Isaiah chapter 56, again he's talking about preachers who
will not warn people, they will not preach what needs to be preached.
They want to preach a positive only message. They want to preach what people like.
Look at Isaiah 56 verse 10. He says his watchman, of course the watchman
is a metaphor that he constantly uses in the book of Ezekiel and elsewhere
about a preacher, about a prophet, someone who is watching
and warning of the danger. Think about what a watchman is. He sits on the wall,
he stays up all night long and he sees the enemy coming in business, he sounds a trumpet,
he warns of impending danger. God likens his prophets
unto a watchman. He likens them here unto a watchman and also unto a watchdog.
He says in Isaiah 56 10, his watchmen are blind.
Can you imagine a blind watchman? When your whole job is to watch for somebody
and you're blind, that's not a good career for you. Okay, you need to pick a new job.
It reminds me of when I was in Oregon. And you know in Oregon you can't pump your own gas?
Who knows what I'm talking about?
In Oregon and New Jersey, those are the two states where it's illegal to pump your own gas.
So they have a guy there or a girl to pump the gas for you.
So Scott and I pull into a gas station in Oregon
and this girl pumps our gas and when we pull out five minutes later, the check engine light comes off.
And I say to Scott, she didn't put the gas cap on right.
Because at first we're like, oh man, what's wrong with the engine? We need to pull over,
and I said, no, you know what, she didn't put the gas cap on.
Now it's pretty sad when that's your whole job.
All you do all day is just undo the, whatever you call it, what's it called again?
Undo the gas cap, pump the gas, hand the receipt, close it up, they can get it right.
I was thinking to myself, we need to get back in California where I can pump my own gas,
put the lid on right. But if you're a watchman and you're blind, you're in the wrong line.
He's saying his watchmen are blind. And if you're a preacher who's spiritually blind,
you need to get another job. If you can't see the bad things coming, if you can't see negative
consequences to people's actions, then you're in the wrong line of work. But he says here that
these watchmen are blind. They're all ignorant. And that's even worse. An ignorant preacher.
And by the way, you young men who want to preach someday, you better learn and learn and learn and
study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needed not to be ashamed,
rightly dividing the word of truth. Because if you don't know the Bible, you have to be ashamed
of yourself. You're going to get up and call yourself a preacher. Know the Bible. Know what
you're talking about. We have too many preachers who don't know what they're talking about. You
need to read and read and read before you learn how to preach. The most important thing is to know
what to preach. That's more important because you can be dynamic and swing from the chandeliers,
but you got to know that what you're saying is right. And so you got to learn the Bible.
You don't want to be blind and you don't want to be ignorant. And then he says this,
they're all dumb dogs. Dumb meaning unable to speak. He says they're all dumb dogs. They cannot
bark. Sleeping. They're lazy, he says, lying down, loving to slumber. Yea, they're greedy dogs.
It's all about money. It's all about the paycheck, which can never have enough.
And they are shepherds. Of course, the word pastor means shepherd. That's what it means.
It comes to the same root word as the word pasture. And they are shepherds that cannot
understand. They all look to their own way. Everyone for his gain from his quarter. And
here's what they'll tell you. Come ye say they all fetch wine and we will fill ourselves with strong
drink and tomorrow shall be as this day and much more abundant. This is what they'll tell you.
Everything's fine. Let's eat, drink and be merry and tomorrow everything's going to be fine.
Have a beer with me after the service. Everything's going to be fine. Lighten up a little.
You know, all this doom and gloom, you know, like God's wrath and God's judgment. Man,
that turns people off. It turns people off. Especially the young people. They don't like it.
You know, they like something a little more uplifting, a little more positive.
Okay, and so let's have a beer with them. Let's reach them where they're at. Okay,
let's sit down with them and just kind of rap a little bit. You know, let's just talk, you know.
And in fact, we're going to get rid of the pulpit and replace it with a bar stool.
And I'm going to sit up on a bar stool and just kind of, in fact, we're going to, we need two
pastors. Okay, one pastor, you know, so we get like two of us up here. Okay, and maybe I'm on
a bar stool here. Brother Dave's on a bar stool. We can get it formatted up like a radio talk show.
You know, there's like two hosts and they kind of, and all of us be kind of like, so Dave,
what do you think this passage means, Brother Dave? And he'll be like, well, you know,
a lot of people, a lot of good scholars say that if you go back to the Greek, you know,
and we can just kind of analyze it and go back and forth with it and everything like that.
But you see, the dumb dog Baptist church, okay. The pastor's asleep at the wheel.
