everybody and welcome to the Fast Baptist Church. Great to see everybody here. If we can go ahead
and find our hymnals, we will get started with this morning's service. And for our first song
this morning, let's go to song number 145. Song number 145, "It is well with my soul." Pay attention
for that key change on the last verse. 145, "It is well." So thankful to be back in your house this
morning. So thankful we can sing these great songs unto you, together as a church. Let's lift up our
voices this morning. Praise you with your spirit. Listen, in Jesus' name we pray. For our next song,
let's go to song number 122. Number 122 will be a newer song to most. You know it well, sing it out.
God received a bulletin, you like it. On the front, we have a memory passage. We're trying
to memorize Romans chapter 10. Anybody that can quote the entire chapter can receive a prize.
On the inside, we have our service and soul winning times, as well as church stats.
Also on the right is a list of expecting ladies. Please be in prayer for expecting ladies.
Also down below, upcoming events, there is a Texas A&M College Soul Winning Marathon, February 27th
through the 28th. Brother Diego is going to be help leading this, and so if you have any questions,
you can chat with him about it. But it's going to be kind of a two-day event. Also, we have a
kids choir that we're going to be doing for Easter. The choir practice is going to begin
March 1st through the evening services, ages 4 to 17 are welcome to participate. We'd love for
everybody to participate. I think it's about five weeks leading up until the Easter, and so we'll
have them perform on Easter morning, and so that'll be a lot of fun. Also, there is a baby shower for
the Foley's, March 7th. We have another soul winning marathon, Carthage, Texas, March 21st.
Brother Sam Foley's helping lead this one, and so you have some questions you can ask him. We have
a soul winning mega marathon, so we'll do a lot of extra soul winning on April 4th, that Saturday,
before Easter, and of course Easter service is April 5th. That's also where we have listed the
child's choir or the children's choirs are going to be performing. On the back is the details about
the baby shower, so if you are planning on attending, please RSVP to Mrs. Suthered. Also,
if you'd like to bring a gift, they're registered on Amazon. It's nursing is only preferred from 12
to 2, so really looking forward to that. Down below is our prayer list and then on the inside
we have the congratulations to the Canaries on the birth of Alexander Castilian. He was born on the
12th, 8 30 a.m. 8.9 pounds and 20 and a half inches long. Congratulations to them. Great to see our
church constantly growing. That's pretty much all I have as far as announcements. We're going to go
and sing our psalm of the week psalm 117. So if you get out our psalm binder psalm 117 that was
psalm 117 psalm 117 that is john 3 the bible reads there was a man of the pharisees named
nicodemus a ruler of the jews the same came to jesus by night and said unto him rabbi we know
that thou art a teacher come from god for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except god
be with him." Jesus answered and said unto him, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, accept the man be
born again; he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus saith unto him, "How can a man be born
when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered,
"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, accept the man be born of water and of the Spirit; he cannot enter
into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the
Spirit is Spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it
listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof; but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it
goeth. So is every one that is born of the Spirit." Nicodemus answered and said unto him, "How can
these things be?" Jesus answered and said unto him, "Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest
not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, we speak that we do know, and testify that we have
seen, and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not,
how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven,
but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. And as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through
him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not
is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than
light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone that doeth evil hated the light, neither cometh
to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light,
that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. After these things came Jesus and
his disciples into the land of Judea, and there he tarried with them and baptized. And John also was
baptized, was baptizing in Enon near to Salem, because there was much water there, and they
came and were baptized, for John was not yet cast into prison. Then there arose a question
between some of John's disciples and the Jews about purifying, and they came unto John and
said unto him, "Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou bearest witness, behold,
the same baptizeth, and all men come to him." John answered and said, "A man can receive nothing,
except it be given him from heaven." Ye yourselves bear me witness that I said,
I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom,
but the friend of the bridegroom which standeth and heareth them, rejoiceth greatly because of
the bridegroom's voice. This my joy therefore is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.
He that cometh from above is above all; he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the
earth. He that cometh from heaven is above all, and what he hath seen and heard, that he testifyeth,
and no man receiveth his testimony. He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that
God is true. For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God, for God giveth not the Spirit
by measure unto him. The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand.
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the Son shall
not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer.
Father in heaven, I pray that you would give Pastor Shelley the fullness and power of the
Holy Spirit as he preaches to us, and help us to pay close attention to the message this morning,
and apply it to our lives to serve you better, and keep us safe, and bless our soul-winning time
later this afternoon. We love you, and in Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. Let's start here in John
316. The Bible says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not a son of the
world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth
on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not
believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light has
come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For
everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be
reproved. And what I want to focus in on is here in verse 20 where it's telling us
that there are people that hate the light, and why do they hate the light, lest his deeds should be
reproved. And the title of my sermon this morning is this, "Why People Hate Hard Preaching." Why
people hate hard preaching. And really we have here kind of indicating in this particular verse,
people are hating the light. What is the light? The light makes things manifest. The Bible makes
it clear in another passage of scripture that whatsoever doth make manifest is light. What
is manifest? To be made obvious, to appear so that you can see clearly. You walk into a dark room,
you don't really know what's in there, you can't really see what it looks like, and then you flip
the lights on. You know, this is why a lot of people go to clubs and bars where it's dark,
because they find people more attractive when they can't actually see all their flaws.
But then you actually bring on the bright lights, and boy, it looks different. Things are becoming
manifest, they're made more obvious, and you can see what's really going on in that particular
situation. Because what does the light do? Light makes things obvious. Light manifests things.
Light brings clarity. Light is essentially just a way to just identify what's going on,
so you can see clearly why would someone not want the light to be shown? It's because they
don't want things to be seen. They don't want things to be uncovered. They don't want things
to be made manifest. And what's really interesting about this particular passage is, you know,
in verse 16 and 17, the Bible's making it clear that Jesus Christ was sent into the world to
save us. The whole point of the light, the whole point of Jesus Christ coming is so that we could
be saved. Yet people are just so afraid of the light. They don't want the light because they
don't want to have to change. They don't want to feel bad about their sin. They don't want
what they've done to be exposed. And so they hide from it. But the reality is that the light was
there to save them. The light was there to make their lives better. The light was to help them.
In the same way, if your house, if you're walking around at night and you're trying to not trip over
toys and clutter and mess, you need light in order to find that spot. The light recognizing that your
house is cluttered, dirty, disorganized, or has problems, the light isn't the problem. The problem
is the clutter, the toys left out, things in the way. You know, the light just helps you recognize
these are problems that I should avoid. The light didn't cause a problem. And so by just hiding
things, that does not help you whatsoever. Bring things to the light is what helps you. And you
know, bringing your sin to light can help you recognize I'm a sinner, I deserve hell, therefore
I need a Savior. That's the whole point of the light exposing your sin is so that you would
recognize you need a Savior. Without needing a Savior, you don't need to be saved. And so the
whole point of recognizing that we're sinful and how sinful we really are is to help us recognize
that we need a Savior. And why are most people going to go to hell is because they don't want
the light to manifest the fact that they are evil, the fact that their deeds are evil, the fact that
they're a bad person, the fact that they've done wickedly, they're afraid of the light and
being exposed as to what they've done. But if they were willing to, you know, go down that pathway,
they would recognize the light's not there to harm them or hurt them, it's there to save them.
Light saves you. Jesus Christ saves you. And of course, when we talk about an eternal salvation,
we talk about going to heaven, you don't have to do anything to get saved. You don't have to
actually even change. You don't even have to actually get better. You know, in the same way
that if your house is a landmine of clutter and toys and whatever, turning on the light,
you don't actually have to fix your living room to not, you know, hurt your foot. You can step
around it. But obviously the light there could help you clean it up at the same time, right? And in
the same way, if you get saved and, you know, it recognizes, wow, you've got a lot of sin in your
life, you don't even technically have to clean it up to still go to heaven. But after getting saved
and having the lights on, you might say like, hey, but I kind of want to clean it up anyways.
It seems like this is just kind of a problem anyway, so maybe I should address it and fix it
and get better. And the fact is, people that are saved are the only ones cleaning stuff up anyways.
The Catholics still have the lights off, and so because they're not saved, they're not going to
ever clean anything up. They're not going to ever get right with God. And look, the people who are
not saved are not living for God, are not following His commandments, are not doing good. Now, do you
have to do that in order to be saved? No, but at the end of the day, the people that don't want to
clean up their lives are often the same people that don't want to accept the free gift of salvation.
