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Go back, if you would, just a couple of pages to 2 Chronicles chapter 17. The title of my sermon tonight is Jehoshaphat's Downfall, Jehoshaphat's Downfall. It's amazing how deep the Bible is and how much is going on when you read the Bible. You know, I've read this story so many times and this story is found in the books of the Kings and in the books of the Chronicles. And I've probably read it about 50 times in each, so I've probably read this story like 100 times, but just recently I was reading this and some new truths jumped out at me as I was reading this. It just goes to show that it takes a lifetime of reading the Bible and you still don't get everything out of it. The Bible is such an amazing book. But Jehoshaphat was a great man of God and it's fascinating when you look at this story and see how he ends up and what happens in the aftermath and that's what we're going to look at tonight. But look at 2 Chronicles chapter 17 verse 3. The Bible says, and the Lord was with Jehoshaphat because he walked in the first ways of his father David and sought not unto Baalim. Remember, Baalim is the plural of Baal, it's multiple Baals that they worshiped in that area, false gods. But sought to the Lord God of his father and walked in his commandments and not after the doings of Israel. Therefore the Lord established the kingdom in his hand and all Judah brought to Jehoshaphat presence and he had riches and honor and abundance and his heart was lifted up in the ways of the Lord. Moreover, he took away the high places and groves out of Judah. So he's a great man of God. He walks in the first ways of his father David, meaning in David's early days when he was the most right with God. That's how Jehoshaphat was. He sought after the Lord. He walked in his commandments. He didn't worship false gods. God blessed him and he got rid of the high places and the groves, which even most of the good kings in Judah didn't do that. The Bible will say, oh, he did what was right, but he still didn't get rid of the high places. I mean, Jehoshaphat even got rid of the high places. So this guy is a very righteous king. Now keep your finger there. Go back to 1 Kings 22. 1 Kings 22, there's no question about the fact that Jehoshaphat was not only a good king, but that he was an excellent king, that he really loved the Lord. He was a very righteous king. Go to 1 Kings 22, verse 41, and we'll see that Jehoshaphat was the son of a king named Asa, and Asa was also a godly king, also a righteous king. So here he is. He's the second generation and he's continuing in the good works of his father. And so it says in 1 Kings 22, 41, and Jehoshaphat, the son of Asa, began to reign over Judah in the fourth year of Ahab, king of Israel. Jehoshaphat was 30 and 5 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 25 years in Jerusalem. So he has a nice long reign, 25 years. It says his mother's name was Azubah, the daughter of Shilai, and he walked in all the ways of Asa, his father. He turned not aside from it, doing that which was right in the eyes of the Lord. Nevertheless, the high places were not taken away for the people offered in burnt incense yet in the high places. But of course, we know later from Chronicles, he's eventually going to get rid of the high places. It says in verse 44, and Jehoshaphat made peace with the king of Israel, and the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat and his might that he showed and how he warred are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Judah? And the remnant of the Sodomites, which remained in the days of his father Asa, he took out of the land. I mean, this guy's doing a lot of great things. I mean, Asa got the Sodomites out, but Jehoshaphat goes in and does cleanup and gets the last few remaining out of the land. He took the godliness of his father and he stepped it up a notch. Go back to 2 Chronicles, let's look at chapter 18, verse 1. 2 Chronicles, chapter 18, verse 1. Now Jehoshaphat had riches and honor in abundance and joined affinity with Ahab. Now here we see the one big mistake that Jehoshaphat makes. I mean, he's got everything going for him. He's godly, he's righteous, he's getting rid of the Sodomites, he's getting rid of high places and idolatry, he's worshiping the Lord, he's following his commandments. But he has this one problem that he teams up with Ahab, right? He joined affinity with Ahab. Verse 2, and after certain years he went down to Ahab to Samaria, and Ahab killed sheep and oxen for him in abundance, and for the people that he had with him, and persuaded him to go up with them to Ramoth Gilead. And Ahab, king of Israel, said unto Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, wilt thou go with me to Ramoth Gilead? And he answered him, I am as thou art, and my people as thy people, and we will be with thee in the war. And Jehoshaphat said unto the king of Israel, inquire I pray thee at the word of the Lord today. You can tell Jehoshaphat's a godly man. Even when he's yoking up with the wrong crowd, he's trying to be a good influence on them. Well, hey, why don't we inquire at the Lord here? And of course, Ahab brings all these phony preachers in, and basically Jehoshaphat can spot that these guys are phonies. He knows they aren't the real prophets of the Lord. So he says in verse 6, but Jehoshaphat said, is there not here a prophet of the Lord besides? I mean, he brings hundreds of preachers, but they're all phonies, they've all got their collar turned around backwards, and they've got the long robes, and they're preaching lies. And so he says, well, isn't there a prophet of the Lord here besides that we might inquire of him? This goes to show you what kind of a guy Ahab is. Verse 7, and the king of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat, there is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord, but I hate him, for he never prophesied good unto me, but always evil. He keeps rebuking me and ripping my face and telling me I'm not right with God, basically. The same as Micaiah, the son of Imlah. And Jehoshaphat said, let not the king say so. You know, he's like, no, don't say that. He