(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.) you you you you you you you you you you you you All right everybody welcome to stronghold Baptist Church take you with your songbook and turn the song number 42 Song number 42. We're gonna sing my latest son is singing fast Again that's song number 42. Again that's song number 42. My latest son is singing fast. My latest son is singing fast. My race is nearly run. My strongest trials now are past. My triumph is begun. Now come, come, angel man, come hang around me, sing. Oh, bury away all your soul, he leads to my eternal home. Oh, bury away all your soul, he leads to my eternal home. I know, I hear the holy race of friends and can't redeem him. The battle waits on Jordan's face, the crossing must be near. Oh, come, angel man, come hang around me, sing. Oh, bury away all your soul, he leads to my eternal home. Oh, bury away all your soul, he leads to my eternal home. I almost reach my every hope, my spirit loudly sings. Thy holy ones behold they come, I hear the noise of wings. Oh, come, angel man, come hang around me, sing. Oh, bury away all your soul, he leads to my eternal home. Oh, bury away all your soul, he leads to my eternal home. Oh, bear my lonely heart to him, who'll let me die for me. His blood now cleanses from my sins and gives me victory. Oh, come, angel man, come hang around me, sing. Oh, bury away all your soul, he leads to my eternal home. Oh, bury away all your soul, he leads to my eternal home. Again, we're going to sing song number five. Song number five, When I Survey the Wonder's Cross. When I survey the wonder's cross, on which the prince of learning died. I raise his gain, I count but loss, that more content on love I find. Forbidden, Lord, that I should boast, save in the death of Christ my God. All the vain things that drive me boast, I sacrifice them to his blood, seek from his hand, his hands, his feet. Sorrow and love flow, we go now. Didst us love and sorrow be, or forced to boast so rich a crown? Were the whole realm but a major mine that were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, he met my soul high, wide, by your arm. Amen. All right, great singing this morning. This time we're going to go through our announcements. If you do not have a bulletin, just slip your hand up real high. We'll make sure that we get one out to you. And if you open up to the first page, you'll see our service times listed there. It's always Sunday morning at 1030 Sunday afternoon. Again at 4 p.m. and then Wednesday night 7 is our Bible study. We're in Isaiah chapter 39 this week. We've got the soul winning opportunities listed there. And then the final numbers for salvation and baptism for the month of December as well as for 2021. So you can see there is a final figures. I'm hoping to do a lot more as far as the the salvation's go this year. I've mentioned this many times. You can't control exactly how many people get saved. And, you know, I was looking at the numbers and, you know, our 2019 numbers were phenomenal. But we still have more baptisms this year than we ever had as a church. So that's a great accomplishment there. But even with the the salvation's, you know, obviously we could put in time. And that's what we try to do. We're going to make sure that we stay consistent with our soul winning. And hopefully we'll see continue to see a lot of success like we're doing now. So there's there's the final numbers in the bulletin for what we did for 2021. And if you are planning on going soul winning this afternoon, just speak with me. And let me know before you head out for lunch so we can get you equipped with a map. I did finally get the the organizer here. I just haven't mounted on the wall yet to store our completed maps, our partial maps and our brand new maps. But we should have enough for today for those of you planning on joining us this afternoon. Got the offering totals listed on the bottom of the page for the month of December prayer requests. Continue to pray for everybody on our list here. I don't have any real updates on anyone on the list. So just continue to pray for everybody here. All ladies there with child as well as everyone else. My father in law is having surgery in two days. So pray for him as well. And my wife is out sick today and she's not doing very well. So if you pray for her, appreciate it. And it appears that there's probably multiple other people who are out sick as well. It's that time of year. In addition to the the COVID stuff that's going on, I know that that, you know, according to the news outlets, it's it's been very spreading very quickly and rapidly and a lot of people are getting it. Thankfully, it seems like it's not. It doesn't sound like that's that big of a deal, but it does seem like a lot of people are getting it. So very contagious. And it is what it is. It's going to keep people out and that just pray for everyone that's not here. Churches and pastors here. I put Good News Baptist Church back in there again. That's that church in Ohio that does not have a pastor. So pray that that God will bring a pastor to that church so that they don't have to just just completely disband. Right now, they're trying to continue as much as possible, hoping that they can have a pastor come and lead that church for them. But right now, brother Brett Stockton, many of you know him from our camping trip that he's come and attended. And he was also the one that's been very instrumental in putting on the Midwest Fundamentalist Conference in Cincinnati. So he's a really great guy. Like him a lot. I've been in communication with him, but they're still without a pastor. So be in prayer for them. On the next page here, we've got the January Bible reading challenge. So if you haven't started yet, you haven't heard about this yet, it's not too late. We just missed one day, but you actually get two days. If you follow the plan that I have here, obviously you follow whatever plan you want, as long as you can get done reading between Matthew and Revelation, everything in between, an entire New Testament read in the month of January, you'll be able to complete this challenge. It can be accomplished by reading nine chapters per day. So if you are current, you should have read nine chapters yesterday, Matthew 1 through 9. And you'll be up to date here. If you missed yesterday, you can still get this done in 29 days and get it all done within January. So start it today. The key with this challenge is don't get behind. When you get behind, it really, really, really screws you up, because you need to be doing this reading every single day in order for this to work. And if you do miss a day, my advice is not to burn up one of the, I call them a free day, but to add just a little bit more reading, maybe one extra chapter. Instead of doing nine chapters, they do ten chapters. Don't try to do, like, 18. It's like, oh, man, I missed yesterday, so now I've got to do 18 chapters today. Don't do that. It's going to be overwhelming, it's going to make everything just seem that much harder, and you're going to be more prone to just give up then and say, oh, well, I can't do this now. Especially early on, just say, okay, well, if I just do ten chapters for the next few days, then I could go back to do a nine, you know, for the next nine days, I could do ten chapters a day, and then you've made up whatever you've lost. That's a much, much better way to do it. Distribute out for the rest of the days that you have. Make it more manageable. I also encourage you to do morning and evening or, you know, kind of split up the nine chapters. It's going to make it also a little bit easier to do, and it's great because you'll get, you know, you get Bible reading in multiple times during the day. It's something I recommend. Obviously, do whatever you want to do, but you do have to read. You have to read the chapters unless you're not capable of reading, you know, children. I encourage children to participate in this as well. If children aren't able to read or they're not advanced enough to be able to really read and understand the Bible, they could still participate by listening. If you have an audio Bible and you can play the Bible for the children, just make sure that they're, you know, paying attention, then they could participate in this challenge as well. Bible memory passage, Psalm 150. So we're on the last week, week two of two, six verses. Hopefully you get this memorized, committed to memory, be able to quote it word perfect without making any error, and you'll be able to earn a special prize for that. We've got the homeschool field trip coming up on the 14th. All of our homeschool field trips, all of our activities for that matter, are free of charge. We'd love for you to come and attend. We don't charge for anything that we do as a church. Everything is free. We don't want anyone to not be able to make it because of any financial reasons, you know, so everything that we do is completely 100% free of charge. Even our camping trip that's listed there, we've paid for all the camping sites. We have everything reserved, so we'd just love for you to come and attend that. The only thing with the camping trip is you have to provide your own food. So I don't think that's asking too much. You have to be able to feed yourself whatever you would normally eat during the week. Just bring that with you to campsite. Hopefully it's something you could cook over an open flame or something like