(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Amen. The title of my sermon this morning is Warning the Wicked, warning the wicked out of Ezekiel chapter 3 here. I'm picking up where I left off on Wednesday because I wasn't able to get to this part of the chapter and this is such an important part of the chapter that I wanted to be able to really take time and do it justice. So it says in verse 16 there, and it came to pass at the end of seven days that the word of the Lord came unto me saying, Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel, therefore hear the word at my mouth and give them warning from me. Now what is a watchman? A watchman is like a security guard. It's somebody who is staying up all night and just watching for something bad to happen in the middle of the night. You've got cities that have walls around them and defenses, but they want to make sure that they don't get invaded in the middle of the night or that someone doesn't bring a surprise attack even during the daytime. And so you have a guy who's just watching all the time looking for an enemy, looking for danger, looking for destruction, and he's going to sound the alarm if something goes wrong. He's going to blow the trumpet and let everybody in the city know that something bad is about to happen. And so that's what a watchman is and God is telling Ezekiel that he is a watchman unto the house of Israel as a preacher, as a prophet. That's his job. He is supposed to hear the word at God's mouth and then to warn the people about the dangers. Says in verse number 18, when I say unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die and thou givest him not warning nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way to save his life. The same wicked man shall die in his iniquity but his blood will I require at thine hand. Yet if thou warn the wicked and he turn not from his wickedness nor from his wicked way he shall die in his iniquity but thou has delivered thy soul. Again when a righteous man to turn from his righteousness and commit iniquity and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die because thou has not given him warning. He shall die in his sin and his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered but his blood will I require at thine hand. Now I'm going to preach several things from this passage but the first thing that I want to cover in this passage is the fact that this passage is not teaching a works-based salvation. That is how some people will try to take this passage and take it out of context and twist it to try to teach a works-based salvation. The first thing I want to point out is in verse 18 it says, and thou givest him not warning nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, look at these words about halfway through the verse, to save his life. We're not talking about getting to heaven. We're not talking about having eternal life. We're not talking about being saved from hell. What we're talking about is physical death, warning people so that they don't die. Now if you look at the context here we're talking about the children of Israel. They've gone into captivity into Babylon and Ezekiel is preaching to those of the Babylonian captivity and they have just experienced some serious physical judgments for their sins. Nothing to do with individuals going to heaven or hell but rather because the nation was sinful, God sent in the Babylonian army and they literally killed people, right? And he's telling them, look, this is how you're going to live. This is how you're going to survive. You've got to get right with God. You've got to obey the Lord so that you don't get killed because there are two kinds of punishments that we can receive. Number one is we can receive punishments on this earth in this lifetime. Number two, we could go to hell for all eternity, right? Those are two types of punishments that we as humans can face. Now once we're saved we will never face that second punishment. We that have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ have been passed from death unto life. We cannot come to condemnation. We have eternal life. No man shall pluck us out of his hand. We're sealed unto the day of redemption. But we can still experience the first kind of punishment, can't we? As Christians the Bible says, whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth and scourges every son whom he receiveth. Scourge is a pretty strong word. Scourge is to flog, you know, to beat someone with a whip. And it says he scourges every son whom he receiveth. So we as saved Christians, we cannot go to hell, we have eternal life, but we can certainly be punished on this earth even up to death, right? We could even be killed, right? We could get diseases, we could get in car wrecks, we could lose all our money, we could lose our job, we could lose our family, and we could even be physically killed. Now of course we never want to look at people to whom those things happen and assume that it's God punishing them. That was the mistake that Job's friends made. Because a righteous person will go through those things as well in a different situation like Job's situation. But we as Christians need to serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling because of the fact that God can really cloud up and rain on us in this life. Not because we're trying to earn our way to heaven, that's already been paid for by the blood of Jesus, but because we want to be blessed on this earth and we want to live long. I mean the Bible says, honor thy father and mother which is the first commandment with promise that it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long on the earth. Now do I have to honor my father and mother in order to get to heaven? No I get to heaven by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior. But if I want to be well with me, if I want to live long on the earth, then I've got to honor my father and mother in order to do that. You know, so if we disobey the Lord, we can face serious punishments. The next thing I want to point out is verse number 20 where it says, again, when a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness and commit iniquity and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die because thou has not given him warning. He shall die in his sin and his righteousness, watch this, his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered but his blood will I require at thine hand. Now keep your finger there and go to Titus chapter 3 in the New Testament. Titus chapter number 3 in the New Testament, what he's referring to here is that if a person who's doing wrong gets right, then they shall live. Things can go well for them even if they've done really bad stuff in the past. Once they get right with God, God can bless that person and things go well with them. And likewise, let's say you've lived a really good godly Christian life for a long time, but then you go out and start living a wicked life. It's not like, well, he did good for 20, 30 years, so let's just let him get this out of his system or whatever. That's not the way God's going to operate. You know, if you go out and commit these grievous sins, you're going to be punished for them, you're going to suffer for them, and the righteousness which you have done is not going to be remembered. The righteousness which you've done is not going to be remembered when you do some horrible wicked sin. Right? I mean, think about this. Let's say you have some preacher who preaches the word of God and does