(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.) Man, the title of my sermon tonight is mistakes of the old IFB. Mistakes of the old IFB. Now let me start out by just defining some terms for you tonight. You might be here tonight and you don't even know what IFB even stands for or what it means. Well that stands for independent fundamental Baptist. Now these are names that we apply to our church here at Faith Forward Baptist Church and a lot of other churches will apply these same adjectives independent fundamental Baptist. Now this is not an official thing. There's no official IFB denomination. There's no headquarters. There's no articles of the faith of what it means to be an IFB. These are just adjectives that people use to help define what we are and the purpose is to help people find a church that believes the right things from the Bible. Now a lot of people say, well, you know, why don't we just be non-denominational? Why don't we just not call ourselves by these labels? You know, let's just get rid of these labels, man, and just call it the church in El Monte or whatever. Well here's the problem with that. You're living in a city here with just millions and millions and millions of people. Imagine if every church just called it, you know, church in El Monte number 37. Church in El Monte number 65. Think about how hard it would be to find a church that's actually preaching the word of God and a good illustration for this is in the pantry you have cans of food and they're all labeled. Can you imagine just going in and just removing all the labels and just writing food on all of them? You don't know what's in it, right? Now even when you use the label Baptist, you still don't always know what's going to be in that can. But at least if it says Baptist, that gets you in the ballpark, you kind of know what to expect. Okay. If it says Baptist, at least we know they're not going to be baptizing babies. You know, because every Baptist church only baptizes those who are actually saved. And at least if it says Baptist, we know that they're going to be dunking them under water in the name of the father, the son, the Holy ghost. I mean, at least we used to know that, right? Amen. But you know, when you see the word Baptist, you at least know, Hey, baptism is going to be by immersion. You at least know that they're going to say that they believe the whole Bible and that it's literally God's word and things like that. So Baptist kind of gets you in the ballpark. At least you know, they're going to believe in the eternal security of the believer. So that label is there to help you find the church that you're looking for. You know, right outside this building is a big signage that has the name of the church to help people find it. The word Baptist helps people find it. But then because there are so many different kinds of Baptists, a couple of other adjectives get thrown in there. Like for example, fundamental and fundamental is a word that has a lot of different meanings. But one of the things that it means to us is that we're not liberal. It's like the opposite of liberal. You know, in politics, they talk about liberal and conservative. Well, in religion, we don't really use the term conservative as much. We'd more use the term like liberal and fundamental. Fundamentalists and sometimes you'll hear this applied to Islam or something. If they're actually going back to the what the Quran says, they're called Islamic fundamentalists. You know, so they actually believe in all the murder and all the weird stuff that the Quran teaches. You know, the Muslim fundamentalists, they're just the real Muslims is what they are. Because if you read the Quran, it teaches all that garbage. So that's what we mean by fundamental. Also, we mean fundamental because we get back to the fundamentals of the faith. You know, we believe in the fundamentals of the faith, back to the basics, back to the traditions of what's been passed down to us, the King James Bible and so forth. So we use these terms like fundamental. And then one of the most important parts of that is independent. We strongly believe in churches being independent, meaning that they're not all tied into one headquarters. You see, if you are a Southern Baptist, there's a Southern Baptist convention that everybody's tied into and it has a headquarters and a president and we're strongly against that. We strongly believe in being independent, autonomous churches so that that way, if one of them goes bad, they don't all have to go bad. They're all separate and we want each pastor to be able to have the liberty to follow what the Bible says and preach what the Bible says without worrying about what the higher ups are going to say. The only higher up is Jesus, you know, and he can basically just lead the people as the spirit leads him and not worry about what a headquarters or a convention or a denomination tells him. So we strongly believe in being independent. So when we say IFB or independent fundamental Baptist, it's not really an official designation. It's more just a label for churches that are totally independent. They're Baptist churches and they're fundamentalist type churches as opposed to progressive liberal type churches. So when we talk about the old IFB, what I mean by that is the IFB of the past, you know, the IFB that we grew up with and I was born in 1981 so many people here are older than I am, but most people here are probably younger than I am because it's a pretty young church. And so when we say old IFB, I'm talking about the independent fundamental Baptist movement of my childhood, the one that I grew up with in the eighties and nineties and the early two thousands. And when we talk about the mistakes of the old IFB, let me start out by saying this. There's a lot that the old IFB got right. So I'm not up here to bash the old IFB or to just talk about how bad they are or anything like that because that's what I came to know Christ in, you know, the old IFB. I mean, that's where I got the gospel. That's where I was taught the Bible. And so I have a lot of appreciation, thankfulness, respect for those who've gone on before me. You know, we as children should always have a great amount of respect and honor for our parents and those also who gave us spiritual life, not just those who gave us our physical life and raised us and fed us physically and spoon food into our mouth when we were a baby. But how about those who fed us spiritually and they, they spooned the spiritual word of God into our mouth when we were babes in Christ, those who want us to Christ and taught us everything, but that doesn't mean that they were perfect. And that doesn't mean that we should do everything exactly the way that they did it. You see, our parents raised us, loved us, and we should treat them with respect and honor, but it doesn't mean we're going to live our lives exactly the way that they did because if there's something that they did that was in conflict with the word of God, we need to bring our lives into total conformity with what the Bible says. And if there are things that the churches of the past did wrong, we should bring our churches today in 2018 into conformity with the Bible and not just be stuck on a tradition if it's an unbiblical tradition. Now on the flip side of that, we don't want to be given to change. The Bible says, meddle not with those that are given to change. We don't want to be one that just changes on a dime. We should only change when there's a compelling reason to do so, but sometimes there is a compelling reason to do so. Now if you would, we're going to mainly be in 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, but flip over to 1 Chronicles if you would. I just want to show you one thing from 1 Chronicles chapter 13 and keep your finger there in Timothy. That's where most of the Bible for this sermon is going to come from, but I think a great example of this concept is David and King Saul. King Saul was a man of God. King Saul was filled with the spirit of God. A lot of times we forget that because he ended up being so bad in the end that we forget about all the good things he did when he was younger. What a great guy he was. So King Saul was a great man of God. He was spirit filled. He was righteous. He fought the Lord's battles. He led Israel for a time doing right, but he went off the rails a bit and King David was raised up after him to replace him and God said that King David was better than King Saul, but if you look at King David's attitude toward King Saul, he treated him with respect. He never stopped loving Saul. Even when Saul died, he mourned greatly for him. He loved Saul. He wished