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Welcome to steadfast Baptist Church If we could let's go ahead and take our seats and take out our hymnals We're gonna begin this morning in song 23 There is power in the blood Song number 23 Again That's song 23 there is power in the blood that sing it all together on the first Would you be free from your burden of sin there's power in the blood power in the blood Would you worry full of victory when there's wonderful power in the blood? There is power Wonder working power in the blood of the lamb There is power Wonder working power in the precious blood of the lamb Would you be free from your passion and pride there's power in the blood power in the blood For a cleansing to Calvary's time there's wonderful power in the blood There is power Wonder working power in the blood of the lamb there is power Wonder working power in the precious blood of the lamb Would you be wider much wider than snow there's power in the blood power in the blood Since things are lost in its life-giving flow. There's wonderful power in the blood There is power Wonder working power in the blood of the lamb there is power Power wonder working power in the precious blood of the lamb Would you do service for Jesus your King there's power in the blood power in the blood Would you live daily his praises to sing there's wonderful power in the blood There is power Wonder working power in the blood of the lamb there is power Wonder working power in the precious blood of the lamb Amen, great singing let's bow our toward a prayer Heavenly Father, we thank you that we could come here again this Sunday morning Staff fellowship with the brethren and to hear the preaching from your word I just pray you would soften our hearts that we'd be open and receptive And that you'd help us to apply these teachings this morning to our lives and please best pastor Shelly You'd fill them with your Holy Spirit right now and help them to teach us your word and pray bless our soul winning this afternoon And Jesus saying we pray amen Next is going to be 192 Ring the bells of heaven 192 Ring the bells of heaven Ring the bells of heaven there is joy today for us all returning from the wall See the father meets him out upon the way welcoming his weary wandering child Glory glory how the angels sing Glory glory how the angels see Glory glory how the loud hearts ring Tis the ransom army like a mighty sea Peeling forth the anthem of the free Ring the bells of heaven there is joy today for the wanderer now is reconciled Yes, the soul is rescued from his sinful way and is born a new Glory glory how the angels see Glory glory how the loud hearts ring Tis the ransom army like a mighty sea Peeling forth the anthem of the free Ring the bells of heaven spread the peace today angels swelled the glad triumphant strain Tell the joyful tidings bear it far away for a precious soul is born again Glory glory how the angels sing Glory glory how the loud hearts ring Tis the ransom army like a mighty sea Peeling forth the anthem of the free Amen Amen thank you so much for coming to steadfast baptist church If you need a bulletin lift up your hand nice and high one of our ushers would love to come by Get you a bulletin on the front. We have our Bible memory passage John 1 verse 26 and We have on the inside our service our soul winning times Down below church that's for me in the year Then we have our list of expecting ladies continue to pray for all of those that are expecting We also have a prayer list if you'd like to be added to our prayer list Please just send an email to steadfast Baptist kjv at gmail.com and we'd love to add you just put in the title of your email prayer request and If you don't specify we always assume it's public if it is a private one just say like this is a private prayer request Also, we have a couple events coming up May 21st the Austin, Texas So winning marathon and so that's just right around the corner We have a sign-up sheet right over here. And then we also have the men's conference August 18th through the 20th, so that'll be a lot of fun. I Was actually this week. I wasn't here Wednesday Brother Ben preached for me. So thanks so much for that and I was in Georgia with stronghold Baptist Church they kind of have like a Camping retreat event that I went out to and it was a lot of fun I got to see a lot of great people some of our friends from Jacksonville some of our friends from Oklahoma and Some of our friends even from the Atlanta Georgia area pastor Anderson preached on the Friday night pastor Jimenez preached on the Wednesday night. There's a local pastor there named pat pastor ed Williams He preached Tuesday and then pastor Burson preached Monday a lot of really good sermons If you can I highly recommend listening to pastor men his sermon. Okay. It was it was a really really good sermon and I highly encourage you checking that out I think pastor Jimenez, I'm sorry I think pastor Burson's is posting that on his channel kind of the nicer the uploaded version later And so that's some really good sermons if you have to you could listen to mine, but you don't have to know skin and So but we had a lot of fun. It was it was a great retreat going out there and hanging out with them So thank you so much for anybody. I was praying for that event also We still don't know exactly when our timetable is to move in It's our new location, but it could be this Sunday So just continue praying for that and just check your email and we'll be updating you emailing you everything That's going on. Did we bring the yearbooks? Yes, all right All right, so we got our church yearbooks in and We have we have plenty to give out so it is one per family or one per Individual so if you if you're just a single that's fine. Take one and one per family, but we'd like to pass these out This is my first time looking at in person it looks really nice so Go ahead and grab one lift your hand up or whatever as they come around make sure you get one and We have it is steadfast and pure words and I like that kind of combined family thing Couple you guys that escaped photos. I just put a group picture with you in there anyways, okay So there you go, but I'm really looking forward to also doing this next year so if you like these and you say man I missed out well next time you got to do it right next time you got to sign up and Really? I really feel like they turned out. Well, thanks to everybody that participated Thanks so much to miss Lucy for taking pictures here and everybody else. Let's just give them a round of applause for that. All right Let's go ahead and go to our third song this morning 232 tell me the story of Jesus 232 You Again that's gonna be 232 tell me the story of Jesus Tell me the story of Jesus Right on my heart every word Tell me the story most precious Sweetest that ever was heard Tell how the angels in chorus Sing as they welcome his birth Glory to God in the highest Peace and good tidings to earth Tell me the story of Jesus Right on my heart every word Tell me the story most precious Sweetest that ever was heard Basting alone in the desert Tell of the days that are past How for since he was tempted Yet was triumphant at last Tell of the years of his labor Tell of the sorrow he bore He was despised and afflicted Homeless, rejected, and saved Homeless, rejected, and bore Tell me the story of Jesus Right on my heart every word Tell me the story most precious Sweetest that ever was heard Tell of the cross where they nailed him Writhing in anguish and pain Tell of the grave where they laid him Tell how we liveth again Love in that story so tender Clearer than ever I see Stay let me weep while you whisper Love paid the ransom for me Tell me the story of Jesus Right on my heart every word Tell me the story most precious Sweetest that ever was heard Amen. Great singing. As the offering plates are being passed around, please turn your Bibles to Joshua chapter 1. Joshua chapter 1. Joshua chapter 1, the Bible reads, Now after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' minister, saying, Moses my servant is dead, now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea, for the going down of the sun shall be your coast. There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life, as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee. I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Be strong and of a good courage, for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I swear unto their fathers to give them. Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded thee. Turn not from it to the right hand, or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein, for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people, saying, Pass through the host, and command the people, saying, Prepare you vittles, for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan to go in to possess the land which the Lord your God giveth you to possess him. And to the Reubenites, and to the Gadites, and to the half-tribe of Manasseh spake Joshua, saying, Remember the word which Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, saying, The Lord your God hath given you rest, and hath given you this land. Your wives, your little ones, and your cattle shall remain in the land which Moses gave you on this side Jordan, but ye shall pass before your brethren armed, all the mighty men of valor, and help them. Until the Lord hath given your brethren rest, as he hath given you, and they also have possessed the land which the Lord your God giveth them, then ye shall return unto the land of your possession, and enjoy it, which Moses the Lord's servant gave you on this side Jordan toward the sun rising. And they answered Joshua, saying, All that thou commandest us we will do, and whithersoever thou sendest us we will go. According as we hearken unto Moses in all things, so will we hearken unto thee, only the Lord thy God be with thee as he was with Moses. Whosoever he be that doth rebel against thy commandment, and will not hearken unto thy words in all that thou commandest him, he shall be put to death, only be strong and of a good courage. Let's have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this day and for the opportunity to be gathered together at the first to hear the word of God to preach. I pray that you would still pass to Shelly with the Holy Spirit now, help him to preach boldly to us the word of God, and help us all pay attention. