lot of people up. And I'm never sitting here thinking like, 01:00:23.960 --> 01:00:30.840 oh man, I feel like I missed out. No, no, I'm glad that that's the case. And they're lying to you 01:00:30.840 --> 01:00:38.040 when they say, oh, when you're young, soil your wild oats. Lies. Lies. It is not healthy. It is 01:00:38.040 --> 01:00:44.040 not good. You'll only regret it. It will not be something that you're proud of. People that are 01:00:44.040 --> 01:00:49.000 proud of this are trash. Okay. And yeah, they exist. But let me tell you something, they're 01:00:49.000 --> 01:00:54.360 trash. They have meaningless lives. They don't have a real deep meaningful connection with someone 01:00:54.360 --> 01:00:59.320 else. The people that whore themselves around typically never have a great relationship, 01:00:59.960 --> 01:01:05.160 never have a really close relationship. You kind of see David have my cow and then he just gets a 01:01:05.160 --> 01:01:10.360 string of wives. And then the Bible says that he never had a relationship as close with a woman 01:01:10.360 --> 01:01:15.000 as he did his friend Jonathan. I believe that's partly because he was never exclusive with one 01:01:15.000 --> 01:01:20.200 woman. You know, there's a lot of reasons why we could, you know, guess at what the problem is 01:01:20.200 --> 01:01:24.440 there. But let me tell you something, you're going to damage your intimacy when you have multiple 01:01:24.440 --> 01:01:30.280 partners. If you have one partner for life, it is going to be a closer bond and a better intimacy 01:01:30.280 --> 01:01:35.160 than anything that the world has to offer. You just want to have your one spouse and you want 01:01:35.160 --> 01:01:40.600 to avoid fornication. You want to flee fornication. Here's another layer to this. You know, 01:01:40.600 --> 01:01:48.360 if you're only ever with one person, you'll never get an STD. You'll never have gonorrhea. 01:01:50.280 --> 01:01:56.840 You'll never have syphilis. You'll never get AIDS. You'll never have HIV. You'll never have the clap. 01:01:57.640 --> 01:02:03.880 And it's not this, okay? No one's clapping for you, all right? And look, I mean, 01:02:04.920 --> 01:02:08.600 I don't really know from experience any of these kind of things because again, 01:02:08.600 --> 01:02:12.840 I don't have to worry about that. But unfortunately, I went to public school. 01:02:12.840 --> 01:02:16.680 And unfortunately, in public school, they would make you sit down as a sixth grader, which I have 01:02:16.680 --> 01:02:23.240 no idea why, and just see a slideshow presentation of the worst examples of this kind of stuff. And 01:02:23.240 --> 01:02:29.240 let me tell you something, it looked bad, okay? I'm still traumatized, all right? You're like, 01:02:29.240 --> 01:02:35.480 thinking like, what the heck was that? I don't want to know, okay? It can get real bad and real 01:02:35.480 --> 01:02:42.520 ugly and real itchy and real red and real sore and real pussy and all kinds of weird stuff going on. 01:02:42.520 --> 01:02:47.960 And you don't want any of those fluids and pimples and whatever nonsense is going on down there, 01:02:48.440 --> 01:02:53.400 okay? And let me tell you something, the chances of you whoring around and catching one is 01:02:53.400 --> 01:02:59.160 astronomically high now. I mean, there's more people committing fornication than ever before. 01:02:59.160 --> 01:03:04.520 There's more prostitution than ever before. The amount of people getting STDs is just so high 01:03:04.520 --> 01:03:08.760 that you know what? You're just basically begging God to give you something nasty. 01:03:08.760 --> 01:03:16.680 And look, these things are with you for life. For life. You say, how do you cure this? You can't. 01:03:17.640 --> 01:03:22.840 So you just don't want to get it ever. You just want to stay far, far away from it. Like you're 01:03:22.840 --> 01:03:28.200 sinning against yourself. Here's another thing you could think about. How about Samson and Delilah? 01:03:28.840 --> 01:03:33.800 You know, this guy just commits a lot of fornication. And what happens is, you know, 01:03:33.800 --> 01:03:37.640 obviously you can't really have like close relationships with people and not get feelings 01:03:37.640 --> 01:03:44.360 for them, not, you know, basically get enwrapped in that relationship potentially. Samson had these 01:03:44.360 --> 01:03:50.760 feelings for this woman that was destructive for him. And look, there are people that will 01:03:51.320 --> 01:03:57.560 get in relationships that are literally destructive to them. And they kind of get trapped in them and 01:03:57.560 --> 01:04:01.800 they make a lot of bad decisions because they kind of get feelings for someone they should have never 01:04:01.800 --> 01:04:07.240 even gotten feelings for in the first place. He should not be with Delilah. That was a bad relationship. 01:04:07.240 --> 01:04:12.200 But you know what? Delilah is literally trying to kill him and get him killed. And he can't get out 01:04:12.200 --> 01:04:17.480 of this toxic relationship, this toxic damaging relationship because of the feelings he's caught 01:04:17.480 --> 01:04:22.920 for this woman or whatever the relationship is. Look, there's so many ways that fornication can 01:04:22.920 --> 01:04:29.080 harm you. There's so many ways that fornication destroys lives and causes problems in society. 