Verse number one, the Bible reads,
then came to Derbe and Lystra, and the only certain disciples
there being Timochius, the son of a certain woman which
was a Jewess and believed that his father was a Greek,
which was well reported of by the brethren that
were at Lystra and Iconium.
Now, keep your finger there.
Go to 2 Timothy chapter 1, because we're
going to talk a little bit about Timothy just briefly
here.
Basically, Paul and Silas are traveling.
Remember, it used to be Paul and Barnabas, pretty much
all the adventures that we've seen over the past few chapters?
They had that falling out in the last chapter
about John Mark.
Paul did not want to bring John Mark,
because he had quit on them earlier.
He wanted someone who was going to be a little more reliable.
And so they got angry and got in a big fight,
Paul and Barnabas.
Barnabas ended up taking John Mark,
and then Paul ended up taking a different guy, Silas,
who wasn't planning on leaving.
But Paul recruited him, and he decided to take him along.
So now it's Paul and Silas that are the team going out
and winning souls together and preaching the gospel
in all these places.
Well, they come to this town, and they
find this young man named Timotheus, who's a disciple.
His mother was a Jewess, but she's not
following the religion of Judaism.
She's not a Pharisee or a Sabbath.
She's a believer.
She's a saved, born-again child of God.
His fathers are Greek.
We don't really know about his salvation.
So look at 2 Timothy chapter 1, and this
is Paul writing to Timotheus many, many years later.
But it says in verse number 5, when
I call to remembrance the unfamed faith that
is in thee, which dwelt first in my grandmother, Lois,
and my mother, Eunice.
And I am persuaded that in thee also.
Wherefore I put thee in remembrance
that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee,
by the putting on of my hands.
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear,
but of power, and of love, and of sound mind.
Be not, therefore, ashamed of the testimony of our Lord,
nor of me as prisoner.
Be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel,
according to the power of God.
Go back to Acts 16.
So what I want to show you there about Timothy
is that his mother was saved, and his grandmother was saved.
But we don't really hear anything about his dad.
We know he was a Greek.
It doesn't say, hey, he believed.
He was a disciple.
He probably wasn't, because the Bible kind of spells out
that he got his spiritual heritage from his mother
and from his grandmother.
And the reason I want to point that out
is that a lot of people have this idea that,
well, my husband isn't really leading, or whatever.
And the husband should be the leader in the home.
He should be leading the way spiritually.
But biblically here, and I wanted to get into this
when I was preaching on Sunday morning.
I ran out of time, and that's why I'm doing it right now.
But in 1 Corinthians 7, the Bible says,
if you've got an unbelieving man and a believing wife,
he said, the last thing, I'm just paraphrasing,
he said, you don't want the wife to leave her husband.
Because by staying with her husband,
she can raise the children to be right.
Okay, and the same thing goes
if you've got an unbelieving wife and a believing husband.
The Bible teaches that it only takes one parent.
You know, they can get those children saved
and raise those children right.
And a lot of people today, they get divorced.
And what happens when they get divorced
is they split the time.
You know, they spend half the time with mom.
They spend half the time with dad,
or some kind of a percentage.
Well, the problem with that is, half the time,
let's say you've got a believer
and an unbeliever that are married.
Well, if they get divorced, then half the time,
the children are gonna be in a total unbelieving home
with who knows what kind of visitors,
or boyfriends, or girlfriends, or husbands, or wives
that are gonna come into the picture.
Whereas if they would stay married,
they could be with that child 365 days a year.
And people make this mistake, and believers today
are looking for an excuse to get divorced, in many cases.
Well, the Bible says, you know,
if it's not left the unbelieving, depart.
You know, and what about the children?
And God said, stay with them.
Because they're sanctified by that believing parent.
And he says, how do you know, oh husband,
if you'll save your wife?
Or how do you know, oh wife, if you'll save your husband?
You'll save thy husband.
You know, another example where people get mad at us,
say, oh, we got people saved.
He said, the husband will save the wife,
or the wife will save the husband.
You know, and that's another sermon,
but that's another verse.
I always rant through about three of them.
Now I'm gonna add that fourth one to the list.
But the bottom line is, that it only takes one parent.
Don't hide behind the excuse,
well, my wife is a weak Christian.
No, you make sure that that child turns out right.
And see, Lois here, and Eunice,
you know, it sounds like they were
the only believers in that family.
Dad was following another religion,
he's a Greek, whatever.
He doesn't say anything about him being saved.
And his faith was definitely passed down
from his grandmother and his mother.
So, ladies, the hand that rocks the cradle
rules the world.
And so ladies, you should take your job
of being a mother very seriously.
Don't plop him down in front of a TV,
don't plop yourself down in front of a TV,
and drop him off here, drop him off there,
just, you know, oh, kid, leave me alone, leave me alone.
You know, we need to have mothers
that take an interest in their children,
because the Bible says a child left to himself
will cause his mother shame.
Timothy brought great honor
unto his mother and grandmother.
They were mentioned in 2 Timothy chapter one
because of their son or grandson.
It was Timothy that got them mentioned in the Bible.
And so it's really important there to understand.
And that's another reason why
people should not get divorced,
because you're giving up your children for half the time
and you have no control
over what's gonna happen to them over there.
You say, well, they're getting exposed.
You know, I gotta get divorced
because my husband's exposing them to bad stuff.
Yeah, and he's really getting exposed to bad stuff
when you're divorced
and he's in a totally different city
or whatever with the kids.
And so that's something to think about right there.
But let's get back into Acts 16.
This is a little background on who Timothy is.
He's a young man, he's a disciple.
Now, Paul, you know, Paul right here,
I'm positive that he did the wrong thing here
when he circumcised Timothy.
Now, first of all, I'm sure Timothy
wasn't too thrilled about it, okay?
