Please open your Bibles to the Acts of the Apostles Chapter 17, the Acts of the Apostles
Chapter 17.
And as I custom you will read the whole chapter, Acts Chapter 17.
Say amen when you're there.
Acts Chapter 17, the Bible reads, Now when they had passed through Amphipolis
and Apollonia, they came to the Thessalonica, where it was a synagogue of the Jews.
And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three Sabbat days reasoned with
them out of the Scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and
risen again from the dead, and that this Jesus who might preach unto you is Christ.
And some of them believed, but the sword did it fall, and Silas and the devout Greeks agreed
multitude, and the chief women not a few.
But the Jews, which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows
of the baser sword, gathered their company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted
the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out of the people.
And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren into the rulers
of the city, crying, These who have turned the world upside down, I come hither also,
whom Jason had deceived.
And these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king,
one Jesus.
They troubled the people and the rulers of the city when they heard these things.
But when they had taken security of Jason and of the other, they let them go.
And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea,
who, coming thither, went into the synagogue of the Jews.
These were more noble than those of Thessalonica, in that they received the word
all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, where those things were so.
Therefore many of them believed, also of honorable women which were Greeks, and of
men not a few.
But when the Jews of Thessalonica acknowledged that the word of God was preached of Paul
at Berea, they came thither also, and stirred up the people.
And then immediately the brethren sent away Paul to go as it were to the sea.
But Silas and Timotheus abode there still.
And they that conducted Paul brought him unto Athens, and receiving a commandment
unto Silas and Timotheus, for to come to him would also be a day departed.
Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him when he
saw the city fully given to idolatry.
Therefore it disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons,
and in the market daily with them that met with him.
Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him, and some
said, What will this babbler say?
Other some he seemed to be a setter forth of strange gods, because he preached unto
them Jesus and the resurrection.
They took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine
whereof thou speakest is?
For thou bring certain strange things to our ears.
He would know therefore what these things mean, for all the Athenians and strangers
which were there spent their time and nothing else but either to tell or to hear
some new thing.
Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I have received
that in all things ye are too superstitious.
For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription,
To the unknown God, whom therefore ye inherently worship.
Him declare I unto you.
God hath made the world in all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth,
dwelleth not in Tycho's major hands, neither is worship with men's hands, as though he
needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all things, and hath
made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and
hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.
For they should seek the Lord, if happily they might feel after him, and find him,
though he be not far from every one of us.
For in him we live, and move, and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have
said, for we are also his offspring.
For as much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead
is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, raven by art and man's device.
In the times of this ignorance God went at, but now commanded all men everywhere to repent,
because he had appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness,
by that man whom he had ordained, whereof he had given assurance unto all men, and
that he had raised him from the dead.
And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, and said, We will
hear thee again of this matter.
So Paul departed from among them, how be it certain men claim unto him, and believe,
among the which was Dion, Dion, their initiates the eropagite, and the women named Damaris,
and others with them.
Thus pray, our Heavenly Father, thank you for your word, thank you for the Bible.
Please bless the message we are about to hear in the wisdom thereof.
Bless, bless the Gaius, if we just say a word in Jesus name, Amen.
All right, we're here in Acts chapter 17, and we just turn on,
we're in Acts chapter 17, and the name of this sermon is Hapunen versus Pangimagas.
Now, I'm not preaching in Tagalog, but I do have a Tagalog title, and let me just,
before I get into the chapter, just explain to you what the difference is between Hapunen
and Pangimagas.
Now obviously Hapunen is referring to your dinner, it's your supper, okay?
Pangimagas is referring to your dessert, so it's basically dinner versus dessert.
Now when it comes to your dinner and your dessert, your dessert is not something
that you need for your body, okay?
When it comes to eating sweets, there's nothing wrong with it, there's nothing inherently
sinful about it, but it's not something that you need for your survival, okay?
You can go the rest of your entire life and never have dessert one time, never have
Pangimagas, and you'd honestly be pretty healthy, okay?
But if you went the rest of your life and never had Hapunen, never had any vegetables,
never had any gula, never had any fructose, fruit, never had any bread, but you just
had cake and ice cream and cookies, you're not gonna last very long.
Say, I'm just gonna skip my breakfast and just eat a slice of cake.
Well, you know, you're gonna die at a pretty young age if you do that, okay?
Because Pangimagas is something that there's nothing sinful about it, but it's something
you eat if you have a little bit of extra room in your stomach and you worked hard
that day, it's not something that you need every single day or every single meal.
It's something on the side that you can have if you want, and it tastes really good and
you wanna have it, but what you really need in your life is gula.
You really need vegetables, you really need bread, you need meat, you need fruit.
That's what you need for your survival.
Now, when it comes to the Christian life, there are certain things that, you know
what, we don't need, and oftentimes people dive into those things and ignore something
else, okay?
And so the first point that we have is this, when it comes to things that are Pangimagas,
Pangimagas is online preaching, okay?
Online preaching is not something unique, okay?
Now, look at what it says in Acts chapter 17, Acts 17, starting at verse 18.
It says, then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered
him, and some said, what will this bachelor say?
Others some, he seemed to be a setter forth of strange gods because he preached
unto them Jesus and the resurrection.
And they took him and brought him on to Arab-Pagas, saying, may we know what this
new doctrine aware of thou speakest is?
For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears.
We would know, therefore, what these things mean.
Notice what it says in verse number 21.
For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in
nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.
Now, here in Acts chapter 17, you have unbelievers that spent all of their time.
They just want to hear something new.
They want to hear something different.
You know, the sad reality is this, that amongst people that are saved in today's
world, a lot of them just want to hear some new thing.
So they just kind of flip through the titles of the sermons, and they say, wow,
that sounds really interesting.
I'd love to listen to that.
That sounds really interesting.
I'd love to listen to that.
Oh, wait a minute.
It's 10 o'clock at night.
I didn't read the Bible at all for one minute.
But that's okay, because I heard a couple hours of online preaching.
No, you have to understand that the harunin is the Bible read.
The online preaching is fine.
It's great.
I love listening to sermons when I get a chance, but it's fangimagas.
You don't need that every day.
And if you never heard a sermon online the rest of your life, you could be a great
Christian if you have your personal time with God.
So the first point is this.
We're comparing your personal time with God versus internet preaching.
Personal time with God versus internet preaching.
Now, what's interesting here in Acts chapter 17,
it talks in Acts 17 about a group of people that just spend all their time
wanting to hear some new thing.
And you know what?
It's the same chapter as Acts 1711.
Notice what it says in Acts 1711.
These were more noble than those of Thessalonica,
in that they received the word with all readiness of mind
and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
See, what the Bible says about the Bereans is that they were so noble,
they were so godly, that every time they heard something,
they made sure that what they heard was the truth.
Now, just think about this logically.
If you listen to four hours of preaching in a day,
do you honestly have time to search the Bible
and make sure everything you heard was correct and was accurate?
No, you don't.
And this is what people do.
They don't search the Bible to see if it's true.
They just say, well, I trust pastors so and so.
I trust brother stuff.
Don't trust me.
Read the Bible for yourself.
That's what the Bible says.
You don't just listen to a bunch of preaching and just say,
well, I assume it's right.
Here's the problem with that.