these things, but then he's caught doing adultery or whatever, are you going to just be like, oh, but look at all the good he did. Like, no, get rid of this guy. And people are going to even forget that he ever did anything good. And that's what the Bible's saying is going to happen. Look what the Bible says in Titus chapter 3 verse 5 though. It says, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us. So Ezekiel 3 is not about salvation because salvation has never been by works of righteousness which you have done. And notice that's the exact wording it uses in Ezekiel 3. It says, his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered, but his blood will I require at thine hand. So it's talking about doing righteousness and doing sin and talking about getting physically punished on this earth, even killed because the children of Israel are in danger of that at this time. And even we are always in danger of that too because if we push things too far with God, there's a sin unto death and God can really cloud up and rain on you. So there in Titus 3, let's just read the whole passage because it's so powerful. Look at verse 4, but after the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior that being justified by his grace we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Sin is by grace, it's not by works of righteousness which we have done, and it's not because we didn't sin. That's not what the Bible teaches. Now back to Ezekiel chapter 3, it says in Ezekiel chapter 3 verse 21, nevertheless if thou warn the righteous man that the righteous sin not and he does not sin, he shall surely live because he has warned also thou is to live with thy soul. Now stop and think about how ridiculous it would be to apply this passage to salvation in light of verse 21 when it says that you say unto him, don't sin and he does not sin. Now is that how life actually works if we're talking about every sin and if we're talking about heaven and hell? You just tell somebody not to sin. Is that what we do when we preach the gospel to every creature? We just knock on people's doors and tell them, hey everybody, don't sin, okay, I'll stop sinning, ah, I'm going to heaven now. And then idiots who want to teach work salvation, they just kind of bring Jesus into the mix like, okay, don't sin by the grace of God, okay, Jesus is going to help me now, never to sin again, great. You know what? That is the stupidest doctrine in the world and anybody who believes in it is literally an insane person. I mean when I knock on somebody's door and they tell me I don't sin, I never sin, I realize I'm dealing with a lunatic. You know that guy, what was his name, Jesse Lee Peterson? That guy claimed that he never sins, he doesn't sin anymore and he believes that in order to be saved, you have to be totally sinless. Well, you know what, you're a lunatic if you believe that because here's the thing, we all know ourselves and we know other people and I've never met anybody who can walk on water and I've never met anybody who doesn't sin. Every single person is a sinner, period. The Bible says there's not a just man upon the earth that doeth good and sinneth not except Jesse Lee Peterson. The Bible says that if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us and you want to know why it says you deceive yourself? Because you're not deceiving anybody else. Even Jesse Lee Peterson's own fans are on there saying like, well, I love this radio show but this is stupid to say that he never sins. You're not deceiving anyone else, you're deceiving yourself because you're the only one stupid enough to believe that you don't sin because everybody around you knows that you sin because only Jesus is perfect. Hey, the Bible says there's none good but one and that's God, okay? There's none righteous, no, not one and even the Apostle Paul, arguably the greatest Christian who ever lived, talked about how he was constantly committing sin that he didn't want to commit. In Romans chapter 7, he said the good that I want to do, I end up not doing it and then the bad things that I don't want to do, I end up doing them and he said, oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death and that was after he was already saved unless you're foolish enough to think that he got saved after he wrote the book of Romans, okay? He saved and yet he's saying, man, I keep doing stuff I don't want to do. I don't do the things I want to do. It's the flesh and he said, when I sin, it's no longer I that do it but sin that dwelleth in me. I delight in the law of God after the inward man but then there's this other law warring in my members, you know, it's just like a battle going on between the flesh and the spirit. Everybody who's actually saved understands that battle but you have these false teachers and false prophets with the self-reformation gospel, you know, with the help of Jesus or Jesus does it for you or whatever where they teach this garbage that you get to heaven by getting all the sin out of your life and you just clean up your life and thou shalt be saved. That is a false doctrine. Salvation is by grace through faith and once you're saved, every single day you have to make the decision to deny self and take up the cross and follow Jesus and you do that every day. Paul said I die daily. We have to die to self every single day and there's a battle every day between the flesh and the spirit. Sometimes the flesh wins, sometimes the spirit wins, but nobody is walking in the spirit 100% of the time. If Paul can't do it, if the apostle John can't do it, then guess what, you can't either. And these bozos who claim that, it's such garbage they claim, oh I got saved and I never craved a cigarette again and I never, but then they weigh 300 pounds but they never crave a cigarette. What did you crave? Why does God only deliver you from certain sins? Why did you get the whole package? Because guess what, it's not real. That's why the Bible tells, I mean it sounds great, it sounds great you just get saved and all of a sudden you just never crave to sin again. Sounds awesome. I mean who would love to just push a button and you just never want to sin again, you just only want to do good. Sounds great man. Sounds wonderful. Too bad it's a fairy tale that's not taught in scripture. Now look, we're all going to experience that one day when we get to heaven. When we get to heaven, we're going to have no sin, we're not going to desire to sin. Why? Because the flesh will be dead. But until this sinful flesh is dead, we will have to fight, we will have to struggle, we will have to battle every single day to do what's right. It's a war and it's not just a war externally, no, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, they're not physical, they're spiritual to the pulling down of strongholds and the Bible says casting down imaginations and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. The battle is in our minds, the battle is in our hearts, the battle is within us and it's a battle we're going to fight until the day we die, but you've got these phony charlatan frauds out there claiming to be sinless, as if anyone could believe such nonsense. And so the Bible here when it says, Nevertheless, if thou warn the righteous man that the righteous sin not, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he has warned also thou hast delivered thy soul. What this is talking about, when it says sin there, when it says he does not sin, it's not saying like he doesn't commit any sins at all, it's talking about he