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

All right, now we're going to be getting back to this chapter in a little while, our text verse, but what I'm going to be preaching about this morning is the Reformed Church. Now, what it really is is the Reformed Catholic Church. So we're going to go over a little bit of history. Most people are somewhat familiar with the Protestant Reformation that took place in the 1500s. You know, we hear stories of Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley. These are kind of big names in that movement, in that event that happened. Now, a little bit of my own personal background. I grew up in a Presbyterian Church. Okay, a Presbyterian Church is like one of the main Reformed churches that are out there, and what I'm going to be teaching this morning, for one, just real basically is, you know, any Christian could look around and you see, or not even just a Christian, people look around you see like, well, you know, we've got all these different churches, we've got all these different denominations. Why are there so many different denominations? What's the deal with this? Why does there have to be so many of these different things? Well, a lot of them, the majority of them actually, are just spawned off from the Catholic Church. They have, you know, with the Reformation, they decided Martin Luther thought, hey, you know, this church has kind of lost its way. There's some things here that I don't agree with, and we need to do some house cleaning. We need to just fix up a few of these issues, and we'll be good. Okay, now as far as Baptists are concerned, Baptists are not Protestant. Now, Protestant itself, just the word Protestant, because oftentimes you have a tendency to kind of forget what the word even means, because you think like there's Catholic, and then there's Protestant, and like that's it, and this is kind of the way people have a view of just Christianity in general. There's just these two camps, and that's it, but literally Protestant comes from the protest, right? The word Protestant, it's your protesting. It comes from the protest of the Catholic Church, and the Baptists didn't come from that line. It didn't come out of the Catholic Church. The Baptists, I believe, and you can look through history, there have been people ever since the Church started, ever since the New Testament churches started, there's always been local congregations of people that just believed the Bible, that didn't belong to some higher state church, or some higher denomination of this huge conglomerate of a denomination. Okay, denominations today will have one central authority that has power over the individual churches. Now, that is not the way the Bible has outlined the way a church should be. The church is supposed to be autonomous. It's supposed to be local under the authority of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. No other man, no other church, nobody else should be having any power or authority over that church to dictate what you can and can believe or teach or preach. A church is literally a congregation. It's an assembly of people, the assembly of believers that is led by an elder or a pastor, and this is the way that the New Testament is outlined, the way a church ought to be run. Nowhere does it say, well, you need to join all these different churches and set ahead over that. And there's many reasons. I'm not going to preach about denominationalism too much this morning, but think about this. Satan is attacking church, right? Satan is attacking Christians. Satan wants our church to fail. He wants every good church to fail. Now, if you have a whole bunch of churches and they all have to answer to one head, where do you think Satan is going to bring his attack to? He's going to start at the top because you attack that top, you get in there, you can impact all of the churches beneath that head. But if you have an individual church in this city, in that town, in that town, in that town, and they're all doing their own thing, so to speak. Now, obviously, we ought to be teaching and believing the same thing, just whatever the truth is from the Bible. Obviously, there's people who have differences of opinion and they don't see things exactly the same way, which is another reason why there's independent churches. You know, there's another church down the street, whatever, you could, you want to believe that? Okay, go ahead. You've got your church. But there's nothing saying that we have to conform to this way of thinking or this or that way of thinking. So we have these denominations today and it's not found anywhere in the Bible and the vast majority of them, you'll find, have literally come from the Catholic Church. Now, and I don't want to get into the Catholic Church this morning either because I've got a lot of material here just on the Reformed Church, which it is, I call it Catholic light because that's what it is. A Reformed Catholic Church is just, it's Catholic just with some changes here and there. They just, they just mixed, messed with it a little bit. But we'll do all the, you could, we'll have discussion afterwards, okay? Baptists are not Protestant, so even suggesting that the Catholic Church needs to be Reformed is giving credibility to the notion that it was ever the legitimate Church. Okay, all throughout history, like I said, you know, the Roman Catholic Church came into existence in the 300s when it was mandated, it was dictated as the state church, like that was going to be the religion of Rome and that was going to be the religion of the country and that's when it came into being. Now the word Catholic literally just means universal and we don't believe in a universal, like there's some people believe in a universal church that is like everybody is a part of, that is this invisible, unseen church, but as I mentioned before, the Bible defines a church as a congregation. So it's a contradiction of terms to say there is this universal church because not everyone's congregated together. Maybe one day in heaven when everybody is there and after judgment everything else, okay, yeah, then we might have a universal church, but we don't have one right now. Now the Reformed Church, the Reformed Catholic Church, this church movement that came out of the Catholics, the Bible says in Matthew 7 18, and we saw this last week, a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good. And the Bible also says in Job 14 4, who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean, not one. Now the concept of fruit is bring after your own kind. This church was started as another church sent me out here to start this church. The church begets another church. That's the reproduction, the same way that a Christian, a saved person, will will bring forth another Christian when you preach the gospel to them and you sow the seed of God's Word in their heart. That produces another Christian. Apples bring forth apples, everything else. I'm not going to go into the whole fruit thing either, but so another, you know, the Catholic Church, I don't believe, can bring forth good churches. And as I mentioned already, the Baptists did not spawn from the Catholic Church, but these other denominations have. Now here's a list of just, and this may not be comprehensive, but in general, if you're looking