I just thank you so much for giving us this pattern prayer. Dear God, there's so much that we could learn.
And God, I just pray that you would be with the message tonight and use it in someone's heart today,
that it would bring them closer to you and that it would help them to grow in grace
and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
And in Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.
That's a very familiar passage, the Lord's Prayer, as it's commonly referred to.
There are two versions of the Lord's Prayer found in the Bible.
One of them is found in Matthew, chapter number 6, and one of them is found here in the book of Luke, chapter 11.
Now, the longer version is found in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew, chapter 6. It goes on a little longer.
This is kind of an abbreviated version.
Now, I'm only going to be preaching on one little phrase of this prayer,
but as I sat down preparing the sermon and I was thinking about how I was going to preach on that one little phrase at the end,
I went through and just decided, okay, what am I going to read?
Yeah, I'm deciding on the sermon. What am I going to read at the beginning for the text that I'm going to read at the beginning?
And so I'm reading it and thinking about it, and boy, there's so much great teaching in this passage of Luke 11 on prayer.
And I always struggle as a preacher, the thing that I struggle with is how to condense things.
There's so much to preach, there's so much to say, and I have three times a week to say it.
And by the way, that's why it's important to be at all three services, if you can,
because there's so much that you need to learn as a Christian.
This is a big book. There's so much that I need to learn.
And there's so much that I have to teach, and I try to condense it and prioritize.
But let me just, before I get into the message, I just want to give you a few things that I noticed.
Literally, just as I read through this, I compiled this list in about 20 seconds, just looking at it,
just seeing the things that jumped out at me.
Number one, I saw, he says unto them in verse number two, when you pray.
Number one, have a time to pray. When you pray.
It's a time that you need to take to do it. It's a time that you should set aside.
Number two, I saw, when you pray, say.
See, you open your mouth when you pray. You pray out loud, if possible.
That's the second point I wrote down. Have a time. If you can, then pray out loud.
Now, there are other times when you pray in public and everything,
and you're praying to yourself and your mind and your heart, and that's fine.
But whenever I can, whenever I have the opportunity, when I'm by myself, I pray out loud.
Number three I wrote down. Pray for others in addition to yourself.
Notice everything in this prayer is our, we, us.
You see, this person is not just praying for themself.
Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be I.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, so as in heaven, so on earth.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins.
And on and on. Number four, when you pray, praise God.
See, don't mix up praise and prayer. Prayer means asking for something.
If you haven't asked for anything, then you haven't prayed.
If you say, God, I love you, you're so wonderful, you're such a great God, amen.
That's not praying. That's praising God, and that's great to do that,
but praying is asking for something.
But in addition to asking for something, praise God.
He said, Our Father, hallowed be thy name.
See, he's glorifying and exalting God in this prayer.
Number five, pray according to his will.
He said, thy will be done. Pray for what God wants, not always necessarily what you want.
Number six, and I just came up with these. I was just reading it.
There's so much there.
Number six, pray for God's physical provision.
He says, Give us to stay our daily bread.
Pray for God to take care of you, to give you the food on the table, to give you your finances.
But number seven, pray for God's spiritual provision,
because the daily bread that we really need is the bread that we get out of this book right here,
the hidden manna of God's word that he gives us every single day.
Number eight, bargain with God in your prayer life.
I love this verse. It's my favorite part.
And forgive us our sins, verse number four,
for we also forgive everyone that's indebted to us.
See the bargaining with God, telling God, Hey, look, God,
I forgive everybody that's indebted to me.
Can you give me a break, God, for some of the things that I've done wrong?
You see that? Bargain with God when you pray.
A big part of my prayer life is arguing with God and telling God,
God, you said in the Bible this and that. Is that true or not?
Are you going to do that for me?
And so bargain with God.
Take him up on some of the promises that he's made.
Number nine, pray for God to lead you out of temptation.
Pray for God to keep you away from things that will cause you to sin.
None of us is above sinning.
The best way not to sin is to not even be tempted to sin.
It's just to stay away from it.
So I don't have a TV in my house tonight.
I don't even want to be tempted to turn the thing on and watch something inappropriate.
And so that's number nine.
And then number ten, the case in point, what we're preaching on tonight.
These four words, deliver us from evil.
Deliver us from evil.
Now, what is evil?
A lot of people have a misconception of what evil is,
and I've taught this a little bit, but I'm going to explain it a little more again.
Evil does not mean sin.
A lot of people think evil means sin.
When they think of evil, they think of some kind of a,
oh, they think of maybe, here's what I think of, like a psychic or a witch or something.
Don't you think of like Halloween type images?
That's what I think of when I think of evil.
I think of some of the dark rock music album covers and stuff like that.
That's what I think of as evil, and a lot of people think evil is just sin.
Well, all sin is not evil, and all evil is not sin.
In fact, those two words are very different in what they mean.
Let me show you something.
Look at the book of Amos, chapter three.
Right at the end of your Old Testament there, it's about ten books from the end of the Old Testament.
It's all those little books called the Minor Prophets, Hosea through Malachi there.
It goes Hosea, Joel, Amos.
So find the book of Amos there in the end of your Old Testament and get to Amos, chapter three,
and I'm going to show you a verse to illustrate what I'm talking about.
It says in verse number six,
Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid?
Look at the latter part of verse six.
Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?
You see that?
The Bible says that God does evil.
Did you see that?
God does evil.
So if evil is a sin, then God wouldn't be doing it, would he?
No.
Evil is not sin because God does evil.
You say, God does evil?
This is weird.
Look, we've got to understand what evil means.
The word evil means that you're harming or hurting someone else.
That's what evil means.
Now, every sin is not evil.
Evil is when you're hurting somebody, and every evil is not a sin.
Now look, there are people that God hurts.
That's called evil.
Is he wrong in doing that?
No.
Everything that God does is right.
And so when God does evil, he's right in doing it
because evil is hurting or harming someone else.
Now, not all evil is sin because there's a lot of evil that God does.
Let me just read these for you.
You don't have to turn there, but Exodus 32, 14.
I alluded to this this morning.
And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.
He was going to destroy them.
He was going to do them evil.
