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Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Sing it on that first verse together with me. Am I a soldier of the cross, a follower of the lamb, hymn number 400 and four sing it out. Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Ecclesiastes 11 as we always do, we'll read the entire chapter beginning of verse number one. Follow along silently with brother Hester as he reads. Ecclesiastes 11 starting verse Ecclesiastes chapter 11 the Bible reads cast thy bread upon the waters for thou shalt find it after many days give a portion to seven and also to eight for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth if the clouds be full of rain they empty themselves upon the earth and if a tree fall toward the south or toward the north in the place where the tree falleth there it shall be he that observeth the wind shall not sow and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap as thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit nor how the bones do grow and the womb of her that is with child even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all in the morning so thy seed and in the evening withhold not thine hand for thou knowest not whether shall prosper even either this or that or whether they both shall be alike good truly the light is sweet and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun but if a man live many years and rejoice in them all yet let him remember the days of darkness for they shall be many all that cometh is vanity rejoice so young man in thy youth and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth and walk in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes but know thou that for all these things God will bring me into judgment therefore remove sorrow from thy heart and put away evil from thy flesh for childhood and youth are vanity dear lord thank you for giving us the opportunity to spend time at faithful word baptist church and i pray father that you would bless the hearers of your word who came to hear the preaching and that you'd fill pastor aniston with your holy spirit and that you would help us to grow as christians as we leave in jesus name we pray amen man ecclesiastes chapter 11 the bible reads in verse number one cast thy bread upon the waters for thou shalt find it after many days i absolutely love this verse and i love the concept that this verse represents that you're going to reap what you sow and that if you give it shall be given unto you and that's the idea here is that if we actually you know spread out the good things that we have if we're generous to other people if we give unto other people it's going to come back to us whatever it is that we put out there is going to come back around to us and so we need to make sure that we're spending our lives investing in other people helping others doing good unto other people because that's all going to come back around to us there's no good deed that we could possibly do that's ever just sort of forgotten by the lord he will actually reward every good thing that we do the bible says knowing that whatsoever good thing any man do it the same shall he receive of the lord whether he be bond or free and if you think about someone who's bond that's talking about somebody who is a slave who's not getting paid they're being forced to work they're not getting any wages but yet god says that if he sees them working hard he's going to make sure that they actually receive a recompense for that and i believe that this verse in particular is about being generous you know scattering abroad dispersing what you have sharing with other people blessing other people helping other people and you know you could also think of this as the bread of life you know you think about the word of god and and putting out the word of god preaching it from the house tops you know putting it out on youtube or social media just kind of getting it out there how that's going to come back around to you when you spread the gospel you're going to see the results from that eventually so the bible says in verse one cast thy bread upon the waters for thou shalt find it after many days and then it says give a portion to seven and also to eight for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth now verse two here is talking about the idea of being prepared for what's coming and this is sort of the opposite of verse number one because in verse number one you're sort of just kind of putting everything out there and and you're you're being generous and in times of abundance when you have extra it's good to give to other people and help out other people because then god's going to make sure that that comes back around to you when you need help at some point but in verse number two it's sort of the opposite because in verse number two he's talking about kind of stockpiling which is sort of the opposite of being generous and getting things out there instead it's sort of storing up things or being prepared you know a lot of people might point to this verse as a preparedness verse and we're living in a time where a lot of people are pretty into prepping uh i actually went to this event it was called the preppers convention or something so i i got a booth at this convention even though i you know i'm not really into prepping but i figured like the kind of people that would go to this preppers convention you know they would probably enjoy some of my preaching and they probably like want to hear some of the stuff about bible prophecy so i just went there i just bought a booth at this thing and just had stacks of like marching to zion after the tribulation new world order bible versions and then just audio preaching cds and and we were just uh i i think we're supposed to be selling something so i think we like we sold some of paul's movies there or something i don't remember what we did we we sold something and we gave it was really about giving things away for free maybe maybe i sold piano books and then everything else was free or something i don't remember but anyway we're just giving out tons of preaching and and stuff at this event and it was it was cool you know we got to give the gospel to people give out stuff but you know is that is this prepper mentality that that conference represented or convention represented is it a biblical mentality to be a prepper you know you have people stockpiling enough for six months or a year or whatever and and you know i think that you could make both cases from the bible you could kind of see both sides of this from the bible because you've got stories like in the book of genesis with joseph and he's laying up grain during the years of plenty so they'll have it in the years of famine but then you have a lot of other scripts in the bible that just say take no thought for the morrow for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself sufficient unto the days the evil thereof and give us this day our daily bread just you know trusting the lord and not worrying about it now and and just where i would lean personally on this i would lean toward just trusting the lord and not being a big prepper okay i'm not a big prepper guy don't tell the people at that convention that i was uh had an exhibit exhibition booth at but you know i'm not a big prepper because when the bible says here give a portion to seven and also to eight for they'll know it's not what evil shall be upon the earth that doesn't really sound like a crazy amount of prepping that sounds like just having seven or eight portions or something i mean you know that's not necessarily like a year's worth of food or three years worth of food or whatever and i know people personally who have a lot of stockpiled food like literally entire walls in their house are just food like just canned foods dried goods just literally enough food to eat for years okay now a lot of people say hey you know you don't know what's going to happen there could be some kind of a famine we could always say but here's the thing yes those things can happen but chances are they're not going to happen number one that type of event is pretty rare probably not gonna happen but even if it did happen i'd rather practice verse one casting my bread upon the waters and understand that the bible says that if i give unto the poor i'm lending to the lord and whatever