You're going to hear a lot of things that are right,
but you're not going to fully grasp them
because you don't understand the context of the chapter.
And even if you get what's being said,
you're going to get this much of it.
If you really want to fully understand the impact of it,
you have to actually read the chapter
and know what the chapter says.
Just hearing a sermon,
you're not going to fully grasp it yourself.
Now, turn in your Bible to Deuteronomy 17.
Deuteronomy 17.
And see, the online ministry is great.
We're live streaming our services now
and people are watching and they can be benefited from it.
But I don't want anybody to listen to sermons
and just sacrifice their Bible reading.
Because Bible reading is far more important
than listening to sermons.
Because you can become a great Christian
without ever listening to online preaching.
Look, before Pastor Anderson ever started his church,
I already was a soul winner.
And you say, how did that happen?
It happened because after I got saved,
I started reading the Bible.
And I saw that the Bible said this is what I need to do.
And so I started doing it.
Now look, online preaching is great.
If you've done your Bible reading,
you've done your prayer time,
you've had your personal time with God,
by all means, if you have extra time,
go ahead and listen to a sermon to be extra edified
and be motivated.
That's great, but you don't sacrifice an opponent.
You don't say, I'm just going to skip the chicken,
skip the bread, skip the rice, skip the vegetables,
and go straight to the cake.
It doesn't work that way.
Nobody does that with their diets,
at least not that often.
And if you did, then you're going to die
at a pretty young age.
You're not going to be very healthy.
You don't skip your meal.
You don't skip habounen to jump to the ponemos.
Deuteronomy 17, verse 18, the Bible reads,
And it shall be when he sitteth upon the throne
of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy
of this law and a book out of that which is
before the priests of Levites.
And it shall be with them, and he shall read therein
all the days of his life, that he may learn
to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words
of this law and these statutes to do them.
See, the Bible promises that if you read God's word
every day, you will learn to fear the Lord,
and you'll also learn to keep his words
in his statutes, okay?
That's a promise from God.
You can't point to a verse in the Bible
that promises if you listen to online preaching
that you're going to fear God.
You can't find that verse.
Now, I'm not saying it can't help you.
By all means, it can help you.
But look, as newborn babies desire the sincere
amount of the word that you may grow
thereby, you actually read the word of God.
And look, you get a lot more Bible
by reading it than you do listening to a sermon, okay?
You're hearing somebody explain a bunch of verses,
but they only explain 40 verses in that sermon.
That's not that much.
That's only one and a half chapters.
So you're expected to actually read the word of God,
and it will help you to fear God and to keep his statutes.
Notice what it says in verse 20.
That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren,
and that he turn not aside from the commandment
to the right hand or to the left,
to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom,
he and his children in the midst of Israel.
See, verse 20 promises by reading God's word every day,
it will prevent you from being lifted up full of pride, okay?
So here's the promise from God's word
by reading it through the Bible every day.
You'll learn to fear God, keep his statutes,
and not be arrogant.
Now, here's the truth.
If you never do any Bible reading
and listen to a lot of sermons,
you will for sure become very prideful.
It's a guarantee.
You say, why will you become prideful?
Because of the fact you're learning a bunch of doctrines,
and it makes you feel like you know more than other people.
Now, look, it's great to get knowledge,
but you need a proper balance.
And look, if you get a bunch of knowledge,
but you don't actually do what God says to learn to fear him
and not be prideful and to keep his statutes,
you're going to end up being a really arrogant person.
You know what the truth is?
That when it comes to people
that listen to a lot of online preaching,
many of them are very arrogant.
That's the truth.
You say, why?
Because they're learning a bunch of stuff,
and boy, they can prove their pastor wrong
about the poster rapture,
but you know what?
They haven't learned how to be humble.
And when it comes to spiritually growing,
here's the truth.
The doctrines are great to learn,
but you're not necessarily expected to ingest
all these new doctrines immediately
when you first get saved.
That's not the most important thing.
Look, you that will be married one day,
because we have a lot of single people here,
when you get married, your wife doesn't care
how well you know the poster rapture.
She cares whether or not you're a jerk, right?
And look, you're going to realize that in reality,
it's not the most important thing to learn
all these new doctrines.
Now, by all means, it's good to learn those things,
but that's not the most important thing in life.
Now turn in your Bible to Psalms 119.
Psalms 119.
Now look, if you get to do your Bible reading
and you have extra time, then by all means,
listen to sermons and learn new things
and write them down and search the scriptures.
Make sure you know what it's saying
and you know how to prove it
and you know it's accurate,
but you do not replace Bible reading for sermons, okay?
You say, Brother Stuckey,
I listen to two hours of preaching online a day.
Do you read the Bible for two hours a day?
Because maybe you want to cut down
some of that online preaching
and start reading God's Word every day.
You say, why?
Because God promises you're gonna grow
if you read the Bible, okay?
And you know, the truth is,
when you listen to a lot of online preaching,
usually you're not just fully focused on it 100%.
Usually you're kind of listening in the background,
you're doing whatever, you're hearing things.
You're not really fully focused on it, okay?
When it comes to getting close to God,
you really need to take God's Word
and get aside from all distractions
and just focus on reading God's Word
and set aside everything else.
You don't have something on in the background
while you're reading God's Word.
You get aside from all distractions
and just read His Word.
And so one thing is this,
when it comes to personal time versus internet preaching,
you cannot sacrifice your Bible reading
to listen to a sermon online.
It doesn't matter how interesting that title is, okay?
It doesn't matter that so-and-so exposed,
so-and-so's proved to be a baptismal regeneration heretic.
It doesn't matter what the title is,
you must read your Bible first, okay?
And so in Psalms 119, verse 11, the Bible reads,
thy word have I hidden my heart
that I might not sin against thee.
When it talks about hiding God's Word in your heart,
if you're hiding something,
you're putting in an effort to put it inside, okay?
This is talking about memorizing the Bible.
When you memorize the Bible,
it's gonna help you not sin against God
because when you think about sinning
or doing something wrong,
that verse is gonna pop into your head
and you're gonna feel guilty about it, okay?
So by memorizing God's Word,
it's gonna help you not sin against God.
Now look, that seems like it's pretty important
on the list of things as a Christian,
not to sin against God.
Once again, you do your Bible reading,
you know something else that's more important
than listening to sermons?
Memorizing the Bible.
Now you say, why?
Because there's a verse in the Bible that says that.
And look, you will learn the Bible much better
when you memorize God's Word
than when you're listening to sermons, right?
It seems like it takes a lot of time
but it's gonna stick in there
and you're gonna fully understand that chapter
or that book or those verses you're memorizing.
When it comes to being a soul winner,
you're gonna be 100 times more effective
as a soul winner if you memorize the verses.
You say, why?
Because instead of having to memorize how to explain,
you're gonna just understand how to explain
because you know the verse.
Once you memorize the verse,
it's like, man, I don't have to put in any effort
to figure out how to explain this
because I know what it means,
I know what it's saying,
I know what God's trying to tell me,
now I just explain these verses.
Put in the time memorizing the verses,
you won't have to put in the time memorizing
how to explain those verses.
You'll just know how to explain those verses.
That's the trick.
And look, you're not gonna do that good
as a soul winner if you're trying to memorize
how to preach the gospel.
