Take from the passage tonight what you would have for us, and God please bless the sermon, and in Jesus' name I pray, amen.
Now let me tell you this story a little bit of what's going on here.
Elisha, the prophet, not to be confused with Elijah.
Elijah was the man that we read about, you know, toward the end of 1 Kings, and right at the beginning of 2 Kings,
the mantle is passed from Elijah to the man that he'd been training, the younger preacher, Elisha.
Now Elisha, at the time that he received the mantle from Elijah, this is found in 2 Kings chapter 2,
was promised by Elijah, this is what he asked God for, he said, I want a double portion of Elijah's spirit.
And you'll notice throughout the Bible that Elisha was used by God to perform twice as many miracles as Elijah did.
He preached twice as many prophecies as Elijah did, and so God used this man in a mighty way.
Well, Elisha came to Gilgal. Now this place, Gilgal, was a place that was suffering a famine,
it was suffering a dearth, the Bible says in verse number 38 in your Bible there.
It says that there was a dearth in the land, that means there was a famine, it means that food was scarce,
water was scarce, hard times had hit, it wasn't raining, and things could not grow, and so they were having a tough time.
Well, the Bible says, if you look at your Bible in verse number 38, it says that the sons of the prophets were sitting before them,
and one of these young preachers had gotten themselves to this great man to learn from him and to be taught the word of God,
and it says that he said to his servant, set on the great pot and seed the pottage for the sons of the prophets.
He says, I want you to get out the big pot and I want you to make a big bowl of soup so that we can feed all these young men that are here to learn.
And so they got out the big pot, and notice what happened in verse number 39, the Bible says,
and one went out into the field to gather herbs. He was going out to get some herbs and spices to, you know, season the soup a little bit and make it a little bit more palatable,
a little more enjoyable, get a little more nourishment in there. It says he found a wild vine, so here he comes across this plant, he has no idea what it is.
I mean, it probably looked good, it looked like it was edible. He comes across this wild vine, he has no clue what it is, he's never seen anything like this before,
and he says, well, you know, we're having some hard times here, and anything to stretch out this soup a little bit wouldn't hurt, so let's get all these,
and it says he filled this whole lap full of these. So he probably pulled out his shirt and dumped a bunch of these gourds in there,
and it says he came and shred them into the pot of pottage, for they knew them not. So here he is with these wild gourds, he's never seen them before,
he has no clue what they are, and yet he's just going to put them into their food, and he has no clue what they are.
So he starts shredding them in there, almost like a cheese grater. He shreds all this in there so it's all mixed in there, completely mixing with everything in the pot.
This whole giant pot that's going to feed, as we read later, a hundred people. So he pours in just this one lap full of bad gourds into this giant pot of food
that's going to feed a hundred people. He grinds it up in there. Well, they all sit down to eat, and they take a bite of that food.
Gross, it was poisonous. Those gourds were poisonous. And they said, O thou man of God, they're talking to Elisha, there is death in the pot,
and they could not eat thereof. And now Elisha's going to perform a miracle. It says, and I'm sorry, let's see,
then bring meal, is what he said. And he cast it into the pot, and he said, pour out for the people that they may eat, and there was no harm in the pot.
So this was a miracle where Elisha healed this bad pot of food, this bad pot of pottage.
Then in the next verse, and I'm building a foundation, but I want to teach you this story so that you'll understand the sermon.
Then in the next verse, this is a little bit later, there came a man from Baal-Shalisha, and brought the man of God bread of the first fruits.
So here's this man from another town, and he's coming to bring a gift to Elisha, and it says here that he brings him twenty loaves of barley,
and full ears of corn and the husks thereof. And he said, give unto the people that they may eat, this is in verse forty-two.
And his servitor said, what, should I set this before a hundred men? He said again, give the people that they may eat,
for thus saith the Lord, they shall eat and shall eat thereof. So here's a hundred people again, and this man brings just twenty loaves of barley,
and he's going to, and some corn, and he says, give it to them so that they can eat. And they said, well good night, this isn't going to feed a hundred people.
You've got to be kidding. And he says, give them to eat, because not only is this going to feed them, but there's going to be leftovers.
Now this is obviously a precursor to Jesus' miracle of feeding the five thousand. Jesus took just five loaves and two fists and fed five thousand people.
Here, Elisha performed a miracle where he feeds a hundred people with twenty loaves of barley. These are obviously small loaves, it's not a big loave.
Now, what's the difference? There's no difference. I mean, if you're feeding five thousand people with five loaves and two fists,
or whether you're feeding a hundred people with twenty loaves, it's still the same miracle that God multiplied food.
And it's interesting because Jesus, after he feeds the five thousand, he feeds four thousand, and he uses seven loaves to feed four thousand.
The numbers are irrelevant. But the point that I want to show out of this story is that here they are,
the same people who felt the need to experiment with strange things that they had no clue what they were.
Unsafe, you know, vegetables or whatever they were, some kind of a poison.
The same people turn around in the next few verses and they look at what God has provided them to eat.
God's food that he provided for them, which was, it seemed like it wasn't enough, it just seemed like it wasn't going to cut it.
And the same people who felt the need to experiment in these bizarre things,
the same people looked at what God was giving them and God was feeding them and providing them with it and said,
you know what, it's not going to be enough. I'm just not satisfied with what God is giving me.
And so I think I'll dabble over here in this kind of unfamiliar ground of these wild gores.