god borrows he's going to pay back again so therefore i think it's better to spend our time investing in other people loving other people building relationships with people having friends taking care of others so that when we're in need those people will be there to take care of us and if those people aren't there to take care of us then god himself will be there to take care of us and god can take care of us through any famine because look how many times in the bible someone was miraculously fed during a famine like you think about elijah during that period when it did not rain and the ravens are bringing him food by the brook kydron or there's the widow woman with the barrel of meal and god performs the miracle where every time she goes back to the barrel there's just a little bit she can kind of scrape the bottom of the barrel there's a little food left she comes back there's a little more comes back there's a little more and it just never runs out okay so god takes care of us the bible says my god shall supply all your need according to his riches and glory by christ jesus the bible says i've been young and now i'm old but i've never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed baking bread the bible says seek ye first the kingdom of god and all these things shall be added unto you and it's specifically talking about food and clothing and drink and he says if god take care of the grass of the field if god so clothed the grass of the field which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven shall he not much more clothe you oh ye of little faith if he takes care of the birds of the air and if he feeds them and he and the bible tells us that the the sparrows and the birds of the air they do not sow they don't reap they don't gather into barns they don't have a stockpile of food but yet your heavenly father feeds them are you not much better than they and so the bible clearly teaches us in the new testament not to worry about the future worry about serving god focus on seeking first the kingdom of god and your needs are guaranteed to be met i promise you this no one who loves god and is living for god and serving god is ever going to starve to death now i'm not saying you're not going to die some other horrific way that could be even worse but i'm saying you're not going to starve to death because god has promised to provide food and raiment to those who are seeking him first and trusting him and living for him and i believe that so i'm trusting that so you know i would focus more on verse one as far as distributing and being generous and open-handed with people serving god preaching the gospel serving in the local church building family relationships friendships church relationships i would focus more on casting your bread upon the waters than just stockpiling all your bread as a prepper because i think verse two is just a mild level of prepping so it's probably a good idea to have a couple weeks worth of food in your house because you don't know what's going to happen upon the earth right so i think that's what god i think god is prescribing here just a basic moderate level of preparedness of not just like there's just the there's just a bottle of ketchup in the fridge and that's about it you know or a stack of ketchup packets you know that you'd have a little bit more there a little bit of stuff you know you don't want to just run your checking account down to like 38 cents or something okay obviously you want to leave a little buffer i think it's just smart to always have a buffer in your checking account and what does that mean that means that let's say your buffer is five hundred dollars basically you consider five hundred dollars to be zero like when your checking account hits five hundred dollars that means you have zero dollars because that's just the buffer that you don't cut into that's for emergencies because if you just run your checking account down to like three dollars and 45 cents then you know all it takes is one mistake and then the bank's gonna just nail you with like ninety dollars in fees they're saying we've got you now sucker and there's this i mean i remember one time i did i made that mistake once early in life when i was younger and i wasn't as smart about the way i handled things and i made that mistake and you know overdrew my checking account once and just the the fees were like 160 because i went like seven dollars into the hole 160 of fees you know and then you go down to the bank and you whine and complain and then there's a courtesy you know they they charge you eighty dollars instead of 160 for the seven dollars they loaned you for like less than 24 hours because you thought one thing had gone in and it hadn't quite cleared and it just you know kind of crossed each other who you know well i was gonna ask for a raise of hands but i probably shouldn't you know who's ever overdrawn your checking account before all right wow it's everybody all right so therefore that's why it's good to have a portion for seven and maybe a portion for eight you know it's good to have a little buffer just so that you don't end up just wasting money and giving them all your money for stupid fees and and all the junk so you know i'm for having a buffer and if you have a lot of money going through your checking account 500 probably isn't a big enough buffer as you as you have a bigger family you're spending more money and whatever you know that might need to become a thousand dollar buffer or two thousand dollars or whatever uh just a basic like do you think that we run our church checking account down to zero dollars obviously not you know you got to leave a little buffer in case things go wrong that's what the bible is saying you know you know have the pantry with a little bit of food in it have a little bit of money in the checking account have some basic water and food needs to get you through a week we can have because here's the thing those type of events do happen it's very unlikely that society is just going to completely collapse and we're going to have just kind of like this post-apocalyptic scenario where your three-year storable food supply kicks in okay the chances of that happening are pretty close to zero in my opinion okay in the united states of america whereas you do hear about situations like in texas recently where the power's out for like a week or something you know or when uh you know covid happened and you know you had to buy a different brand of bread than you than you were used to or something you know it's like the shelves are empty it's like it's like you're just you're filming like this one shelf that's empty whole grocery store is full of food and it's just like it turns out that's not even a food shelf it's a toilet paper shelf that's empty but that's what you know people were doing that posting pictures of empty shelves and oh you know it's the end the end is nigh and whatever you know so i think that's the balance between verses one and two i think verse one is what you need to focus on and then verse two is just a basic common sense level of preparedness but nothing crazy now verse three has some very profound things to say if the clouds be full of rain they empty themselves upon the earth and if the tree fall toward the south or toward the north and the place where the tree falleth there it shall be now what what is that saying basically what he's saying is and and this ties in with a lot of stuff he's been saying throughout the book of ecclesiastes he's basically just saying look things are the way that they are it's just things are a certain way there are certain things that aren't really worth questioning because he's been questioning a lot of things throughout the book like why is this this way or why does it have to be this way and i think that that verse is just a poetic way of saying look things are the way that they are deal with it you can't change it everything doesn't have to be explained you know why is the sky blue and yeah we can explain all the science behind why it's blue but to a small child the answer is what if a toddler asked you you're not like well you know i'm glad that you asked that let's talk about index of refraction you know if somebody asks you why the sky's blue when they're you know you pretty much just tell them look that's just the way it is it's just blue okay and and i think that's