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

This morning's sermon, what I want to be preaching on is fundamentalism. Now obviously there's a lot of things I can preach about in fundamentalism, and before we get started I'm just going to start with kind of, you know, there's even, you know, people can define it in multiple ways too. Okay, but the way that I'm going to be talking about fundamentalism is a way that I think is pretty commonly accepted and pretty commonly used. I would say hopefully most commonly used. It's basically just looking back to the Bible or, you know, fundamentalism in general. I'm talking about Christian fundamentalism, right? Fundamentalism in general would just be going to the roots and going to, you know, the core and just looking at the basic principles and also kind of looking to it relatively strictly, looking at it as something that's like, well, here's what it said, instead of being very loosely and open to interpretation, you think about, you know, you could apply this to multiple areas. There's a lot of people today that will have this concept if you're even just applying it to law or looking at the Constitution of the United States, which is a legal document, right? You look at its legal document and some people look at that and say, oh, well, they want to interpret it as more of a living thing and it needs to be able, you know, it kind of changes with the times and you can kind of apply it. However, it needs to be applied. And it's a much more loose interpretation or understanding of a legal framework as opposed to what a more fundamental approach would just be like, well, look, I mean, this is what it says. Now, it doesn't mean that it doesn't allow for some applications to areas that are not literally spelled out. But what you're doing is you're saying, well, this is, I mean, this is what it says. We're not going to go against what it literally is just stating out here on the surface, right? You can make extra applications, but that is what is. And that's the type of fundamentalism that we follow here with the Bible is that this isn't just some guidelines. This isn't just some errant book written by man that they did the best that they could and we're going to try to do our best now to make sense of it all. And look, we have the Word of God. And when I'm talking about fundamentalism, we're talking about regardless of what anyone thinks, regardless of what's politically correct, regardless of what the world thinks, we believe in the complete inerrancy and truthfulness in God's Word and Holy Scripture and the Holy Bible. And when we go back and read the words of these books that we're taking them literally. And again, I'm not speaking to the times where there's poetic language being used and it's apparent that it's not literal. We're talking about using common sense when you read something and I don't even want to get into the nonsensical arguments. Oh, you say you take it literally, what about, you know, and come up with some stupid thing that's obviously being used as a parable or being used as an illustration and symbolic. Okay, those references are in there and I don't want to spend a lot of time in that because most of the arguments that would go against that are pretty stupid. Okay, there's people who just want to debate and want to nitpick. But you know what I'm talking about when I say we take the Bible literally because there's so many people out there that don't want to take it literally. They just want to make excuses for the Word of God and say, Oh, no, no, no, see, you need to really understand and what they'll do, no matter how they fill in the blank of what you need to understand, what they're doing is changing what the Bible actually says to whatever it is they want it to say. And when you see people doing that, that's not fundamentalism. So this is the fundamentalism that I'm talking about. Fundamentalism that I'm talking about is along the lines of Jeremiah 6.16 where the Bible says, Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways and see and ask for the old paths. Where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. Fundamentalism looks to the old paths. The opposite of fundamentalism, according to this passage I just read for you, Jeremiah 6.16, would be modernism. Right, just things that are modern and new, not the old path, not the old way of doing things. And you know, the Bible is the oldest way because it's from everlasting. The Word of God has always existed. It hasn't always been given to us, right? Obviously it's been delivered unto man at various points throughout history, but the Word of God has always existed. Always. It is eternal. So, this is the oldest path to look to, and it's the right way. And, you know, what I kind of want to deal with, like I said, there's a lot of things we could go into. We could look into, you know, I could preach at the inerrancy of the Scripture and literal and all this other stuff. But what I want to kind of just spend most of my time focusing on here is why people disparage fundamentalism just as a whole. Right, Christian fundamentalism. And you'll hear people make claims like, well, there's no love there. Right, or the methods don't really work. And, you know, we had a good example of this, just talking about this this morning, of how the world wants to portray fundamentalism with the news article that came out about us just calling us a hate group and everything else. I was talking to Brother Cory before service. He had just seen that. He hadn't known about that before. He had relatively recently seen that. You know, they completely portray something that's just not the way things are. He's been coming here. He knows. As I said, I wish other people, you know, could actually come and see what the church is about and what our ministry is about. You know, the news, the world's going to want to make it sound like, oh, man, these guys just sit around hating all day and they're all about hate. And that's what, you know, it's like, that's not what we're about at all. I mean, we have to be literally like people need to drag us into talking about a lot of that stuff when we're out loving people and trying to preach the gospel. It's what happened a couple of weeks ago. We had someone just just trying to get, you know, he's like, you guys are spreading hate. We're bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ to people. You're the one that's bringing up all this other stuff. You're the one that wants to talk about the homeless. You're the one that wants to talk about, you know, perverts. I'm not going out trying to talk to people about perverts. That's not what we're all about. We don't sit around talking about it. We just we're trying to serve the Lord and do our thing. But yes, we do believe what the Bible literally says. And that's where we are as fundamentalists. We believe what the Bible literally says. So when you read passages like in the law of God, God's perfect laws, we believe them. We believe that the