01:04:29.080 --> 01:04:35.320 It destroys society. It destroys marriages. It destroys kids. It destroys all kinds of stuff. 01:04:35.320 --> 01:04:41.320 You just stay far, far, far away from it. Here's another horrific. I mean, I can just keep going. 01:04:41.320 --> 01:04:46.120 I'm just going to keep going. All right. You commit fornication. The person that you're with 01:04:46.680 --> 01:04:52.440 could get pregnant. And then that woman could literally say, you're never allowed to see this 01:04:52.440 --> 01:04:58.920 child ever again. This woman could not only that, this woman could cause your child to learn liberal 01:04:58.920 --> 01:05:04.600 ideology. There are people out there that have a child with some woman and she tries to force them 01:05:04.600 --> 01:05:10.440 to be transgender against their child's own will. Talk about problems. Talk about evil. 01:05:11.000 --> 01:05:17.240 You could have a child and they want to abort it. They want to kill it because you know what? 01:05:17.240 --> 01:05:21.080 You're not really in a committed relationship, whatever. There's crazy things. I mean, look, 01:05:21.080 --> 01:05:25.560 you want to talk about damage. You want to talk about problems. You want to talk about pain. You 01:05:25.560 --> 01:05:32.040 want to talk about suffering. Fornication has it all. You can have all the emotional pain, 01:05:32.040 --> 01:05:39.720 all the physical pain, all the damage of just historical pain, just memories and just evil 01:05:39.720 --> 01:05:46.520 and suffering and whoa. Look, it's not going to benefit you. It's not a blessing. It's not cool. 01:05:46.520 --> 01:05:53.160 It doesn't make you better than other people. Oh man, but you know what? This guy's super cool 01:05:53.160 --> 01:06:00.040 because he's had a lot of partners. Look, it's gross. It's not cool. It's gross. And he needs 01:06:00.040 --> 01:06:08.200 to get tested. Okay. She needs to get tested and you know, unfortunately you can get AIDS. You can 01:06:08.200 --> 01:06:14.200 get a disease that's limited to faggots because of how much fornication exists and how much people 01:06:14.200 --> 01:06:19.560 go both ways and you don't even know. I mean, how could, as a Bible-believing Christian, you follow 01:06:19.560 --> 01:06:25.480 God's commandments, you could never get AIDS. You could be in a good church and you can hate fags 01:06:25.480 --> 01:06:28.680 your whole life and then you just screw up in this area and then you get AIDS. 01:06:31.160 --> 01:06:35.880 I mean, I can't even imagine how horrific that would be and of course I've already read the 01:06:35.880 --> 01:06:40.760 consequences of AIDS. It's like one of the worst pains and sufferings. It's like you're drowning. 01:06:42.120 --> 01:06:47.560 Like the pain of like HIV and AIDS, it's like you're drowning and you can't catch a breath 01:06:47.560 --> 01:06:51.640 until you eventually just basically just drown in your own blood and your lungs. 01:06:51.640 --> 01:06:55.960 Drowning is like one of the scariest things. I don't know, like I like swimming, I like playing, 01:06:55.960 --> 01:07:02.280 but I always hated being dunked. Who hates being dunked? Okay, yeah. I kind of like, I was always 01:07:02.280 --> 01:07:07.080 the youngest of the family. I was always the smallest of the family. So they thought it was 01:07:07.080 --> 01:07:12.120 so much fun, you know, just like, hey, come here, John. And it's just like, they just dunk you and 01:07:12.120 --> 01:07:17.640 hold you under the water. And it's just like, it's really like, it stresses you out, you know, just 01:07:17.640 --> 01:07:24.520 like being, you know, it's why waterboarding is just such one of the worst tortures ever. Like the 01:07:24.520 --> 01:07:31.560 feeling of drowning is awful. The feeling of loss of control, swallowing water is just awful. 01:07:31.560 --> 01:07:35.480 You know, you go out into the ocean, you accidentally swallow that salt water, it's even worse. 01:07:37.480 --> 01:07:41.640 Yeah, that's how God will punish you by just permanently waterboarding you until you die. 01:07:41.640 --> 01:07:48.200 The death he gives the faggots. I mean, it's the lake of fire. They just go drown and fire. 01:07:48.200 --> 01:07:55.560 A lake which burned with fire. You know, don't commit fornication. I hope you're learning the 01:07:55.560 --> 01:08:01.160 lesson, okay? Learn the lesson through other horrible people destroying their lives so you 01:08:01.160 --> 01:08:05.640 don't make the same mistake. And you know, unfortunately, I kind of have this opinion that 01:08:05.640 --> 01:08:09.880 teenagers and young people are not smart enough to make these decisions, and that parents should 01:08:09.880 --> 01:08:14.680 help them make these decisions. You know, just keep them away from each other. You know, 01:08:15.480 --> 01:08:18.600 people are magnets. You just got to keep the magnets away from each other, okay? 01:08:19.560 --> 01:08:22.440 Now, go to Ephesians chapter five, go to Ephesians chapter number five. 01:08:25.320 --> 01:08:28.760 Just don't do thyself harm. And let me tell you something, fornication is harmful. 