what he's saying here is just you know things are the way that they are now it says in verse four he that observeth the wind shall not sow and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap now what the bible is saying here is that there are certain people they're they're waiting for the exact right time to do something and because they're waiting for that exact right time to do it they end up just not doing anything because the perfect situation never comes up okay i'll give you an example of this i remember i used to go to the liberal niv type church when i was a teenager everything's just super watered down nobody's ever getting saved nobody's ever getting baptized it's just kind of a dead church and i remember the pastor getting up and talking about how he goes golfing every saturday with his next-door neighbor and they've just been golfing and golfing and golf like every saturday and this is what he said you know i'm still waiting for an opportunity to give him the gospel now think about it this is the pastor of the church saying he golfs with the guy every set i mean i you know i mean i'll admit i've never been golfing unless you count mini golf and i usually don't even make it all the way to the end i usually get bored and bail out about halfway through not a golf guy okay i don't know much about golfing but it's not exactly soccer you know what i mean it's not exactly basket it's not exactly like oh what'd you say man you know it's a you know correct me if i'm wrong because i've never been golfing but there's probably a lot of downtime am i right you ever have a chance to talk a little you know and and the thing is you know i remember listening to a preacher from the 1960s named glenn shunk he was given a course on soul winning and explaining how to win people the lord and here's what he said he said when you're alone with someone give them the gospel he was talking to he was preaching at like a bible college or something and they were going home for the holidays and he told them he said look you're going on for the holidays if you're ever alone with someone that's your opportunity to give them the gospel you know when you're by yourselves it's just the two of you and you're talking that's a great time to give someone the gospel amen so obviously this guy he's going golfing with his neighbor every week he's a pastor like how hard is it to bring this up so what do you do for i'm a pastor by the way are you a christian well do you know for sure you're going to heaven i mean that's that's pretty natural and pretty easy to bring that up but probably i guess if you just haven't brought it up for so many months then it then it just gets more and more awkward probably a lot easier to bring it up like the first time or or the second time or something you know i mean to bring it up the sooner the better but i that just kind of blew my mind but see he's observing the wind you know he's like you know should i give this guy the gospel today no today's not the right day and then what's he doing he's not sowing he's not sowing because sowing is planting seeds and in the bible sowing is often a picture of giving the gospel you know the sower sows the word and he's preaching the word he's trying to find the good ground to to sow the word and because he observes the wind he's not going to sow and because he doesn't sow he doesn't reap right and then that's why the church is dead that's why people aren't being saved that's why people aren't being baptized because he's not sowing the seed you know the bible says he that goeth forth and weepeth bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again with rejoicing bringing his sheaves with him you see i'd rather go soul winning in the wrong place at the wrong time than to not do any soul winning at all you know i'd rather i'd rather go out soul winning wrong place wrong time i still might get somebody saved but you know here's a guaranteed way to get no one saved is not to go at all and people are constantly looking at the circumstances and by the way you can always find an excuse not to go you can always find an excuse of it's it's too hot outside i'm too tired i'm too busy this week uh you know i'm just not feeling like it today or you know i'm just not really in that mode right now you know to everything there is a season and right now i'm a little focused on work i'm kind of focused on school i'm kind of focused on my marriage you know i'm kind of focused on the kids right now you know it's easy to always find an excuse or you can just carve out that time to go soul winning and just go and just say you know what yeah i'm busy it's crazy but you know here's a time that i can carve out and i could just be there you know i remember there was a time in my life when my schedule was crazy and i was you know working like 75 hours a week at my job and i was pastoring a church and i've got a big family and i'm trying to deal with everything and it was just it was a it was a difficult time in my life and it was kind of crazy and you know i just i carved out sunday afternoons as the time that i would go soul winning which is not really ideal for me as a pastor because you know i'm already preaching in the morning and night and then going soul winning in between it was kind of a bit much for a sunday but the it's funny i've i've never seen a church that had soul winning on sundays before before faithful word because but before i started faithful word every independent fundamental baptist church i'd ever seen they either went soul winning on saturday or they would do it on a weeknight i the reason that i actually invented that sunday soul winning time was just because that was literally the only time i could even make it because monday through saturday i'm out working my tail off you know at my secular job trying to put food on the table for my family and i was busy monday through saturday and i was gone a lot of saturday's i was you know and i did it was inconsistent and yeah i could you know i could i was sometimes monday was available sometimes saturday my schedule was inconsistent i was busy i was working a lot of hours but i knew like well i know i'm in town on sundays because i have to preach on sunday morning and sunday night so this is a soul winning time that i can always be at and i just carved that and then it ended up becoming a popular soul winning time because a lot of people have busy lives too and you know monday through saturday they're real busy and the good thing about that sunday soul winning time is just you're already there you're already in the clothes you're already fired up from the sermon you're motivated it's like all right let's go do it get it it's like you can get a lot done on sunday you get the morning service get the fellowship go soul winning boom and of course we have someone in our church seven days a week not because necessarily any one person goes out all seven days a week but because we just want to make it convenient for people and so we're just trying to make it easy for people to just carve out that time and make a habit because if you have an attitude that just kind of says well you know i'm just going to get out so many when i get the chance you know you'll find like whoa three weeks just went by whoa it's been a month whoa six weeks because time flies man you get busy so it's good to pick one of those soul winning times whether it's monday tuesday wednesday thursday and just kind of pick a time just kind of stick with it and say you know what no matter how busy things get and man i can remember on certain sundays in those days because i was running my own business sometimes things would just be spinning out of control with my business and i'm just stacked and paperwork and physical work i had to go out and do and i can remember just kind of just turning it all off on sundays and just kind of just shutting it off and saying you know what i'm not going to think about it i'm not going to worry about it you know it's time to go soul winning it's time to preach it's time to do church you know and that's it's what you got to do so that's a spiritual sowing but you know you could apply this to any area of life you know you're waiting for that perfect opportunity to get married or have kids or whatever it's never going to happen life's never going to be perfect sometimes you just do things right