Now, my first point that I'd like to make is that God's provision is always enough.
Whatever God provides is all we need. That's enough. Isn't it wonderful,
I was thinking about this as I wrote the sermon, isn't it wonderful to have a God that provides all of our needs?
But I wouldn't know what I would do if I, just as the head of my household, just as a man,
I've got three children here and a family and just all kinds of bills. I mean, you know how it is.
It's the expenses and the bills. And if I felt the pressure, if I thought that I had to somehow make things happen
and provide my needs, that would keep me up at night because it's a heavy load,
especially in today's society where the norm is two incomes.
And then trying to just support the family on one income, it would be stress.
But thank God, I have a God who will supply the needs, who will step in and provide.
And I don't have to worry about it because God said if I just keep his commandments, he'll provide the needs.
I was thinking about Philippians 4 19, but my God shall supply all your need according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus.
I thought about Matthew 6 33 where God said, but seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness
and all these things shall be added unto you. You read the context and all the things are, he's talking about food and clothing that's necessary for life.
He says, your heavenly father knoweth that you have need of all these things, but seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness
and all these things shall be added unto you. He's saying, you worry about taking care of my things
and I will provide and take care of your things. You don't have to take it in your own hands.
But God loves us and he wants to provide our needs. Listen to this passage from Matthew 7, I'll read this for you.
Ask and it shall be given you. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you.
For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
I always thought it was interesting there, it says ask and then it says seek and knock and if you put together the first letters, A-S-K, it's like ask.
Ask, seek, knock, ask. Pretty interesting that God did that. But listen to this.
Knock and it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?
Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then be evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children,
how much more shall your father, which is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him?
He's saying, look, if your child, can you imagine Austin going up to his dad and saying,
Dad, can I have some bread? Can I have a piece of bread? And he says, here, take this rock. Is that what you want for breakfast? No.
And can you imagine, you know, Alexis says, Dad, could I have some eggs? And he says, okay, well here's a scorpion.
You know, that's, God is not, and people have that attitude of God, and they think God is just out to get them.
You talk to people all the time. This week on Soul Winning, I must have talked to a couple different people.
They had this attitude where they said, you know what, I'm just kind of bitter against God, and here's why.
And they think that God is just out to get them, and God's just trying to give them some kind of a raw deal.
But God says, if you be evil, you being the sinner that you are, and I being the sinner that I am, I know how to give good gifts unto my children.
I want to feed my children. I want to take care of my children. I want to put a roof over their head.
I want to put clothes on their back. I want to put food in their mouth. Isn't God going to put food in my mouth if I'm his child?
God has got to be a much better parent than I am, and so we don't have to worry about the provision of God.
God's provision will always be enough. We don't have to go elsewhere to try to find the provision.
God's provision is always enough. God will take care of us. If we take care of the things of God, he'll take care of the rest.
1 Timothy chapter 6 verse number 17, I love this verse. It says,
Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches.
But in the living God, watch this, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy.
God gives us richly all things to enjoy. God wants us to enjoy our life.
God's not trying to make life miserable for us. He wants us to enjoy. He wants to provide our needs.
He loves us. He's going to take care of us.
But point number one, that was kind of all an introduction, showing you, look, God's going to provide.
God takes care of us. Whatever God has provided, that's enough.
But point number one that I want to make about this story is that you need to be careful of things that you're not familiar with.
Be careful of things that you don't know what they are.
Look at this guy. I mean, he just grabbed something he had no clue it was.
Now, is that smart kids to go out and just find something in a field somewhere and just start eating it?
You found little berries or something and just put it in your mouth and say, you have no clue what it is.
But look, I just thought of a story.
When I was a kid, okay, and I used to, I'd be driving around with my mom, and we would drive by these trains.
There's a lot of trains where we lived in California, okay.
And we'd drive by these trains, and when little kids are first learning to read, they just read everything.
You know how they are, and they just read and read.
And so I'm sitting there, and I'm just reading them off, Union Pacific, Western Railway, whatever,
and I'm just going through and reading and reading.
Well, of course, this train car comes by with just the most filthiest graffiti on there, you know,
all this ungodly cursing and everything.
So I just start reading it, and I had no clue what it was.
And here I am, I start reading all this graffiti, and my mom's like, what?
You know, because she's driving just in a daze, not really paying attention to what I'm just chanting.
You know, little kids talk, and mom's just like, mm-hmm, whatever.
And so I'm just talking and talking and talking and talking and talking, as kids often do at that age.
And then all of a sudden, just this filthiest profanity starts coming out of my mouth.
And my mom is just shocked, she's like, what are you saying?
And I said, well, I just read it off there.
She said, don't, you can't read, only read the ones that are printed on there, don't read the graffiti on there.
But kids will often say ungodly bad things just that they picked up somewhere.
And they'll say things, curse words and stuff, just because they don't know what it means.
And you have to teach kids, you have to say, look, if you don't know what a word means, don't use that word.
But, see, that goes for a lot of areas of life.
We need to be wary of things that we're not familiar with.
You know, books that you're not familiar with.
You know, some people think that if it's in the Christian bookstore, it must be safe, right?
It must be of God. If it's in the Christian bookstore, think again.
I remember in the Christian bookstore, when I was a teenager, I went to the Christian bookstore,
I was looking at the music in there, and they have all the Christian music.
And they actually had Christian gangster rap.
And on the CD of the Christian gangster rap, it was made to look exactly like a rapper named Coolio.