doesn't commit a sin unto death, the kind of sin that gets you killed. Now listen carefully, you don't have to turn there, but 1 John chapter 5 says this, If any man see his brother sin, a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death, I do not say that he shall pray for it. All unrighteousness is sin and there is a sin not unto death. So there are sins that are far more serious than others, there are sins unto death and sins not unto death. For example, if I know to do good and do it not, then it's sin. There are not just sins of comission, there are sins of omission. So for example, if I should go to church tonight and I'm just like, nah, I'm not going to go. If I'm told to go soul winning and God tells me to go preach the gospel to every creature, I'm just like, nah, not going to do it. That's a sin, right? Bible tells me to read the Bible. What if I skip Bible reading tomorrow? What if I go through my whole day tomorrow and I don't read the Bible at all? Isn't that sin? Because I'm coming short right there. Because I'm not reading my Bible and God said that I should read therein all the days of my life. So if I don't read my Bible tomorrow, that's a sin. But is it likely that God would punish me or kill me because I didn't read my Bible tomorrow? Think about it, my friend. And I'm not downplaying the importance of Bible reading, but you know what? If I miss a day of Bible reading or if you miss a day of Bible reading, you know what? I think we're going to be okay. Now we should read our Bible every single day, but you know what? I think we're going to be okay if we miss a day. But you know what? If tomorrow you go out and commit adultery, you're not going to be okay. Does everybody see the difference? Or are you one of these bozos who thinks all sin is equal? You know, you could go out and commit adultery or skip a day of Bible reading and it's all the same. No, the Bible codifies sin and says there's a sin unto death, there's a sin not unto death. Jesus told Pontius Pilate, he that delivered me unto you has the greater sin. You know, the Pharisees received a greater damnation because they made a pretense of long prayer as they sinned, okay? They sinned in the name of God. And so that warrants even greater condemnation on their part, okay? And so we have all kinds of crimes in the Bible and the punishments are all different. Minor crime gets a minor punishment. Major crime gets a major punishment. This is known as justice. Balancing the scale where the punishment fits the crime. That's what the Bible actually teaches, okay? So here's the thing. If I go out and commit a sin that's a major sin, that's a sin that would get me in big trouble with God, you know, then I'm going to get a big punishment and God might even take my life from me. Look at what happened to King Saul. You know, King Saul disobeyed the Lord, did a lot of very wicked things, rebelled against the Lord and what happened? Samuel the prophet told him, tomorrow you and your sons are going to be with me and he ended up dying in battle as a result of his sin, okay? Whereas he could have lived longer, continued reigning, passed the kingdom on to his children. Instead, him and his sons die and the kingdom is given to a totally different family and it goes to David instead. You see, I'm glad I'm going to heaven no matter what, but it doesn't mean I want to die at age 40. I would rather live much longer, continue serving God, continue earning rewards, do great things for God all the way until the bitter end. That's what I want to do. I don't want to die young. You don't want to die young. Okay, so the Bible's telling us we've got to warn people about sin so that they don't perish, okay? So the number one point that I want to make is that this verse, this passage is not teaching a workspace salvation because it's not talking about going to heaven. Notice what it doesn't say, anything about heaven or eternal life or anything like that. You know, you've got all this clear scripture in the New Testament telling you that eternal life is by faith, it's by believing, to him that worketh not but believeth. So people want to go back to some obscure Old Testament passage, take it out of its context and twist it to teach something that it's not teaching. It's talking about physical punishment. Israel has already been on the receiving end and they're potentially going to receive a lot more punishments if they don't get right with God and so Ezekiel is sent to warn them so they don't get wiped out. Let me put it this way, a huge number of people from the nation of Israel went captive into Babylon and a small number come back. Just do the math, look at the numbers. Read Ezra and Nehemiah, do the math of how many people go into captivity or get killed and how many people actually come back 70 years later and you know what, it's just a remnant that comes back. It's just a remnant because the majority get wiped out and that's what Ezekiel is warning people so that a remnant can get right with God and not be destroyed. Also when you see the word soul in the Old Testament, don't let this just automatically make you assume that we're talking about something spiritual. When he says that the watchman has delivered his own soul, that just simply means his own self. That's what that means. Study the Bible because the soul is used as a synecdoche of the entire body. It's basically the part representing the whole. If I said to you, hey, nice wheels, what am I talking about? Talking about the whole car. What if I said, hey, nice threads, I'm talking about what? The clothes. I'm not talking about just the wheels or just the threads. When the Bible says, for example, in Genesis that Abraham took with him all the souls that he had got in Haran when he went into the Promised Land, it's talking about people that he picked up there. He's not some kind of a soul collector, whatever that means. He's grabbing actual people. When it says the soul that sinneth it shall die, it's talking about the person that sins shall die. That's just often a misunderstanding people have about that word. The word soul in the Old Testament is usually just referring to the person. It can be referring to what we would think of as body, soul, spirit, that trichotomy, but it's often just referring to the person or the self. So the first point I wanted to make is just that the passage is not teaching work salvation. The second point I want to make is what is this passage teaching? First let's start with the primary application. The primary application, and if you would flip over to Isaiah 56, you might want to stick a bookmark or a finger or something in Ezekiel 3 because we'll be back, but go to Isaiah 56. The primary application here is that the watchman is a preacher warning people about sin so that they don't die, so that God doesn't destroy them. It's the preacher's job to warn people about sin and what does God say? If I warn someone about sin and they continue down that sinful path after I warn them about it and then they die in their sin, is it my fault? No. And so I'm not responsible whatsoever. They die, but I'm not responsible. Whereas if God tells me to warn them and I don't warn them and then they die in their iniquity, then the Bible says his blood will I require at the watchman's hand. So he's saying I'm responsible because I was the watchman. Now that's why as a pastor it's a big responsibility. The Bible says my brethren be not many masters knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. Unto much is given of him shall