Saul would have stayed on the right track. He loved Saul's son and he treated him with nothing but respect, but when he became king, he didn't say, well, we're going to do everything exactly the way Saul did. No, because there were certain things that needed to change in the kingdom. Look at first Chronicles chapter 13 verse three. This is what David said, and let us bring again the arc of our God to us for we inquired not at it in the days of Saul. So he's just telling the people straight up, look, this is something that we did wrong when Saul was in charge. We did not have the arc of the covenant in its proper place. We need to fix that. It's not that he doesn't like Saul. It's not that he's trying to hate on Saul or disrespect Saul. He's just fixing something that was wrong in the previous generation. Now flip over to first Timothy, actually let's start in second Timothy four, then we'll go to first Timothy four, but for now go to second Timothy chapter four and before I get into my sermon tonight on the mistakes of the old IFB, let me start out by just listing many of the things that the old IFB got right. What did they get right? Well, first of all, they had the right Bible. The King James Bible. Second of all, they had the right salvation and they gave us the Romans road of salvation. They, they gave us that formula of how to win people to Christ with Romans three, 10 Romans three, 23 Romans five, 12 Romans six, 23 Romans five, eight Romans 10, nine Romans 10, 13. They gave us that formula of, of how to show someone the gospel simply and easily. And they had the right salvation. And not only that, they had soul winning. I mean when I was growing up, soul winning was a thing amongst the independent fundamental Baptist. They went out, they knocked doors, they won people to Christ. So they were on the right Bible. They had the right salvation. They had the right soul winning. Another great thing they had going for them was hard preaching. They preached hard. They got up, they yelled and screamed and preach hard. And not only that, they preach hard against sin. They were really good at calling out sin and preaching hard against sin. They also were good about being separated from worldliness. You know, these are reasons why we loved the old independent fundamental Baptist movement and we profited from it because the hard preaching kept us right with God and it, and it, it scared us into doing the right thing because we had the fear of the Lord when we heard all that hard preaching against fornication and drunkenness and drugs and all those things that we need to stay away from. Not only that, the old IFB had the right music. I mean they had the old hymns. They sang a lot of great hymns. Not only that, they had strong pastoral leadership. One of the things that characterize that old IFB movement that we grew up with was pastors who were strong men of God. You know, I remember growing up as an independent fundamental Baptist and as a little tiny child, I wanted to be a pastor when I grew up. You know why? We had role models that were strong men that took a strong lead and a strong stance and that inspired me to want to be a pastor. But I remember when I became a teenager, we started going to the more liberal watered down churches and I didn't want to be pastor anymore. If you would've asked me when I was a teenager, I would've give you a totally different answer. But then when I turned 17 years old and got into an independent fundamental Baptist church, all of a sudden I wanted to be a pastor again. Why? Because I wanted to be a pastor with someone that I could respect and look up to and want to be like. So they had strong pastoral leadership and for the most part they were doctrinally sound. Most of their doctrine was right from the Bible. I mean there were a few things that they were off on, but in general they had the right doctrine. But what did they do wrong? What were the mistakes of the old IFB? Number one mistake was they did not use enough Bible in their preaching. They did not use enough Bible in their preaching. Look down at your Bible there in second Timothy chapter four, the Bible reads, I charge thee therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge the quick and the dead. It is appearing in his kingdom. And these are the three words that matter the most. Preach the word. What does that mean? Preach the word. Don't just get up and just preach your own ideas and your own thoughts. Preach the Bible. Use the Bible. That's what needs to be preached. Now the old IFB would typically preach one or two verses, three verses, and then preach for an hour just on those couple of verses. They didn't typically use a lot of Bible. Now they were saying a lot of great things. They were teaching a lot of great concepts. A lot of what they were saying was correct, but they just weren't using as much Bible as they should have. That was a major mistake of the old IFB, not using enough Bible in their preaching. Look what it says. Preach the word. Be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine. Why? Verse three, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables. Now understand what verses three and four have to do with verse two because verse number three starts out with four. Four means because. So you say, look, preach the word, teach doctrine. Why? Why do we need to preach the word? Why do we need to nail down doctrine? Because there's going to come a time when they're going to turn away their ears from the truth. So we need people to be established in the word and doctrine. They need to be rooted and grounded in those things so that they're not too tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine. And that's why today most of your independent fundamental Baptist movement today is drifting into false doctrine. They're slipping into false. It's a great falling away that's happening. I mean, you're seeing churches that used to stand strong on the doctrine of the faith. They're unrecognizable compared to what they used to be. And you wonder, how could these same people who used to be so straight doctrinally and they used to preach so hard, how could they be slipping into these errors? Well, I think a lot of it was that they didn't use enough Bible when they preached. They got up and they preached the truth, but because they didn't use enough Bible, people didn't have enough word of God in them that when they heard the false doctrine, they should have said, Hey, wait a minute. That's not what the Bible says. They would have recognized the error a lot more quickly if they would have had more Bible drilled into them in church and in their personal Bible reading. So we need to preach the word and lay down a lot of doctrine. Why? Because the time's going to come when they're going to turn away their ears from the truth and be turned into fables. We want to make sure that doesn't happen. Flip back just to chapter three, just right above that part. It says in verse 15 and that from a child thou has known the Holy scriptures, which are able to make the wise unto salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable, not was profitable. It is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be perfect throughly furnished unto all good works. You see the preaching that we need, the instruction and righteousness that we need, the doctrine that we need comes from the scriptures and it comes from all scripture. Okay. All of the Bible needs to be preached. Every bit of the Bible from Genesis to revelation needs to be coming across the pulpits of America. There's no part of the Bible that we should be skipping or de-emphasizing or staying away from or saying, well, it's 2018. We're living in the new Testament. Let's back off on Leviticus. Let's back off on numbers. Let's back off on Deuteronomy. No, all scripture is profitable and it's probably for doctrine. Doctrine means teaching, being taught. It needs to be taught all of it. And there's just a lot of scripture that's not been taught in our independent Baptist churches. Just things that haven't been covered because not enough Bible was used. One or two verses were spouted off at the beginning of the sermon and then that's it. I mean, if this were an old IFB sermon, in many cases, first Chronicles 13 three would have been the only verse. And then I would just talk for an hour about that. That's how a lot of these sermons are. I remember I went to Howells Anderson college and in Howells Anderson college, the chapel period was typically a half hour sermon and typically the preacher would get up and read one to three verses and just preach for the next half hour on those one to three verses. We didn't