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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Good evening, everyone. Welcome back to Stronghold Baptist Church. Open up your handles. Song number two hundred and two. Or two hundred and twelve. Sorry. Two hundred and twelve. Oh, happy day. Song two twelve. Song two twelve. Can I sing this down the verse? He taught me how to watch and pray. And live rejoicing every day. Happy day. Happy day. When Jesus washed my sins away. Happy God. And she's my pal. The stupid who's there. Is all my love. And cheerful hand. Still his house. Up to the city. Happy day. Happy day. When Jesus washed my sins away. He taught me how to watch and pray. And live rejoicing every day. Happy day. Happy day. When Jesus washed my sins away. Sisk of the grave. Protections done. I am my Lord. And he is mine. He drew me and I followed on. To confess the voice divine. Happy day. Happy day. When Jesus washed my sins away. He taught me how to watch and pray. And live rejoicing every day. Happy day. Happy day. When Jesus washed my sins away. On the last. Our hearts not long to fight hard. Face to face bliss. We'll sin to rest. Forever from life or deep heart. With him we'll every good must dance. Happy day. Happy day. When Jesus washed my sins away. He taught me how to watch and pray. And live rejoicing every day. Happy day. Happy day. When Jesus washed my sins away. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Song number 40, no disappointment in heaven. Song number 40. All right church, let's sing the song of the verse. There's no disappointment in Heaven. No weary to sorrow or pain. The parks that are bleeding and broken, No song in the binder refrained. The clouds of our earthly horizon Will never appear in the sky. For all will be sunshine and gladness, With never a song or a sky. I'm bound for that beautiful sea. My Lord is prepared for His hope, Where all the redeemed of all ages Sing glory around a little white throne. Sometimes there will be homesick for heaven, And the lorries I there shall behold. What a joy that will be when I sleep, For I see in that beautiful city of gold. We'll never pay rent for our guests, The taxes will never come due. Our garbage will never grow threadbare, But always be famous and new. We'll never be hungry nor thirsty, Nor anguish and poverty care. For all the rich velvetys of heaven, His sanctified children will share. I'm bound for that beautiful sea. My Lord is prepared for His hope, Where all the redeemed of all ages Sing glory around a little white throne. Sometimes there will be homesick for heaven, And the lorries I there shall behold. What a joy that will be when I sleep, For I see in that beautiful city of gold. On the last, there will never be breath on the door line, No funeral train in the sky, No praise on the hillside of glory, For there we shall never more die. Behold, we are there forever, Transformed in a moment of time. Our door will stand in its likeness, The stars in the sun will now shine. I'm bound for that beautiful sea. My Lord is prepared for His hope, Where all the redeemed of all ages Sing glory around a little white throne. Sometimes there will be homesick for heaven, And the lorries I there shall behold. What a joy that will be when I sleep, For I see in that beautiful city of gold. This week, the last chapter, so be sure to make it out here for that if you can on that Wednesday night. Soul-winding opportunities are listed there, as well as our salvations and baptisms for the month of August as well as for the year. Let's go ahead and count up. Any salvations to report at all for today or otherwise? Anything to report today? I'm going to assume everything's for today unless you tell me otherwise. So one here, three, amen. Denzel had one, so that's three plus one, four total. One back there. All right, very good. We'll keep up the good work. I know it was a little warm out there this afternoon, but keep it up. It's not going to be here too much longer, right? We're near the end of summer, so it's already, should be starting to cool down, and I appreciate everyone investing their time in going out and preaching the gospel, so that's great. So six salvations for today, praise the Lord, unless there's more that we haven't heard back about. Offering totals through the month of July listed down there at the bottom of the page. Let's see, prayer requests. We went over, there's Brother DJ's grandmother is still in the hospital, but she's scheduled to be released in a few days and has slowly just been improving. They're just watching her with the fluids that she had and stuff. It's good that she's planning on being released. Unfortunately, Lonnie, Logan's neighbor, who has the stage four breast cancer, is not better. It's actually grown worse, and there seems to be more tumors growing back where they had treated, and now they're attempting, or they're scheduling an aggressive chemo treatment strategy. So that is, as I mentioned this morning, going to wreak havoc on the body. That's normally when they add, do that type of treatment, it's going to be very intense for that person. So pray that God will strengthen them and strengthen their body and heal their body, right? Heal their body quickly, so hopefully they won't have to endure much of that treatment. And it really is a difficult thing. I've never gone through it personally, but it really is, it does a number on the body. So please, it's going to be very painful and discomfort, and I'm sure it's very scary for them too, so just pray for her. Pray for everyone else. On our list here, we added Joyce. It's brother Keith's sister, heart problems, and Frankie, brother Peter's brother. We're praying for him as well. He's doing well, which is good. He's no longer ill, but they're still trying to figure out what happened and get the results of the colonoscopy. And then I forgot to add Joshua and Liza Hill. They're moving here from North Carolina. When they visited a few weeks ago, they were able to put in an offer on a house, so they're planning on moving to the area here to join our church full-time, which is great. So pray that everything will go well with that. If you don't know, I don't know where you've been, but purchasing a house at this time is still not very easy. Is it, brother Brian? It's still pretty... It's slowing down, but it's still not... You don't just get to pick and choose and be like, well, let me sit on this for a while and let me take all my options in and then I'll make a decision in a couple weeks. That doesn't happen like that, no. No, no, it's still not like that. Yes, it slowed down to the point where it's not just necessarily going to be gone before you could even step foot in the place, so anyways, that's going great. Pray for them, pray everything goes good. Obviously it's a big deal, big transition, big move. Pray to get here safely and that everything will work out well for them and they also would like to be blessed with a child, so pray to the Lord that he would open up her womb and then, of course, I didn't mention this morning, but you can see on here, Side Pass Baptist Church, we're going to continue to pray for them. Nothing new that I'm aware of and nothing's changed. There's still a lot of just things for them to deal with, a lot of persecution, different things that the church has to deal with, so pray for them, pray God will strengthen them and bless them for the trial. I mean, everyone goes through trials. They're going through a trial right now and as far as I can tell, they're coming out pretty good. I mean, they're staying the course. They're still doing the work. They're not backing down. There's nothing that's stopped from full steam ahead with their work, with the ministry, so, amen. That's a victory right there, but pray that God will strengthen them and bless them. On the next page, we've got the month of August challenge here, the visitor challenge, excuse me, bringing in first-time visitors, so if you are instrumental, and you know, you can do share. I like giving out prizes, even though I don't like remembering to get the prizes because I'm not good at it. I like giving them away. I like when people complete stuff, so if there are efforts from multiple people to get someone into church, then great, just let me know. You don't have to be like, this is my visitor, you know, like. Now, if we