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And for His grace so rich and free, I never will cease to love Him. I never will cease to love Him. He's my Savior. He's my Savior. I never will cease to love Him. He's done so much for me. He gives me strength for every day. I never will cease to love Him. He leads and guides me all the way. I never will cease to love Him. I never will cease to love Him. He's my Savior. He's my Savior. I never will cease to love Him. He's done so much for me. Though all the world His love neglect, I never will cease to love Him. I could not such a friend reject. I never will cease to love Him. I never will cease to love Him. He's my Savior. He's my Savior. I never will cease to love Him. He's done so much for me. Along my journey here below, I never will cease to love Him. And when to that bright world I go, I never will cease to love Him. I never will cease to love Him. He's my Savior. He's my Savior. I never will cease to love Him. He's done so much for me. Amen. Good singing. Pastor Shelley, will you open us in a word of prayer, please? Sure. Thank you, Father, for giving us this great time to come together and worship and serve you. I pray that you just bless all aspects of the service and soul winning this afternoon. And that we just have a great time of fellowship. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Alright, the next song we're going to sing is song number 45. Song number 45. When I Can Read My Title Clear. Song 45. Alright, sing it out. I can read my title clear to mansions in the sky. I'll bid farewell to every fear and wipe my weeping eyes. And wipe my weeping eyes. And wipe my weeping eyes. I'll bid farewell to every fear and wipe my weeping eyes. Should earth against my soul engage in fiery darts be hurled. Then I can smile at Satan's rage and face a frowning world. And face a frowning world. And face a frowning world. Then I can smile at Satan's rage and face a frowning world. That cares like a wild deluge come and storms of sorrow fall. May I but safely reach my home, my God, my heaven, my all. May I but safely reach my home, my God, my heaven, my all. May I but safely reach my home, my God, my heaven, my all. Shall I bathe my weary soul in seas of heavenly rest. And not a wave of trouble roll across my peaceful breast. Across my peaceful breast. Across my peaceful breast. And not a wave of trouble roll across my peaceful breast. Amen. Good morning. Thank you all so much for being here. If you need a bulletin, I think you can lift your hand up and get one. I think everybody got one. On the inside, we have our service and soul winning times. Make note that one of the soul winning times is shifted to Thursday at 5.30 p.m. So we have Sunday at 2 p.m. Thursday at 5.30 p.m. before the service. And then Saturdays at 10.30. So you can just meet here at the church building for all of those. Also, if you have any soul winning throughout the week, you can always contact brother Furr and just let him know so he can update those statistics as you go out and do soul winning. Also, if you please be keeping Mrs. Poorman in your prayers, as she's expecting. And then also we have some newest church members still down here. Rachel Gertrude, Catherine Smith. I don't know if they could fit another name in there or not, but she was born on the second, weighing eight pounds, one ounce, 20 inches. So keep them in your prayers, Ken and Chloe Smith. And then also Matt and Rochelle Hill on Emerson May Hill, born on the 21st, 2020, at six pounds, 13 ounces and 19 inches long. So we're just growing organically. You know, it's the best kind of growth and the best announcements. Also, we have a lineup of a lot of guest preachers that are going to be coming up here. They're excited about everything getting kicked back off again. So on the 10th, we're going to have brother Ben Naim. He's down there in Fort Worth. So he's down there at fast Fort Worth and really dynamic preacher, really good preacher. He does a great job and I'm really excited to have him come up here. And then we had scheduled Pastor Tommy McMurtry to come out here in April, but because of everything, we decided to just push it back a little bit. So he's going to be coming here for the Thursday service on May 14th. So if you are able, please come. He's a very good preacher, a great guy. And so he's really looking forward to come down here. Also from Faith Ward Baptist Church on the 17th for the crystal girl, he's going to be coming out here. He's preached for us in the past. He preaches faster than anybody I've ever met. But, you know, it's good information coming at you at warp speed. All right. I love brother Chris Agura. You know, I always just say he's kind of a wild card. You never know. But he's really fun, really zealous. And I love brother Segura. And then brother Jesse Michael. He'll be coming back up here also preaching that May 24th. The 31st for the Philip Milstead, also from Fort Worth. And brother Duncan Urbanic, also from Fort Worth. So we have a lot of guys down there, really good preachers. And we just want to bless you guys having them come up here. They're excited. I'll be back for the Sunday services on the 14th. So I'll be back then. And then also brother Jeff Goodwin. He's going to be coming up here. I don't think he's preached for you guys yet, but I've sent him down to Houston as well. He's preached in Fort Worth for us. And he's a very good preacher. I really like his preaching usually in the preaching class sermons. Some of the best sermons. So I was just kind of like pushing him. I was like, hey, you need to go out there and preach the bowling sermons for me. And so I'm really excited to have all of these guys come up here and bless you guys. And so please tell them thank you for coming up here and just be very hospitable unto them. On the right hand side we have the Bible Memory chapter, Hebrews chapter 4 verse 4. So work on that. And then we have an event that we're going to have here at the church in honor of Mother's Day on May 9th from 11 to 1 p.m. And all women, all ladies, all girls are invited. So this is not if you're a mother, this is just if you have a mother, which is everyone. OK, so everybody has a mother somewhere. You know, even if they passed away, you can still come and celebrate Mother's Day with all the other ladies. And so all ladies, we'd like for you to please attend. And also, if you have a nursing, that's a boy. He's still also welcome. So he'll be the ladies man, you know, if you can bring him in. And but we'd like for you to participate. Everything's to be provided for by the church. So we just want you all to be blessed and to come and have some good fellowship. Also, just a couple of notes. Since we've been away, we've got to remind ourselves again, there's still some house rules, right? We want our children to be well behaved in the house of the Lord. So no running, you know, keep your children with you. Keep eyes on your children. Make sure they're behaving themselves very well in the house. Also, just try to help clean up after yourselves and even just others. So if you notice trash, you say, that's not mine. You can still throw it away. Just help out. Keep the buildings. Obviously, we're a smaller church, so we just want to be a blessing to each other and bear one another's burdens, all right? So, you know, just go ahead and just try to help clean up and after yourselves, after the services. That's pretty much mostly it for announcements. The only announcement I was going to make is, unfortunately, we did have to exercise church discipline on a particular member. It was Bo Ballard. And so him and his family are not welcome to attend the church until he decides to repent of his railings against me and just basically our church in general. And so, you know, you can still be praying for them, but maybe they'll make the right decision. And, you know, obviously it's not it's not fun to deal with, but it's life. And so hopefully he can get that right. But I'm excited for this weekend and these services. So let's go to our next song. One hundred and sixty one. Our great savior. One hundred and sixty one. All right. Song one hundred and sixty one. He's a friend for. He's a lover of my soul. And they say, oh, me, my savior. Makes me. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Jesus, what a strength in weakness. Let me hide myself in Him. Tempted, tried and sometimes failing. He, my savior, victory wins. I say you're high. Oh, wow. Thank you. Thank you. love me, he is with me to the end. Jesus, what a helping sorrow, while the bellows o'er me roll. Even when my heart is breaking, he, my comfort, helps my soul. Hallelujah, what a Savior, Hallelujah, what a Friend. Saving, helping, keeping, loving, he is with me to the end. Jesus, what a Guide and Keeper, while the tent is still this high. Storms about me, night o'er takes me, he, my pilot, hears my cry. Hallelujah, what a Savior, Hallelujah, what a Friend. Saving, helping, keeping, loving, he is with me to the end. Jesus, I do now receive him, more than all in him I find. He hath granted me forgiveness, I am his and he is mine. Hallelujah, what a Savior, Hallelujah, what a Friend. Saving, helping, keeping, loving, he is with me to the end. Amen. Good singing. Alright, as offering plates are being passed around, turn in your Bibles to Ephesians 4. Ephesians 4, the Bible reads, I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one, hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all. But unto every one that is of us is given grace, according to the measure of the gift of Christ, wherewith he saith, when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men. Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. But speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things which is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, making increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. This I say therefore and testify in the Lord that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, feeling alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart, who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness. But ye have not so learned Christ, if so be that ye have heard him and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus, that ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirit of your mind and that ye put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Wherefore, putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor for we are members one of another. Be ye angry and sin not. Let the sun not go down upon your wrath, neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labor working with his hands the thing which is good that he may have to give to him that needeth. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying that it may minister grace unto the hearers and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, I want to thank you for your work. We want to thank you for the church. We want to thank you for all the people gathered here. We ask that you fill Christ with your Holy Spirit, give him the wisdom that he needs to preach to us, edify the saints to bring us closer to you. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. One other announcement, I always forget unless I write it down, but we have a men's retreat that we're gonna be doing in the Fort Worth area on June 18th through the 20th. So that's a Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, right before Father's Day. If you'd like to participate, and I'll get you more details as far as exactly all that information. We'll get a little closer, but that's just something to keep in mind. Look at verse number three again where the Bible read, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all. Now, the Bible's telling us here that we should try endeavoring, that means to try to keep the unity of the Spirit. And notice we have a lot of things in common here, don't we? We have one body, one Spirit, we have one hope, we have one Lord, we have one faith, we have one baptism, we have one God and Father of all. And when it comes to church, what makes a really great church is one that has a lot of things in common with one another, the commonality. And so the morning sermon is entitled, Why I Love My Church, Why I Love My Church. And I have several things this morning that I wanna talk about that we have in common and that's what causes me to truly love this church and to love church in general. But if we see in verse number five, it says that we have one Lord, one faith. In order to really love your church, in order to have a lot of commonality, we have to have the same faith. If we have different faith, then we're not gonna be able to come together. If people believe salvation is by works, they're not gonna have the same unity with me because I believe it's by faith. Or someone that believes in a different God or they believe in all kinds of different, well, I think you have to get baptized to be saved. Well, I think you have to follow all these commandments. Well, I think you have to endure into the end. Well, I think that you don't even have to believe, God just elects you. There's all these variations out there and it's hard to have some unity unless we all have the exact same faith, unless we have the exact same salvation. That's one thing I love about this church is I don't really doubt if we all have the same faith here. There's a lot of churches you could go to this morning where there'd be a smorgasbord of beliefs when it comes to salvation, even itself. Probably the most principled doctrine you could have is how does someone go to heaven? Yet, if you go to a really big non-denominational church today, I guarantee you're gonna have a non-denominational answer. I mean, you're gonna have the Calvinist answer, you're gonna have the Methodist answer, you're gonna have the Catholic answer, you're gonna have all these different variations and that's not gonna really breed a great church. What's gonna breed a great church is when we all have that same faith. Go to Jude chapter one for a moment and if you want to keep your finger on Ephesians four, we'll keep coming back to it but in Jude, if we look at verse number three, the Bible speaks about this. Verse number three says, Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you, notice this, of the common salvation. It's a common salvation. We all have the same salvation. Now, if salvation were not by faith, then it would not be common because we all have different works. So it's like, well, who got saved? Well, I have all these works. How are your works? We have to all measure our different works and then it's like this bragging and boasting and trying to measure ourselves and compare ourselves. We have a common salvation. It's through Jesus Christ. You either put your faith in Jesus Christ and you're saved or you're not saved according to the Bible. There is no variation when it comes to that salvation and why I love my church is we all have that in common. We all have the same type of salvation. I've been to churches where they get up and they invite people to come and share their testimony and they get up and they're like, well, I was on drugs and then I did, I was doing all these wicked things and I was with these bad people and then I found Jesus and it's like everybody has their own salvation plan. Everybody has their own testimony. My testimony is I believed in Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection and I would hope that every person in this room says, you know what my testimony is? I believe in Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection for my salvation. It's a common salvation and it's not my testimony. It's his testimony that he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. We're declaring his righteousness, not my righteousness. Where has boasting been? It is excluded by what law? By the law of works? No, but with a law of faith. Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. So we have a common salvation. That's why I love my church. I would not want to go to a church today where everybody has a different plan of salvation. I would want to go to a church where we all have that in common, we have that unity. Go to Revelation chapter 14, just flip to the right just a few pages. Now we know this because the Bible teaches that the gospel is the same gospel from before the world was even founded. Jesus Christ is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. There isn't multiple gospels. There isn't your gospel, my gospel. There's one gospel and it's described here in Revelation 14. I like how it's described. Look at verse six. And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven having the everlasting gospel to preach to them that dwell on the earth. You know, we have an everlasting gospel. It's just for all time. It's actually outside of time. It's always been the case. There's always been salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, and that's it. That's the only way to get saved. It's the common salvation. And in order for us to have unity in this church, we have to have that one faith. Go to 1 Corinthians chapter 14, 1 Corinthians chapter number 14. The Bible makes it clear that there's a benefit when we all have the same salvation testimony. And 1 Corinthians chapter 14 is describing, you know, some instructions in how a church is supposed to behave itself. It talks about what kind of language you're supposed to preach in, the language that everybody understands. You know, it would seem pretty obvious, but you know, the Catholic church for a long period of time would preach in Latin. If I got up here and started preaching in Latin, you guys would just fall asleep. What's the point in me preaching and you can't even understand anything that I'm saying, right? But we see here in verse number 24, it says, but if all prophesies, talking about every person in the church prophesying or preaching, and there come in one that believeth not or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all, and thus of the secrets of his heart made manifest. And so falling down in his face, he will worship God and report that God is in you of the truth. So he's saying, if someone came in that's an unbeliever, if someone came in that doesn't have the same salvation, anybody in this room could just open their Bible and say, hey, can I show you how to go to heaven? And notice he'd be convinced of all, he'd be judged of all. That's gonna be a great thing when we all have the same testimony. If someone walks into a church and this person's saying it's by faith, this person's saying it's by works, this person's saying it's to get baptized, the person's gonna be confused. And God's not the author of confusion. And what I love about my church is I don't have to give the gospel to anybody. I know my people in the room could give them the gospel. I know the people in the room could show them how to be saved and they can show their children how to be saved and they can show their family and their friends and that we're just pumping out the gospel to every single person. Whereas some churches, they kind of make the gospel something that only the pastor or the preacher can deliver. You know, and look, I'm not gonna say that an altar call is wrong because a lot of people have gotten saved on an altar call, but you know what, that shouldn't be the only vehicle in which people can get saved. We ought to be able as a whole body to be able to preach that common salvation and be able to deliver and convince people of how to be saved, not just the pastor, not just the preacher. You know, I feel like it's a disservice to the congregation if I'm the only one that's capable of getting someone saved. That's a disservice. We want to enable every single person in this room to be able to preach the gospel. And he combats this in verse 26. He says, how is it then, brethren, when you come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying. So he's saying, how is it that you have all these divisions here? We ought to have the same faith here. We ought to have the same doctrine and the same beliefs and the same songs. Can you imagine? Everybody just turned to your favorite song in the hymnal. All right? And then let's just start singing. Ready? I mean, that's going to be chaos. OK? And that's the same kind of chaos it would be if we all didn't believe the same things, if we didn't all have the same faith. Maybe you didn't even have a hymnal. You just have your own music. You just brought in your own worldly music. We're just all singing randomly. That's going to be confusing. And so in order to have a good church, we need to have unity. Unity about what? Faith. We want to have that common faith. And I love the fact that we have the common faith not just about salvation, but even the Bible itself. If we all have a different Bible this morning, it's going to