As an adult man, okay?
Because usually that happens when you're a baby
and you just, oh, they're too young
to tell us what they think about it.
But anyway, the bottom line is here, Paul did wrong.
He said, well, how dare you?
How do you know that?
Well, because we have the whole rest of the Bible
to tell us.
And later, Paul basically explains why he did it.
He said it was because of false brethren
who came in unawares to spy out our liberty,
which we have in Jesus Christ.
And in Galatians, he spells out, he says,
in Jesus Christ, neither circumcision availeth anything
nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.
He said in another place, that was in chapter six.
In chapter five, he says, in Jesus Christ,
neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision,
but faith which worketh by love.
And the Bible's really clear
that we do not need to be circumcised.
And we do not need to circumcise our children.
But yet, Paul here, look why he did it.
And this is why I know that he was wrong here.
And that's why when you're reading the Bible,
just because people did something doesn't make it right.
You know, there are people in the Bible
who have two wives.
That doesn't make it right.
People in the Bible commit adultery.
And here, Paul, even though he's a great man,
far greater than I am, he did wrong.
And he even later admitted that he was wrong
in his epistle under the Galatians.
But he says here, in verse three,
him would Paul have to go forth with him
and took and circumcised him because of the Jews
which were in those quarters,
for they knew all that his father was a Greek.
So he's trying to please man.
He's trying to please the Jews.
Now, Paul did not have that attitude earlier on.
But when he went to Acts 15, that conference there,
it seems like those people maybe rubbed off on him.
And that's why we gotta be careful when we hang around.
Because whenever Paul went back to that big meeting,
where they're trying to impose Judaism on people
and impose all these Old Testament laws
that no longer apply, after that veil was rent in 20,
when he went and hung around with them,
now we see in chapter 16,
he's telling this grown man to get circumcised.
He didn't need to be circumcised.
We're in the New Testament.
And so that right there is a lapse of faith
with Paul there.
Now, you say, well, did we throw out the Old Testament?
No.
We keep all of God's laws in the Old Testament
that have to do with morality.
That have to do with right and wrong.
But when it comes with the carnal ordinances,
the fleshly ordinances, the meat, the drinks,
the fleshly, circumcision, the Sabbath,
those are all specifically brought up
as no longer applying.
And Paul is not saying here,
well, I circumcised Timothy
because it was the right thing to do.
No.
He says, well, I just circumcised Timothy
because of the Jews around there.
That's always the wrong reason to do something,
just to please somebody who's not even saved
or somebody who's a liberal.
I'm not gonna try to please them
by circumcising this guy.
I mean, it just wasn't the right thing to do.
But anyway, it says in verse number four,
and as they went through the cities,
they delivered them the decrees for to keep
that were ordained of the apostles and elders
which were at Jerusalem,
and so were the churches established in the faith
and increased in number daily.
Now, before I get off this,
I'm sorry, go to Galatians.
I wanna show you something, Galatians, about this
before I get off this subject of circumcision.
Because it's an important subject in the Bible.
It's something the Bible deals with a lot.
Now, this is the key here
because Paul really spells this out.
I forgot about this until just now.
And I really want you to see this with your own eyes.
Look at Galatians 6, verse 12.
This is the key right here.
As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh.
You get that?
They constrain you to be circumcised,
only lest they should suffer persecution
for the cross of Christ.
For neither they themselves who are circumcised
keep the law,
but desire to have you circumcised
that they may glory in your flesh.
But God forbid that I should glory
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ
by whom the world is crucified unto me
and I unto the world.
And then the verse I already quoted,
for Jesus Christ, Jesus neither circumcision
nor un-circumcised, but he agrees.
I mean, can you get any clearer than that?
He says the reason that they're circumcising you
is to show off and to glory in your flesh.
He says, God forbid that I would do that.
Now, he had done that in the past,
but by the time he got to Galatians,
he learned his lesson that he was wrong for doing that.
Because if you stop and think about it,
how does anybody know whether Timothy's circumcised
or not in the first place?
He's fully clothed.
But he's circumcised in order
so that he might tell people,
hey everybody, relax, I know his dad's a Greek,
but he's circumcised, okay, so just calm down.
But what is the problem with him being half Greek?
So what?
God has made all nations of the earth a one blood.
And Paul here was trying to make a show in the flesh
here, he realized his mistake,
and later he said, hey, I was wrong about that.
I did it because of false brethren
that were crept in unawares.
That's what caused me to do that.
So go back to Acts 16, if you would.
And that's a really clear passage in Galatians chapter six.
But it says in verse five of Acts 16,
it says, so were the church established in the faith,
and watch this, and increased in number daily.
Now that's great right there, they were multiplying.
They were outsoleting.
They're outwitting people to Christ.
And the church is growing and increasing in number daily
because they're doing a lot of solewining,
they're doing a lot of bridging.
That's the kind of growth that we should want to
experience, that we should be out doing
by getting people saved daily in the temple
and in every house, they seek not to teach
and preach Jesus Christ.
And so it would to God that our number
will multiply daily and that we would constantly
be growing because we're out knocking doors
and winning souls to Jesus Christ.
It says in verse six, now when they had gone through
Phrygia and the region of Galatia
and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost
to preach the word in Asia,
after they will come to Mysia,
they are saved to go into Bithynia,
but the spirit suffered them not or did not allow them.
And they passing by Mysia came down to Troas,
and a vision appeared to Paul in the night.
There stood a man in Macedonia and prayed him,
saying, come over into Macedonia and help us.
And after he had seen the vision,
immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia,
assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us
were a preach to God's wonder.
Now this is kind of an interesting part here
because Paul, he wants to go preach in a certain place.
He's just kind of thinking to himself,
hey, let's go over here and go solewining in this town.