judgment that God gave is appropriate and ought to be in the institute. It ought to be in place. Because how can we say that we know better than God and that God's judgment is wrong and God's judgment? You know, he doesn't know what he's talking about. We know better. We need to be more lenient on people because love is love or whatever you want to say, whatever stupid argument you want to make, whatever philosophy you want to follow. It doesn't matter if it doesn't line up with the word of God. Hey, look, we believe the word of God. And that's where fundamentalism lies, is that we need to you know, that's what we believe in here, is that it's all based off of what the Bible literally says. So, you know, people make these claims against fundamentalism that there's oh, there's no love there. Why? Because we have strict rules and they mistake strictness and strict rules and having high standards for no love. When in fact it's the exact opposite. We want our children, for example, to say, oh man, I don't know what it would be like to be like a Burzins kid. You know, they've got all those rules in that house and they can't do this and they can't do that. I don't know, they seem pretty happy to me. And you know, you can see for yourself, see if there's any love in our house. See if there's any love in this church. You all know what the answer is to that. But these are just claims that come from outsiders that want to make fundamentalism look bad. And you know, also they come from places where amongst fundamentalists you're going to have weirdos out there. You're going to have weird cultist churches out there. You're going to have organizations where you've got bad people, you know, buying the pulpit. And unfortunately that could tarnish and stain a reputation that people will apply to all churches. And that's unfortunate that people do that, but that is kind of the way it is. And often times you'll see people using anecdotal evidence of some person that went to a fundamental church and now they're just completely turned away from God. How many times have you heard that? Oh, you're just going to turn people away from God. You don't want people. And they blame fundamentalism for it. But that level of argumentation is just completely wrong, because if someone is practicing fundamentalism, and I would say it correctly, by going to the Word of God, if someone gets really upset and angry and is turned off by fundamentalism, then they're getting turned off by literally the Word of God. If that's what's being taught. If it's not man's opinion, if it's not these weird interpretations and telling you why the Bible doesn't mean what it actually says, but you're actually just preaching the Word of God for what it says, and people get turned off and, oh man, I don't want to have anything to do with that. If that's what you, well look, then you don't want anything to do with God's Word. So I would say, you could say, well that approach is turning people away. It's not that approach, it's the Word of God then that's turning people away. And at the end of the day, what are you going to do? Hey, if God said it again, am I just going to censor God's Word and change God's Word to try to make it easy for everyone that hears it? No. Now you're tampering with the truth, you're tampering with the Word of God. Who do I think I am to do something like that? To judge God's Word and to judge, oh well this is going to drive people away. That's way above our pay grade. God's the one who gave us His Word and we're supposed to just believe it and follow it and teach it. And don't hold anything back. But these people, they want to blame fundamentalism for it. Just because people don't want to accept something doesn't make it inherently wrong. Just because people want to reject it and say, well I'm not going to have anything to do. I don't even want to go to church then. If that's what the Bible says, because ultimately that's what the Bible says, then that's on you. Okay, but at least people need to have the opportunity to hear what the Bible actually says. What would be the point of getting a bunch of hypocritical people to follow a hypocritical God if you're not going to give them all of the truth and just say, well here's who God is and here's what He said. And it's all written for us and preserved in His Word. The moment you start lying about it or not covering it and not telling people about it, then you're getting them to follow and believe in something that's a fraud. That's deceitful. And again, that's vanity. It's empty. There's no value in that whatsoever. This is why I'm not afraid or ashamed or embarrassed about any doctrine that I believe, about anything that I believe about God's Word, about Jesus Christ, about our church, about anything. I will boldly, I mean, why do you think I'm putting all of our sermons out on YouTube? And for the whole world to see, and it's free, and we pass stuff out, all the stuff that we believe in, hey, it's wide open. And when people ask me about my beliefs, I'm not going to shy away and tell them something different or try to water it down. I'm going to state explicitly exactly what I believe, and I'm going to do so by trying to use as much Scripture as I can to say, well, this is what the Bible says. So these people ultimately that really want to disparage fundamentalism, what you'll oftentimes find is, again, it's either one of two things. One, they're just in a really weird, bad place where you maybe had a false prophet as a preacher or some bad people have infiltrated and they had been hurt or abused by somebody. And that's wicked and wrong. And obviously we're condemning that, but that's not fundamentalism. That's damage from a predator, it's damage from a bad person. But the other thing that happens then, more often than not, is that they just don't really like what the Bible says. And they would prefer to have somebody tell them that it means something else. And we have evidence of this in Scripture that this is the case for many people. That they don't want to hear from God. They don't want to hear the truth. So it's not fundamentalism's fault. It's not the problem of taking the Bible literally. That's the problem. The problem is people not wanting to accept what the Bible actually says. And, you know, people who want to look at, oh, you guys have such a bad approach and you're so forward and people don't want to hear someone yelling and screaming and talking about their sin and everything else. You know, why don't you just try doing it differently? Or you could change your method a little bit. Well, if we're going to be fundamentalists, then we're going to try to follow what the Bible actually says about these things. Right? We're going to try to follow a pattern that God laid out, because God used prophets. And we see one here in Isaiah chapter 30. Let's see how the prophets of God preached. Let's see how they did it. What did they say? Did they sugar coat the message? Did God change His methods when He wasn't getting