He's, he's not warning. He loves money. He's ignorant. And he wants you to think that
everything's going to be fine next year. It's going to be just like this year. And hey,
it might even be better. You know what I mean? Like tomorrow shall be as this day.
And hey, why not? Much more abundant. All right. Why not? While I'm lying to you,
I might as well just tell you, it's going to be really good.
But you see, we ought to be warning of sin. We ought to be standing up and, you know,
as preachers, as Christians and warning. And sometimes it's a negative message that
people don't want to hear. And that's why it's always spoken against. I mean, think about it.
If all that we preach was sweetness and light, who would speak against it?
I don't think that there's anybody in this world who's against loving your neighbor as yourself.
Have you ever run into somebody and said, I don't agree with that.
You know what I mean? We could go to the Mormons and the Catholics and the Muslims and the Buddhists.
They'd all agree with that. Do you really think the Mormons don't agree with that?
Love your neighbor as yourself is a good idea.
Okay. Do you think the Buddhists have a problem with that? You think the Hindus have a problem
with that? Does the Navajo traditional religion have a problem? Probably sounds good.
Love. Everybody likes that. But when you start preaching the rest of the Bible,
you know, most people, when we go out souling, don't even really have a problem with the gospel
message of just Jesus died for our sins. He rose again. He's the only, you know, but then
you start saying, well, he's the only way to heaven. You know, then they start having a problem.
You say, well, if you don't believe, go to hell. Now we're losing people. Think about it.
You know, in fact, all other religions are false because Jesus said, I am the door.
And he said this, he said, I'm the good shepherd. All that came before me are thieves and robbers,
but I'm the good shepherd. I'm the savior of the world. That's what he said. He said,
everybody else who has claimed to be a savior or a Messiah has been a liar.
If he were today saying the same type of thing as what he was saying, he'd basically be saying,
Buddha was a liar. You know, he'd be saying, uh, Joseph Smith was a liar. He'd say,
he'd tell you that Mohammed was a liar and he shouldn't have been married to a nine year old
girl, the pervert. He would tell you, he'd say, uh, he's a, he's a pervert and a pedophile and
a polygamist and anything else that starts with a P that's weird. You know, Joseph Smith was like
that. Mohammed was like that. And they tell you the truth about it. And that's where you start
making people mad. I mean, I used to preach in two nursing homes when we started this church
on Sunday afternoon. And I preached there for about six months each and I got thrown out of
both of them after about six months. And it was for the same thing. And I preached a lot of radical
sermons in there, but you know what got me thrown out? Just preaching that Jesus was the only way to
heaven. Literally. I mean, out of all the radical stuff I preach, you know, I'm expecting them to
say it was this, it was this, it was this. It's just, no, you can't preach that, that Jesus is
the only way, you know, and that any other way is wrong. They said it's too exclusive. You know,
it's gotta be an inclusive message. And I said, you know, I can't preach inclusive message.
It's just not true. You know, I got, I got thrown out. I think I'm going to cry about it, you know,
but that's life. And I just decided, and you know, it was really sad because the people in
the nursing home, they, they loved it. And they, the harder I preached, the more they liked it.
They said, man, we love you. You know, they said, they said, faithful word, Baptist church is our
church. You're our pastor. And they would come, they'd dress up and come and they loved it.
But the staff, what happened was the white, one of them, the wife of the, of the manager
happened to be there on a Sunday. And I said, Oh, you know, it's offending some people. And
I'm thinking to myself, well, the Catholic mass you guys offer probably have been some people do
it. I think the, the, the priest needs to wear pants. It offends me that he doesn't wear pants,
dressed like a man. Don't wear a skirt. Okay. And you know, I'm sure people are offended by
the non-denominational service, even though their desires to never offend. I've offended
by the NIV. I'm offended by a lot of things about it. But the point is that, you know,
the truth is going to offend people. The truth causes division because when the truth is preached,
some believe it's said in Acts 28 and some believe not, but when nothing is preached,
everybody just nods their head and smiles and says, Oh, great. Even Jeremiah is saying, amen
to the phony liberal preacher. Nobody disagrees with him. Even Jeremiah said, this sounds good.
And I've said it before. If you and I went to most liberal churches,
if we visited one of these liberal churches, we'd probably agree with 99% of what's said.
But there's just not much being said, because it's just a lot of generic general things. And
it's not what they say. It's what they don't say. That's the problem. That's the problem.
The false prophet doesn't tell you the truth. He only tells you the positive stuff,
which a lot of it's good stuff, but that's all good stuff. And that's the truth.
But that's all he tells you.