that. But, yeah, everything that we're providing here is provided by the church. Now, the camping trip, I started a short list there. I need to get, like, I guess call it an official one. But if you want to join us on this camping trip, there's going to be a lot of preachers on this camping trip. You're not going to want to miss it. There's already, I already got a few people have confirmed 100%. Pastor Anderson has confirmed. Pastor Thompson's confirmed. Pastor Shelley's confirmed. I don't remember who else now has confirmed. I've got multiple responses, though, so it's going to be awesome. There's going to be a lot of people. We've got a week-long camping trip. We've got the whole place, except for one cottage. We've got everything else reserved. So there's going to be one family or one cottage there that's going to be like, what in the world's going on? You know, what did I get myself into? Why did I reserve for this week? But we've got everything else the whole week, so it's going to be great. Looking forward to it. And I'm actually, I'm just going to throw this out there right now. I don't have everything completely organized yet, but I'll be doing that this month. I want you all thinking about this. I'm going to need some help from people this year. I really want to make this event even better than it was last year. So I'm going to be looking for volunteers to help. And I brought this up last year. My wife thought she could kind of take everything. And I was telling her, no, no, no, you don't want to do that. Get help. And she's like, no, no, I want to do this. And she wanted to take care of things. But it turned out to be, it's a very big burden. So I'm going to be asking people, kind of like I brought up last year, but we didn't actually do it, was to be responsible for taking care of some of the pastors that are in town with making sure they're set up with their food and their accommodations and things like that so that it doesn't all fall on the shoulders of one person. That's one of the things. But the other thing is I want to do more, have more activities, like some activities scheduled for different age groups of kids and adults that are going to be set up during the course of the week, you know, different games and things like that, that if I had someone from church that could say, you know what, I'll head up this time. We'll do the bean bag, the corn hole game or whatever. I'll do that. I'll make sure everything's set up and we'll just have this set at a time where people can play, you know, whatever. We could do scavenger hunts for the kids, all kinds of different activities. But anyone who's willing to help with those activities, I'm just going to ask you to let me know. I'll have a sign-up sheet. We'll get it more formalized. But everybody participating, a little bit here, a little bit there, is going to make the whole trip be, I think, just a lot more fun. And we're going to have a great time anyways. But it's going to be nice to be able to have some of these things already spelled out. And I'd love to hear any ideas that you have as well that we can, any activities that we can do. So that's going on. It's going to be here before we know it. I can't believe we're already in the new year. But this is May 9th through the 14th. So please just let me know. I'm going to ask for RSVPs. You can start signing up right now. There's a sheet over there. The back of the homeschool field trip one for January 14th is where I have people starting to sign up for the camping trip. I want to make sure that we have all of our church covered as far as those that want to attend the camping trip before I open this up to other people. So just let me know. Oh, and Pastor Williams too, of course. You know, I don't always think about him because he's local. But Pastor Williams is also coming and he's going to be staying with us that whole week. He's not going to be commuting and only showing up in evenings. He's going to be there all week. So that's going to be a lot of fun. You get a chance to know him a little bit better. And let's see, at the bottom of the page there we've got the upcoming birthdays and anniversaries all in the month of January. And that's about it. Not a whole lot of announcements. I intended, I should say, on having more things booked for the year. But every time my wife gets sick it makes me appreciate how much she does at home because there's always a lot more. So yesterday I was planning on doing a lot more for planning all this stuff. And a lot of those things didn't happen because there's a lot of other things that need to be tended to at home. But she's doing okay. She's not well. She's sick. But we'll get through this. And we appreciate your prayers. And with that I'm going to pass the service back over to Brother Jesse. And he is going to lead us in our next song. All right, if you would, turn your song to song number 10. Or if you sing, Near the Cross, that red song with the next to your seat or on your seat or under your seat. Song number 10, Near the Cross. We're going to sing all four verses. Song number 10. On Calvary's fountain, in the cross, in the cross, be my glory ever. Till my raptured soul shall find, rest beyond the river. Near the cross a trembling soul, love and mercy found me. Then the brightest morning star, sheds its beams around me. In the cross, in the cross, be my glory ever. Till my raptured soul shall find, rest beyond the river. Near the cross a lamb of God, brings its seeds before me. Help me walk from day to day, with its shadows burning. In the cross, in the cross, be my glory ever. Till my raptured soul shall find, rest beyond the river. Near the cross I'll watch and wait, hoping, trusting ever. Till I reach the golden strand, just beyond the river. In the cross, in the cross, be my glory ever. Till my raptured soul shall find, rest beyond the river. Alright, this time we're going to pass the offering plate around. I'm going to ask Brother Lindsey to come up and take the offering for us. And while the plate's being passed around, you can open up your Bibles to Hebrews chapter number six. Look of Hebrews in chapter number six. And as is customary for us here at Strong Old Baptist Church, we're going to read the entire chapter out loud. You can follow along silently. I'm going to ask Brother Logan here to come up. And he's going to read the chapter for us this morning. Hebrews chapter number six. Alright, Hebrews chapter six. Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection, not laying aside the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. In this what we do, if God permit, for it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakes of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away to renew them again unto repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh upon it, and bringeth forth herbs, meat for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God. But that which bear thorns and briars is rejected, and is not unto cursing, whose end is to be burned. But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we dost speak. For God is not unrighteous to forget your work of labor, of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, and that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister. When we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end, that ye be not slawful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself, saying, Surely blessings I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men verily swear by their greater, and oath for confirmation is to them and the end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us. Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, in which enter into the within the veil. Whether the forerunner is for us, and entered even Jesus, made in high priests forever, after the order of Melchizedek. Father, thank you again for your word, that's a light into our path, and a lamp unto our heart, Lord. Please, Lord, as we listen to your word today, Father, hide your word in your heart, that we might have sinned against you, and please help pastors to preach your word, Father, and for us to be doers of your word, not hearers only. Thank you, Lord, for allowing us to be here at church today, and in this year of 2022, Lord, help us be better this year for you than we were in the past. And again, we just thank you for our salvation and for our life. And thank you for your word. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. All right. For this morning's sermon, I'm going to preach a sermon that's titled, Swear Not At All. Now, I realize I probably should have preached a sermon last week instead of this week, but you know what? It's still just as important. It's still a great truth. The reason why I'm preaching on this this morning is oftentimes at the New Year, people make New Year's resolutions, right? So what are you doing when you make a resolution? You're resolving to do something for the year that maybe you hadn't done previously, something that you want to get right, some action you want to take to better your life. You know, a lot of people make resolutions to get healthier, to get more fit, physically speaking, or you may be making resolutions to do things more spiritual, right? I mean, we've got these challenges. Maybe you're saying, you know what? I'm going to start doing these challenges as Strong Old Baptist Church does. I'm going to read my Bible. I'm going to do all these other things. And I don't have any problem with resolutions at all. I think they're great. I think it's good to be making plans and making goals and setting marks and trying to accomplish things. But what I'm specifically going to be preaching about is when you make an oath or a vow or a promise and things of that nature, one, how serious the Bible is about those things, that if you're going to actually have words come out of your mouth and say, you know what, I am going to do this or you're promising to do something, especially if you promise to God or you're swearing to God about something, these are all very serious matters. And these are things that we're going to look a little bit at what the Bible says about all that and then what's taught in general about making vows and things like that just in general. We started off in Hebrews chapter 6. One of the things I like about this in Hebrews chapter 6 is you're going to notice that there's multiple words that are used pretty much interchangeably to give us an understanding of swearing or an oath or a vow or a promise. These are essentially all the same thing, so keep that in mind when we're looking at these different passages. When you're making a promise to someone, basically what it boils down to is your word. And the importance of your word, God puts a very high importance on your word and you keeping your word. When you say, I'm going to do this, I swear this is the truth, these words that come out of your mouth, in a way almost define who you are and your character on your ability to keep true to the words that come out of your mouth and the truthfulness of the things that you say. And God holds a high place, a high standard on keeping those words truthful. Why? Because He has a high standard on His word. We trust that God has preserved His word for us today. I mean, the very thing that gets us saved, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by what? The word of God. God's testimony, God's word. There's power in God's word. God's word brings salvation. Jesus Christ is the word, right? So the perfect Jesus, the perfect word, God has exalted His word. And He expects us to be able to believe and trust in His word. And in order to believe and trust in God's word, we have to understand and believe and know that it's true. He doesn't lie to us. There's going to be no error in the word of God. And having that confidence and trust, God wants us to be able to trust in Him so He puts the highest amount of regard for His word. I mean, to have faith in something you can't see with your eyes physically, we're trusting a testimony. We're trusting in the word of God. It's everything to us. It's what we use to determine right from wrong to fully understand morality. Hey, what is right and what is wrong? We have to go to the word of God. We're trusting the testimony that God has given to us, trusting that it is of God, and trusting that it has been preserved for us and it's true and there's no error. These things are all extremely important. So if you think about that, that's how God deals with His word. Well, you know what? He wants us to be able to deal with our word similarly. Obviously, none of us are perfect. We aren't God. But we ought to have high regard for people being able to believe the things that we say, that we could have a good testimony that when we say something, people could know, hey, I know this person. They're faithful. They're true. What they say is going to happen because they're careful about the things that they say. And we need to learn to not be flippant with our words. Of all the things that we can do, you know, the Bible talks about the tongue is a world of iniquity and how great destruction and great disaster because just from that little member, just from that tongue, that little fire that could be started by the words that you say could end up doing a lot of damage. And on the flip side, you know, a lot of good can come from even just a few words that you can speak to people. Your words have tons of power. I mean, we see the power of God through the words. When we repeat the words of God, when we preach the word of God, out-souling, when we testify of Jesus Christ and we see other people putting their faith in Jesus Christ, hey, that's powerful. And similarly, it's powerful when people do a lot of damage with their words, when they start lying, slandering people, bearing false witness and testimony about things that people may have done that people didn't do also can have a lot of damage and destruction in a person's life. So we want to be very careful with the words that we speak. But look down in Hebrews chapter 6, verse number 13. The Bible says, For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself. So here we see promise and the swearing going hand in hand. When God swore unto Abraham, he's making a promise. And he sware by himself, saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. When God made a promise unto Abraham, he's swearing that what he's saying unto Abraham is going to be true. And he's swearing it on nothing greater than himself. God said, You can believe this because I said it. Surely blessing I will bless thee. This is going to happen because I said so. And we can trust God, of course. Amen. And thank God for that. Verse 15. And so after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise, For men verily swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. And there we see that word oath. We see swearing, promise, oath. An oath of confirmation, basically swearing that something is true. While you're confirming something, you're saying, yes, this is true. An oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. So we should be able to end any debates or doubts by being able to testify this is true and swearing by an oath. And this, I mean, think about it. These words, you know, testifying, giving a testimony, swearing something to be true, this is what even our legal system is based off of. And this is what God's legal system is based off of as well. You know, when it comes to finding people, convicting people of crimes in God's law, right? What do you need? You need, you know, two or three witnesses to determine the guilt of a person, especially if you're going to be putting someone to death. He said no one can be put to death unless you've got two or three witnesses there where their accounts are going to match up and people are testifying that what they're saying is true. And, you know, there's punishments against the false witnesses. Very strict punishments against the false witnesses where whatever the punishment was going to be, like if you're going to bear a false witness against someone and say, hey, I saw this person, kill that person, well, God has a death penalty on that. So if you're going to testify to that and you're lying and it's found out that you lied, well, then you would be put to death. And, you know what, God's system of justice is perfect. And would to God we could have those laws. That would be great. But it also demonstrates how important it is that you are able to speak the truth and when you swear, you're swearing truthfully. An oath for confirmation is then an end of all strife. Verse 17, wherein God willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs a promise, the immutability of his counsel confirmed it by an oath. Immutability, it can't be changed. When God says something, it's sure, it's true, it's going to happen, and it's not changing. So he confirmed it by an oath. Verse 18, that by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation or comfort there who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before. So I'm not going to continue on there, but I just wanted to show you, you know, the oath, the promise, the swearing, all being kind of used interchangeably here in Hebrews chapter 6. And even just what, you know, the kind of context of what it's talking about in hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie promised before the world began, Titus chapter 1. God's promise to us, we're relying on his word. Words are important. We need to be careful with the oaths, the vows, the promises that we make. So if you've decided to make an oath or a vow or a promise this year, understand that, you know, if you've spoken those things or said those as a vow, as a promise, as a testimony of swearing, you know, now you need to keep that. And that's going to impact, you know, what other people are going to be able to even believe you. And, you know, there's a lot of ramifications for this. I don't want to get into all of them too quick about not keeping your word. But another big one, and especially I see this a lot, and I see this a lot not just, you know, with other people but even in our own home having children, it's very important that you keep your word in front of your children. And if they're going to respect you and listen to you, and if you have a problem with your children, parents, not respecting you or not listening to you when you tell them to do something or, you know, where they're not being very obedient, they're kind of just not caring at all about what you say, examine how you speak to them and the things that you say and if you follow through. Because what happens very often times is that parents will start threatening kids, well, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that and I'm, you know, if you do that again, I'm going to do this. But then it doesn't happen. And the reason