turn anywhere else typically. We didn't. It wasn't like this morning sermon where we went through virtually all the verses in second Peter two, the whole book of Jude, we went to a bunch of other scriptures. There wasn't enough Bible. That was a big mistake of the old IFB. Go to first Timothy chapter four, first Timothy chapter four, just a few pages to the left. The Bible reads in verse 13, till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. This is one of the reasons why at our church we read the entire chapter before the sermon begins. So even before any preaching starts, there's an entire chapter read in the word of God on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. I like what it says. Even in the front of the King James Bible on the cover page, if you have an older one, it even says appointed to be read in churches. And we need to get back to reading the word of God, a whole chapter being read, and then multitudes of verses being referenced within the sermon. It's God's word that is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness. He said, till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine, neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery, meditate upon these things. Give thyself wholly to them, that thy profiting may appear to all. And I'll tell you how you can get more Bible into your preaching is by meditating upon the word of God day and night, because out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh. If you can get up and preach for 30 minutes or 60 minutes and barely use the Bible, that tells me you don't have a lot of Bible in you. You see, Joshua said, or it was said unto Joshua, this book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth. He didn't say it won't depart out of your heart. He said this book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night. You know why? Because if you're meditating on the word of God day and night, if you're constantly thinking about the word of God and constantly reading the word of God, it won't depart from your mouth. It'll always be in your mouth. It'll be on your lips. It'll be in your mouth because out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh. It says in Psalm 119, oh, how love I thy law, it is my meditation night and day. So if God's word is constantly in our heart, we're constantly reading it, we're constantly thinking about it, it's going to come out. I mean, you can't help but get up and preach and quote verses when you're filled with the word of God. And so we need to get back to using a lot of Bible in our preaching in our independent Baptist churches, not one verse or two verses, but just saturate sermons with scripture. The old IFB rarely did expository preaching where they would go verse by verse through a chapter. Hardly ever happened. They would often even speak against that type of preaching. And I do see the need for topical sermons. I mean, tonight's sermon is a topical sermon, but we need some expository preaching also where we go through just every verse, every chapter in the word of God, like what's going on in Romans right now on Thursday nights at this church, like the preaching that I'm doing through the book of Daniel over in Tempe, Arizona. And we just need to study the whole Bible. And I'll tell you what, preaching through the Bible verse by verse, it gets me to preach on things that I never would have preached about, that I never would have thought of. I mean, when you go through every chapter in Isaiah, every chapter in Jeremiah, a lot of those chapters you wouldn't have just chosen. You know, I think I'm going to do a sermon out of that chapter, but when you go chapter by chapter, it gets you to preach on things you never would have thought of, you never would have covered. And it's a way to make sure you cover everything, that you don't leave anything out. So number one, mistakes of the old IFB, I think their biggest mistake was they didn't use enough Bible in their preaching. I mean, look, I used to love listening to sermons from Brother Hiles, and I listen to like five, six hundred sermons from him, except for the fact that they use like one, two verses per sermon. I mean, they get you motivated, they get you pumped up, a lot of the things he's saying are great, except for the fact that he's not backing it up with enough scripture. And that brings me to my second point, which is very similar to the first point. Point number two, they didn't teach enough doctrine. They did not teach enough doctrine. Look down at First Timothy chapter four, verse six, the Bible reads, If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shall be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou has attained. You see, God's word and the doctrines of the Bible are our spiritual food that nourish us up and take us from being a babe in Christ to being a mature believer in Christ. It's the nourishment of God's word and doctrine that does that for us. Flip over to Titus chapter one, just a couple pages to the right in your Bible, Titus chapter one, verse nine. And of course, we already saw on the first point that we should preach the word with all long suffering and doctrine, it said. We also saw, he said, till I come give attendance to reading, to exhortation and to doctrine. Here he says in Titus chapter one, verse nine, holding fast the faithful word. This is where we get the name for our church. This verse, faithful word Baptist church, holding fast the faithful word as he had been taught that he may be able by sound doctrine, both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers, the gainsayers are like the naysayers, the people who try to contradict and argue with what's right. You can shut them down with the faithful word and with sound doctrine. We need to know doctrine. Look at Titus chapter two, verse seven and all things showing myself a pattern of good works in doctrine, showing uncorruptness, gravity and sincerity. Look, we need these three aspects of our doctrine. Chapter one, we need uncorruptness. We want our doctrine to be right. We want it to be sound. We want that thing to be tight and we want to cross the T and dot the I doctrinally. The truth matters tonight. There are a lot of people out there who say, Oh, don't get so worried about doctrine. It's just how you feel. It's just your, it's just your, your intentions, but you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. You better get some sound doctrine. You better tighten that thing up. You better make sure that your doctrine shows uncorruptness. What is corruption? Corruption is decay. The Bible says, therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard lest at any time we should let them slip. You see, if we don't make sure to keep teaching doctrine and tightening up the doctrine, it will eventually begin to slip. It's just like your house. The Bible says through the idleness of the hands, that house droppeth through. If you don't maintain things around your house, your house will just go to pot. And you know, I remember when I used to live in an apartment, it was so great. You just call the maintenance man. He just fixes everything. But when you own a home, you have to fix things yourself and things are constantly in a state of decay. The plumbing, the electrical, the roof, the air conditioning, windows, doors, locks. I mean, we have 12 people living in our house, so everything just gets used and abused to the extreme. Sometimes I feel like my house is like one of these testing centers. Have you ever seen where they like, they test things, they'll just keep opening a door, like a machine will just open a door and shut it like hundreds of times to see how long it's going to last? That's how our house is. The fridge is just being open and shut. Every door is being open and shut. Everything's just getting used. The dishwasher, open, shut, open, shut, open, shut. So we buy the warranty on everything because we always use the warranty on everything because we, you know, we use everything industrially, even though it's just one family. We have to keep changing the locks in our house because the kids just grab the doorknobs and wrench them open and little kids are pulling on the door and the doors get open so many thousands of times, things decay, things get old. The dishwasher wears out, the washing machine wears, everything wears up. You have to give attention to fixing things at the house or it just all goes to pot. It decays. So it's the same way with our doctrine. If we're not constantly reading our Bible, constantly preaching the correct doctrine, constantly explaining here's what's right and here's what's wrong, we'll slip into