a good response from the people? Did God say, oh, oh, wait, I'm sorry, I offended you. I guess I shouldn't have said it like that when I was calling out your sin and rebuking you. Maybe I should try a different tactic and try to add a little honey to that so that it could be more palatable. Do we see God doing that anywhere in Scripture at all? Does God just take it back a notch and say, oh, no, wait, not one, no, not one, no, not one, not one time do we see that happen in the Scripture? He doesn't take it softer on His people when they're getting into sin. And the reason why is because He loves them. But I'm going to get ahead of myself there. Look at Isaiah 30 where we started. Look at verse number 1. The Bible says, woe to the rebellious children. And that starts it off right there. It's the rebellious children. This is who we're going to be reading here is on rebellious children. Children who are rebelling against God's authority and against God and against what God says because they don't want to hear it. Said the Lord, that take counsel but not of me and that cover with a covering but not of my spirit that they may add sin to sin. He starts off by calling out their sin. Now this is the word of God but this is also the prophet Isaiah. Right? I mean we're in the book of Isaiah and Isaiah is just repeating the message of God which is what fundamentalism is supposed to do. Take the message of God and repeat it. Right? So these aren't the words of Isaiah. These are the words of God. And when I'm preaching or reading the word of God here, not when I'm speaking with my own words, but when I'm reading the word of God here, these aren't even, you know, these aren't my words, these are God's words that's coming out here. So if I'm repeating them, I'm going to do what Isaiah did and repeat them and say exactly what God wanted said. So he starts off in chapter 30 here calling them rebellious children and talking about how they're adding sin to sin. And what you want to notice and what you want to see is that these people who are rebellious and these people who are adding sin to sin, it's not that they're not religious at all. They actually are really religious. They actually like going to church. They actually like having their religious ceremony. They like doing things and hearing someone, you know, talk to them or teach them or whatever out of God's Word. They like that. That's what they're all about. But God's calling them rebellious and they're adding sin unto sin. So just because people may like going to church or whatever doesn't mean that it's right and God actually calls out and rebukes people who are rebellious in this manner. So let's keep reading though so we can get more of the details on what he's dealing with here. Verse number two, that walk to go down into Egypt and have not asked at my mouth to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh and to trust in the shadow of Egypt. Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion. So basically what they're doing is they're not trusting in the Lord for their defense. They're trusting in Egypt. They're trusting in the world. They're trusting in the arm of flesh to save them, not in God. Verse number four, for his princes were at Zoan and his ambassadors came to Hainis. They were all ashamed of a people that could not profit them nor be in help nor profit but a shame and also reproach. The burden of the beasts of the south into the land of trouble and anguish. From whence come the young and old lion, the viper and fiery flying serpent. They will carry their riches upon the shoulders of young asses and their treasures upon the bunches of camels to a people that shall not profit them. For the Egyptians shall help in vain and to no purpose. Therefore, if I cried concerning this, their strength is to sit still. Now go write it before them in a table and note it in a book that it may be for the time to come forever and ever. God tests his people, he's trying his people, they're turning to the world, they're turning to whatever physical strength they could find. Egypt is a wicked place. Egypt was a place that had them in bondage and Egypt didn't change much after they left. There's still a really wicked place. So they're turning to this wicked, heathen place, Egypt, for their salvation, for their guidance, for their direction, for them to come in and help them. And God's saying, you know what? You're going to go to a people that aren't going to profit you. They're not going to help you. They're not going to be there for you. They're not going to support you. Their help is going to be in vain. It's going to be no purpose at all. You're going to the wrong place. Because God's trying to instruct them here and rebuke them and tell them, hey no, you need to come to me because I'm the defender, I'm the protector, I'm the one who's going to lead you in the right way, right? But look what he says here, and some people might say this is harsh, but he's saying, now go write it before them in a table and note it in a book. He's like, write this down and make sure this just gets established. Write it on a tablet, write it down. This is getting put down. It's like being written in stone. Just make sure this is written that it may be for the time to come forever and ever. He's like, this is just going to be a permanent spot on this people. And look at what he says in verse 9. That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Lord. Funny, we have people like that today. Anyone says wills, they don't want to. They don't want to hear the word of the Lord. People today don't want to hear, there's nothing new under the sun. God's people, the children of Israel at this time, they didn't want to hear it either. So what did they do? Look at verse number 10. Which say to the seers, so a seer in old times is a prophet, it's a preacher. This is someone who is supposed to be a seer of God's word, someone who is a preacher of God's word. Which say to the seers, see not. We don't want to hear what you have to say. And to the prophets, prophesy not unto us right things. We don't want to know what's right. We don't want to know what God says. Speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits. So the people that want to say, oh, fundamentalism, you know, you guys just have a really bad method, you're turning people off and people don't want to go there because you're screaming about sin and you're talking about all this stuff from the Old Testament and God's law. But don't you know people don't want to hear God's law? People don't want to, I know they don't want to. So what they're going to do is they're going to go to the fund center where they're not going to hear anything about God's law because they want someone to speak smooth things unto them. They don't want anything to upset them. They want anything to offend them. They want someone to prophesy deceits unto them. Just tell me some lies so I can feel good about myself. Tell me some lies. Tell me whatever you want and say the Son of