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

Proverbs 27, the Bible reads, Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth, a stranger, and not thine own lips. A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty, but a fool's wrath is heavier than the both. Wrath is cruel, and anger's outrageous, but who is able to stand before envy? Open rebuke is better than seeker love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. The full soul loveth in honeycomb, but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet. As a bird that wander from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from his place. Ointment and perfume rejoice the heart, so doth the sweetness of a man's friend by hearty counsel. Thine own friend and thy father's friend forsake not. Neither go into thy brother's house in the day of thy calamity, for better is a neighbor that is near than a brother far off. My son, be wise, and make my heart glad that I may answer him that reproaches me. A prudent man foreseeeth the evil, and hideth himself, but the simple pass on, and are punished. Take his garment that is surety for a stranger, and take a pledge of him for a strange woman. He that blesseth his friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, it shall be kind of a curse to him. A continual dropping in a very rainy day, and a contentious woman are like. Whoso heiath her, heiath the wind, and the ointment of his right hand, which beareth itself. Iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. Whoso keepeth the fig tree, shall eat the fruit thereof, so he that weigheth on his master shall be honored. As in water, face answered the face, so the heart of man command. Hell and destruction are never full, so the eyes of man are never satisfied. As the fining pot for silver, and the furnace for gold, so is a man to his praise. Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not school just to part from him. Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy urds, for rages are not forever, and doth the crown endure to every generation? The hay appear, and the tender grass showeth itself, and herbs of the mountains are gabbard. The lambs are for thy clothing, and the goats are the price of the field. And thou shalt have goats milk enough for thy food, for the food of thy household, and for thy maintenance, for thy maintenance. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this time. You've given us to come here, gather to hear the word of God preached. We pray, bless, praise God right now as he gets ready to preach. Fill in with your spirit, help him to teach so we can edify and grow in the faith, and we pray all this in Jesus' name, amen. Amen, look at Proverbs 27, verse 17. The Bible reads, iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. And I wanna preach a sermon entitled this morning, iron sharpens iron. Iron sharpens iron. Now, God always uses carnal truths to expound spiritual truths. What is the carnal truth? It's the fact that if you wanna sharpen something, you gotta use an equivalent or even a better instrument, and use that iron to sharpen another iron instrument. You have to use something sharp to sharpen your sword. You use a file, you use something to get that blade ever so sharp to where you could just cut right through a piece of paper. You could just cut through something. And honestly, in the Christian life, we wanna be sharp. We don't wanna be dull. Now, that's not necessarily the point of my sermon. What I wanna focus on is the fact that it takes iron to sharpen iron. And so when we think about this concept, we should not be discouraged when we surround ourself with iron. We should want to surround ourself with iron, and not physically, but spiritually. What does that look like? It looks like other godly people, other Christian people. And when we surround ourself with other godly Christian people that are like iron, that can cause us to become a better instrument for God, a better Christian. Flip to Proverbs 13. Flip backwards to Proverbs 13. Let's get another example of this, where we can see iron sharpening iron. I noticed that it causes the countenance of your friend to do what? To smile, to be happy, to be excited that they're around their friend. I enjoy coming to church. I enjoy seeing other godly men. It makes me feel happy. It makes me feel excited to be around other godly people. When I show up at the Red Hot Preaching Conference, it's not a downer for me. I'm very excited. It's energetic. It gives you a lot of energy. It causes you to wanna be fired up a little bit. It can inspire you a little bit. Whenever you're around other good people, godly people, energetic people, it's gonna rub off on you. If you want to have the best come out of you, you need to surround yourself with good people. Look what it says in Proverbs 13, verse 20. The Bible says, he that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. Focusing on the first aspect of this, if you want to be wise, you must do what? Walk with other wise people. So notice who you surround yourself with is gonna have a direct effect upon you. And we could look at this from two different aspects, but I'm kind of focusing on the positive here in the sense that if you wanna be wise, then you need to surround yourself with other wise people. You need to talk to other wise people. Go if you went to Ecclesiastes chapter four, flip to the right in your Bible, Ecclesiastes chapter number four. What's the title of the sermon? The title of the sermon is iron sharpens iron. And I have one point to start out here is that if you wanna understand this concept, you have to realize that since iron sharpening iron, what we need to do to other people is we need to provoke them to be better. We need to provoke them to do more. But basically, if you're gonna be that iron sharpening iron, you gotta provoke others, okay? Now, Ecclesiastes chapter four, the verse nine says, two are better than one. These they have a good reward for their labor, for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow. The woe to him that is alone when he fall, for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat, but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Verse number 11 gives us this idea of provoking though, how can you be warm alone? You can't. But when you get that friction of the two, what happens? Now you get heat. Now you can gain the heat that's coming off from the other person's body. They can warm you up. They can cause you to get red hot from you seeing them being hot, right? You can be around another person that's hot, but if you're alone, you're just gonna get cold and cold and cold. In fact, if someone falls in a very cold water, it's a chance they could die. And so often what they'll do is they'll get another person to lie next to them so that their body heat can cause them to warm up. It's one of the best ways to help someone recover if they've fallen into cold water or they've been outside in a really cold temperature or they've been stuck in some snow or ice or whatever the situation is. Body heat is one of the best ways to warm another person up. And so that's what they'll do to people. I remember in school, they showed some person fall in some water in like Alaska or something, and they're two compadras. They all just got in a sleeping bag together and just lying there, just trying to warm the other person up just to help their buddy not die just so the other person wouldn't perish. And so this parable is not just a carnal truth. It's a spiritual truth though also that when we see our brethren struggling and having difficulty, it's our job to wanna help warm them up, provoke them to do more for God. More what? More soul winning, going to church more, reading the Bible more, understanding the Bible more, quoting scripture, going out and serving God, getting sin out of their life. These are ways that we can provoke our brethren. And what I want you to understand is in the Bible, there's great teams in the Bible. You know, I know we're so independent. We're just independent Baptist. You don't wanna get so independent that even yourself, you're like, I'm just independent of everybody in this room too. You know, the Bible says that the church is a body which has multiple parts. And when you study the Bible, you see great teams. You see great groups, like who? Like Peter and John. That was a great duo. And I'm sure they were able to feed off of one another's energy. How would you like your soul winning partner this afternoon to be John the apostle? Hey, what was revelation like? Tell me all about it, you know. How about Peter? You know, you got the apostle Peter as your spokesperson. I bet that's gonna give you a lot of boldness when you got Peter standing right there, where his own shadow is just healing people. I mean, imagine the faith increase when you see Peter's shadow just healing everybody that he walks by. You're like, wow, this is pretty great. How about when you're in jail