And look, salvation is free. There's no price. There's no cost. Some people say you have to be,
quote, willing to clean up your life to be saved. I don't personally like that. I don't use that
phrasing. I don't say that. But you can kind of see where they're even getting that idea from
because the text is kind of indicating though that there are people who genuinely don't want
to hear about the gospel because they are unwilling to clean up their lives in any way
or to expose the fact that they have any kind of sin. And so again, for most people, for a lot of
people that get saved, they do have some desire to seek the Lord. They do have some desire to clean
up their lives. They do have some desire to know the truth. And of course, that leads them to the
gospel and then they get saved for free. But the people that don't want to hear anything about God,
they don't want to know how sick, how sinful they are. They don't want to know how wicked they are.
They're often just going to die and go to hell. And if you go soul winning regularly enough,
you will find these people where you knock on their door and they're like, I don't care.
I don't want to know what the Bible has to say. I don't want it. You know, I'm just going to go to
hell. Who cares? You know, it's just like this attitude of apathy, this attitude of rejection.
Why? Because they don't want their deeds to be reproved. That's what the text is saying.
What does it say in verse 21? "But he that doeth truth cometh to the light that his deeds may be
made manifest, that they are wrought in God." So you have two different people. One person
does not want his deeds to be made manifest. The other guy wants his deeds to be made manifest.
This is the same way it would be at a job or at a workplace where there's one employee that doesn't
want any accountability. He doesn't want the boss to know what he's been doing all day. He doesn't
want his work to be evaluated. And then there's another guy that wants all of his hours to be
evaluated and all of his work to be evaluated. Why? Because one guy worked hard and the other
guy didn't. And of course the guy that actually cares about truth and actually works hard,
he wants to know if he's doing a good job. He wants things to come to light. Whereas the guy
that's been lazy and slack and not doing a good job, he's afraid of any kind of scrutiny. He's
afraid of the boss actually understanding what's going on because it's going to be evident, you
know, hey, this guy needs to be fired. This guy needs to be promoted, whatever. And so you can
kind of see that same attitude and the things of God, that there are people who are not really
serving God. There are people who do not have a heart for the truth. There are people out there
that do not really want to go soul winning, that do not really want to get people saved,
that do not really want to give up sin, that do not want to give up covetousness,
that do not want to actually sincerely love other people, that are actually extremely selfish,
that they have a lot of evil, wicked things going on in their hearts and minds, that they are
railers, that they are gossipers, that they are tail bears. They have all these problems and issues
in their life and so they are afraid of real scrutiny. And not only are they afraid of real
scrutiny, they're afraid of even perceived scrutiny. We'll be perceived scrutiny. The
pastor or the preacher getting up and just ripping on their sin, even though that guy has no idea
what's going on in their life. And for some reason, people always think like, "Oh, this guy's just
preaching about me. He knows what's going on in my life." I don't know at all, okay? It's so funny.
I remember there was one time back at Pure Words where I preached a sermon. It was honestly a
targeted towards somebody. I'll just be honest, okay? Part of the sermon was kind of targeted
towards somebody. And whenever I was done preaching, someone else came up to me like,
"This sermon was all about me, wasn't it?" And I'm just kind of thinking like, you know,
in my mind, I'm obviously thinking like, "No, I don't even know. I have no idea what's going
on with you. I don't really care." Not that I don't care about the person, but I'm just like,
I just didn't really think this was a thing. But of course, you know, whenever someone asks me,
I just like, "Yep, definitely. It was absolutely all about you." Because, you know, I don't want
someone to feel like, you know, I'm not, you know, preaching about them because I am. But of course,
the Word of God is what tears us up. The Word of God is what makes us feel, you know, awful about
our sin and reproves us and corrects us and makes us want to have that change. And the people that
don't want to change, they don't want to hear it. They don't want the scrutiny. They don't want
to feel bad about what they've done. And so what do they do? They reject hard preaching. They reject
the Word of God. They reject the preaching of God's Word because they don't want things to come to
light. You know, if you're doing a really good job, you want everything to come to light. Think
about this. If you're preaching really good sermons, wouldn't you just want to upload it
to the internet and just tell everybody like, "Hey, everybody should listen to the sermon."
You know, if a guy's hiding all of his sermons, if he's afraid to put his preaching out online,
what does that really tell you about that particular individual? It makes me think this
guy is afraid of scrutiny on his preaching. Which if you're preaching the Bible, if you're
preaching the word of God, what do you have to be afraid of? You know, that should be a red flag
when someone doesn't want scrutiny, when someone doesn't want accountability. You know, when people
are not having accountability for their finances or for their financial dealings or where money's
being spent, you know, that's a red flag. Because if you're using the money on legitimate things,
you want people to know where that money's going. You want people to understand where it's going.
Now, Ken, you know, you don't necessarily want to just have so much scrutiny and so much
transparency that it's like, "Hey, I just, let's all list on a billiton board on the on the wall
of our church all of our sins for this week." That wouldn't be very good, would it? Right? If we just
said, "All right, everybody, here's a chalkboard. Everybody write down all their sins this week.
We just want to have his full transparency." That wouldn't really be very good, right?
Okay, so we're not saying like we should go to some weird level of scrutiny and accountability,
but at the same time, having no accountability, no transparency is really typically a result of
trying to cover things up, not doing things that are legitimate. Go to John chapter number seven,
John chapter number seven. So why would people not want to come to a church like ours? Why would a
church not want to hear preaching like our style of preaching? It's very simple. It's very, very
simple. They simply don't want to change. They don't want to change. That's it. We could go home,
but I'm gonna belabor this point, all right? It's like, why do people hate hard preaching? It's
because they just don't want to change. Because, I mean, at the end of the day, the words aren't
gonna hurt you. Some people even sleep during the sermon, okay? It's obviously not affecting
your sleep here. So you're not gonna be physically harmed or injured in any way. So why would you not
like the hard preaching? It's because they don't want to change. You know, of course, if you're
gonna have to sit here and pay attention and you don't want to change, then what do you want? You
want sweetness and light. That's what you want. You just want to feel good. You want to pick me up.
Hey, I just, I just came here. I'm just kind of down. So I just want someone to, you know,
make me feel better inside. You know, the Word of God is not here just to make you feel better
inside. It's to help you get right with God. It's help you serve God. And sometimes we need
to change. And of course, what is hard preaching? You know, it's a few things. Number one, it's
going to be biblical, because if it's not the Bible, then it's not hard preaching. It's just
opinion. And that's not, that's not hard preaching. Hard preaching is always going to be the Bible.
It's going to be specific. So it's going to really name the names. Okay. It's going to name
the names. It's going to name the sin. It's going to make application of what the Bible is saying.
It's going to modernize whatever we're talking about and putting it into practical situations
that you deal with regularly. It might even potentially step on some people's toes. It might
make some groups of people feel like they're targeted because it's going to be specific.
And then lastly, it's going to be corrective. It's got to be these three elements. There's
not really hard preaching, but at the end of the day, you know, we need hard preaching to
help us to have that light shown on what's going on in our lives so we can get better,
we can improve, we can change. Some people come to church to basically get a pat on the back,
but you know, I believe that the Bible more emphasizes the fact that we need to change.
We're showing up here as an opportunity to get better, to take our Christian walk seriously,
to draw closer to the Lord, to make sure our pathway is on the right pathway,
to make sure that we are being edified, building up. So that's again, that's change. Sometimes we
also need just reproof, meaning, hey, you're doing something wrong. Sometimes we need rebuke
because we're just not listening. We're not changing fast enough. We're not taking things
seriously enough and we need to get, you know, kicked in the pants, spiritually speaking,
so that we can get on the right, on the right pathway. But people don't like this. People
don't want to be told that they're wrong. People don't want to be told that they're being foolish.
People don't want to be corrected in any kind of way. And this is why they hate hard preaching.
Look at John chapter seven, verse seven. "The world cannot hate you, but me it hateth,
because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil." Why did they hate Jesus? He's the
light. He's coming to save them. Why? Because he's telling them what they're doing is evil.
He's telling what they're doing is wicked. He's making it manifest that their actions are way
worse than people perceive. People look at the Pharisees and think these guys are so righteous
and they're so good and look how honest they are and look how upright they are and Jesus is tearing
them to shreds and they hate that. The Jews are wicked and they're sinful and they have major
issues and they're not really serving God and they're not sincere and they're flatterers and
Jesus is exposing their hypocrisy and exposing their wickedness and they don't like that.