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. We're in Joshua chapter number one, look at verse number six, the Bible reads, Be strong and of a good courage. For unto this people shalt the divide for an inheritance of the land which they swear unto their fathers to give them. Only be thou strong and very courageous that thou mayest observe the dew according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded thee. Turn not from it to the right hand or to the left that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein, day and night, that thou mayest observe the dew according to all that is written therein. For then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. And this portion of scripture is very famous, it's often looked to for sermons, and there's a lot of great doctrine, there's a lot of great instruction, encouragement that could be taken from this passage. But the phrase that just kind of kept sticking out to me and really just kind of that I was noticing when reading this passage was the phrase good courage, good courage. Now it's mentioned twice in this little section here, in verse number 6 he says be strong and of a good courage, and then again in verse number 9 be strong and of a good courage. Now why I like the coupling of these two words is because courage in and of itself is a neutral word in the sense that you could have a good courage and you could have a bad courage. The courage being described isn't necessarily positive or negative. Now of course courage in and of itself is considered a good attribute, a positive attribute, and we understand that. You know it's better than being a coward or being afraid, we don't want to be afraid, we don't want to be a coward, but at the same time there's many people that are courageous but they don't have a good courage, they have a bad courage. Or they're courageous in something that's not good, not right, it's actually sinful. And so what we have to understand is that there is a good courage out there and we don't only want to be courageous, we want to have a good courage. Now I want to show you this in the Bible, actually this phrase is not mentioned just here, it's mentioned all over the Bible, but go backwards to Numbers chapter number 13. And I want to show you another mention here. Now Joshua, in the book of Joshua in verse number 1 he's taking over the responsibilities of Moses. Moses was the main leader, Moses the primary leader, but he's going to pass on, he's going to die, and they need a man over the congregation and that's why Joshua is being set up as a leader. He's appointed the next man to take over the leadership role of the children of Israel and it's very important for the person at the top, it's very important for the leadership to exercise good courage. And to have strength. Obviously not everyone's going to be strong, not everybody's going to have the same level of leadership characteristics, but the guy at the top has to have good leadership characteristics. He can't be a double minded man, he can't be weak, he has to be someone that's very strong, he has to have someone that's going to be very courageous to do that which is right, to do that which is good. And it says in Numbers chapter 13 look at verse 20, and what the land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether it be wood therein or not, and be of good courage and bring of the fruit of the land, now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes. Now I'm not going through all the context here, but in this portion of scripture, what are we talking about? We're talking about them going into the promised land and sending spies to go into the promised land, they're going to take 12 men, essentially one of the top guys from each tribe, and they're going to send all of them into the promised land to spy out the land. Now if you're picking a guy from your tribe to go in, what is a characteristic, what is an attribute that you want in this guy? It's someone that's going to be very courageous but having a good courage, someone that's strong. Unfortunately, when the spies come back, only two of them were very courageous. Who? Joshua and Caleb. Now that makes sense that we're going to end up picking Joshua to be the leader of the children of Israel because he's already shown that he's a man of good courage. He's already shown that he's willing to follow God's commandments when it's difficult, when there's a lot of things to be afraid of, when it's not even necessarily the popular opinion, he's going to do that which is right. It's not popular to say, let's go into the land, because notice he's one or two out of 12 that basically want to go in, whereas 10 don't. And we're not talking about the world here. We're talking about amongst Christians, amongst those that are saved, and we're not even talking about those that are saved. We're talking about the leadership, and we're not even just talking about some of the leadership, we're talking about the top of the top of the top leadership. Only two out of 12 are willing to follow God's commandments, are willing to have that courage, are willing to have that strength to go into the promised land. And so we have to understand that having good courage is not something that's automatic, it's not something that everybody just does, it's something that we have to be disciplined for, and we have to think about, and we have to prepare our hearts, and we have to really try very hard in order to have that good courage. Of the disciples, only 12 are picked, and even amongst the disciples, not all of them show the same levels of courage, the same levels of faith, do the same amount of works. And what Jesus Christ wants is to find that man that is going to say, you know what, I will follow Jesus wherever. If it's in the land of the giants, if it's in the land of the Canaanites, it doesn't matter what foe I may face, I'm willing to face them. And I will submit to you today that many of the foes that we have to face, in my mind, they're not even kind of as scary as the Canaanites or these giants. I mean, if you were to say, Pastor Shelley, would you rather face the foes of today or to face the foes of the Old Testament? The Old Testament guys always sound scarier. They sound a lot meaner, they sound more wicked even. I mean, we talk about our culture being wicked, but you have to think about it. How about the cultures of the Old Testament? How about the cultures of the New Testament? I mean, these people aren't Bible-believing Christians. These people aren't worshipping the Lord. These people don't have Christian values. These people are pagans, they're of the devil, they do all kinds of evil, wicked, satanic practices, all the filthy things you can imagine they're doing them. And so, it's not going to be really any different. We're always going to kind of have the same foes, but at the same time we need to find men that are willing to stand up and have some good courage. Go over to Deuteronomy chapter 31, Deuteronomy chapter 31. So, this morning I'm just kind of by way of introduction showing you that the Bible teaches there is a good courage. And we now have three points that I want to make about good courage, but I first just want to kind of show you this theme of good courage in the Bible. It says in Deuteronomy 31, look at verse 6, be strong and of a good courage. Fear not, neither be afraid of them, for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee, he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. So, this is kind of the precursor to Joshua chapter number 1. Moses is talking to Joshua, he's trying to give him a pep talk, he's trying to encourage him. You have to understand that they were supposed to have strong courage when they were spying out the land. Then fast forward 40 years, Moses is telling Joshua, have good courage. Then Joshua chapter number 1, this is the Lord telling Joshua, be strong and of a good courage. Now, what I think is significant about this is why did Joshua need Moses to reiterate that to him? Why did he then need the Lord to reiterate that to him again? It's because it's not automatic. It's because it's actually a very difficult task. Having good courage is not easy. It's also something that we need a constant reminder on, and we need the reminder not just from man, also from God. And so, if you're going to have a good courage, you can't just rely on a pastor or a leader or a minister to tell you. You also need to read the Bible on your own and get that courage from the Word of God, get that courage from God himself. Because many times, those that actually have to have good courage will not have a man standing beside them to cheer them on. At this point in time, Moses is right there by Joshua saying, have good courage. It's a little bit easier to have courage when you got a guy standing next to you saying, let's do this. But pretty soon, Moses is going to be gone. So who is going to motivate Joshua? Who's going to encourage Joshua? Who's going to remind Joshua, the only thing he's going to have left is the Bible, is the Word of God. And there is going to be times in your life if you are a leader, and look, if you're the man of the house, you're a leader, where the only person that's going to agree with you is the Bible. The wife may not agree with you, the children may not agree with you, the father's not going to agree with you, the father-in-law's not going to agree with you, the uncles and aunts and the brothers are not going to agree with you. But you know who's going to agree with you? Jesus, the Word of God, and you're just going to have to have good courage anyways. You're going to say, well, you know what? I've heard what all of y'all had to say, but this says something different, and guess what I'm going to pick? This. And there's been times even in my life where I felt like, at least in the moment, I don't really hear anybody telling me to do this, but I hear this telling me to do this. And you know what? That's what I'm going to do. And every time you just submit yourself to the Word of God, you just say, that's right, I'm going to do it anyway, I'm just going to trust that the Bible's right here, it always proves true. It always rings true. I've never in my life done something the Bible told me to do and then later regretted it. Maybe in the media it didn't make sense to me, but I'm saying right now, as I stand before you now, every single time I've trusted the Bible over my own thoughts or what other people have told me, the Bible's always been right, it's always been true, and if it's been true so far, why would I then start doubting now? If God's led you through the wilderness for 40 years, why would He stop you now when you're going to enter the Promised Land? If God was with Moses, why wouldn't He be with Joshua? But here's