for a Reformed church, because there's this whole Reformed theology, and we're going to go over some of that this morning, and I'm going to finish off with it tonight and explain why this is so important for us to understand this, okay? This Reformed theology is false, it's heretical, and we don't want to get sucked into this in his thinking, or just thinking that everything is the same and everybody is just fine, because it's not. Now some of the denominations that are part of that Protestant movement that came out of the Protestant movement are Presbyterians, as I already mentioned, Lutherans, Methodists, Anglicans, Congregational, the Pentecostal kind of formed a little bit later down the line, but out of that same stream, and basically anything that has Reformed in the name. There's even Reformed Baptists. So there's Baptist churches that'll say we're Reformed Baptists, and what that means, and you see names in churches, you don't always understand what they are. Well, when you see that word Reformed, that means they subscribe to a Reformed theology, and there's an entire theology laid out of Reformed churches, and this is what we're going to kind of cover this morning. Now, this is also important to understand, a lot of people think they go to a non-denominational church because there's no denomination in the name, but that is almost every single time not true. Almost always it's not true. You'll see things like, my parents go to church, I don't remember the exact name, but it's like Christ Community Church or Christ Fellowship Church, you know, things like this. Real generic, just kind of, you say, well, what's wrong with that, right? And in the name, no, there's nothing wrong with the name. There's Christ Community Church. Okay, it's a community. We have church, and it's centered around Christ, but what they don't tell you, at least what you don't get out of the name, and I'm not saying they're intentionally being deceitful. I don't know what all their motives are, but you can't just say just because of the name that this is non-denominational, because the church they go to, it's a Reformed church. They subscribe to Reformed theology, and there's other churches that are similar. It's the same thing. There's Assemblies of God churches that do the same thing. There's Pentecostal churches that do the same thing, where you're not going to see on the sign out front that it's Pentecostal, but yeah, they are. They're part of a denomination. They're part of this group. So just be aware of that. When you see churches, when you look at them, don't just assume because you don't see a certain title in the name that it is non-denominational. Now, we truly are non-denominational because we don't have that structure of a denomination where someone else is telling us what we can and can't believe. We have Baptists in the name simply so that people could understand what our faith is and have a general understanding of our beliefs. Baptists, I mean, they ought to be believing in grace through faith in Jesus Christ for salvation. We believe in full immersion for Baptism, not sprinkling or pouring or anything like that, and I'll get into that in a little bit too. Just do some key fundamental things that Baptists in general believe. So when you're looking for a church and be like, I want to go and congregate around like-minded believers who believe the same way I do, well, with Baptists in the name, you can identify another one. It doesn't mean that anyone else is telling us what to do, but that's why we have that in the name. Now, Martin Luther is basically called the father of the Reformation. He is one of the key figures in the Reformation, and you may have heard this, but one of the things he's famous for was he went on the door of the Catholic Church, he posted his 95 Theses, which was his argument or complaint against the Catholic Church. Now, Martin Luther was a Catholic priest, and he was for a while, and what his main complaint was during this time, that was when they were selling indulgences. The Catholic Church was selling indulgences. What that means, if you're not familiar, is that people were kind of able to purchase their forgiveness and purchase their redemption for sins that they've committed, and they would go and they could pay so much money, and they could either pay a priest to be praying for souls in purgatory or to kind of absolve them of their sins. So it's getting grossly out of hand. There's a lot of things that I could pick apart on the Catholic Church, but that's really bad. Martin Luther recognizes, and other Catholics see this too, when there's corruption going on, when there's things that are just, what are you thinking? Of course, even within a false religion, people are going to be like, this isn't right. You're extorting people. There's too much corruption here. This is not what this is used for. But what a lot of people don't know, because they'll praise Martin Luther, and you have an entire Lutheran denomination now, and especially in those 95 Theses, he actually was not looking for it at all. He was not looking for a split from the church, and his main grievance was this selling of indulgences. He gave, in the 95 Theses, he acknowledges the Pope's authority. He believed in the existence of purgatory and all these other doctrines. Now, he did come later. I mean, his teachings later did come out. I don't know about the purgatory for sure, if he came out against that, but he came out against the papal authority later on. But it took him to be basically excommunicated from the church before he kind of started doing his own thing. But I got this off of the internet. There's an article posted about Martin Luther, and I'll read this for you. He says, Luther was a true Catholic. He did not stand against Catholicism per se, but the degenerated Roman Catholicism that undermined the Word of God of his day. Luther affirmed the decisions of the first four ecumenical councils of the church, Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon. Luther recognized the authority of the church fathers when they rightly interpreted God's Word. Luther understood himself as an ordained man with a responsibility to witness to the truth of God's Word, and he stood on the truth revealed in the Apostles Creed. Now, I've done my own studying of Martin Luther a little bit, and that's generally from everything I could gather from different historians and books and stuff. That seems to be a pretty true statement that he did. I mean, he considered himself Catholic. There's just a few things that he wanted to change. But the problem is there's way more things that need to be changed than just a few things, and it really required a complete separation from that type of a faith, because the whole thing is just wrong. It's heretical. But I want you to look now at where we started. We're going to get into a little bit more Bible. 