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Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Anybody have a salvation tonight? Anybody? No? It was a little tough time, we ran into a witch, me and brother Alex and Remi and we asked if we could invite them to church and they went They didn't really do that but they were kind of mean but anyway At least we did some soul warning out there, amen? We also have our regional captains there below Our praise report, you can see the salvation, baptisms and attendance totals from last week We did have another baptism last week, Cali got baptized so praise God for that And let's see, kids choir practice is immediately after the evening service Is that working out okay? Alright well if there's any need to be changing the time or anything like that Rylan just get with me if that's something you need to do Otherwise we're going to keep doing the same thing And it'll be immediately after the evening service until the 19th So ladies cookie exchange is coming up, it'll be December 11th And it's the white elephant game and also bring three dozen cookies The cook is going to be at Julian and Rylan's home So I think there's breakfast burritos, I think you all got the breakfast burrito thing handled I was going to come and watch and stand guard over the food to just make sure it was not all eaten by the kids So I charged $25 an hour for that too by the way, I'm just kidding But anyway it's been a good time so if you are just on the fence about going Please just go, you don't have to bring all that stuff if you don't want to You can just go and enjoy yourself So I'm sure there will be plenty of stuff there December 16th we have the kids cookie and ornament decorating here at the church building at 2pm And so bring your kids and have a good time decorating cookies More cookies for dads to eat at home, like we just need that right Grandparents, yeah, I don't need any December 19th we have the Christmas service And then we'll have the children's choir sing and I'll be preaching a sermon A Christmas style sermon and then we'll have a prime rib dinner after the morning service And it will be a great day And then I'll try to preach a short sermon in the evening so you guys don't fall into a total coma Anyway, December 23rd we have our candlelight service that is on a Thursday night And so it will be a shorter sermon But we just want to honor the Lord Jesus Christ and have a candlelight service there And then December 31st we're going to pray the New Year We'll have a game night and a ping pong tournament and all that good stuff And this January 1st we're going to start the New Testament challenge That's nine chapters a day for 30 or 31 days, whatever You've got 31 days to get it read And it's a great challenge, it's a great way to start out the New Year reading God's word And if you've never read the Bible cover to cover Maybe you've just never read the New Testament Well that's a good place to start is in the New Testament Because in case you didn't know, we're in the New Testament So anyway, it's a great challenge to do for yourself And even, like I said, if you've said this before Even if you don't do the nine chapters a day Just try to get it finished This year try to put a purpose in your heart to finish reading the Bible cover to cover For one time per year So we're a family and a great church That means the children and infants are welcome during the church services Please utilize the baby rooms for your convenience And the rockers are for pregnant nursing mothers and elders only Please know unattended children in the building Please no food in the assembly area unless it's a special event Silence your cell phones if you would at this time please And escorts are available to your vehicles by the ushers Should you need one just ask And then the online donations are available on our website And also text giving, you can do it that way Or just the old fashioned way, put it in the basket So ties and offerings so far for last month I think we still need a total at the very end But other than that, that's all we got On the back page, does anybody have a birthday this week that didn't get in the... No? Okay, alright well We do have the picture Did you make sure you get a picture? Did you take one of these home for your wife? Oh man, you're going to be in trouble Alright, she already has this picture though I'm sure It's a nice memorabilia thing So anyway, congratulations again to the Alcorta family For the birth of Lydia Lynn Alcorta Weighing in at 8 pounds, 2 ounces The new Intercontinental Heavyweight Champion of the World And she's 19.5 inches long Alright, that's all I got for announcements Let's sing another song and we'll receive the offering Oh wait, one more thing, I'm sorry But wait, there's more So I put this kit together I know we've already done this in the past But I just wanted to show you kind of how I put some up here And if you want to grab one for soul winning or if you want to make your own kids I bought like a hundred of these bags And so basically I just put like a full bible in here I put a pin, there's a card if you get someone saved you can write their name down You got, you know, cards galore here We got our, and I've been putting the Christmas CDs in here And then like our invitations One baptismal sheet to just explain baptism and then one DVD So if you get someone saved then you can just give them like most of the stuff in the package And even the case itself And if you just use up a bunch of stuff Then just come back and fill it in whatever it needs to and you can use it again So they're pretty handy instead of digging through all your pockets And you know, where did I put the, you know So it's all right here in your hand So anyway I just wanted to show you that real quick And if you want to make them, you can make them however you want But anyway I just wanted to show you that Let's sing another song All right, our next song is song number 433 in the green Away in a manger Song number 433 in the green, Away in a manger Song number 433, let's sing it out in the first Away in a manger, no crib for a bed The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head The stars in the sky looked down where he lay The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes I love you Lord Jesus, look down from the sky And stay by my cradle till morning is nigh Be near me Lord Jesus, I ask thee to stay Close by me forever and love me I pray Bless all the dear children in thy tender care And take us to heaven to live with thee there And little Sean, could you bless the offering for us? Dear Lord, thank you so much for this day Thank you so much Lord that we would come to your house and hear your word preached I pray that you would bless this offering Lord, bless both the gift and the giver In Jesus' name, Amen Thank you All right, well let's bow our heads together and go to the Lord in prayer tonight Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you Lord so much for the ability and privilege to come to you in Jesus' name Lord, we ask that you would watch over and be with the mothers, the pregnant mothers Lord Ms. Kylie and Ms. Alana We praise you Lord for Olivia's appointment going well And we praise you for Lydia's appointment going well And we would continue to pray that she would be able to hold milk in her mouth and not spit up so much And that she could gain some weight And Lord, we also ask for traveling mercies for Ms. Alejandra's sister Daisy and cousin Karen And strength for the Velasquez family as they try to finish up and sell their home to move And I pray that you just help the process to go smooth Ms. Chantel has a special unspoken and Ms. Sheila has prayer unspoken And for Amanda, unspoken prayer for her mom and her family And also Alex just wants to thank everybody for the prayers for Mary And also that she's doing better, I pray that she'll continue to improve her health And Ms. Sherry has a special unspoken and Remy has a request that Lord you would help him in his new job that he got And thanks everybody for praying and also for Tony for prayer for his healing from his accident We ask Lord that you just help Steadfast Baptist Church right now as they're going through many battles Just pray Lord you just bless Pastor Shelley and his family and Lord all those involved Just pray that we'd be faithful to pray for them and all things that are going on Pray that you just bless according to your will And Lord that of course our people would win the battle And Lord we also pray for all of our church plants that we have Pray for Spokane and also for Canada and for brother Ian as he's about to go to Geneva Pray that that will be a fruitful trip and Lord the brother will be refreshed by his coming And pray for a special event that we're trying to plan for Canada Pray Lord that you would make that happen And also that you would just watch over Daniel's son who has fallen sick But he's feeling a little bit better but Lord just pray that you bless him and watch over him And a special unspoken for the Larson family And Lord we just thank you for all your blessings here Lord Pray that you just help us to stay healthy here Lord and let the sickness pass over us Pray that those that are sick would come back to church as soon as possible And that you would heal them up In Jesus' name we pray Lord, Amen Alright good evening, would you turn with me to the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 16 1 Corinthians chapter 16 The first book of Corinthians and the last chapter 16 And as is our custom we'll read the entire chapter Please follow along with me silently as I read starting in verse 1 1 Corinthians chapter 16 the Bible reads Now concerning the collection for the saints As I have given order to the churches of Galatia even so do ye Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store As God hath prospered him that there be no gatherings when I come And when I come whomsoever ye shall approve by your letters Them will I send to bring your liberality unto Jerusalem And if it be meet that I go also they shall go with me Now I will come unto you when I shall pass through Macedonia for I do pass through Macedonia And it may be that I will abide yea and winter with you that ye may bring me on my journey whithersoever I go For I will not see you now by the way but I trust to tarry awhile with you if the Lord permit But