the Lord and I'm good with that because I don't care what's true. I don't care what's right. I don't care about looking to the word of the Lord for what it actually says. I just want to feel good about myself. This is the crowd that rejects fundamentalism. There's nothing new that's happened in Isaiah's day. It's happening in our day too. And it's the same group of people that want to not hear the law of the Lord. They just want to hear smooth things. Because you know what that means? The things that the law of the Lord is not smooth to people. It's actually very divisive. It divides. God's word divides right from wrong. But see, they want to smooth it all over and make it all gray. They don't want black and white. They just want to smooth it all out. You've got right over here. No, let's just kind of mix them together and just kind of smooth off all the hard edges. And we're all just not that good. No one's going to judge anything. Nothing can ever be said as right or wrong. And we're good, right? That's what people want to hear. Those are the smooth things. But you know what? Those are the deceits too. Because God has right and wrong. Because God made His law for a reason. Verse 11, get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. Again, this is what the people are saying. The people who want the smooth things, that want to prophesy deceits, they're saying, get out of our way. Get out of the path. Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. Verse 12, wherefore. Again, back to how God teaches and preaches. He's calling this out and calling it for what it is. Do you think that the people who are religious, that were following these seers, that they're saying the sea knots and prophesy, do you think that they would say that that's an accurate depiction of who they were? Probably not. They'd be like, oh, why are you saying that about me? We actually love God. What do you mean? They would fight against this. Say, we're not like that. Cause who's going to say, yep, we're saying we want the Holy One of Israel not to be before us. But what God's doing here, He's not quoting them verbatim. But He's quoting what they actually mean. What's in their heart. It's the same thing today. You don't have people actually saying, that are going to Christian churches saying, well, we don't want to have anything to do with Jesus. But in effect, that's what they're saying when they're rejecting the Bible and rejecting what God's Word says. They're rejecting the Word. Jesus Christ is the Word. And they don't want to hear the Word. They don't want to hear the Word taught. They don't want to look at it and say, yep, that's what the Lord said. Thus saith the Lord. They don't want that. They want something else. They want the smooth things. And this is how God describes it. And it's the same thing. So now, but there's a consequence to this. Verse 12, wherefore, thus saith the Holy One of Israel, because ye despise this Word and trust in oppression and perverseness, and stay thereon. Therefore, this iniquity shall be to you as a breach, ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant. Now, I'm not going to go on and on and on about all the different destruction and doom and gloom that they're going to face, but this is what the Word of God says. And this is what the Bible goes into. This is what it talks about. And this is what it warns about. And one of the big problems is that people end up allowing themselves to be too influenced by the philosophies of the world. In Isaiah's day, they were influenced by Egypt. The philosophies of Egypt. They liked what Egypt had to offer. They were looking to Egypt for their way. They were looking to Egypt as their guide. That's what they were looking to. The Bible says in Colossians 2, verse 8, beware lest any man spoil you, think ye of the Lord, and ye of the Lord, and beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. So what happens is, you know, you can get these philosophies in your head. You could read and hear and study on what philosophers said, and that's going to be where you get your morality from. That's going to determine right and wrong from you, and then you look at the Bible and say, well, that doesn't match up. Well, that doesn't sound right, and that's when people want to start changing the Bible because it doesn't match their philosophy, which is why the Bible says, hey, watch out for those philosophies because if they're contradicting the word of God, then they're not right. And this goes, I mean, you've got a whole spectrum of philosophies out there, of people who don't just stick with God's word. Some are closer to the truth than others, but I'll go, I'll talk about one that I think is real close to the truth, and that's like a political philosophy of, you know, libertarianism or people who believe in freedom, right? Even to the extreme of anarchism where they say there should be no rules. Well, when you take the word of God, the word of God says there is a ruler, there is a lawmaker, there is a judge. It's God Himself, and that God made these laws, and see, they'll take their philosophy and say, well, I mean, if two consenting adults want to do whatever they want to do behind closed doors in their bedroom, they should be free to do that. So yeah, if you're following that philosophy, that makes sense. But what you're doing now is ignoring the word of God. And then they want to take, they say, oh, no, no, no, I believe both. I want to believe that philosophy and the Bible, but then what they do is they start correcting the Bible, where they can say, well, how does this, because I believe this is true, but I also believe this is true, and they try to make the two work, and instead of changing their vain philosophy, they try to change God's word. And it's like, how about you get that the other way and just take, accept the word of God as being the truth, and then any philosophy that you want to follow, make that conform to the Bible. Beware lest any man spoil you, is what the Bible says. It's going to ruin you, just spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men, because those philosophies are all built on man. So those are all man's word. This is not. Proverbs 17, verse 15. Turn, if you would, to, are you still in Isaiah? Turn to Isaiah 58. See, the problem with the liberal crowd when it comes to church, when it comes to, you know, the people of the world and the people of the world and the people of the world and the people of the world when it comes to, everything about following the Bible and serving the Lord is that it's going to come to a head when you see and read verses in the Bible that talk like Proverbs 17, 15 says, He that justifieth the wicked and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the Lord. So when people want to start justifying the wicked, Jonathan, sit still and pay attention. Oh, it's not that bad. Oh, you don't understand. Oh, and start making all these excuses for what the Bible says. No, that's wickedness. Just call it out for