heresy, we'll start to slip into sloppy doctrines and the Bible says that we need to have uncorruptness in our doctrine. Uncorrupt means there's no decay. Corruption is decay. We don't want our doctrine to get corrupted, to get rotten and spoiled and sour and decay. We want to keep freshening that thing up and making sure that it's tightened up with the word of God. He says uncorruptness and he says gravity. You know what gravity is? Gravity means seriousness. Being grave is when you're serious. He's saying we need to take doctrine seriously, not play around with it. It's not a joke. It's ah, it doesn't matter. It's very serious. We need to have gravity concerning doctrine and we need to have sincerity. You know what sincerity means? That we believe and preach what the Bible actually says and we're honest about it. See what does it mean to be insincere? Insincere is when we get up and say things that we don't really believe. You know, we know that that's not what the Bible teaches, but we just kind of teach it anyway because of the fact that that's what's popular or that's what everybody else is saying. That's what people want to hear. No, we need to have sincerity, meaning that we actually go to the Bible where our heart truly wants to know the truth and we really want God to show us the truth and once we figure out what the truth is, we get up and we preach it faithfully. That's sincerity. We need our doctrine to be uncorrupt. We need it to be grave and we need it to be sincere. These are the three things we need to show in doctrine showing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, a sound speech. Verse eight of chapter two, sound speech that cannot be condemned, that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed having no evil thing to say of you. The Bible says in verse, in chapter number one in verse 10 it says, there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, especially they have the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not for filthy lucre's sake. He's saying, look, we need to shut these people up. And the Bible says when we have sound speech that can't be condemned, they won't have anything to be able to say. I mean, we'll shut them down. We will shut down that false doctrine and lay down the truth. That's what the Bible is saying here. Now I love that word sound when he said sound doctrine and then he said sound speech that cannot be condemned. What that word means is like when you go up to a ship, for example, and you tap on the side of the whole of a ship and you, you, you can kind of tell what it's made of by the sound that it makes, right? Like if we were to go up and knock on something, we can tell, is it hollow or is it solid? And I remember when I was doing electrical work and I'd have to fish things down the wall, I didn't always have a stud finder. I would just knock on the wall and you could just get used to the different sounds that a hollow bay would make versus a stud and you just find a stud by the sound. Okay. And so when the Bible is saying sound doctrine, sound speech, he's saying it's solid. You can hit on it and you know that there's something there. It's not hollow. It's not empty. It's sound. So they, the old IFP number one, they didn't use enough Bible when they preached. We love them. We're thankful for them. We're glad for everything they taught us, but you know what? We're not going to make that mistake. We're going to preach sermons that are Bible heavy. Number two, they didn't teach enough doctrine. You're going to work harder at tightening up key doctrines and teaching deep sermons that are filled with doctrine. You know, often the old IFP would even preach against being deep. They would say that you, you know, you go down deep, you stay down long and you come up dry and they would often almost pride themselves in how shallow they could be. And they'd just say, well, I'm just an old country boy. I don't know much doctrine, but I know that Jesus saves, amen. You know, and there was almost like just a pride in being illiterate or a pride in not being able to read well or use good grammar. It was almost like a pride in just being really simple and not being intellectual. But I got news for you, being intellectual is a virtue. Knowledge is a virtue. Wisdom is a virtue. Understanding is a virtue. We don't ever want to have a culture that exalts ignorance. You know, it's just good to just be a simple old, you know, kind of just, there's the basic, no. Learn grammar, learn math, learn how to spell, learn how to read, learn doctrine, study the Bible, know how to, how to say things and how to do things the way God says. But it's almost a virtue with some people to be ignorant. Who knows what I'm talking about? You know, you kind of heard stuff like that. And uh, I don't, I don't like it because I feel like it's just an excuse for people not to grow, not to learn. And what we all have weaknesses, we all have strengths and weaknesses. And if you're not an intellectual, that's okay. I love you, but that's a weakness on your part and you need to get some smarts. I've got weaknesses too. I need to work on those weaknesses and become a better person. But we don't want to be those who exalt folly. You know? Sure. We love simple people. We love those who are hillbillies or they they're uneducated, illiterate. Look, if you're here tonight and you're illiterate and you can't read, I love you and I'm glad that you're here. But I'm not going to get up and say, Hey, that's great. That's cool. No, I'm going to say, Hey, can we figure out a way to teach you how to read? You know, can we get you on hooked on phonics or whatever it's going to take? Because of the fact that we need to work on our weaknesses and not exalt folly and not exalt ignorance and just act like, well, you just gotta be simple. I mean, look, I've heard pastors from the previous generation get up and say, you know, just read the book of John. And when you're done reading John, read Proverbs. And when you're done with Proverbs, read John again. No, read Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, read Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. And you know, we shouldn't be afraid to preach deep. And I'm not talking about going into a bunch of theological jargon and trying to make ourselves sound smart. I'm talking about going deep into the word of God and preaching tough chapters, digging into tough chapters in Chronicles and tough chapters in Ezekiel and tough chapters in Daniel and digging in and getting to the bottom of things and teaching sermons that are deep. But we see the old IFB, many of them, every Sunday morning was a salvation sermon. You want to talk about shallow. It's like you just can't get off of step one. Sometimes I wanted to just get up and scream, we're all saved. You know, because the pastor is just getting up there and just preaching on the gospel and it's like, we know we're all saved. Who here is saved tonight? Put up your hand if you know you're saved. See what I'm saying? Like, what about these people? Do they just need to keep hearing salvation every Sunday morning? Doesn't make any sense, right? We need to go deep. We need to teach some strong meat of the word. Yeah, we need some milk in every sermon, but we need some meat on the bone if we're ever going to grow up and we're ever going to get strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. We need doctrine. We don't need to just know what to believe. Just shut up and believe it because we said so. No, we need to know why we believe it and we need it expounded to us from the Bible so that we could say, here's what we believe and here's why. You know, the old IFB had a great doctrinal statement in some cases, but people couldn't explain why and then they can get led into false doctrine because they don't really know why they believe what they believe. Many of them know their King James only, but do they know why? Many of them know a lot of doctrines, but they don't necessarily know why. And thirdly, this, the mistakes of the old IFB is that they were very weak on the family. Three points tonight. I'm just keeping it simple tonight. The mistakes of the old IFB, number one was they didn't use enough Bible in their preaching and I don't think that hardly anybody could argue with that, that they used very little Bible. Number two, they didn't teach enough doctrine. They were too shallow and they praised shallowness as being a virtue. And number three, they were weak on the family. This was one of their biggest downfalls and shortcomings. You say, what do you mean by they were weak on the family? Well number one, they didn't homeschool. They