I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost for a great door and effectual is opened unto me and there are many adversaries Now if Timotheus come see that he may be with you without fear for he worketh the work of the Lord as I also do Let no man therefore despise him but conduct him forth in peace that he may come unto me for I look for him with the brethren As touching our brother Apollos I greatly desired him to come unto you with the brethren but his will was not at all to come at this time But he will come but he will come unto you with the brethren excuse me but he will come when he shall have convenient time Watch ye stand fast in the faith quit you like men be strong let all your things be done with charity I beseech you brethren ye know the house of Stephanas that it is the first fruits of Achaea and that they have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints That ye submit yourselves unto such and to everyone that helpeth with us and laboureth I am glad of the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus for that which was lacking on your part they have supplied For they have refreshed my spirit and yours therefore acknowledging them that are such The churches of Asia salute you Aquila and Priscilla salute you much in the Lord with the church that is in their house All the brethren greet you greet ye one another with an holy kiss the salutation of me Paul with mine own hand If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be anathema maranatha The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you my love be with you all in Christ Jesus Amen Father Alex would you pray for us Would you pray for us Father thank you for bringing us here safely Amen Well we're finally there the end of 1 Corinthians chapter the book of 1 Corinthians and we're finishing up the final chapter here 1 Corinthians And we got to verse 9 last time in our study and basically I got to the part where it talks about us having many adversaries But there's also great doors that get opened amen and when you're in church work there's always going to be open doors and opportunities But just remember there's always going to be many adversaries that come along with that so we should never be surprised by that It surprises me when people are surprised about that kind of stuff But you know I mean sometimes things just take you off guard people betray you that you don't think are ever going to And you know it's not just enemies from within it's enemies from without and enemies from below You know it's just it's just a fact of being a Christian so there's going to be persecution there's going to be trouble There's also going to be many blessings so it's not all negative you know we shouldn't look at it like it is because in the future it's all going to be positive Ultimately we win hashtag winning right so we always win we always triumph in Christ Jesus And we should never get to the point where we're just all depressed and down about things because ultimately if you're saved today or tonight You have everlasting life, and you also have rewards in heaven because if you're in a church like this You're probably doing something for the Lord and if you're not then you should get busy and start doing something for the Lord amen But so first Corinthians we're going to start off in chapter and verse number 16 or good night verse number 10 tonight And basically this is just final thoughts and instructions from Paul as he closes out now just before I begin here I just want to remind everybody that this church is a church that had a lot of problems and so this whole 16 chapters is Paul trying to straighten out people's doctrinal issues That they have and just there's just a lot of problems and Paul you know he loves these people he started this church he cares about this church And it's very evident in the way he's very patient with them and in the next book you're going to see it's a lot more meat So these people have grown up Paul's letter obviously helped them being under strong leadership helped them and so the next one is going to be a lot more complicated But you'll see that people the enemies don't change you know there's people accusing him of not being a real apostle And there's just like you'll see as we dive into second Corinthians that the trouble doesn't go away you know the trouble is still there And but it's a lot more meaty than the first book so hopefully we can all learn together in second Corinthians There's a lot of stuff that's hard Paul said a lot of things that were hard to be understood that's what the Bible says Peter said that He's like and he's an apostle also so he's like some of the stuff he says is hard to understand and it is and it's hard to dissect sometimes So but we'll try to do that together so look at verse number 10 tonight It says now if Timotheus come see that he may be with you without fear for he worketh the work of the Lord as I also do So just starting off right out the gate he's talking about Timothy you know Timotheus is Timothy there's first and second Timothy Those books were written by Paul to Timothy a young preacher a young pastor and he is telling the Corinthians hey if Timothy come So remember Paul always has that mindset of you know never nothing's going to happen for sure you know we just if the Lord will it's going to happen He's saying if Timotheus come see that he be without fear for he worketh the work of the Lord and obviously the ministry is work And it's work you know anything that you do for the Lord it's work it's hard and sometimes it's hard work but work is work and I see a lot of times where people just be like Well it's not really you know you're just preaching or whatever it's like well why don't you get up and try it see how easy it is Why don't you study because you know the sermon is the hours of study you already put into something you know it's not just the hour that you got to hear it again Or hour and twenty minutes but the ministries work you know talking about him traveling traveling to go preach places is work you know some people would say that's vacation Well I'd like to see you be six foot eight and get on an airplane as much as I did this year and you see if that's a vacation to you because it's usually an anxiety attack Before you get through security and you know it's just it's work it's not always you know people just think it's all fun it's not all fun it is fun I like the ministry like getting accosted by witches tonight was fun You know Alex didn't think so but he's like I think they might have been serious because they said we're witches and we're going to hell I was like yeah I know but that's just the kind of stuff that you know when you go out soul wanting you always get into fun adventures but isn't soul wanting work When you go out soul wanting and nobody wants to talk to you that's work you know it's work when you have to talk to them too so soul wanting is hard work so anything that you do in ministry is going to be work Whether it's cleaning the church whether it's you know knocking on doors whether it's preaching whether you know just there's everything it's work and the apostle Paul says he worked at the work of the Lord as I also do Paul was a hard worker he said he outworked all the apostles do you believe him I mean it's scripture so I believe him so let's look at Ephesians chapter four verse eleven Ephesians chapter four verse eleven we'll turn over there real quick and just keep your finger in first Corinthians sixteen Ephesians chapter four verse eleven says and he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints what's it say there for the work of the ministry for the edifying of the body of Christ so you know ministers aren't there to be ministered to necessarily they're there to minister to other people and you don't have to be a pastor to minister to other people you can be a minister of Christ we all have a ministry here we all have as Christians we all have ministry aren't we supposed to all go soul wanting yeah because that's the word that's we have a ministry it's not just one person it's not just the pastor it's not just the deacons and the evangelists and all that but everybody has a spot to play but God specifically did give the apostles and the prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers for the work of the ministry so someone has to do all that work and obviously everybody here in this church does something around here and I appreciate that because I don't think I could do it all alone and if there wasn't people that were helping me it'd be very frustrating it'd be very hard it'd be hard to want to stay a pastor if nobody ever wanted to help because there's a lot of people in here that help with a lot of different things and it's a blessing to me so but you know those people that criticize pastors about not working hard it's just like some churches they have one service a week and it's one hour a week like I've ever seen like the you're driven by those non-denom churches it's like Sunday 1030 it's like the only time they have it's like dang that must be nice you know you show up you make more money than I do and you have one service a week and it's probably like a 15 minute you know Joel Osteen's speech or something with a bunch of rock music you know a bunch of people getting up and washing the windows and carrying the televisions and all that stuff you know but it's hard work being a minister it's hard work being a pastor so and God does call it work so if you're saying pastors don't have to work hard well all work is pretty hard isn't it I mean that's why it's called work and not fun you ever heard that saying is you know people at work who's like well this isn't very fun well it's not supposed to be it's called work you know but work can be fun you can have fun at work you know and I know that like where I work like we like to have fun obviously there's a time to be serious but we like to have fun and joke around stuff like that and we do that here you know me and Remy were joking around out soul winning but obviously when we get to the door we're serious but we were laughing about the witches so it was pretty funny but anyway I think Anthony might have met one of them before at some point but anyway let's look at verse number 11 back in our text but you know people that say that being ministering and working for the church is not hard those people are like the Monday morning quarterbacks