you just you know you just say all right you know it's time to get married it's time to have kids it's time to go to church time to go soul winning it's time to you know get this job or whatever you know you just you do things and you know if you're waiting for things to be perfect you know the bible talks about people not plowing their field by reason of the cold like ah it's too cold to get out there and plow my field but then it talks about in the harvest time you know they're not going to be they're not going to have what they need sometimes you got to get out there when it is cold when the ground is hard and till the ground and get it done because sometimes you just got to get while the getting's good so you can't go through life you know just observing the wind and then not sowing okay but now he actually brings this illustration in regard to actually having children so this is kind of interesting where he goes with this because he says in verse five as thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit you know does any of us really comprehend exactly what the spirit is or what the soul is these are things that are kind of beyond our understanding right but not only that we don't even not only do we not really know what the spirit is or what the soul is we don't even fully comprehend our own physical bodies there are many things about the physical world that we still don't understand even with all the advances in science and technology we don't know everything and the bible says as thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child even so thou knowest not the works of god who maketh all he's saying you don't know how the bones do grow in the womb that is of her that is with child you say well you know pastor anderson that's because bible's you know written in the bronze age and you know that was before we knew that stuff now we do know that no we don't that isn't true now i you know i myself have been studying a lot of science lately and i'm sure that there are other people in this room who who have studied a lot of science and know a lot about science and i'll tell you right now there are many things that science does not yet understand and especially in the area of biology these things abound i would say personally that in all of the disciplines of science biology is probably the one with the most question marks because it's the most complicated i mean it's just living organisms are incredibly complicated there's just a lot going on and it's funny i was actually watching on youtube i was watching lectures on youtube a while back several months ago and uh going over you know basics in biology and explaining even processes that are as universal as like mitosis and meiosis and just going through all the different steps of mitosis and meiosis and just going through each step and uh the professor who was giving these lectures on the youtube video was was talking about just these very rudimentary processes that are very basic and that are happening you know in every single organism and ourselves included and basically here's what she said she she got to certain points and she said here's what happens next but we have no idea why it happens you know all these things line up here and do this we have no idea why and and she's talking to her students in this video and she says hey if you ever figure out why this happens this way you know you'll always remember that i'm the one who taught you so that when you're famous or something you know she's like joking like that but at at various points in this process she's explained we don't understand this we don't know why this happens we don't understand why this is the way it is here's the thing if you actually listen to real scientists or actually talk to people who really know science they'll admit that there's a lot that we don't know when you have these bozos oh yeah science has already figured out you know science already proved that god doesn't exist we already know where life originated that's idiotic anyone who is actually serious about biology will admit that the origin of life on this planet is a mystery you know they don't know no one knows there's not only is there not a theory there's not even a hypothesis that gives a detailed explanation of where the first life form came from or how life originated from long life well hint it didn't life did not originate from long life because life was created by god and so life cannot come from non-life but yet they just say well here we are so it must have well there's this other explanation called in the beginning god created the heaven and the earth okay but my point is that even though science has gained so much knowledge and and and the the knowledge is compounding and and and we're learning more and more and more you know even the branches of science that are probably the most advanced and that have the least questions say you know astronomy and physics questions still abound in astronomy and physics and chemistry i mean there are a lot of questions out there you know and obviously we know more than we used to but there's a lot more that we don't understand and when we look at this scripture here that says you don't know how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child i guarantee you that if you actually do some real study and real research and read up and study the process all the way from the egg being fertilized all the way through the gestation and to the birth of the child there are lots of things along that path that science cannot explain and that real scientists will explain hey this is still something that we don't get this is a mystery we don't quite understand how this part works or that part works that is a fact so this bible verse that was you know written about three thousand years ago it still applies today it's not like well i was back then no no we still don't know how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child and i don't believe that we ever will because i think that god's ways are past finding out and that there are many things that science cannot answer and never will be able to answer because there are things that transcend the physical realm okay and one of those things is life that's why science doesn't really know what life is and again if somebody tells you well science knows exactly what life is all they're proving is that they don't know science because any real biologist any real scientist will tell you we don't have a theory on what life is and they're trying to create a theory i didn't even say where life came from i'm saying they're trying to create a theory on what life even is what is it like what changes when when someone dies versus being alive you know what is it that makes someone live now if you say well i don't get it we'll join the club because you know phd scientists don't get it either and they try to come up with definitions for what it means to be alive and even if they were able to come up with a definition for what it means to be alive it still doesn't mean that they know what life is what is that animating force that makes something live there's a difference between things that are alive and things that are not alive what is it nobody knows i don't think that now it's it's possible that it's something physical that god created it for sure was created by a divine act of god it cannot come from non-life it didn't just evolve from non-living matter that's impossible it's absurd it's for sure created by god it's possible that it's something physical that someday could be understood on some level somewhat i mean i don't believe it'll ever fully be understood but but honestly i don't even believe that life is even physical i believe that life is something that transcends just chemistry and physical i mean even plant and animal life i think there's something about it that is transcendent that's my opinion you know maybe that will be shown to be wrong in the future but at this time science doesn't know is it physical does it transcend the physical they don't know i'm not downplaying the things that science does know because obviously yes science has made a lot of great discoveries and technological advances that are truly amazing but there's still a lot that is unknown and real scientists will tell you that even if they're non-christian they would still acknowledge that obvious fact if they're