sounds like a good guy to me. Now look at chapter 19. So we see from chapter 17 that Jehoshaphat's a great king. We looked at it in the books of the kings. It said the same thing, how great he was and all the right things he did. But then we see him do something wrong by yoking up with Ahab. He's being unequally yoked together with unbelievers. And he's rebuked for it in chapter 19, verse 2. And Jehu the son of Hanani, the seer, went out to meet him and said to King Jehoshaphat, shouldest thou help the ungodly and love them that hate the Lord? Therefore is wrath upon thee from before the Lord. Nevertheless, there are good things found in thee, and that thou hast taken away the groves out of the land, and hast prepared thine heart to seek God. So even though Jehoshaphat's a very godly man, he gets a very stern rebuke from a man of God who tells him, you shouldn't help the ungodly. You should not love those who hate the Lord. And because you do, wrath is upon thee from before the Lord. Wrath upon? He's a great guy. Yeah, but he's palling around with very wicked people who hate the Lord. The house of Ahab, Jezebel, he shouldn't have anything to do with those people. Now look at chapter 20, verse 29. After he gets this rebuke, God continues to bless him. Even though he's rebuked, even though he did wrong, he continues to do everything else right. It was just this one thing that he did wrong. He continues to do everything else right, and God continues to bless him. Look at verse 29 of chapter 20. The fear of God was on all the kingdoms of those countries when they heard that the Lord fought against the enemies of Israel. So the realm of Jehoshaphat was quiet, for his God gave him rest round about. And Jehoshaphat reigned over Judah. He was 35 years old when he began to reign. And he reigned 25 years in Jerusalem, and his mother's name was Azubah, the daughter of Shilai. And he walked in the way of Asa, his father, and departed not from it, doing that which was right in the sight of the Lord. Howbeit the high places were not taken away, for as yet the people had not prepared their hearts unto the God of their fathers. So it's like they're taken away by Jehoshaphat, but then they're not taken away because it's like they keep coming back. It's like they're there, they're gone, they're there, they're gone. He says in verse number 34, Now the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, first and last, behold, they are written in the book of Jehu, the son of Hanani, who is mentioned in the book of the kings of Israel. And after this did Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, join himself with Ahaziah, king of Israel, who did very wickedly. What do we see Jehoshaphat doing? The same mistake, right? What did he get rebuked for earlier? Being buddies with Ahab, loving those that hate the Lord. What's he doing now? Well, Ahab now has a son, and the son of Ahab's name is Ahaziah. And he ends up now joining affinity with Ahaziah. And it says that Ahaziah did very wickedly. Verse 36, watch this, and he joined himself with them to make ships to go to Tarshish. Tarshish is like modern day Spain, okay? So they're going there to do exotic trading and make money. And it says they made the ships in easy on Gebur, they want to send them to Tarshish so they can make money. Verse 37, Then Eleazar, the son of Dodova of Marishah, prophesied against Jehoshaphat, saying, Because thou has joined thyself with Ahaziah, the Lord hath broken thy works, and the ships were broken that they were not able to go to Tarshish. So he made this big investment in this business venture with Ahaziah, and they were making these ships to go to Tarshish and trade exotic goods, but the ships were broken. Probably what happened is that God sent a storm, because a lot of times, even ships that are just sitting in the harbor, if God sends a bad enough storm, it can wipe out those ships and break them. So that's probably what happened, although the Bible doesn't give us any details, it just says the ships were broken and they had to call off the deal. So what were Jehoshaphat's two big mistakes that the Bible tells us? Number one, he joins affinity with Ahab and goes to war, teamed up with Ahab. Number two, he teams up with Ahab's son, Ahaziah, in a business venture. God rebukes him both times, and it's really the same mistake that he's repeating twice. That's the end of the story of Jehoshaphat. That's it. So, you could get the wrong impression if you don't keep reading and think to yourself, well, you know what, Jehoshaphat, even though he was a friend of the world, even though he loved those who hated God, even though he helped the ungodly, he still pretty much lived a great life. Everything went well. He lived happily ever after. Yeah, he got his face ripped a couple times from a couple of prophets, but no big deal, right? He kind of got away with it, in a sense. Yeah, he had some ships broken or whatever, but what's the big deal? If you're not careful, you could read this story and think that this mistake that Jehoshaphat made wasn't really a big deal and that he didn't have severe consequences. Oh, but that's where you're wrong, because in chapter 21, we will find out the severe consequence. See, you think the story with Jehoshaphat's over. Oh, it's over. No, it's not over. Look at chapter 21, verse 1. Now Jehoshaphat slept with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David and Jehoram his son reigned in his stead. And he had brethren, the sons of Jehoshaphat, Azariah and Jehiel and Zechariah and Azariah and Michael and Shephatai. Look at all those names. So he has these six brothers, right? There's seven sons here. These are his six brothers. And it says, all these were the sons of Jehoshaphat, king of Israel. And their father gave them great gifts of silver and of gold and of precious things with fence cities in Judah, but the kingdom he gave to Jehoram because he was the firstborn. Now doesn't it seem like Jehoshaphat loved his children? Yeah, he loved his children. He's got his seven sons. Six of them he gives cities to rule over. He gives them presents. He loves them. But he's going to give the kingdom to Jehoram. He's the