that could always do it better than you can and I was like let's see you do it then because there's not as far as I know there's not a lot of people signing up to be pastors especially in churches like ours it's like I remember when all this start first kicked off and every young man wanted to be a pastor they had their checklist of you know find wife get married have kids read the Bible 10 times where they all at where they at because it's a lot easier to say that you're going to do something than it is to actually do it and I encourage young men to want to be in the ministry and to have all that checklist I mean I make fun of that stuff just because we actually found some some checklist that somebody left in the pews one time and the guy was a total bozo so but it is what it is but there's nothing wrong with having a checklist though or goals you know but to leave it in the I don't know if that was just like left on purpose how do you leave that checklist laying around like I want people to see my checklist of what I'm about to do it's like that guy's a Mennonite now anyway yeah Mennonites I don't think they believe in internal security I'm pretty sure so don't they like do hay bailing and stuff or something like that I don't know I don't know enough about it but yeah they're kind of like they're like Amish people right except for they're a little different okay so anyhow yeah it's easy for people to say what you should do and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and how this should be done and stuff like that but when it comes down to it you know someone has to be the person that does you know the has to be the boss you know if everybody just has a free for all you know then it won't the work isn't going to get done and so but there's always someone that thinks that they know how to do it better and it's like it's just like people like that criticize my preaching sometimes on youtube it's like I mean yeah okay you got me there but where's your sermons at buddy you know I don't see you your sermons it's like I don't know and sometimes they're on maybe they're fair criticisms you know I don't mind getting criticized when I say something wrong or whatever I'll walk it back you know I will but this is funny it's like some people will just get on there just to kind of cut you down it's like well we'll see your sermons well can I listen to yours too I'll give you some criticism too it's like you don't even preach so you know it's easy to sit there and clown people when you don't do it so but anyhow verse number 11 let no man stand excuse me let no man therefore despise him talking about timothy but conduct him forth in peace that he may come unto me for I look for him with the brethren so you know why is he telling them this because I believe it's tied to first timothy chapter 4 verse 12 and I'm not gonna have you turn there but it says let no man despise thy youth but be thou an example of the believers in word and conversation in charity in spirit and faith in purity so that's paul talking to timothy and say let no man despise thy youth so obviously timothy is a young man and sometimes older people tend to look at someone that's young and think that guy doesn't know anything he's just a young punk and you know that's not true you can be young and know the bible as good as an old man can you just have to read it you just have to do the study you have to do the work so you know but timothy if he was a pastor obviously he was qualified or he wouldn't have got ordained as one and he did get ordained as one so obviously you know he was an elder in the faith see pastors are called you know bishops or elders now just because they're an elder doesn't mean that they're an old person necessarily it means that they're an elder necessary you know in the faith so timothy had the bible knowledge of someone that probably just is an average church you know more than excuse me more than an average churchgoer his knowledge you know was enough to be a pastor where he is able to get up and explain the bible and teach people and lead people but there's some people that have been in church their whole life and they still haven't read the bible cover to cover one time so i mean you shouldn't despise somebody because of their youth or you shouldn't despise someone because they're older you know and that seems to be the way society is you know at least the the things i've seen is that people will despise old people and act like oh he just he's just an old old fart he doesn't know what he's talking about or whatever right but that's not true why old older people have a lot of wisdom they've lived a long time and and you know there's no fool like an old fool i understand that so if someone's old and foolish then they're not wise right but if someone's old and they know the bible real well they have a lot more experience than you so we should despise someone for being older we shouldn't despise someone for being young and that's why i think paul's saying hey let no man despise him let no man therefore despise him you know look down on him hate him for being a young man because you know i mean if some young 24 year old man starts a church or he's a he's sent to a church to be the pastor there or something and you got men that have been there for 20 years you know they're going to give them some grief you know they're going to look down their nose at them and that's paul's saying hey don't don't do that that's not how we should you know hey at least give the guy a chance you know maybe he's a little more put together than you want to give him credit so we shouldn't despise youth we should uh actually encourage people that are young to read the bible and learn you know if you want to be a pastor someday hey start now if you're young start now get your bible reading and now like well i'm only i've only done it four or five times well keep working at it keep keep reading you know keep learning keep learning how to preach because we definitely need more pastors look at verse number 12 in our text says as touching our brother apollos another great preacher i greatly desired him to come unto you with the brethren but his will was not at all to come at this time but he will come when he shall have convenient time so he's basically just kind of talking about how paul's was supposed to come and visit their church also so remember the apostle paul's an apostle and he's he's kind of overseeing a bunch of different churches but yet you know and he started all these churches and he so he's sending people preaching to different places and we kind of do that too like we've sent people when we first started the church in spokane we started sending you know men all the time like every every other week or so to to preach there and that's kind of how you do it when you first start and you want to get experienced preachers to help if you're doing like some kind of a church plant or something but uh you know guest preaching is to help you to be blessed by other ministers and preaching or preachers excuse me because you know sometimes you get tired of hearing me talk you're probably tired of me right now but every once in a while i'll bring preachers in to preach to you so that you can be edified and it's kind of like a change of pace you know and that pastor you know pastors that go visit they're always like the superstar or whatever everybody's like hey it's great to see you but you know that's fine i want that i want the i want you to treat the pastors that come here to preach for you like a superstar you know i'm not saying like you know bow down and worship them or something i'm just saying you know you should respect them as a man of god and they come here and they take their time away from their church to come and preach to us and we should we should appreciate that we should show up you know we should say amen in their sermons we should talk to them and let them know we appreciate them but you know the reason why i have people come in and preach for us it's not just you know it's for it's not for nothing it's because i want someone to come in and edify you also it sounds like this is what the apostle paul was doing he's like having you know obviously he's talking about timothy coming and then he's talking about apollos and they're you know they're in the bible these guys are famous preachers so you know and when i have pastors come here they're they're usually famous preachers maybe in our circles but like maybe not in some circles they're probably infamous preachers but hey you know if the world hates you you know you're doing something right so anyway look at verse 13 it says watch ye stand fast in the faith quit you like men be strong so paul's exhorting the corinthians here to watch you know watch what's going on pay attention to what's going on stand fast in the faith don't be moved you know this this is the problem i see is that people want to quit all the time they want to go someplace else because the grass is greener you know you got it's time to you know you should plant roots sometimes you know are you just hopping to different churches every two years you know because that's some people's manner you know they get there and it's like oh this wasn't what i thought it was going to be you know or whatever and instead of giving it a chance they just want to jump around from church to church or they want to go back to some other place it's like maybe you should it's saying stand fast in the faith obviously it's not saying don't move churches but i'm just saying that if you have a good church to go to you should stick in that church and try to make it great so but it's saying quit you like men be strong so quit quit you like men basically just means be a man you know there's nothing wrong with being a man in 2021 but it sure seems like it's a problem with all this feminist garbage that's going on and being taught all right even churches are doing it it's like what is wrong with you you know they got rainbow flags hanging off their abilities they got you know there's there's women with short hair leading congregations all over this city across the city probably here too it's like what happened to all the men i thought it was men that were supposed to lead right but yet you that's not what you're seeing anymore you're seeing this woke generation they're so woke they're a joke right like pastor jones says you know they're so woke they're