I don't know if people still listen to that, but when I was a kid, it was Coolio that was the rap star.
And so I remember it was this guy that just looked identical to Coolio, but this was the Christian version of Coolio.
And so the Christian Coolio is there, and in the bottom, it had that little parental advisory for explicit lyrics.
And I'm thinking to myself, what in the world?
You know, here I'm in the Christian bookstore, and explicit lyrics on the CD?
So I picked it up, I just couldn't believe it.
And I look at it, and it says, warning, and it was the exact logo that said, warning, non-explicit lyrics.
Now that's just stupid and retarded and ungodly.
To try to just copy the world to the point of actually trying to copy the little symbol that says,
this music's out of hell, this stuff is wrong, and it's got cursing and ungodly content.
And they're sitting there, the Bible says abstain from all appearance of evil.
And that's the appearance of evil if you look at the CD.
And I thought, I could have just walked by and thought, good night, this CD's wicked.
But it must have been all right, huh? It must have been godly, right? No.
They should have put the real symbol on there, because it's junk anyway.
But you go to the Christian bookstore, there are books from all kinds of different people at the Christian bookstore.
It's not just going to be an independent Baptist that's writing these books.
Because the Christian bookstore cares about one thing, money.
That's all they care about, they're a business.
So they want to include, think about it, they want to include everybody that they possibly can to make maximum money.
So they want to include every denomination, they want to include all the religions that they can.
So you pick up this book at the Christian bookstore, and you pick it up and you say, oh wow,
you know, enjoying a closer walk with God by some guy that I've never heard of.
And you say, boy, that's what I need. I want to be closer to God. I think I'm going to read this book.
Well, the guy that you're reading the book from could be any number of Christian denominations.
Like, for example, he could be a Nazarene.
And he might believe that you can lose your salvation and not believe the gospel.
He might be assemblies of God, which also believes that you can lose your salvation,
which also believes in speaking in tongues and rolling around on the ground and flopping around
and chanting and strange things.
Nine times out of ten, the guy's using an NIV. He's not using the King James Bible.
He's got a totally different Bible than he's going to teach you about the things of God.
And this always cracks me up, because especially with the assemblies of God and several of these other ones,
but this always cracks me up. This is what they call themselves, non-denominational.
And so here's what happens. You look at their church, and it's like so-and-so community church,
or just so-and-so church, or so-and-so Christian church. No denomination, right?
Well, get out the yellow pages, and let's find out if they're a denomination.
You get out the yellow pages and look at these churches. Like, let's say it says,
I don't even know the names of the churches around here, but Grace Fellowship Church, Grace Community Church,
or Faith Christian Church, or whatever.
And you ask them, you say, what kind of church is that?
Because I go soul-winning every week, and I'm constantly asking, oh, what church do you go to?
And they'll tell me, I say, what kind of church is that?
Because I'm kind of getting a feel for where they're coming from, because I want to get them saved.
And they'll tell me, oh, it's non-denominational.
I say, really? Well, I go home, and I get out the yellow pages.
And I look under the yellow pages under Assemblies of God, and boom, the church is right there.
I go into the yellow pages under Four Square Churches, boom, it's right there.
I go into the yellow pages under Nazarene, boom, it's right there.
The thing is, they're not non-denominational, they're liars.
They are part of a denomination that is controlling them,
and they just took the denomination out of their name so that you don't know what denomination they are,
and then they call that being non-denominational.
It would be like, I mean, think about it.
For example, the nursing homes that I preach at, the two nursing homes,
they told me there's one other guy who comes in here and preaches after you, and he's non-denominational.
Well, I met the guy. I said, what church do you go to?
He said, I go to The Door at Tempe.
And I said, what kind of church is that?
He said, it's non-denominational.
I went home and looked it up, and it's part of a worldwide denomination
that has literally hundreds of these churches that are all called The Door,
and they're all over the world, they're all over America.
That is not non-denominational. That's what a denomination is.
A denomination is this controlling organism, just like the church across the street here on 48th Street.
It's a Southern Baptist church.
It's the Southern Baptist Convention, and it's a denomination.
There's a president of the Southern Baptist Convention, I think his name is Charles Stanley,
and then there's all the different boards, and they control.
And if that guy got up and preached the sermons that I preach, he'd be kicked out.
He'd be thrown out. If he said the King James Bible is the word of God,
he'd be thrown out of his pulpit, because he's not lining up with his denomination,
and they'd say, you're not part of the Southern Baptist anymore.
Brother Hiles, Dr. Jack Hiles, one of my heroes,
Dr. Jack Hiles was kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention,
because he started preaching hard standards, and he started preaching the King James Bible,
and he started just preaching against sin and just really letting it rip,
and they threw him out of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Lee Roberson, a very famous preacher from the South.
He used to have the world's largest Sunday school.
Dr. Lee Roberson in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Dr. J. Frank Norris, back in the 1920s, was kicked out of the Southern Baptist Convention
for preaching hard, for preaching the truth, for going soul winning,
and for doing things that they didn't agree with.
They threw him out, because they want to be the authority, not Jesus Christ, not the Bible.
They want to run churches with their denominations.
So don't ever be deceived by this non-denominational.
Here's the ironic thing. Faithful Word Baptist Church is non-denominational, literally.
If you want to talk about non-denominational, you're sitting in a non-denominational church,
because we're not part of any denomination. We're independent Baptist Church.