with Peter and then the angels just let y'all out and you're just, you're going through jail. I mean, having another person there with you to fight that fight is gonna provoke you to end up doing more. How about we got other great teams? What about Paul and Barnabas? What about Paul and Silas? You know, I don't believe that these men would have done the great exploits they did without their companion. The Bible plainly states two are better than one. And it's, myself included, sometimes it's hard to wanna do things by yourself. You know, if you go out soul winning by yourself, which I've done plenty of times, it's easier to wanna just quit. Quit early or just be like, all right, that's my last. But when you got another person there with you, sometimes we're like, no, let's just talk another one. You're like, okay, let's do it. You're like, hey, let's just finish the end of this street. I'll go with you. Will you go with me? And you're like, yeah, let's just finish the end of the street. Why? Because two are better than one. And so we have to realize, you know, having another person there with me, it's not gonna be bad for me. It's in fact gonna provoke me to do more. More soul winning, be more gracious, a lot of different things. Let's go to Acts chapter number 13, Acts chapter number 13. How about David and his mighty men? What a great team to be a part of. And you know, at Steadfast Baptist Church, I don't want Steadfast Baptist Church to be a one man show. It should be a group of awesome elite people. I wanna add as many great people to Steadfast Baptist Church as we possibly can. You know why? Because it's gonna cause us to be more sharp. Because it's gonna provoke us to do even more. The more people we have that wanna serve God that are red hot, it's gonna cause more people to be red hot and then even more to be red hot and then even more to serve God and even more to live for the Lord Jesus Christ and do even more soul winning and more preaching the word of God. You know, you have an effect on other people whether you like that or not, cold or hot. And you know, iron is gonna sharpen iron. The question is, are you iron? But if you're iron, you need to sharpen other people and you should not be discouraged when more iron shows up. You should be excited that it's an opportunity for you to sharpen yourself. Look at Acts 13 verse one, look at this group. Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers as Barnabas and Simeon that was called Niger and Lucius of Cyrene and Manion which had been brought up with Hera the Tea Shark and Saul. So notice we have a church here, is it filled with a one man show? No, it's filled with all kinds of awesome people. It has all kinds of teachers and prophets and great men of God and that's why God's able to split them off and cause Paul and Barnabas to go out and do a great work, why? Because they're already filled with so many great people. I wanna fill Steadfast Baptist Church with as many great people, as many prophets and teachers and red hot evangelists and all kinds of people that love the Lord so then we can end up splitting up and doing even more work for the Lord. If you have this idea of just wanting to be this big fish in a little pond, well then there's no reason to leave, is there? But when you're just accumulating just so much great talent and so many great people, look what God ends up deciding. Hey, I don't want all the 12 disciples to just stay in Jerusalem forever. Let's get these guys and split them up a little bit. You know what, there's nothing wrong with assembling a dream team, was there? Jesus Christ assembled 12 disciples and they were all on fire for God. They all went out and tore up the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ, some more than others but at the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with having lots of iron. I want lots of iron and it's gonna provoke me to do more. Go to 2 Kings chapter number 10. 2 Kings chapter number 10. I love when I come to the men's preaching class and I hear tons and tons of great preaching, it fires me up. It doesn't cool me off. I don't think, oh man, that guy preached a better sermon than I would, oh. I'm thinking like, that was great. I need to step it up. Hey, what he said was really good. I need to use that. Hey, I need to act like that. Hey, I like how they did this. You know, when you go to the men's preaching class, you should take that as an opportunity to say, hey, I like how he preached that. Hey, I like what he said there. Hey, that's good doctrine. Hey, I liked his delivery there. I should learn how to be a better preacher just like he was and we should let iron sharpen iron, not make it a competition of like, oh, I'm better than this guy. I was better than that person. That's a wicked attitude. What we should be doing is we should be looking at others and saying, how can I sharpen myself based on their good attributes? Let's look at a guy that really provokes somebody. 2 Kings chapter number 10. Look at verse number 15. It's talking about Jehu. It says, and when he was departed thence, he lighted on Jehonadab the son of Rechab coming to meet him and he saluted him and said to him, is thine heart right? Is my heart is with thy heart? And Jodab answered, it is. If it be, give me thine hand. And he gave him his hand and he took him up to him into the chariot and he said, come with me and see my zeal for the Lord. So they made him ride in his chariot. Notice, Jehu just comes like a whirlwind out of nowhere and he's like, hey, is your heart right with mine? He's like, yep, it is. And he's like, give me your hand. And he just pulls him up in the chariot and he's like, just come with me and see my zeal for the Lord. We need some godly people to say, hey, are you ready to serve God? Come with me. Jump in the car. You ready to get some soul saved? Get in my car, let's go. Hey, you ready to go to church? Jump in my car. We're going to church Sunday morning. We're going to church Sunday night. We're going to church for the midweek service. Hey, come with me and see my zeal for God today. We need some iron to sharpen iron today. We need some Jehus today that say, you know what? I don't want to serve God by myself. Come with me. Hey, and you know what? We need some Jehota dabs that say, oh, you seem a little bit intense. I don't know about all that. Where are we going? No, he just says, yeah, you know, my heart's right with your heart. You know, his heart's not right though. He's the one that's envious of Jehu. The one that doesn't like Jehu, or he wants to water down Jehu. He wants to put a wet blanket on the fire of Jehu and try to cause him to stop going. That's not the attitude we need to have. If your heart is right with your brethren, you're not going to be discouraged when they're red hot. You're going to say, you know what? I need to get in this guy's chariot because this guy's going in the right direction. I want to get on his team. I'm not discouraged. I'm encouraged by his zeal. Go to First Thessalonians chapter one, First Thessalonians chapter number one. And we today need all kinds of provoking. We need to be revoked to be more gracious. We need to be revoked to be more loving. And we really need to be revoked to be more bold because the persecution that America will see in the future is going to be so much more than we have right now. It's not even close. If you can't stand the persecution right now, you better quit because it's not going to get any better, any sooner. Then go, oh, if Trump gets elected, it'll be great. I feel like our country has gotten really bad when he was the president. Isn't that interesting? Well, if Trump gets reelected, then we'll go back to normal. Under his presidency, it turned to crap, okay? So why do you think that it's somehow going to get better with the same guy? Well, if we get the other guy, it'll get worse. Probably, but you can't tell me that Trump, it's going to go great. We lost all these freedoms. When do we lose the greatest freedoms in America? Bush. When are we losing freedoms again? Trump. Well, we support the Republicans though. We'll have all this religious freedom and liberty. It feels like they keep taking it away. It feels like they keep stealing it from me. Look, if you're looking at the political landscape with an objective viewpoint, you realize we've already jumped off the cliff. It's just how fast we're going to travel down the hill, okay? And what do you realize, what's at the bottom of that hill? Christians being beheaded for Christ. You say, how close are you to that? Not close at all yet, okay? I mean, what's the persecution of Christians right now? Not that much. I mean, we're still at church this morning, aren't we? Is anybody harassing us? Is anybody coming in here threatening you? Are your family turning you in to the Gestapo, trying to get your head taken off from your shoulders? Not yet. And let me tell you, that's coming. Just like Christ is coming, that's coming. And you know what's