why, I understand, there's lots of reasons why. The reason why is because one, you don't really want to punish your child, right? You want to try to keep the peace. You don't want to have to do something that would be a lot nicer if you could just have them obey you just by you using words and not have to discipline them. But I'm telling you, it's going to backfire on you if you don't follow through on what you say. And I'm willing to admit, I think, you know, we're all probably guilty of this to some extent, but that's why we need to keep these things in mind and think about it so that when the words come out of your mouth, you can stay true to those words and, you know, that way they know, you know, how do they know dad's serious? How do they know mom's serious? Well, they should know that you're serious because the words came out of your mouth. The more evidence you give them that, well, what they say doesn't really happen, that's how they're going to act. So if they only know dad's serious when he starts hollering and yelling, then they're going to start obeying. Then that's what they're going to wait until for you to start doing before they're actually going to take you seriously. But if you could teach them, no, when I say it, I mean it, and whatever I say is going to happen when you don't do this, this is going to happen, and then you could just deal with it, be true to your word, and which is also, you know, don't start saying things that you're not going to do and you don't intend. Right? So don't start threatening your kids with a punishment saying, oh, well, if you don't do this or if you do this, I'm going to, you're never going to have that again or I'm going to take this away forever or I'm, you know, if you're going to say something like that, then do it. Because, again, you're going to shoot your own testimony, your own credibility in your kids' eyes if you keep, if you flip flop and go back and forth and start changing your punishment or changing what you say, they won't believe you. And not just with kids, but I mean, obviously, you can apply that to anything. You can apply that with anybody, you know, and especially as a believer, we want to be able to have a good testimony of Jesus Christ and be able to tell people, hey, you know, this is what I believe. I think this is wrong and this is right and this is wrong and this is what the Bible says. And when they look at you, hopefully, they're not going to see or hear a lot of contradictory things where it's like, well, wait, you say you believe the Bible, but you're drinking and smoking and fornicating and, you know, it's like, like, I don't even know the Bible that well and I know the Bible teaches against that. God, you want me to listen to you and trust you while you're telling me here that Jesus is going to save me? Why should I listen to you? Right? And why would you? You don't want to listen to hypocrites. We want to have a good testimony and when we honestly believe these things, you know, we're trusting in the word of God, we need to have that good testimony even through our life and through our actions as well as through our words. But I digress. Let's get back into, turn if you would to Ecclesiastes chapter 5. God's law actually speaks quite a bit about oaths and vows and promises. And I'm going to read real quickly just one verse from Numbers chapter 30, but actually all of Numbers chapter 30 deals with vows and how that is applied in the home especially. And I've just covered this not that long ago, maybe a few months ago, so that's why I'm not going to read this whole chapter in Numbers chapter 30. Numbers chapter 30 verse number 2, the Bible says, If a man vow a vow unto the Lord, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond, he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth. So that's in the law of God. He's saying, look, if you vow something, then, you know, you must do it. You have to do according to everything that proceeded out of your mouth. That's what God expects of you. Now, the rest of this chapter talks about if there is a daughter in her youth that's living with her dad at home and she makes a vow unto the Lord and she makes some promise, Dad has the authority to disannul that vow. Dad has the authority in the household to say, that vow is not going to stand. And the daughter who makes that vow unto God is not going to be held responsible for that. The sin's not going to be laid to her charge. And Dad has the same authority in the household over his wife as well, that any vows made in a household, the head of the house, Dad, the man of the house, has that responsibility, has that authority to either confirm or deny a vow that's made. Yes, even something as personal as a vow that you make individually to God, Dad has that. Now, look, I said we're not going to read this whole chapter. If you don't believe me, if you're like, that doesn't sound right, you know, the reason why you think that is probably because you haven't read Numbers chapter 30 and you're being influenced by this world's culture instead of letting God's word decide what is right and wrong for you. And it's spelled out extremely clearly. Read Numbers chapter 30. You cannot get any other interpretation from Numbers chapter 30 other than what it plainly says is that Dad has responsibility and authority over those vows. That's just the way it is, and that's the way God designed it. But I don't want to get too far into that because that's still, again, a little bit outside of the scope of what I wanted to be just focusing on this morning. When I focus on this morning, it's very simple. Keeping your vows and then on top of that we're going to see what's taught even greater is just, you know, it's better just not to vow at all. We're going to see that in Ecclesiastes chapter 5. Look at verse number 1. The Bible says, Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear than to give the sacrifice of fools, for they consider not that they do evil. Now, before I even get into this, you're going to see from the context that what he's talking about, we're saying be more ready to hear. Well, what's the opposite of being ready to hear? You're just quick to speak, right? You're saying be more ready to hear. When you come in, just be ready to absorb, be ready to listen, and he contrasts that with then give the sacrifice of fools. Because it's a foolish thing for a person to come in and instead of just sitting down, listening, hearing, understanding, going, man, I better make some changes and stuff, then to just flippantly start proclaiming, oh, man, I'm going to do this and this and this, and giving the sacrifice of fools. Because people will want to do what's right, and they'll say, God, I'm going to do this for you, and I'm going to do that for you, and I'm going to make this great sacrifice in my life, and they're going to come in, they're going to make all these vows, they're going to make all these promises, but why are they a fool? Because they're not really going to do it. It's a sacrifice of fools. You need to be very careful with your words and measure and weigh and count the costs and understand that if you're going to make a vow unto God, he's going to expect you to keep it. And oftentimes, people will make these vows, especially in church, in a setting like this. Why? Because they want to be seen of men, oh, wow, look at brother so-and-so and sister so-and-so, they're so holy and pious and righteous, and they're making these vows, and they're going to do this great thing for the Lord. If it comes out of your mouth, God's going to hold you to it. He's going to expect you to keep that vow. Let's keep reading here, verse number two, that's why in context they were continuing to say, be not rash with thy mouth. Rash is you're just too quick, you're flipping, you're not thinking about what you're saying, you're just opening up your mouth and letting words come out without having the proper filter of going, maybe I shouldn't be saying this right now. And let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God. For God is in heaven and thou upon earth, therefore let thy words be few. This is wisdom, this is teaching going on. Hey, let your words be few. God's not asking you to make all these commitments and promises and everything else in your life. He just wants you to listen to him and obey him. You don't have to promise God that you're going to obey him, you just start obeying him. What you're going to end up doing is adding sin upon sin when you make a promise not to do something. God doesn't need your promise, he just wants to see you obeying him. Now it's not always wrong to make a vow, I'm not saying it's wrong, but what the Bible's warning you here to have wisdom is to be careful because God will expect what you vow. And he's going to hold you to that. And he says here not to utter anything, you let your heart be hasty or anything before God. Why? For God is in heaven and thou upon earth, therefore let thy words be. God's in heaven. God's in a holy place. We know you're here on earth, but you know what? God's in heaven. Verse 3, for a dream coming through the multitude of business and a fool's voice is known by a multitude of words. The more you speak, the more you're prone to sin by just a multitude of your words. And the Bible says that's how a fool's voice is known. People just speak and speak and speak and speak and speak. Well, you need to learn to let your words be few. Verse number 