be difficult to communicate the message that we need to deliver. Because one person will say, well, my Bible says this. Well, my Bible words it this way. You know, I have the NLT. My Bible says you have to repent of your sins to be saved. Whereas no other English Bible has that. You know, some people have the Amplified, where it just throws in every possible definition for a word in every single verse. And it's just ultra confusing. So in order for us to have unity, we have to have the same salvation. We have to have the same Bible. And you say, why is it that churches today don't have these things? Well, the Bible says faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. So if everybody in the room has a different salvation, you know what that's telling me? Our different faith? The word of God's not being preached. And unfortunately, I think that's the case. I think there's a lot of churches this morning where if the preacher got up and expounded on salvation very clearly, a lot of people might get saved. There's a lot of people that go to a church today. We knock on their doors. They're going to church on a regular basis, yet they don't understand salvation by faith. They need someone to expound that to them. And it's a shame. So in order for us to have one faith in this building, what we have to do is we have to preach the word of God. And when you start seeing a lack of faith, when you start seeing division and kind of strife and things being brought into a church, that tells me the word of God's not being preached. Other things are being preached or not emphasized correctly. Because whenever you thunder forth God's word to a group of people that are saved that actually care, you're going to have a lot of unity. Because we can all rally around God's word. Jesus Christ said, my sheep hear my voice and I know them. They're not going to follow a stranger. So if you have the powerful word of God right here this morning, then you need to actually preach it. And that's going to encourage people to have that one faith, that one unity. That's why I love my church. I love my church because we preach the word of God and it increases people's faith. And we all have that one faith together. Go back to Ephesians chapter four. Go back to Ephesians chapter number four. And I would say that's probably one of the biggest reasons why I don't like other churches because they screw up point number one. Let's look at another one. Look at verse number five. It said, one God and Father of all. So another thing that we have in common this morning is we all have the same Father. And that's a great thing. That's a great thing that we have the same Father. Because if we all have the same Father, you know what that means? We're all brothers and sisters. And I love the fact that we can go up to each other and say, hey, brother so and so, or, hey, sister so and so. And we have that unity. We have that commonality. Whereas I go to some churches, they don't have the same Father as me. So I don't know, hey, you. I don't know if you're brother so and so. I don't know if you're sister so and so. And you know, obviously there's cultures today where they say that. But it's nice to know that it's true. We actually know that we're brother so and so. We know that we're sister so and so. And I love having that same Father. Go if you went to Ephesians chapter one, just flip back a page and look at verse two. It says, grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who have blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. So we all have the same Father. There's only one Father that we have. That's God the Father. And we have his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And I love the fact that we all have that same commonality, that we have that one Father. Go if you went to 1 Corinthians chapter number eight, 1 Corinthians chapter number eight. Now the Bible says that you're all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. So the moment you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you become a child of God. And as children, we also become joint heirs with Christ and we're even brethren with Jesus Christ. Which in and of itself is a pretty extraordinary aspect to what Jesus has done for us. That he'd be willing to share his inheritance with other people. I remember when I was younger, my mom, she started doing counseling services. So she would counsel children that were in abusive situations. And she was a family counselor. And most of the cases she dealt with were like the state, where they're having to take kids away from a really abusive situation, or there's something really extreme going on. And so she would just give counseling under these children. And she always kind of felt this burden of like maybe just taking one of them in or something as her own. And I remember asking me that one time and I was pretty young. I think I was, I can't remember, like eight, 10 years old. And she's like, what do you think about me just taking one of these kids in, there being a sibling with you? And I was just like, no. Which it was just selfish, honestly. But I'm not Jesus Christ. No, Jesus Christ doesn't have to share his inheritance. He could just say, you know what, I want it. But he's willing to share with us sinners. We're the ones that put him on the cross and then he's still willing to share his inheritance with us. That's amazing. And we all have the same father now. You know, Jesus already got that great father from eternity past, but now we get that great heavenly father. And you know, God willing, you'd have the best earthly father you possibly can. But even if you don't have a great earthly father, you have a great heavenly father that we all get to share. Now I had you turn to 1 Corinthians chapter eight, look at verse number six. But to us there is but one God, the father of whom are all things and we in him and one Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all things and we by him. So we have the same father, which obviously is best articulated in the Trinity where we have the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost. And those who don't have the son don't have the father. And those who don't have the father don't have the son. It's a package deal. You have to accept both. And I'm glad that we're in a church today, a fundamental Baptist church, where we believe in the Trinity, where we believe in God, the father, and the son, and the Holy Ghost. And we can articulate these things very well. Go if you would to back to Ephesians chapter four. So why I love my church? Well, we have the same faith. We have the common faith. We also have the common father, but let's look at another aspect here that we have in Ephesians chapter four. Look at verse 30. Whereby you're sealed under the day of redemption. We also have a common future. We all have a common future. Once you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you're sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, meaning you're going to heaven. I don't care what you do. It doesn't matter what sin you get into. It doesn't matter how bad of a Christian you are or how bad of a son you are. We all have the same future in head of us. And that's a great thing to know. You know, it's sad to be around people that you can tell don't have the same future as you. You know, it's sad going out into the world today and realizing the whole world life and wickedness and understanding most of these people are not headed to heaven. But I love our church knowing that, hey, when I'm around you guys, I can have confidence that we all have the same future ahead of us. You know, when we get to sing to him, when we all get to heaven, what a day, right? So we all get to heaven. How can I sing that in a mixed crowd? Can I go out there in the world, just go in the mall? When we all get to heaven. Usually it's like the opposite when you go to that store. I haven't missed them all. I'm just being honest, right? Go to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. 1 Corinthians chapter number 15. But having the same future is important. Why? Because if you have the same future, then you're headed in the same direction. And if you're headed in the same direction, it's easy to encourage people to come with you in that same direction, okay? Look at 1 Corinthians chapter number 15 verse 49. We're gonna talk about our common future. It says, and as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now, what is he meaning here? He's talking about Adam. We've all borne the image of Adam. Now, here's the thing. Some people take the latter part of this into a weird extreme. Some people say, well, we're all gonna look like Jesus. Well, yes and no, okay? We are all gonna look like him in the fact that we're gonna be similar to his transfiguration, but we're not gonna have his facial features, okay? We're not gonna have his facial structure, okay? We don't all physically look like Adam, but we all are human, right? You know, Adam doesn't look like a bear. Adam didn't look like a panda, okay? Adam didn't look like a chihuahua. He looked like a man, and we all are man and women, okay? We're mankind, so we bear the image of Adam, and that way, we're gonna bear the image of Jesus Christ when we're gonna put on the incorruptible man, okay? Tell that to Peter Ruckman. It says in verse number 50, now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. I love how he keeps saying we. We, we, he's talking about that common future of what? We're all gonna put on that new creation, not just in the spirit, but even our physical bodies. Now, it's not gonna be the same flesh and blood, because it's gonna be an incorruptible body, and it's gonna happen in a moment. It says in verse 53, for this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is thy sting? Oh, grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of the sin is the law, but thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, unmovable, always abound in the work of the Lord, for as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. So notice, we are all gonna put on that incorruptible man. We are all gonna be risen again from the dead. And just like I put this coat on this morning, we're gonna put on immortality, which, what a blessing that is. What an incredible gift that we're given, eternal life, where we get to abide and dwell with God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ for all of eternity. And notice, he