A great example of this is missionaries. Actually, I'm sorry, a horrible example of this is what I meant to say.
Missionaries, because they go around, and I'm not against missionaries, you know, we support some missionaries,
and I've known some really good missionaries that are doing a great work for God in other countries and so forth, but
these missionaries, I'll tell you what, they are willing to lie and deceive because of the fact that they're trying to be supported by so many churches.
In case you're newer to church or maybe you haven't been saved for that long or you don't really know much about how this works,
missionaries in foreign countries often go from church to church to church to church and they're raising money for support.
You know, so one church will give them 50 bucks a month or 100 bucks a month or 200 bucks a month,
so they go to all these different churches in order to raise the support, and then once they have enough support for like a full-time pay check
and their expenses, then they'll go to that foreign country and then they're getting the support from the countries in the United States.
Well, a lot of these missionaries, they don't care who they're getting their support from, right?
So they don't go around, and these churches will put them in the pulpit and have them preach, but they won't preach what they really believe
because if they preach everything they believe, then some people are not going to like it, some people are going to disagree,
so they kind of want to just become all things to all men, you know what I mean?
And kind of just when they're in this crowd, they're going to go in this way, and when they get another crowd, it's going to be what they want to hear.
We had a guy exactly like this come through one time, and this guy came through and he was one of these amen, praise the Lord, hallelujah guys,
like just, you know, amen brother, you know, just every word out of his mouth is like, amen, yes, glory, you know, amen.
So, you know, I walk up to this guy, oh yeah, you know, missionary, blah, blah, blah, you know, he's going to this, you know, place,
and I said to him, I said, hey, do you guys do soul winning? Do you go door to door soul winning?
And I've had this, and look, I've had this same conversation that I want to relay with you with a lot of people.
Now, the names have been changed to protect the innocent, but let me tell you something.
This story that I'm telling you right now is an exact, true, real life story, but literally, I've had probably ten other stories that are almost identical to this that I couldn't tell.
I'm just telling the most recent one.
So I walk up to this guy, I said, hey, some of you guys do soul winning, like door to door soul winning.
Yes, brother, we believe in soul winning, you know, and I said, okay, I said, great.
I said, so when you go soul winning, what do you do? What do you tell people?
Like, you know, if you knock on somebody's door, what do you say to them?
Um, well, uh, I mean, if this is something you're doing all the time, wouldn't you know?
Like, I've done it a thousand times, so I know it.
He's like, oh, well, he's like, um, it's different with everybody.
You got to build a relationship with that person.
It's like, I don't know about you, but I don't usually have people come into my front door and knock on it and build a relationship with me, you know what I mean?
It's kind of not really the place to build a long lasting deep friendship with somebody, you know.
They probably have other things going on, so you might as well just cut to the chase and give them the gospel if that's what you're there to do.
You know, preach them the gospel, not just talk about the tulip garden all day or whatever to build a relationship.
But anyway, he said, you know, it's different with everybody.
I said, well, give me an example.
And I said, okay, I said, let's do this.
I said, I'm the unsafe person.
You just knocked on my door.
You just asked me if I know for sure I'm going to heaven.
And I say, no, I don't.
What now?
The guy literally started shaking.
I'm not kidding.
Didn't know what to say.
He's doing a ton of, he believes in soy.
You know, he's doing this all the time, right?
And then he finally, he pulls out a tract, trembling, and just begins to read for me verbatim off the tract.
Like not saying anything, just reading it verbatim.
Wow, this guy's doing a ton of soy.
Then he gets down to the end of the tract and it's saying how to be saved, you have to repent of your sins.
Okay?
Look, I don't know about you, but the Bible says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
The Bible says, what must I do to be saved?
And they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
Look, if you have to repent of your sins to be saved, good luck with that.
Let me know once you've repented of all your sins.
And then we'll call you Jesus, because that's the only man who's ever walked on this earth who repented of all his sins.
Who lived a perfect life.
Nobody is without sin.
And then they say, well, it's not being without sin, you just have to be willing to stop sinning.
Well, how willing do you have to be? So willing that you will?
Or just willing to will-will, okay?
It's stupid. It's just this made-up stuff.
I mean, the Bible's so clear.
For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
Look, if I'm giving a gift, if I sit there and say to you, hey, I'm going to give you this gift, okay?
You know some of the things that you do, you're going to need to stop doing that stuff.
And I'm not saying you have to stop right now, but you have to tell me that you're willing to stop doing that stuff.
It's not a gift.
But what if I said, hey, I'm giving you this Bible as a gift, you believe me? Take it if you believe me, take it if you can.
There you go. I paid for it, it's free.
That's what salvation is, it's a free gift.
When this guy's like, repent of your sins, I'm like, I said, what does that mean?
Because I was pretending to be the unstable.
Because he asked me if I knew for sure, I said, I have no idea, because I'm playing the role play.
And so I said, what does that mean to repent of your sins?
And he said, well, he's got to turn from sin, forsake sin.
I'm like, have you forsaken all sin?
Oh, well, I don't know.
So the guy got all confused, he got all twisted up, got all confused, doesn't know what he's talking about.
He said, oh, give the guy a break. No, I won't give him a break.
He's a preacher, claiming to be a pastor and a preacher.