oldest, so he gets the kingdom. Look at verse 4. Now when Jehoram was risen up to the kingdom of his father, he strengthened himself and slew all his brethren with the sword and divers also of the prince of Israel. So let me ask you this. How would you like it if you had seven beloved sons and right after you die, one of them murders the other six? Is that living happily ever after? Is that what you want to happen? Is that the legacy you want to leave behind? One son rises up and murders the other six. And by the way, that one son who rises up and murders the other six, he's going to be dead in eight years. That's not good, is it? Why though? Why did this happen? Let's keep reading. Jehoram, this is the murderer who murdered six of his own brothers, Jehoram was thirty and two years old when he began to reign and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem and he walked in the ways of the king of Israel like as did the house of Ahab. So where did he learn to be such a wicked person? He learned it from the people that his dad was palling around with. So here's Jehoshaphat hanging around with Ahab, hanging around with Ahaziah, and guess what his son did? He liked them. In fact, he wants to be like them. He wants to follow them. So he becomes a wicked person just like them and he ends up murdering the sons of Jehoshaphat. But let's keep reading. It gets even more interesting as you go down through this. Look at verse six. Like as did the house of Ahab, for he had the daughter of Ahab to wife. I mean he thought, hey, if it's okay to team up with Ahab to go to war, if it's okay to go into business with Ahaziah, well you know what, I think I'll just marry one of them from that family because I love that family too. And he ended up marrying one of their daughters and it says he married the daughter of Ahab and he wrought that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord. Now look at verse 12. And there came a writing to him from Elijah the prophet saying, Thus saith the Lord God of David thy father, because thou hast not walked in the ways of Jehoshaphat thy father, nor in the ways of Asa king of Judah, but has walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, that wicked northern kingdom, and has made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to go a whoring, like to the whoredoms of the house of Ahab, and also has slain thy brethren of thy father's house, which were better than thyself. Behold, with a great plague will the Lord smite thy people, and thy children, and thy wives, and all thy goods, and thou shalt have great sickness by disease of thy bowels, until thy bowels fall out by reason of the sickness day by day. That's not a pleasant way to die eight years later, that you get sick in your bowels to the point where your bowels fall out, and you say, I've never even heard of that. It's out there. It happens. There are people who have problems with their bowels to the point where their bowels start to fall out. It's disgusting. It's painful. It's horrible. But it's out there. And it says in verse 16, Moreover, the Lord stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the Philistines and of the Arabians that were near the Ethiopians, and they came up into Judah, and break into it, and carried away all the substance that was found in the king's house, and his sons also, and his wives, so that there was never a son left him, save Jehoahaz the youngest of his sons. And after all this, the Lord smote him in his bowels with an incurable disease, and it came to pass that in the process of time, after the end of two years, so this is how he spends the last two years of his life, two years of bowel disease that makes his bowels fall out, his bowels, at the end of two years, his bowels fell out by reason of his sickness, so he died of sore diseases, and his people made no burning for him like the burning of his fathers, meaning that they didn't have a big memorial for him, where they had a big bonfire and everything. Thirty and two years old was he when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years, and departed without being desired. Meaning when he died, people are just like, good. We don't even care. Like, we're not even sad that he's gone, because good riddance, he departed without being desired. And it says, howbeit they buried him in the city of David, but not in the sepulchres of the kings. So they didn't even want to give him the honor of burying him with the kings. They said, well, we'll bury him in Jerusalem, but we're not going to bury him with the kings. Now look at chapter 22, verse 1. This is what's really interesting. And the inhabitants of Jerusalem made Ahaziah his youngest son, king, in his stead. So what's his son's name? Ahaziah. Hmm, where have I heard that name before? Well, who was that guy that Jehoshaphat was palling around with that he wasn't supposed to pal around with? Ahaziah. And this Jehoram kid was influenced by them. He was influenced by Ahab. He was influenced by Ahaziah to the point where he idolized them so much, he even said, you know what, I'm going to name my son after them. So do you see the connection here? Now it seems like Jehoshaphat goes through life, everything's fine, lives happily ever after. But when you dig a little deeper into the story, you see that this had severe consequences where all seven of his kids died. Six of them were murdered immediately after he died. His seventh had that incurable bowel disease. Not only that, but all the treasures are stolen from Jerusalem. The Philistines are attacking. The Arabians are attacking. All the enemies are winning. Everything's going bad. The whole kingdom just goes to pot. Why? Jehoshaphat was a great guy. Why didn't he have a son? I mean, Asa passed it on to him. Why couldn't he pass on righteousness to his son? Because of that bad influence of the house of Ahab that he brought in. That's the only thing he did wrong, and it's super obvious that that was the reason why Jehoram went to the devil. He married their daughter. He named his son after them. He walked in their ways, and keep reading here in verse number two. After it says that Ahaziah, the son of Jehoram, king of Judah, reigned, we're in chapter 22, verse 2. Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name also was Athaliah, the daughter of Omri. He also walked in the ways of the house of Ahab, for his mother was his counselor to do wickedly. Therefore he did evil in the sight of the Lord, like the house of Ahab, watch this, for they were his counselors after the death of his father to his destruction. So we see here that they are his counselors now, the house of Ahab. So we need to think twice before we think, oh, well, you know what? Even though I'm a righteous, godly Christian, and even though I love the Lord, it's okay for me to be best buddies with wicked people. Or I'm just going to be nice to everybody, get along with everybody, bring everybody over to my house, just reach out to everybody. And look, this is what's being taught in Christianity today, to just get along with everybody. What's that teaching your children, though? When you bring the most vile people, when you bring people that literally hate God into your home, and bring them over and treat them well, and you say, well, if we treat them well, we're going to win over Christ, look, you've got to be careful that you don't get so zealous to reach people that you're willing to sacrifice your children by buddying up to these people, bringing them in, and letting your children have that influence. You know, it's funny, on Wednesday night after I preached, there was that, I don't know if you saw that film crew that was here on Wednesday night, well, they were from Canada, and they said they were making a documentary on transgender people joining churches and how churches feel about that, about the trainees coming to church. So they asked me if I would do an interview, and I said, sure. And one of the reasons why I do interviews like that is because I pretty much know that I'm probably the only person that they're interviewing that's actually expressing the viewpoint that I'm going to express. And they even told me, you're the only one who expressed this viewpoint. Everybody else wants to bring in the trainees. I mean, look, it's bad enough when they say they're going to bring in the homos. I mean, it's unbelievable that that's where we've come as a society. But they want to bring in a literal transvestite. Now just stop and think about this. Do you want your children to come to church and look at a transvestite? I don't even want my kids to ever see that junk. That stuff defiles your mind to even look at that filth. Nobody wants to see some dude in drag or something like that. And you know your kids are just going to be staring at it the whole time just because they're going to be freaked out, and you know how kids are. They just have a morbid curiosity. And you know, when those bunch of sodomites were protesting at Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento, there was a news report played on the Sacramento News. Maybe some of you saw this. And literally, the sodomite who was leading the campaign, when they asked him about the signs that they were holding up, showing homos kissing and stuff like that, he literally said, I want the children to see this while they're going into church. Who heard him say that? Who saw that? Yeah, tons of people saw it. He literally, he found out, and you know what? They played this on the news, and they painted this guy as the good guy and Jimenez as the bad guy. And Brother Jimenez was demonized. This guy is the love guy. And he literally said, I want the children to see these pictures as they're going into church. Look, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaking, the guy couldn't help but admit that his goal was to pervert the children. And this is what I told these interviewers on Wednesday Night. How can we bring those people? Oh, don't you want to reach those people? Not at the expense of showing my children that filth! Because look, I love the lost, but you know what? I love my children more than the lost. I love the Lord more than I love the lost. I love my wife more than I love the lost. And you know what? I don't love reprobates at all. And these transgender, transvestites, sodomites, the Bible said that God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient. God gave them up unto vile affections. God gave them over to do those things which are not convenient, the man with man. So why would we sit there and put that in front of our children and show that to our children and act like it's normal and have it around? But even conservative Christians say that's what they're teaching. Even fundamental Baptists are saying, bring in the homos. Bring in the trandies. I talked to a fellow pastor friend of mine, and when he was in the pew at a church, he was a Sunday school teacher, two men came to the Sunday school class, like four weeks in a row, one of them was in drag, and they were two homos. And he said to the pastor, can we get these guys out of here? And the pastor said, no, they're welcome to come. I just talked to somebody in the last week and a half who told me pretty much the same thing, that they approached their pastor and said, hey, these homos are coming, can we get them out? And they said, no. These are independent fundamental Baptist churches. Even, quote, conservative Christianity or evangelical Christianity. There's this guy on YouTube that I've seen, his name's Todd Friel, who knows who I'm talking about. Todd Friel, and he's like associated with that Kirk Cameron and, I'm sorry, wretched radio, it's called. Yeah, you got that right. But anyway, it's wretched radio, Todd Friel. And this guy's, you know, putting himself forth as somewhat of a conservative guy. I mean, he's not a fundamental Baptist. But he's kind of representing a more conservative evangelical style Christianity or whatever. He did an episode on the, and he's ripped on me a few times, of course. But the feeling's mutual. But he got up, and here's what he said. He said, if you have a relative that's a sodomite, like an aunt or an uncle or cousin, he said, have them over to your house, have them over for a barbecue and tell your kids we can still have a relationship with them, but we don't approve of their sin. We don't