1 Corinthians 1 where we were, where we started off reading. Look at verse number 10. It says, Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. So first he's saying, okay, I don't want there to be divisions in the church. I want you all to be of the same mind. This is the intent. Within the local church, we ought to be unified in the faith. We ought to be able to come together and say this is what we believe, and obviously, I believe that there is absolute truth. God's word is truth, and I'm not claiming I'm always right 100% of the time about everything this book says, but there are definitely some fundamentals and some core doctrines that we need to all be in agreement about. It doesn't mean every small detail or opinion needs to all be exactly the same, but we need to be in unity of the faith, especially with regards to salvation and some other very important doctrines. But he's saying here in his letter, and we're going to keep reading, he says, you know, I don't want there to be divisions among you. He's like, I've heard that there's divisions and that we ought to be joined together in the same mind. Verse number 11, it says, for it has been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. So there's fightings in the church. There's contentions because people don't have the same faith. They don't believe the same thing, and this is what they were saying in verse number 12. He says, now this I say, that every one of you sayeth, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ. So people are basically looking to these different leaders and say, well, I'm a follower of Paul. Oh, yeah, well, I'm a follower of Apollos. Oh, yeah, well, I'm a follower of Peter, who is Cephas, right? And people are saying all these, they have these different guys that they've kind of elevated. Now, are these great men of God? All of them, and they all preach the faith. All the men listed here are all, none of them are false prophets. They're all good men, but the problem was coming in the church of saying, of where they were looking to these people as definitely more than they should have, and instead of coming together in a unity of the faith, they were kind of exalting these men and really just saying, well, I'm just following the teachings of Paul, or I'm just following the teaching of Paul. And he says in verse 13, is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul? He's saying, look, who am I? Like, I'm just a preacher of Christ. Christ isn't divided. Don't go making an entire sect or form an entire religion off of one man, and I'll tell you why I'm preaching this this morning, because there is an entire religion that exists today that is based off of the teachings of one man, which is not Jesus Christ, and the name of that man was Martin Luther, which is why you have the Luther N. Church today. They call their church, I mean, their church is literally named after this man. And we see here in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, he's saying, this is wrong. You shouldn't be doing this. He's saying, I'm of Paul, and I'm of Apollos, and I'm of Cephas, and I'm of Martin Luther. That's not the way it's designed. He's saying, look, we're not putting that much confidence in man, and in man's word, and in man's wisdom. We ought to be just focused on Christ. He said, Christ isn't divided. We need to come in the unity of the faith, which comes from God's word, and not just from some man. But there are doctrines, and there are teachings that have been founded and formed from one man, and we're going to get into these teachings. And it's not just one man, because there's actually, there's a few of them. There are people involved in this Protestant movement, but one of your first red flags, if you will, when you're looking at a doctrine, or even a church, when it's just named after a man, there's probably something wrong with it. Like Lutheran, or we're going to get into this tonight. I'm going to spend an entire service tonight focusing on Calvinism. Calvinism is a type of belief system that was essentially invented by John Calvin. And I've got an entire, there's five major points of Calvinism that we'll go over tonight, but it's an extremely wicked doctrine. Essentially, it teaches that God picks and chooses who's going to be saved, and essentially eliminates our free will. It's a predestination. It eliminates our free will, where there's, basically, they believe in a God that says, that could just go saved, going to hell. Saved, going to hell. And that you have no control over this whatsoever. You have zero control. You're totally depraved. And that requires an entire sermon. I can't believe I haven't preached on this in the year that we've been around, but it is a very important doctrine. And for that reason alone is a very, very good reason to stay away from these Reformed churches, because this is the theology that they subscribe to. It's this Calvinist doctrine. But I'm going to get into some of the other problems this morning, because that requires an entire sermon of itself to go through those points. There's major problems within the Reformed churches, and like I said, I call it Catholic Light, and we need to be aware of these things. But there's two main reasons why I'm teaching about this. Why are you bringing this up? We're in a Baptist church. Why do we care about this? There's two main reasons why this is important. Number one, the world is becoming more ecumenical, meaning they're trying to bring all of the churches together and say, let's not focus on anything different. Let's only focus on things where we agree. Let's only focus on the commonality, and we'll have this great unity. Now, when Paul was talking about the unity within the church, it doesn't mean unity at all expenses. He's not teaching us that, well, you just need to be unified more than anything. So if that means that you have to just put aside this doctrine and put aside that doctrine, then go ahead and do it. That's not what he teaches at all, and that's not what the Bible teaches. It's not unity at all costs. So we're not going to say, well, you believe in God, because you could say, well, you believe in Christ, and I believe in Christ. So let's just join hands and all join together. And then where are you going to bring that to? Well, you may not believe in Christ, but hey, you believe in God. So we'll just leave Christ out of it. You believe in God, and I believe in God. So we all believe in God. And do you see how you can just start advancing this umbrella? And this is what happens in general with a lot of the denominations, is that you'll start to get lax on your standards and what you believe. Now, again, I don't believe any two churches are going to be identical, because you're going to have different slight variations and differences of beliefs and teachings. But that is not at all in any way the same as people with different methods of salvation and different ways of baptizing people. It's these real core main doctrines. So that's one reason, is that the world is trying to get all the religions together, and it's trying to make you think in those terms instead of saying, no, we're going to stand on the truth. We're going to stand on what's right. Hey, if other people believe the same thing, great. And if they don't, well, we're sticking with the Bible. We're not going to put the importance of getting everybody together to join hands as higher than our obedience to this word. But the other reason is that I want you to be able to understand what a person might believe if they attend a Reformed church. Because remember, our goal in general is to get people saved, is to bring people to Christ. And it could be very helpful to have a better understanding of where someone's coming