the thing, if God was with Moses and God was with Joshua, why would God not be with steadfast Baptist church? And let me tell you something, He's just with us as He is with Joshua. There's no, it's not like God was like, you know what, I like to show myself strong in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament I'm just kind of a hands-off approach. No, no, no, no, no. In the New Testament, we're going to do greater works than Jesus Himself, is what the Bible said. And I'm not saying me personally, I'm saying us as Christians, as a collective, Jesus said that we would do greater works, but you know what God's looking for? He's looking for people that are going to have a good courage. That are just going to follow what the Bible says, regardless of what man says. Regardless of what history may say. Regardless of what anybody says, we just find it in the Bible and we say we're just going to do it. We're going to study the Bible and we're going to do it. Look at verse 7. And Moses called unto Joshua and said unto him in the sight of all Israel, Be strong and of good courage, for thou must go with his people on the land which the Lord has sworn unto their fathers to give them, and thou shalt cause them to inherit it. You know what I like about Moses is he says, hey, I know I'm going to force you to have good courage, I'm going to tell everybody. He's going to do it in front of everyone. And you know what, that's a good idea because it provides accountability, doesn't it? I mean, if Moses is just kind of telling Joshua on the side like, hey, you need to have courage, buddy. You need to do this, it's just right. He could think like, well, they don't know what's going on. But no, Moses is like, hey, let's bring everybody out here, okay? Everybody listen up. This guy, he's going to have to have good courage. So you know what? Every woman, every little boy, every little girl is looking to Joshua's example and Joshua's example is going to set the tone for millions of people. And you as a man are setting the tone for thousands of people. Whether you realize it or not, by you doing that which is right, you're going to affect thousands of people. You will affect the people in this church, you will affect all your family members, your relatives, your co-workers, your neighbors, just everyone around you. And we all have literally thousands of people in our sphere of influence in our lives. I mean, you're going to come across literally thousands and thousands of people in your life, whether that's through education, through the workforce, through your example online. And you know what? Steadfast Baptist Church as a collective is literally reaching thousands and thousands, tens of thousands, yea, I believe in its lifetime, hundreds of thousands, yea, millions. In fact, some of our preaching clips get millions of views every once in a while. That's affecting a lot of people. And it's not just me because they'll say, oh there's actually people there saying amen. Some of your amens have been heard millions of times. Why? Because you had a good courage to agree with the Bible, to agree with the Word of God. And you know what? We should always agree with the Bible. I don't care what this world has to say, nuts to them, they're the ones that are crazy. Look at verse 23. And it gave Joshua the son of Nun a charge, and said, Be strong and of a good courage, for thou shalt bring the children of Israel into the land which I swear unto them, and I will be with thee. So the Lord's saying, I will be with you. Who else do you need? I mean, who cares who's on your team if God's on your team? It really just is an automatic win. You could have the worst team, but if God's on your roster, win. So that's the only thing that matters. And here's the thing, when we have the King James Bible, when we're reading the Bible, when we're saved, guess who's on our team? God! The Lord is with us! I mean, Matthew 28, He said, And lo, I am with you always, even in the end of the world. Jesus said He's with us when we're accomplishing the Word of God. And so we shouldn't be afraid, we shouldn't cower at what this world's going to throw at us, we should be strong. If you go to 1 Chronicles 19, go to 1 Chronicles 19. What's the sign of the sermon? Good courage. Now there is a bad courage out there, but I'm first emphasizing this good courage that we have mentioned in the Bible, just constantly just hammered. Just good courage, have good courage, have good courage. And we're hearing it in all kinds of different situations. Going and spying out the land, taking over, being charged in front of all the people, the Lord reminding him, hey you need to have good courage. The Lord reminded, I mean when Moses is speaking to Joshua in Deuteronomy, he's saying this is what God said to you. But then in Joshua chapter 1, remember, God's speaking to him again. So if God in His wisdom and in His providence is speaking to Joshua multiple times to have good courage, then I think we too need a constant reminder, we need a constant hammering of having a good courage, of being strong and having that right kind of courage. 1 Chronicles 19, look at verse number 10. Now when Joab saw that the battle was set against him before and behind, he chose out of all the choice of Israel, put them in array against the Syrians and the rest of the people who delivered under the hand of Abishai, his brother, and they set themselves in array against the children of Ammon. And he said, if the Syrians be too strong for me, then thou shalt help me, but if the children of Ammon be too strong for thee, then I will help thee. Be of good courage, and let us behave ourselves valiantly for our people and for the cities of our God, and let the Lord do that which is good in His sight. So what did Joab say to Abishai? Hey, we need to have good courage. We're on the Lord's side, we need to fight this battle, and when they go out to battle, they're basically just completely encircled. Just armies everywhere, and the Ammonites had even hired out other mercenaries and other armies. I mean, they're severely outnumbered, surrounded on every single side, and Joab just says, you know what? We're going to fight them, and we're going to have good courage, and whatever God wants to happen is going to happen. And that's what God's people should say. God's people should say, you know what? I'm just going to fight, I don't care what happens to me, and we're just going to let the Lord do as He wills. Whatever the Lord has decided for me, blessed be the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord. The only thing I don't want to do is just not fight for God, is just not be valiant for the Lord, is just not be in the right battle, is to be home doing nothing. And we could study that on the Bible. Those that do nothing, God basically accounts them as enemies. I mean, the book of Judges, chapter 19, when you have a tribe not go out to fight all these Sodomites, what happens? When they come back, they end up killing the entire tribe because He sees them as an enemy for not even going into the battle. Meaning that you're worthless to God when you're not fighting. Think about it. What point would it make if you had an army and you're traveling to a foreign nation and you're going to fight them, and you have a soldier say, I will do absolutely nothing. I won't go in the battle, I won't pick up a gun, I won't shoot it, but I will eat. I'll take up space on the cargo transit. They're going to say, no, you're not going. You're worthless to me. In fact, you're costing me money and resources by just existing and doing nothing. And so they may just cut you from the armed forces. And that's kind of how God's doing in this world. You're in the armed forces by being alive. But God doesn't have a reason to have to keep you here. God could take you home at any moment. And let me tell you, a surefire way to get sent home early? Quit. Just stop serving God. Just say, you know what? I'm not going to do anything for God anymore. I'm just going to go on and live in the world and make money and enjoy my life. Then God might say, well, there's no point in you enjoying that. I'm just going to take you home. But you know what? When you're fighting, at least you can say, well, whatever God wants to happen to me, His will is going to be done. And we need to get in the fight today. Look at chapter 28. Forward to chapter 28. Just flip a few pages. 1 Chronicles chapter number 28. We need to have the courage, like Joab and Abishai and their troops, of just saying, you know what? We're going to fight. I don't care how many enemies are surrounding me. God is able. God is capable. You know, you see great people like Jonathan saying that God can save a few just as much as He can save with many. Because the numbers aren't really important to God. It's the heart that really is the only thing that matters. Having the good courage is the only thing. It doesn't even matter how good of a fighter you are. It doesn't even matter how strong you are. You know, in order to be the greatest warrior for the Lord, you don't have to go and start working out every day and doing all these exercises. All you have to do is just get your heart right. All you have to do is just say, here are my lords and me. In fact, most of the guys that God uses in the Bible have some serious issues. Like Moses has just got all kinds of issues. He's a murderer. I mean, most of the men in here have never killed anybody. Don't tell me if you have, alright? Moses wasn't even raised in a Christian home. Moses was a sinful guy, committing murder, and Moses had quit church for a really long time. Moses just gave up, ran away, fled, and then when God confronts him and says, hey, I'm going to use you, he's like, use anybody else. I mean, if you were going to say, hand me your resume to be used by God, it's like, well, I didn't grow up Christian, I've killed people, I basically ran away from God, and I'm too afraid to do it. You're hired. Can you imagine? I mean, you go to the workplace, and they say, like, what kind of job experience do you have? None. Okay. Have you committed any felonies? Yes. Okay. Do you want to do it? No. You're the guy for the job! Now, why did God choose Moses, though? Because we know deep down in his heart, if God told him to do something, he was going to do it. That's why. Because he was going to have the courage to stand before Pharaoh and tell him whatever God said. Just, God told me this, it's going to happen. It's got to take a lot of courage to stand up to the leader of the world and say, your son's going to die tomorrow. And not just yours. In