You need to just know how to do it.
And the only way you know how to do it
is if you get God's Word hid in your heart
and it's very easy to explain.
If you don't fully understand John 3, 36,
it's hard to explain it.
It'd be like if I did a math problem up here
and you try to memorize the exact steps
to how I solve the problem.
Try that method.
You're gonna accidentally make a mistake
and it's not really gonna make a whole lot of sense.
And you're like, wow, two X equals eight,
how did I get X equals 17?
I don't know.
It's because you made a mistake along the way.
And so you need to memorize those verses
but also in all of our areas of our Christian life,
you need to memorize God's Word
that's gonna help you not sin against God.
If there's something you struggle with,
memorize a verse about it.
It's gonna help you not sin against God.
You say, Brother Stuckey,
I know it's wrong to listen to rock music
but I still struggle with that.
Hey, memorize some verses about godly music.
It's gonna help you not sin against God.
That's what the Bible's teaching.
So once again, online preaching versus memorizing the Bible,
what's more important?
According to the Bible.
Memorizing the Bible.
Now turn to Daniel 6.
Daniel 6.
I've used this example before
and just think about someone like Michael Jordan
who's a very famous basketball player.
Let me ask you a question.
Do you think Michael Jordan
learned how to be a great basketball player
by just watching people for eight hours a day?
Is that how he became good at being a basketball player?
You know how he became good?
He spent three hours every day
just shooting jump shots all day long.
He spent a couple hours every day
just dribbling the ball.
By no means am I praising sports here,
I'm just giving you a very clear analogy
that you don't become great at something
by just watching other people do it.
Let's say for example you need a surgery.
You know, I tore my ACL when I was younger.
I had surgery.
Guess what?
I want a surgeon that has actually performed surgery.
I don't want a surgeon who's just watched
some TV show where they're performing surgery all day.
They're not going to do a very good job.
You say, Brother Stuckey,
I want to be a bold preacher one day.
You become a bold preacher by reading the Bible
and memorizing it.
That's why your favorite preachers know how to preach.
They didn't just listen to people preach.
They actively did what they needed to
to train and get better.
You say, Brother Stuckey,
it's just so much more exciting listening to a sermon.
Yeah, it's puny magas.
Look, you come to your dinner
and you don't really want to eat the vegetables.
You'd rather have the ice cream,
but that's not what you need.
That's my whole point.
There's things that look exciting.
That sermon title, man, it's going to tickle your ears.
You're going to be so excited.
You're going to have so much fun listening to that sermon.
But guess what?
You might have just wasted an hour of your time.
Did it really help you grow any?
Look, I've heard so many sermons against the Sodomites.
It needs to be preached.
But look, I don't need to listen
to another sermon against it.
It doesn't really benefit me, okay?
I mean, yes, I already dislike them.
I already hate them because I read the Bible
to see what it says.
I know what they are.
I know what the Bible says.
Listening to a sermon on it,
it doesn't really benefit my life.
But see, reading the Bible,
that always benefits you.
You're always learning something new.
You're seeing what the Bible says.
And look, I'm not down on online preaching.
We put our sermons online,
and we hope it can benefit people.
But quite honestly,
if there's someone who listens to the sermons
that doesn't read the Bible,
if I can encourage them to quit listening to my sermons
and start reading the Bible,
that's better for them.
That's better for all of us, okay?
Now, here's the thing about this.
If you don't have a good church,
it makes sense you need to listen to some preaching.
You say, why?
Because you need to be motivated.
And church is meant to teach you
and to motivate you.
And unfortunately,
most Baptist churches here in the Philippines,
you don't learn anything.
And you don't get motivated to look for God.
But look, if you're going to tell me
that you never learn anything from these sermons,
I don't believe you.
If you're going to tell me
that I've never even preached against you
and command you to do things and motivate you,
I don't believe you.
You know why?
Because the Word of God is infinite.
And I don't care who is sitting in this room.
If somebody gets up to preach
that knows the Bible
and they spent time with their sermons,
everybody in the world will learn.
And it won't go to me.
It doesn't matter who it is.
If Pastor Jimenez sat here,
if he just came to this church,
I promise you he'd learn things from the sermon.
Not because I know so much about the Bible.
I mean, he knows the Bible better than me.
But when you prepare a sermon
and take time to do it,
there's new things you're learning.
I learn when I'm preparing my sermons.
There's new things I learn all the time.
And look, all of us
are going to constantly be learning new things.
And look, if a pastor or a person preaching
is preaching sermons
and you don't learn anything,
and you're not motivated to live for God
and get the sin out of your life
and go, so what, there's something wrong.
Because this book is infinite.
And for you to be able to hear sermons
all the time and never learn.
And look, I've been in churches like that.
You sit there all the time
and you don't learn.
I've been to churches that have pews
and you know, sometimes
I would kind of slouch down my seat
and I would either memorize the Bible
or read the Bible in our service.
Now, I'm not saying you should do that.
I hope you don't do that in our church.
But you say, why did you do that?
Because of the fact
I'm not going to break God's command
and I'm not going to church.
And I wasn't learning anything.
And I'm just like, you know what,
I want to learn something.
I mean, I'm spending like
all of my day on Sunday here at church
going on the bus routes
and helping out and listening to the sermons.
And I'm spending my time
sobering trying to motivate people
to come to this church.
I want to at least learn something.
Okay?
Some of the great doctrines
I've learned in the Bible
or when I was in church just reading it.
That's the truth.
And Daniel chapter 6, notice verse 10.
Daniel 6 verse 10.
Now when Daniel knew
that the writing was signed
he went into his house
and his windows being opened
in his chamber toward Jerusalem
he kneeled upon his knees
three times a day
and prayed and gave thanks before his God
as he did a four time.
Then these men assembled
and found Daniel praying
and making supplication before his God.
And see the Bible talks about Daniel
having a pattern for praying
as his commander
or as he did a four time the Bible says.
And so Daniel three times a day prayed.
Now Daniel probably had more free time
than people that are married and have kids.
You know he was a single guy
but he still was praying every day.
And the Bible says
pray without ceasing.
We need to be able to pray
every single day of our lives.
This comes to our personal time with God.
And when it comes to reading the Bible
memorizing the Bible and prayer.
Look if you have time
to be on Facebook all day
and you have time to listen
to all these sermons
don't tell me you don't have time
to get close to God.
You say what would God prefer me to do?
Well what do these verses say in the Bible?
He'd prefer you to read the Bible
and memorize and spend time praying
than just listening to a lot of online preaching.
Now turn in your Bible to Ephesians 5.
And see the truth is this
that when it comes to pranahimagas
there's certain things in life
that you really want
you're attracted to
it sounds good
it tastes good
it feels good or whatever
but it doesn't really do you any benefits.
And when it comes to personal time
with God it's a lot more difficult
to spend time reading the Bible
than listening to a sermon.
It's a lot more difficult.
It's very easy to just sit down
and just listen to a sermon for an hour.
Because you don't really have to pay attention
you can have it on in the background
or whatever
it's very easy
and that's why you don't grow as much with it.
Because things that actually are difficult
are what actually make you grow.
Look if you work out
and you want to get stronger
the only way you're going to get stronger
is if you do something that's difficult
that's hard.