from. Because the trickiest part is that you can talk to people from Reformed churches, and they'll say, I believe salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And you say, that's the right answer. And you're absolutely right, that's the right answer. And I'll get into the Calvinism tonight, but they have a way of saying these things where you can get a right answer, but the belief, it still isn't right. And it sounds funny. It does. I'll give you a real basic example because I'm going to get into the Calvinism tonight and how wicked that is, and the whole understanding is warped. A real basic understanding is, you know, when I go out and I talk to people, say, hey, do you know for sure if you're saved, do you know if you're going to heaven? And they say yes. Sometimes their answer, I'll ask them why. They'll say, oh, I believe in Jesus. Right answer. That's absolutely right. But when, and I could just walk away from there thinking, well, they gave the right answer, they're saved. But I don't do that because I don't want to hear, oftentimes, people repeat things that they've heard over and over again. It's not necessarily their true belief in their heart. And it's not that they're trying to be deceitful or anything. It's just they're not expressing what they truly believe very well. They're just repeating what they've heard maybe. And so what I like to do is say, okay, and I'll give an example. I'll sometimes say, okay, well, what if, you know, what if you were to kill somebody, would you still go to heaven then? You know, or commit some real big sin. Sometimes I'll come up with a real extreme example of, well, what if you were to do this and this and this, and then you kill yourself, and it's just this really extreme example. But what that does is it gets to the heart of what a person believes. Because that's what I'm interested in. If they say, no, absolutely, Christ paid for all of my sins, I'm saved. You know, it doesn't, it's not based on how good I am. It's not based on what I do. It's not based on my obedience to the commandments. Then I'm going to, okay, you understand the gospel. You understand that you are truly just believing in Christ to be saved. That is what you believe. That's what I'm going to come away with. But most people who say they believe in Jesus will say, oh no, I mean, no, if I do that, I'm going to hell. So what that tells me is that they're not truly, they don't truly have all their faith in Christ. They're still relying on an obedience to God's law and obedience to his commandments. This is why this sermon is important because we want to be able to understand this a little better. And normally, and I was the same way, and almost every single person I know has been the same. You have, you have a tendency when you don't talk to very many people about Christ and you don't really go through the gospel very often with people. The tendency is to think that there's a lot more people out there that are really saved than there really are. And it's because of things like that, because you can hear someone talk about Christ and you think, oh, they're talking about Christ. Oh, they read the Bible. They must be saved. And on the surface, sure, that kind of makes sense. But the more, and I'll challenge you to do this, the more you start talking to people and really start kind of asking these questions that will help to bring to the surface what they're believing in their heart, that's when you'll start to understand the real problem. And I believe that this is all intentional from Satan to try to make people all just think everything's okay. Because if you don't think there's a problem, why would you do anything about it? And even, even saved born again believers, if they don't, if they don't think that there's, that their loved ones is going to hell, oh yeah, well, they're saved and they're saved and they're saved. Then, then you don't feel a sense of urgency or a sense of need to really talk about it because, oh, they're okay. They're saved. But if you had the mindset of thinking, well, they might go to hell forever. And this is the mindset we ought to have about everybody, honestly. And it's out of love for them because I don't know about you, but I know for dead sure, I don't want any of my family members, any of my friends, anybody I know dying and going to hell and burning there forever, never, never. So we ought to have that importance of saying, this is important enough to dig in deeper and really, I mean, as much as I can feel comfortable making sure that I think that they're saved. And so again, I'm going to get into this because I am going way, way, way over time with some of these explanations, but we're going to go into some of these, these doctrines. Now they're not all pertaining to salvation. Okay. So what I'm digging about this morning has more to do with other teachings that are not necessarily, you know, dependent on salvation, but the doctrines of the Bible are important. Just because it doesn't have to do with salvation does not mean that, oh, well, this is just fine and that's okay and it's not a big deal. And the first one I'm going to look at, and now I have some, some resources that I printed off and it's from the West Minister Confession of Faith. This is what I'm going to be reading from. Now there are, there are variations amongst reformed churches. It's not all just everybody has to follow this one code. It's not like that, but they subscribe in general to this theology and you'll find that the points that I picked out will not vary that much from church to church. I just found this one resource. This is what I'm going off of. It's the main resource for the Presbyterian Church. Again, I had to learn this stuff. I went through the, the confirmation classes. So it's kind of funny because you look at all these different similarities. That's why, this is why I call it Catholic Light. In the Presbyterian Church baptizes babies. Catholic Church baptizes babies. Now the Catholic Church teaches like it's more for salvation, but the Presbyterians are kind of on the fence about that. They've kind of watered down that the real strong teaching that the Catholic Church teaches about baptismal infant baptisms. They've kind of watered that down, but they still do it. They still kind of do these different things. Catholics have catechism, right? They have their whole catechism classes. Well, they don't call catechism, but I had my confirmation classes. So I had to learn all of this stuff before I could be a confirmed member of the church. You have to go through this whole series. And again, where's that in the Bible? Day of Pentecost, there were thousands added to the church that day. They didn't go through these classes. They didn't have to go through and pass the test and everything else. They got saved. They got baptized. Boom. They're part of the church. And that's what we believe. But there's so many similarities. And one of the things here is baptism. I'm going to start with baptism. So this is from this Westminster Confession of Faith. They've got multiple points. I just kind of pulled a few of them out. They say this. They say dipping of the person into the water is not necessary. Now, mind you, the word baptism, especially if you look just the Greek word itself, and I'm not big on going back to Greek