were, they were not for homeschooling. The vast majority of independent fundamental Baptists of that generation were not for homeschooling. Number two, they practiced birth control. Number three, they split up the family in the service and would put the little kids somewhere else. They put the babies in the nursery and everything like that. Number four, they took a weak stand on divorce. They had all kinds of exceptions for why divorce was okay and it was amazing how people could always find a way to make their situation fit that expectation or that exception rather, right? If the exception is a round peg, they'll find a way to put that round peg into the square hole and say, well, I'm the exception. They condone divorce. They presided over divorce after divorce in their churches. And then number five, they taught a doctrine of women working. Women in the workforce, they embraced that even to the point where they would pressure women in the church to even work for them, to work in the Christian school, to work in the office, to work as secretaries. They'd even be hiring the women. And that's why they had to pump birth control because they got to get all these female workers available to get them in their ministries, teaching their Sunday school classes, teaching their Christian schools and so forth. Now let's dig into the Bible a little bit on some of these subjects just to show how they were weak on the family. First of all, let's just start where we just were and go to Titus chapter two when it comes to women working. The old IFB, they pushed women working. And what does the Bible say about this? Well, in Titus chapter number two, and I realized that this may not be popular in 2018, but this is the truth, is that it's God's plan for man to be the breadwinner and the wife to stay at home and raise the children. That's God's perfect plan. Now, not everybody's situation allows that because of sin or just tragedies or hardship that could happen that could put people in a situation where they can't live that lifestyle. But that should be the goal. That is God's plan. That should be what we strive for. And we need to teach our daughters that they grow up and they get married and they have kids and they raise their kids. And we need to not be taking women out of the home and using them for cheap labor because we're too cheap to pay a man a livable wage to work for the church. You know, if we don't have the money to pay our worker to be a man, then maybe we just don't need that to hire that worker. You know, we need to be able to pay people that are men, but they want to pay these super low wages so they want to bring in the women into the workforce so that they could pay nothing. And then they could pay both the man and the wife wages and then it'll both collectively add up to a livable wage. But in Titus chapter 2, what does it say in verse 3? It says, the aged women likewise that they be in behavior has become a holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste. Look at these next three words, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands that the word of God be not blasphemed. The Bible says they should be keepers at home, obedient to their own husbands. Flip back if you would to 1 Timothy chapter number 5, just a couple pages to the left in your Bible. 1 Timothy chapter number 5, the Bible reads in verse 14, I will therefore, you say, what's God's will for my life? I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully, for some are already turned aside after Satan. God said that his will is that the young women get married, bear children, and guide the house. That's what he said he wants. That's what he wants. He didn't say he wants them to go out and get a career and put on the business suit and go follow this career and that career. This is God's will, this is God's plan. This is not what was taught by the old IFB though. This was a weakness. They had the right doctrine on a lot of things, but they were weak on the family. They had the women in the workforce, especially working in their Christian school. They did it in home school. They promoted a Christian school which relied upon female staff to even operate, had to have women teachers. So instead of raising their own kids, they're raising somebody else's kids and on and on. Preaching against the Christian school is a whole sermon in and of itself, but let me just suffice it to say this. It's not biblical. It's not in the Bible. There's no mention of Christian school in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, period. It isn't there, but yet Christian school dominates the budget of most churches. If you actually look at the budget of a typical church, the school budget is often bigger than the church budget. Well, God specifically laid out what the monies of the church should go toward and who should be the workers in the church. And he talked about the duties of the pastor and he talked about the duties of the deacons in Acts chapter six. He explains this is what the deacons are going to do. And he says, you know, we're going to give ourselves continually to the ministry of the word and prayer. And then the deacons are going to wait tables and do the daily administration. It's funny how they never said, okay, the deacons are going to run the Christian school. The deacons are going to be raising the kids. The deacons are going to be in the nursery. Why? Because it's not their job because the pastor and deacons have better things to do than to raise someone else's kids because that's the job of the women that are to marry, bear children and guide the house and rear the children. That's what the Bible teaches. The Bible lays out what the church is supposed to be like, what the workers are supposed to be doing, where the money should be going. And guess what? Christian school isn't even covered. It's totally unbiblical. Not only that, but they practice birth control. Go to Psalm 127 in the very middle of your Bible is the, is the book of Psalms. Now when you start preaching against birth control, sometimes people just think you're crazy. You're just out of your mind and you say, well now I understand why you have 10 kids back there. You know, I have my whole family here tonight. I've got all 10 of my children and I want you to come up to me after the service and tell me which one of them I should not have had. Which one of these should I not have? I think I should have all of them. I love all of them. I, every single one of them is a blessing. I want more. You know, I'm not going to sit here and buy into this worldly philosophy that says that children are a burden. They're not a burden. They're a blessing. The Bible says in Psalm 127 verse one, except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows for so he giveth his beloved sleep. Lo, children are in heritage of the Lord and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man. So our children of the youth, happy is the man that had this quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. Children are a blessing. The Bible says, God bless them and said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. When he told them to be fruitful and multiply, I was a blessing to them. That's good. I wonder how many people in nursing homes today are sitting there thinking, man, I wish I would have had less kids. Why did I have so many kids? Why didn't I spend more time just having fun and doing things for myself? You think that's what they're thinking? No, if anything, they're probably wishing that they have more children and that or that they would have spent more time with their children, that they wouldn't have been dropped off in that nursing home probably in the first place in many cases. So they practice birth control. Not only did they practice birth control. They preached birth control hardcore. They actually taught you, you need to use birth control. They taught the opposite of what the Bible says and you know, you'll never see anywhere where the Bible tells you to use birth control. There was one guy in the whole Bible who used birth control in Genesis chapter 38. His name was Onan, right? He's the only recorded instance of a guy in the Bible who basically wants to sleep with a woman and doesn't want to produce a child. And the Bible said he spilled it on the ground because he didn't want to have that child and God slew him. Okay. That's, you say, well, it was the reason that he did it. Well, why did he do it? Because he was a selfish jerk. Okay. Well, guess what? That's why most people practice birth control because they're selfish. They want to have the big house, the big car. They want to have nice things. Look, when