4, when thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it, for he hath no pleasure in fools. So what's that saying? If you don't pay your vow to God, then you're a fool. You're foolish. Pay that which thou hast vowed. And this lines up exactly with what we already can see in the Old Testament. And when you study this out, I mean, there's so many verses that talk about promises and vows and oaths and everything else. God's always going to expect you to pay what you've owed. And it's just being explicitly laid out here in Ecclesiastes chapter 5. Verse 5, better is it that thou shouldest not vow than that thou shouldest vow and not pay. He said it's way, way better off for you just not to make the vow at all. So if you're going to make a vow, just, you know what, don't make it. You can still do the things that you would have vowed to do without making a vow. You can still do those things. So if you're thinking you might not do something, it's better to not vow than it is to vow and not pay. And not keep your word. That's what it means by paying, right? It doesn't necessarily mean paying any money. It's just you're not going to keep your end of the vow. Verse 6 says, suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin. Neither say thou before the angel that it was an error. Wherefore should God be angry at thy voice and destroy the work of thine hands? So you're saying like, oh yeah, it was a mistake. Yeah, I know I made that vow, but I didn't really know what I was doing. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. It's too late. You already let the words come out of your mouth. Now, at this church, and especially if you're visiting, we don't do altar calls here. And there's many reasons for that, and I'm not going to get into every single reason for that. But one of the reasons, oftentimes in altar calls, what is being prompted of the people is that you would come forward and make a decision and make a vow, essentially, unto God on whatever subject might have been preached in the sermon. Now, I'm all for people making decisions and having sermons change your life in a way where you can hear the truth, you hear the Word of God and say, you know, I'm not going to do that. Even today, I hope that you're going to be more careful with your words and walk away going to yourself thinking, man, I really need to be careful with my words. I really ought not to be just making vows and speaking flippantly. I want all of that to happen for you and for you to be able to kind of think about those, absorb those, and make the decisions for yourself in your heart. What I don't want you to do is come and just confess to God, like, I'm going to do this and I'm going to make this vow that I'm never going to make a foolish vow or something to that effect. And it's kind of like, that might be a foolish vow, right? I've already broken your vow by making a vow. And what I don't want to do is cause people to be making foolish vows. I want you to learn, I want you to understand, and I want you to obey God. And I want you to get the understanding of the Word of God and have that change your life. Amen. And everyone here, you can have God's Word change your life without having to make a vow or a promise unto the Lord. He's not asking you for that. Now people make vows and promises before God, and like I said, they're not just like all bad or all wrong, you just have to be really careful with them. You have to understand that if you're going to do this and make this vow, then you better keep it. Turn to Matthew chapter 5, we're going to see Jesus basically teaching the same thing that's being taught here in Ecclesiastes chapter 5. That it's better not to vow than to vow and not pay. And this is a truth that's consistent in Scripture, Old Testament, New Testament alike. Matthew chapter 5, we're going to start reading in verse number 33. Matthew 5 verse 33, the Bible reads, again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oath. So now he's talking about, we've already been reading Old Testament, not to forswear thyself. Not to lie, right, when you say something that it ought to be true, but you need to perform what you've said, what you've made an oath for. Verse 34, but I say unto you, swear not at all. You're saying, you know what, just don't swear. We use the word swear, it's not like a cuss word or something like that, right, the Bible's talking about swearing, it's talking about making an oath, making a promise, making a vow. Not the same thing as saying some four letter word or something, right, that's not what it means. I thought about that when I taught my sermon, swear not at all, I'm getting it from what Jesus said here, some people are probably going to click on the link thinking, oh, he's talking about using curse words or something, that's not what I'm talking about at all. I'm talking about making a vow or making a promise unto the Lord, it's where you're swearing. And people will say this all the time, I swear to God, if you have a habit of saying that, I encourage you to stop. I do, I encourage you to stop. I mean, Jesus said swear not at all. And look, he says, neither by heaven, for it is God's throne, nor by the earth, for it is his footstool, neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black, but let your communication be yea, yea, nay, nay, for whatsoever is more than these, cometh of evil. That's Jesus' advice. You know what, just say yes, or say no, and let it be at that. And, you know, be true to that, but just let that be whatever you have to say. Someone asks you something, or you're trying to testify to something, you don't have to say, well, I swear to God, I swear on my mom, I swear on my, you know. Look, first of all, you don't have control over that, and that's why, you know, God's able to swear by himself, because he's almighty, you're not almighty. Don't be swearing by God, don't be swearing by anything at all, is what Jesus is saying, just say, yep, yes, no, and leave it at that. And that's what's wise, that's a wise thing to do. And, you know, often times, too, and this is actually, maybe a little bit outside of the Bible, extra biblical information, but people who study, you know, I kind of, I'm interested in, like, detective work and investigation into finding criminals, understanding more about people, things like that, and when, you know, the profiling of people, and one of the things that is, I was trying to say it's a fact, but I guess something that's very interesting, there's an appeal to a higher power, or when people swear to God, often times it's an indicator that they're actually lying. Because they want to sell you on how serious they are, so they add extra words and try to convince you of something, because they know that what they're saying isn't true. Now that doesn't mean that every single person that ever says, I swear to God, is lying, it's an indicator, it's something that, when you look at statistics, and you look at criminal cases, and they've studied people's testimonies and witness testimonies and things like that, and they look for patterns, they can see patterns in people, the more they try to get you to believe, trying to get you to believe something, the less likely that it's true. And what that tells me is, you know, there's a lot of people out there, I mean, you've probably experienced this as well, where you hear people swearing on all kinds of different things and all kinds of people, you're getting yourself in a lot more trouble than what already you're probably trying to get out of trouble for, by swearing to God and invoking the name of the Lord. And many of those people are also probably using the name of the Lord in vain, because they don't really care anything about God, they don't really mean, they're just trying to get you to believe something, so, you know, it's kind of adding sin upon sin, we need to take the advice of Jesus Christ, hey, let your communication be yay yay, nay nay, yes, no, let it stand at that. James 5, turn if you would to Judges chapter 11, but James chapter 5 basically reiterates what Jesus said here, so James is teaching the same exact truth that Jesus taught in Matthew chapter 5, James 5 verse 12 says, but above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath, but let your yay be yay and your nay nay, lest ye fall into condemnation. Because the being judged, because you swear an oath and didn't keep that oath, it's better just not to make the oath at all. And if you've made vows for this year, you know, now, hopefully, you could actually keep the, you know, you're going to understand the importance of these vows, and you see what the word of God says, and say, wow, I made this, now look, there's a difference between vowing to do something, making an oath, and setting a goal. Big difference, and it's not just semantics either, right? If we're pressing towards a mark, if we're trying to achieve or accomplish something, that's all great. The oath or the vow comes in when you're, I mean, you're literally making an oath, you're making a vow, you're making some kind of promise, some kind of statement, I am going to do this. Right? And it's not even just something in your head, you're going, yeah, you know, I want to do this, I'm going to do this. It's, you know, making that oath or making that promise. So if you've done that now, you need to make sure you see it all the way through. You know, I made a promise a long time ago, and a vow unto God, and