words, but the word itself means immersed. That's what the meaning in Greek, that's what the meaning in English is, that baptism, it means immersion. It means you're immersed. That's just what the word literally means, the definition. They say dipping of the person into the water is not necessary, but baptism is rightly administered by pouring or sprinkling water upon a person. They say this is the right way to baptize. You either pour some water on them or you sprinkle on them. They say it's not dipping. It's not going under the water. They say not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing parents are to be baptized. So they're commanding in their profession of faith. They're saying the infants of either one or both professing parents, so if you're professing parents and you have an infant, they are to be baptized. And then get this, it says the sacrament of baptism is but once to be administered unto any person. What that means is I was baptized as an infant, I shouldn't get baptized again. One time, that's when I was baptized. This flies in the face of scripture. And I'll read a few scripture evidence for you because I don't want to condemn some other belief without showing you the truth from the word. We're going to look at the Bible. And there's too much, you could turn there if you'd like, but I'm going to breeze through a lot of this evidence because I'm running short on time. Matthew 3.16 says, this is when Jesus was baptized. And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water. So if he went up straightway out of the water, does that mean that he was in the water? Now, if Jesus got sprinkled, why would he have to go down into the water and get his legs wet and everything else if that is the correct baptism? It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him. John 3.23. This is talking about John the Baptist says, and John also was baptizing an Enon near to Salem. Why was he baptizing there? Because there was much water there and they came and were baptized. Now, again, if you just need to get a little pitcher and pour some water over your head or get some sprinkled, why do you need much water? This verse wouldn't even make any sense. Why would he be baptizing there? Because there's much water to be baptizing if he didn't need much water. But the main text verse is Acts chapter 8. And a note about Acts chapter 8, what we're going to see here, verse 37, in the modern versions. We are King James only for a very good reason. The modern versions of the Bible remove verse number 37 out of their text. And here we're going to read verse 36, 37, and 38. This is the story of Acts chapter 8. Yeah, this is a good one to turn to. Acts chapter 8. This is a story of Philip. Philip the abandoned. The Spirit tells him, hey, he sees this chariot. And the Spirit tells him, go up to this chariot, right? Go over to that guy. The guy's reading the Bible. So, Philip shows up and he says, hey, do you understand what you're reading? And it's an Ethiopian eunuch. And the eunuch answers him. He says, how can I accept some man should guide me? He's saying, I don't know what this means. Can you help me? And he's in where is he at? He's reading about, like, in the Psalms, I think. Acts chapter 8. And in verse number 32, it says, the place of the scripture which he read was this. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb done before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth. In his humiliation, his judgment was taken away, and who shall declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth. So this is what the eunuch's reading. This is a section of scripture that he's reading. And in verse 34, it says, and eunuch answered Philip and said, I pray thee, of whom speak at the prophet this? Of himself or of some other man? So he asked Philip, like, is he, is the prophet talking about himself here? Or is he prophesying about somebody else? Because this is the way Old Testament scripture was. Oftentimes, you read Isaiah and the Psalms and all those other things. You'll have, like, you know, a man of God that oftentimes they're saying things that are relevant to themselves, but they're also prophesying about another future event, or they're prophesying about Christ. So he asks Philip this. And then in verse 35, then Philip opened his mouth and began at the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus. So now, you know, he's preaching Jesus. He's preaching him the gospel. Verse 36, and as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water. And the eunuch said, see, here is water. What doth hinder me to be baptized? So he's saying, why can't, look, there's water right there. Why can't I be baptized? So he asks the question, why can't I be baptized? The answer is in verse 37. This is the verse that's removed out of the modern versions. Verse 37, and Philip said, if thou believeth with all thine heart thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He asks them, why can't I be baptized? Look, there's water right there. Just baptize me. He says, okay, here is the requirement. This is what you have to do. If you believe with all of your heart, then yes, you can. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And then verse 38 says, and he commanded the chariot to stand still. And they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. Now in the modern versions, he asks the question in verse 36 and in verse 38, he's baptizing him with no answer to the question. Why is this so important? Because you tell me how an infant child can put all of their faith on Jesus Christ for salvation. It doesn't happen. There is a requirement to getting baptized. And that verse has strategically been removed from the modern versions because all these churches practice infant baptism. I mean, the vast majority of them do. They have this practice of sprinkling babies. That's not true. It's not biblical. We'd see this very clearly, very evidently from scripture. It's false, but this is what they teach. We need to be aware of this. My next point is this concept of original sin. Now I preach an entire sermon about this a few months ago, original sin. This is something that unless you've heard it preached about, you've probably heard it so much that you think, oh yeah, original sin. Of course, that's true. It's this common held fallacy. It's not true of this concept. And you have to be real careful with definitions about this because do we have a sinful nature? Yes. As a result of Adam's sin in the garden? Yes. We have a sinful nature. We're born with a sinful nature. But when I'm talking about this concept of original sin being false, we are not automatically a sinner the day we're born. Adam's sin is not imputed unto us as a sin for us when we're born as an infant, as some people teach. These doctrines all go together. This is why they want to baptize babies because they think, for one, they think that baptism has the power of regeneration, of salvation in a sense. And the Catholic church believes you have to be baptized in order to be saved. You can't go to heaven without baptism. They believe it's a part of our salvation. The Reformed churches, they don't go that far. But again, when you read what they believe, it's kind of like they're on the fence. And I've read a bunch of this stuff. They're like, they kind of say