just a joke or you're not woke you're a joke how about that but the problem is is that men stop have stopped being like you know it's it's almost like a sin in society to be manly you're made fun of because you're manly and that's not right but in the old testament god was saying for people to be manly and just like in the old testament nothing's changed people act like in the from the old testament to the new testament like god's like okay grow long hair wear a dress you're in the new testament jesus wore a dress jesus wore you know it's like what are you talking about they act like jesus this little scrawny you know nerdy guy with long hair and a long beard and wore this flowing garment dress and that's the perception that people have of him but that's not the perception the bible has of him right you know when he set his face like a flint to go up to jerusalem you know he was he was probably in great shape he walked everywhere he went he didn't he wasn't riding on horseback was he so he's probably in good shape took good care of himself and he was probably strong he worked i'm sure until his ministry just like all of his other disciples it's not like jesus was just sitting around reading books all day i'm sure he did a job i'm sure he worked with his dad his you know his stepdad or whatever but this generation that we're living in right now it's getting worse and worse it's getting so bad that you have to almost apologize for being a man today i'm not going to apologize for being a man i'll just be flexing like yeah oh man but uh i don't have as big as muscles i used to but so i probably won't flex but you know what i'm saying it's like we the bible's saying to quit you like men and be strong what what is it saying be strong if you're a man you're going to be strong build your muscles build your brain get some knowledge act manly if you're wearing pink skinny jeans you you you've gone off the rails if your wife you know is making you hold her cat and sew some some mittens for her or something you you you need to wear the pants in the family make her wear the dress you know we need to stop with the pink shirts look if it's pink it stinks don't wear it guys all right and i know guys will be like well i'm a man that's why i can wear pink no you look like a fag okay quit wearing pink shirts wear like earthy colors or blue you know like blue but black blue you know i just and acting like a man is being strong look strong be strong if you're a if you're the man of your house be a strong leader be a strong man don't be effeminate don't be weak you know in joe 38 3 it says gird up now thy loins like a man for i will demand of thee and answer thou me when god talks to joe he says hey why don't you pull up your pants your pants not your who girds up a dress i mean it's so weird that people think i mean people will argue this point and say oh they all wore tunics back then with no undies on the undies weren't invented until you know the priest and only the priests wore the undies because they don't want to see their nakedness on the altar or something it's like no men have been wearing pants for thousands of years it's a fact it's a fact and if they didn't wear pants the other armies that were fighting against them mocked them and made fun of them what was it the persians saw the greeks and they're like these guys are wearing dresses they're making fun of them there's you know there's picture like i was in when i was in england i went to a roman villa and in that roman villa there's all these different artifacts like it's all enclosed so it's actually the roman villa the old archaeology and all that stuff in there and on one of the one of the things it was talking about how what people wore and in roman times which was two thousand years ago it said that they wore pants imagine that two thousand years ago they wore pants didn't jesus live two thousand years ago so pants weren't invented back then though they didn't wear pants then how do you know just because your flannel graph on your sunday school told you that i mean come on if you're you know in your sunday school and they have the little flannel graphs and it's jesus wearing a dress it's like uh no you don't know what he looked like you don't know he would you know and they'd say he was wearing a robe well do all robes go down to the to the length of your toes i mean most robes don't they go probably to the knee but just because if he had a robe on which the bible doesn't say that he did the only time jesus ever had a robe on according to the bible was when he was being crucified and when they were mocking him so people just have this mental picture of what jesus was wearing but what was he really wearing it didn't say he was wearing a robe so where are you getting that you're not getting that from the bible are you and so you're just trying you're trying to tell me that jesus walked all around in the hot desert in the hot sun with a robe on with a dress on and no underwear is that what you're telling me that's ridiculous and when men work they're not going to do it in a tunic the guys that were wearing tunics were these like philosophers and socrates and all those types of guys okay and if they were if and obviously some cultures have moved over like you know in scotland for instance they didn't even start wearing kilts until the 1300s okay so they wore pants before that that was just something that you know when cultures get out of control and they get all faggoty that's what they do and so you see these emoms and stuff what do they wear these people in the middle east what are they wearing they're wearing dresses nice dress bro where'd you get that jc penny i mean it looks weird it looks strange but even even like the religious people that are in different religions what do they always wear wizard outfits that look like dresses i mean the roman catholic church there the pope is wearing a dress and some funny giant hat with fishes on them and all this other stuff swinging stuff around and that's not manly it's they're trying to be a peer righteous before men that's why they do that but you know what i think when i see a man in a dress i don't think they're righteous at all i think that they're faggoty and weird okay so when and god says so who who when they if a man's wearing a dress how's he girding up his loins gird up you know when when i put my pants on i pull them up and i strap my belt that's what girding your pant you know if you go out without pants or i mean excuse me if you go with pants on and no belt what's going to happen to most men in this room your pants are going to fall down or if you're working you're going to get the plumber's crack which nobody wants to see you know just like every time they bend over to pick some up you're like oh man come on but when god said told tells job to get up his loins like a man you know that's what men do okay you don't gird up a dress i know that they have that like meme on the internet where it's like you know they show the dress and it's like he they tuck it in and make it look like a diaper have you ever seen that i mean it's the sultan with the diaper on or something with the sword or whatever nobody did that nobody did that's just a made-up picture folks the internet said so quoted by abraham lincoln anyway look if you if you're a man you should avoid these things skinny jeans soy milk letting your pants come off your hip exposing your buttocks nobody wants to see that man it makes you look like a fairy it's weird it's weird when you see someone that has their their pants all the way down to their ankle or down past here and their underwear showing it's like what's wrong with you you're cruising for something man because that's what they think in prison that's where it was made up seriously pull your pants up bro and put put you know cinch your gird up your loins like a man turn to first kings chapter two verse one first kings chapter two verse one and being manly isn't just about dressing manly working hard is manly you know wear your hair like a man that means i i just got my hair cut so i can just talk crap right now there's some people in here needing they're they're they're close to the line right now just kidding i'm kidding i'm kidding i'm just saying that because i'm like way up above like yeah you know but uh if your hair is long you look like a girl girls are supposed to have long hair guys are supposed to have short hair god wants to see a difference between people it looks weird when girls have super short you know dude cuts like remy knocked on the door tonight and she was obviously peter pan you know i mean she had the shaved sides short haircut she was like not interested i could tell right away i was like yeah i could tell you're not interested but like you know as the lesbians want to cut their hair short to look like a dude and guys want to grow their hair long look like a woman so god doesn't like that god is you know he says it's a shame for a man to have long hair so if it's a shame for a man to have long hair then tell me how did jesus have long hair then if us having long hair shames our head our head is jesus christ but so does the picture fit right then it doesn't fit right because it's not true you know and jesus you know if jesus christ our head and he says it's a shame for a man to have long hair i mean are you following the logic here and then you're saying jesus had long hair why would it be a shame then why doesn't everybody have long hair because it's not true if you look at sculptures of any roman back then i mean they have sculptures they have the bust of heads they find all over the place and guess what they don't have long hair they have short hair and when jesus was in the garden of gethsemane if he was the only one with long hair jesus wouldn't have said hey the one that i kissed that's the one that it is you know why because he looked like everybody else and so they would have just said hey get the long hair right there get the john lennon looking guy and take him away you know what i mean it's like people got to use some common sense and actually know what the bible says quit thinking about jesus as some effeminate soft little lily he's not he was a man and we should be manly the bible says quit you like men be strong okay first kings chapter two verse one says now the days of david drew nigh that he should die and he charged solomon his son saying i go the way of all