01:08:29.800 --> 01:08:32.280 I never heard this kind of preaching growing up. I wish I had. 01:08:32.280 --> 01:08:40.280 Praise God. I didn't make a lot of these mistakes. But you know, even myself, I wish I had heard some 01:08:40.280 --> 01:08:44.760 better preaching and had been more pure. I never think like, man, I wish I had experimented more. 01:08:44.760 --> 01:08:54.040 I wish I had been more pure. And you're going to only regret these experiments. Ephesians chapter 01:08:54.040 --> 01:08:59.240 five. Now, I want to talk about marriage specifically, because we've been thinking about, 01:08:59.240 --> 01:09:03.960 like, don't harm thyself. But the Bible teaches that when you get married, you become one flesh. 01:09:05.320 --> 01:09:11.720 So then it's also important not to harm yourself through harming your spouse, okay? Ephesians chapter 01:09:11.720 --> 01:09:16.200 number five. Look what the Bible says here in verse number 23. For the husband is the head of the 01:09:16.200 --> 01:09:19.880 wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he's the savior of the body. Therefore, as the 01:09:19.880 --> 01:09:25.720 church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands love 01:09:25.720 --> 01:09:29.800 your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. That he might sanctify 01:09:29.800 --> 01:09:33.400 and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. That he might present it to himself a glorious 01:09:33.400 --> 01:09:37.960 church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that is to be holy and without blemish. 01:09:37.960 --> 01:09:42.920 So I've made to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. 01:09:42.920 --> 01:09:48.520 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord 01:09:48.520 --> 01:09:55.080 the church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall man 01:09:55.080 --> 01:10:00.280 leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. 01:10:00.920 --> 01:10:06.840 So the Bible paints this picture of you now having such a tight unity that you're like 01:10:06.840 --> 01:10:10.520 one body in a sense. And the Bible is saying you wouldn't harm yourself. 01:10:11.400 --> 01:10:16.200 Wink, wink, nod, nod. Don't harm yourself. Right? Isn't that the whole essence of this sermon? 01:10:16.200 --> 01:10:20.520 Do thyself no harm? So obviously, you know, in the same way that you wouldn't 01:10:20.520 --> 01:10:25.640 kill yourself, you shouldn't kill your spouse, right? There's even rules that you're not even 01:10:26.680 --> 01:10:32.520 obligated to testify against your spouse in a court of law because of this principle that 01:10:32.520 --> 01:10:38.840 you shouldn't be able to do yourself harm. I mean, you're not obligated to testify against yourself. 01:10:39.560 --> 01:10:45.400 You're also not obligated to testify against other people that you're married to. But that's the only, 01:10:45.400 --> 01:10:49.880 like, that's like the only exception. You can basically say like, hey, I don't have to testify 01:10:49.880 --> 01:10:54.120 because this is literally my spouse because, biblically speaking, you're like one flesh. 01:10:54.120 --> 01:10:58.280 And of course, some people do, but I'm just saying the general principle is you shouldn't be obligated 01:10:58.280 --> 01:11:03.000 because it's self-harm. And you shouldn't be harming yourself. You shouldn't be cutting yourself. 01:11:03.000 --> 01:11:08.360 You shouldn't be cutting your spouse, right? You shouldn't allow your spouse to get unhealthy, 01:11:08.360 --> 01:11:12.440 you know, or just try to cause them to be unhealthy. And of course, you know, 01:11:13.160 --> 01:11:18.040 you don't want any kind of impurity in the relationship. You don't want any impurity. 01:11:18.040 --> 01:11:21.720 You should be jealous for each other, and you shouldn't allow for any impurity. Obviously, 01:11:21.720 --> 01:11:26.600 fornications before marriage, but even post marriage, you don't want any impurity in your 01:11:26.600 --> 01:11:35.480 relationship. Now, obviously, in a relationship or in a body, you're going to have pain at times. 01:11:35.480 --> 01:11:39.000 And I want to go to Proverbs 31 for a moment. We'll go to Proverbs 31. But you don't want to 01:11:39.000 --> 01:11:48.520 do yourself harm. Now, again, idealistically, you would never fight with your spouse. 01:11:50.200 --> 01:11:57.080 Idealistically, the husband would always be a great leader and a great example. Idealistically, 01:11:57.080 --> 01:12:04.120 a wife would never talk back to her husband. A wife would never roll her eyes at her husband. 01:12:04.680 --> 01:12:11.400 A wife would never even just, ugh, at her husband. A wife would never 01:12:11.960 --> 01:12:15.640 disobey her husband. A wife would always have dinner on the table. 01:12:16.360 --> 01:12:23.960 A husband always comes home on time, right? No one has this situation. So then what do we do 01:12:23.960 --> 01:12:27.960 when it's not like that? Now, again, I believe we should do that. Hey, husbands should love their 01:12:27.960 --> 01:12:33.320 wives. Wives should submit to their husbands. Husbands are right. Wives should just submit and 01:12:33.320 --> 01:12:39.640 obey and have a smile on their face. And we should all be happy. Now let's talk about what 01:12:39.640 --> 01:12:47.320 we deal with, okay? It's called reality. Now, again, I'm not lightening this load. I'm not saying 01:12:47.320 --> 01:12:53.080 don't try to do this. Hey, if you can avoid fighting, please do. I'm not saying it's a good 01:12:53.080 --> 01:12:57.880 thing. I'm not saying you should want it. I'm not saying start fights. I'm saying it's probably 01:12:57.880 --> 01:13:04.200 going to happen, okay? So what do you do when you have these negative consequences? Well, 01:13:05.000 --> 01:13:11.400 you know, let's take this one-body analogy for a second. You know that certain parts of your body 01:13:11.400 --> 01:13:15.560 are going to sometimes cause you pain? Every once in a while you're going to stub your toe, 01:13:16.600 --> 01:13:22.280 and your hand didn't do anything to cause that pain. But, you know, would it make sense that if 01:13:22.280 --> 01:13:27.160 you stub your toe to just say, like, you know, let's just cut it off? That wouldn't make a lot 01:13:27.160 --> 01:13:31.640 of sense, right? You'd probably nourish it and cherish it and hope that it gets better. 