They don't want it so they want to get rid of him. They want to get rid of the light because
they want to stay in darkness because they don't want their deeds to be reprieved and that's why
they hate Jesus and that's why they hate anybody that preaches the Bible faithfully. If you get up
and you preach the Bible faithfully you know the person that's is an idiot will be mad at you for
calling them an idiot. The person that is a drunkard will be mad for you calling them a drunkard. The
person who commits adultery will be mad at you for calling them a whore, a whoremonger, a harlot,
or an adulterer. They'll be like it was an affair. No it was adultery. Oh you know I had to divorce
this guy because he was just so bad. No no no you're an adulteress. The Bible says that if you are
with another man and you've been married that you're an adulteress. You're not just divorced
you're an adulteress. That's what the Bible clearly says. Oh I don't like that. You just
don't like Romans chapter number seven. You just don't like the word of God. Go if you would to
Matthew chapter 14. Matthew chapter 14. Now again do we want to sit here and necessarily rub
everybody's nose and every pass in and not let people live things down? I'm not saying that we
should be like that but you know what? We should preach whatever the Bible says period. Hey the
Bible balances it with grace. The Bible balances with charity. The Bible balances us with you know
a lot of positive things but you know you got to think about it. What is grace? Unmerited favor,
undeserved charity, undeserved love. Well how are we going to recognize that you need grace if
we can't recognize it's grace? Hey we're giving this person grace. Why? Because they don't deserve
it. Because they're not worthy of this. Because they have issues but we're going to give them
grace anyways. We're going to be along suffering with them. We're going to give them charity
anyways. And of course we all need that. We all need grace. We all need charity. We all
need long suffering. And we want to extend that. We want to grow in grace and in the
knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But at the end of the day we're going to grow
in grace by recognizing we have sin and problems and issues and we're going to fix them. And
we need to fix our problems. Now of course the people in the Bible that preached about
people being sinful, they got in trouble. People didn't like them. People attacked them.
Why did Jesus get killed? Because he was testifying of their works that their works were evil.
He didn't get killed for performing miracles. He didn't get killed for giving people food.
He didn't get killed for these things. He got killed because he was saying the Pharisees were
wicked as hell and saying not to listen to them. He got killed for saying that everybody was on
their way to hell and that they had to believe only in him or they were not going to be saved.
He got killed for saying, "Yeah, guess what? You guys are just as sinful as the Gentiles and no
matter who believes in me is going to get saved and it's not about works." He got killed for that
kind of stuff. That's why he really got killed because he testified of their works that they
were evil. If he was only positive, if he was only Joel Osteen, he wouldn't be killed. He'd be on TV.
He'd have some basketball stadium as his church building, a basketball stadium. You know, it's
funny to me that these big mega churches, because I grew up in one of these, they would always talk
about their success and they would explain why they were successful. And I remember this was a
common theme that they would say is they would say, "Oh, well, it's because of our governance.
It's because of how we're governed." Because instead of having like, you know, a pastor-led
church, we have a board of elders. And so we do it biblically. And I'm just thinking like,
number one, show me that in the Bible. Show me that board of elders that was really successful
at any story of the Bible. Show me the council that was really successful in the Bible. And then
let's show me a practical example of a church that's run by elders, quote, this huge council,
this huge group that's just tearing it up and so winning, has the right doctrine, is King James
only, doesn't exist. You know why they're growing like a weed? Because they don't preach anything
that the Bible says, that they're seeker sensitive and that they're just kind of doing this and trying
to figure out what everybody likes and they're just trying to appease everyone, that there's zero
hard preaching. That's why they're growing, not because of their stupid governance, because I
guarantee even the non-the-non churches are still run like every other church where there's a CEO,
there's a main guy making all those decisions and it's just kind of a fluff board of elders anyways.
Because at the end of the day you can sit here and say oh we're democratic, oh we're a public,
oh we're governed by all these groups of people. No, it's like a few Jews in a back room somewhere
and there's just one guy pulling all the strings folks. You want to sit here and think that we're
ruled by a bunch of women, they they pretend to let women vote. Look the democrats still don't
even have power, they have to cheat in order to even make it seem like they got all the votes
they have because there's not enough freaks and weirdos for the democrat party to actually have
a majority in our country. They have to lie and manipulate and obscure. Look there's always anywhere
there's success, there is a hierarchy and there is a man in charge, there's some guy that's leading
the charge. This board of elders idea is false, it's fake, it's not real, it's not legitimate,
it doesn't work. If it did work we would see the success of it everywhere. You know what's successful?
Having strong leadership. That's what's successful. You know what's successful biblically speaking and
spiritually speaking? People doing what the Bible says. Okay and you know when it comes to you know
the people that are hated of this world it's going to be those that are hard preachers. They're not
the loved of this world, they're not building these basketball stadium churches, they're not
doing this kind of stuff, they're getting their heads chopped off. John the Baptist is the greatest
man born among women. The Bible says this, number one. Number two, the Bible says the entire town,
everybody, from all of Jerusalem, everybody came to hear John the Baptist preach. It's not that he
didn't get the audience, it's not that he didn't get the virality, it's not that he didn't get
enough attention. Everybody heard John the Baptist preach. Then why is he not have a huge church?
Because they walked away because they didn't like the message. Look, the best preachers are going
to be heard by the world, but that doesn't mean that they're going to all come to their church.
You know, the crowds came to hear Jesus preach, but then they all walked away. They all left.
Why? Because they aren't interested in the truth. They aren't interested in the light. They hate
hard preaching. What did they do to the John the Baptist? Well, look at verse three.
"For Herod had laid hold on John and bound him and put him in prison for Herodias sake,
his brother Philip's wife. For John said to him, 'It is not lawful for thee to have her.'"
Look, the guy that's preaching against people and exposing what they're doing
and calling them out and bringing light to their situation, he is killed. He's put in prison.
Why? Because he's preaching what the Bible says, hard preaching. And you sit here and you say,
"Oh well, how are you going to do that to first-time visitors? Herod never even visited his church."
Did you realize that? "Oh well, you know, the law was only for the Jews." Herod's not a Jew.
Let me tell you something. The word of God is for everybody. The Ten Commandments is for everybody.
God's law is for everybody. "Oh well, how dare you preach the law to this person? How dare you not
preach the law to this person?" You know, it just boggles my mind how many people get up and they
say, "Hey, we shouldn't preach this part of the Bible to first-time visitors." What kind of a
wicked attitude is that? What kind of a queer attitude is that? I mean, you're going to sit
here and tell me that you shouldn't preach parts of the Bible to first-time visitors?
Like, you should preach the Bible to everybody. Now look, I get that if I'm trying to get someone
saved, maybe I should emphasize the gospel. I get it. Why would I not emphasize the gospel?
But to say, "Hey, don't talk about this subject of the Bible with this person." Like, that just
makes no sense. It's not biblical. And you know what? I'm going to follow John the Baptist,
where I'm willing to call people out on their sin just straight up. "Hey Herod, it's not lawful for
you to have this wife." So the Bible says it's what the law of God said. Now someone that loves
the truth would have said, "Well, I did though. I must be a wicked sinner. What should I do?"
And then John the Baptist would say, "Well, you need to believe on Jesus who's coming after me,
and you put your trust in him and he'll give you eternal life. And then you need to like get right
with your whole family situation." And I'm sure he had a lot more to say. He told all the Romans
not to exact more than that was owed of them because they were ripping people off financially.
They were exacting more taxes and more money than they should. Sounds kind of common in government,
you know, taking more money than they should, ripping people off with taxes. That sounds
pretty common. That's what would happen, but he doesn't want to hear the truth. He wants to
put him in prison. He wants to shut him up. He wants to get rid of him because he doesn't
like hard preaching. He wants someone to tell him he's a great person. Go over with Hosea chapter
four. There is a danger in man for you to want to get soft, for you to stop wanting to get criticism,
for you to stop wanting to hear how you need to change. You know what? And look, if you want to
go to a church where it'll never challenge you and never cause you to want to change according
to God's word, it's just almost anything else out there. I'm not saying that there isn't
another good church, but I am saying that the vast majority of churches today will not challenge you
with the Bible. They won't read certain sections of the Bible. You'll never touch certain topics.
You won't touch certain sections. You won't touch certain practical applications. There's
just going to be so much withheld from you because they're afraid of people leaving their church.
You know, if there's one thing you can't really accuse me of is that I'm afraid of people leaving
my church because, you know, I just don't want to keep people by holding back the Bible. Because
here's the thing, if I hold, if I do that, then when am I allowed to finally just let it open?
Like when am I finally allowed to open that section? And if it's to prevent first-time
visitors from here, we get first-time visitors all the time. So now it's just like, well,
this section of the Bible is just off for us. We just turned it off. We can't look at it. We
can't read it. We can't explore it. We can't touch it. You know, I just don't want to do that.
I don't, you know, that to me, that's being unfaithful to the Word of God. The men in the
Bible never have this attitude. You know, they don't sit here and say like, you know what,
I don't think I should preach this section of the Bible. And God's like, good job. He's like,
hey, if you do that, I'll confound you before them. Hey, I'm going to punish you. I'll fight
you with my own mouth. I'll attack you. Like God is, God's mad when you won't deliver the message.