it does, but then they say, well, no, it doesn't really. We'll see. They speak out of both sides of their mouth in most of their doctrines because they kind of are clinging to a certain doctrine, but they don't really want to. And they're kind of torn both ways on it because they came out of the Catholic church because that's what they taught. They're kind of just watering it down, but they haven't just completely rejected it. And here's what they say about original sin. So I'll read these points for you coming off of their, you know, basically a statement of faith. They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed. This is talking about, when it says they being the root of all mankind, it's talking about Adam and Eve. Okay. Just because I didn't, there's too much to have in context here of what they're saying. They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by ordinary generation. Again, they use kind of a lot of bigger words, but they're, and a lot of this, some of this stuff is true and some of it's false, but they mix in their falsehood with the truth. So a corrupted nature. Yes, we have a corrupted nature, but is that sin imputed onto us as we are guilty of that sin? No. God doesn't hold us responsible for the sins of our fathers. Everybody is held personally responsible for their own sins. And I'll keep reading here. It says, from this original corruption whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good and wholly inclined to all evil do proceed all actual transgressions. This corruption of nature during this life does remain in those that are regenerated. And although it be through Christ pardoned and mortified, yet both itself and all the motions thereof are truly and properly sin. And this is why I want to point out here, this is point number six on their statement. Every sin, both original and actual. So this is talking about original sins, we're talking about Adam's sin and our actual sins that we've actually committed. He says, every sin, both of them, being a transgression of the righteous law of God and contrary there unto does in its own nature bring guilt upon the sinner whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God. They've included the sin of Adam with our own sins as saying both of them bring God's wrath on us as a sinner. That is not true. Do we have a sinful nature? Yes. Does our flesh incline us to do evil things, do wicked things? Yes, it does. But we are not held responsible for Adam's sin. Which again, in their minds, what does this do to babies then? If an infant dies, babies die relatively frequently, right? I mean, you hear about stillbirths or they're a week old or a month old or whatever. I mean, there are tragedies that happen and infants die. It's a part of life. So, according to this doctrine, that baby has sin because of Adam. And according to this doctrine, the wrath of God is on that baby, which means that baby is just going to go to hell when they die at a week old or stillborn. It's a wicked doctrine. But then this is why they say, well, then you need to baptize your baby because then if you baptize your baby, then your baby is okay for a while. They're all tied together. Now, here's what the Bible says because the Bible says something different. The Bible clearly teaches that infants' babies go to heaven when they die. Remember, David had a curse of God for committing adultery with Bathsheba and she gave birth and he killed Uriah the Hittite, her husband. And when the baby was born, God was angry with David and he said, that baby's not going to live. The baby's going to die. So, the baby was afflicted and David was praying, praying, praying. But the baby finally died and David said, it should not return unto me, but I shall go to him. David was a saved man. He knew he was going to heaven. So, he said, well, the baby's not coming back to me. The baby's gone. The baby's dead, but I will go to him. So, if he thought that that baby was just going to go to hell, he wouldn't have said, I'm going to go to him. So, that's one proof. But here's another proof in Romans chapter 7. You don't have to turn to Romans 7. It says, what shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid, nay, I had not known sin, but by the law. For I had not known lust, except the law had said, thou shalt not covet. But sin, taken occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law, sin was dead. Get this. He says, for I was alive without the law at once. But when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. We are not born dead. We have a, and hear me out here real quick. Spiritually, when we're born again, it's the spiritual birth. Born again means that spirit was alive before. It was alive. It died. It needs to be born again. We need to have that spiritual birth. Before sin enters in, when you're an infant, when you're a child, when you don't understand right from wrong, you don't know the law. You can't know the law. You have no way of knowing any of this stuff because you're still developing. You're still an infant. You don't have that sin. You're alive without the law. He said, I was alive without the law at once. But when sin revived, I died. As soon as a child comes to a point where they could start to understand these concepts and understand, you know, what a sin is and there's rules and there's right and wrong and everything else. And this is, and I don't know exactly when that is. I don't know. But when that sin can happen, when a child could be held responsible for their sin because they've done something wrong they know they've done something wrong. That's the point then where, you know, there's an age of accountability. It's not this original sin that just gets passed down that you're just automatically a sinner. You have a sinful nature, but you're not automatically a sinner. We all are held responsible for our own actions by God. I'm going to figure out why I'm going to cut out here. Okay. I'm going to cut that out for sure. Now repentance, and this is a big one for me. There's a lot of false teachings about repentance in regards to salvation and just understanding what the word even means. The word repent just means to change or to turn. That's it. We have to understand what it means in the context that it's used because in the Bible it's used in multiple ways. There's different reasons that God uses the word repent in the Bible. Sometimes, in the majority of the times in the Old Testament, God is the one repenting. See, most people have this concept that repent means turn from your sin. Repent doesn't mean turn from your sin. If it says in context, you know, repentance from sin, then yeah, in that context that's what it's talking about. But just the word all alone by itself does not mean turn from your sin. God's not a sinner and we see all throughout the Old Testament God repenting. He repents of things he was going to do. He changes his mind. He was going to do this. He was going to destroy the people of Israel, but Moses interceded for him, so he changed his mind and said, okay, I won't do it. That's what repentance is very, very briefly in a nutshell. Again, an entire sermon all by itself can be made out of this. It's not a requirement for us to turn from all of our sins in order to be saved. What is required is to put our faith on Christ to be saved. Turning