what it is. The Bible says that that's an abomination. So the person that wants to make the justifications, they're an abomination. And at the same time, it's kind of funny, too, because usually those same people are going to be the ones condemning the fundamentalists, too. No, that's wicked. That's being called out, and that ought to be judged appropriately according to God's law. And other people want to justify the wicked, say, no, no, no, you guys are, you know, you're calling us wicked. We've had people, again, just like that guy that was yelling at me or whatever last week, you know, in his mind, we're wicked. We're evil people. And he's out there condemning the just. I mean, he was out there trying and just doing everything he could to just stop all the sowing. He's an enemy of the cross of Christ. But this is where that mindset will get you. Isaiah 58, let's look at God's method of preaching. Again, this is Isaiah. This is how God teaches you, I don't like those fundamental churches where you got someone who yells and screams and it's just too loud for me and, you know, we're just trying to make people feel bad. We're just trying to make people feel for what the Bible said, how God was instructing Isaiah to preach. Verse number one, cry aloud. Cry aloud! Spare not. Don't hold back. Hey, Isaiah, don't hold back when it comes to preaching. Cry aloud, don't hold back. Lift up your voice like a trumpet. A trumpet's pretty loud. It really is. You hear trumpet playing? You know, like if you hear a trumpet otherwise it's just gonna overpower all the rest of the instruments because they're so loud. Trumpets can be very loud and he's saying cry aloud, spare not, lift up your voice like a trumpet and then do what? And tell everyone how much you love them. I love you! Yes! Now, there's nothing wrong with telling people you love them, but that's not what he's instructing him to do here when he's telling him to pray. He says, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. God's instructing his preacher, his prophet here, Isaiah, to, hey, don't hold back. This isn't something that you have to do quietly and discreetly. He's saying, you know what, you get up, you yell, you scream about it, you cry aloud, you don't hold anything back, you show them their sins, you show them their transgressions. You're preaching according to the Bible. I mean, it's right here. Now, the other option you could take is to say, oh, yeah, that was just for him. And then you could find other ones, you know, stomp with the foot and smite with the hand, oh, that was just for him. And this is how people who don't want to just accept the teaching of Scripture can just brush it all aside, well, then what is for me? I thought all Scripture was given by inspiration of God and is profitable. For us today. For our instruction in righteousness. Because how else are you going to determine how to do it? It's the same type of conversation I have with people who claim to believe the Bible, but they don't want to have the same set of laws that God laid out at least the same judgments. It's like, well, where are you going to turn to? Someone who studies law, someone who studies history of law doesn't like that. Why would you go to some corrupt source when you've got a pure source right here? When we could see how does God feel? What did God instruct on this? Wow, well, that must be right then. But I don't like what that says. Okay? Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not true. It doesn't mean it's not right. There's a humility involved, and this is going to blow people away. There's a humility involved with being a fundamentalist. Because what you're doing, and again, people are not going to like this and are going to disagree with this. I don't care what you disagree with it, but what you're doing, the humility is saying God's word is right. I'm not going to judge God's word and say I know better and say, oh, no, this really means something else. And if you actually understood Greek and Hebrew, then you would know that. I can read what it says, and it says what it means. And you either accept it or not. I accept it because I don't think I'm better than God or smarter than God or no more than God and that my opinion is better than God's. And if this is the way he speaks on whatever subject, then I'm going to humble myself and accept that whether I like it or not. So when I read in the Bible I'm going to humble myself and say, well, that's wrong then instead of trying to justify myself. At least that's the attitude we ought to have, and that's the attitude that fundamentalism teaches, submission to God's word as the final authority. And what I like to ask people, you know, the people who don't like fundamentalism, if fundamentalism is really where are we going to find the right way? Oh, no, yeah, that was just for Isaiah to scream aloud and spare a nod and show people their sins, but that doesn't work these days. Well, what's the right way? The person that despised fundamentalism and vowed never to go back to church and they go off the deep end into sin, would going to a fund center church have helped that person? Would it really have made sense? And the problem is in that person's heart, because as soon as anything comes close to actually touching the word of God, they're going to back off from it because they don't want to hear it. So what's the point in holding a whole service but then putting this book aside and just, no, we don't really need to worry about that, or maybe reading one little verse and only talking about positivity or whatever, but now you're catering to the people who don't want to hear the word of God. And it's the same way with raising children. You don't just cater to the whims of your children. And we are children of God, and God is the lawmaker, God's the judge, God's the father. Okay, God gave the commandment, so we as children don't get to go, no, don't like that, I'm just going to do what I want to do. I mean, you could and you're going to have consequences. The same way in a loving household when children just think that you're going to be as a parent, you're going to just cater their whims, doesn't work that way. And if it does work that way, it's going to destroy everybody. It's going to destroy the whole family. If you allow your kids just to have the run of the house, that destroys the whole family. There's going to be no joy, there's nothing good that's going to come out, it's going to come your own destruction. When people don't hear about their sins being preached on, they're going to be more emboldened to go out and begin to sin. And what does sin lead to? It reaches last week, it leads to death, destruction, misery. That's what we're trying to avoid. So you don't actually love someone by telling them lies, by telling them the sin's not so bad, by saying, oh no, we don't even need to talk about those things, let's just talk about the positive only things, that doesn't help anybody. Because guess what, God's law still is His