coming first? The beheadings. You know what's coming first? The Antichrist. You know what's coming first? Persecution to the whole world. The Antichrist is not going to just rule everything but America. He's going to be ruling with America, okay? America's going to be his gun power, okay? It's going to be his defense. It's going to be the one who's riding on, like the whore that she is. Now, 1 Thessalonians 1, look what the Bible says in verse number five. For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance, as you know a manner of men, we were among you for your sake, and you became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Ghost, so that you were in samples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia. For from you sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God word is spread abroad so that we need not to speak any thing. What is the Apostle Paul commending the Thessalonians on? Well, the Thessalonian church went through severe persecution, severe tribulation. That's why you have 1 Thessalonians chapter four. The whole context of 1 Thessalonians is tribulation, persecution, affliction, and then he's like, well, Christ is gonna come though. That's your hope to get through all the tribulation. And then your pre-tribulance are like, oh, 1 Thessalonians four, we're gonna be taken out before all the tribulation. You're like, ah, what's the context? The whole context is persecution, okay? But what is he commending them? He's saying because you had great faith through that tribulation, through that persecution, you became an ensemble to all the other churches in Macedonia and all of Chaya. It would basically say, hey, the example of Steadfast Baptist Church has reached into all of Dallas-Fort Worth, not just Dallas-Fort Worth, even Texas, and not just Texas, the whole world. Everywhere they hear about Steadfast Baptist Church, I mean, they're just getting provoked. They're wanting to do the same example. I hope that's the reputation we end up having. I hope that's the type of impact we end up having. I hope that people look at Steadfast Baptist Church and they say, wow, look how they thrive in persecution. Look how they thrive in tribulation. Not, wow, they just folded like a deck of cards, didn't they? They just get a little bit of pressure. They get one protester on a rainy day and they just can't handle it. No, I want them to say, hey, they had an army of protesters out there. They have people trying to persecute them and afflict them and do evil unto them. And you know what? They just keep going to church. They just keep preaching the gospel. They just keep fighting against the government. Hey, they're thrown in jail. They're persecuted. They're laughed at. They're mocked. They're ridiculed. They're beaten. They're spit upon. They're railed, but they still keep going. They keep preaching the gospel. They still show up for church. They still read the Bible. And you know what? That's gonna provoke other Christians to do the same thing. And so you should not look at persecution and say, oh man, persecution, I don't want that to come. You should look at it as an opportunity to provoke others to go through persecution. What if we saw another church, you know, and I can kind of see the rise. What if there's a church in California, which is usually where all the weird stuff starts first, right? But it trickles down to Texas pretty quick, okay? But it starts out in California and you see a church and they start getting persecuted for the word of God. They get persecuted for preaching the gospel and they just say, well, we're just gonna quit. What would that do to the faith of other Christians? What would that do to the faith of other believers? It would probably dampen it, wouldn't it? And so we have to consider our reputation, not just for our sake, for the Lord's sake. You know, we are ambassadors of Christ. How do you handle yourself is a representation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you compromise, when you get watered down, when you're not willing to stand for your faith, you know what? You're no longer iron, you're plastic. And you know what I do to every plastic utensil I use? I break, not on purpose. It's just, you put any pressure. I mean, they give me the plastic fork. You know, you go to a steak restaurant, they give you a plastic fork. It's like, what's the, I can't even have one bite. I just pick the steak with my hand and eat it. But you become plastic, no longer iron. Hey, I need an iron fork and an iron knife and I'm gonna dice this thing up nicely. And you know what? The next person's gonna come, my blade's a little dull. Will you help me out? Yeah, I'll sharpen that thing up. Why? Because that's the type of testimony that we wanna have as a Christian. Go to Philippians, chapter number one, Philippians, chapter one, just flip back and look at verse number 14. Well, let's read verse 13 too, it'll help. It says, verse 13, so that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace and in all other places. So the apostle Paul says that everyone knows I'm in prison. Everyone knows that I'm in bonds for Jesus Christ. And it says in verse 14, and many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife and some also of good will. One preached Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing the out affliction of my bonds, but the other love knowing that I am set for the defense of the gospel. Now, what I love about this passage is the fact that you would think someone going to jail is negative. You would think it's a bad thing. You would think it's a detriment to the cause of Christ, but in fact, God uses someone going to jail for his sake to embolden other people. And I think this is great. Think about John the Baptist. What does John the Baptist say when the Pharisees come up to him and they're like, oh, this guy's baptizing more than you. And he says, he must increase, but I must decrease. Sometimes when you have a really strong leader, other people think, well, I can't do that. He's special. He's someone unique. Let's just let him tackle all the problems. You got that football team where they got the one star player and they just, let's always give him the ball. Let's only give him the ball. When you only give him the ball, the enemy just starts stacking the box. You got one running back and he's the only person on your team that's good. They're like, we're not even gonna guard the receivers. We're just gonna stack the box and we're gonna all tackle him. And then he ends up not being as successful because they've all identified as this one guy. But when you take that one guy out and you start using the whole rest of the team, it starts emboldening other people to realize, wow, I can do great things for God too. So by limiting Paul, by Paul decreasing, you know what increased? Christ, the work of the Lord Jesus Christ by allowing others to go out and preach the gospel, by emboldening others to go out and do great works for God. Don't think, oh man, that one guy, if we had him, no, everybody can serve the Lord Jesus Christ. And even with the detriment of Paul going to prison, you know what, God used that for good. And his persecution provoked others, his iron sharpened others to go out and preach more boldly. You know what's gonna change this world with the gospel? Not one person, a whole bunch of people. You know, steadfast Baptist church is not a one-man show. If it was, we wouldn't be here. It's many people, many faces, many Christians, and we all need to be red hot, not just one person. We all need to be iron. We don't want any plastic forks here, okay? Because they break real quick, okay? We wanna get an iron fist, all right? Now, what would be the opposite of this? The opposite of being the one who provokes would be the one who pans out. Provokes would be the one who panders. The one who panders. Now, what's someone who panders? Panders is where you just kind of give lip service to what someone's doing when you don't agree, just to appease them, just to make them feel good. You notice they're doing something wrong. You realize they're doing something that's not good, but instead of just telling them, like, that's not good, instead of actually trying to help them, you just say, oh, you're all right. Imagine you show up with this dull sword and you're like, I need you to file this. Well, it's gonna be kind of abrasive. You're good. No need to sharpen. That's called pandering, okay? The Bible gives us lots of different verses to think about. I'll just give you one off the top of my head. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. You know what? To file that iron, to sharpen that sword is gonna hurt a little bit. Some of the edges are gonna get scraped pretty hard. They're gonna be abrasively rubbed against, but you know what? That's a faithful wound because it's gonna end up sharpening that iron, isn't it? It's gonna sharpen that blade, whereas that kiss, oh, you're good, you know, that's deceitful. That pandering is gonna destroy people, and when you think about the Bible, let's think about the word of God for a moment. And again, I'm just kind of going broad. The more you know the Bible, the more you'll understand this, but when we read the epistles by the apostle Paul, how much pandering does he do? I mean, is he pandering the 1 Corinthians to the Corinthian church? Is he just pandering to all their problems and all their issues? You guys are great. No problems here. Or is it just like you're doing this wrong and this wrong and that wrong and this is terrible, and you got people that aren't even saved. I mean, you get to other epistles, and he's like, I'm afraid of you. You get to other pages, and he's like, I think you guys might be reprobate. You get to other epistles, and he's constantly rebuking and warning them. In fact, he gets the one portion and he says, they don't even like his epistles. They're weighty. They're powerful. They're like, this guy just keeps knocking us down with all these epistles. You know what? Faithful are the wounds of a friend. You say, oh, I can't believe you would ever say anything negative about anybody. Well, I want to be your friend. What, do you want me to just kiss you all the way to hell? You want me to just kiss you all the way to the destruction of your life? You want me to get up here and just be like Joel Osteen and just be like, you're so blessed. God bless you. Y'all are just so wonderful. And everyone in here is just so special and precious. And God just loves you. And I want to encourage you this morning and tell you how you can just live your best life now. And I know you're going through a hard time. God doesn't want you to go through a hard time ever. I'm just telling you right now, God wants you to be blessed and have lots of money. That's just a kiss from an enemy, my friend. Oh, Pastor Joel, you just get up and yell and you scream and you tell people they're stupid and you tell them that they're idiots and you tell them that they're trash and you tell them they're liars and realers and slayers. Hey, it's because I love you, my friend. Open rebuke is better than secret love. And I'm not going to go around and kiss you and tell you how wonderful you are when you're not because iron sharpens iron. I'm not going to get a plastic fork and just stab it in your neck, okay? Go if you would to Jeremiah chapter nine, Jeremiah chapter number nine. We need to get rid of panderers today who just speak out of both sides of their mouth. They pander to your face and they stab you in the back when you're not looking. They tell you one thing to your face just to pander you and then they go, that guy's an idiot. Well, why didn't you just tell him he's an idiot? You know, if I'm an idiot, I'm not going to be offended when you tell me that. I mean, maybe in the moment, but at the end of the day, I'll be like, okay, well, you know, if I'm doing something wrong, if I'm going down a dark path, if I do something that's sinful, I shouldn't be mad at the guy telling me that I'm wrong. I should appreciate the guy that tells me I'm wrong. I should be mad at the guy that panders to me. I should be mad at the person that comes up to me and says, you know what? You did such a good job. I'm glad you did that. All the while realizing you made a huge mistake, all the while realizing that you're destroying yourself, causing all kinds of problems. I remember the worst to me is singing. I don't know why it is singing. People literally sound like a dying cat, you know, being strangled. And people were like, that was such a good, that was you saying so well. I'm just thinking like, that was awful. That was terrible. That was the worst. Everybody thinks they're a good singer and they're not. Okay, let me just say, but you know what's cool about how God created our singing voices? When everybody's singing together, it just sounds good. It's like you individually, it's not that great. But when we all get together, just iron, somehow sharpens iron, just sounds good all together, right? And so, you know, I don't wanna just get up here and have that awkward special. Because look, I've been to plenty of Baptist churches where they have the special. And let me tell you what, it sounds like crap. Okay, it sounds terrible. And then the pastor gets up, that was a great special. Thank you so much, Mrs. So-and-so. Why do they say that? They wanna pander to them, don't they? You know, it sounds good, the whole congregation singing together. And then your voice gets drowned out, all right? So I don't have to hear it. But here's the thing. I'm not gonna sit here and pander to things that are trash and garbage. I don't wanna get up and tell you that you're doing a good job when you're not. I wanna warn you and provoke you to do better. I don't wanna pander to you and cause you to keep doing bad, keep doing worse. I could get up here and just try to encourage the congregation for 12 weeks in a row, couldn't I? Y'all are doing great, no changes. Don't do anything different. But that would be wrong, okay? They didn't say why. Because you need a lot of provoking, all right? I need a lot of provoking. We need to constantly be reminded how we need to do better, not worse. Now, Jeremiah chapter nine, I'm gonna get to my second point here this morning, but since iron sharpens iron, it provokes, but it also strengthens, if you think about it. It causes you to be strengthened. But some people, they don't really wanna get strengthened. Okay, look at Jeremiah chapter nine, verse number one. The Bible says, oh, that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people. Oh, that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men, that I might leave my people and go from them, for they be all adulterers and assembly of treacherous men. And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies, but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth, for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the Lord. Now the verse or the phrase that I like here in verse three is it says that they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth. Now here's the thing, truth hurts sometimes. Truth will cause you some discomfort sometimes. You know, when the Jesus Christ went around preaching the truth, he preached it pretty bluntly and notice people didn't like it. People didn't wanna hear it. People wanted to get away from the truth, but here's the honest truth. We should love truth, especially when it hurts. In fact, you should want it to hurt. Say, I want it to hurt, what are you talking about? It's gonna strengthen you. You don't wanna hear about all your strengths that already exist. You wanna hear about all your weaknesses so you can correct those imperfections in your life. You wanna find out about all the impurities in your life so that you can get them right, so that you can fix them. When I take my car to the mechanic, I don't want him to give me a list of all the things that are working. I mean, sometimes they will, they have a big checklist and they'll tell you all the ones that were good, but I don't want them to just only say, well, I marked all the things that were good, here's a list. Tires are good, your transmission's good. You know, you got gas in the tank, but you don't have a steering wheel. I didn't wanna tell you that one. No, I want you to tell me all the problems with my vehicle, not all the things that are going well. Why? Because what's gonna make me better is understanding my problems so I can fix those problems. But notice these people, they're not valiant for the truth. They forge lies, they speak lies one to another. And if we're godly people, we're gonna only speak the truth. Let's stop pandering to one another and let's just speak the truth. Am I your enemy because I tell you the truth? No, I'm your friend. A faithful friend is gonna wound you with the truth. He's not gonna pander you with lies today. And you have to realize when you hear truth, it's there to strengthen you. But you know what? Nobody liked Jeremiah's preaching. And you say, why? Because it was the truth. Was Jeremiah just going around just preaching his personal opinion and just like, hey guys, I just wanna tell you some cool stuff I thought up. Or he's just like, here's what God said. You guys are wicked. You guys are adulterous. You guys are doing evil. Now how much fun would it be for me to walk up to somebody in the congregation and be like, you're an adulterer. You're wicked. You're a liar. You're a railer. That wouldn't really feel good, would it? But you know what? If you are, you need to be called out. Oh, you're so mean, Pastor Shelley. No, the mean person will say, you're doing great. Keep going. Good job, Johnny. Oh, you're going sowing this afternoon? Who cares what you're doing in the rest of your life? Oh, you're a pastor. Who cares what you're doing with the rest of your life? Because at least you got one thing going well for you. Hey, you got good tires on the truck? Who cares