much be required. Being a pastor is a big responsibility, okay? This wasn't in my notes, but this just popped into my mind from Hebrews chapter 13. It talks about how pastors and leaders are going to have to give an account for their leadership and they are accountable for that. The Bible says in Hebrews 13 17, obey them that have the rule over you and submit yourselves for they watch for your souls as they that must give account that they may do it with joy and not with grief for that is unprofitable for you. So the Bible's talking about the responsibility that pastors have, that shepherds have, that bishops have unto the Lord of watching out for the flock and one of our jobs is to be a watchman and to warn the flock because if our flock gets into sin, if someone in this church went out and committed some awful sin and it's something that I've never warned about, never preached about, then God could be upset at me for that and say, well why didn't you preach on that? Why did you skip that in scripture? Why did you not teach that? Whereas if I get up and preach and warn everybody and then somebody goes out and does it anyway, God's not going to hold me responsible for that because that's not my fault. I can't control what people do that are grown adults. They have the freedom to go live their life and there's nothing I can do to make them do what's right. All I can do is just get up and warn people and preach and they're going to do what they're going to do. Now look down at your Bible there in Isaiah chapter 56 verse 10. It says his watchmen are blind. They're all ignorant. They're all dumb dogs. They cannot bark, sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. Now what are the dogs here? The dogs are the watchmen and the reason he's using a dog is because a dog is often a watchdog. So some dogs are really good watchdogs. Somebody sketchy comes around, they bark, they sound the alarm, somebody tries to break in, they bark loudly, they threaten them. Whereas I'm thinking about my dog, I think if somebody came into my house it would just probably lick them and roll over and just seek attention from them. It would not actually sound any kind of an alarm or anything like that. Now don't worry, we have other ways of hurting you if you come to my house though in the middle of the night to break in, but the dog's not one of them. So he says they just love to sleep, lay down, slumber. So he's talking about preachers who are asleep at the wheel. They're not preaching on sin. They're not getting up and going woof woof on Sunday morning. They're just more like woof woof. They're not actually getting up and barking like they need to be and preaching hard and warning people. And then it says in verse 11, yay they're greedy dogs. And you know what, a lot of the reason why preachers won't get up and preach hard on sin is because they want money. And if they get up and start screaming and yelling about drunkenness and fornication and they tell you to wait until you get married, you need to be a virgin when you get married and you need to quit drinking and you need to quit smoking and you need to get off the drugs and you need to dress like a lady if you're a lady and dress like a man if you're a man and they get up and they preach hard against sin and tell you not to be greedy, not to be covetous and all these things, well then guess what, a lot of people are going to get offended by that. You know if they get up and preach hey don't get a tattoo because the Bible says don't print any marks on your body, they're going to get offended and say well I have tattoos. Well okay, what does the Bible say though? Don't print any marks on your body. Now look, if you already got it in the past, there's nothing you can do because you can't get in a time machine and change that so I'm not preaching against you but I'm preaching to a bunch of young people telling them don't print any marks on your body. And I'm not going to be like well I know I want to warn the young people not to do that but what if I offend somebody who's already done it? You know what, that's not my problem, I'm just warning people not to violate God's law. You know Bruce Mejia preached a great sermon at the Red Hot Preaching Conference all about tattoos and he talked about how he was all set as a young Christian, he was newly saved, he was all set to go out and get a major Bible verse tattooed across his chest. But then the pastor told him no don't do that and warned him not to do that and you know what, he didn't do it. And so I guarantee you that he's glad right now that he didn't do that because the pastor warned him. But what if the pastor had not warned him, you know what he would have right now? A giant Bible verse tattooed across his chest. Yea they are greedy dogs which can never have enough and they are shepherds and by the way shepherd is another word for pastor, they are shepherds that cannot understand. They all look to their own way, everyone for his gain from his quarter. So here's what they're thinking about, they're thinking about making money, lining their own pockets, filling the church with wealthy people that are going to put money in the offering and then they can get a fat salary and a fat paycheck and they can relax. Doesn't matter that they don't know the Bible, doesn't matter that they don't understand doctrine, doesn't matter that they're not warning the young people about sin, they are just saying, come ye, verse 12, they say, I'll fetch wine and we'll fill ourselves with strong drink and tomorrow shall be as this day and much more abundant. Look at that last phrase, tomorrow shall be as this day and much more abundant. That's basically the message that a lot of churches just, hey it's going to be great, God's going to bless us, it's so nice and isn't it wonderful and everything's going to be great and don't worry about anything. Oh, oh you're living with your girlfriend outside of wedlock? That's okay, hey we're free in Christ, God loves you. Oh, yes, yes, let me show you how to make the checkout. Here's where you can, you know, donate online and it's totally fine that you're living and staying with your girlfriend, no, no issue, no problem. Hey, drinking, hey, I'll fetch the wine myself, drinking, yeah, I'll bring the booze. Folks, I kid you not, there are pastors who not only even just drink beer or not only have a little glass of wine with dinner, but there are pastors that drink hard liquor even with their church members. So this isn't really far-fetched when God says that they say, hey let's go fetch wine and let's fill ourselves with strong drink, they think it's a blessing. And by the way, the Jews today, rabbinical Judaism, orthodox Judaism, teaches drunkenness, prescribes drunkenness on the holiday Purim, they're required to get drunk. They're supposed to get so drunk that they can't tell the difference between Haman and Mordecai. That's how drunk you're supposed to get according to the Talmud on Purim. So I wonder if God is just exaggerating here in Isaiah 56 or if he's being literal when he talks about the preachers and the prophets telling everybody, hey it's going to be great, it's all fine, and in fact let's booze it up. But I'm up here to tell you that wine is a mucker and strong drink is raging and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. The Bible says look not on the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself right, for at the last it biteth like a serpent and sticketh like an adder. You see I'm up here warning you, stay away from