law, and God is still not going to be mocked, and God is still going to judge. Whether you talk about it or not, whether you want to hear about it or not, that's the fact, that's the truth. It's better to know the truth and deal with it than to hide your head in the sand and not want to know anything about it. You could throw up excuses all day long, but it's not going to change God's mind, because at the end of the day, reality is reality. It's like the people who say, well hell doesn't exist because I don't believe in it. And they're out there. No, we're actually out here because hell does exist. You don't have to believe it, but I'll tell you what, it exists, it's real. And you wishing it away doesn't make it not real anymore. It's a fact. You could lie to yourself all you want and reject it, but at the end of the day, you're going to find out. Hopefully, you don't have to find out the hard way, but either way, you're going to find out. You either accept it now and deal with it and get right with God and accept Jesus Christ as your savior, or you could just, nope, don't believe it, and then you're going to find out the hard way. Turn if you go to 2 Timothy, chapter 4. 2 Timothy, chapter 4. You say, oh, passive versions, you know, why are you going to all these Old Testament scriptures? You know, we're looking at Isaiah and we could go to Jeremiah and we could go to Ezekiel and we could look at all the messages that they preach and we could read all those books, we could see what God commanded them to preach, and you're going to see time and time again that they're preaching on sin, over and over and over again. You're going to find that throughout scripture, but it's not just the Old Testament. How about the instruction to a pastor, to a preacher? In Timothy, the apostle Paul's instructing Timothy. We're going to look at 2 Timothy, chapter 4. A direct instruction that's going to impact his preaching. In the New Testament, there's a New Testament church, Timothy, and your pastor in that church, here's what I want you to preach from the apostle, the apostle Paul, from the Holy Ghost. How about that? 2 Timothy, chapter 4, verse 1, I charge thee therefore before God. He's giving him an instruction, this is a charge, here's his charges. Before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge the quick and the dead and is appearing in his kingdom. Hey, there's a judge coming. Preach the word. Preach. He didn't say preach your thoughts. He didn't say preach what's in your heart. He didn't say preach what people want to hear. He says preach the word. Preach the word. Be instant in season, out of season. Look at this, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine. The people who hate fundamentalism, you know what they want to do? They want to read this verse and exhort. And that's all they're going to focus on week after week after week after week. He gave him three charges here about preaching the word. One of them is positive. Two are negative. Reprove. Prove people how they're wrong. Rebuke. Tell people that they're wrong. And exhort. Encourage people. And he says do all those three things with long suffering and with doctrine. Why is it doctrine important? When you rebuke people, it's not good enough just to rebuke them and tell them they're wrong. You do it with long suffering and with doctrine. You show them, hey, doctrine's coming from the word of God. This is why you're wrong. This is where you need to get right. You need a rebuking. And things will go well for you. That's an encouragement. But these people who are lopsided in their Christianity, in their Christian walk, and they just want to hear the exhortation, no, you're missing two-thirds of the puzzle there. This is an instruction to a New Testament preacher. Verse number three, for the time will come. But you need to do this now, because the time's going to come to endure sound doctrine. Again, that word will. They don't want to hear it. They're not going to endure. They don't want to endure sound doctrine. They don't want to have anything to do with it. But after their own lust, shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears? This is all foretold in Scripture if we could actually just look to it and read it and say, oh, yeah, that's what it says. Because of their lust, because of their own sins, they're just going to want to give themselves their own teachers, because they have itching ears. When you have that itch, nothing feels better than scratch. That itch, right? When you get a mosquito bite, oh, man, that's itchy. You want to scratch those things to get some relief. But these people, they have itching ears. They have certain things that they want that doctrine. Stop going to the word of God. Just tell me some encouraging story, be a motivational speaker to me, tell me some instance of your life that's going to bring me hope, and that's all I want to hear. But let's not go to the word of God, and this is what people are doing today. They don't want to hear the sound doctrine. They just want to heap to themselves teachers, and you know they're doing that. I mean, look at the people who don't claim the Bible, like Tim Robbins, these motivational speaker guys, they make tons of money out doing their seminars and their speaking and stuff, but then you start adding, oh, we're going to put some more authority to this by saying I'm a preacher of God. This is a church. We're going to insert the name of Jesus, but basically all they're doing is the same thing, because they're not going back to the word of God. They like the money. Plenty of teachers out there that people can heap to themselves when they have itching ears. Verse four, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables. They want to hear the truth. Just tell me a good story. But watch thou, so you know what, these people are going to do that, watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry. Does it look like anything's changed from the Old Testament to the New Testament and God's preaching? No. No. Have we been seeing a lot of encouragement in the Psalms? We sure have, but have we also been seeing a lot of condemnation in the Psalms, too? You better believe we have. Because we need both. We need to hear both, because God said it. If he didn't think we needed it, then he wouldn't have said it. It wouldn't be in the word. So why all the rebuking, reproving and preaching on sin? It's so people can repent, so people can get right. So people can actually walk in the way where God's going to be pleased with them and they can receive blessings. It works, by the way, it works. Jonah had a job. Jonah had a real short book of the Bible, only four chapters long, and it's all about this preacher, this prophet, that God wants to send to do a job. He didn't want to do it. God kind of persuades him to do it through some not very pleasant means, being swallowed by a whale, being vomited up on shore, you know, all that story. But then he sees it God's way and he decides, okay, I'll go