the earth be thou strong therefore and show thyself a man so what's he saying be strong what's paul what's paul the apostle saying be strong be a man same thing in the old testament same thing in the new testament and so what what are some of the signs that would show you know david kind of goes through and says the things that he would do if he if he's saying show yourself strong be thou strong therefore and show thyself a man he's like hey i'm i'm gonna die son and you know what i need you to be i need you to be a man i need you to be strong i need you to be able to continue in my footsteps and be a good king and here's some of the things he said look at verse number three it says and keep the charge of the lord thy god to walk in his ways to keep his statutes and his commandments and his judgments and his testimonies as it is written so what is he what's what's a manly attribute well hey how about following the lord and walking in his steps and keeping his statutes and keeping his commandments and keeping his judgments in his testimony as it is written that's being manly that's what david's saying hey you want to be a man you know a lot of people say oh you love jesus you're a sissy no you're a sissy well i'm a man because i do want to follow god and i think that every man in this church should feel the same exact way and david's telling his son hey you want to be a man well the first thing you got to do is keep the charge of the lord as it is in the law of moses thou mayest prosper and all that thou doest and whithersoever thou tarnish thyself so being godly equals manly doesn't it it's not sissy it's manly it's the opposite of what the world says oh you like to go to church you're soft you're weak you're not manly here's another look at verse five judging righteously is manly also look what it says moreover thou knowest also what joe ab the son of zarawiah did to me and what he did to the two captains of the host of israel onto abner the son of ner and unto amassa the son of jether whom he slew and shed the blood of war and peace and put the blood of war upon his girdle that was about his loins and in the shoes that were on his feet do therefore according to thy wisdom and let not his whore head go down to the grave in peace what's he's saying well you need to judge the right way if you're a king you know we're as a king psalm was being asked to be strong show himself a man well what was the first thing he said do well the first thing he says is to follow the lord your god and the next thing he says hey you know what joab did you know what he murdered two of the captains of the host don't let his whore head his gray head go down to the grave in peace he's like sometimes you're gonna have to make a judgment salman and you're gonna have to make a hard judgment joe ab has been the captain of the armies for this all these years but he deserves to die for what he did and so he's saying hey one of the first things you do as a king as a man is you need to get rid of joe ab and make sure he's punished for the things that he did and also and look down at verse number seven so he was supposed to be godly he was supposed to judge righteously and he was and loyalty to friends that's a manly attribute also look at verse seven it says but show that show kindness unto the sons of barzillai the gileadite and let them be of those that eat at thy table for so they came to me when i fled because of absolem thy brother so he's saying here's another thing you need to do to show yourself a man to be strong and show yourself a man is show kindness to the people that show kindness to you show kindness to the people that show kindness to to your dad you know some people just have no loyalty some men have no loyalty and you know what you should be loyal to the people that are loyal to you and and not and you know he said hey let them eat at thy table let's take care of them take care of those types of people and the other thing is in verse eight making hard choices and wise decisions is a manly attribute look at verse number eight it says and behold thou hast with thee shimmy i the son of gira a benjaminite of bahuram which cursed me with a grievous curse in the day when i went to mahanim but he came down to meet to meet me at jordan and i swear to him by the lord saying i would not put thee to death with the sword now therefore hold him not guiltless for thou art a wise man and knowest what thou oughtest to do unto him but his whore head bring thou down to the grave with blood see solomon had to make some decisions that are going to solidify his kingdom and david is trying to help him you know here's the other thing if you're a manly listen to what your parents have to say if you're a man you know obviously if your parents are wise maybe they're not going to make every decision exactly correctly the way you think that they should but when your dad is talking to you and he has solid advice don't just blow off what he's saying have some wisdom have you know your dad raised you and probably knows more than you do about a lot of different things why don't you take their advice obviously if it's foolish advice don't take it but i'm saying if they got good like david is giving him good advice isn't he he says to be strong he charges them to be strong and he tells them these are the things that you need to do to make sure you're strong and some two of those things were executing two people that deserve to die and david you know obviously going into the whole history with him and joab is not something i have time to do tonight but one of these days we'll we'll get there but you know joab knew some of david's secrets and and you know david failed to do the right thing he's like hey i failed to do the right thing let me tell you this is what you need to do to do it right be a man so i know this has nothing to do with the sermon i'm going to bring this up anyway just because i wanted to give you a timeout here for a second but manly men aren't weird with animals they're not weird with animals now this is another thing i see where and i'm not saying don't love your animals don't take care of them beat them or be mean to them or whatever i'm not saying that because i have animals that i've loved too we just had to put our dog that we had for like 16 years to sleep and it was it was hard you know when the dog's been with your family for as long almost as old as your kids are you know you grow attached to them a little bit but when you get to the point where you're they're designing phones that your dog can walk up and nudge with his nose and call you on the phone and and see you you know they're doing these tests for these these dogs they're calling they think that they're calling their masters so that their masters can talk to them on the phone they're like recording how many times like this one dog had like called the woman like six times in a day or something like that she's like i know he just wants to talk to me it's like he can't talk he's a dog what's he gonna say to you i want food unless it's scooby-doo you can't talk to him okay but i just think it's weird that men you know men get real weird with animals too with their with their women it's just like you know if you're dressing up your your dogs and dresses and and coats and stuff like that and you're a man i don't know i'm suspect anyway moving on verse number 14 back in our text text let's look at verse number 14 i want to show some charity here says let all let your things be done with charity that means love right so all all your things to be done with charity so now you say well pastor thompson you just been ranting and raving for like the last 10-15 minutes how was that charity well it is charity because when you tell someone the truth you're supposed to speak the truth and love and so if i didn't love you i would never tell you the things that the bible says for you to do because a lot of it's controversial a lot of it's controversial for this time that we live in right now people worshiping their animals is what you see out there don't you they worship them it's gotten strange folks you know when you're going around picking up their poop all the time i mean obviously i know if you're walking them in a park you got kind of got to do that but just people like live in like big cities and they walk around and they're going in the in the planters and it's just like they're following them around and they're treating like they got stickers on the back of their car with how many dogs they have these are my human or these are my children what do they call my fur fur buddy fur babies yeah come on man you've gone too far all right so and you know when it says let all things be done with charity you know there's a time to be loving and talk about loving things but there's also a time that we need to tell the truth about things that are hard like men being men you know if someone walked in with skinny jeans you think it'd be hard for me to preach that sermon yeah but sometimes i i'm telling you this i've preached probably a few times when someone had a man had long hair and preached and i knew that i had to preach that and i knew it was already in my notes and twice well actually one guy cut his hair and i never even told me that he should have cut his hair he just said he came up after church he's like i'm cutting my hair and buying some suits i was like okay i never even preached about it he's just the spirit of god just came upon him and he realized but there was another there's a guy that you know and in a different church and i preach i was preaching about it and he got his hair cut and he got baptized and he started coming to the church it's like you know you never know what people need you think that someone's going to get mad because they walk in with long hair and you say hey you know you look like a fruitcake you know obviously i don't say that you know but you do so but i mean obviously you can say it nicely without being tactless or whatever but because nobody some people just don't know they don't know it's wrong and so if someone's unsaved or they just don't know you know obviously do that in love so nobody no men in here have long hair except for eli tonight so i'm just kidding did you catch that oh okay i said no man in here has long hair except for eli i'm just teasing i was teasing him before the service so sorry brother eli anyway so but telling the truth is love preaching