from all of our sins, I mean, think about that. What does that really mean? If I were to turn from all of my sins and if I truly did turn from my sins, would I do them again? Not if I truly did. If I truly just said I am turning from my life of sin, I would either sin again, which would prove I didn't turn from my life from sin, or I would not sin again, and I truly did sin. To say that we have to turn from our sin to be saved is not true. We need to accept the free gift. We need to receive Christ as our Savior. That's what we need to do. We still have this flesh. So what they say about repentance is this. They say, by it a sinner out of the sight and sense, not only of the danger, but also the filthiness and odiousness of his sins, as contrary to the holy nature and righteous law of God, and upon the apprehension of his mercy in Christ, to such as our penitent so grieves, for penitent is just you're kind of sorry for it or you're grieving over it, so grieves for and hates his sins as to turn from them all unto God, purposing and endeavoring to walk with him in all the ways of his commandments. And this is one of the places where they talk out of both sides of their mouths because they'll say this, although repentance is not to be rested in, it's not to be trusted in as any satisfaction for sin, to pay for your sins, or any cause of the pardon thereof. Okay, I'll agree with that, right? That's not something to do with payment for your sins or the pardoning of your sins, which is the act of God's free grace in Christ. But then they continue on. They'll say, yet it is of such necessity to all sinners that none may expect pardon without it. Do you see what they did there? They said, you don't need it to pay for your sins, but without it, you can't expect to be pardoned. So, and this is, it's intentionally, I believe it's intentionally confusing because you can read part of that and agree, I agree with that. Yeah, of course it has nothing to do with it, but it does. It doesn't, but it does. No. And this is how most of their doctrine is. And it was very confusing for me trying to grow up and understand this stuff, especially being unsaved. But the last point, because I've got another one, I'm not even going to go there. The last point, we'll go into the Calvinism tonight because that's what the real bad doctrine is coming from, because that has to do with salvation, is the Calvinistic teaching. But they teach us about marriage and divorce. They say adultery or fornication committed after a contract being detected before marriage gives just occasion to the innocent party to dissolve the contract, that contract. I agree with that. Before marriage, before the, basically, I believe it's a consummation of the marriage. Before the marriage comes together, you can, you can decide to say, nope, I want out of this. And that was legitimate and lawful according to the Bible, that that was allowed in the law of Moses as a reason to get divorced. But then they go on and they say, in the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue out a divorce and after the divorce to marry another as if the offending party were dead. I do not believe with that. And the reason why is we'll go to some scripture. We're going to be in Matthew. So if you like, we could turn to Matthew chapter five. We're going to go to Matthew five, Matthew 19 and Matthew one. We're going to see what the New Testament teaches about this. And it's the Old Testament as well. The Old Testament teaches the same thing. But Jesus says, Matthew 5 31, it had been said, whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement. But I say unto you that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced, commit adultery. So what he's saying here is that the only allowable case for this divorce is fornication. Now, these words are important because fornication is that physical act between a man and a woman when you're not married. That's fornication. Adultery is the word that's used when you are married, right? Two people who aren't married that are sleeping together and that are doing more than sleeping together, they're not committing adultery. That's not that sin. They're committing fornication, which is a wicked sin. They shouldn't be doing it obviously against the word of God. But that is called fornication. When it's adultery, it's when you're married. So Jesus gives the exception of fornication, which happens prior to marriage. And historically, people gave a lot more emphasis on people being virgin and people being pure. And when you're going to get married to someone, you wanted to get married to someone who is pure and virgin. In today's wicked, disgusting society, it's just out the window. Of course, yeah, everybody does this and it's just, it's no big deal. It's fine. And it's just accepted and it's normal and it's craziness and it's of the devil. But people used to think that this was actually a really important thing and a big deal that you could be presented pure on your wedding day to your spouse because this is the way that God ordained it. And when Jesus said, and this is why he gave that this law was even allowed is because you go into this contract, you think you're getting something. You think you're getting someone who's pure. And if you find out before you consummate that marriage, before you bring that marriage together, if you find out that that person is not where you thought they were, they're not, they have some uncleanness in them. Or as in the case of Joseph, which we're going to see in a minute, the woman's pregnant. Wait a minute. I want out of this. You are not pure. You're not a virgin. This is the case because, and God said, Jesus says for the hardness of your heart that God gave you this preset. It's because Moses gave you this preset. He says it's because you have a hard heart. And I understand that that's going to be really difficult for you to deal with that you're getting married to this person and you find out, well, wait, they're not a virgin. They have not only, they're not only going to be with you. They've been with somebody else. And that's too much for people to handle. So he says, I have allowed this one instance as an allowance to get a divorce. Matthew 19 verse 7 says, they say unto him, why did Moses, so these people are asking Jesus, why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement and to put her away? Verse 8, he says unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your heart suffered you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, there's that word again, except it's for fornication and shall marry another, committeth adultery. And whosoever marrieth her, which is put away, does commit adultery. So what the Bible teaches, and this is very, very, very, very unpopular today because there are so many people that are divorced and it's sad and it's unfortunate, but we can't just look the other way and say that these things are okay when God's word says the opposite. And it's been a tough truth for people to deal with and I understand that. It's hard to imagine. I mean, thankfully my wife and I weren't in this situation as far as being married in the past or anything like that, but that's going to be a difficult struggle to deal with. If you have to think, well, for the rest of my life now I can't get married again. Or