says he gives us the victory. Notice, there's a victory. Now, let me ask this question. Can you have a victory without a battle? No. How do you win if there wasn't any kind of conflict, if there wasn't any kind of, look, this life is a conflict. This life is a struggle. This life is a battle, and there's gonna be things that we're gonna go through that are difficult, that are not fun, not easy, and what's that victory? That victory is going up to be with the Lord. That's the moment that we get that final victory. Obviously, we gained the victory when we believed. We got saved. That's one aspect of the victory, but another aspect is gonna be that day when we get and stand before the Lord Jesus Christ, and hopefully, he'll say to us, well done, thou good and faithful servant. Now, if you have an NIV or a home and Christian standard, say, well done, thou good and faithful slave. That's why I like having the same Bible, okay? What kind of weirdo wants to be told that? But notice, if we're all headed in that same direction, okay, isn't that the context here? It's talking, it's emphasizing that we're all headed in the one direction, we're all gonna put on the same kind of body, then what's the conclusion? The conclusion is be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. Why, why? For as much as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord, we know that our labors are not in vain, we know one day we will be with the Lord, we know that we're gonna receive the recompense of our word, so that's gonna motivate me to wanna keep serving God, to keep working. So what does that do? That gives me my fourth point, we have a common focus. We have the same focus because we have the same goal, we have the same future, we're headed in the same direction, therefore, we can encourage one another because we have the same work. If we have different task or goal, if we're trying to do something different, we're not gonna have much unity, but we all have the same goal. What's the same goal? Get as many people saved as possible, right? I mean, be pleasing unto the Lord, following his commandments, we all have the exact same focus, and so we should be striving together, working together, in order to accomplish this task. Go back to Ephesians, and we're gonna look at chapter five for a second, look at verse number one of Ephesians chapter number five. It says in verse number one, be therefore followers of God as dear children and walk in love as Christ also have loved us and have given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor. So the Lord Jesus Christ in following God's commandments and his sacrifice ultimately on the cross was a sweet smelling savor unto the Lord. That's the type of sacrifices we're supposed to offer in the New Testament. We don't actually offer incense. We don't actually offer a bullock on the altar. What we do is we get on our knees and pray. What we do is we go out and preach the gospel. What we do is serve God and follow his commandments and sing praise unto his name, and God likes these type of sacrifices. He likes these type of offerings, and we all have that same focus. We're gonna be able to edify one another and encourage one another to go out and keep soul winning. What is he saying here? He's talking about being a follower. He's talking about being perfected, okay? Being pleasing in his sight. Perfected is being complete, being a full Christian. And you know, I don't think any of us have or will arrive. It's a constant process of sanctification, of separating ourselves and becoming more holy so that we can be more pleasing unto God. We can be used greater by God, and so it's a constant effort. But you know what? Your labor's not in vain. You know what? We have the same goal. We have the same focus. We have the same vision. We have the same end. And when we have that common focus, you can love your church. Churches today don't always have the same focus. They have a lot of different visions and ideas. They talk about lifestyle evangelism. They talk about, well, we'll just send a bunch of money to these people, and they'll go build wells, and then maybe someone will get saved one day. They just have a lot of disunity as far as what the goal is. You go to church, what's the goal? Well, the goal is to start a coffee club and have everybody come over to your house and just hang out and have fun. It's not really driven in that one focus. They don't really have the same idea as far as how we're supposed to worship God, how we're supposed to serve God. You ask people, hey, how are we supposed to get someone saved? You'll get 10 different answers. And it'll be coming from someone that's never got anybody saved anyways. Rather, you come here and it's like, hey, what do y'all do to get people saved? We all go soul-winning. We open our Bible and we preach the gospel. It's called the Romans Road. And you know what? You ask Brother Cameron or Brother Tanner, Brother Matt, you know, it's the same gospel. You know, they might change it a little bit, but virtually, they're gonna be saying the same things. Hey, you're a sinner. You deserve hell. Jesus paid for your sins. Put your faith in him and you can't lose it. I mean, it's just gonna be hammered in, whereas when you don't have the same focus, it's gonna be all over the board. That's why I love my church. I love having the same focus because you know what? You admonish me and you encourage me to keep on the same task, to keep on the same programs and the same goals. If I decide to start doing things that aren't soul-winning, you're gonna be like, hey, what's going on, Pastor? Where's the soul-winning? Hey, why aren't we emphasizing the soul-winning? Hey, why aren't we emphasizing the gospel here? So when we're all having the same focus, when we don't have that focus, well, we could just get distracted with, you know, all the skits and the plays and the music program and the Sunday school and the vacation Bible and all these different programs and stuff. And you know what? There's nothing wrong with a program, but at the end of the day, sometimes you can lose your focus. What's the main goal of church today? The goal should be to get people saved. And so when we have that focus, we can have that commonality. And that's what I love about my church is I feel like everybody has that same focus, that same vision, that same drive, saying, hey, I wanna get more people saved and I wanna follow God's commandments. I wanna be pleasing to them. And when you have that focus, we can work in unison. I go to James 5, I'll get to my fifth point. Why I love my church? Because we have one faith. We have one Father. We have one future. We have one focus. And we have another thing though. It's been really great so far, but we also have one fault. We're a sinner. And this is something that we all share in common. None of us have arrived. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. So according to the Bible, we all have faults today. And I like the fact that we can at least admit that we have faults. It says right here in verse number 16, James chapter five, verse 15, confess your faults one to another and pray one for another that you may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are. And he prayed earnestly that it might not rain and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again and heaven gave rain. The earth brought forth her fruit. Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth and one convert him, let him know that he which converted the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death and shall hide a multitude of sins. So according to the Bible, hey, we all have faults today. We all have sins today. And the goal of our church should be to help one another in our faults, not pointing each other's faults out. Notice this person's not looking to shame this person. They're trying to tell the Lord about someone's fault. They're trying to pray for their brethren. They're trying to secretly get this brother to fix his problem. Therefore, his sins don't end up getting exposed, do they? He wants to cover the multitude of sins. He doesn't want to expose all these sins about people. And so you can even tell. Sometimes there's been churches where they do like prayer requests and they're like, pray for brother so-and-so. He really needs it. You know, it's like, why would you say that? You know, it's like this guy, you know. Sometimes people be like, I'm not trying to gossip, but so-and-so's doing X, Y, and Z. You need to really be praying for him, you know. It's like, you didn't mean that. Why don't you tell Jesus? Why don't you tell the Lord Jesus Christ his problem? Why don't you? And if it's really big enough, you'll go to him in person. If you have a problem with someone, go to them in person. But I like the fact that we all realize we have faults so that we can all try to work on overcoming those faults together. And you know, one of the best ways that we can overcome faults is by preaching. Preaching the word of God, by edifying one another through the word of God. Go to Ephesians chapter four, and let's find a few verses here that talk about this. You know, one way is to pray for your brethren. You know, I think that's the best way because first of all, not only are you telling Jesus Christ who has the power to do all kinds of things on our behalf, but additionally, I think it gets your heart right. It gets your heart right towards your brother because if I tell someone's fault to another person, it can create bitter envy, strife, malice. Whereas if I'm telling Jesus, it's causing me to think, you know, I feel burdened for my brother. I feel like I want to help him and I want to encourage him. The next time I see him, I want to encourage him. If I just talk crap on somebody, I'm not going to want to go talk to them because I'm going to feel terrible about it. I'm going to kind of avoid them because I've just been talking bad about them to all these different people. But if I'm telling Jesus, then I can go up and be like, hey brother, how's it going? And you call them and you'd be nice to them. So look, prayer, obviously the goal is to tell the Jesus so that he can help us, but sometimes it even helps us get the right attitude and the right spirit. You know, it's hard to be mad at someone when you're praying for them. It's hard to have a wrong attitude when you're singing praises, when you're praying for people, when you're doing those right things, okay? So