Think about it this way. If you tell your kids, because I do this often, I have a lot,
you kind of have to tell kids other kids messages. It's like go tell them to get out of the bathroom.
Go tell them to take out the trash or whatever. If I say hey go tell them to take out the trash
I'm going to punish them. Well that's kind of negative dad. I don't want to tell them that.
You're going to be like what do you mean you're not going to tell them that. Well that's just
kind of a negative. They might get upset if I tell them that. But that's the message. The message is
they need to clean up their room or they're going to get in trouble. It's like yeah but you know
that seems kind of rude. That's kind of harsh. You really think they can handle that right now?
I mean they're only four years old dad. It's like I don't care. Give them the message. And you know
at the end of the day as a pastor I'm not here to get to pick and choose which messages I'm allowed
to give to God's people. I'm here as just a vessel where God is saying hey this is what I said.
Tell them everything I said. But you know what? There's a lot of people that don't want to hear
what God had to say. I mean it's not any different in Exodus chapter number 20. They hear God speaking
to Moses on the mountain. They're like I don't want to hear him. I don't want to hear it. I'm
afraid. I don't like this. People are afraid of hearing what God has to say. It's a common
message in the Bible. Look at Hosea chapter 4. Look at verse 1. Hear the word of the Lord you
children of Israel for the Lord hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land because there is
no truth nor mercy nor knowledge of God in the land. Notice that when you don't have truth that's
when you actually don't have mercy. Everyone wants to pretend like oh I got all this mercy
but then they don't have truth. These are incompatible. The same people that love truth
are the same people that love mercy. The people that don't like truth are the same people that
are very you know ungracious and don't actually have genuine mercy or love or care or affection
for other people. They're selfish. People that don't love the truth are selfish. How do you know
that? Have you ever met a democrat? I mean they are the most gracious party right? They just love
love love. Love wins. The same group that's making effigies and trying to kill Donald Trump
repeatedly. The group of mercy and love. The group of tolerance. The group that you know they really
tolerate ICE pretty well don't they? They want to just murder I mean they just want to murder so
many people and kill so many people and they're so violent and someone that disagrees somewhere
is a MAGA hat kill them right? I mean what group is just slaughtering the other group at will at
as much opportunity as they have? Look if the conservatives were as violent as the Democrats
the Democrat party wouldn't exist. The whole reason the whole reason that they can is because
they're just so weak and effeminate and soy that they can't really do much about it but they try.
I mean what is the tranny school shooting percentages these days? When's the last time
you've seen a MAGA Republican going in and wiping out the Democrat population in a school? I'm not
saying it's never happened or never could happen but don't we kind of see the opposite constantly
happening? The group that claims to be loving, the group that claims to have mercy, the group that
claims to be tolerant and accepting and welcoming is the same group slaughtering children and again
they're not even slaughtering the people that were bullying them, they're not even slaughtering
people that actually harm them. You know what they typically do? They slaughter innocent women
and children. The group of love because don't believe these people, the people that don't like
truth are the same group that don't love mercy. You better believe it. Oh they just they're so
much more loving than you. If they don't love truth then they don't love mercy at all. Let's
keep reading. He says by swearing and lying and killing and stealing and committing adultery they
break out and blood touches blood. I know what party that sounds like. And look it's not like
the Republicans don't have all these problems too okay. The Republicans are worse than the
Democrats of the 90s. I mean the Democrats of the 90s had more morals than the Republicans of 2026.
So don't hear me wrong. Politicians are wicked. But at the end of the day you know there's a group
of people here that God's mad at and they have no truth. Why? Because they want to swear. Because
they want to lie. And again what's swearing? It's not saying you know FJB. All right folks.
You know what it is? It's saying I love God. I swear I love God. I swear on the Bible. I swear
I'm going to do right. I swear that I'm going to be honest. I swear that I'm going to uphold this
oath. It's putting your hand on a Bible and saying I swear to protect you know this country. I swear
to protect the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. That's a swear that they
don't do at all. They're the enemy of the Constitution. They're the ones that are traitors
in our country. Our land is full of swearing. People swearing oaths that they don't make.
Judges getting up and saying they're going to have blind justice. That they're not going to
pervert justice and they're liars. People getting up and swearing all the time. Pastors swearing
that they love the Bible and love their congregation and love people. People swearing that they're not
doing anything weird. People getting up and swearing, you know, oh what's going on with Epstein
files? Well the Dow's up $50,000. How many innocent children that have been trafficked care about
stock funds? Oh the group of mercy, the group of love. Look this is just how our country is that
it's just full of false oath swearing, of lying. People that are just constantly lying, killing,
they're stealing, they're committing adultery, and I mean just just everything bad. But of course
this is God's people. And look this is what's so crazy about this. He is not getting mad at the
heathen. He's not he's not talking in this passage to what would be perceived the unsaved unchurch
group. He's talking to his people. He's talking to his congregation. And you know what's crazy
and this happens is there are God's people, churches, that do wicked evil things. You know
and I hate this attitude and you know it just it just it just irks me so much that it's like
people can't have a negative opinion about a Christian unless they think they're a reprobate.
It's like it's like they have to think like well I don't know if I can dislike this person or not
unless they're a reprobate. It's like look they're gonna be rotten evil Christians. They're gonna
just be bad people that are saved because guess what salvation was free. We were all bad okay
and some people didn't reform at all. They just live in that old man. They love staying in that
old man. They love doing evil and wickedness. I mean look there's tons of people that are saved
in the Bible that do the worst things imaginable. Look at King Saul. I mean King Saul is just hunting
David down trying to kill him, trying to murder him, inquiring of witches, hires Doeg the Edomite
to kill and slaughter the priests of God and their entire families. He's a saved person. You have
David hiring people to slaughter Uriah. I mean think about what they do to do to Uriah. They send
Uriah to the hottest part of the battle. Uriah is out there fighting the Lord's enemies,
doing all this work, and then secretly they try to withdraw from him, take support away from him
so that he can just perish out on the battlefield while they sit here and live luxurious lives in
their palace. They're just sitting here just living this luxurious life in their little palace
while they just let Uriah go and just fight the battle by himself. David's a saved guy. All,
basically the whole crew is saved people. Look, it's like you get this weird idea like, well,
I'm not going to be mad at this person or disgruntled or stay away from them unless they're
for sure confirmed rep. Look, you have the same flesh as a rep does. The rep just only does evil.
But you know what? Christians that live in the flesh can also only do evil. And you know the
Bible talks about Saul that he was only David's enemy continually. It's like, when did he do
something good towards the end of his life? It's just like all bad. You look at Solomon,
end of his life, all bad. He's doing horrible, wicked things. Many of the kings of Israel,
I think, were probably saved. Horrible people. Some of the worst people of the kingdom of Israel
were saved. I think Ahab was saved. The guy that was being influenced by Jezebel. I mean, man,
that guy was rotten to the core. He did some wicked stuff. You have all kinds of shady
people doing shady things. And what's their problem? They don't want to hear hard preaching.
God has a controversy with his people. God's going to judge the house of God. God's going to
get mad at churches and Christians when they won't hear the Bible. Why? Because they want to just
swear and lie and kill and steal and commit adultery and do all this crazy stuff. And look,
there's churches where they're filled with adultery. People are swapping wives and doing
all kinds of stuff, and they'll just appoint them as their trustee of the church. I mean,
can you imagine if a guy came into our church, just starts committing adultery with a married woman,
she drops her husband for like a bad habit, takes on this guy that was the adulterer,
and then we're like, let's appoint this guy as the trustee of our church, the guy in charge of our
church. How does that even make sense? There's churches doing that kind of stuff. There's
churches, you know, there was a church I was growing up with, their deacon, the individual,
that again, this is a deacon run church. So you have to understand, like in our minds, deacons
are a little bit different. Some churches are quote, deacon run, where they make all the decisions,
they pick the pastor, they're doing everything, just a single dude, just a random single dude
believes rich. And of course he's dating somebody, committing fornication with them, of course,
but he's the deacon. He's the guy that makes all the decisions for the church. It's crazy. It's a
crazy town out there. And look, why do people then they start saying like, oh, I don't like
this preacher's message. I don't like what he said. I don't like what he's doing. Because they're
afraid of their sin getting called out. They're afraid of someone getting up and exposing this
insanity of this adultery situation, because they're going to be like, isn't that our like
trustee in the church? That's weird. Isn't it weird that we have, you know, women leading this stuff
and all this gossip and all these problems? They don't want all these things to be exposed because
they don't have to deal with them. They don't want to read 1 Corinthians chapter number five,
because they're going to be like, oh, shouldn't the drunkard be thrown out then? Shouldn't the
fornicator be thrown out then? Shouldn't we deal with these issues? They don't want to get up and
read about the importance of going and evangelizing and preaching the gospel, because they're going
to start asking this question, hey, do we do that ever? Do we have like a program to like actually
go out and preach the gospel or like tell anybody about Jesus? Like are we ever trying that or doing
that? It kind of seems weird that we never do it. Why do they not want to preach those parts of the
Bible? Because they don't want to be exposed. They don't want to change. They don't want it to be
clear what they're doing is wrong and they don't want to do the work. Oh, well, you know what,
we shouldn't have, you know, new people going out and preaching the gospel. This is what a pastor
told me in person when I said, hey, I go soul hunting every Saturday, you know, I want to like
advertise it. If people want to go out with me, he's like, well, we just don't want people to like
going out soul hunting. You know, we got it. We got to train them. It's like, okay, where's the
training program? Well, we don't have a training program yet. It's like, dude, just put a warm body
into the silent partner seat of my soul hunting train and I'll take them with me. You know what
I mean? It's like, what kind of training do you have to do to do this? He doesn't even have to
be saved. I'll get him saved too. You know what I mean? Like he can pray with me at the first door.