01:13:32.360 --> 01:13:37.080 In a marriage, in a relationship, sometimes you might cause each other pain. But you know what 01:13:37.080 --> 01:13:40.760 you don't want to do? You don't want to cut off that part of your body. You want to nourish it, 01:13:40.760 --> 01:13:46.200 you want to cherish it, you want to try and help remedy it and help it to get better. And, look, 01:13:46.200 --> 01:13:50.840 there could be a part of your body that's causing you a lot of pain at points in your life. But, 01:13:50.840 --> 01:13:55.640 you know, it just doesn't make sense to just chop that part of your body off. You know, I've had a 01:13:55.640 --> 01:13:59.000 time where, like, my ankle was hurt for several months and it was really frustrating. But, you 01:13:59.000 --> 01:14:05.000 know what? I'm glad that I just waited it out and took care of it and then eventually it got better. 01:14:05.960 --> 01:14:11.000 You know, and what kind of logic would it be like, hey, my ankle's hurting. If I cut it off, 01:14:11.000 --> 01:14:18.440 it'll get better. Look, that's silly. Getting a peg leg isn't going to help me, okay? It was better 01:14:18.440 --> 01:14:23.160 to just wait it out and to go through the pain and go through the suffering. Look, in a marriage, 01:14:23.160 --> 01:14:28.200 there's probably going to be times where you break your ankle. There's going to be times where you 01:14:28.200 --> 01:14:34.120 have problems, you're going to have low spots. But, you know what? Amputating parts of the body isn't 01:14:34.120 --> 01:14:39.800 going to help. And, you know, the Bible says here in Proverbs chapter 31, look what it says in verse 01:14:39.800 --> 01:14:49.400 number 12, she will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. Now, again, I'm just bringing 01:14:49.400 --> 01:14:57.000 up a specific example, but unfortunately this is very common that people have problems, have fights, 01:14:57.000 --> 01:15:04.360 negative things happen, and it's almost like they just jump to amputation because that's what society 01:15:04.360 --> 01:15:10.120 pushes on people. And what I mean by this is like people have a marital spat, they have a fight, 01:15:10.120 --> 01:15:15.480 or they have some negative consequence, and they just immediately call the police on their spouse 01:15:15.480 --> 01:15:20.840 or something like this. And look, it is not uncommon, unfortunately, this is very common, 01:15:21.480 --> 01:15:28.200 and it's very pushed by society to do these kind of things. And really what you're doing is you're 01:15:28.200 --> 01:15:34.280 just harming yourself, and it's not going to help fix the situation. Cops aren't going to help your 01:15:34.280 --> 01:15:42.200 marriage. I don't know if you know this. I mean, cops are some rough hombres, okay, in many cases, 01:15:42.200 --> 01:15:47.080 especially the lesbian that's going to come over and deal with this domestic discipline issue or 01:15:47.640 --> 01:15:54.840 dispute or whatever. She's not going to help you, okay? And look, is there a time to call cops? Yes, 01:15:54.840 --> 01:16:01.240 when someone's going to die, call the cops, okay? Just like is it possible that my arm could have 01:16:01.240 --> 01:16:07.080 so much gangrene on it and have so much problem that if I don't amputate, I'm going to die? Yeah, 01:16:07.080 --> 01:16:13.240 it's possible. But you know what? I'm not going to cut my arm off unless it's absolutely necessary. 01:16:13.960 --> 01:16:20.600 Let me tell you something, call cops should be an absolute necessity. It should not be like on a whim 01:16:20.600 --> 01:16:26.840 or whatever, because it will only harm. But cutting off a body part harms you. It does not help you. 01:16:27.720 --> 01:16:33.720 Calling the cops will not help you, okay? Now again, somebody will say like, oh, they are 01:16:33.720 --> 01:16:40.360 chasing me down with an axe. Yeah, call the cops, okay? If they're literally chasing you down with 01:16:40.360 --> 01:16:45.320 an axe. It's like, you're like, how do you know when to call the cops? You don't need to know. 01:16:45.320 --> 01:16:51.720 You will start dialing before you even thought about it, okay? If it's not that obvious, though, 01:16:52.920 --> 01:16:58.280 I'm just trying to warn you, be very careful. Be very, very careful. And look, this happens 01:16:58.280 --> 01:17:02.760 men calling the cops on their wives. This happens wives calling the cops on their husband. 01:17:03.480 --> 01:17:09.720 Look, you should be very careful with this because statistically marriages end in ruin after the cops 01:17:09.720 --> 01:17:14.840 are called, after the trust is broken, after these kind of problems. You know, you should not do 01:17:14.840 --> 01:17:21.160 yourself harm and do your relationship harm. Look, you can have low spots. You can have problems. 