If your workout routine is
hey I get to the bench press
and don't have any weights on either side
it's like that's not going to make you stronger.
It's like a 10 year old could do that.
It's not going to make you stronger.
You have to actually add weights to the side
and make it difficult.
Reading the Bible for an hour
that's difficult.
You say brother, I've never read the Bible for an hour.
You've never read it for an hour
because it's difficult.
It's hard to do.
But if you really want to grow
that's what you're going to do.
Set aside all distractions.
Memorize in the Bible
look it's difficult.
Talk to anyone who memorizes the Bible.
You learn stuff and then you forget it.
It's frustrating.
It's very frustrating.
You learn and then you forget.
You're like man.
Now here's the thing about memorizing the Bible.
Anything you learn is not going to be a waste
because you at least learn some things from it.
If I were to memorize a random chapter in the Bible
I'm going to learn a lot of things.
And even if I don't fully
if I'm not able to quote it word for word
I still learn stuff.
There's still a purpose to it.
There's still a point.
But memorizing the Bible is difficult.
It's not easy.
Praying is difficult.
It's not easy.
If it was easy we wouldn't have had to have
a prayer challenge in England
because everyone would just do it automatically.
Now listening to sermons
that's not hard at all.
If we had a listening to sermons challenge
listen to one sermon a day
everybody would do it.
Okay.
It wouldn't be hard.
We're never going to have that challenge though
because that's not really what's going to help you grow.
But it's not just when it comes to
personal time with God versus internet preaching.
Something that's kind of similar
is personal time with family
versus internet preaching.
Okay.
Now look you know next week
I'm preaching a sermon on preparing for marriage.
I think it's going to be good
because we have a lot of people that
in the next couple years might get married.
But honestly this is good marriage advice
for you in this room
that you would one day get married
and say what's more important
personal time with family or internet preaching.
Okay.
And once again the internet preaching is the panginagas.
You get home after a hard day at work
you're exhausted.
You say man I'm too tired to spend time with my family.
It's very easy to just listen to that sermon.
See online preaching is almost like
the new TV for harm movement so to speak.
Yeah.
Because what happened with families is
once the television became common
nobody ever spent any time with their families.
And what do they do?
Hey I'm exhausted after a hard day at work
let's just have our kids watch TV.
We do our thing they do their thing.
Why?
Because it's very easy.
Right.
You just turn on that TV
and it tickles everyone's ears and their eyes
and they're just entertained for hours.
That's what in our movement or like-minded churches
what's replaced the TV is the internet preaching.
And now instead of spending time with family
hey just listen to a sermon.
Okay.
And here's the truth for you that are in this room.
You men that are going to get married one day
your wife really isn't going to care
how many verses you know on a poster graph.
She's going to care that you come home
and you actually spend time with her.
Yeah.
But you have to actually love her.
If you never spend any time with her
and just listen to sermons
the reality is this
what you're teaching your wife
is the preaching is more important than her
and it's going to cause her to resent God
because of the fact
getting close to God so to speak
is causing you to get away from her.
Right.
That's the reality.
It's just common sense.
Turn to Ephesians 5.
Ephesians 5.
Now let me be very clear
when I talk about personal time with family
I'm not saying your third cousin.
Okay.
I'm not saying your great granddad.
Okay.
I'm not saying you know
your your your reprobate nephew or whatever.
I'm saying you know your wife
your husband your kids.
Okay.
Your immediate family.
Your your husband or wife
and the kids that you have.
That's what I mean by personal time with family.
Well let's see what the Bible says
about spending time with your wives.
Ephesians 5 verse 25.
And see what the Bible says is
Christ loved the church and he gave himself for it.
Now he literally died on the cross
but even before he died
he commanded us to love in the same way he had.
And the analogy the Bible's giving is
that he laid down his life every single day.
Okay.
He loved and cared about other people
and as a result of doing it
it says that he might sanctify and cleanse it
with the washing of water by the word.
It says in verse 27
that it should be holy and without blemish.
See what the Bible is trying to tell you is this
that if you as a husband
lay down your life for your wife
it's going to help her want to live for God.
Yeah.
And be holy
and actually love God.
But if you just don't spend any time with her
it's going to do the opposite.
Okay.
Verse 29 verse 28.
And see the Bible says
that we're supposed to love our wives as our own bodies.
Look everybody loves their own body.
Everybody cares about themselves
but it doesn't mean everybody cares about their spouse.
You say well how do you know if you care about your spouse?
How much time do you spend with them?
That's the reality.
I mean love implies action.
You say well I really feel strongly about this person
but you listen to four hours of preaching
and you never spend any time with them.
I mean how much do you really love them?
Love is going to imply action.
You say in verse number 28
why does it say he that loved his wife loved himself?
Look happy wife, happy life.
That's the reality.
If you don't spend time with your wife
and you just listen to all this online preaching
and you know everything that's happening in our movement
and so and so got kicked out of whatever church
look your wife is not going to love you.
She's going to start resenting you.
She's going to start resenting this sort of preaching and stuff like that
because you're drawing away from her.
And guess what?
It's going to make your life miserable.
If your wife is miserable
you're going to be miserable.
That's the reality.
That's the truth.
And the same goes the other way as well.
You know honestly it's more of a problem
for guys listening to a lot of preaching
but if there was a wife that just listened to lots and lots of preaching
and never spent any time with her husband
it's the same sort of thing.
I'm just mentioning it with guys
because the reality is it's usually a problem with men.
Men just listen to lots of preaching and everything.
They don't spend time with their wives.
It's going to cause their wives to resent them.
That's what the Bible teaches.
Turn to Ephesians 6.
Ephesians 6.
And I say Brother Stuckey it's just so easy though.
You go home, you're tired, you just turn on that sermon.
You know it's exciting, it's really easy to do,
it doesn't take much effort.
Yeah exactly my point.
It's very easy.
You just go home, you just have it on in the background.
Look it takes effort to spend time with your spouse.
It takes effort to put aside all distractions.
It takes effort to come home and not just sit around and do nothing.
But look that started with the television
of people sitting around and doing nothing.
And with our modern day and all this you know cell phones
and everything like that,
it's very easy for people to just sit around
and do nothing all day.
That's the reality.
That didn't used to be that way a hundred years ago
because people's lives used to be difficult.
And when they got off work they weren't really done.
They worked hard.
And then they would actually spend time with their families.
They didn't just watch TV or watch a movie.
They actually spent time with their families.
That's a problem we have in today's world.
Notice what it says in Ephesians 6.
And he fathers provoked not your children to wrath
but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
And so not only spending time with your wife
but spending time with your kids.
And the Bible says here in verse four
provoke not your children to wrath.
You say how is it that I'm going to provoke my child to wrath?
Well one really easy way is don't spend time with them.
You'll provoke them to wrath.
That's the reality.
And don't have this attitude that
because I go to this church
and we have this preaching and this soul winning
it's a guarantee my kids are going to grow up
and love the Lord and love me
and we'll be really close to them.
That's not a guarantee.
Turn to first Samuel 7.
I'll prove it to you from the Bible.
And I think it's going to be a sad reality one day
that people that are in churches like this
they kind of just assume that
because my kids are homeschooled
and because we hear all this preaching
they're going to automatically love me and love the Lord.