approve of their lifestyle, but we still can have a relationship with them and have them over. Look, this is what most evangelical Christians believe. They think I'm crazy, I'm radical, I'm psycho, and they think that what Todd Friel said is right. If we were to go around and just survey non-denom Christian churches and even independent fundamental Baptist churches, southern Baptist churches, the vast majority would agree with Todd Friel and disagree with what I'm preaching tonight. They would say love those who hate the Lord, yes, amen. That's what they would say. And they would say bring them into your house, be their friend, get along with them, just don't approve of their sin. You know, isn't that exactly what Jehoshaphat did? Because Jehoshaphat, he brings them into his house, brings them over, he's their buddy. He tells them that they're wrong to reject good preaching. But he just kind of hated the sin, but he loved the sinner. And what did it say? Are you there in 2 Chronicles? What did it say in 2 Chronicles 19 verse 2? It says, and I'm sorry, I'm in 1 Chronicles, can't get out of 1 Chronicles these days. 2 Chronicles 19 verse 2, And Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him and said to King Jehoshaphat, shouldest thou help the ungodly and love them that hate the Lord, therefore is wrath upon thee from before the Lord. But today in 2018, 90 some percent of Christians would say yes, love them that hate the Lord. But what did the Bible say? The Bible said no. Now the Todd Friel method of bringing the homos over for a barbecue, you know what, that's going to result in your kids, even if you tell your kids, now kids, listen to this, this is wrong. You know what, they're looking at your actions though, more than your idle words. Because you know what they see is that you're actually showing by your actions your approval of that. And you're showing that, well, we don't agree with it, but we can still have fellowship with it and be around it and so forth. And so this resulted in all of his children being murdered. None of us want that. But why do we think that we can just be immune to this in 2018 and bring people that are even worse than Ahab and worse than Ahaziah and bring them into our church and bring them into our homes and be buddy-buddy with these people? It's just not right. Now look, I don't think the Lord would have had a problem at all if Jehoshaphat would have thrown on some sackcloth and went up to the northern kingdom and preached to those people and preached to Jehoshaphat and preached to Ahaziah. I don't think God would have had a problem with that. But that's not what he's doing. He's bringing them over for a barbecue. He's bringing them over and joining affinity with them. He's being friendly with them, hanging out with them, and even going into business with them and even going to war with them and so forth on their side. And so this was the downfall of Jehoshaphat because he loved those who hate the Lord. Now people say, well, the Bible says to love your enemies. Amen. Amen. Love your enemies. Bless those that curse you. Do good to those that hate you and pray for those that despitefully use you and persecute you. But it never says love those that hate the Lord. Hate the Lord. Look, I've had a lot of enemies in my life. I've had times where I was at work and somebody had it in for me and was out to do me dirty at work. Well, you know what, though? Just because that person was an enemy unto me, I was not supposed to just basically retaliate and fight fire with fire. You know, I'm supposed to do what? Overcome evil with good, love my enemies, do good to those that hate me. Right? Bless them that curse me and so forth. But there's a big difference between loving your enemies and loving God's enemies, okay? It's sort of like this. If somebody walks up and slaps me in the face, what am I supposed to do? Supposed to turn the other cheek, right? Am I supposed to just beat the living fire out of that person? Somebody shoves me or slaps me. Because if somebody slaps you in the face, they're not really trying to hurt you. They're trying to humiliate you. They're trying to insult you. Because if they really wanted to hurt you, what would they do? They'd punch you in the face, right? But you know, when somebody slaps you in the face or shoves you, they're just trying to demoralize you, humiliate you. And you know what? The right thing to do in that situation is to walk away, to turn the other cheek, to overcome evil with good, and not to just retaliate. Amen? Okay. Does that mean that some innocent person is standing by and they're getting slapped around and beat up? I should just say, well, I'm going to turn the cheek for them. The Bible's saying turn the other cheek when somebody smites you, when somebody slaps you, when somebody hates you, when somebody persecutes you, okay? That doesn't mean that I should forgive people for things that they didn't even do to me. You understand? Like, if somebody wrongs me, I'm supposed to forgive them. But if somebody molests a child, I'm not going to be like, oh, I forgive you. No. You should be put to death for that. You know, these horrible pedophiles, childless. And you know what? These are the people that you're bringing over when you bring the sodomites over for a barbecue. You're bringing over a pedophile. You know what I mean? And it's like, oh, just turn the other cheek. Love your enemies. No, but you don't love enemies of humanity who hate God and molest children. This is stupid. But people have taken Christ's teaching on love your enemies, and they've twisted it into love everybody. Well, how do you make that jive with 2 Chronicles 19, too? Here's how they make it jive. Oh, that's the Old Testament. Throw out the Old Testament and only do the New Testament. That's a false doctrine. And you know what? That's a very dangerous doctrine, because there are so many important teachings in the Old Testament. We need the whole Bible, amen? You can't just take 75% of the Bible and just trash it and just say, none of it matters because we only follow the New Testament. No, we need to follow both. Okay. And the New Testament interprets the Old Testament for us, but