you know what, I probably, it would have been wiser for me not to make it, but now I got to see it through unto the end. And so far I've done great, but I made a promise unto God the last time I had alcohol that I said I am never going to drink again. Never going to touch it again. And it was a very big impact in my life, and it was a decision point that I had to come to anyways, and it was the right decision, but I vowed unto God. I said God, I will never do this again. Now, it would have been, you know, obviously there's nothing wrong with that vow, it's a great vow, it's a good thing to do, but I have to keep it. I keep that vow, I made that promise unto God, I've got to keep that vow for the rest of my days. And you know what, I'm not planning on doing it, and I'm going to keep that vow, it's where my mind is, you know, and I'm going to hopefully continue that way for the rest of my life, but man, woe unto me if I ever break that vow. It would have been better for me not to have vowed at all. You could still make the decision not to do those things without having to make the vow, but you know, I made that vow. I'm just sharing that with you, I mean, that's something that I did, and there's nothing wicked or evil or wrong or bad about the vow, it is what it is. But it's just, you know, we want to be wise with our words. God didn't need me to vow unto him. He already could see my heart and know the seriousness of my intention and everything else, but when you make that vow, it's like, okay, well now you're going to keep that vow. That's what he expects. That's God's standard. Keep the vows. Now we're going to look at some examples in scripture of two people that made some bad vows. And we're going to highlight this just because it's going to highlight to us why we should treat our vows so carefully and use a lot of thought before you go ahead and make a vow because it's easy to make a foolish vow and have things happen that you did not intend, that you did not consider, yet it happens and you're still going to be held to keeping a vow. Judges chapter 11, we're going to start reading verse number 30 about Jephthah. Jephthah is one of the judges of Israel, and many of you probably already know the story, but we're going to read through this real quickly here. Starting in verse number 30, the Bible says, And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then it shall be that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. Now, Jephthah makes this vow, right, because he wants God to help him. He's seeking the Lord's help in this battle. Now, God had already promised to help, to deliver the children of Ammon to Jephthah. We ought to be able to take God at his word and not have to offer up anything else to God from us that, you know, just to solidify the word of God. This ends up being a very foolish vow, and you're going to see why. Now, when Jephthah makes this vow, what do you think he's thinking about? He's got his house. He's got different animals and everything else. Essentially, in his mind, his intention is, man, the first animal I see, I don't care if it's my favorite, you know, whatever, my best producing cow or whatever, right, whatever animal, I don't care if it's the best one, if it's my favorite one, if it's something I don't really want to lose, God, I'm just going to offer that up to you. But in his vow, first of all, in his words, what does he say here? He says, Whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. That's a very specific vow of making the burnt offering and not very specific of what he's going to offer. He's just leaving that open-ended. Just whatever meets me, right? Well, we know the story. Let's keep reading here, verse number 32. So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them, and the Lord delivered them into his hands. So God now kept his end of this deal that he's making, of this vow. Verse 33, And he smote them from a rower, even till thou come to Minoth, even twenty cities, under the plain of the vineyards, with a very great slaughter. Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before children of Israel, and Jephthah came to Missby unto his house, and behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and dances. And she was his only child. Beside her he had neither son nor daughter. So it was the very first thing whatsoever coming forth to meet me, his daughter. And it came to pass when he saw her that he rent his clothes. Right away he realizes he'd screwed up. He had opened his mouth unto the Lord, he made a vow, and now he's regretting that vow that he made. Because the very first thing that came out of his house and greeted him when he came home was his daughter's only child. He rent his clothes and said, Alas, my daughter, thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that troubled me, for I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back. And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth, forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon. So both of them are understanding the importance of opening up your mouth and vowing to the Lord. These are people who had regard for vows that are made unto God. Now, people today, and look, first of all, this is an extreme example, and this is why it's in Scripture, I think, is for us to understand this truth. I don't think that this was happening all the time, but we're definitely being taught of the importance of watching our words. And especially today, I don't know if it was any different then or not. I don't know how people in general are pretty much the same, but some sins get worse and better over time. People kind of focus on different things, and different cultures are better with some things than others. But like today, people are breaking their oaths to God all the time. I mean, show me the person that would keep a vow like this unto the Lord today, you probably wouldn't even find him. They'd just break their vow and just be like, well, whatever. Because people have no regard for what they're saying. Think about this. People are breaking their vows all the time today anyways. What's one of the biggest vows that gets broken these days? Marriage. Marriage vows. And make no mistake, when you get married, at least in the United States of America, in our culture, you get married, you're making a vow. I know when I perform weddings, I'm listing off a bunch of vows that you're promising, hey, I'm going to do this. And you say, if you're going to do these things, say I do. I will or I do. You're going to do these things. You have the person repeat after you. That you're promising to stay with this person for richer, for better, in sickness and in health, in poverty as a wealth, forsaking all others, keeping myself only unto thee for long as we both shall live. You're making a promise to stay with a person until one of you dies. And it's in all manner of situation. You're making a vow. That's what marriage is. I mean, you're making a promise. And people's word, it's just demonstrated how much people have no regard for their word when you look at how much divorce there is. That's just indicative because marriage is a really holy thing. It's something that's supposed to be set apart and held in regard. No, we're actually getting married. This is serious. We're going to make this vow to each other and there's a ceremony and everything. I mean, there's a big deal made of marriage and there should be. It is a big deal. But when that just ends up getting trampled underfoot these days and just treated as nothing, what about every other vow and promise that people make and things that they say? If you can't keep something that important, what about everything else? No Christian ought to have that testimony of divorcing their spouse. And that could get me down a whole another rabbit trail. You read Ephesians chapter 5, though, we talk about testimony, the way that, you know, there's a great truth of how Jesus relates with the church is shown and demonstrated with a husband and wife. It ought to be, right? Those great truths ought to be there. Turn to 1 Samuel chapter 14. We're going to see, actually, no, no, no, hold on a second. Stay there in Judges 11. We didn't finish this off. So she asks her father, verse 37, and she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me. Let me alone two months that I may go up and down upon the mountains and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows. And he said, Go, and he sent her away for two months, and she went with her companions and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. So, obviously, she's sad, she's upset because of this vow and her life is going to end early and she's a virgin. She never even got to get married and have a family or anything like that. And it's a very, very obviously extremely sad story. I mean, it's gut-wrenching. And she's saying, Give me a couple months to just process this, bewail my virginity. And he says, Fine, you know, go ahead. We're still going to do this. But verse 39 says, And it came to pass at the end of two months that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed, and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel that the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year. Now, I've heard people teach about this passage that he didn't really, you know, she didn't die. She just remained a virgin for the rest of her life. Because you see here that, oh, for this reason, they would go and lament. And she was lamenting her virginity. And it says here he did according to her vow, and she knew no man. But what was his vow? His vow was to offer up a burnt sacrifice. And it says he did with her according to his vow. His vow had nothing to do with virginity, keeping virginity, keeping her, you know, like, that was not the vow at all. I believe that he put his daughter to death. Now, obviously, you know, he got himself in a bad situation where it's basically there is no right answer. But he regarded the oath and the word to God as being greater. Right? But this just demonstrates, and look, regardless of what you think about this story, if you say, nope, as a virgin, you're wrong. It's just talking about his virginity. Okay, this still demonstrates how you could get yourself into a no-win situation. I mean, it's a very clear example of that. 1 Samuel 14, we're going to see one more example. 