have like a really large family and there's one visitor from like the whole family, I don't think I'm gonna be giving away like a lot of prizes to every single member of the family, but what I mean, and just so I'm clear, so people aren't gonna be expecting something from me, is, you know, if there's a few, if there's maybe a couple different families involved, like we had that visitor this morning who got saved out soul winning, right? Am I understanding this correctly? There was a couple people involved in her getting saved, and then she got baptized, so I mean, if there's a couple people involved like that from out soul winning or someone comes visit, it's like, great, you know, and I don't know how it all worked out, but whatever, right? We'll give out prizes for that, so just try to, the whole goal is try to get people in, bring in some visitors, and if you can do that during this month, you will get a special prize for being able to do that. We got the home school field trips there, school starting back up, and so are the field trips, so we got the first two field trips listed there, and Leslie didn't go home in between services, she came out soloing with me instead, so we don't have the sign up sheet, but we will have a sign up sheet next week, and we'll keep it in that metal clipboard, which is in the drawer over against the wall over there and that piece of furniture and that desk, and we just ask that you would be RSVP. Leslie, is there anything special for the very first one there at the Yellow River Sanctuary? Is there anything that you're doing that you need in advance, or like, is this one of those ones that you need your letter of intent, or no? So, I should have brought this up this morning, this is one of the things that I was trying to remember, but I couldn't. For the home school field trips, some of the places will require to see your letter of intent that you file with the state for home schooling in order to get the home school discounts, or be part of the home school program, because some of the facilities that we go to, some of these trips, the field trips that we plan, they'll have special home school days or home school times or whatever, and they deal with home school groups different from other groups, different from other school groups, different from other things, but some of the places are requesting that you bring your letter of intent, if you're homeschooling in the state of Georgia, you are supposed to, under Georgia state law, submit like an affidavit or something to the state that says, this person, this person, this person, whoever, is gonna be homeschooled this year, so it's not a big deal, we've done this every year, the paperwork is simple, you could print it off online, and just fill it out and bring it with, bring a photocopy or whatever, and we'll let you know in advance which places those are, but some places will, I'm just throwing out there now in case you need to find it or get it or whatever, or you forgot all about it, like I usually do every year, I forget about those things, this is a reminder, so, but for this event, it's in Lilburn, it's not very far from here, everything should go well, and that's Friday, September 11th, 11 a.m. for homeschool families. All right, continuing on, Hebrews chapter four, we're on week three of 10 verses five and six this week, we've got the upcoming events there, soul winning marathon, the Alabama soul winning marathon, September 3rd, Labor Day weekend, Saturday, is in Oxford, Alabama, Oxford, Alabama, it's a couple hours from here roughly, and it's right off the 20, right off the freeway, this place is right off the freeway, I'll probably be asking for some help in the map making department, but I already zoomed in to this place, and there's another place kind of just north of there, and there's, looks like there's housing developments, looks like there's apartments, there's houses, there's all kinds of stuff, so should be great for the soul winning. I will be finalizing the details this week, and publishing it so that we can get as much participation as possible in Alabama for this event. We got the birthdays and anniversaries for the month of August there, and that is about it for our announcement, so I'm going to turn the service back over to brother Peter to lead us in our next song. Church, if you could open up your hymnals to song number 158. Song number 158, Owe for a Thousand Tongues to Sing, there at the bottom of the page. Song 158. On the verse, Owe for a Thousand Tongues to sing, My great Redeemer praise, The glories of my God and King, The triumph of His praise, My righteous Master and my God, Assist me to proclaim, To spread the law, the earth abroad, The honors of my name. Jesus, the name that harms our fears, And bids our sorrows cease, Tis music in a sinner's ear, Tis life in hell and peace, He breaks the power of Israel, He sets the prisoner free, His blood can make the palace clean, His blood availed for me. And if ye dead, His friends, Ye dumb, your lucid tongues employ, Ye blind, behold, your saviors come, An empty lamb for joy. An empty lamb for joy. That was the book of Jude. And as we do customary here at Stronghold Baptist Church, we're going to read the entire chapter as brother Devin, if you can please do that. That was the book of Jude. Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God, the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called, Mercy unto you and peace and love be multiplied. Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old, ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God in our Lord Jesus Christ. I will, therefore, put you in remembrance, though you once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities. Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil, he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee, but these speak evil of those things which they know not, but what they know naturally as brute beasts, and those things that corrupt themselves. Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gang-saying of Corey. These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear. Clouds they are without water, carried about of winds. Trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots, raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame, wandering stars to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches, which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts, and their mouths speaketh great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage. But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit. But ye, beloved, building up yourselves in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And if some have compassion, making a difference, and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh, now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God, our Savior. Be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for this time for us to meet together and hear your word preached. I pray that you would bless our service and bless pastors as he comes. Help us to have clear minds to receive your word. And I pray that you would keep distractions down to a minimal. And Jesus, I'm going to pray. Amen. Alright, simple topic for this evening. I want to preach on just one of those subjects that I think needs to be dealt with from time to time. And just sort of maintaining awareness. And the title of my sermon has crept in unawares. We're dealing with the book of Jude here, of course. It has a lot to do with false prophets. It has to do with wicked people, children of the devil. And, you know, sometimes things happen personally in my life, and I kind of see things and just sort of have things happen, and I don't want to just completely ignore them. Of course, I'm aware of them, but oftentimes with spiritual things, and I like to bring them back up again. This is one of those subjects that is brought up multiple times in Scripture, especially in the New Testament. It's repeated multiple times about the poor. Like, I'm warning you. Jesus is warning. You know, we're getting warnings about these wolves in sheep's clothing. We're getting warnings about these false prophets. We're getting warnings about these people because they exist, because they're really wicked, because they're trying to do bad things to people. These are the people that you see in the news stories