So the only true non-denominational church would be an independent church.
Now, I will admittedly say that there are some non-denominational churches which are really independent.
There's very few, extremely few, and the way you find out is you go into the phone book,
and you can look under all the different denominations, and you'll find them. Boom.
You'll find exactly what they are, and they're Pentecostals, they're Charismatics,
they're Assemblies of God, they're Nazarenes, and they're pretending to be non-denominational,
because they just want to get as many people in their doors as they can,
so they can get as much money as they can.
But it has nothing to do with being non-denominational.
You're sitting in a non-denominational church. You're sitting in an independent Baptist church.
But who knows if what you're reading comes from somebody who's Church of Christ?
You get a book at the Christian Book Store, it could be Church of Christ,
which believes you have to be baptized to be saved, which believes that there's seven steps to salvation,
and that once you go through all these seven steps, you can lose your salvation if you don't live right.
It makes it kind of hard. Not only do you have to jump through all these hoops, but then you can lose it.
Apostolic, same thing. Another denomination, apostolic, believes exactly the same thing.
Foursquare, same thing, rolling in the aisles, lose your salvation, wrong Bible,
baptized to be saved, all the same garbage.
And nowadays I've even noticed things in the Christian Book Store, and this was never this way when I was a kid,
and that wasn't that long ago, and there was never this way,
but now Roman Catholic paraphernalia is being sold at the Christian Book Store.
It used to be when I was a kid that they had books in the Christian Book Store,
and don't get me wrong, because the Christian Book Store has always been ungodly,
but I went into the Christian Book Store when I was a kid,
and they would have books about why Roman Catholicism was wrong.
Now they sell rosary beads in the Christian Book Store.
They literally sell rosary beads.
They sell rosary beads.
I don't know if they've gotten to the point of the holy water yet.
Have you seen it there?
The first communion set, and they've got the little idolatry, and they've got...
What else did I see? There was something else that I saw.
Oh, yeah, they have the Bibles with the apocrypha in it,
with the Catholic books of the Bible in them, the Deuterocanonicals and the apocrypha in them.
And so if you go to the Christian Book Store, you don't know what you're getting.
You have no clue what you're getting.
You can't just pick any gourd and spoon it up and put it in your mouth and eat it,
and you can't just spoon it up and give it to your children.
You've got to try the spirits, the Bible says, and see whether they're of God.
Let me read it for you. 1 John 4, verse 1.
The Bible says, Beloved... He starts out beloved because he's saying,
I love you. That's why I'm telling you this.
He says, Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they're of God,
because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
You've got to watch out what you just introduced into your mind.
You've got to watch out what you just introduced to your children and say,
what came from the Christian Book Store, it said Christian, so it must be okay.
That doesn't mean it's okay, because there are many deceivers in it in the world,
many false prophets, the Bible says.
I was out soul winning recently, talking about books.
I was out soul winning, and I ran into a man, and he was a very religious man,
but he didn't go to church anywhere, and he was very religious.
I mean, his family, you could just tell by the way that they were dressed.
His daughters were dressed in very modest clothing and not flashy at all,
and just very nice people, very friendly, and he's, come on in.
So I came in and talked to him, and I'm giving him the gospel.
He didn't agree with what the Bible said about salvation,
and he was using all these different versions,
so it was confusing his mind, because I'd show him something really clear in the Bible,
but then he'd kind of go to these other versions and really cloud things up.
Well, this says this, and this says this, and so forth.
He said, well, church is wrong. He said going to church is wrong,
because he read these other versions, and he went back to the Greek and stuff,
and church is not of God. Church is not right. That's what he's telling me.
He's saying you having church services is unscriptural.
Believe it or not, that's what he's saying.
And he's telling me all these different things, baptizing people is unscriptural,
and just strange things.
And so this is how it, I was trying to leave at this point,
because I'd given him the gospel. He was rejecting what I had to say,
and so I was just trying to leave, and he said, well, listen,
you're a great guy, but you're just misguided, and so he said,
I just want to give you this book to read. Just read this book, please.
Just be open-minded. Just read this book, and you'll see what I'm talking about.
And I said, I'm not going to read that book.
And he said, I want you to read this book.
He said, it can't hurt to read this.
I said, look, I don't know who wrote that book.
I have no clue what it's about, so I'm not just going to read something.
I don't know where it came from.
And I said, you tell me where it came from, and then I'll decide whether I'm going to read it.
And he said, well, I didn't, you know, and he just pushed me and pushed me,
and he forces this book on me and says, you've got to read this,
and it's not from anything bad.
So I said, okay, and obviously I wasn't going to read it,
but I took it home, and I opened it up, and I read in there.
I just looked at it. I'm just leafing through, and it was garbage, of course.
But I got to this. I saw the first scripture reference that was in there
where they referenced the Bible, and it's quoting the NIV.
And it actually said something negative about the King James Bible.
And so what did I do? I just picked up a book, and I just ripped it in half in my hands.
I just ripped it in half and threw it in the trash.
Because you say, well, wait a minute, Brother Anderson, you know,
can't you get something good out of this book?
I mean, sure, it was written by somebody who doesn't believe in baptizing people,
and sure, it was written by somebody who doesn't believe the Bible
and who's using a false modern Bible, a modernized watered-down Bible,
but can't you get something good out of it?
Well, let's ask Job what he thinks.
Job 14.4 says, who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one.
Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one.