we have to realize we're all sinners saved by grace here and we're all going to have faults and we need to work on that. And another way to really help people with faults is by preaching. You know, we emphasize hard preaching at this church and what's the point of that? Because we realize we all have faults and we want to encourage people to overcome those faults so that they don't end up making shipwreck the faith. So they don't end up losing that focus. Because we all have that one focus and when we realize we have faults, we say, hey, you know, we want to fix these things so we don't ruin the mechanism, we don't break the system, we don't ruin the job, okay? Says in Ephesians chapter four, verse 12, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. So he's saying, hey, he gave certain people, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, notice this, and even teachers. So is this a job of just a pastor? No. It's saying, hey, there's other people involved here. How about the evangelist? The evangelist can be someone who's perfecting the saint. How about just the teacher? You don't even have to be a pastor. You don't even have to be a preacher. You're just someone that's able to teach the Bible. You're at the teach. You know what the Bible says in a particular subject. You're able to get up there. And what's the goal? The goal is to perfect the brethren. The goal is to edify the brethren. What does the word edify mean? It means to build up, encourage people. The point of a sermon should be to help people be better. You wanna construct people. You don't wanna just tear them down and make them feel like they're worse, okay? Look at verse number 29. We're gonna get this iterated to us again. It says, let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying that it may minister grace unto the hearers. So notice, we're not supposed to go around speaking corrupt things. What are corrupt things? Well, I preached a sermon on bad words. I don't remember the title of it. Maybe you can find it later. But I talked about corrupt words. And corruption is usually things that are just not biblical, things that are preaching a false gospel, these type of things. So sometimes people, they have this idea that they wanna expound to people. The problem is it's not in the Bible. And a lot of times it can end up being corrupt communication and that's not gonna help people. You're never gonna make a mistake if you're preaching something the Bible teaches. If you have clear statements from the Bible, then you can emphasize those things and know that you're gonna be edifying the brethren. Now, go if you would to 1 Corinthians 14. I'm kind of hammering this point in for a moment, but I think it's really important. When you get an opportunity to preach God's word, you should really think about what is the goal of my sermon? Is my goal to edify people? Or is my goal to tear people down? Is my goal to just make people look bad or to feel bad? The goal should be to encourage people to do things that are right. Even in a rebuke or a proof, the goal is for people to correct some kind of a serious issue they have that's gonna make them better. Saying, you don't want that here. This is dangerous. Imagine you walk into a house and they've got electrical wires just kind of laying everywhere, exposed, next to water. You might scream at the person like, what are you doing here? It's not because you don't like them. You say, and I don't want you to burn the house down. I don't want you to destroy everything, all the work here. But again, you're not just screaming at them because. You're not just looking at the paint color and be like, why would you paint this blue? You know, you're an idiot and a moron and a fool. Get out of here. And it's just like, that didn't help anything. I guess the guy doesn't like blue. I don't know. I don't know what the point of that was, right? Constructive criticism, at least, it gives people a way to fix it. Hey, cover those wires, tape them up, get them away from water, clean up the water. You know, giving people some instruction in how they can alter their situation. Look at 1 Corinthians 14, verse one. Follow after charity and desire spiritual gifts, but rather they may prophesy. For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God. For no man understandeth them how being in the Spirit he speaketh mysteries. But he that prophesyeth speaketh unto men to edification and exhortation, and notice this, and comfort. Now again, we emphasize hard preaching at this church, but a lot of our preaching also needs to comfort people. It needs to help them be comforted by the scriptures. People are gonna go through difficulty, through struggle. We talked about it earlier. How do you have victory if you're not in a battle? And the problem with battle is there's casualties. Problem with battle is there's wounds. The problem with battle is people can get very fatigued with the constant fight, the constant just contention and the strife. A lot of us just wanna be like, you know what, I'm done. I just wanna go to Hawaii and just forget that anybody else exists. I just wanna go hang out in the woods. I just wanna go ride on a four-wheeler and just shoot some deer or something. I just wanna hang out by the pond and just relax. I mean, you want that. I want that. But at the end of the day, we have to comfort people with God's word. We have to comfort people with the example that Jesus set for us with people like Job who had to endure great affliction and difficulty so that people can endure their difficulty and their struggle. No one's gonna have the difficulty Job did. No one's gonna have the difficulty Jesus did, but rather we need to still realize for the individual, their pain is still just as real. Their problems are still just as real, and we need to comfort them and encourage them and exhort them and edify them. Preaching over a slow period of time, line upon line, precept upon precept, should eventually cause people to be a strong Christian. They should grow up and have strength and maturity and wisdom, but it comes just one piece at a time, just one nugget of edification after another, just one nail at a time, one board at a time, one piece of drywall, just keep. But again, if you start tearing stuff down, you'll never build the house. If your goal is just to come in as a whirlwind and just this is wrong, that's bad, even if you notice something's bad, you know what you should do? You should take it down and then put a new one up and put it in its place, something stronger. Now all of a sudden it's better. The goal should not be to tear people down. The goal should not be to hurt people. The goal should be to make things better, to improve things. That's the purpose of preaching and edifying, and you can still do this with hard preaching. Now I'm going to give you an idea of hard preaching. It's not the sermon, but I have three things of what makes something hard preaching. First is biblical. If it's not biblical, it's not hard preaching. Number two, it's corrective. If it's not corrective, it's not hard preaching. It's easy to be like, hey, we're all going to heaven. That's not hard preaching, okay? And number three, though, it's specific. Hey, don't sin. You better stop sinning, you sinners. I know y'all sin a lot. Everybody's like, okay, I'll try to stop sinning tomorrow. That's corrective. It's biblical. You know what, it's not specific. And so it ends up not helping people, okay? So in order to have hard preaching, you have to make sure it's biblical, it's corrective, and it's specific. But hard preaching is not just screaming at people, okay? Sometimes we need to lift our voice. Go to Isaiah 58, I'll prove that. We need to lift our voice, but we're not lifting our voice just to do it for fun. Sin is bad. Sin, ah! You know, there's people that'll get up and scream this morning, and it's just vain utterances anyways, you know? If we're going to scream, it ought to make sense. And hard preaching is not showing your superiority to others but it's to help people. You know, I've heard a lot of bad preaching before in the past from different, various people, and what makes something bad is when the person starts bragging on themselves. Man, you guys need to start going sowing like I do. You guys need to start coming to church like I do. You know, maybe one day you'll have a family as good as my family, you know? Or what, then it's like, what are you saying? You know, when I try to talk about myself, I try my best to use myself as a bad example in preaching. Okay? You don't want to always constantly be like, you know, you guys, if you're as good at preaching the gospel as me, you'd get people saved so much more often. Don't do that. It's uncommly, it's not pleasant, people don't like it. Anytime you talk about yourself, it's always uncomfortable anyways, but even more so when you're talking about how much better you are than other people. You know, hey, we're so much better of a church than other people, and blah, blah, blah. Look, I'm not gonna sit here and emphasize why we're so much better, I'm just emphasizing things that we like. And you know what, there's plenty of churches that have all these same elements too, and they're a great church too. You know why I love my church? Because we have those elements. And I don't think that we're better than anybody else. We're not. And if we think that, we're probably way worse than we are, we're off, okay? But at the end of the day, hard preaching is to make something specific to help people, not to show how much better you are than other people. The goal is to edify others and encourage others to do the right thing. I had you turn to Isaiah chapter 58. Now in some ways, we're gonna have to expose sin in order to help people. It says in Isaiah 58 verse one, "'Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet "'and show my people their transgression, "'and the house of Jacob their sins.'" So the prophet is being instructed, you need to make this loud. Now crying here is not in the reference of weeping. It's not like, oh, oh, oh, oh, you guys are so sinful. No, he's crying with a loud voice, okay? He's like, you guys are wicked, right? That's the kind of crying that he's doing, like the battle cry. That's the type of cry that we have here in the Bible. Notice he says, spare not. What is sparing? It's when you notice someone has a problem and you don't point it out. And this is always detrimental to the