Again, in 2 Samuel 24, 16,
when the angel stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it,
this is when David had sinned and an angel came to destroy Jerusalem,
the Lord repented him of the evil and said to the angel that destroyed the people,
it is enough.
See, we're talking here about an angel that's destroying a city.
God says that that's evil, even though God told him to do it.
And then again in Jeremiah 26, 19, the Bible says,
Did Hezekiah, king of Judah, and all Judah, put him at all to death?
Did he not fear the Lord, and besought the Lord,
and the Lord repented him of the evil which he had pronounced against them?
See, evil is something that God does.
Evil is something that God wants to be done sometimes
because evil is hurting another person.
Now, 99% of the time, evil is sin.
It's usually talking about somebody sinfully hurting another person.
But I'm just showing you these rare instances in the Bible where God is doing evil,
where godly people are doing evil,
just to give you an idea that evil and sin are not the same thing.
I want you to see what it means.
Evil is hurting or harming someone else.
Let me give you an example.
Drinking is a sin.
Talking about drinking alcoholic beverages is a sin.
But it's not evil.
Selling alcoholic beverages, that is evil.
The beer commercial on TV is evil because it's hurting someone else.
It's harming someone else.
It's trying to get somebody else involved in a self-destructive behavior.
Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor to drink, the Bible says,
that putteth thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also.
See, that's the evil.
That thou mayest look on their nakedness.
Do you see that?
That's a lot of times the motivation.
And that's a result of alcohol, of course.
And so, again, fornication is not evil.
Fornication is a sin, but it's not evil.
The Bible says,
He that commiteth fornication sinned against his own body, the Bible says.
And so fornication is not evil.
Fornication is a sin.
Now, rape or violating someone else, that is evil.
Do you see the difference between sin and evil in the Bible?
And so God says in this great prayer, and He's teaching us to pray this prayer,
O God, would you deliver us from evil?
Now, what is He talking about?
Lead us not into temptation.
He's talking about tempting us a sin that we're going to commit,
that we're going to do.
Deliver us from evil.
He's talking about evil that's going to happen to us.
Do you see the difference?
It's talking about something where we're the victim
of somebody else's evil ploy to hurt us.
You see, lead us not into temptation is a sin that we're involved in.
God, He's saying, we don't want to be tempted by it
because we know that we'll fall into sin sometimes
if we're, you know, even put in confrontation with it.
But deliver us from evil is saying,
God, would you please protect us from something that's trying to hurt us?
Now, number one, my first point tonight,
is that praying for God to deliver you from evil
should be a part of your prayer life.
This is something that you should be praying.
And I'm going to explain to you a little bit about what this means.
You have to come to realization.
You must realize that the devil would love nothing more than to destroy you.
That's his goal.
He has no purpose in life.
I mean, think about what his doom is going to be.
Revelation chapter 20 tells us clearly
that he's going to be taken hold of by a strong angel from heaven.
He's going to be bound and chained up.
He's going to be shut up, the Bible says.
He's going to be cast down into the bottomless pit
and the door is going to be shut
and he's going to burn in hell for a thousand years.
Then he's going to come out of the pit for just a short time
and deceive the nations one last time.
Then he's going to be cast forever into the lake of fire and brimstone
where the beast and false prophet are
and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever.
You see, the devil's not going to be in hell laughing with a pitchfork.
He is going to be tormented by Jesus Christ.
The tormentor in hell is not the devil.
You know, the devil's torturing people in hell.
You see it on the cartoons.
No, the person who's doing the torturing is God Almighty.
That's who is damning people to hell.
And the devil is going to be on the receiving end of God's judgment.
He doesn't rule and reign in hell.
He's going to be tormented day and night forever and ever, the Bible says.
And so what purpose does the devil have other than to destroy your life?
He says, you know what, if I'm going to go to hell,
if I'm going to be damned and destroyed and doomed,
then I'm going to take as many people as I can with me.
Isn't that wicked?
But that's his whole life.
That's all he's about.
The devil wants to destroy you.
Look, if you go to Faithful Word Baptist Church, the devil wants to destroy you.
If you go soul winning, the devil wants to destroy you.
You believe the King James Bible is the word of God?
You just ask the devil to come attack you.
Because the devil wants nothing more than to destroy people who are living for God.
The more you live for God, the more the devil wants to destroy you.
This is what the devil's plan is.
Now, the devil is evil.
If you're saved, if you're not saved, think about people that aren't saved,
the devil would love nothing more than to keep them unsafe because he wants them to go to hell.
One of the greatest ways that he does this is through false religion.
Evil religions.
Catholicism is evil tonight.
Pentecostalism is evil.
Okay, Protestantism is evil.
You say, what?
It's evil because it's preaching a false gospel.
It's hurting people.
It's damning their soul to hell.
And the devil's favorite ploy, it says that he's transformed into a minister of light.
He's transformed into a minister.
He's transformed into something good.
And his goal is to take as many people to hell with him.
But he's usually going to fail at that.
Now, don't get me wrong.
I'm not saying that Catholics are evil.
I'm saying that Catholicism is evil.
The Catholic parishioner is the one that's on the receiving end of this evil.
This is what we're talking about.
Am I preaching against the person who goes to the Catholic church?
No.
They're the one that's the victim.
They're the one that's being deceived and lied to.
We need to get the gospel to them and take them out of the darkness that they're in
and pull them out of that evil religion and get them to the truth of the gospel.
See, it's not their fault necessarily all the time because sometimes they're being deceived.
Who's evil?
The priest is evil.
The Catholic preacher's evil.
The pope's evil.
He's the vicar of hell.
And he's trying to take as many people into his wicked religion as he can.
So you have to understand what I'm saying here.
All throughout the message, I want you to understand that I'm not preaching against the victim.
That's who we're trying to help here.
That's who we're trying to pray that they'll be delivered.
That's who we're trying to pray that we'll be delivered from the evil that plagues our lives.
And so the devil will use false religion.
But, alas, some of them get away and we win them to Christ and they get saved, right?
Or some other faithful, godly Christian wins them to Christ.
And now he's blown it.
He lost.