You say, hey, listen, kids, if you go to my garbage can back there,
you'll find some food in there. I'll guarantee it.
I'll guarantee you anything that in my trash can in the alley, there's food in there.
Do you want to go in and dig in that trash can and get that food out of there?
No way. Do you want to sort through all the garbage that's been rotting out there?
Not only that, but here's the thing that I hate.
I have to share my garbage can with the neighbors,
and I don't know if everybody's street is like this in Tempe.
Is yours like this where you live?
Because I know you're in the same cell. You have your own garbage can, right?
Praise the Lord. Well, you do have to share it, but it's just...
I don't live with garbage.
That's God. All right.
But anyway, this garbage can is just community garbage can.
Oh, I hate it. I mean, all the neighbors are using the same garbage cans.
So sometimes I'll go out there and it's just bad.
This garbage can is bad. I just wish I had my own garbage can.
But anyway, you don't want to go out in the garbage can and dig around for food,
and you say, well, I might find something that's got nutrition in it.
Yeah, but you're digging in a filthy garbage can,
you're probably going to pick up a lot of other stuff that you didn't want to pick up.
Same thing with getting a book from somebody who's ungodly,
who's somebody who doesn't believe the Bible, doesn't believe the Gospel,
doesn't believe the Word of God, and you're trying to find some nugget of truth.
It's not worth it. Stay away from it.
Just stick with what you know.
This all goes back to what we started out saying.
What God provided is enough.
This is what God provided right here.
The King James Bible is what God provided.
This is what God provided local churches.
Local churches that preach the Word of God that believe this book.
This is what God has provided.
We don't need all this other stuff where we have to go to some other denomination
and read their book because we might get some fresh idea out of it.
It's not worth the tradeoff.
It's not worth the risk.
You know, TV preachers that you don't know,
don't just turn on the TV and watch some TV preacher.
And you say, well, he's a good-looking guy.
I mean, he's sharp. He's saying things that make sense.
How many jokes? You don't know what he's doing.
I remember when I was a teenager, I turned on the TV
and I was watching some TV preacher.
And boy, that guy sounded good.
I mean, he was quoting the King James Bible.
He was laying it out.
Turned out the guy was a Seventh-day Adventist.
And the next thing he starts saying is about how there is no hell.
And he's explaining how hell does not exist.
That wasn't good for me to be watching some guy that I have no clue who he is.
And they don't advertise who they are
because they want to suck in as many people as they are.
So they're just non-denominational.
Or they just preach and they're just some preacher that loves the Lord.
But they don't tell you who they really are.
They don't want you to know who they are.
And if you don't know who they are, then you have no business listening to people who you don't know.
And the same thing goes for radio preachers.
And let me just give you a hint.
Preachers that are on the television, guess who controls the television.
Is it the Lord Jesus Christ that controls the television programming?
Is it God the Father that's running the radio station?
No. It's the world.
It's the ungodly powers that are playing the same garbage on the next channel.
And then they're doing the religion thing because it's profitable.
They can profit off of religion.
And so don't just turn on the TV and radio preachers and listen to people that you don't know.
Don't go to churches that you don't know.
Sometimes people just invite you to say,
Oh, come visit my church.
Find out. What kind of a church is this?
And don't let them tell you it's not a denomination.
What kind of a church is it? What do they believe?
They got the King James Bible?
Are they playing a rock band on stage?
Are they having some kind of watered-down, sissified, effeminate little preacher up there
that doesn't know how to preach?
Find out where you're going before you go.
And find out before you expose yourself to something,
is it right or is there going to be death in the pot,
as these men found when they tasted that food after it had been corrupted?
But not only that.
See, all we need is the tried and the true Bible,
the one that's been around, the one that we know about,
not some new Bible that just came out last week,
not the Bible of the Month Club,
but the tried and the true Bible,
the tried and true gospel that got me saved when I was a six-year-old boy,
the tried and true music that I've sung all my life,
not some kind of a warning, non-explicit lyrics,
kind of a Christian music that's based on Coolio.
And to know what's right and what's wrong,
what do you want to have? Discernment.
Because you want to be able to tell like Elisha did
when he put that spoon to his mouth and said,
This is death in the pot.
He put the spoon in his mouth and he said,
This is not right. Something's wrong here.
Everybody stop. Don't eat this.
How are you going to get that kind of discernment?
Well, you're going to get that kind of a discernment from the Word of God.
We learned this in Hebrews,
when we were studying the book of Hebrews on Wednesday nights.
We learned this when we were in chapter 5 of Hebrews,
when the Bible says,
When for the time ye ought to be teachers,
ye have need that one teach you again,
which be the first principles of the oracles of Christ,
watch this,
and have become such as have need of milk and not of strong meat.
And he says this,
Strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age.
Even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised
to discern both good and evil.
He says this is how you learn to discern good and evil.
This is how you need to discern what's right and wrong.
He says you need to use the Word of God,
not just read the Word of God,
not just know the Word of God,
but use the Word of God.
Not sitting around studying the Bible all day,
although that'd be a great place to start,
that'd be a great idea,
but not only read it, but use it.
The person who knows the Bible is the person who reads and studies it.
God says this will give you discernment between what's right and what's wrong.
Read the Bible and then use it.
How do you use it?
Soul winning.
You're using it.
You're preaching the gospel.
You're getting people saved.
You're using it.
How do you use it?