Look, there's pastors out there saying, oh man, you know, there's trees in the Bible that you're
not supposed to pick fruit off for the first three years. So therefore be afraid of going out and
trying to get fruit after you get saved right away. Don't be concerned with fruit. What about
the woman at the well who's like saved and then just gets tons of people saved instantly? How
about the apostle Paul who straightway preached Christ? Okay. I mean, this is just crazy stuff.
It's like, why would someone preach this? Because they don't want to be exposed for not caring about
soul winning for not having a fruit in their life. Why don't you have fruit? Well, I'm building up
to it. You know, I'm going to, it's going to take years and decades to get to that. Look, look, it
doesn't take years and decades to become a soul winner. You know what it takes? A desire. That's
it. Just take someone that wants to try. But you know what they're more interested in? Swearing,
lying, killing, stealing, committing adultery. Verse three, "Therefore shall the land mourn and
everyone that dwelleth therein shall languish with the beasts of the field and with the fouls of
heaven. Yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away. Yet let no man strive nor prove
another for thy people are as they that strive with the priest." This was so funny. No one
corrects each other because they have this entire environment built where you cannot
correct anybody. Think about it. Don't show somebody that part of the Bible. You might offend them.
You might offend the first time visitor. You might offend these new people. You might offend
these other people. So no one can strive. You cannot argue with anybody. There's only one person
you can get mad at. The preacher. The only person you get mad at. The only person you take the task.
The only person you get offended by. "I didn't like that message. I was a little harsh. I don't
know if that's what the Bible says." That's the only person they attack. Crazy. It's crazy, but
this is how some people get. This is how some churches get. Think about it. There are some
churches out there that if the preacher got up and just preached exactly what the Bible said,
they would not get mad at each other for being guilty of those sins. They get mad at the preacher
for simply saying it. They get simply, they'd just be mad that you even brought up what the
Bible had to say. They only strive with the priest. Verse five, "Therefore shalt thou fall in the day,
and the prophet also shall fall with thee in the night, and I will destroy thy mother."
It's just, God's so funny. It's just, isn't that kind of just random? He's just like,
he's just like, man, all the preachers are going to fail and your mom. It's just like, what in the
world? Like, dang, that's kind of crazy. But I mean, think about it. If you, if you only fight
the pastor, if you only fight the preacher, then yeah, it makes sense. It's probably going to lose
the preacher. It sounds like you're going to basically just run them off or get rid of them
or cause them to be just so discouraged. He quits or whatever. Because that's the only person you're
attacking. But by attacking the preacher, you know what you're doing? You're just turning the
lights off. How, how are you going to walk around in the dark room by turning the lights off? That
didn't help you. Why are you mad? Like, imagine you go home and your kids made a huge mess and
there's toys everywhere and there's problems and there's trash and there's whatever and someone in
the room turns the light on and then you go over there with a sledgehammer and you smash the the
light socket you smash the the light and you smash the the switch you're like how dare you turn light
on it's like why wouldn't you be mad at the trash why wouldn't you be mad at the mess why wouldn't
you want to clean up the mess it's like gonna sit here and smash the light switch because it got
flipped on but that's what these people are like aren't they because they don't want to change they
don't want to clean up the mess now if you did that because you're insane then what's going to
happen you're going to keep tripping and stumbling and falling and causing by turning out the lights
that's not going to help your life at all all you're going to do is just keep smashing your
foot down on the toys and tripping and falling and making more mess of your life turning off the
preaching is the worst thing you can possibly do and you know why would i want to do that for our
world and for our country is turn the lights off even more we want to be a bright and shining light
we want to make it more manifest so that we clean up more stuff not less turning out the lights is
the worst thing that we can do why because well it's going to destroy our moms verse six my people
are destroyed for a lack of knowledge because thou has rejected knowledge i will also reject thee that
thou shalt be no priest to me seeing thou has forgotten the law of thy god i will also forget
thy children we we often see this verse being quoted and people bring it up but it's good to
have some context right they're destroyed for lack of knowledge they turned lights out and because
they turned the lights out because they didn't want to change because they didn't want to get
better what happens well god's going to reject them they're not going to be serving him anymore
and he's going to forget their children there it's a self-destructive ideology the democrat philosophy
is a self-destructive philosophy feminism is a self-destructive philosophy the feminists don't
have 10 12 kids feminists kill all their 10 12 kids that they created bastard children and then
they have all these abortions they destroy their own family satanism will destroy you feminism will
destroy you these liberal ideologies will destroy you you know you have to understand that god's
word is there to help you and to build you up and encourage you and to make your life better
it's not there to harm you but people just they get afraid of hard preaching they don't want it
says in verse number seven as they were increased so they sinned against me therefore will i change
their glory into shame they eat up the sin of my people and they set their heart on their iniquity
and there shall be like people like priest and i'll punish them for their ways reward them for
their doings you get a bunch of people that don't want to hear what the bible as i say and you'll
get a pastor that doesn't want to hear what the bible is saying you get a bunch of people that
don't want to hear hard preaching and you'll get a pastor that will refuse to preach hard sermons
he'll cancel the red hot preaching conference he'll cancel the hard preaching he'll cancel anybody
stepping on anybody's toes why because like people like priests and then you know what you're just
going to destroy yourself by turning out the lights you know you don't want to turn out the lights you
want to turn the lights on go to ezekiel 22 go to ezekiel 22 you want all of the bible not some of
the bible you want the gnarly parts not just the good parts and hey i love the good parts i love
to encourage people i love to help give people grace but you know what we have to understand
why we even need the grace in the first place you know at the end of the day you're not really
loving people by not helping them change or improve or fix situations you know what's the
grace well the grace is not leaving the lights off in the room the grace is having the lights on
seeing the mess and saying hey let me help you clean up your room hey let me hey no problem
let's work on it hey let's pick some of this up hey let's put this up hey let's clean this
area together and maybe if they're being slow you're like hey i'll pick up some slack that's
the grace the grace is not turning the lights out the grace is not saying oh i love how you decorated
the place the grace is not ignoring the issue the grace is trying to say let's fix it let's
let's work on it and being patient with them as they clean it up but keeping the lights on
taking the lights out you're wondering like i don't have this problem at home so you know i'm just
i'm just speaking from a hypothetical but you know there was recently one time okay i was
going to the bathroom and the kids left the stool out and i couldn't see it and i smashed my toe on
it and i said a lot of fun words okay all right but you know it's a rarity it's a rarity and
again i was thinking like man i wish i had more light in my life not less because i hate smashing
my toe you know there's the people that like they smash their toe but they're just too afraid
to see what actually happened and so they just won't flip the light on you know that's a bad
attitude when you smash your toe you should be humble enough to say you know what what's going
on let's fix this situation let's improve the situation people that don't want this will be
destroyed by god ezekiel 22 verse 23 and the word of the lord came unto me saying son of man
say unto her thou art the land that is not cleansed nor rained upon in the day of indignation
there is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof like a roaring lion ravening the prey
they have devoured souls they have taken the treasure and precious things they have made her
many widows in the midst thereof her priests have violated my law and have profane mine holy things
they have put no difference between the holy and profane they don't know what's the difference
between gross things and non-gross things they don't want to hear about it neither they showed
difference between the unclean and the clean they don't want to clean things up they wanted to be
gross and they have hid their eyes from my Sabbath and I profaned among them her princes in the midst
thereof are like wolves ravening the prey to shed blood and destroy souls notice this to get
dishonest gain you know what's interesting about this passage the same people that don't want to
hear about things that are gross and clean things up are the same people that are getting dishonest
gain it's all about money it's all about covetousness did you notice also in verse 25
they have taken the treasure and precious things so you know what they're doing they're misusing
god's money the same people misusing god's money the same people that are getting dishonest gain
are the same people that don't want to hear what god's word has to say are the same people that
don't want to get cleaned up that don't want to hear what the bible has to say that's an
interesting parallel isn't it look this parallel exists a lot and so you should be worried the guy
that doesn't want to hear what the bible says the guy that is afraid of what the bible says the guy