01:17:21.160 --> 01:17:24.760 There are times where people call the cops on their spouse. They show up and they just shoot the spouse. 01:17:25.560 --> 01:17:30.520 They just literally, because it was just, it was a fight. People are upset. Things go sideways. They 01:17:30.520 --> 01:17:35.480 feel like, people can feel like they're losing control in the situation and they get irate. 01:17:35.480 --> 01:17:41.960 And look, cops are just jumpy, man. And again, I'm not saying that, you know, they accidentally 01:17:41.960 --> 01:17:47.560 kill people a lot, but it could happen. And that's really damaging. It's really harmful. 01:17:48.280 --> 01:17:53.160 And there are people out there that don't care about you, that have a tiny following, 01:17:53.240 --> 01:17:57.160 that have a tiny following. And what they want to do is they want to make videos just telling you, 01:17:57.160 --> 01:18:01.720 call the cops, call, you know, separate, get away from them, divorce. They're just always 01:18:01.720 --> 01:18:06.600 planting these ideas in people's heads. And they're just, they just want to destroy your marriage and 01:18:06.600 --> 01:18:11.880 they want to destroy you to make themselves look better. You should be very, very careful 01:18:11.880 --> 01:18:15.960 with the information that you're listening to. You should be very careful about all the feminist 01:18:15.960 --> 01:18:20.280 ideologies that are being planted in all kinds of people's minds out there. Now look, if you're 01:18:20.280 --> 01:18:25.000 going through a rough spot in a relationship, you know, obviously the first person you just talk to 01:18:25.000 --> 01:18:28.600 is your spouse. You just try to work it out with them, you know, talk to them if you're not talking 01:18:28.600 --> 01:18:34.200 to them. But then beyond that, hey, maybe reach out to a godly pastor, you know, reach out to 01:18:34.200 --> 01:18:38.680 someone that could, you know, help you and actually, you know, give you a little bit of wisdom. But, 01:18:38.680 --> 01:18:43.320 you know, if someone ever reached out to you, don't tell them to divorce and separate and do all this 01:18:43.320 --> 01:18:49.080 weird nonsense. It does not help. It is not good. It is doing yourself harm. And look, I don't believe 01:18:49.080 --> 01:18:54.040 in divorce for any reason, period. But, you know, when people start going down these horrific roads, 01:18:54.040 --> 01:18:58.280 they just harm themselves. Go over to Psalm chapter number four, go to Psalm chapter four. 01:18:58.280 --> 01:19:03.960 Now again, somebody will say like, oh, well, haven't you seen or heard statistics? Sometimes 01:19:03.960 --> 01:19:11.320 women are killed by their husband. Now look, does this ever happen? Yes. But I think some people, 01:19:11.880 --> 01:19:18.680 they bring up these scare tactics to make people do things that are not real. Statistically speaking, 01:19:19.400 --> 01:19:26.920 a wife's chance of being killed by her husband in America is one in 500,000. Okay, so there's one and 01:19:26.920 --> 01:19:33.480 a half a million chance that you're going to be killed by your husband. You driving in DFW is a 01:19:33.480 --> 01:19:40.280 way higher risk. Okay, so some people want to just scare you into thinking like, oh, my husband, 01:19:40.920 --> 01:19:45.880 he threw something one time. Oh, you mean like Zipporah throwing foreskins at Moses? 01:19:46.280 --> 01:19:53.080 You know, it's like, oh, he threw something, I might die. It's like, well, that might be an 01:19:53.080 --> 01:19:59.240 exaggeration, you know, to connect these two particular dots. Now he's throwing Chinese stars 01:19:59.240 --> 01:20:05.560 at your face. Okay, maybe you have a case, all right. But it's like, look, sometimes people lose 01:20:05.560 --> 01:20:10.280 their temper. Sometimes people aren't good. Sometimes people cause problems. Sometimes they 01:20:10.280 --> 01:20:14.840 make mistakes. You know, you need to use some discretion in those areas and not just be quick 01:20:14.840 --> 01:20:18.520 to just amputate. I mean, if I came to you and said, hey, you need to cut off your arm, 01:20:19.400 --> 01:20:22.680 do you think you would do some research before you just got out the knife? 01:20:23.640 --> 01:20:29.720 You'd probably be pretty careful. You'd probably get a lot of opinions. You'd probably make sure 01:20:29.720 --> 01:20:35.720 that it was the right decision before you just cut off a limb. And again, some people, they don't do 01:20:35.720 --> 01:20:41.240 this, they just instantly just start amputating. And it's just like, bro, what are you doing? Calm 01:20:41.240 --> 01:20:46.520 down. Like, it's not that bad. It's not that serious of an issue yet. But some people are, 01:20:46.520 --> 01:20:52.520 you know, just, they're nervous, they get gaslit, they hear bad advice. And look, be careful if, 01:20:52.520 --> 01:20:56.680 well, I was listening to this woman's podcast that I've never met and she told me to do this. 01:20:58.040 --> 01:21:03.720 That's a bad person to get advice from. She has no ramifications if you ruin your life. 01:21:03.720 --> 01:21:07.880 You know, please, if you're going to get advice from somebody, get advice from somebody whose 01:21:07.880 --> 01:21:14.600 life would be affected if you ruined your life. Right? I mean, don't get advice from people whose 01:21:14.600 --> 01:21:22.520 life will not change one iota if you ruin your life. You should talk to people that their lives 01:21:22.520 --> 01:21:27.320 would be impacted if you hurt yourself, if you harm yourself, if you make these kind of decisions. 