alcohol, don't even touch it, get away from it, don't even play with it. Because why? Because it leads to adultery, it leads to fornication, it leads to drunk driving and DUIs and death and misery and it emboldens you to sin. You get some drink in you, you will do things that you would not normally do. You won't tell the difference between clean and unclean and right and wrong. What is every driving man you will tell you about alcohol? First thing that goes when you start to drink even the littlest bit is what? Where are my fellow traffic school alumni? I've taken traffic school like five times. Where are my dogs at? Who's been there? Who's been to traffic school? Put up your hand. Traffic school. Okay. I'm among friends. I've done traffic school, traffic survival school. I used to drive 80,000 miles a year though so that's my excuse for why I had some violations. There's none that do it good, no not one. There's none righteous, no not one. All sinned and come short. So you know in traffic school, anybody who's read the driving handbook from the DMV or the MVD or whatever it is, anybody who's read, it always says hey even just drinking a little bit of alcohol, the first thing that goes is your judgment, right? Your good judgment is the first thing to go and that's the first. And here's the thing about that, here's part of that judgment that goes, the judgment of should I drink another one? Or here's another part of the judgment, am I okay to drive? These are the first things that go when you drink and by the way, the people that I've known who were Christians who did social drinking, you know, all the ones I knew, I've seen them drunk. Oh it's okay to drink, just don't get drunk. I've seen them all drunk, the ones who said that, okay, the ones who were the social drinkers and I've seen them all drive drunk by the way. Seen them all get in the car, I'm okay, you know. Now I have had some people say, well, I think it's okay to drink in moderation but I don't touch the stuff personally. And those people didn't get drunk because they don't touch the stuff, okay. But I'm telling you, these social drinkers, you know, and look, I'm not saying it's not out there, I'm not saying that there aren't people out there, I guarantee you that there are people out there who drink small amounts of alcohol in moderation and they just keep it, but you know what, I've never seen it though. I'm sure it's out there, I guarantee it's out there, but funny how I've seen the opposite over and over and over again. And I've got the Bible telling me that there's a certain drink I shouldn't even look at. Don't even look at the wine when it's red, when it moves itself right, when it gives its color in the cup. At the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder. So I'm gonna get up and preach that and warn you and rattle my cage about alcohol and weed by the way is now legal all over, that doesn't make it right. Just because weed is legal doesn't mean it isn't a sin and you know what, I'll put weed right in the same category with alcohol where it belongs. And the Bible tells you to be sober, be sober. And I did a whole sermon on weed back at the Red Hot Preaching Conference a year ago. I did a whole marijuana sermon and let me tell you something, marijuana or whatever the drugs or alcohol, it's all in the same category to me, it's a lack of sobriety and God wants us to be sober, he wants to be vigilant, he wants to be in our right mind. Marijuana and alcohol are sinful, they're doing, what's so bad about marijuana? Number one, you're destroying your lungs just like if you were smoking tobacco you'd be destroying your lungs. You think just inhaling the hot burning embers of the doobie are somehow better for your lungs than tobacco smoke coming in? News flash, bringing fiery embers into your lungs is just not gonna be good no matter what it is. I don't even recommend sitting too close to the campfire if the smoke's blowing your way. Obviously none of that's gonna be good for your lungs. Think about it. They even tell you when the forest is burning down, don't go outdoors too much because the air quality is too bad, but you're gonna sit there and suck marijuana smoke into your lungs. You're hurting your lungs just like smoking hurts your lungs. We all know that in the modern world. We all understand that scientifically these things are damaging to our bodies. But not only that, marijuana's main side effect is that it causes people to have no ambition, no drive, no motivation, just because, hey man, it's cool. I don't wanna be cool. I wanna be a man of activity. I wanna do stuff. I wanna get out there and do something with my life and not just sit around smoking a blunt. Not gonna do it. And so look, you know, I'm gonna warn people about drugs, alcohol. I'm gonna preach against the sodomites. And what am I doing? I'm warning you. Stay away from them. They're dangerous. Keep your kids away from them. They are dangerous predators. Guard your children. Now why am I saying that? Because I'm trying to warn you so that you'll be safe. But here's the thing. The dumb dog who can't bark preacher, okay, what's he gonna do? He's gonna not touch that subject. He doesn't wanna explain to you how the sodomites are dangerous predators because he doesn't wanna offend you because of your gay uncle, right? And so he doesn't wanna hurt your feelings. Well, you know what? Nuts to your stupid gay uncle. Maybe send him to Afghanistan so the Taliban can throw him off a rooftop. Go if you would to Ezekiel chapter 33. Ezekiel chapter 33. Ezekiel chapter 33 is kind of a parallel passage with Ezekiel chapter 3. Chapter 3 and chapter 33, they both contain this idea about the watchman. Ezekiel 33 is a lot more detailed and I'll preach on it eventually when I get to Ezekiel 33. But I do wanna touch on it now. It says in verse number 1, again the word of the Lord came unto me saying, son of man, speak to the children of thy people and say unto them, when I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts and set him for their watchman, if when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and that's what I wanna point out, he blow the trumpet and warn the people, then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet and taketh not warning, if the sword come and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet and took not warning, his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul. But if the watchman see the sword come and blow not the trumpet and the people be not warned, if the sword come and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand. So here's the idea. You've got a guy that you're paying to guard the place. He falls asleep on the job and isn't doing his job, that's terrible. But this guy's even worse than that because he didn't even fall asleep. He saw the enemy coming. You know what I mean? Because it'd be one thing if the guy's asleep, like the dumb dogs who can't bark or whatever, if the watchman were asleep, that'd be one thing. He's asleep, what's gonna happen to him? He's gonna be fired. Think about it, if you have a security job and your whole job is to watch out and literally while you were sleeping, someone came in and robbed the place while you were sleeping, what do you think's gonna happen? You think it's gonna be like, well, we'll give him another chance. You're fired. You had one job, the place got robbed on your shift because you literally slept, right? You're fired. Okay, but what about this? What about this? What about you're not asleep, you