that doesn't want to put a difference between the clean and unclean well what's going on with the
money with that type of a person what's going on with the finances of that kind of a person
says in verse 28 and the prophets have daubed them with untimbered mortar seeing vanity and
divining lies under them saying thus saith the lord god when the lord hath not spoken so they
just say a lot of things that are not what the bible says this is man's preaching boy there's
a lot of churches where they get up and just say all kinds of stuff and it's not what the bible says
like don't spake teenagers where's that in the bible and why is it what's the magical difference
between 12 and 13 anyways it's like a jewish thing right isn't a jew isn't the bar mitzvah a jewish
thing i'm not a jew why why is it that you change you know they're like because isn't it becoming
the bar mitzvah correct me if i'm wrong okay isn't a bar mitzvah you become a man so you become a man
at 13 so now you can't get disciplined or i don't know is that the parallel well guess what i'm not
jewish i'm spiritually jewish and you know what i believe in discipline period you know people
getting up preaching their opinion preaching whatever they want there's a conspiracy of the
prophets they're all conspiring to not preach the bible preach their own opinion they care more
about money stealing money dishonest game look there's nothing wrong with paying preachers and
pastors but you know what it shouldn't be dishonest game where they say things that are not true for
money they lie for money they're deceitful and receiving the money that they get says in verse
29 the people the land have used oppression and exercise robbery and vex the poor and needy yea
they have oppressed a stranger wrongfully see like where do they get this money this is what's
interesting you know where they get the money they rob the poor they're taking money from the people
that don't have the ability to protect themselves or to you know garner their money they're stealing
from the poor they're robbing from the needy the people that need it the most the people that are
the most impoverished the people that should be getting the money they're taking their money to
basically hoard wealth under themselves so the bible saying about these people they've exercised
robbery they steal and they vex the poor needy they made all the poor needy get mad at them
the poor needy despise them they they're like man you're stealing from us you're robbing from us
you're taking from us this is wrong yay they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully the guy in a
foreign country the guy that doesn't have rights the guy that doesn't have an opportunity they're
taking from him because he doesn't have the opportunity to defend himself and i sought
for a man among them that should make up the hedge and stand in the gap before me for the land that
i should just not destroy it but i found none that's sad it'd be sad as you could point this
person out it'd be sad if you could be like here's a church where they only care about money they're
ripping off the poor and the widows and the needy and nobody even cares nobody takes them to task
i mean look how many televangelists are there at the wood how many non-non-churches out there where
you could just point just be like look at this look at this excess look at what these weirdos
are doing look at what this false prophet's doing and yet the church is just filled with idiots
who are going to support that guy no matter what they have they're filled with widows
who are just dumping their life savings into these churches into these false prophets
pocketbook and just giving them everything that they want and no one takes them to task
no one's holding them accountable look just by pointing out that someone's wicked and bad you
would think you would just think god's people and normal people would wake up and be like oh wow
that's a problem i don't want to be a part of this but you can do it and they still they'll dig in
they'll still support look he's like i just want one guy to get mad about this and he's like i can't
even find one that's crazy it's crazy it's crazy when you show a guy preaching just weird junk
just crazy stuff like i just remember like i exposed mainly perry pretty hard at one point
this guy just doing crazy weird stuff i mean the guy is is preaching that no one burns in hell
like what do you need a guy to say to like think this is a problem i mean the guy is preaching
weird stuff on the trinity and no one burns in hell and all this stuff then he lies and says he's
never taught that jesus went to hell i proved that fault and he just deletes his entire youtube
channel but like no one left his church basically i'm not saying no one but i'm just saying like
virtually and you're just thinking like why are people still following this idiot because that's
how it is you could just expose someone all day long i mean you have t.d jakes getting exposed
for all the weird nonsense people still go to his church you have kenneth copeland being investigated
by the fbi you have you have what is that it's like jan and paul crouch or something or paula
crouch there was like this tv couple the guy got caught doing embezzling funds and went to prison
his wife divorced him then he comes back and starts another tv show you're thinking like who's
following you like what do they have to see what do they have to recognize and i'm just trying to
warn you to say this look there will be people to follow the idiots of this world there will be
simple to follow the idiots why because they themselves don't want to hear the hard preaching
they don't want to be corrected that's why they don't want to be corrected they don't want to be
told you've been supporting a fraud they don't want to be told you have a problem you don't
like hard preaching you don't like to hear what the bible says you can expose them all day long
and it won't even matter and what does god say well i'm going to destroy them because i can't
even find anybody that wants to fix this verse 31 therefore have i poured out my indignation upon
them i've consumed them with the fire of my wrath their own way have i recompensed upon their head
say the lord god hey i tried to take you to task i tried to show you i tried to get it fixed you
didn't want it let god be true but every man a liar oh how could all these people be wrong well
let god be true and every man a liar sometimes just everybody's wrong i mean did you read the
passage with me i sought for a man and i found none you know what that means zero were right how
could they all be wrong i don't know it's bible there's going to be whole groups of people where
they're just all wrong where they're just all off where none of them care but you know what god's
word is still true but you know what soul winning is still true you know what fearing god is still
right but some people hate hard preaching because they don't want to change their lives go to amos
chap number five go to amos chap number five we can do this all day but you know what i'm trying
to really drive in is that this is a common problem it's a common problem where you see in
the bible just people don't want to hear what the bible doesn't say and we're not talking about the
unsaved.
No, no, no.
None of these pastors are dressed to the unsaved.
They're all addressed to my people, to the nation of Israel.
They're dressed to God's people they don't want to hear.
That's crazy.
There's a ton of Christians that don't want to hear the Bible.
You probably know.
You probably talked to them.
You probably experienced it.
Family members, friends.
Look at the people even in our church that are drugged here by their wife, by their husband,
by their family, by their parents, by their mom, by their dad, by whoever, by their son.
And they just, they're not really into it.
You know what?
That's their problem.
Amos chapter 5, look at verse 8, "Seek him that maketh the seven stars in Orion, and
turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night, that calleth
for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth."
The Lord is His name.
"That strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against
the fortress."
Now this is really interesting.
I kind of picked up verse 8 only because of the last phrase.
Notice that it says the Lord is His name.
The Lord does something.
What does He do?
He strengthens the spoiled against the strong, saying that the guy that got ripped off, the
guy that's being taken advantage of, God will strengthen him with His word to eventually
do what?
To fight against the guy that took advantage of him.
He's going to strengthen the spoiled against the strong.
The guy that's strong, the guy that's rich, the guy that has everything, hey the guy that's
been poor and needy and taken advantage of, he's going to be strengthened by God to take
him to task.
It says, "So that the spoiled shall come against the fortress."
They're going to come and fight this big fortress that they built up.
Because it's saying in verse 10, "They hate him that rebukeeth in the gate, and they abhor
him that speaketh the rightly."
But let me tell you something, the people in the fortress are going to get so mad that
they've been told that they're wrong.
They're going to get so mad that they're being exposed for being wicked.
They're going to be so, they're going to hate the guy that tells them that they're wrong.
They're going to be mad at the guy that tells them they need to repent.
They're going to be mad at the guy that flipped on the light switch.
"For as much therefore as you're treading as a pawn," notice this, "the poor, and yet
take from him burdens of wheat.
Ye have houses built of hewn stone."
So you say, "Look, you guys are sitting here, living in a fortress, living in a palace,
and you're stealing the burden of wheat.
You're just taking the little bit of money, the little bit of portion from the poor guy.
You're just taking that little bit from him, and you're just sitting here dwelling in houses
built with hewn stone.
That's your problem."
He says, "But ye shall not dwell in them.
Ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them."
God's saying, "You built yourself a palace, stealing from this guy?
Well guess what?
I'm going to take it away from you.
I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins."
Notice this, "They afflict the just."
Notice who they hate?
They hate people that are just and good and righteous.
They take a bribe and they turn aside the poor and the gate from their right.
So they hurt the poor person, they hurt the honest person, the just person, the good person,
they attack him, they attack, they rip off the poor.
Why?
So they can just live in their palace and just have all their excess.