They're going to be in for an awakening a lot of times
because you actually have to make an effort
to spend time with them.
It's not going to cause them to love God.
If they go to a church
that preaches how you need to spend time with your family
and then they still don't spend time with their family
it's not going to cause them to love their parents that much.
That's the reality of it.
Now it says in first Samuel 7 verses 15 and 16
and Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life.
And he went from year to year in circuit
to Betho and Gilgal and Mizpah
and judged Israel in all those places.
And so Samuel was a great man of God.
We have a few of the books at the bottom.
Name first, second Samuel.
He's a great man of God.
He was one of the greatest men in the Old Testament
and he's judging Israel all the days of his life.
He's going everywhere doing it.
He's going from Betho to Gilgal to Mizpah.
He's going everywhere.
He's putting in a lot of effort serving the Lord, isn't he?
Well, let's see what the result of that is.
First Samuel 8 verse 1.
And it came to pass when Samuel was old
that he made his sons judges over Israel.
Now the name of his firstborn was Joel
and the name of his second, Nebaiath.
They were judges in Beersheba.
And his sons walked not in his ways
but turned aside after Lucre
and took bribes and perverted judgment.
Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together
and came to Samuel on the Ramah
and said unto him,
Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways.
Now make as a king to judge us like all the nations.
Now I'm not saying his sons were unsaved
but they weren't that godly, were they?
They're not obeying the commandments of God.
You say, why is it?
Well, I believe the Bible's giving a picture of that
in First Samuel 17
because Samuel is going everywhere.
And guess what?
That means you don't have any time
for your wife and kids.
You can't just be gone all the time
every weekend and still spend time with your family.
You must make a choice, okay?
If you're gone all the time
and you never have any time
with your kids and your family,
they're not going to grow up and love the Lord.
That's the reality of it.
In fact, even if they get saved,
they're going to quite honestly
probably present the Lord in a lot of ways.
Why?
Because you're spending all your time obsessed
with something and spending no time with them.
That's the reality of it.
And you say, I don't know about that, brother Stecky.
Well, if you disagree with me,
then why don't we just look at
all the characters in the Bible,
all the godly characters,
and how many of them had kids
that grew up and loved them
and were godly people?
Do you really see that in the Bible?
Yeah.
I mean, David was a great man of God, right?
Right, yeah.
Did his kids love the Lord?
Look at all the characters in the Bible.
You say, why is that?
Because they're doing the same thing
today that they did back then.
People just spend so much time
obsessed with something
and don't spend time with their kids.
That's the reality of it.
That's the reason why their kids
don't grow up and love the Lord
and love them and care about them.
That's the reality of it.
And look, you know,
I think people just don't get this.
People think that they go to a church like this,
their kids will just automatically just grow up
and just love the Lord.
That's not a guarantee.
You have to actually put in real effort to do that.
Now, you can kind of have your choice in life.
Do you want to just go on
all these exciting adventures
or do you want to spend time with your family?
You know, when I was growing up,
my dad had a chance of getting a big pay raise.
And to do that,
what he would have to do is basically be gone
most of the time.
He'd be gone on projects where basically
he'd be several hours away.
So basically he would just be living there
and he would just kind of come back
from time to time on weekends
and stuff like that.
My dad turned it down.
That would have been a lot more money for us,
but he turned it down
because he wanted to actually spend time with us.
He made a sacrifice.
Now, do you think my dad regrets it now?
That his kids love him?
That his kids love the Lord?
Do you think he regrets it now?
No, he doesn't.
Look, if you choose to say,
you know, I'm going to just go around everywhere
like Samuel's doing
and you're not there for your kids,
it doesn't matter if you're doing something spiritual.
Your kids are going to resent you.
You say, brother, you know,
I'm going to get married.
I'm still going to go soloing like three hours every day
and never spend time with my family.
You know what?
You're commanded to love your wife and other kids.
And if you do that, they will not love you.
And look, the truth is, you know,
marriage and having kids is difficult.
It's not easy.
It takes time.
It takes effort.
And I think it's great that a lot of people in this room,
you know, they put in a lot of effort.
They go soloing a lot.
But I'm just trying to help you guys out
that when you get married,
you're going to probably have to
scale that down a little bit.
You're probably going to have to spend time with your spouse.
You're going to have to set aside distractions.
See, here's the thing about when it comes to
when you're dating before you're married.
When you're dating, everything's fun and exciting.
You say, why?
Because you don't share the stresses of life together yet.
Once you get married, guess what?
You're both stressed out all the time.
You're both exhausted all the time.
And it's not just you're having a fun little dinner
or something like that.
No, you know what?
You're actually going to be frustrated a lot.
You're going to get mad at each other a lot.
You know, honestly, it's not easy.
And we'll talk about that next week.
But that's the reality.
You know, it's not the easiest thing.
You say, what's the advice from the Bible?
Spend time with your family.
It seems simple.
But look, when you come home from work, you're tired.
Aren't we all tired when we come home from work?
We work 8, 9, 10, 11 hours a week.
Man, I'm exhausted.
But here's the thing.
If you choose not to spend time with your family now,
you'll regret it 20 years from now.
That's right.
And so yes, it's going to be difficult.
But look, God did not say life is going to be easy.
Life is going to be difficult.
Anything valuable takes effort.
It's not easy.
Now turn to Ephesians 4.
Ephesians 4.
So when it comes to the first two points that we looked at,
online preaching is great if you get a chance to listen to sermons.
But you have to realize that your personal time with God is more important.
And guess what?
When you get married and you have family, you have kids,
your time with your spouse and your kids is very important.
And quite honestly, that doesn't really leave you
a whole lot of time to listen to online preaching.
And so if you're able to listen to sermons here or there,
or maybe you have a job and you can listen on your headphones,
hey, that's great.
I've worked a job before where I was on Microsoft Excel.
I'd done the job long enough.
It was just copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste.
I didn't have to pay attention.
So I listened to lots of preaching.
Man, I had a lot of pungy nuggets back then.
But I can't do that now.
Most weeks, I don't listen to any sermons.
And honestly, I would love to listen to more sermons
because I get edified and I learn things.
But quite honestly, life's busy.
And for me, there's just priorities that are more important.
And the things I mentioned, they're for sure more important.
That's what the Bible teaches.
And you must realize that, yeah, the online preaching is great.
But look, you do go to a church where you're learning more about it.
So you can't say that you need preaching.
You're hearing preaching every single week.
Ephesians 4, and the next thing we're going to look at,
which is sort of closely related,
is we're going to look at devotion to a church
versus devotion to a movement, okay?
When it comes to devotion to a movement
and all the online preaching and all the pastors we like,
it's pungy magus.
It's entertaining.
It's interesting.
You love to see what's going on in all these other churches.
It's not really what you need, though.
You don't need to know what's going on in all of these other churches.
What you really need is to be devoted to this church.
And I'm not saying that to try to get you guys not to listen to online preaching.
Everything I've showed you is straight from the Bible so far.
I think it's great.
If you have time to listen to sermons from Pastor Menes or the other pastors,
I think it's great.
I'm fine with that.
I think that's great.
I'm not against that.
I'm just trying to help you out that, you know what,
there are things that are more important.