we need to believe and be admonished by both. Look, all scripture is profitable for doctrine. What are we supposed to get out of this Jehoshaphat story? I mean, the whole point of the story is don't love those that hate the Lord. Don't help the ungodly. Be separated from the workers of iniquity. Well, we need to apply that in the New Testament, too. You can't just say, well, now the story is just meaningless because Christ wants us to be friends with the Ahabs and Aazis of this world. Why? So our children can grow up and be murderers? So in the New Testament, our children aren't going to be murderers? You know, there's more murder going on now than there has been in the past. There's all kinds of murder going on. There's all kinds of wickedness going on. This world hasn't gotten better. This world's getting worse. So if Jehoshaphat shouldn't be power around with these people, neither should we. And that's why the Bible said, be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? What communion hath light with darkness? What conquered hath Christ with Belial? What part hath he that believeth with an infidel? He said, come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing. And I'll receive you, and I'll be a father unto you, and you should be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord. And look, I understand that we live in the world. And because we live in the world, we need to interact with the people of this world. And when we go through life, we're going to interact with all kinds of people. And look, I'm not saying we should seclude ourselves from the world, but what I am saying is this. Even though you interact with the people of this world, you work with the people of this world, you go to school with the people of this world, or what have you, your close friends should be Bible-believing Christians. You shouldn't be best buddies and joining affinity and having close relationships with sinful, wicked, unsafe people. You should have your close friends be Bible-believing Christians. And that's part of the purpose of church, is to make friends. Say, well, I don't have any friends in church. Well then, maybe you just need to get more involved. You know, if you start showing up at Soul Winning, start showing up at activities, or maybe you should start walking up and approaching people after the service and making conversation, and not wait for everybody to come to you. I mean, a man that has friends must show himself friendly. You shouldn't be best buddies with the unsaved. You should be best buddies with the saved. You know, and my parents taught me this when I was growing up. You know, there was a kid on my street who was a Roman Catholic, and my parents would let me play with him occasionally, but they said, you know, we don't want you being close with him. We want your close friends to be saved Christians. We want your close friends to be from church. We want them to be from your Christian school, or at least neighbor kids that were evangelical Christians. They said, hang around with them. And, you know, you could be friendly to him. You could be there occasionally, but we don't want him to be your close friend, because he's a Roman Catholic. That's what they taught us. You know, they didn't want me to be in the Boy Scouts, because we went down. I thought it'd be cool to be in the Boy Scouts, you know, the camping and all the skills and everything like that. But we went to a Boy Scout meeting, and everybody was Mormon. And my parents said, I don't want you to just have all these Mormon friends. You know, and they were right about that. Now, I didn't like it at the time. I wanted to go over to that Roman Catholic kid's house. I wanted to go to the Boy Scouts. But you know what, looking back, I'm thankful that my parents steered me away from that and said, look, you need to be friends with saved Christians. Those need to be your main friends, your close friends, okay? So when it comes to the unsaved, yeah, we want to reach out to them, be kind to them, be friendly to them, love them, be civil to them, and not be a holier than thou. But we don't want them to be our best buddies. Our close friends should be Christians. But secondly, when it comes to the God haters, and let's face it, most unsaved people don't hate God. The vast majority, I would say 90%, at least, of unsaved people do not hate the Lord. They're not Jezebel, they're not Ahab, they're not Ahaziah. They're just people that aren't saved, right? And we don't want them to be our best buddies, though, because we want our really close buddies to be saved Christians, okay? Because we need to have fellowship, righteous with righteous. But these minority of people that are just the haters of God, and look, that includes all homos. They hate God. I don't care what they tell you, they're lying. The Bible says they hate God in Romans chapter 1, calls them haters of God, okay? And it isn't hard to figure out that that's a true story, okay? But these God-hating types, these people that are just very vocal in their hatred and disgust for the Bible and the things of God, or open sodomites, or people of that nature, you know, we should stay as far away from these type of people as we can. Now I know sometimes in your job you're going to be forced to interact with them, but you just need to minimize that as much as you can, I think, and just stay away from them. And certainly, if you have a choice about it, stay away from them, don't get together with them. You know, certainly don't go out to lunch with them and, you know, do extracurricular things. Just have the minimum contact with them. Now look, back when I was working in the secular world, I had some times when I had to interact with homos, okay? One of our biggest customers was Bed, Bath & Beyond, and, you know, there were a lot of great guys who worked for Bed, Bath & Beyond, but there were also some fruity guys who worked for Bed, Bath & Beyond, let's face it. And other places, I used to work in an Armani store that sold suits. I would do the fire alarm there, you know, once a year, and it was the Armani store in San Francisco, California. Okay. You think there were any homos working there, you