Just when you hear preaching on sin,
when you read in the Bible about sin,
you put it into practice by obeying the commands of God,
by not doing what he told you not to do,
by doing what he told you to do.
You're using God's Word.
You're not a hearer of the Word, but a doer also.
And God says that if you use God's Word,
if you put it into practice,
if you get people saved,
if you bring visitors,
if you do something to use what you've learned in church
and through your Bible reading,
that's where you'll get the discernment.
Reading the Bible is so vital.
The reason that we're living in a day where people are so easily deceived,
where people bounce around from one church to another church
and they bounce around from one denomination to another denomination,
they bounce around from one day they believe this,
one day they believe this,
it's because they don't know the Bible.
They don't know God's Word.
You see, if you don't know the Bible,
you can just be deceived and hoodwinked by anybody.
Well, how are you going to learn the Bible?
Number one, I would suggest that you read through the Bible
at least one time per year.
It would be a great place to start.
At least one time a year, read through that Bible cover to cover.
Now, we handed out the charts at the beginning of the year,
and it tells you, I mean, it takes about 15 minutes a day
and you'll read through that whole thing in about a year,
you know, maybe depending on how fast of a reader you are.
And I'm not saying that that should be a limitation.
You can always go faster than that.
But at least once a year, read through that Bible.
Know what the Bible says.
Know what you believe for a reason.
Number two, memorize the Bible.
To memorize the Bible is vital.
You say, how do I memorize the Bible?
I know you have the kids do it and the kids have their verses
and the A through Z program where they're earning prizes and everything.
Well, let me tell you how I memorize the Bible.
And everybody has different methods, but look,
I have these cards right here that I put in my pocket.
Now, I used to write these out by hand,
but now just because I've been busy and everything,
I just print them out on the computer.
I print them out, you know, just Microsoft Word.
I have a little program there,
and then I have another Bible program
where I copy and paste the verses in there.
And I just take these verses with me as I go to work.
And I've got this card in my pocket right here.
And whenever I have any kind of a dead time
that I'm just walking from point A to point B
or let's say I'm driving down the road
or let's say I'm just standing waiting to talk to someone,
I just pull out this card right here and it's got my verses on there.
I take this card out and I just take one little phrase.
Like, for example, this is Matthew chapter 10.
And it starts out,
And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples,
he gave them power against unclean spirits.
And so I'm memorizing Matthew chapter 10 right now.
And so I take this out,
and I'll just take one little phrase of this verse,
just like maybe the first phrase.
And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples.
And I'll just repeat that in my head over and over again.
And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples.
And when he had called unto him his twelve...
And then the next phrase, I get to the next phrase and repeat that.
He gave them power against unclean spirits.
He gave them power against unclean, you know.
And just keep repeating, just little phrases at a time.
And so what happens is I'll look at my card,
I'll get a little phrase of the word of God,
and I'll just start repeating that over and over.
It's just going over in my mind, going over in my mind,
while I'm turning my screwdriver at my job,
you know, doing my fire alarm work and everything like that.
And then, you know, about five minutes later,
after I've repeated it several hundred times in my mind,
in five, six minutes times, it's kind of mulling over.
Then I have another kind of a dead time.
I just pull this out.
I grab the next phrase,
put it in my pocket, and for the next five minutes,
that phrase is just going around in my head.
And it's very easy to memorize these tiny little phrases.
And by the end of the day, you know,
I may have gone through this whole chapter,
or I may have gone through a big chunk of this chapter.
And then at the end of the day,
I've already repeated so many hundreds of times
I just kind of put the whole thing together.
And I've just memorized a chapter of the Bible
just while I'm at work, just in my spare time.
And I will tell you something.
Ever since I started doing that,
my understanding of the Bible has just opened up
in a huge way.
Memorizing the Bible like nothing else
has helped me to just really understand the Bible,
has really taught me the Bible.
I had a friend of mine in college.
His name was Jason.
And my friend Jason, I talked to him about this,
and he said that he'd never really memorized the Bible much,
more than just maybe one verse here or a verse there,
very little.
And I taught him how to do this,
and I explained to him my system of doing this,
and I explained to him how to go through it
in the little pieces and break it down
and just to do this while you're at work.
And I said, and then when you're done,
you know, if you learn that whole chapter,
then you just quote it every day for one week.
You just quote that chapter.
And then after that, you quote it once a week for a month.
And then after that, you quote it once a month
just perennially, once a month for the rest of your life,
and you'll never forget it this way.
And he started doing this.
And like I said, this guy was never really memorized
in the Bible much before.
He was doing individual verses that he'd memorized.
But nothing like this.
Well, that was about,
I want to say about nine months ago,
and he's already memorized half the book of Proverbs.
This is a pretty difficult to memorize book,
and it's a fairly long book.
It's 31 chapters.
So I believe he's in somewhere in chapter 15 or 16
of this 31-chapter-long book.
And I remember he told me when I first taught him this,
he started doing it, he called up his mom.
And he was doing about one chapter a week.
And he called up his mom, and he's like,
Mom, I memorized Proverbs 1 through 5.
And she's like, wow, I'm so proud of you.
And she thought he meant like verses 1 through 5.
And she was proud of her.
She's like, wow, Jason, great job.
I'm so proud of you.
He memorized it.
And he's like, no, I'm saying I memorized chapters 1 through 5.
She was shocked.
She couldn't believe it.
And he's still going.
I mean, he's going to memorize the entire book of Proverbs.