He said, ugh, they're saved.
They can never go to hell.
I mean, they have eternal security.
What am I going to do?
Well, he's not through yet.
He says, if I can stop them from getting baptized.
If I can stop them from getting baptized, I know they're not really going to grow much in the Lord.
If they don't get baptized, they don't take that first step of obedience, they're going to fall by the wayside.
It's just a matter of time.
And so he's going to do everything he can to stop them from being baptized.
But sometimes they get baptized.
And then he says, well, they've been saved, they've been baptized.
I've got to keep them out of church.
Because if they get under that preaching, the Holy Ghost is going to speak to their heart.
And they're going to be stirred up to do everything else in the Christian life
because the preacher is hopefully going to be preaching a well-rounded messages all throughout the Bible
and something's going to get ahold of them and they're going to start living for God.
So I've got to keep them out of church.
And you'll see the devil do all kinds of things to keep them out of church.
And then that doesn't work.
They get in church.
Well, then the next day he wants to keep them from being faithful to all three services.
He wants to get them to think, don't be a fanatic, don't be eccentric, good night.
Church three times a week, what are you doing?
One time is enough.
And he'll try and just get them to be a Sunday morning glory, a Sunday morning only type Christian.
But alas, they're coming three times.
Then he's going to try and stop them from being a soul winner.
Actually, he'll try that earlier.
He'll say, I'm going to stop them from winning anybody to Christ.
I'm going to tell them that you're too sinful.
You can't preach the Gospel.
You're not good enough.
You've got to get rid of all your sin first.
They're like, well, good night.
You're never going to be a soul winner.
You're backward.
You're shy.
You don't know the Bible.
Hey, look, the people in the Bible that I see Jesus winning to Christ,
they turn right around and be a soul winner immediately.
They don't care what their testimony is.
And I'll tell you something.
I'm all for having a good Christian testimony.
But I will say this.
Your testimony is way overrated in Christianity today.
Everything is just live the life in front of them, this lifestyle evangelism.
And, hey, I'm going to protect my testimony as much as I can.
But 99% of the time, I don't give a flip what anybody thinks,
except what God thinks.
And if people talk about your testimony, your testimony, testimony, hey, look,
your testimony is not going to do you any good unless you're opening your mouth
and giving people the Gospel.
And I've seen people who were very sinful win another person to Christ.
And you shouldn't let that stop you because here's God's plan.
He says every tree that bringeth forth fruit, my Father purges it
so that it will bring forth more fruit.
See, the fruit, first you bear the fruit.
First you be a soul winner.
Then God will begin to cut some of the sin out of your life.
He'll begin to purge you so that you can bring forth more fruit.
But you're never going to get the purging until you start bringing forth fruit.
And so the devil will try to discourage you and tell you you're not good enough to be a soul winner.
Or you don't have enough knowledge.
You don't need knowledge to go soul winning.
Do you know how to get saved?
Because if you're saved, you must know how to get saved.
Well, explain that to somebody else.
Take this tract right here that we hand out for our church
and take this and just show them these verses and explain to them what salvation is.
God will use you.
God will use you if you want to be used.
If you open your mouth and preach the Gospel, God will use you.
And so don't let anybody discourage you.
Don't let the devil tell you that you can't be a soul winner.
You see, the devil is just going to never stop attacking you.
He's not through with me. He's not through with you.
And he's evil.
I mean, he wants to destroy you. That's his whole goal.
He wants you to be a failure.
Everything that you don't want your life to end up like,
that's what the devil is trying to do to your life.
Everything that you say, that's not where I want to end up financially,
that's not where I want to end up spiritually,
that's not the way I want my family to end up,
his goal is to do that to you.
His goal is for you to fail and be a loser and a phony
and get out of church and get out of the battle and not be a soul.
That's his whole goal for your life.
He hates you.
Did you hear me? He hates you.
He looks at you with disgust and despite and disdain.
He says, I hate you. I want to destroy you.
That's what the devil feels about me tonight.
That's what the devil feels about you tonight, going against a Christian.
You are not strong enough to face on the devil.
You're not.
And he's after you, you're not strong enough.
You will lose this battle.
That's why you must pray for God to deliver you from evil.
Because prayer is the only way you're going to be delivered from it.
I was thinking about this.
I was working on a fire alarm and I told a man the story,
but I was working on a fire alarm in this spooky church building
in Illinois, in Woodstock, Illinois.
And this was one of these really old United Methodist churches.
Stained glass windows.
And I could not figure out how to turn the light on.
Okay, so I'm there at night.
I mean, this thing had like a peak of a roof like 40 feet high or something.
Big, spooky, scary, like stained glass windows and everything.
And the only light on is right above the platform.
There's this chain hanging down with a glowing red lamp.
I mean, it looks so demonic.
Just this glowing red lamp.
My wife explained to me what it is because they have the Catholic churches in Germany.
But it's this red, glowing lamp.
And I couldn't figure out how to turn the lights on, so I'm trying to do my job.
I'm working on my job.
And I was just thinking, man, this place is demonic.
This place is scary.
And then all of a sudden, I'm up on top of a ladder working on something
and this bat starts flying through the auditorium.
And this bat is flying around.
And I'm trying to throw a cable, because I'm trying to run this fire alarm cable,
I'm trying to throw a cable to get it off of a ceiling fan that is hung up on.
Every time I throw the cable, the bat thinks that I'm attacking it.
So the bat starts to fight back.
And the bat is just dive-bombing me like an Air Force fighter jet or something
and just flying into my head and trying to hit me from every angle.
And so here I am in this dark, spooky, United Methodist.
And, hey, let me tell you something.
The pastor is a lesbian, literally, at this church.
I saw a brochure.
I'm just working on the fire alarm.
But anyway, I'm there after hours, thank God.
I don't want to be around these perverts.
But anyway, I'm there in the middle of the night.
It was actually about 1 in the morning, literally.
It was 1, 1.30 in the morning.
And I'm running these cables.
The bat is attacking me.
There's this glowing red demonic light.
And I was thinking to myself, I was just walking through the auditorium,
and I pondered a thought.
I was thinking, boy, wouldn't it be good?