fact, just the firstborn of every single one of you guys. Just all of them are going to die unless you let me have whatever I want. I mean, that takes a lot of courage to get up there and stand and say that, especially with his own people, they weren't really even behind him. They were complaining, and they're saying, you're making us stink, we're unsavory in the sight of the Egyptians. But you know what? Someone that has good courage doesn't care what the people say. He doesn't care what Pharaoh says. He doesn't care about the circumstances. He doesn't care about his past. He doesn't care about his future. He cares about one thing. What did God say? That's it. And to have good courage, let me tell you something. Point number one is this. The way to have good courage is you just submit to the word of God. It takes courage to just submit, just say, yes, Lord. Whatever you're asking me to do, I'm going to do it. It is very hard. What I am saying, let me make it clear, we're not doing. There is areas in our life where we are not submitting to the Lord. Don't think like, oh, I've arrived. No one has arrived. We all need to be challenged every single day. There are areas in all of our lives that if we were to say, hey, you need to quit this and start doing this, it would be a struggle for real. We would say like, I don't know if I want to do that. I don't know if I want to go there. I don't know if I want to fight that battle. We have to learn to say, you know what, I'm going to start examining my life and seeing if I can submit to the Lord even more. And finding areas where I can submit even more. Look at 2 Chronicles chapter 15 and look at verse number 8. The Bible says, and when Asa heard these words in the prophecy of Oded the prophet, he took courage and put away the abominable idols out of all the land of Judah and Benjamin. Out of the cities which he had taken from Mount Ephraim and renewed the altar of the Lord that was before the porch of the Lord. So here in the Bible, Asa has to take courage. But what is that courage? That courage is to put away all the abominable idols out of the land. So he's saying, hey, we're not going to have that image of Baal. Burn it. We're not going to have this altar destroy it. We're not going to have any of these things. Get rid of them. But I guarantee you, many Christians, many saved people will not even do this one step. They'll get saved and they used to go to the Catholic church, but guess what they're still going to have? Idols in their house, aren't they? Or they'll go with their family to the Catholic church. Or they won't tell their family about the wicked abominable idols and idolatry they have in their life. They're too afraid. Now Gideon was kind of afraid. He did it at night. He's like, okay, I'm not going to tell mom and dad. I'm just going to take it all and burn it. I'm just going to destroy it. I'm going to overthrow it. And then we'll see what happens. But you know, one of the biggest steps after getting saved for a lot of people is destroying all the false religion they had in their life prior. And even telling their whole family, I'm done with that. Not only am I changing religion, what y'all are doing is wicked. This is abominable. I'm not going to have it in my life anymore. I'm done with it. No more rosary. No more confessional booth. No more any of this junk. A Hindu that gets saved needs to reject anything and everything to do with Hinduism. Even after the fact. Now I'm not talking about the faith to get saved. Obviously to get saved you have to put 100% faith in Jesus. But we see people in the Bible going back to false religion even after getting saved. Naaman the Syrian. Naaman the Syrian goes and dips in the Jordan seven times and then he comes back and he's like, hey, so when I go back home, I'm still going to bow down to the false god. Please just forgive me already. You know, and you could see that happening today, couldn't you? You could see someone getting saved and then saying, hey, I'm still going to go to church with my parents though. I'm still going to go to church with my cousin. I'm still going to go to church with my wife. I'm still going to go and do this, you know, false religion exercise even though I already know that it's wrong. I already know that it's wicked. You know what? It takes courage to just say, you know what? The Bible is the truth and everything else is a lie and I'm rejecting it all. I'm removing it all out of my house. Every graven image I have in my house I'm destroying. All the false religion I have in my house I'm destroying. You know, how about just burning bad translations? You know, that horrifies people. It horrifies people that I take the NIV and I burn it every year. But let me tell you something. The NIV is full of lies. In fact, I recently preached this in Georgia, but it was an interesting stat. If you look up how many words are in the King James Bible, and sometimes people quibble over this because you got like a Cambridge and Oxford and so it could be slightly different. But you take the total words in the King James Bible and you take the total words in the NIV, how many words difference is the total number of words? Does anybody have a guess? How many people would say I think it's, I'm going to just throw out a number, all right? I think that it's less than 20,000 words. Okay, a handful. All right? I think it's less than 30,000 words. All right? I think it's less than 40,000 words. I think it's less than 50,000 words. It's over 55,000 words difference. How could you say that's the same book? That's an average of over 46 per chapter. Over 46 words per chapter difference and the total number of words are just the King James and the NIV. Let alone the fact that when we study the differences, we notice they're just ripping whole verses out, they're altering all kinds of verses, they're twisting the definition of things. I mean look, when you add work salvation into that Bible, why would I not want to burn it? And even if you were to say well that's disrespectful, well the most respectful way to dispose of an American flag is to burn it. And why would you burn it? Because I want no one to ever read it. You know why we even got most of the modern versions today? Do you know where we got Alexandria's, the Alexandrian text? It was in a trash can next to a fire. What if someone had said you know what? I'm not even going to wait to put this in the fire. I'm just going to put it in the fire. Have the good courage to say this is trash and just throw it in the fire. Look at all the problems, look at all the false doctrine that has emanated from these modern versions, from these critical texts today. What if a bunch of Christians had just said you know what? This modern critical text is junk, let's burn it. But people get all superstitious and they get weird and they get afraid. I mean I believe in Judaism, they're afraid to even say the name of God, they're so superstitious. What kind of satanic doctrine is that? To forget the name of God? I wonder who thought of that one? The devil. But we need men to have courage to say you know if we just as a nation just burn the NIV we can just move on. Why not? Why not just get rid of all of these wicked translations? But you know some people feel really uncomfortable about that. They're like well I think some of it is the word of God. Okay but whenever there's a little bit of cancer in something you get rid of it. You destroy it. Whenever there was a little bit of leprosy in the wall of the house and it was fretting, you just like let's just knock down the entire house. We're not going to just try to preserve the parts of the house that aren't leprous. No. The garment that has leprosy on it, we're burning it. The food that has mold on it, we're going to throw it away. We're not going to just eat around the mold. I mean how does that logic make sense? Why use the NIV I just eat around the mold? Dude that thing's full of mold. That thing's just it's not even brown anymore it's just green. You need to just throw that thing in the trash. Throw it in the fire. And we need men that are going to say you know what I'm going to submit to the word of God. And anything that's not the word of God I'm going to burn it. I'm going to get rid of it. Just like we have Asa here destroying all the abominable idolatry. I don't care how close that altar looked like the altar of God. If it's not the altar of God, destroy it. I don't even care if it looks exactly like the altar of God. If it's in the wrong place, destroy it. If you're doing the wrong sacrifices on it, destroy it. We need men of courage today to say hey the King James Bible is the word of God and I'm not accepting any cheap substitutes. You want to get the NIV out of the congregation's hands? Say hey bring them up here let's burn them. But you know what there's fundamental Baptist churches all across this nation where the person in the pew has an NIV in their lap this morning. Why? Because the men don't have enough good courage to say hey let's burn those things. Those things are trash. Let me show you all the lies in that book that you're holding in your hand that's not a Bible. It's the non-inspired version. It was literally translated by a lesbian. She was on the styling committee of the NIV. The people on these committees some of them are extremely wicked. Now maybe some of them are you know just sincerely wrong but the vast majority of them are just wicked. Go if you would in your Bibles Isaiah chapter number five, Isaiah chapter number five. Look we need to submit to the word of God and not care what the world thinks. Here's one that's actually very difficult and again I'm going to bring up stuff that's difficult. When you go to the job and your boss and your co-workers say hey we're going to the bar. It's happy hour. Do you want to go with us? You know what I say I don't drink. How could you say that? Why is a blessing from God? No no alcohol is never a blessing. Yeah fruit juice is. Don't let that lie creep in. Why do people let that lie creep in? Because they don't want to take a bold stand. Because they know if the Bible condense alcohol then it's going to alter a lot of the relationships they have in their life. When their best friend with their neighbor says hey why don't you come over and have a beer? Instead of saying no they just drink because they don't want to have a difficult conversation or they don't want to look uncool. Teenagers today especially if they go to the public full system which I don't recommend but you go to the public full system if you don't drink you're not cool. If you don't go to the parties and you