and you hear about from time to time. But when we understand how really wicked some of these people are, and on top of that, when you realize how wicked these people are, but that they're really enemies of God, if they're children of the devil, they really don't like what we do and what we're doing here. And our service to the Lord is going to put a big target on our backs. And we need to continually be aware of the threat of the possibility of people being creeping in and creeping into churches and, yes, creeping into our church in order to target people and especially target children. And the primary focus for my sermon tonight is going to be on protecting our children. Okay, it's very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very important, right? Super precious. This is one of the reasons why, and if you started coming here recently and maybe you haven't heard, maybe you don't understand, why are we a family integrated church? Maybe you've never even heard that term before. We are a family integrated church, which means we keep the families together in service. Now, I grew up going to a church. It was another denomination, a Presbyterian church, where the whole family would go into church for the first, I don't know, maybe 10 minutes of service, something like that, 10 to 15 minutes, and then they would do some special little teaching for, like, the kids, and then they'd all be sent off to other rooms in the church building, like classrooms, to do what we called Sunday school. We don't have Sunday school here amongst independent Baptists. Sunday school means something different. It's you show up before the worship service starts, and it's kind of like a Bible study, and that's what it's there. But when I was going to church, it was called Sunday school. We would go, all the kids would go to various different classrooms, whatever, associated with your grade level in school or whatever, and that's what we did. Well, we don't do that here, okay? And there's a very good reason why we don't do that here, and why do we have the kids in service? And some people might be going, oh, man, why are there kids here? You know, sometimes they cry, sometimes they get... Look, I get it. It can be distracting sometimes, and we do have options for people to bring children to when they start to get a little bit loud or a little bit rowdy. We have places to go so that they won't be a huge distraction. But you'll notice one of those places that they could go, while it has doors, there's a big window right into that room, just like there's a window in my office. Now, I didn't put that glass, whatever, it's supposed to be like a one-way thing, but you could still see into that. That wasn't like that when we got here, there's glass there. We have the setup here, the design, on purpose, because I don't want there to be any dark places here, any locked doors, any places where people can get alone with children and do bad things. That's bottom line at the end of the day. I don't want there to be any opportunities here for people to get defiled while you're at church. It happens, it happens all the time, unfortunately, in all different types of churches, and here's the reason why. The reason why is because most people, when they come to church, are coming for the right reasons. You're coming to serve the Lord, you're coming to be around other like-minded believers, you're coming to pray, you're coming to sing, you're coming to enjoy good fellowship and make friends and everything else. You're coming for all the right reasons. And there's a feeling of safety that you'll have because you're around a bunch of people, you're around a bunch of friends, you're around a bunch of people that you think all want to serve God just like you do. I understand, I'm not saying, okay, we need the warnings so that we could make the appropriate rules in our life and make sure that we can protect ourselves, but we're also not on a witch hunt that we're investigating every single person and being really suspicious of every single person in our church or something like that. That's not the type of atmosphere we have, but we have to realize that people will come in to churches in order to do bad things. Bad people, it's what Jesus called the wolves in sheep's clothing. What's a wolf? A wolf wants to devour and destroy. And a wolf wants to devour and destroy sheep. Why would a wolf put on sheep's clothing so it can infiltrate and get in amongst the sheep to do the most amount of damage? Predators will do the exact same thing. You would think, without looking at the Bible of Eurus to say, people that hate God, why would they ever be in a church? Because you don't expect them to be in a church. People that hate God, they don't really care. We might have a sense of sanctity within a church. Things that people might do outside of church, man, when you come in a church, you don't do those things, just because people have a respect for the house of God, for the worship place, for coming into a place. We're supposed to be in the presence of the Lord, so you're going to be on your best behavior. You're going to maybe even talk a little bit different. Now, obviously, we shouldn't be hypocritical. We should try to live our lives, whether we're in church or not, the way that God would have us to live our lives. But there still is something about coming to church where people would be like, hey, wait, don't do that. There's a higher level of respect, right? But when people hate God and when people come in, they're predators, they don't care about that at all. The only amount that they care about it is the amount to fool other people and to make them think that they're just like you and that they can trust you and that you have nothing to worry about and, oh, give me access to your children. Now, this is literally what this chapter, one of the things that this chapter is warning us about, is the book Jude. Look down at verse number four. Actually, here, I'm going to read, starting in verse one, Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to them they're sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ and called, mercy unto you and peace and love be multiplied. Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints, before we even continue any further, you know, he's saying, I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation. And some people is like, oh, man, I don't want, you're going to talk about salvation, I don't want to hear about that. Look, sometimes it's important to hear about this stuff, even if you already know it. And even if you already know there's predators out in the world, even if you already know there's people who try to sneak in, look, we need to hear it. It's important for you to be reminded of this because it is very easy to fall into a condition, fall into a state where you become too relaxed. And like I said, especially when it comes to children, and here's part of the reason why I'm preaching this is because we just came from our trips, we came from our vacation, we visited Faith Ward Baptist Church in Phoenix, Arizona, and we, you know, it was like a homecoming. It's a church that I got all my training from and taught and saw all kinds of people there that are still attending, that were going there when we were there, and it was great and had a great time and loved seeing everyone, and church has grown, all kinds of good things going on there. And then we went to Verity, same thing, we saw all kinds of people, haven't seen for a long time, it's very friendly, it's very nice, it's good to see all these people. But here's the thing, bigger places, the kids want to go, they want to see their friends, and they want to start running around, it could be very comfortable. You could feel very safe, and we did feel safe. But I'm not saying you shouldn't have a safe feeling, okay? But what do you do with that feeling if you start allowing too many things to happen, if you start allowing your children to get outside of your sight, if you start allowing for your children just to be away from you completely and you have no idea where they are, that's a problem. Okay, that's a problem. Now, before we even get into predator stuff, I'll tell you what, right here, that's a problem. We have a smaller church, it's still a problem. If you have a young child and you can't tell me, if you