And the Bible is clear,
the Holy Ghost basically tells him, don't go there.
So he goes, okay, well I'm gonna go over here then.
And basically the Holy Ghost tells him, don't go there.
And then he basically has a dream that night
where basically God gives him a revelation,
this vision where there's a Macedonian man saying,
come over into Macedonia and help us.
And then he realized, hey,
God is telling me to go to Macedonia.
He goes to Macedonia and does the preaching over there.
So it's not that God didn't want these other two towns
to hear the gospel,
it's just that he had another priority
of getting Paul into a new area that he hadn't been to
to preach the gospel in Macedonia.
Now the problem is people will take passages like this.
And by the way, Paul was an apostle of Jesus Christ.
Paul is the author of half of the books
of the New Testament,
which were given to him by divine revelation.
He got those words directly from God, not from many.
He was the author, humanly speaking,
obviously God is the author,
but he was divinely revealed unto him
the words of half the books of the New Testament,
14 out of 27 books.
But people today think they're the apostle Paul
and they think that they're the author
of the half the New Testament.
They think God just comes to them and tells them stuff.
Now here's the thing,
these guys didn't have the whole Bible.
They didn't have the New Testament.
They only had the Old Testament scriptures
and the New Testament was being revealed at this time.
I mean, they're living the book of Acts.
I mean, they're living chapter 16.
They're not reading ahead to see
what's gonna happen next, okay?
And so it's being revealed through them.
They're the holy men of God that are speaking
as they're being moved by the Holy Ghost, okay?
But today people think
that they're getting extra biblical revelations.
Look, God's already given us the whole book here.
He's not revealing new scriptures today.
Now, Baptists believe that.
Pretty much any Baptist you talk to is gonna say,
hey, we only believe the Bible.
We don't believe in other, like the Book of Mormon
or another Testament of Jesus Christ
or you know, Ellen G. White's revelation.
And they'll say that if somebody stands up and says,
well, I've got a new, you know,
I, Steve Anderson, have got this new revelation.
You know, God came and talked to me
and it's gonna be the gospel
according to Steven Anderson, okay?
We don't believe that, right?
And I don't think we're gonna find any Baptist
who believes that.
But yeah, how many times do your Baptist say stuff like,
yeah, God just told me not to witness to him?
Or like, yeah, God just told me.
Like, I ask him, so why'd you start a church in this city?
You know, God just told me, go to Phoenix.
Well, I don't know.
I mean, God has never talked to me like that at all.
Now, God's talked to me many times through this book
every day.
But I'll tell you right now, God has never appeared.
Who here can say God has appeared unto me
or spoken to me in an audible voice
like he spoke unto Moses at Mount Sinai?
You know, or he somehow spoke to me in words.
Now, here's the problem with that doctrine.
I believe that every word of God is in this book.
That's what I believe.
I don't believe this is just part of God's word.
I think this is the complete word.
So, what I've always said to these people who say,
well, God told me this, and God said this,
and the Holy Spirit said this, and God said this.
I always say to them, well, God said that.
Then that's God's word.
And I'm gonna write that down
and put it in the back of my Bible
because that's part of the Bible now
because it's part of God's word.
It's authoritative.
See how foolish that is?
And that's basically what you're saying.
And what I'm trying to say is don't just throw that around
because most people don't really mean that anyway.
They just kind of throw that out there
just to sound spiritual.
You know, if God really appears unto you
and talks to you, then let me know.
But you know, he's not appearing to them.
He's not talking to an audible voice.
It's just like, well, God just told me to go to Phoenix.
What they really mean is just
they decide to go to Phoenix
and they just call that God telling them to do it.
Or they ask their pastor and he told them to do it.
I'll tell you right now, God did not tell me
to start a church in Phoenix.
God did not tell me.
And a lot of preachers today,
they have these stories about how they're called
to preach and you know, they heard an audible voice
and the whole room lit up and stuff.
You know, it's just not, I'm sorry, my friend.
I don't believe in him.
I'm not saying that God can't speak.
I'm not saying that the angel of the Lord
cannot appear and speak.
But this is what he's gonna speak.
He's not gonna say, go to Phoenix.
Don't give the gospel to your coworker until tomorrow.
That might be the devil talking, you know what I mean?
And everybody just says, and so I hope
that you'll take this to your heart right now,
what I'm saying, and not go around saying
that God told you to do stuff
unless God really told you to do it.
And if he did, then it's in this book.
So don't be that guy that says,
oh yeah, God said to do this.
The Holy Spirit told me this.
The Holy Spirit said this.
That's blasphemy.
If he didn't really say that
and you're saying God told me to go to this Bible college,
and I know he didn't tell you to do that.
But I'll tell you that.
You're gonna say like, God told me to go to this college.
You're blaspheming God right there
unless he really did.
So why don't you be careful what you say God said.
You know why?
Because the Bible says, every word of God is pure.
He says, shield unto them that put their trust in him.
Add thou not unto his words lest he reprove thee
and thou be found a liar.
He said, don't lie and say that God told you something
unless God really told you something.
And if God really told you something,
why don't you go start your own,
whatever revelations he gave you.
You could write the book of revelations of Dave Burson
or the book of revelations of Brett Rodden.
I'm telling you right now, this is all we need.
And it's funny, we can't even obey this.
I mean, obeying this is a full-time job
and you're looking for some other revelation,
you need to get in this book
and get a revelation, my friend.
Get in the book of revelation, okay?
And don't try to get all these
extra biblical revelations
and don't let these Pentecostals rub off on you
with all their talk about all these revelations, okay?
Did Paul get a revelation?
Yeah, it's in scripture.
It's Acts 16, it's the word of God
because he's an apostle of Jesus Christ.
God is not revealing more scriptures today.
He's not working on Acts, the sequel.