you don't have an engine? Who cares that someone clipped the wires to your brakes? I mean, it's like, it's crazy pills when you try to tell people, hey, here's a serious problem you have. Oh, you must hate me. It's like, no, I don't hate you. I want you to get it right. I want you to fix it because iron sharpens iron. And not only does it provoke you, it strengthens you. And here's the thing. If I tell you something that's not true about you, say I lie to you, that should be no effect. You'd be like, well, that's just a lie. But if I tell you something that's truth, you should not be offended. You should be grateful. You know, I welcome criticism. I love criticism. You know, when I went to Faithful Word, I would ask anybody and everybody to criticize me on my sermons because you know what? If they give me bad criticism, I can just be like, cool. I don't care. If they give me good criticism, I can fix it. I can get better. I can strengthen myself. And if you come to my preaching class, you got to welcome criticism, okay? The men that go to our preaching class know about it. Go to Proverbs 22, Proverbs 22. Some people want to be a big fish in a little pond, not me. I'd rather just figure out where I'm at so that I can improve today. I want to be strengthened today because I understand that the battle is going to wax hot in the future. And I don't want to just sit here and be ill-prepared, not understanding my weaknesses, not understanding my impurities. I want to improve those. And you say, how are you going to improve those, Pastor Shelley? I need to surround myself with iron. And you know what? I don't want to be the only iron in this room. I want you to be iron too so you can strengthen me, so you can encourage me, so you can help provoke me, so you can get me on the right track and I can see your hard work and your diligence and your love for the Lord Jesus Christ. And it can provoke me. It can strengthen me. You know, a congregation can strengthen its pastor. It can help its pastor become more red hot for the Lord Jesus Christ when they, hey, show up for church. If no one shows up for church, it's going to be harder for me to want to preach. You know, for the two weeks that we kind of limited our church services to a smaller group, it's kind of harder to preach when there's like three people back there and one over here and you're just kind of like, all right, you know, I'll just scream and yeah. You know, when you've got a packed house, it's easier to preach. The hardest crowd to preach to is the smallest. For me, I don't know. Maybe it's different for you, but most people I talk to, the bigger the crowd, the easier it is to preach to. The smaller the crowd, it gets real intense. Because I mean, you pretty much have one person that's either liking your sermon or not liking it. One person that's sleeping or not. When you've got a huge crowd, usually somebody's just the, you know, woo, yeah. You know, they're just excited. You got those automatic amen people that you're just like, sweet, all right. You know, you got those, they're like, he's drowning on stage. I better yell amen, you know. But you know, I want to find the best people and I want to learn from them and I want to be diligently getting better, why? Proverbs 22, look at verse number 29. See, is thou a man diligent in this business? He shall stand before kings. He shall not stand before mean men. You say, what does mean? Mean, think about it in math terms. What does the word mean? And it's average. So it's just saying, hey, if you're a diligent person, if you're working hard, if you're striving to be better, you're going to end up surrounding yourself with great men, with great people. You're going to stand before people that are important, not just your average Joe, your average Bob or whoever it is. No, you're going to end up standing before great people. You're going to be elevated. And you know what, how you elevate yourself? By surrounding yourself with those types of people. By getting around them and learning from them and being strengthened by them. That's why I moved to Faithful Word Baptist Church. Because I wanted to be strengthened. I wanted to be provoked. I wanted to surround myself with as many mighty men as possible so that I myself could be mighty. I don't want to find a bunch of weak people that I can just show off in front of. You know, when I go play a pickup game of basketball or football or any of these type of things, there's two attitudes. There's one attitude where I hope when I show up I'm the best player, because I just want to show off how great I am. There's another attitude that says, I hope everybody there is awesome because I just want to play with people that are really great so I can get better. You know, and again, I'm not for women's sports, but you know, a lot of women's college teams, you know that they practice against the men. They'll practice against the junior varsity or they'll practice against the B team of the men. You say, why would they do that? Because they're going to lose, first of all, okay. But second of all, they just get scrubbed guys to just come. They just get random guys to show up and they'll beat the women's basketball team handily. You know what? By them playing against them, they get a lot better. They get a lot stronger. They learn how to become more strengthened because they're getting knocked around by guys. So then when they got a little girl just kind of, you know, they're like, that was nothing. You know, I had a big, you know, six foot guy knocking me around, pushing me over, dunking on top of my head. But you know what? That's the type of attitude we should have as a Christian. We should not be saying, you know what? Well, we're just the greatest right here in our two mile radius. We should say, hey, I want to find other great people and challenge myself so that I can be strengthened. I don't want to just constantly look for people that are weaker than me and lesser than me. I want to look for people that are stronger than me so I can learn from them. Go to 2 Samuel 23, 2 Samuel 23. Flip to the left in your Bible. And we need to build a congregation of mighty men for this, mighty for the truth. I want people to get up and have the ability to preach the Bible, to preach the truth unfiltered, and people like it. People appreciate it today. They're not offended at the truth. They're offended at lies. They're offended at pandering. They're offended at people getting up and skirting around issues, skirting around the truth. They say, hey, just tell it to me plain. You know, it always made me sick. It's always frustrating when you show up at church and there's a controversy, there's some kind of drama and everybody knows it, but they just say, oh, you know, just look the other way. Don't worry about it. Let's not talk about it. You know, nothing bad ever happens. This pastor stepping down, you know, we wish him the best, see you later. It's like, what happened? Well, he's stepping down. Don't worry about it. Don't ask questions. Would you like that if we just said, hey, Romero's just stepping down. Okay, no questions. All right. Or would you like to know what happened? Or would you like to know the ugly truth? You know, even though it's ugly, I'd rather hear the truth. What if they just said, well, it's just a lot of pressure. So it's just not gonna work. Is that the truth or is that pandering? Is that the truth? Are they valiant for the truth? But you know what? There'll be some people that would go to a church and they would say, I can't believe you would tell all those things about what he did. That makes the church look bad and it makes him look bad and I can't believe you did that. You called him an adulterer. Right, isn't that what Jeremiah was doing? Is Jeremiah chapter nine calling people adulterers? Is it the truth though? Oh, okay. So you don't like the truth then? That's your problem. Hey, I wanna have a church that loves the truth. That's mighty for the truth today. You say, hey, we're mighty with our guns, but we can't handle truth. Hey, we're so mighty, we'll go out, we'll start a militia and we'll fight the government. None of us are gonna wear a mask ever. But you know what? Someone gets up and just preaches the Bible and they're all freak out. What kind of strength are you building your church for? Hey, and you know what? I hate wearing masks, okay? I'll just admit it. I pretty much wore a mask like never. It's like the intercom at the airport's like, wear a mask, wear a mask, wear a mask. And I'm just like, no. You know what? I'm not gonna go around and brag about that and be like, look how spiritual and strong I am. I'm so strong. Look how strong I am. I just hate wearing it, okay? So I decided not to. You know what? If someone else wears one, I'm gonna say, great, go for it. I'm not mad at you. You do your thing, I'll do my thing, okay? If you like it, if you love it, go for it. You know, it's your look like everybody else. But I'm not gonna force