preach the message. Jonah began to enter into the city of day's journey and he cried. So here he is. What's he doing? He's crying out. He's sparing not. He's lifting up his voice like a trumpet and said, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. Well, where's the encouragement in that? And God's going to destroy this city. God's going to destroy Nineveh in 40 days. And he's crying out as he's going to do it. That's not going to earn you a lot of friends. That's not a popular thing to say. But God said, preach it anyways. And you know what? The people of Nineveh needed to hear that message because they were involved in wickedness. They were involved in sin that was so bad that God was going to destroy that city. But here's why we do it. Because guess what happened? The Bible says in verse five, so the people of Nineveh got there and preached on their sin and preached on God's judgment and preached on the destruction. And you know what? People actually received it and they believed it. And they said, oh, man, we better do something about this. The people of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth from the greatest of them, even to the least of them. They took it serious. This is why God has the instructions to give rebellious people. They're going to be rebellious anyways. If you try to cater to them, you're completely just, it's vanity. You're spinning your wheels. You just preach what God said and there's going to be some people who are interested in hearing the truth and everyone else. Well, what can you do if they don't want to hear the truth anyways? It's like trying to help a drug addict that doesn't want to get off drugs at all. What are you going to do for that? There's nothing they're going to do it. You help the people that go, wait, man, I want nothing to do with that. Then there's some help there. There's something you can do. You can help the people that say, well, I want to know what the truth is. I just want to know what's right. Yeah, sure, great. Here, this is what the truth is. Here's what God said. But the people that just want to stop their ears and just hire someone else to go and tickle their ears for them, that's not good for that person. No matter how slowly or gradually you try to insert God's word, if they don't want to hear it, they don't want to hear it. So it's best just to lay it all out there and say, here's the truth. Hey, destruction's coming. Hey, hell's coming. You either accept Jesus Christ or you're going to burn in hell. And that's the way it is. Jonah 3.8 says, but let man and beast be covered. It's like a proclamation for them to be proclaiming a fast and everything else, be covered with sackcloth and cry mildly unto God. You let them turn everyone from his evil way and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent and turn away his fierce anger that we perish not? And God saw their works that they turned from their evil way and God repented of the evil that he had said that he would do unto them and he did it not. He did it with God and God didn't destroy them. Great example of how this type of preaching works. And it's actually found in, I don't have to tell you a story of this working from my personal life and other people I've seen and all the people that I've seen have their lives changed in churches like ours and our church through the preaching of God's word. I don't even have to tell you that because we just go straight to the entire city. It's written right here. You don't have to believe my words. You can believe God's words. Second Peter chapter one, it's the last point. I kind of want to close it with this because I've been talking about it a lot. When it comes to fundamentalism, and I said before, we take the Bible literally. I said this multiple times. I kind of left this as the last point. Just explain and show from scripture that that is the right approach to take the Bible literally, to take the Bible for what it says and not try to twist it or interpret it because we have that instruction here. Look at verse number 15 of Second Peter chapter one. Moreover, I will endeavor that you may be able after my disease to have these things always in remembrance. So Peter's admonishing the people to say, you know what? Even when I'm gone, I want you always to be able to remember these. I want this teaching to stay with you. Verse 16, for we have not followed cunningly devised fables, because they're out there, right? There's a lot of people who cunningly devise fables, fairy tales, stories, things that are not true. When we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus is such a voice to him from the excellent glory. This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven, we heard when we were with him in the holy mount. So he's given his own testimony saying we were there. We heard God the Father speaking to Jesus Christ. I mean, we were there in the mount. We heard the voice. We were with him. What a powerful testimony. But then he says this in verse 19, we have also, so in addition to that, in addition to that experience, in addition to being on the mount and hearing that for themselves, we also have a more sure word of prophecy. We have an even more sure, more sure than what we heard with our own ears. We have a more sure word of prophecy where unto ye do well that ye take heed. You do very well if you pay attention to this and take heed unto this sure word of prophecy that we have. As unto a light that shineth in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts. Look at verse 20, knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scriptures of any private interpretation. That is spelled out. You cannot just take any prophecy of scripture and just decide, well, I'm going to interpret it for you. It's not there for your interpretation. The interpretation's in the words itself, just like this verse. Well, I think when he says there, it's of no private interpretation. I think it means what it says, folks. It doesn't really need expounding. Private interpretation. I'm just going to take this and just do what I want with it. Look, the prophecy is a sure prophecy. Try to interpret it to mean something that it doesn't say because that would be what an interpretation is. You're interpreting it to mean something. It's not a private interpretation. It means what it says. Verse 21, for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. It didn't come from man. It came from the Holy Ghost. And now if we continue into chapter two, right, because there's not normally chapter divisions when the word was given. He continues on the thought here, but there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them and bring upon themselves, swift destruction. So the whole purpose of him in chapter one, talking about how they need to take heed and he's building up the word of God and he's saying, look, there's no private interpretation. The reason why he brings that up is because he's leading into all this whole chapter here, chapter two, about