I feel like the devil's just about to appear to me.
And I was thinking about how the devil appeared to Jesus when he's in the wilderness,
fasting for 40 days and 40 nights in Matthew 4.
And the devil physically appeared to Jesus.
And I'm thinking to myself, man, the devil's about to appear to me
and start tempting me.
And so that's what I was thinking.
This would be the perfect place for him to show up.
But then I thought about the Bible.
I was thinking all the times I've read the Bible.
Did you know the devil never appeared to anybody throughout the Bible,
except in the Garden of Eden and Jesus Christ?
That's the only time that I can think of it.
And I was racking my brain.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but all throughout the Bible,
you'll find God's angels appearing to people at different times.
And a lot of times they're scared to death,
and they fall on their faces, and they're deathly afraid.
But never did Satan appear to someone and speak to them,
except in the Garden of Eden and then to Jesus Christ.
And I was thinking that's because we probably couldn't handle it.
I was thinking the only person that can handle a face-to-face face-off
with the devil is Jesus Christ.
See, it happened one time in the Garden of Eden,
and she didn't handle it.
She lost.
And so God protects us from that, it seems like.
And so don't get so cocky and arrogant.
The Bible says, let him that thinketh that he standeth take heed lest he fall,
because none of us is above falling into sin.
None of us is above the devil getting his evil grip on our life
and destroying us and harming us and hurting us.
No, we're not above it. None of us is.
And so you have to understand that the devil harming you,
the devil trying to destroy you, that's evil.
Now, you need to pray that God will protect you from that,
because you're not strong enough to protect yourself from that.
Well, number two, this is how to protect yourself from evil.
This is how to get yourself out of the grip of evil
or keep yourself out of the grip of evil if you're not there.
Number one is you've got to pray for God to deliver you from evil.
But number two, you've got to hate the evil.
Look at Amos, chapter 5, same book we were just in.
I'm still there.
Amos, chapter 5, and look at verse number 6.
You've got to come to the place in your life when you hate evil.
I remember I used to struggle with certain things that I don't struggle with anymore.
Now, I struggle with different things. I struggle with all kinds of things.
But there are a lot of things that I've gotten over
because I just prayed, oh, God, help me to hate evil.
And I started to just fester in my heart a healthy hatred for evil.
How's your hate life tonight?
You say, what, my love life?
No, I said, how's your hate life?
How is the hatred in your heart?
You say, hatred's bad. Not all hatred's bad.
Look if you would at Amos, chapter 5.
The Bible reads in Amos, chapter 5, verse 6.
Seek the Lord and ye shall live, lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph and devour it.
And there be none to quench it in Bethel.
And by the way, whenever we're reading these minor prophets and the prophets of the Old Testament, this is preaching.
These are men preaching a sermon, just so you understand the format of these books.
Ye who turn judgment to wormwood and leave off righteousness in the earth,
seek him that maketh the seven stars in Orion,
and turneth the shadow of death into morning,
and maketh the day dark with night,
and calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth.
The Lord is his name that strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong,
so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress.
They hate him that rebuketh in the gate.
See, they hate the preacher. They hate the guys rebuking everyone.
And they abhor him that speaketh uprightly,
for as much therefore as your treading is upon the poor,
and you take from him burdens of wheat,
you build houses of hewn stone,
but you shall not dwell in them.
You planted pleasant vineyards,
but you shall not drink wine of them,
for I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins.
They afflict the just, they take a bribe,
and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.
Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time,
for it is an evil time.
Seek good and not evil that you may live,
and so the Lord, the God of hosts,
shall be with you as you have spoken.
Look at the next three words.
Hate the evil.
And love the good.
You see, you can't have one without the other.
An established judgment in the gate,
it may be that the Lord God of hosts
will be gracious under the remnant of Joseph.
Now, look, if you think that these books of the Bible
in the Old Testament are boring, you're crazy.
I don't think that's boring at all.
This is great preaching. I love it.
But God says, hate the evil.
He says, how are you going to be delivered
from some of the evil that he spoke of
in the previous nine verses there
that he listed off some of the evil things?
How are you going to overcome it?
He says, step number one, hate the evil.
Step number two, love the good.
You see, you've got to come to the place
where you hate not only other people's sin
but where you hate your sin
because you hate all sin
because you hate evil,
most notably the evil
that the devil is using to destroy you.
Look, if something's destroying you,
don't you want to hate it?
I mean, wouldn't you hate to have somebody
out of church?
Wouldn't you hate to have somebody keep you
from being a soul winner?
Wouldn't you hate it if somebody hurts your family?
Yes, you ought to.
And so that's why God says, hate the evil.
Hate the person who's trying to destroy you.
Well, what do I mean by that?
Well, number one, I was thinking about,
and this is kind of just a parenthetical statement
that I threw in here,
hate false religion.
I'm not saying to hate people over false religion,
but I'm saying hate their religion.
Let me show you something in the Bible.
Keep your finger in Amos there
and flip over to the book of Malachi, chapter 2.
This is just a few books later.
This is the last book in the Old Testament.
Now, let me show you in the Bible,
now, this might offend people,
what I'm about to show you,
but let me show you in the Bible
what God thinks about false religion.
Let me tell you what God thinks about phony churches
and liberal churches and false religions
that are lying to people.
Now, you say, Pastor Anderson,
but sometimes you're a little bit uncouth,
and sometimes I don't like the way that you preach
because it's just downright offensive
and profane and vulgar,
and I wish that you would just tone it down a little.
Well, let's listen to our pastor
coming into the church to visit with us.
Brother, would you stand up? Malachi?
Come on in and preach for us, brother.
All right, let's hear Malachi, chapter 2,
and let's hear what God thinks about false religion.
Malachi, chapter 2, verse number 1.
And now, O ye priests, this commandment's for you.
Hey, listen, religious crowd, I'm talking to you, buddy.
He says...
I won't add any more comments, I'm sorry.
And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you.
If you will not hear and if you will not lay it to heart,
to give glory unto my name, saith the Lord of hosts,
I will even send a curse upon you,
and I will curse your blessings,
yea, I have cursed them already,
because you did not lay it to heart.