party, okay? The Bible teaches this, go to Proverbs 13, go to Proverbs chapter 13. We need to make sure that we're willing to not spare people. And when you don't spare people, you're gonna get a lot of cool labels like you're hateful and judgmental and all kinds of accusations against you. But truly, it's coming from a place of love. And I'll prove this from the Bible. But look at Proverbs chapter 13, verse 24. The Bible says, he that spareth his rod, hateth his son. So notice the person who spares, when we compare spiritual with spiritual, the one who spares is the one who what? Hates. Oh, you guys, you're a hate cult. You're always preaching about sin and exposing all this, exposing that. That's because we love you, not because we hate you. But the guy that spares his preaching is the one who hates you. That's the guy that doesn't truly love you. The one who truly loves you will point out the problems you have in your life so that you can correct them and no longer have that problem. If I constantly tell you how much superior I am to you, then you have no opportunity to match my level. If I'm pointing out your problem, you can either get to my level or even go above my level. The goal is to edify and to build other people up. And then, you know, if they get a little bit ahead of me, then maybe I can be encouraged to get a little bit ahead. And then we just keep going in the same direction. We keep encouraging one another, iron sharpening iron. I'm not just gonna keep looking down like, you're never gonna get up here, buddy. What's the point of that? We should encourage people that, hey, you have great potential here. You know, David, he was wiser than all his teachers because he meditated on the word of God more. And I'd encourage anybody in this room, you can be the best preacher on the planet. The only thing holding you back is yourself. Because if you study the word of God and you memorize the word of God, you can be wiser than all of your teachers because this is where it all comes from, not from here. I'm not special. There's nothing special about me. There's nothing special about you. What's special is this book. And the more we put this book into our hearts, the more we can be used by God and show His glory and His power and His righteousness. But at the end of the day, sometimes when we expose light, we reveal darkness. And that darkness is the sin in people's lives. And if you love your children, notice you're not gonna spare the rod. If you spare the rod with your children, you hate them, is what the Bible is very clearly articulating. So if we wanna have good children, if we love our children, we're gonna constantly discipline them. It says in the latter part, but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes. The word betimes means early, early. You need to discipline your children starting out of the gate. I mean, and look, obviously a newborn, you can't really do anything, okay? I get that, right? But as they continually grow up and develop, you need to start implementing discipline as early as you possibly can. Now I'm gonna make this practical, okay? Because you say all this, what does that even mean? I think for the first six months, you're pretty much just, you gotta put up with the baby, all right? You can't do anything to a baby. But as they start to get a little bit older, parents can start to discipline their children. Now you're not gonna get a paddle out and discipline a newborn, no, okay? But if they do something wrong, if they're tugging on mom's hair, if they're kind of doing something that's wrong, you can just tell them no. And you can just kind of tap them or tell them no. And look, they'll be upset. You didn't do any physical harm, but they just don't like being told no. People don't like being told no or they're doing anything wrong. Even adults like that, you can tell adults that were never spanked because you tell them no and they all fuss about it. They can't handle it. What do you mean no? Why would you tell me I did anything wrong? It's like, you need to be spanked more. You didn't get all that foolishness out already. But you need to start, but times, early. Because here's the thing. Whenever you start, you're starting to work on making them better. If you don't start, you're behind the curve. Some people don't start disciplining their kids until they're grown and then it doesn't really work. You need to start early and you want to get it done early. Teenage years, I've heard, are hard. So you want to do as best a job. You want to enter in the teenage years with a lot of stripes of the belt already applied. But at six months, you can start giving some discipline. As they start getting older, maybe about 12 months, then maybe you could escalate to an actual instrument. But let me mind you again, I would only use the instrument as a visual. It's not actually probably doing anything. You're not actually going to even hurt them. Look, if I go to my 12-month-old and just kind of tap them with a spoon, they might just wail. They'll be like, ah! The goal is just for them to be disciplined. So you apply the appropriate amount of discipline to where it's actually been received. Now if you go like this and they're like, ha ha ha ha, didn't work. I've seen people discipline their kids and their kids are laughing at their parents' face. It's like, you're actually doing something worse. If you're going to apply discipline, it has to hurt. There has to be true correction. Otherwise you don't love your children and they're not going to get the message. Now as they get older, maybe once they're getting 18 months, two months, now you need to actually apply some pressure. It needs to have some sting there and they need to start learning. Otherwise they're going to not be good children. Because you know what, foolishness bounds on the heart of the child. No child is good on its own. A child left to himself bringing his mother to shame is what the Bible says. If I leave my kids anywhere by themselves for maybe more than five seconds, the house is going to get burned down. It's just going to be chaos. Kids need constant watching, constant discipline, constant instruction. You say, man, it feels constant. It is. But if you don't do it, you don't love your child. And ultimately you don't love other people too because we're all annoyed by your kid just as much. All right? So look, you need to constantly discipline your children and constantly keep watch over them. And you say, man, my parents are always on my case. They're always disciplining me. That's because they love you. You should be thankful that your parents disciplined you and that they do discipline you because that means that they love you and they care for you. I don't just sit there and just think, you know what, I just feel like you need a spanking right now. No, I'm disciplining them because they have some kind of issue they need to correct. Go over to Proverbs 29, Proverbs chapter 29. And look, when we discipline our children, it should be for their benefit. But you know what, there's another benefit. Look what it says in Proverbs 29 verse 17. Correct thy son and he shall give thee rest. Yea, he shall give delight unto thy soul. So not only do you get the benefit for them, you get a benefit for yourself. And if you don't discipline your children, they will be terrible people. The worst people in this society, I guarantee you got very little correction from their parents, if any. Terrible people, people that were not spanked, people that were not disciplined. And in fact, when I went to school, the people who had no rules, I mean, their parents let them do whatever they want. There were some kids in my high school, I don't even understand it. They lived on their own. They were like 16, they just lived on their own. They had no parents. You know, when you talk about it, they say, I can do whatever I want. I can go drink and I can go hang out till the middle of the night. They say, my parents don't love me. It's funny how the derelict kid in high school understands that when your parents don't discipline you, they don't love you. And so we as fundamental Baptists ought to understand, hey, we need to love our children and we need to constantly discipline them, constantly instruct them, constantly tell them how to behave because they don't know how to do it on their own. You have to teach them and you have to train them and you have to love them. And this applies in all areas of our life, even when it comes to church. People do not show up to church knowing everything to do. You have to explain it to them, make it plain unto them and teach them the Bible, but you're doing it from a loving place. You're not just getting out, let's get the paddle out again, let's whack. I just can't wait to whack some people around. No, it should be, hey, I noticed this issue and I want to gently instruct you in the right ways. I want to edify you and make you a better person. Notice it'll give delight to the parent, just like it'll give delight to the church. A church where children are not well-behaved is not going to be the light. I don't want to be an advertisement for birth control. I want people to come to this church and be like, whoa, I couldn't imagine having that many kids. They're all screaming and yelling and tearing the building apart. I want people to come and be like, wow, how do you have all your kids just lined up and they just sit through a church service? My kids would never sit through a church service, right? And in fact, if you go out in the world today, if you just bring your random person in the room with their kids, they will never be able to sit through a church service. They will just, they can't handle it. You say, why? Because they're not being disciplined. Discipline corrects things. And even my wife, I'll give you a little bit more help, practical help. Our kids have struggled at times. And you know what she'd do? She would just sit them down for 20 minutes every day and they would either watch a sermon or read the Bible or just something. And they had to sit still, otherwise they got the paddle. And my wife was a lot more comfortable disciplining her children just at home, right? But she just did it for a while and they start learning and then they go to church and they get their time to practice. But if you don't discipline your kids ever, they're not going to get it at church the one time you do. It's got to be a lifestyle. It's got to be a daily habit. You