know? And one of my customers for a while was Urban Outfitter. That's why I preached against Urban Outfitter a lot for a little phase there. And you know, and I worked in CVS Pharmacy a lot. I worked in Rite Aid a lot. I worked at a lot of different businesses. And I would always, this is what I would do, if the manager was a sodomite, I would try to seek out the assistant manager and just see if I could deal with that. I would try to avoid the manager as much as I could if it was a homo. Or I would just try to find the, if I walked into the Armani store or whatever, I tried to find the most straight looking person I could and just keep my fingers crossed hoping that they were. But sometimes you had to get your paperwork signed by that sodomite manager and I was just real stoic. I wasn't friendly, but I wasn't rude because of the fact that I'm representing a company. Okay, so I can't just go in there, you filthy faggot. You know, that's what I like to say. But I, you know, obviously I'm representing the company that I work for. Because, you know, I wasn't in business totally for myself. And even when I was in business for myself, I was a subcontractor. So I can't just go in there and tell them how I really feel. You know, so sometimes you're in a position where you have to represent the company that you're working for. It isn't right for you to be on the payroll on your own agenda. You know, when somebody's paying for your time, you're on their time, you need to do what they tell you to do. You know, when you're on the clock, you do what your boss wants you to do. As long as it's not immoral or unethical, you do what the boss tells you to do. Amen? It's not, you know, it's not necessarily always a soul winning time either when you're supposed to be working. You know, sometimes you got to do what you're told. Because God commands that also in the Bible. And there's a time for everything and to everything under heaven, there's a time and a place and a season for things that we do. And so, you know, when I would go into these places, sometimes I would have to deal with...and I would just deal with them as little as possible. I would just be civil and, all right, your fire alarm's fixed, sign right here, all right, you know, and just get out of there and just try not to make a scene, try not to act too grossed out even though I was. I would wash my hands twice after I, you know, get the paperwork back from the guy, sanitize everything and whatever just to kill all the STDs and pathogens from the, all the excrement and everything else that they're into. So, it's true. I mean, you know, I hate to be graphic, but it's true. And so, you know, I would always really scrub everything. And, you know, to this day, even as a pastor, you know, sometimes I'm on an airplane and isn't there always one? You know what I mean? There's always one on the airplane. And, I mean, when they offer me something to drink, I'm just like, no thanks. Because I don't even want them touching anything that I'm going to drink. If I go to a restaurant and the waiter is a sodomite, I'll just ask to be seated somewhere else and just choose a different waiter. I've walked into a restaurant before and I'll see some flaming sodomite waiter, and I'm just thinking to myself, I don't want to sit at that guy's table. So, I'll just pick a waiter that looks normal and I'll just preempt it sometimes and just say to the host, hey, that's my normal waiter. Now, what they think I mean is that that's the waiter that I usually have serving me. But when I say that's my normal waiter, I mean, that's my normal waiter. You know what I mean? And if you say, hey, that's my normal waiter, can I sit in her section or can I sit in his section? Sure. And then that way I don't have to make a scene and I can just stay sanitary and stay away from the sodomites of this world. Look, I don't want them around me, I don't want them around my family, I don't want them around my children. You know, I want to get away from them as much as I possibly can. But look, the sad thing is that I talk to people all the time in the church and I know that many of you have to work with them. How many of you work with open sodomites? Put up your hand. Yeah, all over the building. So, you know, it's a reality and it's only going to get worse in our society. You know, 10 years from now, even more hands will be going up. So what do you do? I mean, you know, you have to make the company happy, you got to be loyal to your job, I mean, that's important. But at the same time, I think you should limit your exposure to these people as much as you can without making the boss mad, without doing the company wrong, try to stay away from them. Now in some situations, you might have more pull at your job. Like, I worked for this guy where it was pretty much him and I was his second in command and then we would have a couple other guys usually working with us, a very small company, and he called me up one day and he said, you know, oh, you know, I got this guy, I think he's going to work out great, I'm going to hire this guy, you know, there's one thing though, he's a homo. And I said, I said, well, Tim, that's fine if you hire him, just as long as I never have to talk to him, never have to see him, don't have to train him and he never is going to ride in my car and I never want to interact with him in any way. Which obviously wasn't going to work, it's a very small company. And I told him, I said, otherwise, just let me know and I'll start looking for a new job. And then he's like, no, no, no, it's all right, you know, we'll skip that guy, oh, discrimination. But, you know, that was a kind of a unique situation because I was in a position of authority in the company where I was able to say that. But, you know, you're not always going to be in that position where you can make those kind of ultimatums, okay. So you got to do what it takes obviously to make a living without being unethical, without being immoral, without committing sin. But look, why in the world would you extracurricular go out to lunch with that guy, hang around that guy's desk or befriend that guy or do good unto that guy? I wouldn't do anything to be