Behold, I will corrupt your seed
and spread dung upon your faces,
even the dung of your solemn feast,
and one shall take you away with it.
Now, I don't remember preaching any harder than that, friend.
I preach pretty hard, but I haven't preached that hard.
Maybe I need to work on it.
But you see, in this scripture here, he says,
look, you know what I think of your solemn feast?
You know what I think of your religious service
that has nothing to do with me, that's phony?
He says, it's dung to me.
Dung. I hope you know what that means.
And he says, it's dung, and I'm going to take that dung,
and I'm going to spread it in your face.
Now, that's a pretty mean picture.
That's a pretty grotesque, crude picture.
But that's God's word, and the Bible says
every word of God is pure.
That's God's word.
And God says, yes, I'm using a grotesque illustration,
because I'm trying to show you my extreme disgust
for people who preach and prophesy in my name.
But I didn't send them.
They're not preaching my word.
They're preaching a lie.
They're sending people to hell.
I'll spread dung in their faces.
That's what he says.
Hey, that's God's word.
Don't get mad at me about it.
You can get mad at me about some of the stuff that I say,
but don't get mad at me about that one.
That was our guest preacher.
I'm never inviting him back, because he split the church.
You're not coming back.
I can't believe I ever invited that guy.
He's not getting a love offering either.
Hey, don't tell me I'm too graphic.
Tell me I preach too hard.
That's the Bible, friend.
See, God hates false religion.
You ever wonder why I preach against sin?
You're thinking, Pastor Anderson, these visitors come.
They're these sweet, nice people.
They sit down, and you just start ripping on sin,
and they don't come back.
And you're thinking, why do you do it, Pastor Anderson?
Why do you rip on sin?
Why do you name sin?
Why do you preach on sin?
I'll tell you why I preach sin, because I hate evil,
because I'm practicing hating evil,
because I want my kids to hate evil,
because I want you to hate evil.
So I'm going to make sin exceeding sinful, the Bible says.
When I preach to my kids, and I preach to them
throughout the week, I preach to them,
I'm trying to make sin seem really bad, because it is bad.
And we get to thinking that it's OK.
But I'm trying to make sin exceeding sinful.
Why?
Because I want them to hate the evil.
Why do I preach against sin?
Why do I hate evil?
I hate evil because I love you, and I don't want the evil
to destroy you.
Does that make sense?
Because if something is destroying you,
and I love you, and I don't want you to be destroyed,
aren't I going to preach against the evil that's
destroying your life?
Yeah.
See, believe it or not, this sermon
is Love the Brotherhood, part two.
Because this is how I express my love for you,
is by ripping on sin.
Because look, the preacher who won't tell you
that sin is a sin, he doesn't love you.
He doesn't care.
He doesn't love you.
He doesn't care.
You know what he loves?
He loves his bank account.
That's what he loves.
He doesn't love you.
If he loved you, he'd tell you the truth.
If he loved you, he'd warn you.
But he doesn't care about you.
He cares about himself.
He cares about how you feel about him,
rather than how your life ends up down the road.
You see?
And so you can't trust these preachers
who won't preach on sin.
The person that loves you, I'll tell you something.
I've never felt loved by any liberal in my life.
I've been in liberal church.
I've been in fundamental church.
I've never felt like they loved me.
And boy, they were preaching on love all the time.
I never felt loved.
I've never felt more loved than when I sat in the service
and had somebody just scream and yell at me
about how my sin was so bad.
I felt like I could just,
Can you feel the love?
Hey, I felt the love.
Because I felt like, you know what?
This guy's telling the truth.
I remember there was a Mormon guy that I worked with.
I'm putting in too many stories,
but there was a Mormon guy that I worked with
at the pizza place.
I mean, I preach at this guy.
Your religion is satanic.
You're out of hell.
I was a little more uncouth back then.
This is when I was like 16 years old.
I'm like, you're out of the devil's hell.
You need to get saved.
And I'm just preaching to this guy,
ripping his face.
I saw the guy a few weeks later.
He worked at an amusement park.
He let me in for free.
He knew I loved him.
Literally, that guy loved me.
I never said a nice thing to that guy.
But he knew that I loved him.
He knew that I loved him,
because at least I cared enough to warn him
and tell him the truth.
And that guy loved me.
Hey, Steve, how you doing?
That's the way he treated me.
He loved me.
Why?
Because I loved him.
That's why.
That's why I was telling him the truth.
Nothing but love in my heart for him.
That's why I was trying to get him saved.
Maybe I didn't express my love perfectly,
but I was trying to get him saved.
You know, people criticize me about,
you know, they say, I get emails.
I read your essay on male gynecologists.
It's the stupidest thing I've ever read in my life.
I get emails like that all the time.
And by the way, that essay has been read
by literally thousands of people.
And I get all kinds of positive emails about it, too.
But I get just, that's the stupidest thing
I've ever heard in my life.
You're an idiot.
You're crazy.
You're a fanatic.
You're the Taliban.
Hey, look, I'm not the hate monger, friend.
Because I'm the one who's trying to protect women
from being defiled because I know personally,
family members and friends who've told me
about being defiled.
So don't get mad at me.
Get mad at the sickened pervert that's doing it.
Hate the evil.
Don't hate the preacher who's rebuking in the gate
saying, God, say it to the Lord.
Don't uncover the nakedness of your neighbor's wife.
Because you take, my wife's not going to go there
and get uncovered, friend.
And you say, I don't like that.
You're mean.
Look, why in the world am I mean
when I'm trying to protect you from evil?
What in the world wrong motivation could I have
from trying to protect you from some evil
that's going to hurt you?
It could ruin your life.
It's love that motivates me to take a stand against sin,
to hate sin.
And that's why I will keep ringing that bell
just until the cows come home.
I'm going to preach against that garbage
of some pervert doctor molesting women in his office
and calling it a prenatal exam.
It's filthy as hell.
You say, I don't like that.
I don't care.
I hate it.
And I love you.
That's why I'm telling you that.
You say, well, I was thinking about rock music.
You say, wait a minute.