And then he's telling me, man, I'm excited,
because I want to get on to the next book after that.
And so it's not something that's unattainable.
But you have to love the Word of God
to want to chant it all day.
And you have to enjoy the Bible.
You have to love the Bible.
So you could pick something that you like.
But let's say you don't want to memorize entire chapters.
Let's say you say, well, I'm not going to take it that far.
Well, write down verses that stir you up.
Write down a verse that gets you excited about soul winning.
You have a certain sin that you're struggling with.
Find a verse that just nails that sin.
And then you could just quote that verse.
And every time you're tempted to sin, you could quote the verse.
I have a lot of verses.
I have different sins in my life where I have several verses for each sin.
And every time I'm tempted to sin, I just quote those verses.
And boy, when you quote those verses, they'll just cut you to the heart.
And you're just like, man, I can't do that.
Good night.
Because you just quoted the verse that just tore into you.
And then just encouragement.
You're down in the dumps.
Have some verses that you wrote down on cards that will encourage you.
Have verses that get you excited about doing something for God.
And use these verses and just memorize them.
You could just write one verse on the card and just have it in your pocket.
And we have so much time in today's world
where you're just sitting around waiting and dead time and time in the car.
Boy, use that time and know the Bible.
Know what you believe.
Boy, you want to know what the first verses that you need to memorize are?
Get those invitations that we hand out
and those verses on the back for the plan of salvation?
Boy, learn those verses for the plan of salvation.
I won somebody to the Lord this morning without my Bible.
I didn't have my Bible on me.
And no, I'm not one of these people that thinks you can get people saved without the Bible.
I didn't have my Bible, but I had my Bible right here in my head.
And I walked up to a guy and I started talking to him.
And I took, you know, 10, 15 minutes
and went through the whole plan of salvation with him,
quoting the verses off the top of my head.
Because I just didn't have my Bible.
I mean, I don't always have my Bible with me 24 hours a day.
And here's an opportunity to win somebody to Christ.
I took the opportunity because I had it in my head
and I had it in my heart and I was able to win somebody to the Lord
because I'd memorized those verses.
That'd probably be the first place to start is to memorize those verses.
But reading the Bible once a year minimum
would be great if you could read it more.
But at least read it once a year and know what it says.
Number two, memorize the Bible.
And number three, be in church and hear the preaching of God's Word.
You're going to learn the Bible.
You're going to learn what the Bible says.
That's how you're going to get discernment.
But number one, don't only be wary of things that you're not familiar with.
Be wary of methods that you're not familiar with.
Not only is the doctrine important,
the doctrine that God teaches in His Word,
you know, the things that we believe,
that Jesus is God, that you can't lose your salvation,
that salvation is by grace through faith,
plus nothing, minus nothing,
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
That's important.
Baptism by immersion, that's important.
But you know what, not only that,
but God has certain methods that He wants us to use.
And don't use, don't believe things and don't read things that you're not familiar with.
But number two, be careful of methods that you're not familiar with.
What am I talking about?
Well, I was looking at this story about David, King David.
And this is back when he was a boy and it's David and Goliath's story.
And when David was going to go out and fight Goliath,
King Saul puts all of his armor on David.
Now, King Saul was a man who was head and shoulders taller
than anybody else in the kingdom.
And so they put this armor on David
and he's going out to fight against Goliath
with all this armor, this helmet on.
And I'll read this for you for the sake of time in 1 Samuel 17.
This is David speaking to Saul.
He says,
...the Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion and out of the paw of the bear,
He will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.
And Saul said unto David, Go and the Lord be with thee.
And Saul armed David with his armor
and put an helmet of brass upon his head.
Also he armed him with a coat of mail,
and David girded his sword upon his armor and is saved to go,
for he had not proved it.
And listen to what David said unto Saul.
I cannot go with these,
for I have not proved them.
And David put them up.
He says, I haven't tried this.
I don't know what this is. I don't know if it's going to work.
He says, I haven't tried these tools that you're giving me to fight this guy.
He says, I'm just going to go with what I'm used to.
I'm going to go with what I know works.
I'm going to go with what God gave me and what I know works.
Not some new-fangled idea that somebody has.
Not the latest armor that I don't know.
I just haven't proved it. I can't go with these.
What am I talking about?
I'm talking about God's methods like preaching,
not a drama team instead of preaching,
not dramatic presentations instead of preaching.
I'm talking about soul winning, knocking on doors, preaching the gospel.
I'm talking about talking to people at work
and winning them to Christ and giving them the gospel.
That's what I'm talking about as opposed to lifestyle evangelism,
which is the new thing where supposedly if I live right,
people are just going to fall on their knees in front of me and say,
what must I do to be saved?
Yeah, right.
When does that ever happen, right?
He says, no, open your mouth and go soul winning.
I'm talking about prayer and fasting, God's methods from the Bible,
not some dial a prayer and put your hand on the television screen and feel the Spirit.
No, I'm talking about God's methods, preaching, soul winning, prayer and fasting,
reading your Bible, not the latest bestseller at the Christian bookstore,
but the 66 bookstore right here, God's Word.
I'm talking about church, God's old method of having a local church,
not some home Bible study cell groups where we get together
and rap and go around and discuss the Word of God.
He says, no, I want to use the same methods that have always been used,
the tried and the true methods that God used in his Word.
You say, well, I don't think they work anymore.
I don't think those methods work anymore.