my carnal opinions on you. I wanna force my spiritual opinions on you. I want you to be mighty for the truth of God's word, not going around and saying, oh man, if you wear a mask, you're like accepting the anti-Christ. Like, what are you talking about? Look, there are certain churches where, guess what? Sunday morning is about masks. And Sunday night, it's about masks. And Wednesday night, it's about how the government is evil. And then Sunday morning is about how you should be patriotic. And then Sunday night is about how being a patriot is really biblical. I think I'm already sick of it. Why? I went to an independent, sorry, this is a rant, okay? You're welcome. I went to an independent, fundamental, Baptist church and the Supreme Court passed same-sex marriage. I show up on Sunday morning and guess what? Instead of singing hymns, we sing God bless America. We have to sing patriotic songs after that filth, okay? And think about the irony. When America is stripping all the freedoms, becoming more wicked by the second, constantly pandering to evil and lies and filth, what kind of sense does it make for me to stand up behind God's pulpit and try to preach how we should be more patriotic? Why would I do that? Why would I stand up behind the pulpit and grandstand about how we should love America more when it's taking away more liberties and standing for more lies? I don't care where you're at on the issue. And you know what? I love every soul on the planet and I want them all to get saved, but I'm not gonna sit here and try to defend my patriotism. Oh, and this is how they do it. Look at all the old documents. Well, let's read 1776. Let's read the Declaration of Independence and let's read Pilgrim's Progress and let's read the Mayflower Compact. You're just living in yesteryear. You're praising a document, not in the Bible, and nobody honors today. So you're just praising this idyllic God that doesn't exist. Why don't we praise the God of the Bible this morning? Amen. I mean, why would I go to church to hear about how I said, love America? I can just watch Fox News for free. I don't even have to get out of bed. I can just turn on the news and learn how much I should love America and love patriotism and love Trump and love the Constitution and love all my rights. I'll just listen to Tucker Carlson, the Episcopalian. You know what? I'm not gonna go to the Episcopalian church this morning. I'm gonna go to an independent fundamental Baptist church where you're gonna hear the truth, hear God's word being preached, not my personal opinions, not warmed-over news media stories. It's nonsense today. Now, look at 2 Samuel chapter 23. It says in verse number eight, 2 Samuel 23. Look at verse number eight. "'These be the names of the mighty men whom David had, "'the Tacmonite that sat in the seat, "'chief among the captains. "'The same was the dino, the Es-nite. "'He voted for Donald Trump.' "'He didn't wear a mask. "'He wrapped himself in an American flag. "'He lifted up his spear against 800 "'whom he slew at one time.'" You know what he did? He slayed the real enemy, the spiritual enemy, and notice he slew 800 men. He was excellent. You say, why did they pick this guy to be the best? Why did they pick this guy to be in charge? Because he slew 800 men, that's why. Not because he was just warming over some kind of meal. Well, he scared one guy off one time. No, he slew 800 men at one time is what he did. You say, hey, I wanna be the chief of the captains. Well, slay 800 men. And we're not talking physically here. We're talking about spiritually here. He was going out and taking the enemy to task, the devil to task. I like this, hey, I got 800 people saved. I mean, at one time. Now, usually when people come in with those stories, they're a false prophet, okay? But I'm just saying, you could legitimately go out and get a lot of people saved. That would take a lot of hours, though. If you come back with 800 saved this afternoon, you're a liar, okay? But you might get two or three. You might even get lucky, get four or something. God might bless you if you go out and you know, over a year, hey, if you go out swimming every single day of the week, you go on big missions trips, you go and try and preach the gospel, and you say, hey, let's put this guy in charge of evangelism at our church, because he's getting 800 people saved in one year. Imagine that. It's not unrealistic. It would be a big task, though. Look at verse 18. And Abishai the brother of Joab, the son of Zeruiah, was chief among three. He lifted up his spear against 300 and slew them, and had name among three. So there's another three, another captain said, another trinity of men here, and one of them's risen up. He slew 300 men at once. Now, where do you think he got that idea? Probably from his buddy who slew 800. Probably from the example of his friend. And you know what? When you see your friend go out and slay 800, you're like, I'm gonna take 300 on. Hey, when you see other people doing great things, it can strengthen you and embolden you to go out and preach the gospel. Imagine if I take someone out soul winning for the first time, they're a silent partner, and I get up to the door, and I say, hey, how's it going? We wanna invite you to church. We don't wanna take you from a good church. St. John's, I mean, that sounds really good. John's is in the Bible, you know. What do you think you have to do to be saved? Oh, be a good person? Yeah, the Bible kinda says that. Well, all right, have a good day. You're gonna be like, what was that? That was weird. Oh, you're a Christian? I'm a Christian, okay, bye. See ya. Oh, you look busy. Don't let me interrupt anything that you're saying. I get up and I just fumble through it. Romans 3, 20, somewhere in the Bible. Do you know? Do you know that verse? Do you have a Bible? It's for God so loved, I mean, for every sinner, something. Do you know? Well, you think that would embolden him? Do you think that'd help him preach the gospel? Just believe Jesus, okay? Why do? Okay, you're saved, see ya. Or what if you go in there like a sharp instrument and you can just get in there and preach the gospel with power. You don't even have to look at your Bible. You have every verse memorized. Every single time this guy has any kind of question, you can just answer it like this. You're in there with boldness. You're in there with confidence. At one moment, someone tries to strip them away. You bring them back in and you get them saved there at the door. He's like, wow, I'm emboldened to do that again. I was out soul-winding with brother Ryan just Wednesday and he basically preached this kid the whole gospel. He's like literally about to pray. The next words out of his mouth are like, let's pray, okay? And this car pulls up and they're taking him. So I go, I gotta go, I gotta go to soccer. And he's like, give me another 30 seconds. And he's like, okay. And then he just, it's like two minutes, okay? But he sat there and he's like explaining, he's double checking again. He gets the guy ready and they pray and the kid gets saved. You know what, that emboldens me, that strengthens me to say, hey, when there's a little bit of obstacles, there's a little bit of difficulty there. Hey, I need to be bold. Just say, give me another 30 seconds. When I go out soul-winding with other people, hey, they just walk up and they're like, we're checking salvation. What do you have to do to be saved? I'm just like, man, I need to get bolder. And I'm not saying you can't be tactful, okay? I try to be pretty tactful. But I'm just saying, when you see other people doing things, being confident, excited about preaching the gospel, it causes you to be excited to go out and preach the gospel. Look at verse 20. Second Samuel 23, look at verse number 20. And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, the son of a valiant man of Kabziel, who had done many acts, he slew two lion-like men of Moab. He went down also and slew a lion in the midst of a pit and time of snow. And he slew an Egyptian, a goodly man, and the Egyptian had a spear in his hand, but he went down to him with the staff and plucked the spear out of the Egyptian's hand and slew him with his own spear. Now that would be just awesome to watch someone just die by their own weapon. But what do we see the common denominator here? We see that all these mighty men, they're provoking one another. You know, I don't wanna be the guy that's in David's army and looking at all these great men. You know, you got Benaiah, you got Adino, you got all these great men, and just be like, eh, why are they here? They make me look bad, I only killed 50 guys. I only killed 80 guys, you know? I killed a guy, but he was kinda effeminate, he wasn't really lion-like. As opposed to looking at their example and saying, you know what, I need to step my game up. I need to strengthen myself. So you know what they do? Instead of being strengthened, they sabotage. Instead of strengthening, they sabotage, don't they? And there was a lot of sabotagers amongst David's mighty men. I'm not saying the ones that were actually mighty, I'm saying they were with them. They would try to surround themselves and they'd try to take away from the mighty men. And so when we realized that they're sabotagers, you know what that makes me want? It makes me wanna have a lot of mighty men. Because when you're sitting in a meeting with a bunch of men and it's just filled with sabotagers, the meeting can go in the wrong direction. Yeah. They're like, let's stone David. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's stone him. Whereas you got a bunch of mighty men like, let's go. I slew 800 men, let's go. Hey, you wanna drink of water? We'll just go and get you a drink of water, David. Hey, whatever you need, whatever you want, we're ready to take on the challenge, we're ready to take on the fight. You know, it's tough to stand against a whole bunch of people where no one's valiant for the truth, where no one's mighty for the truth, where no one's on your side, and you just have to sit there and say, you know what? As for me and my house, we'll serve the Lord. Who's on this line? Who's gonna cross the line where the Lord is? And if not, just hit the road, Jack. We don't need you. We can just shrink down all the way to 300 on Gideon's army. I don't need a bunch of weak plastic forks. I hate plasticware, okay? I'm just getting that off my chest. Go over to Numbers chapter 11, Numbers chapter 11. Think about Joshua coming to Moses, and he says, hey, these guys are preaching too. He says, envious thou for my sake? Would God all the Lord's people are prophets? When the apostles found someone that was not with them, they forbade him to preach the gospel. Out of what? Envy, sake. Go to Proverbs 27. That's the verse I really want you to look at. I already told you Numbers 11. Envy is a wicked sin. It's an evil sin, and it causes people to end up sabotaging things, not strengthening them. Sabotaging and not strengthening. Look at Proverbs 27, where we already read this morning, read a lot of great verses here. Look at verse four. Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous, but who is able to stand before envy? Who is able to stand before envy? We need to get rid of all envy in our lives. And I hope so far, I've already made it abundantly clear, it doesn't even make sense. Why would you envy someone that's better than you? You should be excited that someone's better than you because they can provoke you to do more. They can strengthen you to do more. And you say, well, I'm just the best one here. Well, you're probably not with that attitude, first of all. But even if that were true, then you should say, I should try to strengthen them and make them better than me, because then when they're better than me, they can strengthen me. And then I can strengthen them. And then they can strengthen me. And you can have a good competition, you can have a good provoking, a good strengthening, where you constantly keep getting better and better and better. And you know what, I don't wanna surround myself with people that I think, man, these people are terrible and foolish and weak. No, I wanna be around people that are stronger than me, that are mightier than me, that are wiser than me, so that can encourage me and provoke me and strengthen me and do the same also. Not a sabotager who was there for envy's sake. You know, who's that? Like Daniel's chapter number six. Daniel's chapter number six, you have the presidents. They didn't like Daniel because he was so excellent, because he had such great wisdom. He had been elevated, he had been promoted. But here's the thing, why would you not want Daniel in charge? Wouldn't you, hey, here's the smartest guy, the wisest guy, he understands everything. He speaks all the languages. I mean, God just reveals dreams to this guy. You're like, let's put him in charge. Let's let him lead the charge. But these other presidents, since they're wicked, because they're evil, they wanna strip Daniel of his position. They're envious of his position, so they make up lies. They try to sabotage him. They try to afflict him. They try to persecute him. And we as a church should never, ever sabotage another person. You say, I would never sabotage someone. Yeah, but have you ever been envious of someone? Because that's where it starts. No one starts out usually thinking like, I'm just gonna sabotage this guy. They just start envying something about that person. And so they end up wanting to sabotage them eventually. They want them to do wrong. They want them to fail. And you know what, if you get excited when your brethren fails, you're wicked. You should want your brethren to succeed and to do great things and to do wonderful. Hey, I wanted to be the person to preach that sermon. I hope they mess up. I hope they screw up. I hope they do bad. I wanted that door. I hope they fail at that door. I hope they ruin their life. I hope they screw up. I hope their church fails. I hope they do bad. Look, that's a wicked attitude. We should be encouraging and exhorting our brethren to do better. They tried to get John the Baptist to have that attitude, but he wouldn't have it. Oh, look at this guy. He's baptizing more. Oh, John, you're not the number one baptizer anymore. You're not the number one Baptist. Imagine, someone comes to you, you're not the best Baptist church anymore. It's like, great, because it's about Jesus Christ anyways. It's about him. I hope there's thousands of better Baptist churches. Let's go join them. Say, hey, there's a thousand Baptist churches that are better than you in this area. Well, let's go join the best one then. Why not? I'm not against it. But at the end of the day, I'm not against people that are better than me. I wanna surround myself with people that are better than me. Word to God, all the Lord's people are prophets. I hope every guy in this room preaches. I hope you all preach the best sermon. You say, I don't wanna be a pastor. I don't care. You'd be able to preach a godly sermon. I would love to think, you know what? It doesn't matter who shows up. Someone can get up there and preach. I don't care what, I don't care who's knocking on the door. I know that person's gonna get them saved if they're receptive. Hey, I can trust that my men are gonna go out and do a hard job, you know, they're gonna work hard and they're gonna get people saved. That's the type of attitude we should have, one that wants to be strengthened, not one that wants to sabotage. Go to Proverbs one, my last point, and I'll cover it quickly, because we've already addressed a lot of these points, but we need to learn. We need to learn from the iron, so we can be provoked, we can be strengthened, and also we need to learn. Proverbs chapter one, look at verse five. The Bible says, a wise man will hear and will increase learning. A man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels. You should look for people that are smarter than you to learn from them, to gain wisdom from them. Go if you would to Proverbs 27 again. Go back to Proverbs 27. I'm not gonna go to any more verses, but I'll just tell you. Now, what you need to understand about learning is the Bible says you need not that any man teach you, but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things and is truth and is no lie. Look, the Holy Ghost will guide you into all truth. The Holy Ghost is your helper, the Holy Ghost is there. You technically don't need any person. But you know, Ephesians chapter number four makes it abundantly clear that God gave us apostles and prophets and teachers and evangelists and pastors, what? For the perfecting of the work, so that we can all come into unity. Now, at the end of the day, God's not gonna give you a pastor and teacher in vain. And he makes it abundantly clear, we do need to be taught of men. We do need to go and to hear the Word of God. You know, the Bereans, they still showed up at church, they still heard the Word of God preached because you can learn from other people. And just because you technically wouldn't need anybody to learn something does not mean that it's not beneficial to have them. I'll give you my example. Going into software development, I was pretty much just put into the fire, okay? I didn't know anything, I was green. My boss just put me in a room with a computer and said, figure it out, okay? And it was really hard. And here's the thing, with the internet, you can pretty much figure it out. I mean, all the answers are there somewhere. So you can go, you can figure it out. I didn't technically need some man to guide me, okay? But let me say this, I would solve problems in about two days that would take about 30 seconds if someone just told me what to do. And the same thing happens spiritually. He's like, oh, I could have figured that out on my own. Yeah, but you might as well get that information quickly. You might as well go to someone that is wise, that already has that