I listen to rock music.
Are you saying that I'm evil?
No, you're missing the point of the sermon.
If you listen to rock music, I'm not saying that you're evil.
I'm saying that the evil is the devil
that he's trying to hurt you.
You see, you're the one who's being victimized willfully.
You're letting the devil hurt you.
You're letting the devil harm you.
You're letting him get his grip into your life.
Hey, I want you to be delivered from that evil.
I want you to be delivered from the devil's evil
that he's trying to hurt you.
I'm not saying you're evil.
I'm saying the guy who's producing it's evil.
I'm saying that the guy who's promoting it's evil.
And you say, how do I hate the evil in my life?
How am I going to hate rock music, Pastor Anderson?
Because I'll tell you something.
I used to be very addicted to wrong music, very addicted.
I listened to it all day, every day.
My number one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten
favorite thing to do was listen to music.
And what happened?
I came to a point where I said,
I need to just start hating this music.
And I would just think about it and just fester and get worked up.
Man, I hate this music.
I would try to read everything bad about every singer
of the music that I listen to and just think, these guys are idiots.
I hate these guys.
And I just psyched myself up and just said,
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.
Here's what you do.
Let me illustrate.
I love doing illustrations.
See, I was reading the Bible,
and they have all kinds of figure lessons and object lessons
where they, you know, if you read the book of Ezekiel,
he had all kinds of, he built a city and destroyed it
and does all these really neat things.
And it really drives the point home.
And so I went into my wife's CD cabinet,
and here's what I found, believe it or not.
Okay?
NSYNC CD.
Can you believe this garbage?
This was in her bedroom.
Oh, I'm kidding, of course.
So I take my NSYNC CD, and then here's what else I found.
Typical, huh?
U2.
A U2 CD.
The brand new U2 CD that just came out.
I found these CDs.
Look, here's how you make the evil.
Let me teach you something, okay?
This is what you're going to need to help your hatred out a little bit.
You take the NSYNC CD, and you say,
hey, you stupid pervert faggot.
Hey, you sissified little twinkie little queer.
I'm sick of you messing up life.
I'm sick of the evil.
Get out of here.
That's what you do with that garbage.
Hey, if you do that, you say,
well, I got rid of my rock music.
I just like it so much, I just went back and bombed another one.
And then I just turned away.
Look, you've got to, after you do something like that,
you're probably not going to like it.
You know, you're probably going to feel some hatred for it.
And you say U2, Bono, the lead singer for U2,
he's some left-wing activist.
Some liberal, he's always for some left-wing cause.
He claims to be a Christian.
Doesn't that make you sick?
He claims to be a Christian,
but he said he'd go to the church in San Francisco
where the preacher is gay, if he went to church.
He said, I'd go to this church in San Francisco,
that's my kind of church,
where gays and straights, everything's fine.
He cough-stresses on, stinking cough-stressing left-wing idiot.
I'm sick of you controlling the way that I think.
I'm sick of you messing up my life.
I'm sick of you evil.
I hate you.
See, that's how you, you've got to hate the evil, friend.
Hey, if you have rock music,
that's how you should get rid of it.
Don't sell it to the pawn shop.
Don't sell it to the used record store.
Hey, break it.
Get out, express a little anger on it,
and then maybe you'll hate it a little more.
You say, you're crazy.
No, I'm not crazy.
I'm trying to show you how to hate evil.
See, cause what does hate mean?
It means that I want to destroy something.
The Bible says he that hated his brother is a murderer.
So hatred is like, I want to kill you.
That's what hatred means.
And so I don't want to kill a person,
but I'm saying I want to kill my stupid U2 CD.
And I've destroyed my music in the past.
I've violently thrown it away and stuff like that.
And you say, well, that's just violent.
That's just destructive behavior.
It shouldn't be like that.
Well, listen, Mr. Rogers,
maybe you should read the Bible
because when Jesus walked into the temple, Barney,
when Jesus walked into the temple, Bert and Ernie,
Cookie Monster.
Hey, listen, Ronald McDonald.
When Jesus walked into the temple,
he started flipping over tables and chasing people with a whip.
Why? Because he hated evil.
He said, you're selling things in the house of God.
I'm going to take your money and dump it out on the ground.
Can you imagine the pandemonium,
somebody dumping money on the ground,
flipping tables over?
Yes, he had a hammer in his hand.
It's not in the Bible,
if you read the Greek and Hebrew, no.
But hey, look, Jesus hated evil.
That's why the Bible says in Hebrews 1-8,
thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity.
Therefore, God, even thy God,
hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness.
Sounds pretty positive to me.
The oil of gladness above thy fellows.
And so that's how you could express your hatred toward rock music.
I was thinking about some of the other evil that the devil has for us.
Think about my sermon on the,
and this is another sermon that people might find a little silly,
my sermon about eating right, about proper diet.
You say, come on, Pastor Anderson,
you're preaching against artificial sweeteners,
you're preaching against NutraSweet,
you're preaching against Diet Coke.
Hey, look, I'm preaching against it
because the devil wants you to be unhealthy.
Let's face it, if the devil can get you to be unhealthy,
he can hinder you from serving God.
Now, look, if I'm unhealthy,
can I go soul winning as much as if I'm healthy?
No.
Can I memorize the Bible as much as if I'm healthy?
No.
And so the devil wants nothing more.
I mean, he wishes that he could kill you,
but God won't let him do that, but he wishes that he could.
And so he wants to harm you and make you sick and ill.
So if he can get you to go to McDonald's every day
and eat a bunch of trash food every day, he'll do it.
Because he wants to hurt you.
He wants to harm you.
You say, Pastor Anderson, I am not evil because I drank Diet Coke.
Hey, I'm not saying you're evil.
I'm not preaching against you tonight.
I'm trying to warn you and say, look, the devil wants to hurt you.
He wants to fill your body with a bunch of trash.
He wants you to listen to a bunch of rock music
and fill your mind with trash.
He wants you to be addicted to anything.
He'll get you addicted to food.
He'll get you addicted to drugs.
He'll get you addicted to booze because why?
He wants to destroy you. He wants to hurt you.