He wants people to give him money so that he can claim that he's going to some country somewhere far away.
And you know why he's going so far away? Because it's dark there.
Because the people in America don't know what he's doing.
They don't know that he's not really sowing, that he's a liar, that he's never knocked a door in his life,
or if he did, he probably just handed him the track, or talked about the tulips with them.
He did not do real sowing, so he wants to get really far away from everybody's watchful eye.
And that's why people who won't do sowing here, they won't do it there.
If you won't do it when people are around, your debts are not going to do it when nobody's around.
And so it's dishonest.
And so this guy, he begins to ham and haw, doesn't know what he's talking about,
and he's saying, you've got to turn from your sin, you've got to forsake sin.
That's work salvation.
That's working your way to heaven if you have to forsake your sins and turn over and leave and live.
The Bible says believe.
So anyway, I say to him, I say, well, I don't agree with that at all.
And I said, let me show you what the Bible says.
And I show him all these scriptures how that's work salvation,
like where God said about Jonah, and God saw their works in chapter 3, verse 10,
that they turned from their evil way.
So I said, see right there, it says the turning from your evil way is works.
Here it says keeping the law is the works of the flesh.
The works of the law, like obeying the Ten Commandments, that's works,
and the Bible says salvation is not works.
And here's what he said.
Oh, I agree with you.
And here's what he said.
I hope you don't misunderstand what I said earlier.
You know, like I thought you have to like turn from your sins to be saved.
I was just saying you should do that after you're saved.
I took the paper out of his hand, the little track that he was reading, his little script, you know.
You know, this guy had Parkinson's or he's never been sold, you know what I mean.
So the guy's got, I took the little track out of his hand, and I said, look, I said, it says right here,
how to be saved, it says repent of your sins, and it says you have to turn from your sins.
And then it says you believe on Christ to be saved.
I said, your name is at the bottom of this.
He was literally the author of it.
His name was at the bottom of it.
He was the author of the track.
I said, you wrote this.
This came out of your heart.
And he's like, oh, but I would have explained to people that that's not really what it meant.
And I said, you know what, he kept reiterating to me, I don't want you to misunderstand what I said earlier.
I don't think you have to, and I said, you know what, I do misunderstand what you said earlier.
And I said, you know what I think is happening right now?
I think that as soon as you found out I didn't disagree with you, you're just pretending, or that I disagree with you,
you're just pretending to believe something else.
Because everywhere you go you tell people what they want to hear.
You say, I can't believe you were so rude to him.
I can't believe that he would come in here and lie to my face and call himself a man of God.
He's a joke.
And I'm sick of it today.
I am sick of it.
And look, if God said it's an abomination, if it makes God mad, if it's what God hates,
if people just lie to your face, why am I supposed to lie to you when people lie to my face?
In the name of the Gospel.
You know, he comes in and starts to lie to me.
And why is he here? For money.
He wants financial support, so he's going to lie to me.
That's just as bad as somebody who would walk in and say, hey, here's a pound of whatever for this much money,
and they're really giving you three-quarter pound.
That's the same thing.
Pastor Parmesan, with all his fillers and all his emulsifiers and whatever.
The power of money.
And I mean, we laugh about it.
It's funny, but it's actually sad, though.
It's not really that funny.
When you think about the fact that people actually put money in the offering plate,
and they're trying to support missions because they want people to get saved,
this guy's not getting anybody saved.
This guy's getting no one saved.
Period.
And he's sucking up all this money from people, but he talks the talk.
And man, he looks the part.
I mean, he's got the suit on, and he's got his big King James Bible,
and he knows when to say amen and hallelujah and praise the Lord.
You know what I mean?
But he doesn't preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
He's got some bogus Gospel.
He's reading off a card.
Look, if you asked me to do something that I've never done, I'd be nervous.
Let me just be honest with you.
For example, I perform what, four weddings now?
Yours was the fourth, right?
So I performed four weddings as a pastor.
Well, here's the thing.
The first time I performed a wedding, I was very nervous because I'd never done it.
Now, when I get up to preach on Sunday morning, I'm not nervous at all
because I've preached literally 1,500 times.
So I'm not really nervous about it because it's something that I'm used to doing.
I'm confident with it because I've done it before.
But when I did the first wedding, which I did I think in, what year was it?
2008?
2008, when I performed my first wedding ceremony, I was very nervous.
I was probably shaking a little bit.
This is something I've never done.
The second wedding, I was still nervous, but I felt a little bit better
because hey, at least I've done it once.
The third wedding, I felt a little bit more comfortable.
The fourth wedding, it was like, let's do it.
No, I'm just kidding.
But anyway, I was a lot less nervous.
And when you're nervous and shaking and reading off a card, it's because you don't know what you're doing.
And it's because you haven't practiced.
It's because you haven't done it.
I mean, if somebody asked me to get up here and do something that I've never done as a pastor,
I've never performed a funeral.
I'd probably just be nervous just because I'm afraid I'm going to mess up
because I don't know what I'm doing, because I've never done it.
And I'd read books about it, watch YouTube videos of funerals and try to figure out what to do.
But I'd be nervous until I'd had some experience with it.
You see what I mean?
So people are not being honest.
People who say one thing and they present themselves a certain way
and you're not getting the real deal, that's dishonesty.
That's what God is talking about here.