1 Samuel 14. We're going to start reading verse number 23 of this story. This is when Jonathan and his armor bearer, you know, there was the great standoff between the Philistines and Israel with King Saul. And they were pitched kind of one mountain on either side, and they were both sort of just waiting, kind of like waiting the other person out to see who was going to make the first move. You know, militarily speaking, you want to give up the good ground, right? Like the higher ground is you have the advantage. And Jonathan's just like, let's get these Philistines. Right? The Lord will deliver them into our hands, and he comes up with this plan with his armor bearer, and he's just, you know, kind of praying to God, and he's saying, look, he tells his armor bearer, like, this is what I'm planning on doing. Are you with me? You know, and I'm like, basically, I'm with you. Right? And Jonathan's saying, look, God can save by many or by few. Hey, if God's going to be with us, then we could just go in and just win this battle. Like, that's the faith that Jonathan had. Very similar to the faith of David. And he ends up going over there, and God is delivering these people for him. Right? So he's going through, and he just starts killing all these Philistines, and then there's all this confusion in the camp, and they start fighting each other, and then they flee, and Saul sees this happening. So then the armies of Israel start, you know, once they find out, well, who's not with us? They find out Jonathan's not with them. Then he starts chasing after them. Right? And they start beating them as they're retreating. And they continue to just go after them, go after them, and then Saul makes a vow. We're going to see that here. I'm just kind of bringing you up to speed in 1 Samuel chapter 14. Look at verse number 23, it says, So none of the people tasted any food. So Saul makes this vow, basically, of saying, this proclamation, look, no one's going to eat anything. You're going to be cursed. You're going to be put to death. And it says here, Verse 25 says, So here we're saying this command from Saul is also an oath. It was a promise saying, look, if you do this, this is what's going to happen. Right? I'm going to, you're going to be cursed. And the Bible calls this an oath. But verse 27 says, It's like, why didn't you say that before I ate? You know? Or you saw me dipping my hand in the honey. Why didn't you say something? Now, but see, he didn't understand. He didn't hear it. Then he hears about it. But now Jonathan is going to respond. Verse 29 says, The people flew upon the spoil and took sheep and oxen and calves and slew them on the ground. And the people did eat them with the blood. And eating them with the blood, the Bible says you're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to eat the blood. That's very highly commanded against in Scripture. That's not something you're supposed to do. But the people did that. They sinned. Not only are they breaking, you know, Saul's command here, but they're just, I mean, they're so hungry from fighting. I mean, imagine fighting a battle and not being able to eat anything, and you're just, you know, you've been going all night, and you're going into the day, and Saul's saying, don't, you're not allowed to eat anything until we see this thing through. And it's kind of like, look. And, you know, in these fighting, it's not like a just non-stop battle for like 36 hours or something, and it is don't ever stop swinging their sword. There's movement, right? And there's breaks and movement and breaks and movement, and they get into fighting, and they're not always just continually, literally fighting. So they have opportunities to eat. But they're not able to because of that oath. And when they start beating these people, you know, they start defeating the enemy, they also have the opportunity to eat of the spoil, eat of their stock, of their resources that they had with them, with, you know, traveling with their army. But they're not able to do it, and they get to the point where they get so hungry that they're just like, let's just kill this thing right now and just start eating it, you know, eat it raw, whatever, the blood's in there, they don't care, and they're just eating it up. This is all a result of Saul's foolish oath that he made. If he didn't make that oath, none of this would have happened. He ended up causing people to sin because of his oath. He's the one that made that oath, and on top of that, of course, besides making the people sin this way, his own son ate, and he didn't know. But here's the thing, when you make an oath, and you're not excluding, well, if you don't know about this, then you're excluded, well, the oath is going to have to stand. And, you know, God's laws, you know, God's commandments, his oaths that he's made in proclaiming his law, we're all held responsible for those laws, whether you hear about it or not. You know, you commit murder, and you say, well, I didn't hear from God's word that murder was wrong. You're still, God's still going to hold you responsible for that. Sinning through ignorance is not a justification for sin. The Bible has an entire chapter dedicated to what you do with people who sin through ignorance. They still have to offer up a sacrifice in the Old Testament. That was still something because they're guilty of sinning, whether you know it or not. And it's up to the person who's making the oath not to make something foolish. You see, obviously, none of God's laws or his oaths or his proclamations are foolish. They're all righteous. Saul, King Saul, made a foolish oath here in commanding the people not to eat anything and having that judgment against them if they do. So, verse 34, and Saul said, disperse yourselves among the people and say unto them, bring me hither every man his ox and every man his sheep, and slay them here and eat, and sin not against the Lord, and eating with the blood. And all the people brought every man his ox with him that night and slew them there. Verse 35, and Saul built an altar unto the Lord, the same was the first altar that he built unto the Lord, and Saul said, Let us go down after the Philistines by night, and spoil them until the morning light, and let us not leave a man of them. And they said, Do whatsoever seemeth good unto thee. Then said the priest, Let us draw near hither unto God. And Saul asked counsel of God, Shall I go down after the Philistines? Wilt thou deliver them into the hand of Israel? But he answered him not that day. And Saul said, Draw ye near hither, all the chief of the people, and know and see wherein this sin hath been this day. Now, there's so many things that are interesting about this, especially with Saul. Saul kind of has this bad habit and a bad attitude, at least like very shortly after this and even before this, of not getting right with God. But in this instance, he's trying to do the right thing. He's saying, Oh, okay, well, I'm trying to communicate with the Lord. I'm not getting any answer. I'm not getting any response. There must be a sin problem. We must have to deal with this. So he's trying to now figure out where's the source of this problem. Why is God not dealing with me? Whereas you'll see later on in his life, when God's not speaking to him, he's not trying to get right with God and figure out where the sin is. He's saying, Okay, well, let's just go find a witch and see if I can call Samuel up, because God's not speaking to me. Right? He just completely goes outside. At least in this situation, he's trying to do what's right. He's trying to figure out, Okay, well, where is the sin? God's not dealing with us anymore. Something's wrong. And it's the same thing that happened when the children of Israel were invading the Canaanites, right? And they had just beat Jericho, and then they're going to Ai, and then they're getting defeated before Ai. Why? Because there was sin in the camp. Because Achan had coveted and stolen and taken of the accursed thing that they were not supposed to take of. He hid in his tent. God wasn't with them anymore because of that sin. So Saul's essentially trying to figure out the same thing here, saying, Okay, well, where's the sin? If God's not with us, then we've got a sin problem, and we've got to deal with it. And what's the sin problem? His oath. It all still goes back to his oath, because the oath wasn't being kept, because Jonathan was still there. Now, again, Saul didn't know. And Jonathan hadn't known, but is God still holding him responsible? You better believe he