see the bad guys coming, and you just sit back and let them do it. Now you're not just fired, now you're probably going to jail because you're an accomplice now. You've helped them, okay? Because think about this, if the watchman sees the enemy coming, that's what the Bible says. Verse 3, if he seeeth the sword come upon the land, he blows the trumpet and warns the people, yada yada yada, okay. But if the watchman, verse 6, but if the watchman see the sword come and blow not the trumpet and the people be not warned, that's when the blood is required of his hand because he knows the danger is there. You know what, he's a traitor at that point. He's just letting it happen. That's just treason at that point, because you'd wonder about the guy. Is this guy in league with the enemy? Is this guy an infiltrator? That's what you're thinking, right? So the point is that blowing the trumpet represents preaching the word of God and warning people about the effects of sin. Because the Bible says this in Isaiah 58, cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet and show my people their transgression and the house of Jacob their sins. Show my people their transgression. Show my people their sins. He's saying we've got to get up as preachers and point things out. Now I'm not saying individually, like, alright, Varen, let's talk about your sins, you know, we're going to go to alright, Fidel, no, we're not talking about individually pointing out people's sins, but by preaching the word of God and expounding the word of God, all of our sins are revealed. You know, we're showing people their sins because I guarantee you that there were things that you didn't realize you were a sin until you heard it preached about. You thought it was fine. There are all kinds of things like that, that someone might think it's totally fine and then they come to church and somebody reads a Bible verse and they're like, whoa, that's a sin? Thou shall not print any marks upon thy body. Whoa, I didn't know that was in the Bible. I didn't know that was a sin. You know, there are all kinds of examples you can think of where people would come to church and learn that something's a sin. And by the way, you know, there are a lot of people who've told me over the years as a pastor and said to me, you know what, if I would have heard the preaching that you're doing right now, if I would have heard this when I was younger, man, I would have avoided so many problems in my life. And I, you know, I talked to a lady, she's divorced three times. Three times divorced. And she said, man, I never would have done that if I would have heard this preaching. If I would have heard what the Bible said about divorce preached. But again, you can't preach that because then you're going to offend all the divorcees. And I'm not going to ask for a raise of hands, but I guarantee you there's a ton of people in this auditorium that are divorced. My own parents are divorced. Lots of us have loved ones that are divorced. And like I said, even lots of people in the church are divorced. And that's fine because, you know what, obviously it's the past. Forget the things which are behind and reach forth unto those things which are before. Okay? But here's the thing. Don't we need to warn the newlyweds? Don't we need to warn the singles? Don't we need to warn those that are married not to divorce? The Bible says God hates divorce. Malachi. God hates divorce. The Lord God of Israel hateth putting away. God does not think that it's okay. And so therefore, I've got to get up and preach about that to warn people. But you know why the greedy dogs won't preach about that? Because they want the tithing from the divorcees. But you know what? Here's the thing. The divorcees that are right with God, they're not going to be offended by that preaching anyway. The divorcees that are right with God, they're not like, well I'm divorced so I want everybody else to get divorced too. And there are some people out there like that and they're wicked. There's some people out there that are wicked. There's some moms out there that are just straight wicked because they're divorced and they like want their daughter to get divorced so they can like bond over it or something. Like hey, let's bond over the fact that we both hate men or something or we're both divorced or whatever. You know, there are people out there who will actually encourage their kids to get divorced because I never liked him anyway. I never liked her anyway. So what? I don't care if I don't like my son-in-law or my daughter-in-law. You know what? And I can say that because I don't have a son-in-law or daughter-in-law. So I got to say this now because otherwise people might take it the wrong way. I don't care if I don't like my son-in-law or my daughter-in-law. You know what? I encourage my kids to get divorced when I know that the Lord God of Israel hates putting away and he hates divorce. You know, I'm going to say, hey, you know what? Let's try to fix it. And if they say, well, I just don't know if I love him anymore, it's like, well, tough. You better figure out something to like about this guy because you're stuck with him because that's what the Bible teaches is till death do us part. You know, it's one man and one woman and we leave father and mother and cleave unto our wife and, and what God has joined together, let not man put asunder, okay? You know, that's what I'm going to teach. That's what I'm going to preach. And, and, and people that are divorced and they're right with God, they don't think that divorce is great and it's wonderful and, and it's okay and it's permissible and it's sanctioned. You know, they actually realize, hey, you know what? It's wrong. I've made a mistake, but hey, what can I do? Here I am. And they're not going to make it again. You know, the people in our church that are divorced and remarried, you know, I believe that they're committed to staying with the person that they're married to and not getting divorced a second time or a third time. Not just thinking, well, I've been divorced once and so I'm ready to do it again if I need to. It's like, whoa, you need this preaching more than anybody then you need to get right with God if that's how you feel. So the point is I'm never trying to chastise people for stuff that they've done in the past and they've already repented of that and they've already changed their mind and, and they already have, have, have got, you know, uh, their life on track. I'm not, I'm never trying to chastise people. I'm trying to warn the people who are coming up and haven't made the mistakes and give them the best shot at doing it right. That's what I'm trying to do. And so, you know, as a watchman, it's my responsibility to get up and preach hard on sin, even on unpopular subjects, even though it makes me lose church members. And I'll get up and rip on sin and lose church members. You know, I remember one time somebody quit the church because I preached that, you know, if you have adult children living in your home, living in fornication, fornicating under your house and your roof, you're not right with God to allow that to go on in your house. You know, I didn't think that was some radical teaching or something to say that as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And if the Bible tells us that, you know, we're not supposed to fellowship with Christians who are fornicators and Christians who are drunks, and I didn't think it was radical to get up and say that your, if your adult children are still living