you have 10 kids, you don't have nice things and if you do, they get destroyed. You know what? Where no oxen are, the crib is clean, but there's much increased by the strength of the ox. You see, you know, we don't need to live in museums today. You know, we need to raise up some godly children. We need to raise up a generation that would love the Lord. The Mormons are reproducing, the Muslims are reproducing, and then Christians today are not reproducing. They're having 1.5 children, 2.5 children. And today, even in Europe, the Muslims are just taking over because the Muslims are having so many kids. The Europeans are having like 0.9 kids per family on average or something like less than one per family. They're not even close to even replacing themselves. So their population is going down and the Muslim population is going up. Why don't we crank out a generation of independent fundamental soul winning Baptists and, and maybe we don't need another 4x4, maybe we don't need another boat, maybe we could skip the next RV, and maybe we could live in a more humble home or drive a more humble vehicle and let's raise some children for the glory of God. Stop being weak on the family. And you know, a lot of people have pulled out of independent fundamental Baptist churches because they're weak on the family and then they go join some dead liberal church because they're strong on the family. I mean there are churches in Phoenix that are just these Calvinistic, dead, watered down churches, super liberal, and they're filled with homeschoolers. They're filled with people who have big families because they're like, well at this church, they actually treat us okay for having a big family. They actually support us on homeschooling. They actually understand where we're coming from. They go to the IFB church and it's like, Oh, you got, you got to put that kid in the nursery. Get that baby out of here. It's making too much noise. And they want to just preach that you need to have a responsible number of children. You know, well, like I guess we need to plan our parenthood, right? And you know what planned parenthood used to be called? The birth control Federation of America. That's when it started out being called friend, the birth control Federation of America. It was later renamed planned parenthood, but you don't know that because you're so brainwashed that you think that birth control is just part of being an American. It was illegal until the 1930s. President Theodore Roosevelt said, quote, birth control is sinful. Independent Baptist preachers of the past from before I was born, like John R. Rice wrote whole books about why birth control is wrong. And they still love John R. Rice. They still praise John R. Rice. But let me tell you something. The old IFB got really weak on the family. They let that stuff slip from what John R. Rice had told them about birth control being wrong and that we should have as many children as the Lord blesses us with and as many as the Lord gives us. They split up the family in the service, didn't they? They would put the babies in the nursery, they'll put the children in the children's church. Many of these churches, the kids didn't even enter the main service until they're 12 or 13 years old because of the fact that they're in children's church. And I'll tell you, that's why the Independent Fundamental Baptists have lost a lot of the youth. Because stop and think about it. What is children's church like? What makes it different than the main service? Think about this. Because we're in the main service right now, right? That's all we have at our church is just one service. Family integrated. Well, what do we have? We sing hymns, right? And then we read the Bible and we have prayer and we have preaching, right? Okay. So what's children's church like? Children's church, do they sing the hymns? Nope. They sing, somewhere in outer space God has prepared a place. So they sing this wild music, childish, wild, shallow music, right? Okay. What else is different? Instead of having deep biblical preaching, it's a very simplified message. It's short, really simple, and it usually leans positive. You know, Noah's Ark is no longer about drowning the entire population of the earth and killing them all. Now Noah's Ark is all about the animals. Look at all these little animals. You get the photograph and the two by two and you're coloring pictures of two of this animal. Why aren't they showing you all the animals that got wiped out? Yeah, two animals got on the ark. Millions got wiped out. So what else? You know, so it's all sanitized. You say, well, that's just too heavy for kids. Well, you know what? I want my three-year-old hearing the real story of Noah's Ark. I want my three-year-old to know about heaven and hell. I want my three-year-old to hear everything that the Bible says. I don't think that we need to just soften everything and censor everything for little tiny kids. You know, there's nothing in the Bible that teaches that, oh, kids can't handle this part of it. There's no warning at the beginning like, warning 12 and up. Like M, you know, this book is rated M13. Is that how they rate the video games? Like M for mature? What is it? What are the ratings? Help me out. T for teen. Yeah, there we go. Okay. So, you know, certain, but you know, you get to the book of, you get to the book of first Kings. There's a little bit of violence. So it's like, Hey, this book is T for teen, right? And you know, there's nothing like that in the Bible. Timothy from a child just knew the Holy scriptures, the good, the bad, and the ugly. He heard it all. He grew up with all of it. What else is different about children's church? Well, there's usually a snack. You know, and it's usually just totally high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated soybean oils and things like that, but they'll give them like the animal crackers and Kool-Aid. So they got their animal crackers, they got their Kool-Aid, they got their wild shallow music, they got their watered down message from the Bible, and often it's a female teacher. That's children's church. That's the difference between the main service and children's church. Okay. I don't understand where we went wrong. That all of our kids, when they turn 18, they go down to a liberal church, grace community, or, you know, Christ church of the valley or cornerstone fun center. And when they go there, what's that? What's over there? Wild shallow music, rock band, purple lights, smoke. Look, you don't think every kid loves purple lights and smoke. I don't think there's a kid in America that wouldn't think it's cool to see a smoke machine on stage at the church or purple lighting all over the church and all kinds of light shows. Kids love that stuff. And you know what? Oh, the wild music. And then instead of the animal crackers and the Kool-Aid, it's the Starbucks in the lobby where they buy in the house of God. They purchase things even though God's house is everything's supposed to be free. It's not a place of merchandise. And then often there's a woman preaching. You say, how could they grow up and listen to a female preacher? How can they grow up independent fundamental Baptist and listen to Joyce Meyer? How can they be into this wild stuff and how can they be into this shallow preaching? What do you find out at the liberal fun center church, a 15 minutes Herman that's positive only water death. Look, it's exactly like children's church. Liberal churches are just children's church for adults. It's just adults who never stopped being a babe in Christ. They never put on the big boy pants and go to a real church. They just stay in this childish church. Why? Because that's what you taught them when you say, Oh, this is your service. You know, but my kids are growing up in this kind of church from day one. They're never going to feel comfortable listening to Joyce Meyer. They're never going to feel they're going to walk into the liberal church and see the smoke and mirrors and say, you know, something's not right here. This isn't church. And then when they hear some leather lung preacher screaming and yelling, being the policy, okay, yeah, this is what I'm comfortable with. This is the church I'm used to. Now what was their excuse for taking the kids out of the service? They said, well, disturb the service too much. Now part of this was because of their emphasis on the invitation and the altar call. So they kind of had to build an atmosphere where everything would kind of lead up to that invitation or altar call. It was almost like they had to get everybody in this trance, you know, and they don't want it. They don't want to break the