hard is love warning people is love and so if you if someone's about to go you know the bridge is out you know the signs are are been moved out of the way and you're there and you know that someone's about to drive across a bridge would you try to stop them and warn them what is what's more loving to try to stop them and say you know they're on they're on a family vacation you know and they're about to drive off a cliff don't you think it's the the loving thing to do is to tell them or just ignore them and keep walking ah you know they should have they should have looked at the signs you know it's wrong and so i think it is loving i think it is charitable to tell someone to warn someone about something when they're you know going to wreck their life or you know whether they're doing something that god is is upset with you know that's my job as a preacher so anyway look at verse 15 it says i beseech you brethren you know that the house of stefanis that is it is the first fruits of akia and that they have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints so you know that's that's a good thing to be addicted to it's good it's a good thing to be addicted to the ministry you know there's a lot of addictions out in the world isn't there there's people that are you know addicted to all kinds of what is that new drug fentanyl right i don't think it's new actually but you know i don't really know a lot about it i just know it's way more powerful than heroin and people are overdosing on it all the time what people are down on overdosing downtown or on is fentanyl it's a really scourge of america right now all these opioids and all these addicted people that eventually you know i think i think fentanyl is more powerful than heroin i'm not sure about it is yeah so i mean there's a lot of things that to be addicted to that are really bad for you like you know porn offer pornography or drugs alcohol food entertainment music sports video games whatever it is the girls like to do but you know there's a lot of things that we can get addicted to in our life though but you know what's really good to be addicted to is addicted to the ministry or you're just addicted to being at church and you want to help people and you want to serve the lord you know that these people were addicted that they addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints and so it's not just helping yourself it's it's really about helping other people it's about helping each other and that's a good thing to be addicted to all these other things these worldly things that we get addicted to you know they're they're not helping us they're not earning us rewards in heaven you know so being addicted isn't always bad as long as it's something that's good you know obviously you can burn yourself out and i kind of already talked about that before but look at first john chapter 2 verse 15. first john chapter 2 verse 15. i assume everybody's using a pad or something like is there no bible pages turning here you you're not turning your bibles anymore first john chapter 2 verse 15. if you don't if you don't turn the if i don't hear pages turning then i kind of just assume everybody's checked out so i just want to kind of bring you back to reality all right check back in first john chapter 2 verse 15. the bible says love not the world neither the things that are in the world if any man love the world the love of the father is not in him for all that is in the world the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the father but is of the world and the world passeth away and the lust thereof but he that doeth the will of god abideth forever so what is the lust of the eyes the pride of life the lust of the flesh these are things that we're addicted to if someone's lusting after something that means that they're desiring it so much to the fact that they just can't get enough of it and they and they are addicted to it people are addicted to alcohol there's people that they have to drink or they'll die that's how addicted they are you know and it's the same thing with like anything else that you're addicted to you know those things are hard to get over and so we ought to make sure that we're you know we have to ask god to help us and to pray for us that we would start to hate these things that we're addicted to and get more addicted to the things of the lord because you know without god's help you're not going to overcome any sin in your life you know any sin that anything that you can think of right now in your mind you don't have to say it out loud something you're addicted to that you need to change in your life you know why don't you ask god to help you hate that thing to the point where you won't do it anymore quit cold turkey wean yourself off whatever you have to do but if there's something that you're addicted to and we're all addicted to something we all we all are i mean if i just sit up here and act like i don't have any problems then you know i'm just lying because we're all sinful and so we all have problems in our lives but you know our what we're supposed to do is get better as time goes by as a christian not get worse we're supposed to get better and so we're supposed to how do we do that well we walk in the spirit you learn to walk in the spirit you learn to hate the things of the flesh and crucify the flesh in your life and how do you do that well you know you're not going to do it without god's help now can people quit drinking alcohol without god's help yes they can but there's some sins i'm sure that's that people in this room commit that the only thing that's helping them is god because there's there's sins that were that are easily uh what are the the sin that easily besets us the bible says there's certain sins that we're we have the proclivity to do and it's just it's really hard it's like a button gets pushed and you have to have it and so the only person that's going to be able to help us with stuff like that is god so and obviously like i said you can get over anything without the help of god pretty much but sin is going to reign in our mortal bodies until the day that the lord jesus christ comes back and so we have to learn to try you know getting yourself addicted to the ministry maybe it'll help you get you know because some people say that those add that there's addicts right and addicts that we try to replace whatever they were addicted to they they quit doing this but then they get addicted to something else isn't that true so if you're an addict which probably everybody in here is an addict of something then take that and replace it with something good replace it with something in the ministry replace it with more sowing times or you know whatever you got to do to overcome that addiction you know if if that's the if that's the truth that addicted people you know go to another addiction then make that other addiction something good instead of replacing it with something that's equally as bad then you're just like going hopping from addiction to addiction so and you know loving the things of the world those things i mean like i said they're not going to get you a reward they're not going to help you in the long run you know what's going to help you is the things that you do for god and when we get to the judgment seat of christ and he gives us our rewards you know the jumbotron is not going to play all your sins that's a lie from the devil all of our sins are forgiven but there's going to be a rewards given out and based upon those things that are eternal you know what did you do for eternity's sake what did you do to help someone else get into the kingdom of god what did you do to help birth a new son into this world a spiritual son or daughter into this world did you do so i mean those are the things that are going to count for eternity get yourself addicted to those things get yourself addicted to the bible where you just want to learn about what god's done and you know obviously we all get in pitfalls in our christian life sometimes you know you're reading the bible you're doing great i don't know if i'm the only one that ever struggles with this stuff but i'm sure that i'm not and i'm the pastor you know do you think that there's not times that i don't feel like reading the bible in a day but that's my job i have to do it but do i love do i always love doing it i don't always love doing it and you're like well you're fired pastor well i'm sorry you better find someone else that is perfect okay because i'm not but i'm just saying that you know you can get yourself addicted to stuff and hey if you're you know there's certain kinds of foods that you like sometimes too right you're like i really like this particular brand of coffee or i like this particular kind of food or this kind of ice cream but if you get it all the time don't you get sick of it sometimes like i'm done with this ice cream forever or i'm done with this kind of food whatever it is you know if someone makes spaghetti every week you know you're gonna get sick of spaghetti and if there's no meat in it then you're really then you're really gonna be mad i'm just kidding i always have to bring that up but but the point is is that we should get addicted to the things that are going to help us in our life if you want to replace your addictions replace them with something godly that you can you know actually get something for that addiction and these guys addicted themselves to the ministry um so second corinthians 4-1 says therefore seeing that we have this ministry as we have received mercy we faint not so we have a ministry also and i mentioned this earlier in my sermon but it's not just my ministry here it's you know first of all it's god's ministry but it's not just this is not just pastor thompson's ministry here so if you want to dictate does this guy stefanis i mean and they addicted themselves to the ministry or whatever but you can do the same thing you can get on fire for god and do great things for the lord but don't like i said don't burn yourself out but when it says we have this ministry it's not just paul well who does paul talk about he talks about the people that work with him the people he's talking in this chapter about timothy being sent and apollo's you know he had a network of people that were helping to work it wasn't just paul doing everything now was he the main hard charger that the person that was making stuff get done yeah but