at home with you and they just have their, they just are living with their girlfriend or something in your house, that you're just allowing that sin of fornication to just take place in your house and you're just enabling that and sanctioning that. I said, no, you need to get right with God. You know, if you have an adult child that's trying to live that lifestyle, you need to be thrown out of the house and go do that somewhere else. You can't enable that. I'd be like if the prodigal son just stayed home and just brought all the whores home. Is that what happened in that story? No, he knew. He knew that wasn't going to fly in dad's house. That's why he had to go into a far country before he did that stuff. He didn't even do it in the same town. He went to a far country to go do all that stuff because he knew dad's not going to play with that. And so, you know, that's what I preached and I didn't even know that that was the situation of someone in the church. I'm just preaching the Bible. I'm preaching about the prodigal son. I'm preaching about fornication. I'm preaching about stuff. And it turned out that a family in the church had their adult son living in the house and his living girlfriend is living with him in his bedroom and they fornicate and live together and that was their situation, they quit the church. And you know what I said, bye. You think I regretted teaching that? Because you know what, I was right. I was right. I was preaching the word of God. I was ripping on fornication and I was right. So bye. You know, that's how it goes. You know, I've had many other people come up to me and say, hey, Pastor Anderson, you know, uh, we want to get married. Will you perform our wedding ceremony? I asked them, have either of you ever been married before? Well, yeah, we're both divorced. And I said, listen, I'm sorry, but I can't participate in that. I don't perform weddings for people who've already been married before because I believe that if you, if you get divorced and you marry someone else, you know that it's adultery and I don't, I don't believe in that. And I said, look, if you don't agree with me, if you interpret things differently, hey, that's between you and God, you know, but I said, I'm not going to perform a ceremony though because I'm not going to participate in that sin. If you want to go do that, that's between you and God, but I'm not going to participate in it. Guess how many times those people came back to church? You know, I've had a lot of people, they came to me and we had that conversation, even though I was nice about it, I gently explained it to them and told them, hey, you don't have to agree with me, but this is where I stand. This is what the Bible says. I showed them what the Bible says. I said, this is how it is and so I will not perform your ceremony and then they just never came back to the church. Now here's the thing. You can have a bigger tent and bring in a lot more people if it's just, sure, yeah, no problem. Sure. You want to have alcohol at the wedding too, I'll bring it. You know, yeah, let's, let's go ahead and marry, and I told them, and I told them, hey, you know, instead of getting remarried, you know, if your, if your original spouse hasn't been remarried yet, you know, then why don't you go back and try to patch things up with your actual wedded wife or your wedded husband. Now if they've already remarried, it's too late for that. That can never happen. That's what the Bible teaches. But I said, you know, hey, if they're, is your ex-wife already remarried? No. Okay, well then why don't you go back and fix things with the one that you've made a vow to be with for the rest of your life. Never see them again either. But that's, that's just, you know what, that's the job. You know, it's just, you've got to, as a watchman, you've got to blow the trumpet, you've got to preach hard on sin, and, and, you know, it's going to, preaching against sin is going to offend people, you know, and, and the goal is not to offend people. The goal is not to hurt people's feelings. The goal is to tell people the truth and preach the truth. And you know what, there have been some people that have gotten that advice and they were able to patch things up with their, with their original spouse, and that's great when that happens. It doesn't always work that way, but you know what, when it does, it's great. Amen. When it works. And so, you know, being a pastor involves sometimes having to tell people things that they don't want to hear, preaching things that are unpopular, being persecuted, possibly having people quit the church, people that you like, people that are your friends, people that are good people, but they quit the church because they get offended because you touch on their sin. Now let me say this. You know what, we're all going to be sitting in church sometime and have the pastor preach things that hit us a little close to home if you're actually in a Bible preaching church because none of us is perfect. So if you can't handle sitting in church and having the pastor preach and it hits a little close to home with you, oh yeah, I'm never coming back. You're not going to last long. But see, you might think to yourself, well he's preaching against me. He's on me. What you don't realize, there's 20 other people in the room that are in the identical situation and they all think I'm mad at them too. It turns out I'm not mad at anybody and I don't even know anybody's situation and I'm just preaching the Bible here. But you know what's funny, when you start, when you start preaching the Bible and just start throwing the Bible verses out there and throwing the commandments out there, you know what, you're going to hit something. I mean think about it. When you're in a room with hundreds of people, everybody's a sinner, nobody's perfect, there's not a sin that I could preach on that wouldn't offend people in this room. Or at least, even if it doesn't offend them, where it wouldn't be like, ooh, ouch, that's me. Which is the right way to respond, by the way. Not get offended but say, oh, you know, I need to work on that or whatever. Like you might think, when I get up and preach on marijuana, nobody, people of faithful word would never smoke pot. I'd be willing to bet that there's people here that either smoke pot or have smoked pot recently. You know, because I've just, I've been doing this for a long time. We you know, we've had someone in our church be addicted to heroin and have to be checked into rehab, okay. We've you know, look, it's out there my friend. You name it, it's out there. And so we need to understand that all the sins need to be preached about from the pulpit. I guarantee you that there's somebody in the, in the building doing almost everything that I could possibly preach on, unfortunately. Just because it's human nature. There are just hundreds of people coming through the doors. There's all kinds of visitors coming through the doors. All kinds of brand new people. People who just got saved last week. There, you know, there are regulars, visitors, new people, people who've been around. There's all kinds of people from all different backgrounds, all different walks of life. And I guarantee you that every possible sin, you know, is probably represented somewhere in this room, if not today, then a week from now or two weeks from now, okay. Hopefully not sodomites. We, you know, if we found that out, we'd, we'd toss them. But the point is though that sin is out there. And so if I get up and preach hard on sin, don't