It's all about us in 2011, you know what I mean?
So anyway, I just want to make that clear here.
But God's really guiding him here
and telling him, I want you to go
to this first place and do this,
but that's not something that he's gonna do to you.
He's not gonna tell you, like, go to Scottsdale.
Don't go to Scottsdale.
Don't go soloing in Mesa, go to Scottsdale.
He's not gonna tell you that.
But anyway, it says in verse number 10,
it says, and after he had seen the vision,
immediately we endeavored to go into Macedonia,
assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us
for a preach to God's mother.
So it wasn't something that they were just thinking,
maybe, they said, no, we were assured of him.
We assuredly gathered that we're supposed to go
to Macedonia, they were sure that it was God
talking to them.
It wasn't just some feeling that they had.
And it says, you know, basically,
I'll skip this, we already read it.
They went there, they got there.
And it says in verse 13, on the Sabbath,
we went out of the city by a riverside
where prayer was want to be made.
And we sat down and spake unto the women
which resorted thither.
And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple,
of the city of Thyatira, which worshiped God,
heard us, whose heart the Lord opened
that she attended unto the things
which were spoken of Paul.
So Paul goes down there, he's doing some soul-biting,
there's all these ladies down there
washing clothes and so forth.
So he's going down, he's gonna try
to preach the gospel to him, get him saved.
This lady Lydia, a seller of purple.
She basically, I believe she was already saved.
The way that verse reads, it sounds like
she was already saved.
She liked Paul's preaching.
And she needed to be baptized,
she got baptized in verse 15.
And her household, she besought us,
saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord,
come into my house and abide there.
And she constrained us, so she gives him a place to stay.
Verse 16, and it came to pass,
as we went to prayer, a certain damsel,
a damsel's just a young girl,
possessed with the spirit of divination, met us,
which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying.
Now, soothsaying is like a fortune teller.
You know, and that's why we need to stay away from that.
You know, it's about, oh, this is fun.
God says that it's something that's demonic,
it's a satanic, and you have the death penalty
in the Old Testament for practicing the art of witchcraft
or sorcery or soothsaying.
And this is basically like today's palm reader,
your psychic readers, your Ouija boards, you know,
lots of you need to stay away from that stuff.
Well, this girl, and by the way, she's just a damsel,
so she's a young girl, she's already into this,
and she's possessed with the devil here,
possessed with the spirit of divination, met us,
which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying.
So basically, other people are basically running her
and getting the money, and she's basically working
for them in the fortune telling business.
And it says, verse 17, the same followed Paul and us
and cried, saying, these men are the servants
of the most high God, which show unto us
the way of salvation.
And this did she many days, but Paul being grieved,
turned and said to the spirit, I command thee
in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her,
and he came out the same hour.
And when her masters saw that the hope of their games
was gone, they caught Paul and Silas,
and we'll get to that in a second.
Now, let me ask you this.
Was what she said right or wrong?
Well, let's read this again.
The same followed Paul and us and cried, saying,
these men are the servants of the most high God.
Was that true?
Yeah, they were the servants of the most high God,
which show unto us the way of salvation.
Is that true?
Okay, but is this what Paul wants,
following him around all day, chanting that over and over
again, yelling, and it says she cried out,
so she's yelling, these are the servants of the most high
God, they showed us the way of salvation.
So finally, after days of just following him around,
well, there she is again, there she comes again,
he finally just turns and basically casts out this devil
that was possessing her.
Now, if you remember, a lot of the people
who were possessed were devils.
Remember when they fell on their face before Jesus?
They said he was the son of God.
They said, what are we to do with thee,
Jesus, thou son of God?
Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?
I know thee who thou art, the holy one of God.
That's all, you know, legitimate stuff
that sounds pretty good.
Now, let me tell you something.
There are people today that are possessed with devils.
This didn't go away, and a lot of people,
it's as if they don't believe in this or something.
Like, oh, man, I don't believe in that.
Where'd they all go?
There's over, you know, there's over, what,
a hundred million of them.
There's 102, at least 102 million angels
that the Bible mentions, and about the third part of them
went with Satan.
So, you know, you got, what, 30 million or something
or more?
Who knows the exact number?
Bottom line is, there were all kinds of people
that were possessed with devils back in those days.
I guarantee you, there are a ton of people
that are possessed with devils today.
It's the same world that we're living in,
the same devils are out there.
Now, I'll be honest with you.
I firmly believe that when you see these
so-called Christian services,
even though they're preaching another gospel,
even though they're preaching a work salvation
or a loser's salvation,
now I'm saying, no, I'm not, I'm talking the deal.
You know, when you see them
with the so-called tongue speaking,
and when you see them flopping around on the ground,
hey, the only time I ever seen anybody
flop around on the ground in the Bible
was when they were possessed, period.
When they're throwing themselves on the ground
and foaming.
And I've been to one of these charismatic services,
I've seen the people, you know,
ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah,
you know, doing that kind of,
you know, falling on the ground, rolling,
that's not of God.
The Bible says the spirit of the prophets
is subject unto the prophets.
And when you're out of control, that is not of God.
When the spirit of the Lord came upon people,
their body wasn't just taken over by some other force.
And they can't control what they say,
and they can't control what they do.
The spirit of the prophets is subject unto the prophets,
and they were in the driver's seat.
But these people that are flopping around on the ground,
they are not in the driver's seat.
And it's because they're possessed with devils.
Because they bring in all their devil music.
You know, and that's the biggest reason
why I hate this Christian rock and Christian contemporary,
because I know it's made by a bunch of Pentecostals
that are possessed.
And I don't want to bring that music into my home.
I don't want to bring that spirit.
The Bible says that God inhabits
the praises of Israel.