an extra help to that guy for sure, that filthy sodomite. Then you say, I don't know if this preaching is even legal, you know, this sounds like discrimination. You know, I don't care if it's legal because somebody needs to preach the truth about this. And if it's not legal, then I'm just an outlaw preacher because I'm going to keep preaching it because it has to be preached. Because look, I don't want your children or my children growing up thinking that this filthy death style is normal. The haters of God are going to be a bad influence on your children if you bring them around. And you know, I wonder if you show your children a bunch of movies that have sodomite characters and let them read books that have sodomite characters. And I wonder if you teach them to enjoy music that's sung by sodomites. I wonder if that's sort of like being around Ahab and Ahaziah and they might just choose to idolize those people and follow in their ways. And you're going to be doomed. So don't let the story of Jehoshaphat mislead you if you think it ends at the end of chapter 20 because it doesn't. Because as soon as Jehoshaphat dies, the full repercussions of what he had done wrong are immediately apparent when his son Jehoram murders his six brothers. And nobody wants that for their family. And then just to see how his son continually idolizes and loves those people, and then even his son, the grandson, oh, they just loves that house of Ahab. You know, look, I have sodomite in my extended family. And you know what, as soon as I found out that he was a sodomite, I broke off all fellowship with him. I want nothing to do with him. I would never have my family around him. Never want to see him again. Want nothing to do with him as my uncle. And he's a sodomite and I want nothing to do with him. And many other of my relatives have done the same thing and just gotten away from this guy. He's dead unto us. We don't want him around, why? Because you don't know what's influencing your children. And so this idea of bringing sodomites into the church, it just makes me think that the pastor doesn't even love his children. Like he just cares more about not offending people or he cares more about just filling the pews with more people or just, I mean, to be honest, I can't figure it out. Can somebody help me? What's motivating these pastors? Money? Well, that's the root of all evil, so that wasn't easy. That was kind of a low-hanging fruit of an answer. You can just answer that for anything. What's behind it? What's behind the evil of this world? The love of money. You can never be wrong. You're always gonna be right with that answer. Root of all evil. It's just sad that, I mean, they don't even love their own family enough to shield them from that. I mean, think about it. Remember when they put that Bruce Jenner freak on the magazine covers? Did you want your children to even see that image? I mean, look, when I was in public, I would be shielding my kids. Don't look at that magazine rack. I don't even want you guys to even see that. Imagine bringing that into the house of God. It's so wicked, I can't even imagine it. I never would have thought that our country would get to this place. I never would have thought the independent Baptists would get to this place where we would have to separate from our independent Baptist brethren because they love homos too much and they're bringing them into the church. It never would have dreamed. But you know what, the story of Jehoshaphat is a powerful reminder of why we must be separated. And that's one of the adjectives that we throw around with our church. You know, independent, fundamental, King James only, soul-ending, separated. What do we mean by that? Separated. It means that we're not everybody's buddy. We're not going to breakfast with all the other pastors in the town. We're not, and you know what? Blessed are you when men separate you from their company. Because I'm not going to sit around with all the sodomite-loving pastors and all the ones who want to bring in all these freaks and transvestites. You know, if they don't love their own children, they certainly must not love me. So what, you know, why would I want to be friends with people like that? You know, I'm just going to tell the truth. I care more about my wife and kids than anybody else. You know, humanly speaking, you know what I mean? I mean, look, I love you. I love the members of our church. I love all of you. But not as much as I love my own wife and my own kids. I'd rather offend you and you get mad and leave and my wife and kids don't have to be around that filth. You know, because they're a higher priority for me. And the Lord is my highest priority. And I know he doesn't want to find some unclean thing in us and turn away from us. So let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for this story about Jehoshaphat, Lord. And Lord, help us to really think about this story. And I pray that if people are in error on this, and I know there are people out there who think that we're over the top on this. I know that there are people who are listening online who think that we're overboard on this. And there may even be people here in our church that think that we are overboard on our stance on this and our doctrine on this. Lord, I just pray that those people that are your children that are misguided on this issue and that think that we're overboard, I pray, Lord, that you would just make the story of Jehoshaphat come into their mind every day this week. I pray that every day this week, they would wake up every morning with the story of Jehoshaphat on their mind and think about what a nice guy he was, what a godly man he was, what a righteous man he was, and how palling around with the God haters wiped out his entire family to where they were either brutally murdered or died of a horrible disease where their intestines fell out, Lord. I just pray that you would just let this story become etched or ingrained in every single person who's here so that they would realize, you know, this is a big issue. This is a serious issue. I need to be careful who I pal around with and allow to influence my children. And in Jesus' name, we pray, amen.