And you know what?
Why?
Because they hate the guy that rebukes them and says, "What you're doing is wrong."
There's nothing wrong with having money, but taking money from the poor so that you can
have excess money, that's wrong.
And you should be called out on that.
And the guy calling you out is not the problem.
You're the problem.
You know, the problem is not the person that asked Pam Bondi what's going on with Epstein
files.
The problem is Pam Bondi talking about the doubt.
Think about what just happened.
They're ripping people off.
They're taking advantage of the poor, little children.
They're profiting off of them, and then she says, "But we have all this money."
What a wicked witch.
I mean, this is just evil, what we're doing in our society and in our country and our
politicians.
And, look, the same thing happens in God's house sometimes.
We have God's people profiting off the poor and profiting off of people and ripping people
off.
You know what?
Shame on any institution, shame on any group of people that would be like this.
And you know what?
I noticed it's the same person that hates rebuke.
It's the same person that hates what?
Hard preaching.
Why do they hate hard preaching?
Because they don't want to get exposed.
Because people don't want to know what's really going on with them.
They're afraid of it.
Go to Isaiah 30.
Go to Isaiah chapter number 30.
You know the Bible warns in Amos chapter 8 there'll be a famine of God's word.
You know, you start turning off the Bible, start turning off hard preaching, you're just
going to basically get none of it then.
Fine, you don't want to hear what the Bible has to say?
I'll give you a pastor or a preacher that'll never preach the Bible.
I'll give you a pastor that gets up and just preaches his opinion all day long.
And then you'll just basically know one in there who'll know what's going on.
Look, if you don't want God's word, he'll punish you in special ways.
Isaiah chapter 30, look at verse 8.
"Now go write it before them in a table and note it in a book that it may be for the time
to come forever and ever, that this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will
not hear the law of the Lord, which say to the seers, 'See not!'
And to the prophets, prophesy not unto us, write things, speak unto us, smooth things,
prophesy deceits."
Tell us we're the best church ever.
Just tell it to us.
Just tell us we're the greatest.
Get you out of the way.
Get aside of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us.
Wherefore thus say the Holy One of Israel?
Because he despised this word and trust in oppression and perverseness and stay there
on.
You know what he says?
This group of people, they're trusting in oppression.
What does that mean?
Some of these verses are just really hard to understand and then one day they click.
All right?
You know what?
They think they're oppressing people.
They're ripping off the poor.
They're taking money that shouldn't be theirs.
And because they're doing that, they think we won't be harmed.
We won't be affected.
We're good.
They're trusting in their oppression to keep them going and not God.
And God's like, "Boy, I'm going to take you to task and I'm going to take away your oppressive
means.
I'm going to take you to task, buddy.
You're not going to be able to sit here and just oppress the poor forever.
I'm going to take you to task."
And when you don't have that oppression anymore, when you can't rip people off, when you can't
steal from them anymore, well, you know what?
You're going to be destroyed.
It's the same people that what?
Don't want to hear what the Bible is saying.
Why?
Because they don't want to have to change.
They don't want to have to actually work honestly.
They don't want to actually do good things with the money.
They don't want to actually work hard.
They want to be lazy and steal from other people.
And then, you know, not ever be reproved about it.
Not every taken a task on that.
The same person that's lazy is the same person that steals.
And boy, you know, it's a sad group.
You know, why are all these politicians called fat cats?
Because they steal.
Eli and his sons got fat off the offerings of the Lord.
Why?
Because they're stealing.
It's interesting, the same people that get fat, which according to the dictionary is
the word gross.
If you look at the word gross in the dictionary, it says fat.
Sorry if you don't like the dictionary.
And the same people that don't like the word gross, according to the Bible, fat, spiritually
fat, steal and oppress the poor.
And they trust in their oppression to deliver them, not the Lord.
The Bible says in Psalm 62, "Trust not in oppression and become not vain in robbery."
That actually helps you understand what that means.
What is trusting in oppression?
It's like the Democrats.
They think they're going to be good because they're just stealing all this money and that's
what's going to keep them safe.
But don't trust in oppression.
Don't think that that's going to deliver.
You don't think that robbing people is going to help you.
The Bible says if riches increase, set not your heart upon them.
There's a lot of good people that if they get enough money, they become rotten.
It's like if they garner enough wealth, if they get that million dollars in the bank,
their heart might change.
They might become a different person.
That's why the Bible told the king not to multiply gold and silver into himself because
you don't want his heart to change.
You don't want him to become a different person.
Proverbs chapter number one, go to Proverbs chapter number one.
You know, the Bible says, "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine,
but after their own lust shall they heap in themselves teachers having itching ears.
They shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables."
Just tell a story.
Just make stuff up.
Just convince us that what we're doing is fine.
The Bible contrasts that, "But watch thou in all things endure afflictions, do the work
of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry."
You know, instead of just hearing stories and lies, you know, you should be concerned
about just getting people saved and having to endure the afflictions of the gospel.
If you're going to endure afflictions, you'd rather endure afflictions of the gospel than
endure afflictions of being evil and wicked and doing things that are wrong.
Make full proof thy ministry.
You know, whatsoever man soweth, that shall also reap.
But people don't want to hear it.
Proverbs 1 verse 23, "Turn you at my reproof.
Behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you.
I will make known my words unto you, because I have called and you refused.
I stretched out my hand and no man regarded, but you have said it not all my counsel would
none of my reproof.
I also will laugh at your calamity.
I will mock when your fear cometh."
You know, God's saying, "Hey, you don't want to hear what I have to say?
You don't want to take my correction?
Fine.
Then I'll make fun of you when I destroy you.
He'll meme at you."
Verse 28, "Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer.
They shall seek me early, but they shall not find me."
You know, you can basically piss God off so much that he's just like, "I won't even help
you anyways."
Sorry, it's just, you're doomed.
"For that they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord."
They don't want to hear their preaching.
They don't want to get the correction.
They don't want to change.
And so God will laugh at them as he destroys them marvelously.
Verse 31, "Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way and be filled with
their own devices for the turning away the simple shall slay them."
Notice this, "And the prosperity of fools shall destroy them."
They got money and they didn't understand why.
And because of that, they got lifted up with pride.
Prosperity of fools.
What's the prosperity of fools?
You got money the wrong way through oppression, through perverseness, through bribes, through
the bad means.
And that prosperity made you think that what you were doing was right.
But what you were doing was wrong.
And you trusted in that and God's going to repay you.
Verse 33, "But whoso harkeneth unto me shall dwell safely and shall be quiet from fear
of evil."
You know, there's nothing like being right with God.
And there's nothing like being wrong with God.
Being right with God is a solid foundation.
Being not right with God is a sinking sand and it's a marvelous destruction.
Go to Proverbs 12, we're just looking at a few Proverbs here and maybe a couple Psalms.
What's the point of the message?
Well, why do people hate hard preaching?
Because they don't want to change.
So then what should our attitude be?
We should seek correction.
Because if you want to change, if you want to get things right, if you want the lights
on, then you'll seek out the hard preaching and you'll desire it and you'll want to go
to a church that has hard preaching.
And you know what?
The hard preaching church isn't destroying your life.
Sin is destroying your life.
Ignoring sin is destroying your life.
People are not destroyed.
People are not like, "Man, my life got ruined because I started preaching the gospel and
getting people saved.
My life got ruined because I started reading the Bible on a daily basis."
No, people are like, "My life got ruined because I committed adultery.
My life got ruined because I'm lazy.
My life got ruined because I steal.
My life got ruined because I did drugs.
My life got ruined because I broke God's commandments."
That's why people ruin their lives.
People are not ruining their lives by obeying God's Word.
I'm not saying that by serving God you won't have turbulence.
I'm not saying you won't have persecutions.
I'm not saying you won't have disappointments.
I'm not saying you won't have setbacks, but let me tell you something.
What will destroy you is sin, and our preaching will not destroy you.
If it did then we would just see a huge group of people's lives have been destroyed.
You know, why don't you do this?
Why don't you just think about five, seven, ten, whatever, two years ago, whenever you
did not go to a church, did not have hard preaching, and what was your life like?
What path were you on?
What knowledge did you have?
And where are you at now?
And then ask this question, did hard preaching help or hurt?
And then look at the group of people that left hard preaching and see what happened
to their lives.
They can sit here and claim that it's so wonderful and so great, but many times it's rough.
Not because you have to be at this location, but you need God's word.
We all need it.
We all need correction.
Proverbs 12, 1, "Whoso loveth instruction loveth knowledge, but he that hateth reproof
is brutish."
Brutish is stupid.
Brutish is foolish.
Saying you got to love knowledge, you got to love correction.