And who or what spirit inhabits music
that's made by people who preach another gospel,
who preach the devil's gospel?
When the Bible says be filled with the spirit,
speaking to yourselves in Psalms and Hymn for its fun,
what kind of a spirit is with the music
that's put out by people who are following the devil
and preaching his gospel?
Because you know what?
The Bible says that the devil is transformed
into a minister of light.
He's transformed into an angel of light.
He corrupts and perverts the gospel.
You know, I mean, I was going to go,
we were going to go roller skating all the night.
You know, we got invited to this roller skating night.
We were really excited because it was with
an independent fundamental Baptist church.
We got invited to this roller skating night.
And we assumed that they had rented out the whole rink,
kind of like we do here whenever we do a roller skating.
And even just pretty much every time
I was a teenager growing up,
we'd always have church roller skating nights.
They pretty much rent out the whole rink.
So we were really looking forward to this
because, you know, I like to go roller skating.
It sounded really fun.
And I figured, you know, usually you don't like to go
because of the atmosphere,
like they're blasting rock and roll
and they got all the dark lights
or the lack of light and so forth.
When we went roller skating, it was cool.
All the lights were on
and we didn't have any of the rock and roll.
We had a blast, you know,
with faithful Rebecca's.
But then we found out at the last minute.
We didn't go because we found out
just a few hours before we got there.
You know, Matt, Shanae, myself, my son, other people.
We found out that they didn't rent out
the roller skating rink,
but that it was a Christian music night
at the roller rink.
And I'm thinking to myself,
I would rather just go on the basic night
when it's just worldly music.
And listen, I'm not into worldly music, my friend,
but I'm dead sure not into blasphemous,
demon-possessed music.
That's what I'm really not into.
Because if you're gonna have rock and roll,
you know, and all this, you know,
Metallica and whatever, you know, that's one thing.
But when you're gonna sit there
and attach Jesus Christ's name to it
and it's put out by a bunch of Pentecostals
and Catholics and Protestants and whatever denomination
preaching a false gospel and heresy
and a bunch of tolerant of homosexuals
and just this total phony, so-called Christianity
that's the NIB and the New Living Translation
and total false lies and work your way to heaven,
make a commitment to Christ, you can lose your salvation
and all this garbage.
And that music is not something that I wanna listen to.
And we had to cancel our skating night
and I'm still upset about it.
And I still haven't been roller skating and I wanna go.
Anyway, so my friend, Pastor Jimenez,
he said, next time you come to Sacramento,
he's like, I'm gonna have you come preach next year.
He's like, I promise, he's like,
I'm gonna rent a roller rink.
And you know what, I'm gonna do that.
He's like, I'm gonna rent it out.
He's like, I'm gonna do it the right way.
We'll do it.
I'm like, okay, good.
But the bottom line is this,
that music is wicked as the devil.
And I don't want anything to do with it.
And look, you don't believe me?
Look at the Christian rock bands, the ones that were out
and I don't know all the new Christian rock bands
but when I was a kid, the big one was DC Talk.
And DC Talk, their music video
for their most popular song,
DC Talk's most popular song was called Jesus Freak.
Okay, that was their most popular song.
And for the music video,
they used the producer from Nine Inch Nails
to make their music video.
Which Nine Inch Nails is a completely say tan,
openly say tan group.
And this is what they said.
We watched the Nine Inch Nails video closer
and we liked it so we decided to have the producer
from Nine Inch Nails come and produce
our Jesus Freak video.
That is satanic.
Those people in DC Talk, they look like fags.
I'm sorry but they do.
I'm not sorry, they do.
But anyway, the bottom line is they look like a fag
and they're up there singing a song
by the Doobie Brothers called Jesus Is Just All Right.
Jesus is not just all right.
He's the Lord Jesus Christ.
He's the name above every name.
But they're out there singing Jesus Is Just All Right
and they're bringing in the Nine Inch Nails producer
to bring all the satanism associated with that.
I'm sorry, there's nothing Christian about that.
And one of those guys from DC Talk is coming
up to Tempe for this big Lewis Powell thing
and he's gonna be there singing.
I wouldn't be caught dead down there
with some queer looking Satan worshiping idiot.
And that's the garbage that's going on
in Christian music today.
And then you say, well wait a minute Pastor Anderson,
it talked about Jesus.
So did this demon possessed girl.
She talked about Jesus.
Oh but look at this song, it talks about being saved.
She talked about being saved.
And the whole point of this rant that I'm on right now
about this music is to tell you
that just because someone mentions Jesus
and says some of the right things,
that doesn't make it right.
I've heard Benny Hinn say that Jesus Christ
is the son of God or that he's the only way
to heaven, but Benny Hinn is filled with Satan.
I mean the saying where he slaps people
on the forehead and they fall on the ground
and roll around, it is not of God, it's wicked.
He's a fraud, he's a phony, he's a liar,
he's a charlatan, he makes a mockery
of the Lord Jesus Christ and that crowd,
just because they say a few of the right things
and just because the Christian rock has a few lyrics
that sound pretty good that mention
some of the right doctrines or some of the right things,
that doesn't make it right.
Because the bottom line is that when somebody's flopping
around on the ground, they're not filled with the spirit.
They're filled with an unclean spirit
or they wouldn't be flopping around on the floor.
They wouldn't be foaming at the mouth.
They wouldn't be barking like a dog.
They wouldn't be saying strange things
that they can't even understand.
You know, speaking with another tongue in the Bible
was a foreign language.
It wasn't blabbering and blabbering
and choking on your own tongue.
That is Satanism and the occult.
And you know, you look at the voodoo in Africa
and then you look at some of the traditional
Native American stuff, some of the Navajo stuff,
it's all involved, the drums, you know,
and they get worked up with an emotional,
drum-driven music where they get all emotional
and worked up and they're basically demon possessed.