all about the false prophets and warning them, well, hey, you know what? There's also false prophets among you that you can't just privately interpret the scripture because there's going to be false prophets that are going to come out and do that very thing. They're going to come out and try to do that and they're going to try to twist it and interpret it and say this is what it really means, so you need to understand, you know, Peter's laying it out here, the Holy Ghost is laying it out here, no prophecy of the scriptures of any private interpretation. He's going to say, well, that's your private interpretation. You know what? If you have that attitude, then just go find someone else to listen to then. Go somewhere else. I think I can see people's faces here. I'm pretty sure everyone's in agreement that this is a very good scripture we could look to and say this is what we mean when we take the Bible literally. We're not trying to twist it. Verse 18 says, for when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh through much wantonness. Those that were clean escaped from them who live in error, while they promised them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption for whom a man has overcome of the same as he brought in bondage. So they speak these great swelling words, but their vanity is rebuking. They're not even exhorting. They're just speaking a bunch of vain words. Oh, man, I don't really have a lot of time for this, but when I was in Chicago, I was still trying to do the whole challenge and stuff, so I found these two teenage girls. They were playing basketball to preach the gospel to, and they were Muslims. So I gave them an opportunity. They were totally open to him and saying, Excuse me, sir, you know, and that conversation was over an hour long, over an hour long. That was on my bad for not cutting it a little bit earlier, but this guy, every time he tried to explain his religion, it's just like you're saying, I'm just sitting there going, he's saying a lot of words, and I'm trying to follow him, but it's like he's saying nothing, because ultimately it's just like, sometimes I think people think, if I could just continue talking for a long time, and people's eyes are going to glaze over, and you could win an argument, because no one wants to talk to you anymore, because you're not saying anything. You're not addressing the issues, you're just going off, and you just kept on bringing up these weird stories from the Quran or whatever, but there's no point to it. It's like you bring up a story that's being real solid, because even him, they're very ecumenical on the set, they're all moving that way at least, at least many of the people are. Now he wasn't a fundamentalist, right? Because there's fundamentalist people who believe in Islam, and they actually say, no, we're going to believe what the book says, and that's their form of fundamentalism, but that's what fundamentalism does, they say, we're just going to believe what the Bible says. Most religions aren't. Most religions aren't, because they just like making up their own God, and they'll go with whatever they were brought up with, or whatever's closest to what they want, and they don't care about what the truth is, and it's sad, and it's unfortunate, but just like these false prophets, they speak great, swelling words of vanity, I'm not saying this guy talked to a false prophet, I mean he was deceived, I don't think this guy, but it just reminded me of just these great, swelling words of, just empty. They allure through the lusts of the flesh, and this is how, you know, calling wickedness, it's not that bad, just making light of sin. That allures through lusts of the flesh, oh, you mean I can drink? Oh, you mean I can do whatever, and it's really not that big of a deal? That's an allure to people, and that's one of the methods that they've been given that money. And they promise them liberty, liberty, freedom, right? Great. But they lead them into sin, which brings them into bondage. So it says they themselves are servants of corruption. You're gonna listen to promises of liberty, promises of freedom from someone who's just brought in total bondage. That doesn't make any sense. You're like, how can you teach someone about freedom when you're like, oh man, freedom's really great, I'm gonna promise you freedom, I could lead you to freedom, but you're in bondage. What are you talking about? I'm gonna let the free guy lead me into freedom from my bondage. He done it. Trust that. Fundamentalism was practiced properly, right? When we just go to the core of fundamentalism. It's not about exalting and it's not a person, it's not a cult of personality, it's not any of that, because man is not perfect, and man will fail you, and oftentimes where people have been failed by fundamentalism, it's because of the result of a sinful man, a sinful person. That's where it comes from. But it is about focusing on the word of God, because the word is perfect. And we know that there's gonna be no failure there, no faulting. It's completely right. We have to walk with God, according to what the Bible literally says. Responsibility's on you. It's not on me. It's up to everyone individually to know and to want to know and to seek the truth and to ensue it and to follow it with their own humble heart, trying to be, you know, wanting to be taught by the word of God and just accepting what it says. There's always gonna be people who reject fundamentalism, and you know what? It is what it is. But hopefully that'll help you. Maybe, you know, sometimes, especially when people get started in a church like this, you know, they might start talking to family members, because oftentimes when people get plugged into churches like this, they oftentimes will start getting real excited about serving God. That's something that I'm aware of, where people actually could get fired up. Man, I want to do this and start making changes. And that causes people to take notice of what's going on in their life, and oftentimes they'll start speaking about it more, too. So when people want to tear down fundamentalism, oh, you're part of a fundamentalist group. What is that? You're some cult or some weirdo, why you've got a preacher that yells on sin and everything else, and how we actually do receive the word of God as it is in truth, the word of God, not the word of man, and that we don't make excuses for it. It says what it says. We're not going to privately interpret it. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you so much for giving us such great instruction in your life, and that we understand it better, and that we would only do those things that are going to be pleasing in your sight. Lord, build our church. Help us to reach more people as a church. I pray that you would please bring people in that have the desire to know the truth, to seek the truth, and that will not just be hearers of the word, but doers also, dear Lord. I pray that you would please just bless our church today, and help