01:21:27.480 --> 01:21:34.840 Like your spouse. Like, I don't know, your pastor, your parents, your best friend. You know, 01:21:34.840 --> 01:21:41.320 just talk to somebody. And instead of just listening to people that have a vendetta against 01:21:41.320 --> 01:21:47.320 you or vendetta against your family, or people that have a vendetta against the new IMB, it's 01:21:47.320 --> 01:21:53.080 like, man, I think some people genuinely want to know what's going on in your life. And I think 01:21:53.080 --> 01:21:58.040 I have a lot of people who are like, I'm going to get married to a new IMB. It's like, man, 01:21:58.040 --> 01:22:03.960 I think some people genuinely want as many marriages in our church to be imploded just so they can make 01:22:03.960 --> 01:22:09.960 the new IMB look bad. That'd be a bad person to get advice from because they have no incentive 01:22:10.440 --> 01:22:15.240 to actually help you or do good unto you. You know, why don't you talk to somebody that actually 01:22:15.240 --> 01:22:19.720 cares? And you know, you should talk to the most. How about Jesus? Now look, everything we talked 01:22:19.880 --> 01:22:22.920 about, well, the cure is, hey, if you're upset, if you're sad, if you're depressed, if you don't 01:22:22.920 --> 01:22:27.720 like your situation, if you're suffering, if you're in pain, go to Jesus. That's the first step. 01:22:28.680 --> 01:22:33.480 Go to Jesus and read some Psalms. I love reading the Psalms when I'm upset or have problems. 01:22:33.480 --> 01:22:37.800 Psalm four is a great one. Look what the Bible says in verse one. Hear me when I call, O God, 01:22:37.800 --> 01:22:43.080 of my righteousness. Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress. Have mercy upon me and hear 01:22:43.080 --> 01:22:48.280 my prayer. O ye sons of men, how long will ye turn my glory into shame? How long will ye love vanity 01:22:48.280 --> 01:22:53.000 and seek after leasing Sila? But know that the Lord has set apart him that is godly for himself. 01:22:53.640 --> 01:22:59.160 The Lord will hear when I call unto him. Stand in awe and sin not. Commune with your own heart 01:22:59.160 --> 01:23:04.200 upon your bed and be still, Sila. Offer the sacrifices of righteousness and put your trust 01:23:04.200 --> 01:23:12.520 in the Lord. There be many that say, who will show us any good? Lord, lift thou up the light of thy 01:23:12.520 --> 01:23:16.920 countenance upon us. Thou hast put gladness in my heart more than in the time that their corn and 01:23:16.920 --> 01:23:22.520 in their wine increased. I will both lay me down in peace and sleep for thou Lord only makest me 01:23:22.520 --> 01:23:29.080 dwell in safety. Again, I'm not excusing bad behavior by any stretch of imagination. You know, 01:23:29.080 --> 01:23:35.880 if a guy is harming his wife in any way, that's wicked. That's evil. You shouldn't harm yourself. 01:23:36.600 --> 01:23:40.840 You know, men should be loving under their wives. They should be kind. They should be compassionate. 01:23:41.480 --> 01:23:46.120 You know, and I feel really bad for anybody that's in a situation where there's harm. And 01:23:46.200 --> 01:23:51.960 especially if there's anything physical that's wrong. Okay. I do not believe men should be 01:23:51.960 --> 01:23:55.960 physically harming their wives by punching them or beating them up or pushing them around. 01:23:55.960 --> 01:24:03.640 That's wicked. It's wrong. It's evil. It should be condemned. Okay. I'm not for that. I don't like 01:24:03.640 --> 01:24:09.080 that. I don't support that. I've never done it. Like I said repeatedly, the worst I've ever done 01:24:09.080 --> 01:24:14.440 is tickle my wife. Okay. So if you're going to be mad at me, then you can be mad at me for that. 01:24:14.440 --> 01:24:20.360 That's the extremity that I've taken things to and it remedies the situation. All right. 01:24:21.800 --> 01:24:29.800 But at the end of the day, you know, yeah, what if my wife just, God forbid, slapped me or something 01:24:29.800 --> 01:24:37.560 or threw something at me? I'm not going to call the cops on her. Okay. Now at the end of the day, 01:24:37.560 --> 01:24:43.720 like obviously if my wife was like shooting a gun at me or something, yeah, I'd probably defend 01:24:43.720 --> 01:24:50.360 myself. But at the end of the day, it's like, how realistic is that? Is that even a scenario 01:24:50.360 --> 01:24:56.600 that anybody is living through? Probably not. Okay. And if you have to ask the question, 01:24:56.600 --> 01:25:04.440 you know, it probably isn't severe enough to get authorities involved. Okay. Now if you're suffering, 01:25:04.440 --> 01:25:09.160 I feel bad for you. If you're in a bad situation, I feel awful for you. You know what? Why don't you 01:25:09.160 --> 01:25:14.680 pray to God and ask for him to fix it and be patient. Maybe you can fix it. Maybe you can 01:25:14.680 --> 01:25:17.960 turn it around. You know, there are going to be kids sometimes that are in a bad situation 01:25:18.520 --> 01:25:22.600 and they have to suffer for a while, but just pray God that he would fix it. You know, spouses 01:25:22.600 --> 01:25:27.880 that are in