And it goes through, in Africa,
it goes on in the Native Americans
and it goes on among the white men.
It's just called a Pentecostal church.
And literally, the voodoo shaman,
Satan worshipers in Africa literally baptize people.
You know, oh, well that's biblical.
I mean, voodoo people, they baptize them in the water.
Because Satan is always making a counterfeit
in a mockery of everything that is Jesus Christ.
And I would stand against this Christian rock.
You know, you say, well, it's just a form of music.
No, look at the people who are putting it out.
They're Pentecostals, they're Charismatics,
they're Roman Catholics.
They're not independent fundamental Baptists.
They're not soul-winning, they're not King James.
You know they're not.
I don't want to hear their music.
I'd rather listen to the person in this room
that has the worst singing voice.
I'd rather listen to you sing all day long.
I don't care how much talent they have.
I want to listen to somebody who's actually a believer,
who actually is saved, who actually wins souls to Christ,
who's actually filled with the Spirit,
make a joyful noise to the Lord.
Then to go and listen to DC talk.
And to go and listen to all these other groups.
I don't even know what the groups are.
But I remember the blasphemy and the garbage
that came out of their mouths.
And you say, well, but they said this good thing.
Why don't they dress and act like a man?
There's a good place to start.
Because the Bible says the effeminate
shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
Isn't that what the Bible says?
You're not, you've never, thank God for heaven.
You're never going to walk by
and see some queer little sissy in heaven.
Because the Bible says that there will be
no effeminacy there.
It won't exist.
How beautiful heaven must be.
There's no effeminacy.
You're not going to go to a DC talk concert in heaven
because it's too feminine.
It's too queer looking.
And so that's what the Bible says.
And today you don't hear this kind of preaching,
but you know what?
What I'm trying to show you here
is just because you attach Jesus to something
doesn't make it right.
You can't just slap Jesus on.
You can't just, oh yeah, look,
this girl said some good things.
Paul, why are you being so hard on her?
She's possessed.
He knew that.
You know how he knew that?
Because she's going around screaming
and won't stop and just chanting
and following him around chanting.
And chanting is not a God.
The Bible talks about chanting in a negative way.
And so the bottom line is this vain repetition
is coming out of her mouth, this chanting.
He says she's demon possessed.
Come out of her thou unclean spirit.
Even though she said a lot of the right things.
Hey, the devil is smooth.
And he'll say a lot of the right things.
But there's just a little bit of lie mixed in.
And so beware of these unclean spirits.
They're out there.
And I think the biggest inroad
that the unclean spirit has is through music.
That's how it is in Africa.
That's how it is in America.
And the devil uses music.
He's a musical creature.
Beware of music that's put out by Satan.
And if it's put out by the Pentecostals,
it's put out by Satan.
And that's where I stand.
Maybe you don't stand.
That's where I stand.
Anybody who preaches work salvation
and lose your salvation is not of God.
And they are following the wicked one, period.
End of story.
And so it's pretty clear.
And I gotta hurry up because I'm running out of time.
But it says this she did many days,
but Paul being grieved,
turned and said to the spirit,
I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ
to come out of her.
And he came out the same hour.
So basically this spirit of divination is now gone.
And he's permanently gone
because of the fact that her master saw
that the hope of their gains was gone.
So they kept trying to get her
to be able to do some of the witchcraft
and she couldn't do it anymore.
It was God.
Seemed to be permanently gone.
Now I will say this.
It doesn't really mention her getting saved or what.
I mean, he definitely cast out the spirit,
but I'll say this.
It is impossible for a Christian to be demon possessed.
There are a lot of people today that are teaching
that Christians can become possessed with devils
and that the Pentecostals will teach that too.
But I've heard a lot of baptism.
Jack Scott, priest of sermon,
can a Christian be demon possessed?
He said, yes, they can.
Okay, now I don't believe that for one second
because the Bible says,
greater is he that is in you
than he that is in the world.
And the Bible also talks about in 1 John 5.1,
we know that, I don't know,
that's not what took my tongue,
but that wicked one touched them not.
The devil, you'll never find evidence
of someone in the Bible being possessed by a devil.
You're not gonna find it.
Saul was not demon possessed.
That's a false doctrine.
First of all, he was not even
involved by the whole spirit
because it was Old Testament,
but he was not possessed with a devil.
There was a spirit from the Lord that troubled him.
That was not a devil.
That was not a demon.
That was something that came from God
where God sent a spirit to trouble him.
And so I preached a whole sermon on that situation.
I don't want to go on and on about that.
But the bottom line is,
Christians aren't demon possessed.
And they say, oh, we need to cast off
the devil of alcoholism.
That's just your flesh.
The Bible says every man sinned
when he's drawn away of his own lust and entice.
So you can't just blame every sin
that you do on the devil.
The devil made me do it.
I was demon possessed.
But you know, the biggest reason why I got out of churches
that have this devil music,
this charismatic Pentecostal music,
the reason that I got out of it is
because I know I'm not going to become demon possessed
listening to it.
But I just thought about my young children.
I was like, what kind of spirits
are getting into their head
at this young impressionable age
before they're even saved
when they're just a little kid
exposing them to this devilish music
of the charismatic movement?
And the, look, let me say one more time.
The charismatic movement is of Satan.
That's why people roll on the ground.
It's a false gospel and false doctrine.
And that's why they slobber and roll around
and all this stuff.
And they call that being filled with the spirit.
They're filled with something.
But it's not the Holy Spirit.
It's an unclean spirit.
It's an unclean devil.
I defy anyone to show me in the Bible
somebody falling on the ground
and rolling around or being out of control
or not knowing what they're doing.
And I've talked to these people
that so-called spoke in tongues afterward.
And they'll say, I don't even remember what happened.