a real scientist so we don't know the works of god that maketh all you know god's ways are much higher than our ways and just when we think that we understand something then scientists find all these new question marks that they weren't even thinking about so as a result of the fact in verse that we don't know the way of the spirit nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child and another way of saying we don't know the way of the spirit is you could say we don't know what life is because that's part of what it means to have spirit or breath giving up the ghost is death even so thou knowest not the works of god who maketh all and as a result verse 6 in the morning sow thy seed and in the evening withhold not thine hand for thou knowest not whether shall prosper either this or that or whether they both shall be a light good he's saying look because you don't fully understand what's going on spiritually because you don't fully understand what's going on physically don't try to figure it out and say like well i'm not gonna sow because you know the wind isn't right or whatever he's just saying you know what you need to do you just need to get out there and just put the seed out there put it out in the morning put it out at night and you know you don't know which one's gonna work is the morning gonna work is night gonna work you don't know so just put it out there because you don't know which one's gonna work so let's take some applications for this if we take a spiritual application you know what this tells me is you know you go out and you win souls and you don't just decide in advance like oh well i don't think it's worth going soul winning today or i i don't think it's worth going soul winning in this area or i don't think it's worth going soul winning you know to this person or something like that you know sometimes i've i've looked at somebody and just assumed like this guy's not going to be receptive right have you ever felt that way you look at somebody and you're just like i'm not even gonna bother witnessing this guy this guy's not gonna be receptive and then other times you're thinking like oh man this guy's gonna be receptive man if i can just get a chance to give this guy the gospel like he's gonna get it but how many times you've been proven wrong you know that person that you think is going to be receptive and they blow you off and then how many other times i've seen people where i was like thinking like man i don't even want to talk to this person because you just you just feel like they're just gonna blow up at you or they're just gonna shut you down or humiliate you or embarrass you or something you know maybe somebody that you work with or family or whatever and i've had people just blow my mind where the the last person i thought would listen and then i start giving them the gospel and then it's just like they're just super receptive and they end up getting saved whoa man you know or sometimes you know you're out soul winning and they've got all the left wing bumper stickers on the car and you're heading up to that door and you're like see your partner it's like hey you want to get this one you know hey i gotta hang out at the curb i gotta you know check my messages real quick you know you want to grab this one with all the left wing you know bumper stickers but but here's the thing you know i can't even count how many times i've walked up to one of those doors where you thought it's going to be a hostile door or sometimes you even think it's going to be a sodomite or something but then you go there and it turns out it's not you know it turns out that the people are receptive so the idea is you know don't worry too much about you know witnessing to the wrong person or witnessing at the wrong time you know just preach the gospel you know just get out there do some soul winning preach the word of god give people at least a chance to hear the gospel because you don't really know what's going to prosper you don't know what's going to work you know and here's the thing you know obviously we we take a lot of flack at our church because we take a strong stand against the sodomites but you know what i'm willing to take flack over that because i'm right you know the bible says what it says i preach the word of god i take a stand for what's right and i'm interested in protecting my family your family i'm interested in protecting our church and i'm interested in protecting america and warning people you know and and and standing up in our country and saying things that are unpopular but they need to be said so i'm willing to stand up and say those things but you know we get a lot of flack like oh you don't love these people you don't reach these people and you know pastor bruce mahia a good friend of mine he told me that you know he was he was teaching at a bible college in the past you know before he became a pastor he was teaching at a bible college and they found out that he was uh you know friends with me that he was listening to my preaching and so you know they they were upset about that because he's teaching in their bible college then they find out that he's mixed up with pastor anderson and so they they started to get on his case and the thing that they got on his case about was the reprobate doctrine you know and they're getting on his case about the reprobate doctrine and and you know the fact that he believed that doctrine from romans chapter one about sodomites and and here's what he said to them and i i always remembered this because it's such a great answer he just looked at them and he said he said you know you have a problem with me believing this doctrine what is it that you want me to actually change in my practice like what do you want me to do differently like you're so worried about me believing this you know what is it that you want me to actually change and and the reason why that's such a good answer is because of the fact that even though we believe that these sodomites are reprobate we still go out and knock every single door and preach the gospel to every single person who's willing to listen i mean we go out and knock on doors and i promise you we have accidentally witnessed to more sodomites than these bunch of bleeding hearts have done on purpose you know and they're worried about us that we're not witnessing to enough homos or something it's like look if we go out there and and preach the gospel at thousands of doors it's not like they come to to the door you know wearing a t-shirt that says hi i'm a homo and by the way when i'm out soul winning if i'm 99 sure that the person's a homo i give them the gospel anyway on the one percent chance that they're not and even if i'm if i'm out so waiting i if i have a teenager tell me that they're a homo i just give them the benefit of doubt maybe they're just confused because they're so young and they're a teenager and they might just be confused and i'll try to witness to them anyway so i get and look i i can tell you for a fact when i was a teenager i worked at a restaurant when i was a teenager and one of the supervisors there you know this is back when most homos were in the closet people didn't go around saying that they were a homo at all even if they were one okay nowadays people say they are one even if they're not because it's just so cool to be a sexual pervert now it's the cool thing in america now so you have teenagers and kids claiming all this i'm non-binary crap and it might not even be real they might just be trying to get attention okay but here's the thing i'm working at a restaurant over 20 years ago okay and i was already solid on the reprobate doctrine brother because i figured that out when i was around 16 or 17 years old okay somewhere around that time but i'm there when i'm you know 18 19 years old working at round table pizza and there was a supervisor there and i gave that supervisor the gospel and i preached to him and he was he was not receptive at all but i you know i preached the gospel to him anyway i gave him the entire plan of salvation okay because you know i i this is my co-worker and i had a good rapport with the guy i knew i could get away with kind of you know hitting him kind of hard with the gospel i knew that it would be okay that i wouldn't get into trouble or anything because obviously you know at work you got you want to abide by the guidelines