don't know where your child is, one of the parents doesn't know where your child is at all times, how do you know they're not in the parking lot, walking around in the parking lot, about to get hit by a car? First and foremost, every parent needs to be paying attention and watching where their children are and not off chatting and talking and everything else and have no idea where your little child is. Everybody needs to know where their children are. Just for the simple fact that they could be doing anything, they could be sticking their fingers in, you know, we got these plugs here, Brother DJ, thank you for that suggestion. I mean, they can be doing who knows what, right? And they do. And look, I get it, I have my own, I've got six. It's not always easy to keep track of all of them all the time, but that's also one of the reasons why you ought to have them in subjection and not just off crazy, and the more you have, they could understand and tell you and say, hey, no, I need you to stay right here and they stay right there. Because you need to have that level of control the more kids you have. But you need to be able to know where they're at, you need to know if they're going to be getting into danger or causing problems for other people, but beyond that, you need to know where they're at because people who are predators and prey on the innocent and prey on children, they're just waiting for their opportunity. I mean, you hear about it, right up, real close to where we live, Mall of Georgia. There's people that go out there all the time and kidnap people from the Mall of Georgia. That's one of the hot spots. It's crazy, but it happens. I mean, it literally happens. People will be shopping and everything else, they get distracted, all of a sudden, they're looking, they find their opportunity, and there you go. Predators are looking for a place where they can get their prey. I mean, at the end of the day, that's what they're trying to do. And one of the things about churches is that it is a place where you could find a lot of people who are very accepting, very open, very trusting, and very loving, which I'm not saying there's anything wrong with those things. We ought to be able to welcome in people and everything else, but you also need to be able to not, you know, when it comes to children, have your own rules so that, you know, the rules that I have is to not let them, not know where they, you know, if you don't know where they're at, that's not good. You need to be able to see them. You need to be under your control or under the watch of, like, a few different people or something. You know, there's, like, older kids are able to help a little bit, but you need to know where they're at. You can't allow for something bad to happen, and I'll get into a little bit. Well, I'll just go into it right now, and then we'll get more into Scripture, but nothing horrible per se happened, except, so two weird things happened. One, I got a phone call from someone here that got kicked out because it was a man that was trying to have a relationship with a 10-year-old, and some of you know who I'm talking about, and obviously that's disgusting, and as soon as it came to light, he was thrown out of this church and never welcomed back again. He called me recently, trying to say, oh, don't hang up. Look, I don't have nothing to say to you. Nothing. You're not welcome here. Don't ever call me again. Sorry, no perverts are allowed in this church. This is not an everybody-welcomed church. It's not. You're a pedophile. You're a predator. You are not welcome here. But then also when we were out, after we came back, I get this email from somebody who was, it boggled my mind that this was even a real thing because at first I thought it was just a troll. If you know what I'm talking about, like if you're in my age group, you might not know what a troll is on the Internet. When people troll you, they want to get a rise out of you. Sometimes people just say things they don't even necessarily mean, but they just want to mess with you. So from time to time, I get emails, I get comments, I get things, where people, I could tell, they're just trying to mess with me. They're trying to say things to get a rise out of me, to get me all angry, to get me to start fighting or whatever. People do that kind of stuff for their own entertainment or whatever. It's like messing with people. So I got this email asking about wanting to be able to marry my daughter once she passes the flower of her age. Yeah, weird terminology. Now, if you read your Bible, you know that term is used in Scripture. It was from this hyper-spiritual person who was trying to say, oh, man, I go soul-winning 40-plus hours a week, and I saw, and your daughter was the best I've seen out of every, you know, like... And at first I'm thinking, like, there's no way anybody would send me an email about wanting to marry my daughter, who's my... I don't know what she's talking about. My oldest is 12. My oldest is 12. An adult man is asking me to marry one of my children, prepubescent children. How could I not think that's a troll, someone messing with me? Because who in their right mind would ever think that you could do it? Well, it's not someone in their right mind. Now, normally predators aren't that stupid. But thank God this guy even did this because that just outs him as a predator. And here's the thing. You know, sometimes people could get away with saying, oh, well, I didn't know how old she was, or I didn't know, you know, they wanted to dance around this stuff and not look as bad as they really are. But the terminology he used, when you start saying, when she passes, that means you know you're looking at someone who hasn't even hit puberty yet. Like, you know you're eyeballing someone like that. And you're looking to marry... That's disgusting. That's perverted. That's a pervert. Now, this already happened after we came home. That person was at both places where we were. It's easy to feel comfortable. It's easy to be in a situation like that and to just let the kids go off and play and have no idea what's going on. The danger is you have no idea who might be around. And you might have no idea what's going on in the minds of some people who look like a normal person, dressed nice, coming to church, singing the songs, going out soul winning. They exist. So, you know, these two personal things made me go, you know what, it's probably time to hit on this subject. It's easy to get comfortable. And like I said, I don't think we should be getting a magnifying glass out and just inspecting everybody in church and having this attitude of like, wait a minute, are you, you know... No. But the way that you protect yourself is you protecting your children and watching your children and knowing where they are. You know where your children are, you could be surrounded by predators and not going to be able to get to them if you know where your children are and you can see them. You're not going to let anything happen to them. Right? We are warned in the book of Jude that these people will be with us. That's not even a doubt. Verse 4. For there are certain men crept in unawares. It means people don't realize it. They've snuck in and nobody real... No one noticed it. And it doesn't mean because the church is full of a bunch of dummies. No. It's because the people who creep in are creeping in because they're trying not to be noticed. They're trying to fly under the radar and we're not just trying to be suspicious of every single person that comes in through our door. And if you wear a mask, you put on the show, it's not that hard to fool people. I mean, you think back, and we'll go to the most extreme examples, I mean, think about the serial killers. Right? The most famous ones. You go to the most famous serial killers, what do you find? They go back and they interview people, like, wow, I'd never had any idea, never would have thought it was that person, they were always so nice, they were always so kind, they were always so sociable, I never would have thought. And you just find out that just time and time and time again, like, wow, that person just seemed, you know, sometimes it might seem a little bit weird, but nothing like, I never would have thought they were killing and eating people or something, you know, like some of these people do, right? These