spell. And if somebody coughs or sneezes or cries at the wrong time, it sort of would break the spell of the tension that they're trying to build up and everything, you know, and the emotion. But you know what? That's not really the stuff that keeps you in church and keeps you living right. You know what you actually need is the reading and the doctrine, right? Well, back to point one. Use more Bible in your sermon, teach more doctrine, and then you won't have to rely on emotions and tension and everything being so silent that a pin can drop when you're telling your dramatic story and you're just about to lay down that tear-jerking illustration and it's so silent and everything's perfect. And then a baby goes, eh, and then it's just ruined, right? But you know what? I say it's more important that our kids are in here hearing Bible preaching. We don't need that stuff. And you know what? Some of these preachers, they're too easily distracted. You know, just get used to preaching with a little distraction going on. You can't just sit there and expect everything to be perfect all the time. But say, oh, we got to put, I preached a whole sermon in fact, holding one of my kids in my arms just to show like I can handle kids being in the service. And I remember when I first started Faithful Word Baptist Church in Arizona and we just had, you know, 15 or 20 people coming. Some people would say, oh, well, this works for you to have the kids in the service because your church is so small. But wait till it gets bigger. Well, now our church runs over 300 and we still have all the babies and kids and we have a ton of babies and kids, more than a hundred little kids in our service. Out of 300 and some people, more than a hundred of them are little kids. And yet we're able to function. People are edified. People grow. People learn the Bible. People go soul winning. Life goes on. You know, we're getting it done. We don't want to be weak on the family. We don't want to neglect our families. We don't want to have this attitude that says, oh man, I could just win so many more souls if my family wasn't holding me back. Your family is why you're here. You know, I mean, your family is not just this burden that you drag with you. They're your most important ministry. You know, the Bible says if a man know not how to rule his own house, how should he take care of the church of God? The first church that you ever pastor is your family. The first person that you ever lead and teach the word of God as a man is your wife. And then your children are born. Those are the ones you're raising and teaching. And so we don't want to get this attitude that says, oh, they're a burden. I mean, look, when I was at Howells Anderson college, they actually had a mandatory meeting for all girls who were engaged. They said, if you're engaged to be married, you must come to this meeting. So my wife infiltrated the meeting. Even though she was already married, she wasn't engaged, I said to her, I said, I want you to go to that meeting. I want you to tell me what's going on in that meeting. I want to know what's going on in that meeting. Because the meeting was with this doctor who was an adulterer who committed adultery, divorced his wife and married the woman he's committing adultery with. That's who's teaching this meeting that all engaged girls had to go to. So they have this mandatory meeting at the college for all the engaged girls. So I told my wife, I said, I want you to infiltrate that meeting and see what's going on in there. So she just kind of waltzed in there because so many people are coming and going. They didn't notice. But when she walked in the meeting, they literally had black sheets hanging over the windows. This was a secret meeting. Am I telling the truth? Didn't they? They had it dimmed down. They had black sheets. They locked the door. It was like, ladies only, because we're going to talk about some really sensitive stuff. It's only ladies except the guy who's talking to them is a dude. If it's only ladies, why are you bringing some dude to talk to you about it? But he's like this god man. You know what I mean? He's not like us mere mortals. This god man comes in and he gives them this big speech about how they have to use birth control and how he's going to prescribe them birth control and everything like that. And he wants them to get the pill and he's explaining the pill. And he's showing a bunch of pictures of naked ladies for them on the projector and explaining to them the science behind it and everything like that. And he also taught that pregnancy begins at implantation. No. Pregnancy begins at conception. So he gets up and teaches them this garbage and promotes birth control to them. And then he says to them, how many of you have ever heard of an imperforable hymen? He raised his hand and nobody had heard of that. After this meeting, I Googled it and it was zero results that came up when I Googled it. Nowadays if you Google it, more results will come up because the internet has more content on it. When I Googled this back in 2004, nothing came up. But he's acting like, oh, this is just the most common thing in the world. Hey, how many of you have heard of this? Nobody. Oh yeah, this is a big problem where women, they get married and on their wedding night, they're not able to consummate because of this. Because of this imperforable hymen. So he said, you should probably come and see me before your wedding night so I can open things up for you and make sure that you're not going to have any problems on your wedding night. Let me get in there and open that up for you and make sure it's good to go. You can ask my wife, this is all true. Let me make sure it's open. And he said, but if you have this thing where you really just want your husband to be the first one to see you down there, then you can come in after your honeymoon, after the wedding night and I'll do your exam down there so that we can get you the birth control pills prescribed. Because guess what? In order to get birth control pills, you got to get an examination down there. Now most women are going to go to a female practitioner if they need to get examined down there. But this dude, this dirty old man, this adulterer is saying, hey, you need to come see me for that. What was the guy's name? Dennis. Was that his name? Dennis Streeter. He said, oh, he might sue you. Come sue me, Dennis Streeter, you dirty, filthy pervert. I don't care about people suing me. I'm going to speak the truth. Let these filthy works come out in the open. Let them put a dark curtain over the window and try to hide what they do. Bring all these dirty perverts out into the open. Kind of a filthy, dirty pervert says, oh, let me make sure everything goes well for you on your wedding night. Some dude that gets his kicks by deflowering virgins in his office, he's a filthy pervert, burn him at the stake, put him to death. Say what's wrong? What's wrong with the old IFP? Who do you think you are, Pastor Anderson? People say, you know, you, Pastor Anderson, you want to change what it means to be an independent fundamental Baptist. Yeah, you're right. I do want to change what it means to be an independent fundamental Baptist. I want to change it to be somebody who exalts the family. Yeah, I do want to change what it means to be a Baptist. I want to change it from being some birth control pushing, divorce promoting, take the children and put them somewhere else because they're a burden. And I want to change it to being one that says children are a blessing, that says that they're a virgin on their wedding day and you don't scare them with weird horror stories about some freak thing that's not even going to happen. Why they need some doctor to go in there first and pave the way. That's disgusting and wicked. These people are evil and they need to be called out. You know what? And you say, why don't you go talk to them? I went to the administration of the college and I said, my wife went to that meeting and here's what they said. And they said, you know what? I can't believe that you have the guts to come in here and how dare you criticize us. That's what they said. That's what they said. I went into Dr. Bob Hooker's office. I'll name every name. Come find me. Come call me a liar. Bob Hooker. Come call me a liar. You bunch of phonies. Come sue me. I don't own anything. I have 10 kids. I don't have any money. I went into Bob Hooker's office and I said, here, Bob Hooker, I have a taper. My wife went in there and taped that meeting and here's the perverted things that he said. He said that life doesn't begin at conception begins at implantation seven to 14 days later. Here's