of work and do these things outside of work but you know i knew that i could get by with it and so you know i preached the gospel to all my co-workers i preached the gospel to this guy i gave this guy the gospel clear his reign on a break or whatever and the guy he didn't like it he got mad about it he rejected it he was hostile toward it okay but i gave him the entire plan of salvation and you know what later the guy turned out to be it would turn out he's a closet homo and other people knew that about him and i didn't know that about him because he was not a real flamboyant guy but later i found out it turned out he was a sodomite and that's part of why he was so offended by me preaching to him the gospel i didn't say anything about homo so i'm preaching the gospel i'm preaching about jesus i'm preaching the romans road and he was very offended and he didn't like it and then later someone told me you know that so-and-so is a homo and i was like whoa are you serious what in the world i didn't even know that so there i saw there's one homo i can point to for sure that i preached the gospel to okay now i could i could start listing all the other homos i've witnessed to if you want that's the first homo i ever witnessed to that i know of but i guarantee i've probably witnessed to tons of them out there just from all the thousands of hours out soul winning all over the world all over america all over phoenix and california you know i one time i i'm thinking of a time in particular you know i i was preaching the gospel to a group of teenagers two of them were homos and one of them was straight you know and and i gave the gospel to all three of them they all stood there you know and the the the one guy got saved the other two sodomites they scoffed at it but here's the thing about that though that was me preaching the gospel to a couple of homos so i i i probably preached the gospel personally to like a hundred homos in my life just because i preached to so many thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of people let alone all of the people that have listened to my preaching online okay so so the point is you know it's like it's like pastor bruce me he has said he said you know what's your issue like what do you want me to change about my practice do you he's like do you just want me to just like go seeking out homos to witness to or something like what do you want me to do and they're like well we don't want you to do anything just don't believe this it's like well it's what the bible says get over it but you know if if if somebody walked up to me on the other hand and asked me why do i need to believe in this reprobate doctrine you know how is this going to change my practice what is it that you want me to do differently you know what i would say to that person i would say here's what i want you to do i want you to avoid homos not have them over to your house not have them around your kids and be aware of them that's the do differently okay so that would be my answer to that because you know the mainstream christian teaching that's out there says oh have them over to your house spend time with them love like uh that wretched radio guy todd friel somebody asked him how to handle a sodomite relative and he said like oh have them over for a barbecue spend time with them have them around your family but just like sit down with your family first and say like you know now uncle so-and-so's a little bit got a little sugar in the tank you know we don't approve of his of his lifestyle you know but we still love him whatever who wants to just have your kids around that folks and and look i don't want to i don't want to just i don't want this to turn into the red hot preaching conference tonight okay that you know that sermon is there for you to listen to if you haven't heard it already the sermon i did the red hot preaching conference i kind of touched on some of these things a little bit very gently but the point is you know we go out there and we witness to anybody who's willing to listen we go out there and we preach the gospel to every creature we witnessed more sodomites on accident than the bleeding heart old ifbs do on purpose just because of the quantity of soul winning that we do and so obviously yeah there are some people that are not worth witnessing to because the bible says not to cast your pearls before swine don't give that which solely under the dogs but at the same time want to take this verse into consideration and realize that sometimes people that we think are going to be unreceptive turn out to be receptive and vice versa so when in doubt preach when in doubt give the gospel also you know there's never a bad time you know as far as just getting the word of god out there now another thing that we could point to is the the childbearing illustration you know you have some people that would that that you know uh they can't have children you know married couples are struggling to conceive and so if we took a literal interpretation of this you know they're struggling to conceive some people that are struggling to conceive you know i've talked to people as a pastor you talk to people over the years that struggle in these areas and you know first of all the thing i would point to in the scripture is that you know people in the bible that were barren they eventually had a child every single time you know so that that should give you hope but some people had to wait a really long time you know you look at isaac and rebecca and rebecca's baron 20 years later she gets pregnant obviously i don't even need to mention abraham and sarah okay so long periods of time can go by it's not always going to happen right now when we want it to happen but you know if you're struggling to conceive be patient because i can't even count how many ladies have gone to our church and our friends churches and they they thought they couldn't have kids and then five years later they have a kid 10 years i know people who they gave up and adopted children and then 10 years later boom they just get pregnant out of the blue happens all the time so you know sometimes you just got to be patient pray wait on god and so forth but you know typically when when people come to me and and they're having trouble in this area you know typically i would also give them just some practical advice and tell them like for example sometimes people are very underweight or very overweight and and you know obviously these are things that could hinder conception so you know i would point to those things and say hey you know here's something you could work on and of course women just love to hear that you know but anyway you know so obviously you gotta be real tactful you gotta be careful with that one okay but but but honestly we you know there was this one lady that was just super underweight because usually underweight is the problem with conception um being being a little bit overweight doesn't typically cause a problem but obviously being very overweight could but uh you know because your body basically when you're really underweight your body's like hey you're barely feeding me you you want to you know there's we don't want somebody else get a piece of the pie you know there's barely enough food to keep me rolling here we don't want to feed someone else okay that's the that's what your body says maybe not in those exact words but that's what your body that's what your cells are screaming okay so the point is we you know there was this one lady that was having trouble conceiving and we basically gave her some practical advice of hey you know you need to start buttering your food you know and you know this i'm thinking of a lady in particular she didn't even have a stick of butter even in her house she had like some kind of a pam cooking spray was like the closest thing to butter just to like spray a pan it's like no no you need to put like a thick layer on the toast right amen you know you it's got to be like a layer of butter on the bread okay and you know you need to be eating eggs drink a glass of full fat milk you know it's like no you got it you got to do the full fat milk and the yogurt with the non-fat nope not non-fat and you know the eggs and the butter and the cheese and everything you know it sounds like a great homework assignment right so obviously you know you want to give like some practical