Oh, God, would you deliver us from the evil of our generation?
Oh, God, would you deliver me from the evil in my life?
Leave me not into temptation, but God, deliver me from the evil
that other people are trying to suck me into
and the devil is trying to hurt me with.
Look at that television, obviously.
Television is an addiction that is evil.
I mean, it hurts you because it makes you stupid.
Yes, it does make you stupid. It rots your brain.
Yes, TV does make you sit on the couch
and become a couch potato and lazy, especially as a man.
You know, a man will get lazy just watching TV all day.
Yes, it will make you apathetic.
It'll take away your drive and it'll take away your ambition.
He'll just want to sit around and watch TV all day.
And I've seen elderly people fall into this trap
where they just do nothing but watch TV.
They watch all eight hours of the O.J. Simpson trial every day.
I knew people like that.
I mean, all eight hours every day for, like, a year of O.J. Simpson trial.
Wow. Can't wait till you get to heaven
and get rewarded for all that that you watched.
Obviously, it's harming you.
It's something that's hurting you.
I took it out of my house because I don't want to be led into temptation.
I want to be delivered from that evil device
that people are using to try to control my mind,
to try to tell me that I need things that I don't need on the commercials,
to try to expose me to pornography that I didn't want to be exposed to,
to try to show me lifestyles that I don't want to know anything about.
It's evil. It's hurting me.
Get rid of it.
Think about, well, let's see what's on the next page.
Think about cigarettes.
Well, okay, what's wrong with cigarettes?
Same thing as artificial sweeteners.
It's something that's hurting your body.
Look, doesn't the devil want you to be unhealthy?
Doesn't the devil want you to be sick?
Yes, because he knows that if he can get you to be unhealthy and sick,
maybe he can shave off a little bit of your lifespan
that you would have been soul winning,
that you would have been encouraging people,
that you would have been in church, that you would have been loving God
and loving people and praying and soul winning.
Read your Bible.
If I could shave off 10 years of that,
couldn't I think about 10 years of life what you could do for God?
That's a lot.
I've been serving God for less than 10 years if I'm really serving God,
and I feel like I've accomplished a lot.
But think about just shaving that off at the end of your life.
Think about just the money that it took from you,
and then you've got to work the extra hours to pay for that money
that you could have been doing something else, serving God, loving God.
See, you've got to get to the point where you hate the evil.
Look, doesn't the devil want you to feel guilty
because you know you're doing something that you shouldn't be doing
when you smoke a cigarette?
The devil is the biggest guilt monger in the world.
I mean, this is what the devil's plan is.
He's called the accuser of the brethren.
He comes to you every day and tells you.
He says, you're worthless, you can't be a soul winner,
you're not a good Christian, and he brings up your sins to you.
That's what he does.
He says, you're doing this, you're doing that.
That's the way the devil is.
He accuses you day and night, the Bible says.
He accuses the brethren day and night.
Hey, if you're smoking a cigarette, you're giving the devil another opportunity
to point the finger at you and say, look what you did.
And look, yes, you can still serve God and love God
and do great things for God and smoke cigarettes your whole life,
but see, the devil's going to use that for guilt on you,
and he's going to use it to hurt you physically in a great way
and damage your body with disease, with sickness, and all kinds of areas
so he could hurt you with that, and he could use it against you.
He could use it to hurt your finances.
I was thinking about this.
If God's providing our every need, I wonder if he's providing the cigarette money
or if that comes out of what you needed that God provided for you.
And so I was thinking to myself, how do you quit smoking?
And I don't know about these things, okay,
but here's how I was thinking a good way to quit smoking, okay?
Here I am going through life.
I'm a busy day at the office, and boy, my job every day is a busy day at the office.
My fire alarm business and my phone rings off the hook.
I feel like I'm in the New York Stock Exchange,
and so every once in a while I just reach into my pocket
and I just pull out a good old Marlboro cigarette,
and I say, I'm just going to step outside, honey, kids.
I'm just going to step outside, have a smoke because, hey, well, look,
here's what you've got to do.
You've got to take that cigarette in your hand like this and just smell it like this
and just say, you know what, man, I hate that smell.
Boy, I hate that smell.
I hate it.
And you say, I hate you.
I hate you.
And you say, you know what, I'm sick of you making me sick.
I'm sick of it.
I hate you.
Yes, I hate you for making me sick.
I hate you for wasting my money.
I hate you for controlling me.
I hate you.
Smell that?
Man, I hate that smell.
See, that's the attitude that you've got to have towards cigarettes
because I'm going to tell you something.
Until you hate the sin and you say, well, what's going to cause me to hate sin?
Well, when you realize the damage that it's doing to you
and you realize the pleasure that it's giving to the devil,
that you're sin.
You know, and just the pleasure it gives him.
Boy, I got them hooked, haven't I?
Look, hey, I want to tell the devil to go quickly
because I'm not going to let anything control me.
I like what Paul said.
He said, all things are lawful for me,
but I will not be brought under the power of any.
Nothing's going to control me except the Lord Jesus Christ,
the Holy Spirit of God.
And so here's my next point, number three.
Number one, pray for God to deliver you from evil.
Number two, what was number two?
Number one, pray for God to deliver you from evil.
And number two, you've got to hate the evil.
How could I forget?
That's such a violent point.
Those that are listening to this on tape
are missing like 90% of the sermon, all the visual aids.
But number three, and here's a great important point,
overcome evil with good.
This is the third point.
Let me read this verse for you, Romans 12.21.
Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
How are you going to overcome evil?
Well, tomorrow morning, Monday morning,
boy, always a busy day Monday morning.
I mean, good night.
All kinds of calls are coming into the office.
The phone's ringing off the hook.
All kinds of emergencies from over the weekend.
Well, I reach into my pocket to pull out my moral boys,
but I forgot that on Sunday night,
I beat the hell out of them in the pulpit.
So I beat the fire out of these stinking cigarettes.
So here I am.
I reach into my pocket and...
You ever see people do this?
Oh, man, where are they?
Oh, man.
So here's what I do instead.
Sunday night, after my exercise of anger there,
I take these verses.