don't drink alcohol and you don't do drugs and you don't smoke you're a goody two shoes. They'll make fun of you. They'll say you're a loser. They'll say it doesn't make any sense. But you know what you could have some good courage and just say no I'm not going to drink. It's poison. And all these people that were so cool five years after high school they're still working at McDonald's getting drunk on the weekend and it's not as cool anymore. All the hot babes in high school aren't partying with them anymore. They moved on to some other loser. They started chasing you know who they went they started dating they started dating all the dweebs that didn't drink in high school and make a lot of money. Because they go from basically partying with the hot football guy to then the rich guy because afterwards they realize like you're not making a lot of money being a loser you know football player. You didn't make it in the pros and you now have a drug and alcohol addiction and this guy who didn't drink and started making a lot of money. I'm going to date him and you end up realizing that they were using you. You thought you were taking advantage of them. They were taking advantage of you. And then you're just a complete loser. Then you're a complete just wash up. You have nothing good for you going. Look the losers are the ones that are addicted to alcohol. I've never met someone addicted to alcohol and thought that's a real winner. That guy's got a good grip on his life. That guy doesn't have any problems. Have you ever met somebody and they just said I just want to let you know my life is awesome because I'm addicted to alcohol. Who's heard that testimony. What. What are you talking about. Is that all the time right. No. You know what happens at these parties to coworkers will end up saying really perverted gross things and hit on the wrong person and then H.R. hears about it and then they get fired. You're like well how am I going to get promoted if I don't go to the drinking party. You work hard. Because the upper boss doesn't know that you didn't go to the drinking party. He doesn't care. He's looking at the bottom dollar he's saying like this guy is working the hardest I'm going to promote him. I'm going to elevate him. And you know what it takes courage in a world today to say no to alcohol to say no to liquor to say no to drugs. But you know what we need to raise a generation that says hey I'm going to have good courage and not drink. What does the world say. Oh you're a coward to not drink. Won't they say that. Oh you're you're a weenie. You're afraid. You're too chicken to drink. I bet you couldn't drink. Oh I bet you couldn't drink that liquor. I bet you couldn't drink. You know a whole keg. I bet you couldn't do a shot. That's what they're going to do. What do they try. They try to have bad courage my friend. There is a bad courage out there. There is a courage where people say oh man look at me. I could drink anything. I could drink so much. I could just you know do a whole 24 pack myself. I could drink a whole handle of liquor myself buddy. And look if you hang around that crowd people say that stuff. And they do that stuff. There are people that will literally drink an entire bottle of liquor in one night. There are people that will drink a 24 pack of beer in an entire like in one day. They'll drink an entire 24 pack. And it's really insane. If you think about it because if I gave you that much water you probably couldn't drink that in a month. But you can drink that much liquor in just like a couple hours. I mean they consume so much liquid. I mean if you go to a baseball game people drink eight tall boys five six beers or whatever. If I gave you eight water bottles you'd be like leaving with seven full bottles of water. Because you don't even need that much liquid. And then because you're doing that you have to go and pee all the time. You have to go to the bathroom like every five minutes. Because you're just consuming so much alcohol and really what you're doing is you're just destroying your liver the whole time. It's not cool. But you know what the Bible warns against this mentality says in Isaiah 5 look at verse 22. Whoa unto them that are mighty to drink wine and men of strength to mingle strong drink. Now see the Bible is saying these people are strong. But is this the good kind of strong that you want to be. Oh man you should see how many how many beers I can drink in one night. You should see how much vodka. You should see how much ever clear. And they just keep trying to make the alcohol more potent. It's like once you get to Everclear you can correct me if I'm wrong. I'm pretty sure it's 90 percent alcohol. I think it's what's considered like one hundred and eighty proof. It's like why not just go all the way then. Just a hundred. This is a hundred percent. This is ethyl alcohol buddy. I'm just pouring down the alcohol just straight alcohol. It's not that cool. When you drink that high of potent type alcohol it feels like you're pouring down liquid fire down your throat. It burns the esophagus. Many people if they try to consume it you say what is this like drink apple cider vinegar. If you try to take a straight shot of apple cider vinegar you probably just throw up like you'll gag it up because it's just so potent it's so strong. But alcohol is even worse than that. It makes no sense to be consuming this stuff. It doesn't look cool. The people that do this kind of stuff they're sitting around vomiting and throwing up. Who loves hanging out with people that are vomiting and throwing up. Yesterday on the plane there was a lady like vomiting right in front of me and everyone is avoiding her like the plague. I know why. It wasn't cool. And you got it in a little doggy bag and it's kind of transparent and you can see. I wasn't thinking like can I hold that. That's cool. Wow. So courageous. You're so you have so much courage to hurt yourself. That's not the right kind of courage that we need to encourage like have our youth follow that example. See how much alcohol you can drink. See how much you consume. And of course the more you drink the problem is the more you need in the future to feel the same effects. So it's a vicious cycle. If you drink alcohol for the first time you may only need 1, 2 beers in order to feel very inebriated. But then the next time it's 3, 4. Then the next time it's 6, 7. Then the next time it's 8, 9. Then the next time you're drinking a 24 pack and you're never even getting the same feeling that you had when you first started drinking. In fact they get to such a point where they drink alcohol and they don't even realize it. It doesn't seem like anything to them anymore. They're just so deadened. It's kind of like hot stuff. If you eat really spicy food like the first time when you're a child you could have something very mild and it'll just light your clock up. I mean if you take a jalapeno just the seeds of a jalapeno and you give that to a small child they will be crying and weeping and needing water. It's very very bad. But you know if you eat a lot of jalapenos it's over and over and over. It can get to a point where you can just take a jalapeno and just bite it. And you're like whatever. So then they need to find like a habanero pepper. Then they have to keep finding some. And you get to a point where you just burn all the tastebuds off of your tongue and you could just eat fire and you wouldn't even feel it. And it's like what's the point? What's the point in getting to that extreme just deadening yourself, dulling yourself to the point where you're so mighty. You know people that are like oh man I could eat really spicy food. That just tells me you've eaten a lot of spicy food. That wasn't like a special magical power that you had. Like look how strong I am. Because the strongest guy ever that's never eaten spicy food he's going to cry if I give him a bunch of jalapeno seeds. He's going to cry at something really spicy. And some guy that's real puny and has chicken legs and has skinny jeans on but has eaten a lot of spicy food. He could probably take it like a man. You know there's this idea in the world that as men we've got to be strong. Of course we've got to be strong. But you know what there's a bad strength. Like the strength of what? Look how many beers I can crush. Look how many babes I crushed. Look how many STDs I got. Oh that's so cool buddy. Look how much weight I can lift. And look I'm not against lifting weights and being strong physically. But let me tell you something that's not the courage the Bible is talking about. I can show you tons of guys that could lift you know three or four times as much as I can. And they're a baby when it comes to the Bible. They would have already left the service. They would have been so offended. Why? Because I brought up alcohol. Because I brought up fornication. Because I brought up the fact that they're still a loser. That they go to the gym and they took all these steroids and now they don't even look like a man down there anymore. All that steroid usage. That's so strong. Look there is a bad courage out there and we need to teach our children not to have to go to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. Actually go to 14. I'll just bring up a few more examples real quick. You know the Bible says wine is a mocker and strong drink is raging and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. Why don't you just read the Bible and say oh okay not going to drink then. That's good courage. The courage is the guy that says I'm not going to drink. I'm not going to smoke. I'm not going to just commit fornication with every single person. You know when Lemuel is getting the prophecy from his mother she said don't give your strength unto women. Meaning if you sleep around as a dude you're not strong. Every guy wants to sleep with the hot babe. Every guy wants to sleep with Potiphar's wife. The real courage the real strength is the Joseph that says no. When an attractive woman comes on and says hey will you lie with me and you say no. I'm not going to sin against God. No I'm not going to sin against my wife. No I'm not going to sin against these things. You know if you commit adultery it just shows that you're weak. You're not strong. But what do men like to do? They like to brag about how many women they've slept with and how many women they've committed adultery with and how many women you know. Oh I've been with all kinds of women my friend. Oh because you're weak. You're not strong because you have a bad courage. You don't have a good courage. Good courage is faithful to one woman. Good courage