horrible, disgusting, perverted things that they do, they're just like, absolutely not, I never would have guessed that. Why? Because they're good at tricking people. They're good at deceiving people. That's why. And in church specifically, I mean, that's out in the world, you've got these guys that exist, but look what it says here, it says, for certain men are crept and unawares, verse 4, who were before of old, ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our Lord God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. Jump down to verse number 12, because in the context, there's not very many, you know, 16 verses here, right? This is all the same context. We're not really changing gears here. It's talking about these wicked people. Verse number 12, these are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you. Not if they feast with you, when. It's just a matter of when. We have potlucks, we have feasts, we have gatherings, right? Feasts of charity, great, hey, everyone, welcome, let's eat, let's have a feast, and it says, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear. They don't have a fear. They don't have a fear of God, they don't have a fear of you. They don't care about you, they're there to destroy. The wolf doesn't care about the sheep. The wolf also doesn't fear the sheep. The wolf doesn't care. But the wolf puts on the mask so he wants to look like a sheep. Feeding themselves without fear, clouds, they are without water, carried about of winds, trees whose fruit withereth without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots. They're reprobates, twice dead. Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame, wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. Flip back to 2 Peter chapter 2, it's a parallel passage to the book of Jude. 2 Peter chapter 2, again, another passage that talks about the false prophets. Same type of people, very similar descriptions. We're going to see how it is listed here. Actually, I'm going to, there's, I didn't even have this in my notes, but I'd, uh... One other aspect here in Jude... The Bible also talks about it and it says, these be they who separate themselves. Watch out for the people who are trying to separate themselves with other people in the church and say, oh, no, no, hey, there's too many people here, let's separate, let's go over here. Let's do a personal in-home study with you. Separate, let's go over here. Let's do a personal in-home study with you, away from everyone else. And especially if you've got some, you know, someone of the opposite gender going in and trying to do, you know, like come in and have some one-on-one time or get away from everyone else, watch out for that. Okay, watch out for the warning signs, watch out for the people who are just always trying to separate themselves, sensual, having not the spirit. 2 Peter 2, verse 12, the Bible says, but these as natural brute beasts. Yes, talking about the false prophet. But these as natural brute beasts made to be taken and destroyed. Yes, this is the Holy Bible. Yes, this is Christianity. This is the New Testament. Referring to these false prophets, these wicked, reprobate people, natural brute beasts made to be taken and destroyed. natural brute beasts made to be taken and destroyed. speak evil of the things that they understand not and shall utterly perish in their own corruption and shall receive the reward of unrighteousness as they that count at pleasure to riot in the daytime. Spots they are in blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you. So in case you missed it in Jude, it's in 2 Peter chapter 2 also. While they feast with you, having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin. That should hit home. I mean, look, we're all sinners. We're all sinners, right? Every single one of us. None of us is perfect. But you can't tell me there's not a time where you're just like 100%, I just cannot stop sinning. Just everywhere my eyes are going, I just cannot stop sinning. I hope that's not you. It's not good if it is. People who just cannot cease from sinning at all. I mean, it's just their eyes are just full of adultery. I mean, they're just looking around and it's just wicked, wicked, wicked, wicked, wicked thoughts all the time on everything they see. That's a different type of animal. Having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin. Beguiling, unstable souls. Beguiling means they're tricking or deceiving. They target the unstable. And unstable can apply to multiple different types of people. Unstable, one, can just be someone who's new in the faith. They're not very stable in their Christianity. They might be more susceptible to a false prophet who wants to teach them false things and gain their trust in order to pray on them. Yes, that happens. Unstable can also be, they're unstable because they're children, because they're not just, they're not only spiritually unstable because they're maybe a new believer, but they're also, they could just be someone who's just young. It's a young child. They're unstable. They don't know that much. They need to learn. They need to grow. Unstable. Unstable can also be someone who might have a mental handicap, who doesn't have all of their capacities, right, not fully able to take care of themselves or watch out for themselves. These are vulnerable people. They're vulnerable. And the predator looks for the vulnerable, just like an animal, a predator in the wild, right, a predator that hunts for its prey. Hey, if it finds that wounded beast, guess where it's going for. There's a whole flock, there's a cattle or whatever it eats, you know, whatever some animal eats, you got some lion or lioness going out and hunting and it finds some gazelle that's wounded. That one's unstable. That one's unstable. I'm going after that one. That's going to be my easy meal ticket right there. Go for the week. And with human predators, that is the most disgusting thing. It's bad enough to be targeting people, but then targeting the most susceptible people in our society, targeting children, targeting elderly, targeting people with handicaps, targeting people like that, monsters. Monsters do that. The Bible says, it's a warning, while they feast with you. They will be among us. So having this knowledge, what do you do with that? Like I said, do you just suspect everybody all the time? No, that's no way to live. We got to give people the benefit of the doubt, even almost to a fault. I mean, give people the benefit of the doubt. We're not out looking for these people, but at the same time have the wisdom to understand that maybe there is someone like this around. Maybe they're around. And make it so that you won't be a target and your children won't be a target and no one would ever be able to get away with that anyways because you know where your children are at. Because you're not letting them out of your sight. You're not letting them go away and spend time and do these overnights with people that, people from church, what could go wrong? Yeah, what could go wrong? What could go wrong? What if you're sending it over to someone's house whose eyes are full of adultery and cannot cease from sin? Do you think there might be a problem then? And how would you know that? Until they expose themselves, you don't know that. Until they get caught, you won't know that. Because it's happening here. And their eyes are full of adultery, you don't know. You can't see that. But it's real. The Bible's warning us about these people. Turn, if you would please, to Deuteronomy chapter 22. Dad, especially, and Mom, it's your job to protect your children. You need to ensure that your children are never defiled. That is your job. Don't rely on other people to do that job for you. Don't let your guard down. Don't assume that there won't be wicked people in places like church. You must protect the purity of your children. And you know what? This is even taught in Scripture as well. That it's your parents' job to protect the purity of your children. Straight from God's Word. Now, unlike, obviously, the story we saw this morning with Dinah. Left unattended, gone out, what happened? Committed fornication. At the end of the day, that's Jacob's fault. That's Jacob's fault. Letting her go out. Letting her go out with the daughters of the land and just be out somewhere and end up committing