bad situation. And again, I'm not for these things. Obviously if there's bad stuff going 01:25:27.880 --> 01:25:32.280 on, we need to deal with it. But sometimes people just can't escape or they can't get out of it or 01:25:32.280 --> 01:25:38.120 whatever. No one knows. I don't know. But at the end of the day, hey, if you can't fix your situation 01:25:38.120 --> 01:25:43.400 directly, pray and ask God to help you. And many times, I mean, think about Abigail married to 01:25:43.400 --> 01:25:49.240 Nabal. You think that was a good healthy marriage? Think Nabal, the drunk reprobate, was a great 01:25:49.240 --> 01:25:55.240 husband? You know what? She just prayed to God that he would die. Then he did. Okay. So, you know, 01:25:55.240 --> 01:26:00.680 just pray for God to fix your situation. Psalm 10 is another good one. The Bible says, 01:26:00.680 --> 01:26:06.760 Why standest thou a far off, O Lord? Why hidest thyself in times of trouble? The wicked and his 01:26:06.760 --> 01:26:11.560 pride doth persecute the poor. Let them be taken into devices that they have imagined. 01:26:12.120 --> 01:26:16.600 For the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, and blesseth the covetous whom the Lord abhorth. 01:26:16.600 --> 01:26:20.440 The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God. God is not in all his 01:26:20.440 --> 01:26:25.960 thoughts. His ways are always grievous. Thy judgments are far above out of his sight. As for 01:26:25.960 --> 01:26:31.320 all his enemies, he puffeth at them. He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved, for I shall 01:26:31.400 --> 01:26:36.360 never be in adversity. His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and fraud. Under his tongue 01:26:36.360 --> 01:26:40.920 is mischief and vanity. He sitteth in lurking places of the villages, and the secret places 01:26:40.920 --> 01:26:47.560 doth he murder the innocent. His eyes are privily set against the poor. Look, you know, we can dream 01:26:47.560 --> 01:26:52.200 up all these bad scenarios that could possibly happen. Here's a scenario where someone is 01:26:52.200 --> 01:26:57.720 literally killing innocent people and ripping off poor people and taking advantage of them. 01:26:57.720 --> 01:27:02.600 Talk about abuse, and what is the psalmist saying? Man, it's just how long, God, are you gonna just 01:27:02.600 --> 01:27:07.720 allow this stuff to happen? You say, I can't believe God will allow anybody to suffer. Well, 01:27:07.720 --> 01:27:13.880 unfortunately, God allows bad people to do bad stuff sometimes. And you know what? Bad on them. 01:27:15.160 --> 01:27:21.080 Bad on them. Pray that God will deliver you. Pray that God will turn that around. Pray that God 01:27:21.080 --> 01:27:27.080 will punish the wicked doer and the evil doer. You know, I'm just gonna say that I heard this 01:27:27.080 --> 01:27:33.000 advice from non-denominational pastors, believe it or not. I grew up in a church with a non-denominational 01:27:33.000 --> 01:27:37.400 pastor. He would get up and say, hey, I knew this woman that was in an abusive relationship, 01:27:37.400 --> 01:27:41.880 that the husband was committing adultery repeatedly. And you know what his advice was to her? He said, 01:27:41.880 --> 01:27:46.360 why don't you just do 1 Peter chapter 3 and just submit to him? Because even though she was in a 01:27:46.360 --> 01:27:53.080 bad relationship, and even though her husband was a piece of trash, he said, well, how do you treat 01:27:53.080 --> 01:27:56.600 him? She's like, well, I usually yell at him and scream at him and I nag at him and, you know, 01:27:56.600 --> 01:28:02.200 I don't take care of my house or myself. And you know what she did? She started dressing pretty, 01:28:03.000 --> 01:28:07.000 cleaning the house, making him his favorite meal and never complained to him. 01:28:08.440 --> 01:28:14.200 And then after a few months of doing that, her husband just like broke down, just like couldn't 01:28:14.200 --> 01:28:19.400 even control himself saying like, why are you doing this to me? And she's like, being, she's like, 01:28:19.400 --> 01:28:25.640 he was frustrated at her for her being good. He's like, I'm just, I'm a rotten husband to you and 01:28:25.640 --> 01:28:31.000 you're just so nice to me and it's making me feel awful. He's like, I just feel horrific. 01:28:31.800 --> 01:28:37.240 I can't even enjoy my, he's like, I can't even enjoy my affair anymore. Because you just make 01:28:37.240 --> 01:28:41.720 me feel so awful. And she's like, well, I'm just doing what the Bible says and I'm just trying to 01:28:41.720 --> 01:28:46.440 love you. And then the guy broke off the relationship and they totally restored their marriage. 01:28:46.440 --> 01:28:51.240 That wasn't my advice. That was this other guy's advice. And look, is that ideal? No. 01:28:52.600 --> 01:28:58.120 Hey, if a guy is hitting a woman, I think he should be punched in the face personally. Okay. 01:28:58.600 --> 01:29:03.080 But at the end of the day, we can't always right every single wrong. We can't always get involved. 01:29:03.080 --> 01:29:07.400 Hey, sometimes your arms hurting you so bad, you kind of want to cut it off. 01:29:08.360 --> 01:29:10.920 But maybe just being nice to the arm might be the better move. 01:29:11.320 --> 01:29:15.320 And I know the liberals are going to lose their mind over this and feminists are going to probably, 01:29:15.320 --> 01:29:19.640 you know, cut themselves after hearing this sermon or whatever. But, you know, I'm just trying to 01:29:19.640 --> 01:29:24.920 give you a biblical alternative to think about here. If you're really one flesh, be careful. 