where he said that he's going to open things up for them before their wedding night to make sure that they don't have this, you know, common condition that Google yielded zero results on. I told him all that. He said, you know what? This is what he said to me. He said, you're lucky that you brought this to me because I'm just going to forget that you said anything. He said, you need to just, you need to just never bring this up to anyone again. How dare you? You young punk coming in here and telling us. He said, if you would have brought this into Dr. Ray Young's office, he would have ripped you a new one. You know, he would have, he would have been really angry. You know, he said, you're lucky you brought this to me. I mean, that's the attitude friend. You want to change what it means to be a Baptist? Yeah, I do. Because you know what? The old IFB had some serious problems. You know, and I'm not saying that the old IFB is all wicked like that, but they had wicked people like that influencing them and they had wicked people like that among them. And I think the vast majority of people had no idea what was going on in that meeting because they blackened all the windows. Why? Because their deeds are evil. So you do it in the darkness. So they have to hide everything. Okay. And so, you know, that goes to show you some of the wickedness that goes on where they're pushing birth control, they're promoting the pill, even on college campuses today. Girls are going to Bible college when they're 18, 19, 20, there's a medical clinic on campus that prescribes them birth control so that they can get married. And you know what else they strongly taught? They strongly taught us in college that when you get married, you have to wait two years to have children. Who's heard that one before? You know, you got to wait two years to have children. And they said, you know, have some time to get to know your wife and do all this stuff and wait two years and everything that. That's bad advice. Because number one, birth control is wrong. There, I said it. And number two, you want to get to know your wife, well, even if your wife got pregnant immediately, it's just you and her for the next nine months, buddy. Get to know her. And get to know her after she had the first kid too. Oh, you just need that two years. And then here's what they do. They pump a bunch of birth control for two years. They pump all those hormones into their body, their wife starts growing a beard and has no interest in them physically because their hormones are all out of whack and everything like that. You know, the first two years is when a lot of divorce happens. Look at the statistics. And pumping a bunch of birth control doesn't help. Having some doctor be the one to go in there first doesn't help either. A bunch of filthy perverts. They were weak on the family. Now maybe that's an extreme example, but that was the biggest independent fundamental Baptist Bible college in America. So it's not an obscure story at all. They split up the family during the service. They condone divorce when the Bible says that a man who marries a divorced woman is committing an adultery. If you divorce your wife and marry another, you're committing adultery. That's what should have been preached. But instead they said, well, if he abused you, like called you idiot or whatever, you know, like that, you know, abuse. He threw a raw hot dog at me. He hit me with a pillow. He used a bad word to me. Oh, he's smoking pot? Divorce him. That's what they taught. Oh, he's, he, oh, he drinks? Leave. Separation. It's garbage. Still death do us part. I'm out of time tonight. But I just want to say, look, just because we got saved and just because we were weaned and taught the, the Bible's doctrines in the old IFB movement and we're thankful to them for the things that they did for us and taught us and the good legacy that they gave us, it doesn't mean that nothing needs to be changed. There are some things that need to change because they are things that the old IFB was not with the Bible on. They didn't use enough Bible in their preaching. They didn't teach enough doctrine and they had a very big weakness when it came to the family. That was an area that they goofed up on and we need to strengthen families. We need to have a traditional looking families where we, we, we have the man go out and be the breadwinner and we strive to have the woman at home raising the children. We have children and, and reproduce naturally. We don't split up the family. We suffer the children to come into the church and we forbid them not to come in and hear the preaching and be a part of it and we teach them at home. We use homeschool and, and stop letting all the big families and the homeschoolers go down to the Calvinistic mess down the street. You know, let's get them into a leather long fundamental Baptist church and, and hopefully they won't have to be scared. That's amazing to come take their kid. You're coming with us. Look, I know churches where they'll say, well, if you won't surrender your baby, you can't even come to the church. I can't even count how many people have told me that their church, the nursery is mandatory. Children's church is mandatory. They have guards at the door saying, Hey, what? You can't bring that kid in here. You can't bring that baby in here. You got to get it out of here. Now look, how many babies do we have in here tonight? I mean one, two, three. Yeah. Put up your head if you have a baby here tonight. Yeah. So one, two, three, four, five. You know, how many toddlers do we have tonight? You know, I know I brought a whole crew of them, you know? Yeah. And you know, I didn't even notice any disturbances. I mean, did I miss something? I mean, I'm standing up here preaching. I see all my kids lined up back there. I'm seeing your kids sitting here among us and they're listening and you know what? They're soaking this all up like a sponge. They're forming their core beliefs right now. This is the stuff that they're going to grow up and believe in their heart because it was ingrained in them as a youth from a child they knew the Holy Scriptures. That's what we want. Not a bunch of Kool-Aid and cookies and coloring sheets and a long hair Jesus. A long hair Jesus cut out activity. Long hair Jesus. I mean look, the last time one of my nephews or something went to a Sunday school class, they walked out with a long hair Jesus on a stick, like a little puppet or something. It's like, what in the world? You know, and you say, well, you know, it's on their level. But you know what? Here's the thing. I guarantee you that kids got something out of this sermon tonight. I guarantee it. Like if you asked your kids, so what did Pastor Anderson preach tonight? They're going to come up with something. They'll be able to tell you something about this sermon. I mean, I remember we had a young lady at our church. She was in her young 20s, but she had Down syndrome. And she came to our church and she said, I like this church a lot better. You know, why? And you know what? I had people tell me that their kids have come to them at Faith Ward. And this is what they said. I like Faith Ward Baptist Church because I understand the preaching. That's what they said. I understand it. So they can understand more than we sometimes give them credit for. People with Down syndrome can understand my preaching. Little children can understand my preaching. Okay. And you know what? Brother Bruce Mejia's preaching is the same way. They're going to walk out and they're going to know what he was talking about. They're going to get it. But they're also getting meat. They're also getting Bible. They're getting whole chapters. That's what we need. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for those who've gone on before us, Lord. And Lord, we are thankful for the things that they passed on to us. And without them, we wouldn't be here, Lord. I know that I would not be here if it weren't for that old IFB movement. And I don't think Brother Bruce Mejia would be here. You know, many of us would not be here. But Lord, help us to tighten up some things that they allowed to slack. Lord, help us to build upon what they taught us and improve upon what they taught us and to tighten things up and dig into the Bible and get in conformity with your word, Lord. And especially help us to tighten up our philosophies and our teachings and our doctrines on the family, Lord. And to get our families in a high place of priority in our lives because the next generation is everything, Lord. Help us to raise up a godly seed, Lord. And in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen. Amen.