fornication. Well, that's not very fair to make that Jacob's fault. Well, let's read Deuteronomy 22. And let's see how God's holy law deals with the woman that's going to play the whore that's supposed to be a virgin, that's supposed to be a maid, if she's not... Let's read this passage. Start reading in verse number 13. The Bible says, If any man take a wife and go in unto her and hate her and give occasions of speech against her and bring up an evil name upon her and say, I took this woman and when I came to her I found her not a maid. Finding her not a maid means she's not a virgin. And I know these days it's kind of like, Oh, well, who cares or whatever, you know, no one has any regard or any respect for purity at all. Talk about it this morning. Just like with marriage, people don't even care about it anymore. It's like you just get divorced. Who cares? Whatever. Get married again. Get divorced again. Get married again. Get divorced again. Who cares? That's the wicked world we live in today. We ought to care. If you're a Bible-believing Christian, you should care. We ought to be raising young people to be virgin, to be pure and stay pure until they get married. And that truly is a treasure then. And someone's going to get married and say, Man, I want to have this treasure that I can have when I get married to someone. That's a treasure to have and to hold. And when you're going into a situation, which is the case here, you've got someone going into a situation going, I'm expecting to have a pure woman as my wife. That's what's being sold to me here. That's what's being presented. That's what everyone's saying is the case. This is a maid. This is someone who's pure. Great. What a blessing. Get married. Then come to find out. You go, wait a minute. This person's not even a maid. This is the problem. So let's read about this. Verse 15. Then shall the father of the damsel and her mother take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate, and the damsel's father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wipe, and he hateth her, and lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid, and yet these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity, and they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him, and they shall immerse him in hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel, and she shall be his wife. He may not put her away all his days. Now, I'm not going to get graphic here. The Bible doesn't get very graphic here. But I want you to notice a couple things. So this guy marries this woman, and he's trying to say, you know what? She wasn't even a maid when we got married, and he hates her, supposedly because of that. It's the parent's responsibility, mom and dad, to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, no. Yes, she was a maid, and we have the evidence. We have the proof. We're the ones keeping this cloth that was the result of her no longer being a maid after the wedding night, okay? And those that don't understand that, you don't need to understand that. And those that do understand it, we don't have to go any further than that, okay? But it's left up to the father and the mother of that young lady to be in charge of that and to say, hey, no, look, we raised a right. That didn't happen under my watch. And then this guy gets punished if he's lying about it, if he just wants to say that because he wanted to get divorced or whatever. And he's going, no, no, no, you can't do that. You can't bring this bad name and bring that type of wicked speech on my daughter. Why? Because Mom and Dad made sure she didn't. That's why. Because they invested the time, they raised their child right, and they made sure that that wasn't going to happen. And parents, you need to make sure if you want to raise your children to be pure, you can't just give them all kinds of liberties and freedoms and just go out and do whatever they want, like Dinah, to go see the daughters of the land because who knows what's going to happen then? Obviously, this doesn't even have to be with a predator. This is just, I mean, you need to watch your children, right? But it is the parents' responsibility to protect them and to watch out and make sure that no bad things will happen to them. It's clearly the parents' responsibility. It says, but if this thing be true and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel, then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die because she hath wrought folly in Israel to play the whore in her father's house, so shalt thou put evil away from among you. Now, look, you could say, wow, that's, I mean, you might think that's crazy, but this is God's law, okay? I accept God's law as being right. If you don't understand that, I understand your confusion in the society we live in today, but this is what God's law deems to be an appropriate action and punishment for this particular crime. Now, I know we don't live in the Old Testament days. We don't. We don't have God's laws, our laws, okay? But these laws were righteous and right, and, yes, it would be very shocking to see anybody get stoned with stones that they die, but we need to look at this and say, this is a big deal. This is very serious. Now, I, of course, obviously, you know, this law is in effect, but we need to take heed as though it were because we're Bible-believing Christians because we believe God's word. We believe the law of the Lord to be holy. No one would want to see their child put to death, nobody, right? Every parent loves their children. You need to deal with the purity of your children as important as if they would be put to death for playing the horn, like the Bible's prescribing right here. Just because we don't have that law, don't be flipping the Bible, like, oh, well, whatever. It happens, it's life, you know. No. Do you think that they had that attitude then when that law's in place? Similar to adultery. Do you think that adultery's just running rampant if people are being executed for committing adultery? Because that's what the punishment was in Scripture. The adulterer and adulteress were to be put to death. God's law solves a lot of problems. But when people get so loving that they just get slack on all the law, slack on the judgment, slack on the punishment, nowadays we get pedophiles getting a slap on the wrist and going back out into public. They release rabid dogs into public. It's unbelievable. Pretty soon, it wouldn't surprise me if there's, like, a literal rabid dog that they won't put down. Oh, that's inhumane. You can't do that. We just have to put this dog over here. No, you shoot it in the head, and you put down the rabid dog. Like, that's all you could do with it. And the beast that's gonna be aggressive towards people should be killed. That's what the Bible says. And the beast of a person that's gonna go and defile little children ought to have a bullet put through their head. That ought to be the law of the land. But no, instead, we've got a government that just, oh, here, four months in jail, six months in jail, maybe a couple years in jail, whatever. Back out on the streets and back out destroying innocent lives. It's insanity. You know who's responsible for your children? You are, parents. You are. Flip over to Deuteronomy chapter 6. You're in chapter 22. Let's flip back to chapter 6. Not only do you need to be watching. You need to be on the lookout. You need to be watching. You need to be able to defend your children. You also need to be teaching. Impart wisdom to your children to spot the warning signs of the wicked bad people because they are found in Scripture. God tells us how to identify them. First, you raise them to respect you. You teach them and help them understand you have knowledge and that they ought to be listening to you and getting counsel from you as they grow up. Teach them to read the Word of God for themselves. Teach them about what the Word of God says and what it means. Parents, not enough to bring them to church. You are responsible for teaching your children truth and knowledge. Not enough to drop them off at public school. Not enough to drop them off at Sunday school. Not enough to let anyone else be responsible for your children knowing what's righteous and what's immoral. You are responsible for that. You alone. Deuteronomy chapter 6, look at verse number 4. The Bible says, Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might, and these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou wisest up. It sounds to me like it's pretty important to teach your children all the time about the truth of God's Word. He says, these words. This is what you need to teach them. And guess what? That passage that we were just reading about, about the woman that played the whore being stoned with stone, it's in the same book. Deuteronomy, we just flipped back a few chapters. In chapter 6, he's saying, these words need to be in your heart. These words need to be taught diligently to your children. These words, you need to talk about them when you're sitting down, when you're walking, when you lie down, when you rise up. Thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. He's like, you make sure that you always have this in front of you. Thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house and on thy gates. Sounds pretty important. That includes Deuteronomy 22, by the way. It is vital to teach, you know what? It's easy not to. It's easy not to. It's easy to play on your phone. It's easy to turn on the TV. It's easy to go take a nap. It's easy to do anything else in the world than to sit your kids down, get them to pay attention, stop being distracted, and teach them some truth. That's hard. How much do you love your children? And look, this is one of those things, you can't just be like, I'm going to do this and I'm just going to do this right now, and sit down and have some long session of like, there, I've taught them the Bible. Done. Check. Now I can go on watching football. No. No. It must be done regularly. It must be done continually. I mean, we have church regularly. We need this. We need to hear the Word of God. We need this over and over again in our lives, even as adults. Your children need it too. But you know what? Sometimes your children don't understand everything that's going on. Now look, don't put anything past the kids, just necessarily. I am amazed at, oftentimes, what my children will say to me. I'm just like, I didn't even know you were listening. Like, I can watch them sometimes, and they're kind of just like, doing things like this, or whatever, right? Just doing something. I'm just going like, good night. Well, at least they're not making any noise, right? And then like, on the ride home, they say something like, wait, you heard what I said? And you understood it? So you never know. I mean, great. But then other times, they have no clue, because their head's off in space, right? So you might have kids. And when I remember, when I could remember going to church, more often than not, my head was off in space. It was not where I was sitting. I'll tell you that. I was not paying attention to what was going on, because it was boring. Didn't like it at all. And you know what? Some kids, they might think the same way. They're here today. But parents, it's your job and your responsibility to make sure that they get this teaching. Make sure they understand. And you know what? Go through the book of Proverbs with them. Impart the wisdom. Proverbs is awesome. It's such a great book, and it's condensed on all this great, like, I mean, I call it everything in the Bible is real life. Proverbs is so hands-on, day-to-day truths that just will help you in this life, understanding people, understanding the world, working hard, doing what's right, basic moral principles in the book of Proverbs that will help guide a person's life if you can just listen to so many of the pitfalls that people make in life. Man, you could find them in Proverbs. And if you can teach this to your children and help them understand, look, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. How about you teach them or warn them about flattery? Flattery. Flattery is one of the tools of people who want to do you harm. All throughout Scripture, I preach an entire sermon about flattery. Proverbs 6 23, the Bible says, for the commandment is a lamp and the law is light and reproofs of instruction are the way of life to keep thee from the evil woman from the flattery of the tongue of a strange woman. And it goes on to talk about how there's women that try to seduce men. There's women who hunt for the precious life. There's women out there who are going to try to defile young, innocent men that don't know any better. They're foolish because they don't know these things. And you've got a woman, your Bible describes a woman who comes up and just catches this guy and kisses him and like, oh, man, I've been waiting for you my whole life. Here you are. Let's go to my house. You know, the good man's gone. He ain't coming home. Let's go have some love. And the foolish guy that doesn't know any better, oh, this girl really likes me. I mean, look at it. She's flattering you. To get what she wants. Watch out for the people who just want to just keep on giving you all kinds of praise, all kinds of, there's something wrong there. And look, it's usually not too hard to spot a flatterer. Everyone likes compliments. There's nothing wrong with compliments, but flattery is different. Flattery goes above and beyond. Flattery is going like, okay, you know, like, someone cooked something, someone's just like, and I don't want, you know, I hesitate to even use examples like this because someone out there is going to be like, I said that. And they're like, and it wasn't flattery. But imagine someone cooks something real good, right? You eat that and you're just like, oh, man, this is like the best, this is the best cake I've ever had in my life. This is great. That might be a normal thing to say. Wow, this is great. This is the best cake I've ever had. This is wonderful. But someone just going on and on would be like, I mean, this is so good. Did you go to baking school? I mean, you must teach baking school. I mean, this is so good. Like, I don't even know, I mean, you could probably sell this for like $1,000 a cake. I mean, people just go on and on. That's flattery. I mean, just keep on going. It's way overboard, right? Watch out. Now, look, that's a silly example to illustrate the point, but people will use that. Men and women alike will use that when they're going after people to maybe if they want to commit adultery or fornication and start to, with the men especially, pump up their ego, right? Oh, man, you're so strong. You work out? Hmm. Now, I get it. Look, there's flirting, you know, unmarried men and women, they might flirt a little bit, but watch out for the flattery. Now, look, I could preach a sermon about that, but parents, teach your children about that, because flattery can be more of a subtle way because people will eat it up. People like receiving praise from other people, and it might blind them to going, wait a minute, if no one's ever told you about it, you might just think, well, this person's being really nice. They must really like me. Instead of a red flag going off going, wait a minute, and if you have a humble heart, you already might be going, why are they saying all this stuff about me? And then you've been taught this, you know, that can save your children in their adult life when they're already gone. You need to teach them as much as you can while you have them and help them understand these things. That's one example. What about teaching them about the hyper-spiritual people? I mean, that was the email I got. This guy's trying to tell me how much soul winning I got. Forty-plus hours a week. That's what he said. And this same guy went to work for a friend of mine and quit after the first day because he was late for soul winning. Late. And it wasn't a church service. He didn't miss church. He was late for one soul winning time. Dude, if you got to work, you're going to work. You know what I mean? If you're planning on soul winning 40-plus hours a week, I mean, that's got to be your full-time job then, which is great if that could be your full-time job, but you can't quit jobs when you need to make money because you want to do this. You know, it's like, it's the hyper-spiritual. They want to be the superstar and whatever. Warn your children about the wolves in sheep's clothing. People aren't always what they seem because that's a tough lesson to learn if you have to learn it the hard way. It's a really tough lesson to learn. And sometimes, you know, maybe that