Well, then God doesn't know what he's talking about because God said they're going to work.
And so that Bible's got to be the authority because God says that they're going to work.
God's methods will work if you work God's methods.
That's the problem.
We don't always want to work God's methods, and so we say, well, God's methods don't work
because God's methods take work.
Preaching takes work.
Soul winning takes work.
Prayer and fasting is a lot of work.
Reading your Bible is work.
Going to church is work.
And God says, work my methods and they'll work.
I'm going to have to skip a lot here for the sake of time, but there's a story in the Bible,
and I'll just briefly give you this story because I'm running out of time,
but David wanted to take the Ark of the Covenant,
and the Ark of the Covenant had been stolen from David and had been in the hands of the Philistines.
And so David was going to bring the Ark of the Covenant back into Jerusalem,
back to the tabernacle where it was want to be.
And so he went to get the Ark, and instead of using God's methods,
and you say, well, come on, what's the big deal about this?
God's method was that they carried it on poles,
and the Levites, only the priests, were supposed to carry the Ark of the Covenant, the Kohathites,
and they were supposed to use these two poles that went through the Ark of the Covenant,
and they were supposed to carry it on their shoulders on these poles.
Well, they decided that they had a better idea than carrying it on their shoulders,
and the Bible says here, and they carried the Ark of God, this is I Chronicles 13.7,
and they carried the Ark of God in a new cart out of the house of Abinadab,
and Uzzah and Ahio draped the cart,
and David and all Israel played before God with all their might,
and with singing and with harks and with salt trees and with timbrels and with cymbals and with trumpets,
and when they came under the threshing floor of Kidon,
Uzzah put forth his hand to hold the Ark, for the oxen stumbled,
and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and he smote him,
because he put his hand in the Ark, and there he died before God.
And then David gets upset if you read the story, and David gets angry at God and says,
well, it's not fair that God killed Uzzah, just because he touched the Ark.
Well, look, it never would have happened, David, if you would have followed God's rules,
instead of having your bright idea of putting it on a cart, and you're going to pull it on a cart.
You say, where did he get the idea to put it on a cart?
Well, if you go back in the Bible to 1 Samuel 6-7, when it first got stolen to the Philistines,
the Philistines had their religious leaders.
They got together their priests and their preachers of their false devil-worshipping religion
of worshipping Baal and Beelzebub and everything like that,
and they got their religious people together, and they said,
here's how we're going to give the Ark to the children of Israel.
We're going to put it on a new cart, and this is what we're going to do.
So David was copying, if you know the context, David is copying the world's methods,
and he's trying to do something for God.
He's trying to do something righteous.
I mean, he's trying to bring the Ark of the Covenant back to the temple,
but he says, I'm going to use the Philistine's methods to do it.
And God says, no.
And somebody died as a result of his carelessness of trying to use the world's methods,
trying to use ungodly methods to do the work of God.
And God says, do my work, but do it my way.
Do it with my methods. Do it with preaching, soul-winning, prayer, fasting, church, Bible reading,
and not the latest newfangled things.
You see, I'm not trying to copy some liberal church down the road.
I'm not surfing the Internet trying to find out what the liberal church is doing
so that I can find some good idea. No.
I'm going to use God. I'm surfing this book right here trying to find out what to do,
trying to find out what to do next.
It's where I get all my ideas.
And see, everyone's always trying to find some new thing
because they don't want to work because they're lazy,
because it's hard work getting people saved.
It's hard work getting people baptized.
It's hard work getting people in church.
It's hard work learning the Bible.
And so everybody's looking for some shortcut,
for some shortcut to some big crowd and big results,
and without the work, without the effort,
without the blood and sweat and tears,
they say, I just want it on a silver platter,
and there's got to be a more modern, better, easier way to do it.
And God says, no, I want you to work.
I want you to be holy. I want your heart to be right.
I want you to know the Bible.
I want you to preach the Gospel to every creature.
And if you do it, it'll work.
It's not going to work overnight.
It's going to work in a lifetime.
It's going to work with a lifetime of following this book.
It's going to work in a lifetime of using God's methods will work.
No, it's not glamorous.
Nothing that we mentioned here is glamorous and exciting
and rah, rah, rah, the gang's all here,
but you know what, hold the joy and the excitement
of just winning somebody to Christ yourself,
where not just you were all at the big rock concert
and people flooded down the aisles and started crying,
that I'm talking about when you win somebody to Christ
and when you watch somebody's life change.
Boy, that's the exciting thing.
That's the blessed thing.
When you are using God's methods, doing God's work,
and seeing great results, no, not overnight,
no, not from one day to the next,
but throughout a lifetime of serving God and laboring with God.
What's the moral of the story?
Don't grab whatever gore that's out there and put it in your food
because God's provision is enough.
Even if it doesn't look like it's enough,
even if it doesn't always look like it's working,
even if it doesn't always look like it's going to supply the need,
God says it'll supply the need and it'll be more than enough.
They're going to leave leftovers.
They're going to eat the food,
and there's going to be more than they can even eat
when these hundred men are done eating.
There will be more than enough because God says,
I always provide more than you need.
I've got everything you need and then some.
Rely on me to provide it.
Don't go to the world.
Don't go to the garbage can.
Don't go to the Philistines.
Go to the Bible.
Go to me.
Go to God's Word.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, I thank you so much for your endless resource,
so much for your endless resource,
so much for your endless resource.