when he says therefore seeing we have this ministry as we have received mercy we faint not you know don't faint in your service of the lord you might not you know and you might not think like reading the bible is service the lord is service because it teaches you how to do things that he wants you to do it helps you to know things that he wants you to know to be the most effective christian that you can be when you pray to him and when you pray for other people you're helping other people that is a ministry have you heard of prayer warriors you know why do we why do we have a group called sfbc prayers so that we can pray for each other so when something serious is going on in someone's life at that time we can just stop whatever we're doing right there and just take even if it's just a few seconds to pray for that person that needs prayer you know what that's that's something that god holds in a high reward he he keeps our prayers in bottles you know how many prayers do you have in a bottle is it going to be like one drop you know those he he takes that vial he's like this smells really good it's like this is brother alex's drip just one drop no you know we should be praying to the lord and not just for ourself not just for our family members not just for our church but for for other people you know there's a lot of people in other churches that have prayer requests too do you ever pray for them you ever you know if you're scrolling through facebook you're just like oh man sucks to be them you just keep on scrolling by or do you actually have compassion on people and care for them and think about them and and you know reach out to them and say hey i'm praying for you i mean those are good things to do we have a ministry and it's not just my job to pray for people it's just not my job to preach to people it's y'all's job too and we shouldn't faint in these ministries so if you're taking on too much so that you're gonna faint and you're gonna fall out of church and you're gonna leave and you're gonna go live your life and go back to these things of the world these lusts of the flesh and the pride of life and all this other stuff that you want then slow down because the best thing for you to do is stay in the race stay in the army don't be a deserter you know what happens to deserters they get shot right so you're in the lord's army and if you go out back to that world it's only a matter of time before god's gonna start shooting at you right he's gonna punish you and you're like i still understand when my life is falling apart it's like duh you left you left god you left the church you left all the things you were doing because you're selfish and you're addicted to everything else out there instead of being addicted to the ministry instead of being addicted to the things of god you're addicted to everything else well i just want to be a full-time seahawks fan so i'm just going to quit church and travel and go to every single game there's people that do stuff like that you know they get into some sport and they think that that's more important or they get into some weight loss club and then all of a sudden they start looking good again and they go off and start doing the things that they used to do before and they forget the lord god that helped them lose that weight in the first place you know i mean there's all kinds of stories like that or people come in you know people just get tired of the things of god and they just want to go live their life but i'll tell you what if you're doing too so much here that you feel burnt out from serving the lord then you need to dial it back and and say hey i'm just going to do this much because right now i feel like at any moment i could just be gone i don't want people to feel like that but at the same time do something if you're doing nothing then that's even you know well if you're doing nothing you're still in church at least there's a chance for you to start doing something eventually but you know i mean we're here to serve the lord for the rest of our life are you a lifer did you get the tattoo right here the lifer tattoo like when you get saved you know and obviously it's not one you can see but like you know what i'm saying like this is a lifelong dedication like are you are you willing to stick through it are you willing to stick with it because it's hard christian life's hard but we need to stick with it if you can't hang then you need to dial it back some galatians chapter 6 verse 9 go ahead and turn there galatians 6 9 the bible says and let us not be weary in well-doing for in due season we shall reap if we faint not we're gonna reap but don't faint you know sometimes you're working hard you know i've ever worked out in a field doing something or the sun's just beating on your back or maybe you're doing a roof or you're just out working in the hot sun and you feel like fainting because it's so hot outside that's the way the lord's work can be sometimes for us but you know obviously sometimes you need to put a hat on that covers your your neck and your your shoulders that'll help i mean you need to do something to where you're not going to faint drink some drink some gatorade or something but uh you know we don't want to faint because we want to have like it says in verse 10 as we have therefore opportunity let us do good unto all men especially them who are of the household face so you know we don't want to faint and fall out because what good is that going to do for you and what good is that going to do for other people you know what are you here for is it for yourself is it so your prayer requests can get answered oh i just i don't care about your prayer requests i just care about mine are you a narcissist prayer warrior do you only care about your prayer requests and nobody else's it's all about me my family i mean we need to pray forever for other people's prayer requests too and like i said you don't have to get on your knees for eight hours a day and pray it's like god knows he can hear in a few words someone's prayer request you know and the fact that you just within faith pray to god and know that he can do something to make a difference in that person's life he knows that you can make a difference in that person's health he knows that that that he can do something to help that person whatever the request is whatever the hard mountain that they can't seem to climb up by themselves that they need a little push they need a little help from the lord you know we we sometimes we're selfish and we need to get unselfish to the point where we're thinking about other people's lives too so look at verse 16 says that you submit yourselves unto such and to everyone that helpeth with us and laboreth i'm glad at the communist tifonus and fortune this or fortunateis excuse me in a case for that which was lacking on your part they have supplied for they have refreshed my spirit in yours therefore acknowledging them that are such i thought about this passage for a long time when i was writing this sermon and even that last part it says acknowledging them that are such well what's it's saying here it's saying you know submit yourself to unto such these people that are helping us these people that labor there's some people that have the opportunity to do more labor maybe your job puts you out 50 60 hours a week and you can only just do so much and maybe there's somebody else that can come in where we're lacking and pick up the pace and and maybe you know pick up the head you know stand in the gap in a different area and you know these types of people are ref or he says they have refreshed my spirit you know paul's talking about the people that work with him and work for him that the people that help and labor hey we should acknowledge those people because they're refreshing to my spirit they're refreshed and it says and yours because when someone comes in and does extra stuff and helps you know the the leader or whatever they helps paul people that come and help me you know i don't necessarily acknowledge everything that that person does in front of everybody but i'll tell you what there's some people in here that do some extra stuff and they're refreshing to my spirit and i appreciate it and i'm not saying if you if you're not that person or whatever then i'm not mad i'm just saying that i mean everybody here basically refreshes my spirit but i'm just saying there's some people that they do like a whole bunch of different extra stuff and it's like i'm like how am i going to get all this done and someone just comes and just says hey i'll take care of that that's that's refreshing that helps me that makes me you know feel good you know because i'll just be honest with you sometimes being a pastor is a hard job and sometimes it's frustrating and sometimes it's like man you know in and out the same week i mean i have a deadline to preach three sermons every week and that's that's hard you know so and sometimes you know there's everybody's lives are going wrong and you're counseling all these different people and trying to help all these people and it's just like man and then your life is is turned upside down at the same time and when people come along and help you labor and they and they help with other things or the things that are lacking the things that need to be picked up those people are a blessing it says therefore acknowledging them that are such you know have you ever told someone that's helping you hey you're a blessing thank you that's something that you should do you're a blessing you know i mean there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that i mean just if you're but if you're in it to get the attaboy a pat on the back all the time you know you're you're not always going to get that maybe someone just doesn't even see the thing that you do but why did you do that thing in the first place did you do it so someone could notice it and get and you could get a pat on the back for it or did you do it because you love god and you want to help because that's really the ultimate like if you're doing anything for any other reason then you just want to help and and work for the lord and you want his acknowledgement then you shouldn't worry about whether someone thanks you or not now is it good to thank them well paul says acknowledge them which are such hey if someone's being a blessing to you someone's helping you out you know i just i can't understand people