got to be constantly disciplining your children and instructing them. And you know what? I do not ever get upset with children for misbehaving. You know I get upset with? I get upset with parents that ignore it. I get upset with parents that don't deal with the issue. Because my kids scream, my kids misbehave. Everybody's does. You don't get mad at the two year old at Walmart for screaming, you get mad at the parent being like, I'm going to count. One, two, just have the chocolate bar, please stop crying. And it's like, beat that kid. You know, like smack that thing around already. And you know, it's frustrating to go to a church where there's all these problems and the pastor won't get up and preach on it. You're like, why aren't you preaching on that issue? There's flat earthers in the congregation. Preach them out the door, you know. Hey, there's these people bringing in heresy. There's these people attacking our church. You know, you don't want the pastor to just be this wet noodle that won't handle problems. You want him to get up and actually apply the rod every once in a while when it needs to be applied. Otherwise, you're going to ruin your church. Go back to Ephesians. So what are we even talking about? Why I love my church, because we have one faith, one father, one future, one focus. We all have one fault, it's more than that. But another point that we have in Ephesians chapter four, look at verse four. There is one body and one spirit, even as you're called and one hope of your calling. We have that one body. I love my church because of the fellowship. You know, there's not, I've never had fellowship like a church like this, ever. I mean, you go to church and you feel disconnected. You don't feel like there's a lot of commonality. And ultimately, when you missed all the first few steps, it's hard. It's hard to have a lot of fellowship with people when they don't believe the same things, when their lifestyles are completely different, when they don't have the same type of focus, when we're all got the same kind of beliefs and the same ideas and we have the same vision, it's easy to talk to people. And you know, a lot of churches I have gone to, they never talk about the Bible ever. And even if you brought it up, they're not interested. They weren't even interested in sermon that much, okay? They're interested in talking about life and carnal things. And look, I'll shoot the breeze with people on all kinds of stuff. I like to talk about people's job and I like to talk about the things that are going on. There's a bunch of weirdos and there's a bunch of that. It's just kind of a weird dynamic. But coming to a church like this, it just feels like everybody's just in lockstep and they just, we have a close union because of the first few steps. Go to Ephesians chapter five, I'm gonna get my last point. So I have seven points this morning for you. Why I love my church, because we have one faith, we have one Father, we have one future, we have one focus, we have one fault, we have one fellowship. But it gives us a warning here when it comes to fellowship. It says in Ephesians chapter five verse 11, and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame to even speak of those things which are done of them in secret. So he's saying, hey, there is a certain fellowship though that we should not have. And that's a fellowship with what? The unfruitful works of darkness. So while we have this unity and we have the brethren, sometimes there's gonna be a place where we have to limit fellowship, okay? Or we have to discourage fellowship. Now go if you would to 2 Corinthians chapter number six, 2 Corinthians chapter number six. It started out the chapter by saying what? We're endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit. But what's gonna ruin that spirit is when we invite unfruitful works of darkness into that spirit. It's gonna corrupt and contaminate and leaven that spirit. In order to have that type of unity and close fellowship, you have to purge out certain leaven, certain sins, the things of darkness. The Bible also even says here in verse number 14, 2 Corinthians six verse 14, be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness and what communion hath white with darkness. So we don't want to have a church today filled with unsaved people. We don't wanna have a church filled with people that don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet churches today, their goal is to bring as many unsaved people into the building as possible. And they don't care to get them saved necessarily. They just want them to come and maybe they'll start tithing. And then once they start tithing, the leadership doesn't care. Now, other people might be like, let's get them saved. But they're just trying to bring as many people. Look, I don't wanna worship God with as many unsaved people as I possibly can. I wanna worship God with as many saved people as I possibly can. And also save people that are not in all kinds of darkness. Look what it says in verse 15. And what conquered of Christ with Belial? Or what part had he that believeth in infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For a year the temple of the living God, as God has said, I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Wherefore, come out from among them and be separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing. And I will receive you and I will be a father unto you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Now, this doesn't fit together what we've been talking. We've got that one father, we've got that family. But notice he's commanding us to come out from among them. Why would he give this such instruction if it was automatic? It's not automatic. Churches today are not trying to separate themselves. They're not trying to be holy. They're not trying to sanctify. And so we need to take heed to these scriptures and come out from among them and be separate. The house of God is not for all. It's for those that are separated. It's for those that want to try and be holy. Obviously, none of us are holy in comparison to God. Our righteousness are as filthy rags. But God did command us be holy, for I am holy. So we need to try and separate ourselves. We need to try and sanctify ourselves. We're not trying to be like the world. We're trying to be like Christ. We're trying to be like our God and Father. And so what that tells me is that there's a fight. I love my church because there's a fight. I wouldn't want to go to a church where there's just no fight. Let's just have everybody come in. When you say no to certain people, it ends up being like a fight. It ends up being some kind of a contention, some kind of a struggle. It's easy to just open the doors and just say, come on in. We won't hurt you. I don't care if you're a homo or a fag. I don't care if you worship the devil. I don't care if you're a Hindu. I don't care if you're a Buddhist. I don't care if you're Methodist or Catholic. Just come on in. Nope. We're going to say, you're not welcome. You're not going to come in here. We're not going to have you. And sometimes it ends up turning into a little bit of a fight. You know, at Fort Worth, we've had this protester on a continue, but luckily the coronavirus has killed him, or I don't know what happened. Go to Proverbs 16 for a moment. Go to Proverbs 16. But it's a fight. And the guy who wants to sit there and provoke us and speak all manner, blasphemy when people try to walk in through the door. Why? Because we don't let every single person into our church. And you know what? I like that. I love my church that we don't let everybody in. Why? Because God commanded me to be separate. And if you're not trying to be separate, then you're not trying to be holy. And now we're violating God's commandment. What's the point of gathering together at a church if you're not even going to follow his instructions? If you're not even going to try and separate yourself and sanctify yourself and tell certain people, no, you're not welcome here. You're not going to have fellowship with us. That's going to be a fight. There is a fight there. Look what it says in Proverbs chapter 16. Look at verse number 28. A froward man soweth strife, and a whisperer separateth chief friends. Now, we've been talking about unsaved people. We want to let them in. But not every saved person is welcome in church either. 1 Corinthians chapter number 5 makes it clear, people that are in grievous sins like trunkers, those that are extortioners, idolaters, railers, these type of people, the Bible calls them wicked. I didn't call them wicked. The Bible calls them wicked. Now, I will call them wicked, but it's not my opinion. It's God's opinion. He says, put away from yourselves that wicked person. So there's going to be certain people that even that are saved, we still can't have them coming in. It'll ruin the fellowship. The Bible says there are certain people you have to mark and avoid saying, this guy is not welcome here. Hit the road, Jack, and fix yourself unless you want to come back. But at the end of the day, we're not going to just let anything and everything come in. You say, well, that's uncomfortable. Yeah, it's a fight. Fights are uncomfortable. Fights are difficult. But you know what? That's why I love my church. I love the fact that we're fighting for the faith. I love the fact that we're going out and contending and getting people saved. I love that I come to church and there's something to do. We're not just laying around just like, oh, whatever. You know, just hum-hum. We'll just come in. We've got a Bible, I think, maybe somewhere. We're just kind of, praise the Lord, praise the Lord. I like actually singing with some gusto and feeling like what we're doing matters and feeling like there's action. And you know, when you actually fight and you actually get in the battle and you start doing God's commandments and you start going out and preaching the gospel, a whole section of the Bible is going to open up to you and you're going to realize that's for me. You know, the Bible talks about all things working together for good to them that love God. You start actually having real struggle. The Bible says, yay, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. And you know, they're thinking that persecution is waiting in line at Starbucks. They got a flat tire. You know, that's the persecution they are talking about and Joel Osteen's warning them about. You know, there's