And this is important because before this church existed,
you didn't necessarily have a church like this.
So yeah, you were very devoted to the online preaching,
the movement, and all this stuff.
But now that you actually have a church,
that stuff's really not as important anymore.
I think it's great that before our church existed,
people were communicating all over the Philippines
and jointly doing so many events and stuff like that.
And that stuff's great.
And that stuff's a necessity when you don't have a church
that's going to Cavite on a Wednesday.
But once you have a church,
you realize you need to be devoted to your church,
not necessarily a movement.
Ephesians 4, what it says in verse 11 is this,
and he gave some apostles and some prophets
and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers
for the perfecting of the saints
for the work of the ministry,
for the edifying of the body of Christ.
And so what it says is that apostles, prophets,
evangelists, pastors, and teachers,
they're given for the perfecting of the saints
basically to complete the saints,
teach them everything in the Bible
and help them grow for the work of the ministry,
for the soul winning and everything associated,
and for the edifying of the body of Christ,
referring to the local body of Christ.
Not a universal body, not a movement body,
but your local body of Christ.
Now my position at this church
is I'd be referred to as an evangelist.
I'm certainly not an apostle.
And I'm not a pastor yet
because we only have one child.
So I'm not vividly a pastor,
but I am an evangelist given for these things,
as the Bible teaches.
So it's my job to preach the sermons,
spend time on them so you guys can learn
and grow and be edified,
and also have lots of soul winning
so that way we can all be devoted
to doing lots of soul winning.
And these things are given
for the local body of Christ, okay?
Now if people can be edified outside of our church,
I think that's great,
but the best thing for them
is to have a great local church to go to.
That's the reality.
The online preaching has been very beneficial in my life.
It's helped me learn new doctrines
and be motivating to go soul winning
and understand things in the Bible better.
But look, the reality is,
the way to reach the world is local churches.
That's the only way to reach it.
We need local churches.
Verse 13,
till we all come in the unity of the faith
and of the knowledge of the Son of God
unto a perfect man
under the measure of the stature
of the fullness of Christ.
And see, when it comes to a church,
a church helps provide unity.
Say, how does a church provide unity?
Because of the fact we have the same doctrine.
And everybody in this room knows what our doctrine is.
There's nothing hidden.
There's not some dark secret
that's come down in a couple years.
No, you guys know what I believe.
I say what I believe.
I teach what I believe.
The first Wednesday service we had,
the sermon was the BBC Manila doctrinal statement
on John 1.
Because everything we believe
is pretty much founded the first,
you know, 14 to 18 verses of John 1.
That's the way kind of John 1 was designed.
Just everything we believe.
And we said everything in that sermon.
We're anti-Calvinism, anti-dispensationalism,
eternal security, the Trinity,
that Jesus is God.
We laid everything out in that sermon, okay?
There's nothing hidden that's going to come out.
There's unity because of the fact
we believe the same thing here, okay?
It's not a gray area like,
oh, we believe different things.
No, the reason why we believe the same thing is
because if you don't believe these same things,
you're probably not going to come to this church.
Because we make it clear what we believe.
Verse number 14,
that we henceforth be no more children
tossed to and fro
and carried about with every wind of doctrine,
by the sight of men and crony craftiness
whereby they lie in wait to deceive.
And the Bible says that we should not be children
tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine.
You hear a sermon, you know,
on one topic that's pretty trippy.
You say, huh, those are some good arguments.
You know, maybe the word after does mean before.
Okay?
And then you start changing your mind.
Look, you shouldn't be tossed to and fro.
And one thing that surprised me is that
there's been certain people that were at churches
that ended up being heretics
and they've been preaching all manners of heresy.
And no one in the church realized that.
And I'm like, how would you not realize it?
Because you're not reading the Bible.
Yeah.
That's the reason why.
Because it's just exciting.
Like our pastors in this movement or whatever
and you're not actually reading the Bible.
That's the reason why they got away with preaching heresy
and you just didn't catch it.
Okay?
Now look, I'd be very disappointed
if let's say, for example, you know,
I get thrown in jail.
Okay?
I don't think that's going to happen.
But, you know, maybe it's a possibility
that someone comes in here
and starts preaching for a month
and they're the person I have here
and they're just preaching all manner of heresy.
I'd be disappointed if you guys didn't spot.
I'd be disappointed if someone didn't say,
hey, Brother Stuckey, I think you need somebody else.
Okay?
So it said this and this and this.
I hope you guys will spot.
And the way you're going to spot it
is when you read the Bible for yourself
and you're not so devoted to a movement
but a church as well.
Verse number 15.
But speaking the truth in love
may grow up into him in all things
which is the head and even Christ
from whom the whole body fitly joined together
and compacted by that which every joint supplyeth
according to the effectual working
in the measure of every part
make an increase of the body
under the edifying of itself in love.
And see, the Bible says that this local body
is fitly joined together.
Every one of you, you're in this church for a reason.
God has you here for a reason.
Okay?
It's like a puzzle that gets put together,
fitly joined together.
Now if we take a puzzle piece out of here
and then we just go over to Verity Baptist Church
and just exchange puzzle pieces,
that piece isn't going to fit here
and this piece isn't going to fit there.
Okay?
There's a reason why you're at this church.
We're fitly joined together
to help edify you,
help encourage one another.
Here in about a month,
I'm going to preach a sermon
on the importance of church.
And I think you'll be surprised
what the Bible actually says
about what the real importance is.
We're going to talk about that
but look, it's very important to have a church.
That you love your church.
That you care about your church.
You love going soul winning for that church.
You love trying to bring visitors to church.
You know, you're excited about the preaching.
You're excited about the fellowship.
Look, the online movements,
it's not really that important.
Now I understand that if you live in another country
and you don't have a church,
you don't have a soul winning partner,
that you're trying to stay in the loop
and you're trying to be encouraged.
I understand that.
I understand that, you know, a year ago,
that's what a lot of you guys were kind of doing.
We're like, should I go to a church
where my pastor's not saved?
You know, I'm like, I don't know.
It's kind of a tough choice.
And you're trying to go to church
and doing your best you could
but it was hard to be motivated, okay?
And so it makes sense that, you know,
all this time is spent trying to listen to all the sermons
and you're excited about everything.
But look, when it comes to once you have a church,
a church itself is going to keep you busy
with all the activities and everything going on.
Right.
That's the reality of the matter.
And look, you know, I'm happy anybody who listens
to online preaching who visits our church
but, you know, other churches can do whatever they want.
They're different churches.
It's fine.
There's always going to be some new person
that becomes a heretic
because there's lots of churches out there, right?
We can't keep up to date with all this stuff.
It's impossible.
Now there might be some situations that do involve us
and in those situations, you know,
we kind of go, okay, we won't do the grief.
But you know, if something happens at, you know,
I don't know, whatever church in the US,
it doesn't really affect us.
And if we have different opinions about it,
it's not really the end of the world, okay?
You know, we could have different opinions
about some situation that happens in another church.
Should they rightfully have been kicked out or not?
It doesn't really affect us.
But if something happens here,
like if we kick somebody out, it's like,
well, you better be on board with what we did.
Right.
That's the reality.
You can have a different opinion on some other church
but if somebody gets kicked out of here
and it's like, well, you better be on board
with what we did and not try to cause
the sin within the ranks.