01:29:25.560 --> 01:29:30.440 Don't just do yourself harm. And you know, if you're going through a bad time, seek the Lord, 01:29:30.920 --> 01:29:36.040 pray to him, ask him for help. If you can involve other people, involve the people in your life that 01:29:36.040 --> 01:29:40.840 care about you, you know, you can be a good friend to him. You can be a good friend to him. 01:29:41.720 --> 01:29:47.960 Tell somebody whose life would be affected if you hurt yourself. Don't just tell, you know, 01:29:47.960 --> 01:29:52.600 I'm not even against these like random hotlines and stuff, but they're probably still not the 01:29:52.600 --> 01:29:57.160 best. Talk to people in your life that actually care about you, that love you, that have invested 01:29:57.160 --> 01:30:06.760 in you. Don't get advice from the random podcaster of Mr. Tiny Church. Okay. Mr. and Mrs. Tiny Church 01:30:06.760 --> 01:30:13.080 in the middle of nowhere that has no real vested interest in you, but just wants to see you and 01:30:13.080 --> 01:30:19.000 your whole church burned to the ground. That's a bad person to get advice from. Stay away from those 01:30:19.000 --> 01:30:25.400 types of people. Okay. You know, and again, am I excusing any bad behavior? No. Will it happen? 01:30:25.400 --> 01:30:30.440 Probably. People will do bad stuff. People are stupid. People make bad mistakes. But you know, 01:30:30.440 --> 01:30:35.000 at the end of the day, we should just love them anyways. Doesn't the Bible say turn the other 01:30:35.000 --> 01:30:40.040 cheek? Does that even mean anything to anybody anymore? Hell, dare you say that I should take a 01:30:40.040 --> 01:30:49.720 slap? Well, take that up with Jesus. Didn't he take more than a slap for us? You know, again, 01:30:49.720 --> 01:30:55.800 am I saying please get abused? No, that sounds horrific. Okay. But at the end of the day, 01:30:55.800 --> 01:30:59.480 sometimes you have to think about like, is this going to really cure the problem? Is this going 01:30:59.480 --> 01:31:03.960 to fix the problem? What's the best alternative? And you know, be very careful about the decisions 01:31:03.960 --> 01:31:08.760 you make before you harm yourself. And I think the Bible clearly teaches, hey, do thyself 01:31:09.400 --> 01:31:12.920 no harm. Let's close in prayer. Thank you, Heavenly Father, so much for your word. Thank you so much 01:31:12.920 --> 01:31:17.960 for giving us these instructions. Thank you for giving us life. Thank you for helping us realize 01:31:17.960 --> 01:31:22.920 that we have value and importance in our lives. I pray that those who are suffering, those who go 01:31:22.920 --> 01:31:28.040 through problems, that they can find comfort in your word. I pray that you could deliver them of 01:31:28.040 --> 01:31:32.920 their enemy or their pain or their sorrow or their suffering. I pray that you wouldn't allow the 01:31:32.920 --> 01:31:38.920 devil to take a foothold in people's lives and encourage them to harm themselves. I pray that you 01:31:38.920 --> 01:31:44.600 would give people a reminder if they're in a bad situation to reach out to those who love them, 01:31:44.600 --> 01:31:49.160 that have invested in their lives, that care about them. And I pray that you would just help us to 01:31:49.160 --> 01:31:55.400 not do ourselves harm. And if someone is harming themselves, that we'd be there to be a shoulder 01:31:55.400 --> 01:32:00.280 to cry on, that would be there to bury their burden, that would be there to help them and assist 01:32:00.280 --> 01:32:04.200 them. And I pray that you would help our church to be healthy. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. 01:32:04.200 --> 01:32:04.760 Amen. 01:32:07.960 --> 01:32:11.880 All right, for our last song, let's go to song number 165. 01:32:18.200 --> 01:32:27.880 165. Oh, worship the King. Song number 165. 01:32:30.760 --> 01:32:34.680 Oh, worship the King. 01:32:34.680 --> 01:32:46.040 Oh, Lord, have some love, And gracefully sing this wonderful love. 01:32:46.120 --> 01:32:53.720 Our shield and king, may third the ancients of days, 01:32:53.720 --> 01:33:01.400 The new yin and slender, and firm in with praise. 01:33:01.400 --> 01:33:08.840 Oh, help our blest mind, and change not its race, 01:33:08.840 --> 01:33:16.440 Whose robe is divine, whose stead of his sakes, 01:33:16.440 --> 01:33:23.960 His chair is a wrath, the deep thunder clouds warn, 01:33:23.960 --> 01:33:31.560 And our gifts as wrath on the width of the storm. 01:33:31.560 --> 01:33:39.080 Thy fountain for care runs on every side, 01:33:39.080 --> 01:33:46.600 It breathes in the air, it shines in the light, 01:33:46.600 --> 01:33:54.040 It streams from the hills in peace and smooth the plain, 01:33:54.120 --> 01:34:01.640 And sweet Jesus, still to the dew and the rain, 01:34:01.640 --> 01:34:09.160 Thrill children of dust, and people as frail, 01:34:09.160 --> 01:34:16.520 Give thee duty's trust, nor kindly to fail. 01:34:16.520 --> 01:34:23.960 Thy mercy's how tender, how firm to the end, 01:34:23.960 --> 01:34:32.040 How day-thirty, tender, deep-deeper, and friend. 01:34:32.040 --> 01:34:34.840 Great singing, everybody. You are all dismissed.