I don't even know.
I just blacked out and somebody told me,
oh, you spoke in tongues, you did this.
And you say, oh, you're hurting people's feelings.
You know what?
Amanda will tell you about a friend of hers
that this is the kind of preaching that got her saved.
A friend of Amanda's that was here
was mixed up in this.
And we kept trying to get her saved,
kept trying to give her the gospel
and she just wasn't getting it.
I preached a sermon about this exact subject,
about the tongues speaking and the devils
and how they're possessed.
And she walked out realizing, hey, I was possessed.
And she ended up getting saved the next day
and believing on the Lord Jesus Christ
because she heard the,
somebody's got to rebuke this stuff and call it out.
And so this is an example of possession here
and saying a lot of the right things.
But it's wicked.
And so let me hurry up here.
It says in verse number 20, it says,
brought them to the magistrate saying,
these men being Jews do exceedingly trouble our city
and teach customs which are not lawful
for us to receive, neither to observe being Romans
and the multitude rose up together against them
and the magistrates rent off their clothes
and commanded to beat them.
And when they had laid many strikes upon them,
they cast them into the prison,
charged with jailer to keep them safely.
Whoever received such a charge,
thrust them into the inner prison
and made their feet fast in the stalks.
And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed
and sang praises unto God and the prisoners heard them.
And suddenly there was a great earthquake
so that the foundations of the prison were shaken
and immediately all the doors were open
and everyone's bands were loose.
And the keeper of the prison waking out of his sleep
and seeing the prison doors open,
he drew out a sword and would have killed himself
supposing that the prisoners had been fled.
But Paul cried with a loud voice saying,
do thyself no harm for we're all here.
Then he called for a light and sprang in
and came trembling and fell down before Paul and Silas
and brought them out and said,
Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
And they said, get baptized.
No.
And they said, make a commitment to Jesus Christ.
Make a commitment.
Sign this card.
No.
Oh, and they said, give your life unto Christ.
Repent of all your sins.
Turn away from all your sins.
Change the whole, do a U-turn.
Do a 180.
No.
What do they tell them?
And they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved in thy house.
Nothing less, nothing more.
Same thing Jesus had been preaching when he said
that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish but have a child.
We were outside today, we knocked on his door
and this guy came out just ready for a fight.
We knocked on his door and he comes out
and he didn't have his Bible but he comes out
and I'm like, oh, I'm Pastor Anderson.
Just want to invite you to Faithful Word Baptist Church.
And he says, just a second.
Runs in the house, slams the door, runs in,
comes out with a Bible that was all marked up
and tabs and everything and he's like,
what does John 3.16 mean to you?
And I was just, from God's will of the world
that he gave his only begotten son
that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish but have everlasting life.
And he's like, wait a minute, what church are you from?
I said, Faithful Word Baptist Church.
Oh, you're Baptist.
Oh, I thought you were Jehovah's Witness.
Yeah.
Well, it's funny because we already told him
that when I first got there, I said,
oh, Faithful Word Baptist Church.
But he was just so ready for us.
He finds and gets his Bible, it's all tabbed,
he's gonna just destroy it, you know.
He's like, oh, you're Baptist, oh, okay.
I'm like, yeah, faith alone.
He's like, yeah, you're right.
He's like, I was just ready
for the Jehovah's Witnesses just to show him John 3.16.
And the thing is, it's that simple, John 3.16.
That whosoever, whosoever.
Well, what about this guy if he believes
and they go, whosoever believeth in him
should not perish but have everlasting life.
Not whosoever believeth and goes to church
and endures unto the end and lives a good life.
It's just he that believeth on me has everlasting life.
And so that was the answer again.
Now, a lot of people often ask me about that last phrase.
They say, well, what do you mean, and thy house?
Because he says to him, you know, hey,
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved and thy house.
You know, what's the and thy house?
Well, it's because Paul is basically telling the guy
that he doesn't wanna just give the gospel to him,
but that he wants to give the gospel to his whole house,
because he's basically saying, hey,
if you believe on Jesus Christ, you'll be saved,
and if the rest of your house believes on Jesus Christ,
they'll be saved.
He's trying to open up more,
because watch the next verse.
Whenever there's something in the Bible
you don't understand, you usually forget the context,
because he says, you know,
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved and thy house,
and they spake unto him the word of the Lord
and to all that were in his house.
See what I mean?
So he's basically saying that he wants
to give the gospel to him and to the whole house.
And it works, because then the guy says,
okay, you know, give the whole house.
So he gives the gospel to everybody in the whole house.
And it says he took them the same hour of the night,
which is midnight, and washed their stripes
and was baptized.
He, in all his straight way,
now I'm trying to figure out how they had time
to do the baptism class, you know?
Because usually, like, when you get baptized
in a lot of churches, you have to do, like,
a baptism class where you have to go to, like,
four weeks of that, you know, class.
Hey, no baptism class in the Bible.
If thou believeth with all thy heart, thou mayest.
I like what one guy said to me, he's like,
hey, what do you get baptized in?
That's the water that deep?
You know, that's the swimming lesson?
Bottom line is, in the Bible,
people were baptized immediately.
They didn't have to go through class,
they didn't have to go through, you know,
it's like, it's literally like buying a gun in California
is like trying to get baptized in both churches.
Like, you gotta go through a cool down period
or something, you know, like a waiting,
you know, it's a 15 day waiting period.
You know, you gotta make sure you're really saved.
You know, it's kinda like when you go to buy a gun
and it's like, you gotta wait to, you know,
I'm from California, so I know about that.
I never bought a gun in California, but I knew about it.
And so the bottom line is here,
they baptized them right away.
Now, I've literally, I've literally won somebody to Christ
and had them baptized at 2 a.m. morning, literally.