Yeah.
Now turn to 1st Timothy 6, 1st Timothy 6.
Now when it comes to a church versus a movement,
the movement's kind of pungy about us
because you can kind of just look at it,
it's entertaining, it's interesting,
there's always something happening.
With a church, some of the stuff that's happening
is sweeping the flooring.
I mean, some of the remedial stuff
is not that much fun.
So yeah, I get it.
It's more exciting just to, you know,
go on Facebook and find out what's going on.
But that doesn't really benefit the local church.
And you're fit to join together and fear for a reason.
Okay.
Now the next thing we're going to look at is this.
We're going to look at your shelter, clothes,
and food versus vacations, nice restaurants,
fancy clothes, fancy homes.
Basically, your vacations and your nice restaurants
work upon the markets.
Okay.
Of course you love vacations.
Of course you love the fancy restaurants.
But that's not necessarily what you need.
What you need is shelter, clothes, and food.
First Timothy 6, verse 6.
But godliness with contentment is great gain.
The Bible says if you have godliness and you're happy,
you're contented, it's great gain.
He said, Brother Shucky, I thought that if I won the lottery,
that would be great gain.
Not according to the Bible.
According to the Bible, what great gain is is this,
godliness with contentment.
No guarantee of money coming.
What great gain is that you're living a godly life
and you're happy.
That's what God cares about.
He wants us to be happy.
God does want us to be happy in life.
The reality is by living a godly life,
that will help us be happy.
But if we're godly and we're contented with what we have,
you know what, that's great gain.
Not having lots of money and going on all these fancy trips.
No godliness with contentment is great gain,
according to the Bible.
Verse number seven,
for we brought nothing into this world
and it is certain we can carry nothing out.
And so you come into this world with nothing.
Okay, you're born into this world,
you live and you have nothing, okay.
And then we can carry nothing out, okay.
Now this seems pretty obvious to us,
but quite honestly,
there have been a lot of societies
that believe that they could carry things out.
Look at the Egyptian society.
You know what the Egyptian society would do?
You know, when you got buried,
you get buried with all of your nice stuff.
All of your gold, all of your jewelry,
everything that's fancy got buried with you.
You say why?
Because you get to carry it to the next life,
according to them.
Now here's what my thought is.
Let's say for example that's your father
that made a lot of money in this life
and he just carries it all to the grave with him.
It's like man, talk about being a covetous person.
You don't need any of it to your kids.
That's the Egyptian society.
Very covetous society where basically
you have all this money
and you want to take it to the grave with you.
I mean what kind of a person would do that?
Why don't you actually leave it to someone that could use it?
That's not what they did in their society.
You know, they actually put it in their graves with them
and they believe that they can just take it to the next life.
What they should have done
is just given it to their family.
You made a lot of money.
You can leave that gold to your kids,
your wife, your family.
Instead of just taking it to the grave.
Verse number eight.
And having food and raiment,
let us be there with contempt.
See the Bible says in verse number eight
that if we just have food and raiment
or food and clothing,
we should be content, okay?
Now look, everyone in this room has clothing
and everybody has food
because if you didn't have food
then you wouldn't be here.
You'd be dead, right?
So guess what?
There's no excuse not to be content.
You say, but brother Stuckey, I'm not content.
Well the Bible says I learned
and whatsoever stand at am
there would be content.
Learn to be content.
Say, brother Stuckey, I wish my home was nicer.
Learn to be content.
Don't just say, wow, I wish I had more money.
Learn to be happy with what God's given.
Amen.
Now turn to Hebrews 13.
Hebrews 13.
I mean quite honestly in today's world,
obviously the Philippines isn't as rich
as the United States
but quite honestly this country is very rich
when you compare it to the rest of history
because in the Bible,
one of the things that Solomon's gathered himself,
he's gathered in like peacocks
and all these things like just go to a zoo.
But they didn't have that.
Quite honestly, we live pretty rich lives.
You can just walk outside
and there's all kinds of different types of food.
They didn't really have that in the past.
Now you can go to the grocery store
and find pretty much anything you want.
You want pangimages, go get it.
You want tianapai, go get it.
You can have anything you want.
It wasn't that easy in the past
and when you compare us to how people lived
hundreds of years ago,
quite honestly all of us are rich
because you can honestly have any type of food
that you want.
I remember I was looking up,
there's some other country
and somebody asked about this country,
hey if I just came here with this much money,
could I just like live like a king in this country?
And then somebody responded
who was from the country,
they said well technically yeah,
you'll live better than everybody else
but you're still going to have to walk
to get your buckets of water each morning.
So it's like yeah,
you'll live a fancy lifestyle with that.
Look, we live a fancy lifestyle compared to that.
We're not the richest country
but quite honestly we have everything we need.
We have food, we have ramen,
and quite honestly pretty much any type of food.
All types of different types of clothes you want.
In the past, the Bible says Lydia was a seller of purple.
Why does it say she was a seller of purple?
Because you couldn't find things with purple
because it was very expensive or a luxurious product.
Now look, you can buy shirts with purple on them.
It's not too hard.
You buy anything you want,
any color, anything.
We're rich compared to how they used to live.
That's the reality.
Hebrews 13 verse 5,
Let your conversation be without covetousness,
and be content with such things as you have.
For he hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.
Now he says that he'll never leave us nor forsake us.
Basically he's, you know, we can't lose our salvation.
Obviously we're saved forever.
But you know the Lord's always there with you
if you have times of need as well.
You know, if you're someone who's living godly
but you have struggles in life,
you know, you pray to God if he's there for you.
He's never going to leave us.
He's never going to forsake us.
He'll never send us to hell as his children.
We should be content with such things
as we have.
And it says, let your conversation
be without covetousness.
Now, quite honestly, you know a lot of people
when you just listen to the way they talk,
it's just full of covetousness.
They just talk about how I wish I had this,
and I wish I had that, and this, and that, and that.
All they talk about is wanting money.
All they talk about is I wish I could go on this vacation.
I wish I could do this.
Yeah, it's great if you get to go on vacation.
And by all means, if you have the money, do it.
There's nothing wrong with it.
There's nothing sinful about it.
But if you don't have the money, don't spend your money
on something you don't have.
Because what you need is your food and your rain.
Now, when it says your conversation here,
the word conversation in the Bible
is really not affirmed in what you say.
That's part of it.
It's referred to your entire life.
You can look up every reference to conversation in the Bible.
It's referred to basically your whole lifestyle.
So it's not just what they said.
Basically, their whole lives just lived
full of covetousness.
They just did whatever they could
because they wanted to get everything they wanted in life.
Everything that seemed good to them,
everything that sounded good, they just wanted everything.
That's the way most people live their lives.
People are very, very covetous.
That's the reality.
Now, turning your Bible to Matthew 9.
Matthew 9.
We'll go one last place here real quick.
And so we looked at personal time with God,
which is opponent.
And then we looked at online preaching.
We looked at personal time with family,
which once again is the opponent.
And the online preaching is the hagivagas.
We looked at devotion to a church,
which is what's important.
It's what she means, the opponent.
And we looked at devotion to a book.
I think it's awesome there's so many churches
out there that are doing great works.