says I actually love my wife. Good courage is that which is right. You know in 1 Corinthians 5 we have the passage about men committing fornication and it's getting thrown out of the church. And the church their reaction is they think that they're really great because they're letting that guy come to church. They're puffed up that they let that guy come to church. And you know what there are churches today that they have all this courage because they let everyone come in. Oh we're not like those judgmental churches. We have the boldness. We have the courage to let the sinners in through the doors. We let everybody come in. We let the fornicator come in and we let the atheist come in and we let the heretic come in and we let the faggot come in and we let the tranny come in because we're so we have so much more courage. Look that's foolishness. No the courageous person says hey you're a drunkard get out. Hey you're a fornicator get out. Hey you're a faggot don't even try to get in. You know that's the real courage today and you know what so many churches so few churches are having courage to stop letting the losers and the freaks come in their churches. Like 1 Corinthians 5 actually says and they have this fake courage this fake boldness. Oh yeah you don't try to get tranny saved at the door. Well I do. Oh you're so brave. So wonderful. You're just so much stronger than I am. No that's some stupid courage. You're a fool by thinking that you're going to get people saved that God has already damned. What are you going to go out side of Lot's house and get them saved too? You're going to go down into hell and get people saved too? You're going to get Judas saved? I'm going to get the devil saved. I know you guys preach against the devil but I have the boldness to get that lion saved that serpent saved. You know that's stupid and it's not real courage. You know when the children of Israel would go and try to fight a battle that God didn't say that for them to fight they didn't win. Why? Because they weren't strong. When they go to try to fight A.I. it's like 7000 people or something. It's not even big. I mean you are millions and millions of people and you lose to 7000. Like that was terrible. Why? Because they weren't really strong on their own. You know the courage is saying hey this is what God said I'm going to do it. We're not going to let every weirdo and every freak in the church. You know 1st Corinthians chapter number 11 talks about having the right hairstyle and who's the head of the church. You know it takes a lot of courage to dress like a godly Christian today. But what do people say? Oh I have the boldness to dress like a weirdo. You know I have the courage. Women have the courage to just shave all their hair off. It's like that's not courage. You've been deceived. Or men have the courage to grow their hair out. That's stupid. That's silly. Aaron Rodgers, your favorite football player for the Green Bay Packers grows his hair out like a chick. That's not cool. The atheist. I don't want to be him. Oh but you could be the greatest football player. Guess what? Pretty soon he's going to have to retire or get knocked out or basically just injured. And you know what? He's never going to play football again. He's never going to play professional football again like I'm never going to play professional football. We'll be the exact same. But you know what? I'll still have a really important job like preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'll be a soul winner until I die. And he'll still have nothing to do with his life. I saw I think Tom Brady signed some contract. Isn't he like, something stupid. Like $380 million or something like that to be a sports broadcaster after he's, for Fox Sports or something like that, after he's done with his career. And I'm thinking like, you know how much money they waste on that? About $380 million. Who watches sports because of the commentator that's going to commentate on it? I'm thinking like that's dumb. Like you could just basically grab any guy in this room and they would still watch the thing. You know, you're just wasting money on this. It's probably a payoff or something else. But even if you commentated the greatest game ever. Even if you got to basically be there for game seven of the World Series or the finals or whatever sport you want to bring up. It's the last few seconds of the game and you get to commentate on the greatest score, the greatest goal, the greatest touchdown, the greatest three pointer, whatever it is. Just they knocked it out of park with the bases loaded and they were down by three. You know, there was two strikes. I mean it's just, it's at the very end and you got to see it. You got to commentate it. And millions, the whole world heard you say it. It's not as cool as just giving the gospel a little shout out this afternoon. And that's not courage. These commentators just say whatever's on the teleprompter anyways. How's that courage? They say anything on the teleprompter. How's that courageous? They just lie to you. That's not courage. Courage will say that which is hard to say. And that's my second point is that if you're going to have good courage, you have to speak the word of God regardless of how popular it is. Even the world when they accidentally say something that's biblical, they apologize right afterwards. I remember there was a sports broadcaster, there was a baseball broadcaster I believe, and I can't remember the circumstances. But it's something, I think they were like, they might have been a game in like San Francisco or something. But it was somewhere like California or something like that. And the guy was just like making fun of how bad the team was. He's like, man, there's like a bunch of fags here or whatever. But it was like a hot mic moment. He didn't like realize that. He just like kind of like sidebar to his buddy and he's like, man, that guy's running like he doesn't even care. Just a bunch of fags here or something. And he wasn't even like, he wasn't even saying it in the sense that he was like talking about fags. He was just using it as a diss. Like he was just basically dissing people as being a fag. Because when you go to high school, back in the day at least, when you did anything stupid, your friends would be like, oh, what are you, a fag or something, you know? You know, that was just the insult, right? They weren't really talking about them. So this guy's not even really talking about them. He just kind of brings it up. Then he like apologizes and he's like one of the greatest sports broadcasters, makes tons of money for them. Everybody loves him or whatever. He has some of the greatest games ever commentated on. I'm so sorry, I didn't mean that. I love every LGBTQ, 5, 7, 8, 9, 3, HIV, whatever. And they still fire. That's even funnier to me. Every time these guys get caught saying something they shouldn't, they apologize and then they still get fired. I'm thinking like, why apologize then? I mean if you're going to go down in flames, you might as well be like, I still mean it. Yeah, that's what I said. Because you know, if they actually stick with what they had to say, they might actually get a different kind of job with someone else. By cowering, you end up just losing any opportunity to work with them and then nobody wants to hire you because you're a coward. You're spineless. You're weak. You know, the courage comes from preaching the Bible. You know how the greatest courage is Jesus Christ who's walking around and the Pharisees are right there and then he's just like, hey guys, these Pharisees, the one with the long skirts and dresses on? I mean see the long robes? These guys, they're wicked as hell. Hey, y'all are the children of the devil. Hey, don't listen to anything they have to say. These guys are hypocrites. They can't even believe. That's courage. To sit there and call out the religious leaders of the day and then the lawyers are like, hey, you're not getting on us though, are you? And he's like, not yet. Now, let's go. Woe unto you lawyers. You know, throughout the Bible's history, what is the man with great courage? It's the men that get up and rebuke sin. That preach the word of God. That judge the people. That say, thus saith the Lord. To look at someone in the face and say, you're wicked. That's good courage. You know, it's not good courage to sit here and tell someone that's wicked, you're great. You're wonderful. You know, we have churches today that are filled with women preachers and you know what's a consistent theme with women preachers? They never rebuke sin. Because you would say like, oh, what's wrong with women preachers? Well, first of all, there's a lot of things, okay? But show me, I mean, find me a woman preacher that preaches hard. Right? Even if you did, it's wrong. But I'm just saying, like, find me the woman preacher that's ripping on sin. They never do. Why? Because they're the weaker vessel anyways. They weren't supposed to do that. They weren't supposed to get up and preach that. But you know what? Instead of having good courage to tell the women to sit down and to learn in silence, we have a bunch of churches today letting women get behind the pulpit and teach them. And they'll say, oh, we have so much boldness, we have so much courage to let the women get up and have a voice. No, you're weak. You're weak because you don't believe what God said. You're weak because you're afraid of what the news will say about you. You're weak because you're afraid of what the church members will say about you. You know what? You're afraid of what the women will say about you. There are men today that pastor churches and they are afraid of what the women in the church will say about them. What the woman preacher will say about them. Look at it says in 1 Corinthians 14, I had you turn there. Look at verse 34. Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak, but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. Now I will submit to you, I don't believe it's possible that God could have said this more clear. Like, I mean we're reading this and it's kind of like if you're going to just dream it up, like what could God say to tell us that women shouldn't preach? How about they're never allowed to preach? And they're not even allowed, but they're like, but what if they can just speak? You know they're not like preaching, they're just speaking. They're just teaching. They're not preaching, they're teaching. Well, they're not even allowed to speak. Yeah, but like, what about Sunday school? You know, I mean it's not like the church service, it's Sunday school. Well, if they want to learn anything, they can ask their husband at home. Well, I don't know if they should submit like that. They have to be in obedience. I mean like, what do you want the Bible to say? I mean, it couldn't just say like, no women preachers. If it said no women preachers, they would be like, well I'm a lady preacher. Because they just don't want to believe the Bible today. And when women get up and preach the Bible, in the Bible, against the word of God, what do they do? They preach false doctrine, they preach people to commit adultery, they teach people to commit fornication. And yeah, this is what idiots do. They'll be like, oh, Pastor Shelley's so ignorant, he doesn't realize that Deborah's in the Bible. There's women in the Bible. And they just list every woman name in the Bible. I'm like, I already looked it up when I was trying to figure out a name for my daughter, okay? It's like Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary. I'm like, anything else? Okay. Apparently, you know, that's the only name the people in Mexico can see, Maria. Go if you would to Micah chapter number 3, Micah chapter number 3. But here's the thing. It's not hard often to know what to do. What's hard is to do it. What's hard is to do what's right. What's hard is to say, you know what, God's right here. My culture is nuts. Now, in our culture, I think, you know, it's all subjective here, but you could argue it's actually a little harder to kind of sometimes take biblical stands, because we have so much fake Christianity. But if you think about it, in the New Testament, when they're starting churches, they're going from being a complete pagan, worshipping rocks, to then Christianity. That's a really big extreme. That's a huge difference. That's a huge change. There's not really anything to compare it to. It's not like a Joyce Meyer down the street, necessarily. So, in some ways, their courage has to be, hey, let's reject the idols, let's reject the paganism, let's reject all these other things. But in America, we don't really have necessarily all this paganism that's as open, as obvious, as some of these other cultures did. What we have is a bunch of fake Christianity. A lot of things that are close to the truth. But I don't care how close it is, you still just do what's right. And praise God, our culture keeps getting even worse and weirder, so it's a lot easier to say, like, this is obviously the right thing. This is obviously the truth. But no matter how bad the world gets, we don't change. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We're supposed to be steadfast. Meaning that whatever doctrine that we have as a church ten years ago is the exact same teaching fifty years from now. That we look the same, we talk the same, we have the same Bible, we have the same gospel presentation, we're singing the same songs. Hey, maybe we have a different tune that we've put to the Psalms, but you know what, we're still singing the same Psalms, we're still singing Psalm 139. Probably won't get a better tune, so we'll still be singing it, alright? And notice, there's a reason why you sing hymns, because they're a classic. You know, the songs of the world, they fade. I mean, who in here listens to 80's music? Or they did, okay? I'm not trying to get onto you right now, alright? This is not a confessional booth. Who liked 80's music? Okay. Who liked 70's music? Okay. More people like 70's than 80's, I don't believe that. 60's! Okay, we got a couple. 50's! 1850! 1880! 1890! 1900! But guess what a lot of hymns are written in? Those time frames, why? Because they're better. They're better music. They're better songs. They last time. And the vast majority of music today, you forget about. Yeah, there's those one hit wonders, there's those cool songs, they're iconic songs, you kind of remember they stick with you, they have a catchy tune. But, eventually everybody forgets. And anybody that didn't grow up hearing that song, doesn't listen to it. I mean, unless you grew up and you're an older person, you probably are like, yeah, I'm just going to put on some 50's. I'm going to put on some of the Beach Boys, you know. I'm going to put on the Rolling Stones, or whatever it is, the older band. Most people aren't that interested in it. Most people aren't listening to that kind of music anymore. Because of faith. But we're still singing the hymns. And we have the courage to sing the right song and not go with the trendy CCM of today. Who cares? I mean, I guarantee they're not really listening to the CCM of the 80's and 90's that much. DC Talk? Who knows what I'm talking about. I mean, who cares about that music anymore? Nobody's listening to that music anymore. Their mom stopped listening to that music. It's worthless. We need to have the courage to know what's just right because it's going to stay the test of time. The drinking. You know, you can't drink 24 packs your whole life. You can't smoke your whole life. I mean, some people somehow do it. I don't know. Don't take the exception. If you smoke consistently, you're going to die younger. You drink consistently, you're going to die younger. You do drugs consistently, you're going to die younger. You get a bunch of STDs, you're going to die younger. All these things are life killers. But you know what? You're not going to die young for singing the hymns and going to church and reading the Bible and following God's commandments. In fact, when you honor your father and your mother, he's going to give you a long life. You're going to have that, you know, you don't live a long time because you listen to women preachers. And let me tell you something. No one ever died from just hearing how their sin is bad. They died from the consequence of their sin, from rebellion of sin. You know what? I don't remember a story in the Bible where someone got up and just like, sin's bad, and they're just like, oh, and they just die. Now sometimes, you know, you have prophets like Ezekiel and stuff saying, like, you're going to die because you rebelled against the Lord and they just died. But at the end of the day, you know what? It's not going to kill you to hear the Bible being preached. But it might kill you to not hear it. It might kill you to not listen. And my last point is this, it takes good courage to seek the grace of God. It takes courage to seek the grace of God. Now, I'm thinking of a verse, and I don't want you to go there just yet, but in Hebrews, chapter number four, talking about having boldness to find grace. And it takes courage to humble yourself and to say, I need the Lord. I need God's grace. I can't do it on my own. And it kind of parallels with my second point because if you go to church and you go to a good church, you know what you're going to hear? How you commit sin. You know, it's boldness on the part of the person to preach the word of God, but it also takes courage on the person to go and hear it. To go and hear what they had done wrong, to hear how they can improve. You know, I think sometimes for men, they don't want to drag their family to church. Because their sin is going to be declared from the pulpit, and they don't want to be embarrassed in front of their wife and kids. Because whatever it is that the pastor says, the preacher says, he's guilty of. He's done. And that's embarrassing. But you know what? It's more embarrassing to not fix it. And it's not a good courage to say, I don't need God. I don't need the Bible. I don't need God's grace. I'm good on my own. I can make it on my own. Look at Micah chapter 3 verse 1. And I said, Here I pray you, O heads of Jacob and ye princes of the house of Israel, is it not for you to know judgment, who hate the good and love the evil, who pluck off their skin from off them and their flesh from off their bones, who also eat the flesh of my people and flay their skin from off them, and they break their bones and chop them in pieces, as for a pot and as a flesh within the cauldron. Then shall they cry unto the Lord, but he will not hear them. He will even hide his face from them at that time, as they have behaved themselves ill in their doings. Thus saith the Lord concerning the prophets that make my people err, that bite with their teeth and cry, Peace, and he that putteth not into their mouths, that even prepare war against him. Therefore night shall be unto you, and he shall not have a vision, and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine, and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them. Then shall the seers be ashamed, and the diviners confounded, yea, they shall all cover their lips, for there is no answer of God. But truly I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord, and of judgment and of might, to declare unto Jacob as transgression, and to Israel his sin. So notice Micah is saying, hey, you want to talk about courage? You want to talk about strength? You want to talk about might? It's declaring the sin of God's people. And let me tell you something. It's hard, it's difficult to preach against the sins of the world, but the most difficult thing is to preach against the sins of God's people. Is to get up and to tell people you're doing something wicked, you're doing something wrong, declaring their sin. And notice the vast majority of prophets and the pastors, they won't say anything the Bible has to say. Therefore God will take it away from them. Because the preachers of the day will not preach the Bible, you know what God gave them? An NIV. He gave them a new American Standard Bible. He gave them a Charles Spurgeon commentary. He gave them the HIV version. And so they don't even tell anybody the word of God. They have no word of God to even deliver anymore. It's been taken out of their mouth. And guess what? That's a good thing. Take the word of the Lord out of these false prophets mouths. You know what? Let those that actually believe the Bible champion the King James Bible. And get up and speak it. And you know what? We need men to have the courage to actually drag themselves into church and hear the word of God being preached. What benefit is it for me to just go and scream at the wall? Just yell to no one. Just go out in the wilderness by myself and scream and yell. You know what? It takes courage to go and find John the Baptist out in the wilderness screaming the Bible, crying the word of God, and hearing it being preached. And we need men today that are going to seek after God, but you know what? There's a lot of men today that have no need for church. They don't think church is important. They won't come to church with their family. I have some stats that I looked up. In the last ten years, according to church statistics, people that go to church about one or two times per month or more, basically you come to church once a month or more frequently, there's been a seven percent decline in Christianity in just the last ten years. Not only that, in 2018, people of the age 21 to 29 that claim to be a Christian, and even more specifically, the Protestant denomination, which, we're not Protestant, but we get lumped in with them, so just basically anything Christian that's not Catholic. Of the people that say that they're Christian, so we're not talking about the world, we're talking about the people that are Christian. Of that age group, only 36 percent of them say they go to church weekly. A third of the ones that claim to be Christian go to church on a weekly basis. Here's another stat. 80 percent of women decide for the family if they're going to go to church or not. They did a survey and they said, who's dragging who to church? 