advice right of of you know yeah obviously we want god to step in and and and work but we also need to do our part too okay and you know this might come as a shock to you but part of that is also you know having intercourse as a married couple you know that's actually a necessary component to having children you know now i you know i don't want to explain the birds and the bees tonight but you know that's obviously a component too and you know you'll have some people it's like they're they're they're really trying to get pregnant they're like hey is once a week enough for it's kind of like well you know you're trying to get pregnant you know you might need to put a little effort into this all right you might have to do the work a little bit you might have to sow the seed a little bit okay but they've got some calendar that's basically telling and i i'm not trying to make anybody uncomfortable this is going over all the children's heads anyway but the point is they've got a calendar telling them hey it's going to work on this one day so then that's the day that they go for but the bible is basically saying you don't really know if that's the day or not you know having a calendar tell you that is not necessarily accurate of exactly when that window is because that window is there there is only a short window when women can get pregnant they can't get pregnant at any time of the month okay without going into detail but there's a window when they can get pregnant but here's some chart or some online calculator might tell you when they think that window is but you know what they don't really know exactly when that window is so you kind of just need to just sow the seed in the morning and in the evening with holding off thine hand and basically you know that could help your chances go up a bit there all right and also butter your toast and drink a glass of milk all right so hey this is you know there's a lot of worse prescriptions that you've been given in your life so anyway let's get back to the passage here so it says in verse 7 truly the light is sweet and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun but if a man live many years and rejoice in them all yet let him remember the days of darkness for they shall be many all that cometh is vanity that's obviously a depressing thought he's just explaining look life's not always going to be fun don't expect to go through life where everything's perfect everything's just sunshine and rainbows and unicorns because of the fact that there are going to be a lot of days yet let him remember the days of darkness for they shall be many now if you say to yourself i don't have a lot of dark days pastor anderson i mean i'm enjoying a lot of things are great then you know what i say to you praise the lord and you better get down on your knees every single day and thank god because you're the exception because a lot of other people are going through a lot of dark days in this world and so if you're just hashtag winning every single day you know what amen i'm not trying to get you down but man drop to your knees and thank god every day for being so blessed because a lot of people are going through some very dark things in this world and god predicts that you know there are going to be a lot of days of darkness in our life and then lastly i'm running out of time i just want to hurry up on this but in verse 9 it says rejoice oh young man in thy youth and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth and walk in the ways of my heart and in the sight of thine eyes but know thou that for all these things god will bring thee into judgment therefore remove sorrow from my heart and put away evil from thy flesh for childhood and youth are vanity so what what he's saying there is you know go ahead and have a good time young people but realize that the things that you do have consequences so you know as you want to go out and have fun and enjoy those teenage years those young adult years hey it's great to enjoy there's nothing wrong with that but realize that god is going to bring these things into judgment so don't go off into sin don't cross the line don't go out and drink and do drugs don't fornicate don't do those things you know have a good time but realize that god is going to bring you into judgment remove sorrow from your heart put away evil from your flesh because childhood and youth are vanity childhood youth are vanity he's saying look childhood yeah you have fun youth it's fun but you know at the end of the day life isn't really about having fun is it is that really the ultimate goal of our lives just he who dies with the most toys wins and it's just all about having fun and just partying you're going to have a real empty feeling my friend and not only that god's looking down at your life and when he sees all the fun times and the partying and the good times to him it ends up you know he's not against it but it's wood hands double it's not earning you rewards in heaven you know uh i'm and look anybody who's been at this church for any length of time or knows me personally or listen to my preaching knows that i like to have fun i'm not a stick in the mud i'm not a person who just wants everything to be serious all the time and and it's all work and no play i'm not a slave driver i'm about having a good time we go on mission strips we do serious work for the lord but we also have fun it's important to me that everybody has a good time i always ask when when people get back from soul winning trips that i'm not on you know when when my staff goes you know one of the things i always ask is i don't just ask hey what was it like how many people got saved i always ask did everybody have a good time is that what i ask i always ask hey is everybody happy did everybody have fun did everybody have a good time you say why does that matter pastor anderson because it matters because if they have fun then they'll do it again and if you make it a drag then they're probably not going to come back and we want people to be in it for the long haul and you know joy gets us through life okay this is what gets us through it's what part of what keeps us serving god for years and decades the difference between those of us who are still doing it 20 years later and the flash in the pan is that basically you know we have the joy of the lord as our strength and so you know we we're we enjoy and the lord blesses us with with good food and drink and and good times with friends and fellowship and you know that's part of what keeps us going in life right i mean if there's no friends no good food no fellowship you know what we'd like to think that we'd all keep serving god but a lot of us might just burn out you know i know myself you know it's things have to be a little bit fun for me or i'm gonna quit you know it's it's like a workout plan everybody's telling me like oh man this workout is so effective and i'm looking at this workout i'm like this is gonna hurt and i'm looking at this workout and i'm like this isn't gonna be fun and i don't care if it's the most effective thing in the world i throw it in the trash because i'm like i'm i can't do this you know what i mean i don't care how effective it is you want you want to know the effective workout it's the workout that you actually do see the really effective workout that you don't do is not as effective as the not so cool workout that you actually do the stuff that you do you know you know what's the the best sermon is the one that people actually listen to because i could preach the best sermon in the world if nobody hears it i've accomplished nothing am i right people have to hear it that's why i try to make my sermon sometimes entertaining is to get people to listen to them because they don't listen to it they're not going to get the teaching the spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down okay well here's the you know i'd rather have the mission strip that people go on the effective mission strip is the one that people go on now again we want to make sure we get some serious work done we don't want to say hey spoonful of sugar to get the medicine go down and then there's no medicine this is all sugar well then we've also accomplished nothing haven't we you know we've got to have the medicine and then the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down okay we don't want it to just