These are my Bible verses right here.
These are my memory verses.
And I put those right here
where I used to put my cigarettes in my pocket.
And so here I am.
Oh, man, I got to step outside, honey.
I step out and I reach in my pocket for those moral boys
and I pull it out.
What?
Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost
and that you're not your own?
You're bought with a price?
Therefore glorify God in your body,
in your body, in your body and in your spirit,
which are God's.
And I read that and I say, whoa.
And that is how you overcome evil with good
because now you have a craving for God's word.
And you say, you know, I need a fix.
I need my God's word fix.
Let me read these verses.
You say, boss, I have to step outside.
I got to take my verses break.
What?
Hey, everybody, let's take this smoking break.
Go outside and get your Bible break.
Oh, I got to.
You don't understand the craving.
You don't understand the craving that I have.
It's a physical dependency that I have.
I've esteemed the words of his mouth
more than my necessary food.
I must get my Bible break.
And so you step outside and get the verses up in there
and say, hey, replace your rock music CDs with the hymnal,
with the Bible on CD, Alexander Skirby.
That's great.
Replace it with preaching.
Replace it with something else to listen to.
Sing the praises of God instead of your rock music.
Hey, replace your junk food.
Cook a meal.
Go around the perimeter of the grocery store
instead of the inside of the grocery store.
Go around the perimeter where the meat and the dairy
and the bread and the vegetables and the fruits are,
not where stovetop stuffing is and all this ready-made stuff
and not the frozen section.
I'm talking about the outside of the thing
and get something that's healthy to replace the bad food in your life.
I'm not telling you to go hungry.
I'm just telling you not to have it your way.
Have it the right way and eat something good from the grocery store.
If you replace the bar with the local church,
I was thinking about this in Hammond where I used to live in Hammond.
It's like there's all these little bars.
Literally, they only have like three cars outside of them.
It's like the same three or four cars every night.
It's just the same four or five people every night.
That's like their church.
Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name
and everybody's glad you came.
It's like their little cheers where they go
and all their buddies are there and they get their fellowship
and they worship at the altar of the devil's brew.
Well, replace that camaraderie that you feel with your drinking buddies.
Replace that feel of the local New Testament independent bar.
Replace that with the local independent church.
It's the same thing.
Come where everybody knows your name and everybody's glad you came.
Come to the local church.
You can replace it.
You can overcome the evil with good.
But secondly, another meaning here, and if you turn to Romans 12,
I'm going to close with this.
Turn to Romans 12.
It's my last point of the evening, but look at Romans 12.
I want to show you the context.
I pulled that verse out of context about overcoming evil with good,
which is okay to do that because there are so many meanings in the Bible.
The Bible is so deep.
That verse can mean several things if you take it by itself.
I believe that the verses are divided there for a reason.
But look, if you would, at the actual context of what we're looking at.
Look at verse number 19.
Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath.
For it is written, vengeance is mine.
I will repay, saith the Lord.
Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him.
If he thirst, give him drink.
For in so doing that he coals a fire on his head.
Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
Now, throughout the sermon we've been talking about
more the devil's organized plan to destroy your life.
The evil in this world that we're supposed to be begging God.
Oh, God, deliver us from evil.
Oh, God, deliver us from the devil's ploy to destroy our lives
through all these different avenues.
God, I'm the victim here.
I'm being attacked.
I need you to deliver me.
I need you to help me, God.
I must not fall into prey to the devil's spiderweb of evil.
But this here is dealing with, I'm going to close with this,
this is dealing with a person who does evil to us.
I mean, I'm just talking about an individual person,
not the organized plan.
That's just somebody does you wrong.
Somebody's rude to you.
Somebody's mean to you.
Somebody hurts you.
God says, look, you overcome that evil.
Yes, pray to be delivered from it.
You know, hopefully it won't happen.
But when it does happen, overcome with good, he says,
look, if somebody does wrong to you, do right by them.
He says if somebody hurts you, he says, hey, if they're hungry, feed them.
If they're thirsty, give them a drink.
He says you'll heat coals of fire on their head.
He says all pay them back.
You just have nothing in your heart but love for them.
I was thinking about the first time, we're talking a lot about prayer today.
I was talking about the first time that the word pray is used in the New Testament.
The first time God says pray.
You know what it says?
Matthew 5, 44.
It says, but I say unto you, love your enemies,
bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you,
and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.
The first time God tells you to pray in the whole New Testament,
he's saying, hey, pray for those that despitefully use you.
Pray for those that persecute you.
Bless those that curse you.
Do good to them that hate you.
He says the way that you're going to overcome the evil that comes your way in life
from people hurting you is just by overcoming it with good.
Kind of like what we were talking about earlier.
You were talking about that email that came to you that was negative
and you just reply with good.
And that's the way the Bible says a soft answer turneth away wrath.
And so, yes, you can overcome the evil in your life by replacing it with something good.
And when an individual type person will hurt you or harm you or do wrong to you,
just overcome it with good and just say I'm not going to return cursing for cursing.
I'm going to bless and not curse.
I'm going to love my enemies.
I'm going to do good to them.
And that's how I'm going to overcome the evil in my life.
So I hope that because of this sermon, this is the goal of the sermon,
I want you to add this to your prayer life.
You know, yes, you're praising God.
Yes, you're thanking Him for the things He does for you.
Yes, you're asking Him for your needs.
Yes, all those nine things that I listed when we started out the message at different points.
Yes, you're praising Him and thanking Him and asking Him for your needs and the needs of others.
But don't forget to tag on to the end of your prayer life.
And God, would you deliver us from evil?
Would you please protect not just me but us?
Would you deliver us from the evil that's trying to hurt us?
Would you deliver us from the evil that the devil has that he's trying to destroy us with?
Would you please, God? We can't do it on our own.
We don't have the strength to do it, God.
But would you deliver us from evil?
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
God, I thank you so much for the Bible and I thank you for prayer,
singing a lot about prayer today, dear God, and just the awesome power of being able to command you,
as you said, command ye me, and just being able to tell you, God, what we want
and to make our requests known to God, Father.
What a privilege. What a privilege to talk to the all...