80 percent of the time it's the wife dragging everybody to church. And let me tell you something, praise God for a woman that drags her family to church. But you know what, that's embarrassing for the men. And you know what, I'm not mad at anybody, I don't get mad at anybody for not doing that which is right, but what I'm telling you is that if you're in that category, fix it. You know I never think about people coming to church like, oh finally, I think I'm glad you're here. And it's weird because I think some people they get this embarrassing feeling like, well I haven't been in church in a while so I don't know if I should go back or something. Every single time I see them I'm thinking like great, unless you're someone I want to throw out and that doesn't matter in your frequency. You're still here? I need to preach harder. 45 percent of Gen Z rarely or never goes to church. In 1937, 73 percent of Americans went to church regularly. And for the next 60 years, 6 decades, it was at 70 percent. In the 21st century, so we're talking about 2000 and on, the last 20 plus years, it went all the way down to 50 percent. And now today it's at 47 percent. We see less men are going to church, they don't think they need God's grace. They don't think they need God's help. When you don't go to church, what you're saying is you're too strong, you don't need that help, you got it covered. You're like Donald Trump is like, well if I had some sin that I need to ask forgiveness for, I'd ask for it. But I don't know. Yeah, it's because you don't go to church, buddy. I guarantee if you show up, I can give you a list real quick. You have plenty of things you think you need some help on. Maybe it's because you're going to like Beth Moore's church or whatever. So of course you didn't think you had any sin. Come as you are. God's not mad at you. God's super mad at her. God's furious with her. In 1998, not that long ago, sometime around when Dylan was born, there was 8 percent of Americans that said they had no religion. Now it's 21 percent. 21 percent of our country is basically saying, you know what, nuts to Christianity. And here's the thing. There's always been divides like this in the Bible. There was generations that couldn't figure it out. But it's time for Christians to stand up and say, hey, we're not going to just let our country become a non-Christian nation. Let's take it back. Are you going to plead for bail? You know, Elisha the prophet gets up and says, hey, are we a Christian nation or are we for bail here? You know, it seems like with this Roe v. Wade thing, the real question is, hey, are we for God or are we for the devil? Because it's not a surprise, it's not a secret that these baby murderers are of the devil, my friend. That they're literally sacrificing children under the devil in their minds. That they love killing babies. That there's this weird, strange coupling of killing children and Satanism where they're like hand in glove. Why won't Christians just wake up and say, hey, we're not going to tolerate this. We're not going to argue with you about this. We love God here. We love the Bible here. And to take back our nation. We need men of courage to actually do God's commandments and to preach God's commandments and go to a church where they actually have God's commandments and seek for His grace. You know what? Our country is not seeking for the grace of God anymore. They think we're good. We're so strong, we're so mighty, we've got it taken care of. You know what? We need every man in this country to get on his knees and beg for God to be merciful to this country. Merciful to this nation for the blood shed. Merciful for men not standing up and taking the ownership of their household. Where are all the men? I have so much courage. I can drink alcohol. You're an idiot if you drink alcohol. Oh, I have so much courage. I go to Joyce Meyer's church. You're a weakling. You've basically revoked your man card. Don't go listen to Joyce Meyer. What? I don't even need church. This is what they say. Oh, I don't like churches. They're too weak for me. The pastor's a little too soft. They don't preach like what the Bible says anymore. You know, I would go to church if there was a good church. You've got to have an excuse in Dallas-Fort Worth, buddy. There's great churches all over this place. Oh, they don't preach hard enough for me. Come to steadfast. I'll give her hell. We'll see if you can last the sermon or not. We'll see how comfortable you feel when you bring your daughter in dressed like a whore. You bring your wife in dressed like a whore. And you're wearing the skinny jeans. And you've got the man bun. And you're so strong. I don't need church. You need a lot of Bible. You're going to Todd White's church. Yeah, I can see why you don't want to go to church. But that's not a real church. That's like going to Planet Fitness or something. Why? Because they don't do leg day. And he's got long hair. And he probably doesn't even grunt. It's like, eh, eh. Let me pray for you. No, we need some real men today to stand up and have courage. And you know what? Courage doesn't look like a big, you know, I'm just this tough guy. You know what? Courage looks like a man that just sits down and shuts up and agrees with the Bible. I guarantee some of the men in this room that have the greatest courage are not the ones that are the physically strongest. The spiritually strongest. And we need more Joshua's in our nation. We need more Caleb's in our nation. We need more men in our nation that are going to say, you know what? I'm going to do what the Bible says no matter what. I'm going to preach what the Bible says no matter what. I don't care how unpopular. I don't care if I get thrown out of the building. I mean, wouldn't it take, hey, did you go to steadfast? Yeah, the hate church? Yeah, I do, but it's not a hate church. Yeah, I do. We hate faggots. How dare you say that? You could get fired. I told my boss that and I didn't get fired. Well, your boss doesn't count, Dylan, okay? That was part of the interview process. Do you hate faggots? No, he's talking about the Russians. That's a good group to work for, right? They're all mad at Russians, but it's like, Russians have some good doctrines, okay? I did an interview for some Russians one time and they were like, you have lunch with us. And I was like, well, I could go home and be like, you have lunch with us. I have lunch with you, okay? You don't want to mess with those guys. They have courage to believe. Think about all the nations in our country, or in the world today, that still don't fall for this sodomite agenda. How is it that countries in our world have more guts to stand up against faggotry than Baptist churches in our nation? Where they're going to actually get sanctioned and punished by the U.S. government for not accepting that bill. You know, we need to say no. We need to stand up and have some good courage today and be a church that doesn't cower at what the world's going to throw at us, but say bring them on. Let's close in prayer. Thank Heavenly Father for the word of God. Thank you for giving us an opportunity to show ourselves strong on your behalf, that we realize that strength doesn't come from us, that it's not some kind of a physical exercise, but rather it's a heart issue. I pray that you would help strengthen the hearts of the men in this church today, that whenever they see a challenge in the Bible, they would just do it. Whenever they have an opportunity to speak the word of God, whether it's popular or unpopular, they would just speak it. And that they would realize that we need God's grace in this country. We can't do these things on our own. We don't have the power to get wealth on our own. We're a weak sinner. That we need your strength and your might and that we would just seek after God's strength. We would seek after God's grace in our lives. That we would lead our family in the right direction. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen. With that, let's go ahead and take out our hymnals and sing one more song before we head home. 409, The Fight Is On, great song about courage. 409. Song 409, let's go ahead and sing it on the first. The fight is on, the trumpet sound is ringing out. The cry to arms is heard afar and near. The Lord of hosts is marching on to victory. The triumph of the Christ will soon appear. The fight is on, O Christian soldier. And face and face in stern array. With armor gleaming and colors streaming. The right and wrong engage today. The fight is on, but be not weary. Be strong and in His might hold fast. If God be for us, His banner o'er us, We'll sing the victor's song at last. The fight is on, a rousing soldier's brave and true. Jehovah leads and victory will assure. Go buckle on, the armor God has given you. And in His strength forever will endure. The fight is on, O Christian soldier. And face to face in stern array. With armor gleaming and colors streaming. The right and wrong engage today. The fight is on, but be not weary. Be strong and in His might hold fast. If God be for us, His banner o'er us, We'll sing the victor's song at last. The fight is leading on to certain victory. The bow of promise spans eastern sky. His glorious name in every land shall honor be. The morn will break, the dawn of peace is nigh. The fight is on, O Christian soldier. And face to face in stern array. With armor gleaming and colors streaming. The right and wrong engage today. The fight is on, but be not weary. Be strong and in His might hold fast. If God be for us, His banner o'er us, We'll sing the victor's song at last. Amen. Thank you all for coming. God bless. You are dismissed.