be a placebo okay where it's just all sugar you know a lot of people take this philosophy too far and their church is a fun center where there's no bible preaching no real doctrine no soul winning no work being done for the lord but boy is it fun as they accomplish nothing well that's too far in the other direction isn't it but the point is that you know i i'm for having a good time i i i try to make sure that the people around me have a good time you know in the process of doing real work for the lord so i'm not against fun i'm not against having a good time but i can promise you one thing all the fun that we have at church activities all the fun that we have fellowshipping all the fun that we have on a mission strip is all wood hay and stubble you don't get rewarded for that stuff on the judgment seat of christ now we're not going to stop doing it but it's not earning rewards you know we go on a mission trip we spend five hours out soul winning and then we spend you know another seven hours hanging out having fun playing hey that's what allows us to be able to get out there and do another five hours the next day and another you know and it keeps us going because we're having a good time but at the end of the day what what really ends up mattering is the time that we spent soul winning you know i can get up in my sermon and i can i can joke around and have everybody laughing and tell a cool story and everybody's like oh man that sermon but but guess what the only thing that really matters is the bible that i preached the bible verses that i said and that i expounded at the end of the day that's what matters it's not like i'm going to get to heaven and i'm going to get some kind of an award for being an entertaining speaker or something you know i'm only going to get a reward for the spiritual work that i perform the actual bible that i preached not like and the award for coolest story goes to you know now i'm not saying i would win that award but i'm saying there isn't an award like that so i'm you know i don't even have a chance you know funniest sermon goes to you know most entertaining sermon best illustration most tear-jerking illustration goes to none of those things matter at the end of the day okay having fun yeah it gets us through life but life is not about having fun right life's about serving god preaching is about delivering god's word to people and putting it in a way that they understand and breaking it down to people so they understand it soul winning is about getting people the gospel preaching is about delivering biblical truth to god's people mission strips are about getting people saved everything else there a hundred years from now isn't going to matter it matters right now that's why we're going to keep doing it but keep in mind what actually has eternal value okay it's not having fun now here's the thing like i said i like to have fun i'm for it but if when your life just becomes about having fun and that's just all you live for now is just having a good time just the food and the drink and be merry your life loses all meaning and you will be very depressed you're not going to enjoy it you're going to get sick of it you see when you put think about when you put like a little bit of frosting on your cake you enjoy the frosting right i mean most people's favorite part is the frosting right but isn't it possible to get too much frosting mrs rodriguez is it possible all right not just because we were at her house and it was a store-bought cake so we're not blaming her but we had this cake and remember how it was just like a little cake with your frosting and so we were over there house for dinner and we had this cake and we were joking about it we were laughing and having a good time because i hope you're not offended but anyway she's not but anyway uh this there was like so much frosting we were like digging under the frosting trying to get a little more cake and kind of scoop it out and then the frosting would kind of collapse you know because it was like we're trying to find the cake now usually you're trying to you know get the piece you know everybody likes that corner piece because you get a little additional frosting on the side you know so you know when you're a kid or if you just like a lot of frosting you know you go for the corner piece but here's the thing you it can get to a point though where it's just all frosting and you're looking for the cake and it's like whoa and then guess what at that point you're not into frosting anymore you're looking for cake now so here's the thing we want to make sure that our lives are cake and that we have a little bit of frosting to make it better frosting is the fun and and the the the good times and the the recreation that's the frosting on the cake it needs to be there but when it just becomes all frosting you find yourself longing for cake digging for cake burrowing in to try to get that last morsel of cake and and you know what i guarantee you there are a lot of people in life right now where their life is just like a plate of frosting and it's just not good anymore and it's just it's just that they're not longing for that sweetness anymore whereas those of us who are living a normal moderate life where we actually spend most of our life not even eating cake but eating meat and potatoes and vegetables and everything then we really enjoy that piece of cake and man we want that corner piece and yeah we know how to have a good time so we want to make sure that we understand that childhood and youth at the end of verse 10 there childhood and youth are vanity you know uh rejoice oh young man verse 9 in thy youth and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth and walk in the ways of thine art and in the side of the eyes you know go out and have fun as a young person but realize that number one god's going to bring all that into judgment so you better be careful what you do it's all going to come back to haunt you if it's bad and number two realize that it's all vanity it's all empty childhood and youth are vanity because what really matters is serving god and serving god alone you know that's what really is the cake within the frosting or the meat on the bone and so don't let the tail wag the dog don't let the icing on the cake become the main course you know hey i love having dessert after a meal but i don't necessarily want to replace a meal with just dessert and maybe i'll do that once we've all done it right but what you know and you know every once in a while rarely my wife will just say we're having ice cream for dinner you know at least it's like a home-turned ice cream a kid's mouths are falling open all over the it's very rare okay my wife feeds us very nutritious meals but every once in a while she'll churn up a bunch of homemade ice cream and she's just like this is dinner and we're just like cool party but here's the thing if she did that like breakfast the next morning then lunch then dinner you'd just be like no stop what are you doing doing it like once a year it's fun doing it a couple times a week you'd be like no there's something wrong you need you need help stop get some help okay so we need to keep things in their proper place let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer father we thank you so much for this chapter lord there's a lot of wisdom in this chapter lord and i pray that those that are here tonight would be able to apply some of these things to their lives you know understanding that there's always an excuse not to get out there and do stuff lord help us to just get out there do the work that we need to do sow the seeds that we need to sow and get things done and realize that you have fun and joy have their place but lord help us to realize that the days of darkness are going to be many and that there's also a time to just buckle down and get to work and and do do stuff that needs to be done lord i pray that uh the wisdom of this book lord would would stick with us and that we would live our lives as wise servants of yours and in jesus name we pray amen man take your hymnals please and let's turn to him number 147 leaning on the everlasting arms hymn number 147 what a fellowship and what a joy divine let's sing it out on that first verse together number 147 a piece of mine oh everlasting safe and secure from all us i have safe me great thing it's night so