So, I mean, I've lived this chapter right here.
I wasn't a pastor at the time.
I brought them down to the church
and got them baptized after midnight
because I knew they were down there
and that they would be able to do it.
I said, hey, I want, hey,
can this guy be baptized right now?
They're like, sure.
They baptized him right there.
And so, you know, that's biblical.
It's biblical because baptizing people ASAP is biblical.
Okay, and so no baptism class.
In all baptism class, translation, catechism.
You know what I mean?
Baptist catechism.
That's where they get it from,
the Protestants who got it from the Catholics.
And so the Bible says in verse number 33,
you know, they baptized them right away.
They got saved, they got baptized.
And when he brought them into his house,
he set meat before them and rejoiced,
believing in God with all his house.
And when it was day, the magistrate sent the sergeants
saying, let those men go.
And the keeper of the prison told this saying to Paul,
the magistrates have sent to let you go
and now therefore depart and go in peace.
Paul said unto them, they've beaten us openly
unto them being Romans, and have cast us into prison,
and now do they thrust us out privily, nay, barely,
but let them come themselves and fetch us out.
You know why he's so high and mighty?
God already let him out once.
I mean, he already sent an earthquake,
opened up all the doors, all the chains fell off.
Paul's thinking, I'm not afraid of these people.
God's gonna get me out of here anyway.
That's why he didn't just say, oh, okay, we can go.
Good, let's get out of here.
No, send him down and bring us out.
Because he had the boldness there,
because he knew God could get him.
But you know what?
You really could have had that boldness before.
And we ought to get the idea,
and kind of like I preached on Sunday night,
let's not fear man, fear God.
And God can keep us safe and protect us.
And so Paul had a lot of boldness right there to say that.
Yeah, send them down here to bring me out.
They violated my rights as a Roman citizen.
And people always say, it's not Christian
to stand up for your civil rights in America.
Then why is Paul doing it over and over again?
Paul was always saying, hey, I'm a Roman citizen.
I need a trial, I need to appeal unto Caesar.
Don't beat me uncondemned.
And I've been beaten by the police uncondemmed.
And then I'll stand up for my rights and say,
hey, it's not right to beat somebody without a trial.
For the police to be the judge, jury,
and executioner right there.
And Paul stood up to the same thing.
Says in verse, and then Jesus stood up to the same thing.
Even when Jesus was on trial,
he said, well, Paul was wrong.
Well, Jesus, when he was on trial,
he refused to testify against himself
to the point where they're slapping him in the face
and he's saying, hey, ask them what I said.
I don't have anything to say to you.
He didn't have anything to say to King Herod.
He would not cooperate with them.
Okay, and so that is biblical.
But anyway, it says in verse 38,
and the sergeants told these words unto the magistrates
and they feared when they heard that they were Romans.
And they came and besought them.
Now their attitude has changed.
Now they're beseeching them.
And brought them out and desired them
to depart out of the city.
And they went out of the prison
and entered into the house of Lydia.
Remember, that's the lady's house they were staying at
at Philippi, the cellar of purple.
And when they had seen the brethren,
they entered into the apartment.
So basically, just a quick chapter in a nutshell.
Start out, Paul and Silas are taken off.
They pick up Timothy.
They're gonna bring him along.
They circumcise him, just a pleased man.
Later on, Paul, in the book of Galatians,
said, hey, I was wrong to do that.
I've learned more since then.
I've grown since then.
It's good to be able to admit when you're wrong, too.
We all make mistakes.
We all do things that are wrong.
Don't just stay with it.
If you do wrong, just go back and say,
I didn't know as much back then.
I've learned more.
I've grown.
That's what Paul did.
They go around trying to preach in different cities.
God makes it clear, wants them to go to Macedonia.
They go to the capital city, the main city, Philippi,
the big city in Macedonia.
They start preaching.
They're getting a lot of people saved.
They're getting a lot of the ladies saved in the town.
And then, of course, this devil-possessed girl
is singing Christian rock around them
and chanting over and over.
And one of them goes skating.
They basically cast the devil out of her.
And when they cast the devil out of that girl,
that's what got them in trouble with the law.
Because when they cast the devil out of that girl,
now the fortune-telling industry is going bad.
That's what gets them to get thrown into jail
because the fortune-teller company
is who basically brought them in and got them arrested.
They beat them, and it was a serious beating
of bloody strikes.
They beat them and throw them in jail,
and instead of crying about it,
they were down there singing praises to God.
They were down there rejoicing,
even though they'd just been beaten,
even though they're in prison.
And, of course, God opens all the doors.
They didn't even use that
because they were more interested
in just getting that guy saved
than escaping.
They got him saved.
They got his whole family saved.
They baptized him the same hour of the night.
They had a good breakfast together,
and then it was, all right, guys, back into the cell.
He brought them back into the cell, chained them up,
and then the sergeants came to pull them out,
and they said, no, don't just send us a deputy.
We want Sheriff Arpaio himself
to come down here and pull us out.
So he came down and got them out,
and they went to Lydia's house,
spent a little time with the disciples.
Even though they were commanded to leave town immediately,
they said, no, we're gonna stay a few more days,
and they stayed with Lydia a few days,
headed off to the next town,
and that's Acts chapter 16.
Let's bow our eyes and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for your Word, dear God,
and for the Apostle Paul.
Great man, great preaching, powerful man.
Yes, he made some mistakes,
but at least he learned from his mistakes
and he grew past that.
He was a mighty man of God,
powerful preacher, dear God.
Thank you for his example.
And Father, I just pray that you would help us
to win souls to Christ, that we would multiply daily,
bring forth fruit every day by preaching the Gospel
and giving people savings at church,
and that we could grow in grace
and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,
and help us to remember the simplicity of the Gospel,
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and thou shalt be saved.
And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.