understanding, that already has that education, that's already been diligent with the Word of God, and to get up and to teach you the Bible so that you can learn more rapidly so you can grow faster. We need to grow quickly because look, you could never outgrow the Bible. You can never outgrow the Word of God. And I don't wanna grow at the slowest rate possible, I wanna grow at the fastest rate possible when it comes to understanding the Word of God, when it comes to knowing the Word of God. But we also understand you can't just microwave it, okay? It's line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little. That's why it's important that every moment you have a chance to learn something, you learn. Every sermon, every time you sit down with the Bible, you know, sometimes I'll read the Bible, I'll sit down in the morning and I'm there to read the Bible and I'll read a chapter and I'll kind of think like, I don't know what that said. And then I read the second chapter and I'm like, I don't know if I read, I don't. I'm just thinking about the day. I'm thinking about all the tasks that I have to get done. I'm thinking about other stuff. And it's like, it's all in vain if I didn't learn anything. And you know, I have goals like that I wanna read so much of the Bible and at certain times and certain, you know, intervals and things like that. But let me say this, I would rather have understood one chapter in my Bible reading in the morning than to have read 10 chapters and really just gloss it all over. Every opportunity you have to learn. I don't wanna show up for a church. I don't wanna have to be like, Pastor Shell, you preached for so long. What'd you do out of it? Nothing. Get one thing out of it. Pick out one thing and just say, I liked that point. All right, I'm just gonna cling to that one point. But get something. Hey, Brother Ryan came and preached. I hope you learned something. Hey, Brother Duncan got up here and preached. I hope you learned something from the Word of God. And you know what? As a preacher, you should try to learn the Bible yourself so that you can teach others. So that you can what? Provoke them and strengthen them and teach them the Word of God. What would be the opposite of this? It'd be the person that's going to limit others. Limit others. Let me give you a quick delineation between a church and a cult. A church is gonna help you learn. A cult is gonna limit you. You say, what is a cult? Well, a cult can be under the guise of church. It can be Baptist cult. It can be Methodist cult. It could be non-denominational cult. And you say, what does a cult look like? Well, a cult limits the information coming in. They say, oh, you can't listen to those people. Don't hear that thing. We want to disguise all this other information that's trying to come in. Don't listen to that person. Don't go around and hear all this other information. They try to limit their congregation. They try to limit the information that's coming in. Well, you know, Romero's just kind of stepping down. Don't worry about it. Don't listen to the reports. Don't listen to what other people are saying. Don't pay attention. Now, obviously, there's an element of truth there. There are certain people that need to be marked and avoided, but it's after they've already been discredited as an unreliable source of information. But you know what? Some people just limit all information. That's a cult. They don't want your family members and your friends to tell you things. Look, I'm not afraid of your family members trying to warn you about the cult because you'll see through their thinly veiled arguments real quick. Oh, it's a cult. How is it a cult? It's a cult. I saw this video. They said it. They put it on the screen, you know. Okay, well, we're in the Bible. You know, what verses do they teach wrong? Cult. You know, let me just, I'm going on a lot of rabbit shells, I know. Here's the thing. Your family members and your friends are not gonna wanna argue doctrine with you. So they'll say, oh, I don't like your church because I don't agree with the rabbit bait doctrine. You know what you do? Well, let me show you Romans one. Let me teach you Romans one. Well, let me teach you Judges chapter 19. No, I don't wanna hear that. You know, I don't agree with your church. They say once they'd always say, well, let me show you. You know, let me show you where it is. And they're like, no, I don't wanna look at that. They say, oh, I don't like your church because it's pastor led. Well, let me show you that verse. I don't like your church because they say that women can't be preachers. Well, let me show you that verse. You know what, they get really tired of being rebuked by the Bible. So this is what they say, cult. And then you're like, I don't know where to turn. Because here's the thing, they wanted to stop you from just showing them things in the Bible. Yeah, right. That's the reason why they go to it. That's why they turn to that. Because if they go to doctrine, you're like, I'm ready. I'm ready to give an answer to every man that asks me. But notice they weren't asking. And then what happens? They just go to the cult street. Because it's easy. Because there's no defense. I mean, how do you defend against that? But I'm not afraid of information. I'm not afraid of the truth. You find as much truth as you want. It's not going to stop me from doing my thing. And if you love truth, it's not going to stop you from wanting to come to this church. I'll tell you that. What does a cult also do? A cult limits the information going out. They limit the information coming in and they limit the information going out. When I start making all of our YouTube sermons in private where nobody can check them out, be afraid. Now here's the thing. Obviously we understand the censorship issue and all that kind of stuff. I'm saying when I'm just deciding just to take it down on my own accord and no one gets to know all the things that I say to y'all, that's called a cult, my friend. I thought Jesus Christ said what I whisper in the ear that preach ye upon the housetops. Why are you so afraid of other people hearing your sermons? Why are you so afraid of other people hearing what you preach behind the pulpit? You know why? Because it's not the truth. I'm not afraid of the truth. Now, obviously we might put, you know, fag sermons on another channel or something, but that's not because I'm trying to limit the truth. It's because I'm not trying to get destroyed. I'm not trying to cast my pearls before swine here, okay? And that's understandable. But when I limit the comment section and I limit all the information that's coming out of my church, and you know, every once in a while, you're going to have a private church matter where you're dealing with something internal, and I get that. But when I'm limiting all my sermons, my question's why. Jesus didn't say, hey, what I told you, don't tell anyone else. When did he say that? He might've said, wait. He might've said, hey, this isn't the right timing, or don't cast your pearls before swine. But he's never saying like, this isn't public information here. He's saying this is for everybody. Let me tell you. And obviously he spent more time with his disciples. He explained more things to his disciples. He didn't want to preach it to the world. And another aspect of the cult, not only do they limit the information coming in, not only do they limit the information going out, they limit the congregation. And they punish them by leaving, legitimately. If someone leaves our church legitimately, and then I punish them by preaching a sermon against them for leaving our church, it's a cult. Look, I try to preach people out the door, okay? I'm not gonna sit here and punish people for leaving legitimately. There's been pastors I've seen of independent fundamental Baptist churches. A person just decides, I'm just gonna move, or I'm tired of the church, or I just wanna leave. And then they'll publicly preach against that individual in front of everybody. You know what he's doing? He's scaring everybody from leaving the church. He's terrifying everyone for them feeling like, well, I can't leave, because then I'll get a whole sermon dedicated to me leaving the church. That's a cult. You say, hey, I don't wanna get preached against. Well, you can leave. You won't ever get preached against. Obviously, when we preach against people, it's because they lied and slandered and railed and they're evil and they're wicked, and it's been confirmed. And we say, you gotta avoid this person. It's just a toxic person. You know, there's plenty of reasons that you get backslidden. I'm not gonna preach against you for getting backslidden. I'm not gonna publicly humiliate you for moving or leaving. That's a cult. So you say, hey, I know it's a church, but they're limiting the information coming in, they're limiting the information going out, and they're punishing people for leaving legitimately. It's a cult. And you know what? Why?