that would never thank somebody when they do something nice for them i just think it's weird it's like how can you not thank somebody you know and i'm not talking about anybody here at all i'm just saying that there's there's been people in my life it's like they get everything handed to them on the silver platter they're always in trouble there's always something going bad in their life and then when they get help they don't even think the people that do that help them it's just like i i can't understand that it's like a welfare mentality or something it's like you're so used to getting everything handed to you that you just don't acknowledge when people are doings are a refresher so what are you tonight are you a refresher or are you a pain in the neck you know that that's a good question to ask you know are you diligent are you a blessing are you a refresher or are you negative nelly everything's always going wrong this could be better you're always complaining the pastor's preaching too long sermons i don't care you should have done that a long time ago but ask yourself this question are you one that would be considered a refreshing person or are you somebody that's a detriment or are you just neither one you're just but you know if you're a blessing then you should be acknowledged as such but you know don't don't necessarily think that every person is going to knowledge everything you do you know maybe you spent extra time cleaning here or something like that and pastor never notices when i do this pastor look i notice more than you think and i do appreciate all the work that y'all do and you know when i come into the church it's clean my spirit's refreshed i thank god for that because otherwise it'd be me here doing it for four hours or whatever and sometimes it is but you know are you a refresher well we should work on being someone that's a refreshing person not just to me but to each other you know instead of being a pain in the neck or a negative person you know positivity there's a lot of power and positive things like there's you know those people that are positive only preachers there is something to that that's why people like listening to them they don't like being ripped to shreds so they walk away every service feeling bad about themselves but you know being positive is a good thing having a positive attitude hey we're going to get through this i know we're going to get through this because you just have a positive attitude if you're always negative about everything well this is never going to work it's not receptive in vancouver and whatever hey we'll go on receptive trips other places don't worry about it we just need to do the work that we're here to do verse 19 the churches of asia salute you akila and priscilla salute you much in the lord with the church that is in their house and i would take time to develop this but i just am out of time but basically there's churches that start and their church starts in the house there's nothing wrong with that but just don't confuse that with the house church movement okay the house church movement basically is like a bozo movement that people ordain themselves as pastors and you know i mean i i can't speak for every home church that in the world that i know of because i don't really know a lot of them but one thing i do know is that they're they try to do this small group thing and they don't have qualified pastors i was looking on the there's a you can sign up to be your own home church and all you have to do is like believe in jesus or whatever and then you're qualified or whatever it's like okay who's overseeing that you know so a true house church is one that started by a pastor and there's boots on the ground there's someone that's leading it you know and the the goal is to someday probably get out of that house unless it's like a mansion or something but so there is a difference between a house church and a church house okay so and there's nothing wrong with starting a church in a house that's biblical it's been you know there's other verses i could turn to but i just don't have time for that but just know this that there's people that are against you know coming to a church like this they're like well they're taking ties and they're doing this and you know ties pay the late the light bill the light bill is expensive here we got a jumbotron white out there that's running i don't i'm scared to see what the light belt's gonna be like this month you know the heat never wants to turn off or whatever it's just like but things cost money if you want a nice building to worship in and to do things in it's going to cost money and these house church people are just like against that kind of stuff they think that everything's bad including pastors anyway let's move on verse 20 says all the brethren greet you greet you one another with an holy kiss now i personally think this is like a uh i don't think this is a commandment all right because if you greet me with a holy kiss you're going to be missing some teeth all right so don't do that unless you're my wife she can greet me with a holy kiss i think that that's kind of like the or whatever i don't know what that is exactly but i told i've told you the story about the pastor that came up and kissed me on the face at one time i was just like get the heck away from me what are you doing don't as you got one chance that's the last time that ever happens you're like slobbering i was before i had a beard too it was like slobbery ugh don't ever do that to me not even joking around all right the salutation me paul with mine own hand if any man loved not the lord jesus christ let him be anatha maranatha now just really quickly before i close i just want to explain this anatha maranatha it basically means to be accursed that love not his appearing that's kind of what i i did some study on it i'm not a greek scholar or anything like that i'm not claiming to be not going back to the greek but uh that's what i've seen oh i think a lot of consensus says that that's what that means so i i mean i know there's a lot of people that name their churches maranatha baptist church or whatever so i guess if that means the appearing of our love the appearing of our lord and i guess that's a good name for a for a baptist church but if it's an ask about maranatha baptist church then it's like you're saying that uh if you don't love the appearing of our lord jesus christ let them be accursed so and that that's what you know the catholic church when they excommunicate people they go anathema maranatha or whatever and then they burn their bones or whatever they do but anyway so anyway so the bible you know and and paul's saying hey if you don't love the lord then be accursed people they act like that's such a bad thing you know paul but paul was paul's nice jesus was nice you know they never cursed anybody that he cursed them right there he said if you don't love the appearing of our lord jesus christ let them be accursed that's what it says that's what it means and i'll and in second thessalonians i'm just going to read it real quick it says even him who's coming after the working of saint with all power and signs and lying wonders with all deceivableness and unrighteousness and then they'll perish because they receive not the love of the truth that they might be saved and for this cause god shall send them strong delusion they should believe a lie god's going to actually send strong delusion on people to believe a lie because they wouldn't believe the truth that they all might be damned who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness so let me and this is the apostle paul saying this so look the new testament's a little more hairy than you think it is you know you just never heard that at the the community church that used to go to you never heard that at a different church but that's what paul said he said let them be damned you know what he said in galatians 1 8 let them be accursed you know if anybody comes to you with another gospel like jehovah's witnesses or mormons or somebody else is preaching a workspace salvation or lordship salvation he said let them be accursed he says it twice in galatians chapter 1 you know why because they're they're damning people to hell what is worse than that what scum is worse than someone that would preach a false gospel in order to send somebody to hell there's nothing worse than that can you imagine any other worse thing than going to hell i mean nobody is there's nothing worse even a murderer they're not worse than that but they're murdering people's souls that's the difference all right let's wrap it up verse 23 grace of our lord jesus be with you let's praise the lord jesus christ be with you hey amen and it says my love be with you all in christ jesus amen so right after he curses the people that don't believe in jesus he's like hey the people that do grace be with you and my love be with you all in jesus in christ jesus so like i said at the beginning paul loved these people and so if he's hard on them you know what sometimes you got to be hard on people but it doesn't mean that you don't love them it doesn't mean that and so that's what you know that's what 2021 people that are just you know they're so fragile they have to go into a safe room you know in order to get their feelings back together or whatever but you know if you love someone you're going to tell them the hard truth and you're going to be and you know and paul did in this whole book paul is telling people hard truths i've preached some hairy eyeball sermons out of these out of these books and they came from the bible they didn't come from my own heart they came from this book so let's pray we're done with first corinthians first corinthians all right let's pray heavenly father thank you lord so much for this great book lord i pray that you would help us as we study the the next book second corinthians and i pray that everybody would get home safely tonight and you bless each and every person that came in attendance tonight in jesus name we pray amen all right our last song we saw number 285 in the blue hymnal angels we have heard on high song number 285 in the blue hymnal angels we have heard on high song number 285 let's sing it on the first angels and the mountains and recline and go back there joy it swings oh oh shepherds why this jubilee is and exiles and exiles come to christ oh oh jesus so oh so so so so so