is. Because God expects you to pay the vows, whether you know it or not. And, you know, I thought about getting into this. I don't have it in my notes. The Old Testament even talks about that as well. That as soon as you know, like if there's something you don't know about, but you've made the oath, then you've got to deal with that, and you've got a sin offering, then you've got to deal with that at that time as soon as you find out. Because God expects it immediately. God demands his oaths to be reckoned with. Now, let's keep reading here. I forgot. Where did I leave off here? Verse number 39. For as the Lord liveth, which saveth Israel, though it be in Jonathan my son, he shall surely die. But there was not a man among all the people answering. So the people know, and no one's saying anything. Because now, even Saul's saying, you know what, I don't care if it's my own son, Jonathan, and people are just like, whoa, you know, like, we don't want to tell him that. Verse 40. Then said he unto all Israel, Be ye on one side, and I and Jonathan my son will be on the other side. And the people said unto Saul, Do what seemeth good. Hey, do whatever you want to do. Right? And I think at this point, he's probably starting to put the two together, because why else would he separate him and Jonathan and everybody else to try to narrow things down? I mean, you're not narrowing it down very much. You're like, well, just me and Jonathan over here and everybody else over there. You could probably deduce that he's starting to get what's going on here based on the people's reaction of no one saying anything, and the people going, yep, yeah, do whatever you want, Saul. Sounds good. Verse 41. Therefore, Saul said unto the Lord God of Israel, Give a perfect lot. And Saul and Jonathan were taken, but the people escaped. So basically, it's like, we need to take a lot or vote. Like, who's responsible here? Who's in sin? Where's the problem coming from? Is it from all the people, or is it from me and Jonathan? You and Jonathan. Okay. And then, verse 42. And Saul said, Cast lots between me and Jonathan my son, and Jonathan was taken. Then Saul said to Jonathan, Tell me what thou hast done. And Jonathan told him and said, I did but taste a little honey with the end of the rod that was in mine hand, and lo, I must die. And Saul answered, God do so and more also, for thou shalt surely die, Jonathan. So Saul was willing to keep that vow and that oath, but how stupid is that? What a stupid vow he made that he was going to, you know, now his son, because of his vow that he made, his foolish words that came out of his mouth, instead of just not vowing, his son was going to lose his life, just like Jephthah and his daughter. But verse 45 says, And the people said unto Saul, Shall Jonathan die who hath wrought this great salvation in Israel? God forbid, as the Lord liveth, there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground, for he hath wrought with God this day. So the people rescued Jonathan that he died not. So the people interjected and interceded and entreated for Jonathan, and he ended up not killing Jonathan. But this is why it's wise not to vow at all. And I know you're not going to make the same vows that Jephthah and Saul made, right? Like I don't expect you to make a vow that you're going to sacrifice some, you know, like a living creature or something like that. I know you're not going to do exactly what they did, but these stories demonstrate how you could make vows about things and not even be considering or thinking about what the consequences might be of that vow, and how things might turn out to where you're going, Oh, I never expected this set of circumstances to happen and wish you had never made that vow. And, you know, things happen that we don't really consider. And if you're opening up your mouth foolishly before God and just making all these vows, you know, God's not impressed with your vow. God's a lot more impressed with your obedience. Just listen to him. That's why we need to have that ready ear, like it says in Ecclesiastes 5.1, come in and out of God more ready to hear than to give the sacrifice of fools. God made the sacrifice for you. God has done everything for you. He doesn't need your sacrifices. Now, there's nothing wrong with giving sacrifices to God. There's nothing wrong with that. But when it comes to making oaths, when it comes to making promises, when it comes to making vows, it's better just not to make the vow. Now, obviously some vows are appropriate. I mean, I think it's appropriate to make a wedding vow. But you know what? Before you make that vow, and we have some people, you know, people planning on getting married, before you make that vow, understand you're making a vow that God is going to expect you to keep. And you know what? With marriage, there's unknowns. There's always just unknowns. There's always unknowns. You never know everything about your spouse before you get married. And you're never going to completely 100% know, which is one of the reasons why you make the vow, so you're going to say, you know what? Whatever comes up, though, we're going to stay together. We're going to see this through. Because everyone is going to go through some problems, whatever, but you need to make that vow and that promise saying, we will stick to this. I'm going to promise unto you and your promise unto me that we're staying together until death do us part. And God expects you to keep that vow. So, I know it's a little bit too late to prevent some people if you've made some New Year's resolutions or you've made vows. Now, if you've made New Year's goals, you're doing fine. Don't lie to yourself either. If you made a vow, keep that vow. You made goals, great. Planning on doing something. I've got goals for the church. There's goals and things I want to get done here. And that's why, usually, unless I'm not being careful with my own words, you know, we have our challenges and our prizes. I tell you, you are going to get them. I'm vowing that you will get the prizes for your challenges that we complete. You will get them. But don't make the promise on exactly when you're going to get them. You're going to get them. And hopefully I don't slip with my words too much and promise a day and not have them on that day. Usually when I make the promise on the day, I already have the prizes so I know that they're going to be there. But, you know what, seriously though, in all seriousness, I know I'm kind of saying that like lightheartedly, but it is important. Right? Why would I want you to lose confidence in the things that I say if I'm making promises about things and then not being able to fulfill them? And nobody's perfect, right? But at the same time, you know, we ought to have these standards for ourselves. We ought to be able to be careful with our own words and choose our words wisely. And especially when it comes about, you know, understand what you're doing and think about the ramifications before you just open up your mouth to the Lord. Spotlights have a word of prayer. Dear Lord, we love you. Thank you so much for the great wisdom that you give us in your word. I pray that you would please just help us all to have a better filter on our mouth so that the thoughts that we have and the intentions that we have don't end up resulting in us saying something foolish and vowing something foolish, dear Lord. I pray that you would please just help us to be able to consider those things. Lord, we love you. We want to show our sincerity and our dedication to serving you, Lord, but we know and understand that we don't have to make some special vow in order to take heed to your words and to keep your words, dear Lord. We are offering up ourselves here as living sacrifices to be able to serve you, but we just pray for your discretion and give us more knowledge and understanding and help us in this area, Lord. We love you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right. We're going to sing one last song before we're dismissed. I'm going to ask Brother Jesse if he'd please lead us in our last song. All right, everybody. For the last song, we're going to sing a song number 121, Like a River glorious. Again, that's song number 121. We're going to sing all three verses like a river glorious. All right, everybody. Let's hear it. Perfect getting flowing, full burn every day. Perfect getting growing, deeper all the way. Stay up on Jehovah, hearts are fully blessed. Hiding as he promised, perfect peace and rest. Hitting in the hollow of his blessed hand. Never folk and follow, never change or stand. Not a surge of worry, not a shade of care. Not a glass of memory, touch the spirit there. Stay up on Jehovah, hearts are fully blessed. Hiding as he promised, perfect peace and rest. Every joy or triumph, falling from above. Raised upon our dying hope by the Son of God. We may trust him fully, all for us to do. They who trust him fully, find him fully true. Stay up on Jehovah, hearts are fully blessed. Hiding as he promised, perfect peace and rest. Amen. Real quick, there's some oranges that were brought in that are underneath the tables out in the front. And they're very juicy and they're very good and they're free for the taking. There's a few boxes left. So please help yourself to that. And we appreciate that, Chad, for bringing that in. Help yourself to that. And if you're planning on going soloing this afternoon, please come and see me as soon as possible.