actually real persecution that people endure where there's family division. There's division of friends and there's enemies and there's people that are trying to attack. And look, we go through such light affliction in America, it's sad today. People in other countries, their brother is calling the cops on them to have them come and be beheaded. They're coming and dragging families out of their house and harming families in severe ways. I don't want to talk about it. It's so disgusting what they do. That's real persecution that a lot of people are going through. We go through light affliction here and people here can't even handle it. I mean, I can't imagine if y'all are under the threat of death, how many people show up for church on Sunday morning. But you know what, I love my church that we're in the fight. I don't want to go to a church where there's no fight. It's called a dead church. The dead church doesn't have the fight. And look, people that come in and look, a froward man, so is strife and whispers, separated chief friends. I don't want that in my church. We're talking about endeavoring to keep the unity, but there are some people that come in and they want to destroy that unity. They don't like that fellowship. They don't like a bunch of people coming together and being chief friends and being really close. So they have to go around and whisper about people. Talk bad about people. Go behind people's backs. That's not what we learned earlier in the chapter, did we? We learned about people that tell Jesus, people that go to them in private and talk to them, people that are praying for them. You don't want to go around whispering. That's going to destroy the church. We have to fight against people sowing secrets. And look, this starts with every single person. If someone comes to you, hey, did you hear about so-and-so? No, and I don't want to. Hey, so-and-so had a baby. That's great, you know. Hey, so-and-so's moving close to the church. Great, you know. Hey, did you hear about this problem, so-and-so's. No, and I don't want to know. We don't want to just create an environment where there's all these secrets and all these little things that are going on. No, that person's trying to cause discord. And you know, God doesn't like that. Go to Proverbs chapter number six. Proverbs chapter number six. We're almost finished this evening, but, or this morning, I'm sorry, this evening, wow. It's long preaching. Proverbs chapter six, look at verse 16. These six things that the Lord hate, yea, seven are an abomination unto him, a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, and heart that aviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift through running to mischief, a false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren. Notice, God didn't even say he dislikes it. He says he hates it. And a lot of these just run together. Think about it. You start getting that proud look, you start getting pride in your heart, and that could cause you to what? Start devising wicked imaginations, couldn't it? And those wicked imaginations are a lot of lies. So we got the lying tongue, we got the false witness that speaketh lies, and notice this person's now swift and running to mischief, and those lies are gonna do what? They're gonna sow discord amongst brethren. They all, a lot of times, fit together. This is a wicked spirit that we have to constantly fight against, and we have to purge out and get rid of. Otherwise, it's gonna destroy the church that I love. I love the church that's willing to fight. I love a church. Look, it's called the armor of God in Ephesians, chapter number six. What do you think that armor's for? What do you think that shield of faith is for, to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked? You know, those darts are not Starbucks. Those darts are not the traffic out there. Those darts are people trying to destroy the unity of a church, whispering, backbiting. Oh, you just think everybody has a degree with you, Pastor Shillel, in every single thing. Well, if that's the case, everybody better get out, because I guarantee none of you agree with me on every single thing. That's stupid, but you know what? No matter who it is, we shouldn't go around whispering against other people and backbiting against other people and causing division and sowing discord against other people. That's gonna destroy the church, and I don't care if you tell it about me or the five-year-old child in the room. I'm gonna defend it the same way, because why? I love my church, and we need to fight for our church, and that's what I love about our church, is we're willing to fight for that unity. We wanna endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit, because if you don't fight for it, you'll lose it. Why do other churches not have this? Because they're not willing to fight for it. They're not willing to contend for it. Go back to Ephesians 4, and we'll finish. You know, Jude chapter number three warns, or instructs, that we should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. And you know why he says that? For there are certain men crept in unawares. You know why I have to contend? Because people will creep in and try to destroy a church. They'll try to ruin a church. And you know what, I've seen it constantly. I've seen it for the last few years, just a constant, just people trying to creep in and ruin the unity. And look, they're all shapes and sizes. They're all different variations and all kinds of different types, but at the end of the day, anything like that, we have to deal with, we have to fight for, otherwise we're gonna lose our unity. We won't be friends anymore. Well, we won't have that one faith. We won't have that one Father. Look, and that's a serious one. I went to a church where there's people coming in teaching another Jesus and another Father, trying to ruin the church. We won't have the same future, because there'll be unsaved people amongst us. We won't have the same focus anymore, because we'll be worrying about strife rather than soul winning. We'll be worried about discord rather than singing praises unto God and coming to church. And people get discouraged and not going to church. That's the worst thing, is when somebody gets just so offended that they won't go to church, they won't get right with God. You know, we'll stop worrying about faults and trying to help people, we'll start trying to pick people apart for their faults. We'll be fault finding. We'll lose that fellowship, and ultimately it'll ruin the fight. If we're not unified, we can't fight together. You don't wanna fight each other. I don't wanna fight you guys, I wanna fight with you guys. I wanna fight against those things. Look at Ephesians chapter four, this is the last place we're gonna look at, verse 31. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. You know what's gonna help us keep this great church, is if we fight in the right way. How do you fight? Well, fight by being kind to people. When you have the, well, I'm kind of bitter against that person. Just go ahead and forgive and be kind. That's the type of battle that we need to be in. We don't need to be in a battle of trying to discover other people's secrets. We don't need to be in the battle of sowing discord and being a busy body in other men's matters. We don't wanna do these type of things. We rather wanna fight to be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another. This is a problem in every single church because the devil wants to destroy it, and he's not gonna destroy our church with fags, but you know what, he can do it with gossip. I see a lot of people, they just, they get offended because, well, did you hear what so-and-so said about me? And did you see what she was wearing? Did you see what she was doing? And it just blow your mind. You know, you get a call and be like, so-and-so doesn't like so-and-so, and they did this and they did that, and it's just like, get over it. Forgive one another, be tenderhearted. Look, we have so many enemies. Please don't make enemies in this room. Please don't make enemies of your brothers and sisters in Christ. Let that be your physical brother and sister, okay? There's a brother who's born for adversity, but you know what, we need to be in unity here, and we need to endeavor to keep the unity, and you say, well, I feel like I'm the one that's always endeavoring. Well, keep doing it. Just always be the bigger person. Just always be the person that's trying to get rid of strife and envy, always being tenderhearted, kind, forgiving other people. You say, why? So that we can have a great church. I love my church and I want us to constantly fight for this church, all right? Let's close in prayer. Thank you, Father, so much for giving us all this great instruction and giving us this church that you purchased with your blood. I pray that we would handle it with care and with love and with diligence and that we would earnestly contend because we love all the great aspects that you've given us, the same faith and the same Father and the same focus and all these things that we can constantly have great fellowship over. I pray that you would just bless the individuals in this room, that you would just let us put away all envy and bitterness and rather we'd be focused on the right things and serving you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Clear our last song, Psalm 126. Psalm 126, it's in the music sheet. It should be under your chair, that white music sheet. All right, Psalm 126. ["The Lord Turned Again"] All right, sing it out. When the Lord turned again, the captivity and Zion, we were like them that dreamed. Then was our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with singing. Then said they among the heathen, the Lord had done great things for them, the Lord had done great things for us, whereof we are glad. Turn again our captivity, oh Lord, as the streams in the sound. Pray that so in tears shall reap in joy. Pray that so in tears shall reap in joy. Then said they among the heathen, the Lord had done great things for them, the Lord had done great things for us, whereof we are glad. Then goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed. Shout out, let's come again. Shout out this time again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. Then said they among the heathen, the Lord had done great things for them, the Lord had done great things for us, whereof we are glad.