think I'm getting on you personally. I'm just preaching on sin and, and you know what? It's going to get on you eventually. And if I haven't, you say, well, you never preach on my sins, Pastor Anderson. Well, just give me a couple of weeks and I'll get there. Give me a couple of months and I'll get there. You know what I mean? And, and, and here's the thing. If we, if, if we actually have a tender heart to the preaching of God's word, if we actually have a tender heart, whenever we hear a lot of preaching on sin, our heart's going to be pricked about some things and myself included. You know, if I go to, uh, a preaching conference and I'm listening to other men preach or if I download preaching or watch something on YouTube, preaching God's word, you know, many times it hits me where I live and, and my conscience is pricked and my heart is pricked like, oh man, I need to work on that. Oh man, I'm guilty of that. Now, you know, I felt pretty good through that tattoo sermon, but guess what? There are a lot of other sermons though where I'm kind of like, ooh, ow, cause you know what? My sins are not going to be the same as your sins or anybody else's sin. We've all done stuff in the past. We all have our things that we struggle with currently. We're all at different levels of Christian growth. You've got to be able to come to church and let the pastor get up and preach hard on sin and when it hits you, then you know what? Be thankful for that when it hits you because that's what we all need that to help us. I remember Pastor Jimenez and I, you know, cause we've been friends for a long time. When I first met him, he was like 16 and I was like 20 so that was the age that we were. So around that time I remember we were sitting around and we were sitting around a restaurant one time. We were just kind of chatting as, as just young guys at that time we were chatting about the fact that like, man, I feel like I haven't had my face ripped in church in a long time because it's like, you know, you, you kind of get things right in your life and sometimes you kind of miss going to church and just kind of having the pastor really rip on something that hits you hard. You know, it's like we were, we were like seeking a rebuke, you know, because it's like we'd kind of, we'd kind of gotten things that the pastor preached on a lot. The stuff he preached about all the time, we'd kind of got all that straight and it was kind of like, okay, you hit us with something else, you know? And we're, we're joking obviously, but we liked hard preaching and it was okay with us if it hit us where we live. That's where we need to be at spiritually and we need to understand that a preacher who won't warn the congregation is not right with God and he might even be in big trouble with the Lord when people in the church start messing up their lives. And then it's like, well, wait a minute, why didn't you preach about fornication? Why didn't you preach about drunkenness? Why didn't you preach about adultery? Why didn't you warn people about these things? You know, he could be in trouble because if somebody dies as a result of sin and you knew that they were on that path or you knew that this was something that you needed to preach and you skipped it because it's not popular, well then their blood is on your hands. Now, I'm out of time this morning, but the third point of the sermon is that there's also a symbolic application of this passage because we took the literal application as talking about warning people, preachers warning people about sin so that they get right with God and avoid punishment and death. Okay. But a secondary application is about preaching the gospel because we know that hell is real. We know that people are on their way to hell and here's what the Apostle Paul said in Acts chapter 20. He said, wherefore I take you to record this day that I am pure from the blood of all men for I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. So the Apostle Paul said, hey, I've preached the word of God so I'm pure from the blood of all men. That's not on my hands because I preached the word of God. In chapter 19, right before that, it says that all that were in Asia heard the word of God. Not talking about the continent of Asia, talking about Asia Minor, also known as Turkey. And so we have a responsibility as a watchman. Now I'm the pastor of the church, so I have a responsibility to watch out and preach hard on sin and warn people, but you don't necessarily have that job, right? I mean, I'm the pastor, but everybody's not the pastor and you've got ladies here that are not going to be preaching behind the pulpit at Faithful Word Baptist or any other Bible believing church. You've got children or you've got men that are just not pastors. They're just laymen, right? But here's the thing. The reason that this sermon applies to all of us is that, first of all, we all have people in our life that we're responsible for that we could warn about sin and we could warn our little brothers and sisters and we could warn our children and we could warn friends and people that we're discipling and so forth about sin. But also, we all have a big responsibility to warn the lost about not going to hell. And you know, the Bible says if our gospel be hid, it's hid to them that are lost. And that God has committed unto us the ministry of reconciliation. He's trusting us with that ministry of reconciliation. And if we don't warn people, we know that heaven's real, we know that hell is real, we know that salvation is through the blood of Christ. If we don't warn people, then their blood could be on our hands. If we're just letting everyone around us just go to hell without even hearing the gospel when God has required us to do this. And what does the Bible say? Jesus said, he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. If we're not gathering with Jesus, we're scattering. So we need to warn people so that they could be saved. And so, you know, when you go out soul winning, if you go out soul winning and you go out and knock doors and attempt to preach the gospel or maybe even you get through the gospel with some people, but no one gets saved, don't ever feel like you wasted your time because you didn't. You did not waste your time because you warned them. And you know what? You've delivered your soul. You know what I mean? Like, hey, you warned them and they still go to hell, but you warned them, then hey, at least their blood's not in your hands. You know, you're pure from the blood of all men because you warned. So sometimes we're not soul winning, sometimes we're soul warning. I'd rather be soul winning, but you know what? If I'm just soul warning, that has value. And you never know who's going to get saved down the road. Sometimes you're just planting a seed or watering. It's a long life that people live. You might just be one step toward them getting saved. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for this chapter, Lord, and Lord, thank you so much for the free gift of salvation purchased by the blood of Christ. Lord, I pray that I would never stop preaching on sin and Lord, I pray that preachers all over America would get up on Sunday morning and thunder forth about sin and preach what your word says about these subjects so that people could be warned and do right. And Lord God also help us to get out every week and warn the unsaved about hell and lead them to Jesus Christ where they could get the free gift of salvation. And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.