at least until your previous spouse dies because the law binds you, it's till death do you part. And that's the vow that you've made before God and before man. And when you make that vow and then you come together and complete that marriage, the joining together, that is when you are one flesh. The Bible says what God hath joined together, let not man divide asunder. It says you are one. And I know there are lots of circumstances where people are in really bad situations and they have bad marriages and stuff and it's horrible. I'm not condoning of any of it, but the Bible says this is the way I want it. And then he says, and then if you do get divorced, not saying it's okay, but if you do get divorced for another reason, if you marry a person who's divorced, he says now you're committing adultery because God has not separated that marriage. You've gotten a divorce, but God has not separated that marriage. And this is seen evidence in Matthew chapter one when it talks about Joseph contemplating whether or not he's going to divorce Mary. Because he's thinking about this now because of course we know that Mary conceived of the Holy Ghost. She was not unfaithful to Joseph at all, but she was carrying Jesus in her womb. But Joseph found out about this now. And again, back then they were espoused. They had not come together yet. Mary was still virgin. They were espoused and it's a little bit different way of marriage than we have these days because people, now you get espoused and married and everything on the same day. It all happens right away, but they didn't do it that fast before. It used to be you'd be espoused to someone and then later on you'd consummate the marriage and varying amounts of time or whatever. And this is what it says in Matthew 118, the last verse I'm going to look at because we're kind of running out of time. The Bible says, now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise, when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph before they came together, very clear, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband being a just man. He was a just man. He regarded God's law. He obeyed God's law and not willing to make her a public example was minded to put her away privately. So it would have been justified for Joseph to divorce his wife because they had not come together yet and he had found out now, hey, she's pregnant. And except in this one case, there's only one way that people become pregnant, right? So he's thinking, oh man, and he didn't want to make a big deal out of it and make her a big public example, make a big scene out of it. He's thinking, well, I'm privately just going to just put away and move on because I don't think I could deal with this, with her, with me getting ready to commit my entire life to this woman and she's already been unfaithful to me and she's pregnant, you know, like, and she's lied to me. And that was the case that he gave. And, you know, it's a hard truth. I understand that, but it's in the word of God, it's in the Bible, it's what the Bible teaches. It's what the Bible preaches and this is what we believe. I believe the word of God and I think it's holy and pure and true and great and God gives us these reasons. And if people had this understanding, again, I think if people had this understanding of marriage and divorce and that, well, if I get divorced, I mean, I can't do, you know, except for that one gaze, I can't, you know, God's not going to bless me. I can't go out and just get married to someone else. It's going to change your attitude. And I'm not saying every marriage is perfect. I don't know if any marriage is perfect, but when you're coming together, you're making an agreement and you're saying, you know what, for better and for worse. The for worse is important. The for better is easy. We're having great times. You don't need to worry about your promise. You don't need to worry about that vow because when things are going great, they're going great. You don't even think about the vow. It's when things are going bad. You say, you know what, things are going really bad, but I made this promise and I'm going to stick it out. And, you know, with a little bit more getting back to this way of thinking, I think we'd see a decline in the divorce rate. I think we'd see more marriages, you know, tough it out and work it out. And, you know, if you've been divorced, I'm not here trying to condemn you for your actions of getting divorced. You know, what has happened in the past is over. There's nothing you can do about it now. You can't go back and reverse time and change anything that's been done. It is the way it is. Okay. But for one, I'm teaching this because my children have not, they're not even close to getting married yet, but they need to understand this doctrine. And for two, it's what the Bible says. And if you have been divorced, you know, and your ex-spouse is still alive, according to the Bible, you should not get remarried. Now, that's all I have time for this morning. And I know we went a little bit over time, but, you know, this is the church. This is the doctrine that I came out of. This is the Presbyterian church, the Reformed church, all these different points that I hit. Obviously, you know, we don't hate the people that go to these churches at all. A lot of them are really nice, friendly. I mean, good, good people. I know there's none good. No, not one, but, you know, decent people. But it's heresy. The church teaches heretical teachings. There's a lot of major doctrines that are just totally messed up. And if you come back tonight, we're going to get into Calvinism, which is really important, really, really screwed up. But it's important to understand these things so that we don't just assume that everybody's the same and oh, it's just a little bit different here, a little bit different there. No, there's actually some very major differences. And we need to just stick with what the Word of God says and not be following some man, you know, Martin Luther, John Calvin or fill in the name. I don't care. I don't care if it's a Baptist man. You know, I don't care if you want to say, you know, if it's Billy Graham or whatever, any, you know, all these names are escaping me right now. But there's all these famous men of the past. I don't care who it is. We need to be following Christ, not just some man and just being so into their doctrine that we're going to call it by their name and we're all going to believe it. No, we're going to just believe this book. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you so much for your words. God, I pray that you would please help us to become better soul winners. Help us understand not the false teachings as much as just that they're out there, that they exist. Help us to be diligent when we talk to people about the gospel that we try to dig down to the heart of the matter that we can understand what they truly believe to come to the surface so that we don't just make the false assumption that somebody is saved when they're really not, Lord. That would be very grievous for us to do that because we would probably have a tendency not to bring up the gospel anymore if we had that impression. God, help us to be bold in spirit. Help us to learn and to grow more. And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.