This church is doing greater works than us.
Praise the Lord for it.
It's great.
It's awesome.
But we're still a local church.
And we have to realize the importance of that.
And then we looked at our basic necessities in life.
Our food and regiments versus
fancy vacations and restaurants.
And our food and regiments is what we need.
That's all we need.
Okay.
We don't need the fancy restaurants
and things like that.
One thing I'll just quickly touch on,
I've talked about before,
but the last thing I want you to compare,
or I want to compare is this.
Preaching door to door and one-on-one in public places
versus preaching to large crowds and schools
and things like that.
Okay.
Now I'm not only briefly touching this for sake of time,
but when it comes to this,
the hagivagas is the preaching to schools
and the large crowds.
Okay.
Now look at what it says in Matthew 9.
9, verse 35.
And Jesus went about all the cities and villages,
teaching, verse 35,
teaching in their synagogues
and preaching the gospel of the kingdom
and feeling every sickness and every disease among the people.
But when he saw the multitudes,
he was moved with compassion on them
because they fainted and were scattered abroad
as sheep having no shepherd.
Then saith the unto his disciples,
the harvest truly is plenteous,
but the labors are few.
Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest,
that he will send forth labors into his harvest.
And so what Jesus says is,
we need to pray for more soldiers
so we can send them out to preach the gospel.
Okay.
When you look at the entire Bible,
whether it's the gospels,
whether it's the book of Acts,
the best method,
the main method used is just one-on-one preach to the gospel.
Right.
That's what you always see in the book of John.
That's what you see with Jesus talking to the name Demas.
You see it in John chapter 4.
And here in Matthew 9,
a large crowd,
and guess what Jesus does not do,
doesn't preach the gospel on them.
You say, why?
It doesn't work.
It's not the most effective.
Now I'm not saying it's useless
because there's nothing wrong with Bali Magas.
Quite honestly,
I hope as this next school year comes around,
we'll be able to start preaching in the school some.
But it's always been something on the back burner to me.
Because I know it's the most exciting thing,
and everyone looks at it as super exciting,
but the reality is one-on-one soul when he has the method
always used in the Bible.
That's right.
That's the best method.
Amen.
Right.
You notice this in Matthew chapter 9,
and then Matthew 10, verse 1,
and when he had called unto him his 12 disciples,
he gave them power against unclean spirits to cast them out
and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.
What he's going to do is send them out two by two
to preach the gospel.
That's what we didn't commit to.
We just went out and just paired up.
We went out so many to preach the gospel
and got lots of people saved.
Think about Acts chapter 2.
This is what some people think.
Some people think Peter just stood up
and preached the gospel and had over 3,000 saved.
Now let me say this.
First of all, in Acts chapter 2,
more than 3,000 people got saved.
3,000 people got baptized.
It does not say 3,000 people got saved.
They had more than 3,000 saved,
because those that gladly heard the word were baptized.
Not just those that got saved,
but those that got saved and baptized is what they numbered.
We don't know how many they got saved,
because quite honestly, they probably didn't know.
They're getting so many people saved.
It's like when we preached to seven people at one time
and then eight and then 10.
We have no idea how many of them got saved.
It's hard to tell.
You can count two, you can count four.
You really don't know.
It's hard to know.
You talk one on one, you can get a much better idea.
It's really hard when you talk to people.
It's kind of the most difficult thing.
Talk to so many people, you just don't know who got saved.
But in Acts 2, it wasn't one person
just standing up and preaching.
No, it's actually a lot of people going out
and preaching the gospel.
That's the way you successfully get lots of people saved.
It's not something done by one person
or a couple people.
It's done by a lot of people doing the work.
And that's what you see throughout the book of Acts.
As it goes on with the book of Acts,
they're just going out and preaching the gospel
and they get more and more people saved.
That is the main method.
And you'll notice that in the Sermon on the Mount,
at the end of the Sermon on the Mount,
or even during it, Jesus touches on salvation
because it's a sermon, but he doesn't preach
a whole sermon on salvation.
You say, why?
It's not the best way to get people saved.
See, that's what a lot of Baptist churches
do in the Philippines where they basically
have every sermon on salvation
and they have an overwhelming one.
It doesn't really work.
And look, when I was in college,
I would invite people to hear me preach.
I invite unsaved people to hear me preach
and I always preach on salvation.
You say, why?
Because I figured if I preach on salvation
for an hour, we're going to get saved.
Guess what never happened to all the people
that visited and heard me preach?
They never got saved.
See, why?
It just isn't the method that the Bible has.
Now, it's a good thing to do on the side,
but it's never going to replace
our Wednesday evening soloing time
or some of the other ones.
Now, I understand other churches,
they might put more of an emphasis
on the school ministry,
and they still do soloing one-on-one.
So I'm not saying they do both of those.
We just have the emphasis mainly on the one-on-one
because I do believe it's the best
and most effective method to get people saved.
Now, it's not the most exciting method.
The most exciting method is to preach.
When I was in Guyana,
I remember preaching to a thousand people
at one time.
It was exciting.
But in reality,
I don't really think many people got saved.
You say, why?
Because if you don't talk to people one-on-one
and ask questions and be able to fully
get their attention,
they're probably not going to get it.
Now, look, both things are great.
Wherever you have an open door
to preach the gospel,
by all means,
to preach the gospel,
take those opportunities,
that's great.
But it's not the hakuna.
It's the pangimadas.
The hakuna is just the fact
that we just go out every Sunday
and look, it takes a lot of time.
We're all tired.
We all put in a lot of hard work.
That's the method God gave us.
And it works.
Look, this number in our bullets
is pretty accurate.
And then we get a lot of people saved.
We put in a lot of work,
a lot of time,
a lot of effort,
and it's a receptive country,
so a lot of people listen to us.
That's the method God gave us.
And so in conclusion,
on all these points we talked about,
and there's a lot of topics
we could have looked at.
A lot of things
of the hakuna versus pangimadas,
what is the thing
that's the most important
versus what's kind of the most exciting.
And there's a lot of things
that we could have thought of.
But what we need to do in life
is just figure out
what is it that we consider
the most important
and spend our time on that.
Okay?
Now look, if you disagree with me
and you say,
I think that listening to online preaching
is more important than memorizing the Bible,
then the Bible needs to do it.
That's fine.
I don't agree with that,
but you're welcome to make your own choices.
But whatever you consider
the most important,
if you consider online preaching
more important than spending time
in prayer every day to God,
then the Bible needs to do that.
And I don't agree with you.
But if you think it's more important
to, you know,
I don't do whatever,
then go ahead and do it.
But you need to figure out in life
what is it that's the most important.
What is it that specifically
God wants us to do
and just be very disciplined to do that
because of the fact
usually there's something else
that is more exciting
that's not as beneficial,
that's not as helpful.
Let's go to the Lord of Prayer.
Dear heavenly Father,
thank you for allowing me here today
and just getting to us
and the scripture says
on a variety of topics.
God, help us to realize
what's the most important thing in life
and all the areas of our life.
God, help us to spend our time
focused on that
and not all of our time
on things that aren't as important.
God, I ask you to continue
blessings.
Church, help us have a great time
of soul eating today
and getting many people saved.
Also have a great time of fellowship
and food tonight as well.
God, we pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.