does happen. It's always tough. It's always sad to see when you think someone's great and then they turn out to be a wolf. No one enjoys that. But if you could teach them right, then hopefully you could keep the damage down to a minimum to where the damage might just be a broken heart like, oh, I'm sad that that person turned out to be really bad when I thought they were really good. That's way better than having something actually happen, like some physical things going on and happening to that person. Or that person's screwing around with their head so much, you know, you can cause other doubts and other things to arise or whatever, right? You want to be able to teach your children to warn, warn about people that are just going to try to entice them to sin. Like Proverbs chapter 1. Proverbs, right? Proverbs saying, my son, my son, my son, hear my commandments, my son, forsake not my law, forsake my son, listen, my son. You know, when these people come to you and they try to get you to commit crimes and the Bible says here, this wasn't in my notes, but I had this in my this morning sermon. I didn't go to it for sake of time. My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. If they say, come with us, let us lay weight for blood, let us look privily for the innocent without cause, let us swallow them up alive as the grave and whole as those that go down in the pit. We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil. Cast in thy lot among us, let us all have one purse. My son, walk not down away with them. Refrain thy foot from their path, for their feet run to evil and make haste to shed blood. Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird and they lay weight for their own blood, they lurk privily for their own lives. So are the ways of everyone that is greedy of gain, which taketh away the life of the owners thereof. This is literally a father teaching his son, look, if people try to entice you saying, man, we could score a lot of money, this is going to be a big score, we could get this treasures and riches, man, don't go to that job, that lame job, you're flipping burgers, man, we could get all this money and it's quick and it's one day and you just go in and we go out and we'll take it from these people, who cares about them? Anyways, who cares about them? We'll just go take it. Watch out for these people, son, because you know what they're doing? They're laying weight for their own blood. These people who go and lay weight for other people, that's going to come back on their own heads. You live by the sword, you're going to die by the sword. You're going to spend your life trying to trick people and steal from them and do all this other stuff, guess what's going to come back on your head? Don't do it. Don't get involved with that. This is teaching from God's word that needs to be imparted unto your children. Like everything else in this book, parents, you do that job. Your responsibility. We could go on and on and on all night, I'm not going to, don't worry. I didn't even think this sermon was going to take this long to get through. It's a very simple subject, but so critical, so important. These people, and if you think, well, I would always spot the predator. It's funny because I read comments sometimes people online, there's always someone who's like, well, I knew, I knew from early on. I knew that guy was no good. People always want to say how much they know. Funny, you didn't say that then, before they were found out, but then after they're found out, everybody's Mr. Detective going, oh yeah, I knew that. Of course I knew that. I have the spirit of discernment. Where was your discernment? When no one saw the problem. And here's the thing, if you think you're that hyper-spiritual and you can spot all this stuff, well look, Judas was in Jesus' ministry for three years, for those three and a half years. Okay, now obviously Jesus knew. Jesus wasn't duped by him. Jesus knew he had to be there. He knew he was a fulfillment of scripture, but you know what? None of the other disciples knew. Peter, James, John. Oh, but you have more discernment than them, right? You're so much more spiritual than Peter. So much more spiritual than the apostle John. None of them questioned Judas. None of them was like, well, of course it's this guy. I mean, that guy's always stealing. That guy's always, you know, look, they don't make it obvious. They won't make it obvious. They don't want to. Now the really stupid ones do make it obvious. And thank God for their stupidity. Because it's much better to find them and out them right away and get them out of here so that they don't cause damage than it is when people can get in and creep in and infiltrate and even sit. People sit in churches for years. For years. And you know what? People like that, they might not be fishing in one pond. That's why they could go for so long. They could be trying other things in other places. You have no idea. They're just coming here maybe three times a week, maybe two or three times a week, maybe once a week. Who knows? They could just be establishing their credibility. Don't know. Don't know, right? And I'm not saying, start to suspect everybody. I'm saying is, we don't know. Watch your kids. They're going to stay with us in service. We're not sending them off to be under the responsibility of one adult somewhere who very well could be a pervert. And you know, these other churches, they are desperate oftentimes to get anyone to do these jobs that no one wants to do in teaching these kids. Like, I don't want to do that. I don't feel like I'm having a good, you know, whatever. And then they give these jobs to anybody in church and they could be giving it to some predator and they have no idea. And then bad things happen and predators know oftentimes how to deal with little ones, with unstable souls, to get them not to say anything. And it could go on and on and on for a very long time. It's horrible. Super destructive. I never want anything like that ever happening in this church. It's why we do things the way that we do. And please, please, parents, watch your children. Watch them. They're precious. You realize just how precious they are. If something bad happens, then you'll realize. Don't let it get to that point. We know they're precious. Spot our heads, have a word of prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you so much for the blessings that you give us, the blessing of having children, dear Lord. I pray, I thank you that we have so many children in our church services, Lord. I pray that you'd watch over and protect every single one of these little children, dear Lord. Keep them safe from evil. Lord, keep us safe from evil. Church, all of us that love you and want to serve you, dear Lord. Help us to be able to spot wicked people, spot the children of the devil, people that want to come in and do harm, the wolves, dear Lord. I pray that you would please help us to spot them before they would do any harm. Help us all to set up boundaries in our own lives that we would be able to ensure that our children would be safe. Ultimately, Lord, we know we have to rely on you for our safety at the end of the day. There's always going to be some time when we may not be able to have our eyes on things, dear Lord. But your eyes are always around. Please watch over, please help us to spot these things, Lord. We need your wisdom. Thank you for giving us so much instruction in your word to be able to identify these things. We love you. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. All right, we're going to sing one last song before we're dismissed. Brother Peter, please lead us. All right, church, if you could open up your hymnals. Song number 176. Song 176, Jesus Loves the Little Children. For this song, we're going to sing Jesus Loves the Little Children. Then we're going to sing it again. So Jesus died for all the children. We'll sing it one last time. Jesus rose for all the children. Song 176. The first. Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world. Jesus died for all the children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world. On the last. Jesus rose for all the children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world. Amen, church, great singing. Thank you so much for coming, you guys. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.