You want to get better.
Proverbs 15, look at verse 10, Proverbs 15, look at verse 10, "Correction is grievous
unto him that forsake it the way, and he that hateth reproof shall die."
This guy hates hard preaching, boy it's grievous unto him.
Can't stand it.
But what's going to happen?
He's going to die as a result of that.
Go to Psalm 32.
You know, the Bible says, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God is profitable
for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."
God wants us to be corrected by His Word.
All of it.
All of it is good.
All of it is great.
I'm not ashamed of anything in the Bible.
I love it.
It's always right.
It's always good.
It's going to be profitable.
The Bible says this, "All scripture is profitable."
Then how dare a preacher get up and say, "Let's not show this part.
Let's hide this part.
Let's not bring this up."
No, it's all profitable.
It's not like, "Be careful.
Be careful with this passage.
Be careful with that story."
You don't want to scare people into believing the Bible.
What?
What does the Bible say in Isaiah 58?
It says, I'm just reading for you, "Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet
and show my people their transgression in the house of Jacob their sins.
Yet, they seek me daily and delight to know my ways as a nation that did righteousness
and forsook not the ordinance of their God.
They ask of me the ordinances of justice.
They take delight in approaching to God."
Seeking justice and truth is approaching to God.
Not wanting truth, not wanting justice, not wanting the law is getting away from God.
Seeking justice, seeking truth, seeking the law is seeking God.
And you know what?
The pastor, the preacher is supposed to get up and show the people their transgressions,
not hide them, not obscure them, not conceal them.
Psalm 32 verse 5, "I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid.
I said I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity
of my sin."
He won't forgive us of sins, you got to confess your sins.
Confess and forsake your sins, and he's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins.
You know what?
Concealing them will never help, hiding them will never help.
Psalm 119, go to Psalm 119, we're just going to look at two more Psalms after that.
Psalm 119, look at verse 71, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might
learn thy statutes."
Hey, we should desire to be afflicted by God's Word, not by our sins, not by this world,
not by the evil that we do, but by God's Word.
Go to Psalm 141, Psalm 141, oh man, I don't know if we should give them this sermon, it's
going to afflict them.
No, it's good for them that they're afflicted, good for them.
You know, it's interesting, the same group that's so afraid to afflict their children,
to punish their children, to spank their kids are the same people that don't want to be
afflicted by God's Word.
You should want to be afflicted.
You know, children, no one likes punishment.
For the present, it's not joyous but grievous.
We get that.
But you know, you don't want to be a kid that just never gets disciplined.
You recognize that it's not good, it's not healthy for you.
Just like if you go to work out, you don't want to be like, "Man, I'm never sore after
working out."
If you did an hour workout and then the next day you're not sore at all, you're going to
be kind of mad.
You kind of want to be like Arnold after a workout.
You're like, "I can't touch my hair."
You're so like, "Oh," you feel like Jell-O or whatever.
In fact, I think that Arnold Schwarzenegger was infamous for working out to where he couldn't
even do anything.
Basically just complete muscle fatigue was his goal in the gym, because why?
He wanted that affliction so that he would get growth.
What does working out even do?
It tears your muscles.
It gets to the point where your muscles get torn.
And then what happens?
They rebuild.
They grow.
They get stronger.
That's how you actually get strong.
You have to tear yourself down to build yourself up.
And you know in the same carnal way that that's true, spiritually it's true that you come
into God's house and you tear down the strongholds, you tear down all the evil, you break down
the weakness, the softness, the effeminacy that's in your life so you can build up strong
like a man, like a man of God, you know, that's what we want, that's what we need.
Look at Psalm 141 verse 5, "Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness, and let
him reprove me, it shall be an excellent oil which shall not break my head, for yet my
prayer also shall be in their calamities."
Look, I'm not going to come and punch you in the face, but the word of God can do that
to you in your heart and your mind so that you get better.
And notice, it's a kindness, thanks for being so kind to me.
You know what's not kind? Lying to people, wasting people's time.
Can you imagine you show up and I preach as long as I do and it was not Bible at all?
Man, that would be rude.
I could see why these guys preach for 20, 30 minutes because they're not even preaching
the Bible.
They're afraid to waste that much time of people's.
You know, when you preach long, but it's really biblical and it's really good, people don't
mind at all.
I guarantee people will be more mad at me if the preaching was lame, weak, and not biblical,
but 30 minutes as opposed to like an hour and a half, but it was just straight Bible.
You know, because at the end of the day, it's like, it's a kindness.
Psalm seven is the last place we're going to go, Psalm seven.
Why do people hate hard preaching?
They don't want to change.
So you know what you need to do?
You need to want to change.
You need to desire change, desire correction, desire instruction.
You want the lights on.
You know, you go to these nom nom churches, they turn the lights off literally.
I remember my dad would joke and I'm just thinking like, I don't even know why he goes
to this church, but he would make fun of our church a lot.
And he's like, you know what our church reminds me of?
He's like, you know what the worship server reminds me of?
I was like, I don't know.
He's like, hell.
He's like, it's dark and there's all this smoke and it's loud and there's all this screaming
and I'm just like, why do you even go, you know, like, okay.
It's like, don't you want it to be like heaven where the saints are there and there's light
and we're singing with melody in our hearts, no smoke?
I mean, yeah, it kind of seems weird when you think about what kind of style of music
they even have, right?
Psalm 7, look at verse 4.
If I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me, yea, I have delivered him
that without cause is mine enemy, let the enemy persecute my soul and take it.
Yea, let him tread down my life upon the earth and lay mine honor in the dust, Sila.
Dude, this guy is extreme, man.
This guy is saying, like, if I've done evil to somebody that was not my enemy and not
attacking me, then destroy me.
That's his prayer to God.
It says in verse 6, "Arise, O Lord, in thine anger, lift up thyself because of the rage
of mine enemies and awake for me to the judgment that thou hast commanded.
So shall the congregation of the people compass thee about, for their sakes therefore return
thou on high.
The Lord shall judge the people.
Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to mine integrity that is in
me."
This guy is begging to be judged, begging to be reproved, begging to be corrected.
Hey God, I want to know where I'm at.
God, judge me according to my righteousness.
Hey, check how I'm doing.
That's the type of attitude people should want to have.
They want God to know where they're at.
They want to know where they're at.
They want to be reproved.
They want to be afflicted.
They want to be confronted.
They want the hard preaching.
You know who doesn't want the hard preaching?
The guy that's guilty of this stuff.
He doesn't want to get up and say, "Hey punish me like I punish people that aren't even causing
me problems."
Whoa, you know, that would be bad for some people.
"Oh, let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end, but establish the just.
For the righteous God trieth the hearts and reigns.
My defense is of God, which saveth the upright in heart.
God judges the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day."
You know what?
God will judge not only the wicked, but He judges the righteous.
He judges His people.
It's a fearful thing to fall in the hands of the living God.
And you know what?
Judgment begins at the house of God.
We need to judge ourselves so that we are not judged.
We need to seek hard preaching.
We need to turn the light on in our lives.
We should seek out a preacher and a church that is going to challenge us with what the
Bible says, from Genesis to Revelation, holding nothing back, sparing not, but you know what?
Making us feel uncomfortable so that we can be right with God.
That's what you should want.
You should be afraid of getting this attitude or this bug in the mind where you say, "You
know what?
I don't really want to hear that.
I don't want to be corrected on that.
I don't like what they said.
You know, this isn't nice or kind or gracious or whatever."
I don't care.
This is what you should always ask.
Is it biblical?
Is it true?
All you should ask.
And you know what?
That's all you should seek.
You should seek the truth.
And you know what?
The truth shall make you free.
Close the prayer.
Thank you, Heavenly Father, so much for your Word.
Thank you for giving us correction.
Thank you for giving us light.
I pray that we wouldn't be people that despise truth or despise light.
I pray that we would be people that love the truth and love the Word of God and seek
righteousness, and seek judgment, and seek the affliction from God's Word.
I pray that you would help us to be humble and to recognize that we have problems and
issues and that we should work on them and we should fix them.
And I pray that as we recognize our own sinfulness, it will help us to have more grace and more
mercy and more long-suffering towards others.
Pray that you would just help our church to be a bright and shining light to such a dark
world.
Pray that we wouldn't be afraid and ashamed of God's Word.
I pray that if we were wrong, or we have issues, or we have something that would be embarrassing,
we'd rather know the truth than to shy away from it.
And I pray that you would help our church to be right with you so that you get more
honor and glory as we reach this world with the gospel.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Okay, for our last song, let's go to song number 392.
Song number 392.
Soul Winner for Jesus, song number 392, let's all sing that out together.
Hey everybody, you are all dismissed.