And by the way, go to 2 Corinthians chapter six,
if you would.
2 Corinthians chapter six.
Let me just unload the whole truck while I'm here.
2 Corinthians chapter six, how about this?
Don't team up with or promote false prophets
because you like their politics.
Don't team up with or promote false prophets
because you like their politics.
You know, there's something wrong when we just
basically drop all boundaries of separation
so that we can all rally and unite for politics,
especially when it happens in the church house.
Let me bring up some examples of this.
You know, it's funny, but I was in a great big giant
independent fundamental Baptist church for years.
And this church was always schmoozing
with all the politicians.
So they'd always bring in like the mayor
and the chief of police and the fire chief
and the congressman and the governor.
They'd bring in all the worldly politicians
into church on Sunday morning and give them awards
and honor them and praise them and give them chances
to make speeches behind the pulpit in church
on Sunday morning, Sunday night in the house of God,
you know, bringing in all these worldly unsafe politicians.
I remember they brought in the mayor of the town
and he was Roman Catholic and he got up
and he's telling us, I'm sorry, he was the chief of police
because he was talking about how he was in his police car
and he flipped over his police car and he almost died.
But he said, you know, but if I died,
I'm pretty sure I would have gone to heaven
because every night I pray this prayer.
He unfolds a piece of paper and reads a Catholic prayer.
I think I would have gone to heaven
'cause I pray this every night.
First of all, number one, if you pray that every night,
you wouldn't have to read it off a paper, would you?
You big fat lying politician.
If you reach it, if you pray it every night,
why do you have a script?
If I prayed something literally every night,
that's 365 times, for 10 years, that's like 3,650 times,
and you're still reading it off a script?
But number two, if you don't know for sure
that you're going to heaven,
it sounds like you're not fully trusting Christ,
because if Christ did everything,
if it's all paid for by Christ, how come you're not sure?
You're not sure if Jesus really died?
Are you not sure he rose from the dead?
But typically when people say,
"Well, I think I'm going to heaven,
"I hope I'm going to heaven,"
why is it that they say that?
It's because they're wondering, "Am I good enough?"
You know, "I've done good, I've done bad,
"I think I would've gone to heaven."
This guy's like, "Well, I've done a lot of bad stuff,
"but I pray this prayer every night."
"Whoop, I'm in, I made it!"
You know what that's called?
A vain repetition.
The Bible says, "When you pray,
"use not vain repetitions as they heathen do,
"for they think that they shall be heard
"for they're much speaking."
You know what that means?
They're not gonna, they think they're gonna be heard.
You know what it means when he says,
"They think they shall be heard"?
What does that actually mean?
God's not, is God listening?
Hail Mary, full of grace.
God's not listening.
Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
God's not listening.
Because if you're just vainly repeating things,
if you're just chanting, he's not listening.
And by the way, if you're not saved,
he's not listening.
The only prayer that he'll hear from an unsaved person
is one either seeking the gospel or confessing
that Christ is their savior.
You know, he's not going to just hear all your prayers.
You're not his child.
You've got to get saved.
This guy's a Roman Catholic.
Why is he promoting a false gospel on Sunday morning
in an independent Baptist church?
But you know, there's another church that's the same way
out in California, Pastor Jack Treber.
You know, for decades, they've brought in the politicians
and schmoozed them and the police chief and the mayor
and the governor and praising the Congress
and the city council and oh, they have such a good
relationship with all their local officials.
And when I was in Bible college, they taught me,
you got to make good relationships
with all these local officials.
Which okay, I mean, I can see if somebody said,
hey, take them out to breakfast or something
and try to get along, okay.
I get that, but you know what?
Bringing them into the house of God has gone too far.
When you're bringing unsaved people
and honoring them in the house of God,
giving them awards in the house of God,
we need to honor Christ.
This is God's house, not a political house.
But anyway, so he did this for decades.
And then during the whole coronavirus thing,
when California was saying that churches can't meet
or they can't meet indoors
or they have to be socially distanced or whatever,
and this is a church running thousands of people.
So Pastor Jack Treberg gets up and says,
I think he didn't meet for a while,
but then he gets up and says, we're meeting anyway.
We're doing it anyway.
We tried to slow the spread and we shut down for a while,
but it's time for us to get back to church.
We're just gonna do it anyway.
His local officials that he'd been schmoozing
for the last 30 years, right?
All of the whining and dining and awards
and praising them and how wonderful they are,
guess how they repaid him?
Does anybody remember the dollar amount?
Somebody remember or no?
It's like $50,000 a service.
They find him like 50 grand in the morning
and 50 grand at night.
And then he's making all these videos like,
please let us have church.
We need to have church.
Charge us 50 grand in the morning to grand at night.
It's like, well, you know what?
Here's the lesson to be learned.
Guess what you get for desecrating God's house,
bringing in all these worthless, ungodly,
wicked, corrupt politicians and praising them and exalting them
and lifting them up in church.
Guess what you get for that.
You get precisely nothing for that.
You get nothing.
You receive nothing.
And you know, isn't that kind of a poetic justice?
Now, let's talk about our church.
All of our local leadership hates me and hates our church.
Pastor Roger Jimenez, his local leaders hate him
and hate Verity Baptist Church.
He had the police chief of Sacramento
screaming at him over the phone.
Literally screaming at Pastor Jimenez.
I mean, and then talk about Pastor Bruce Mejia
in El Monte, they basically ran him out of town literally
because basically the sodomites blew up his church building
and then basically they wanna go in and fix it
and make it structurally sound
so that they can have church again.
And basically the government gave him a list of stuff
that he has to do to meet in that building.
It was literally impossible to perform.
It was a list of things that were literally impossible.
They said like, give us the history of the occupancy
of this building for the last 30 years.
Tell us about every church that's ever met in this building.
It was just like, it was these bizarre requests
that were just pages and pages and pages.
It was like something that no one could ever achieve.
No one could ever get done.
So he ended up just moving to another town.
Because basically, and this is what, you know,
I was talking about on the phone.
He said, look, it's just the leadership of our city
just wants us in a different town.
They just want us gone.
They just want us in a different city, right?
But think about this.
You know, here we are, faithful,
but here's the thing, it's a blessing anyway,
'cause now he's got a better building, a better gig.
That building had issues anyway.
There's no parking lot.
Now he's got a parking lot, a better building, better setup.
All things work together for good to them that love God.
But here's the thing.
You know, our politicians hate our goods.
Our politicians have literally done press conferences
in our parking lot where they're like,
we're gonna stop this guy.
You know, that one of our congressmen's like,
this guy every six months or so,
says something hateful, it's like,
well, you're not listening to enough of my preaching, okay?
But he's like, you know, we're gonna stop him.
Here we are, seven years later or something,
six years later, and they haven't stopped us.
They've called, our city councilman has called our landlord
and tried to get him to throw us out of this building.
And our landlord said, as soon as you're willing
to rent 11,000 square feet from me, let's talk doctrine.
But until then, I don't wanna talk theology with you.
That's, you know, because it's, you know,
but he's like, and he's like, by the way,
they signed a five-year lease.
I can't just put them out
because I don't like his preaching.
It's nonsense.
That's why I always sign a five-year lease, by the way.
It's like, you wanna renew?
You know, how about three?
How about five?
How about 10?
How about till Jesus comes?
The thing is, you know,
the politicians don't support us here.
They don't support Pastor Jimenez.
But yet, you know, Pastor Jimenez and I are doing just fine.
I mean, here we are, just preaching away, doing just fine.
Do I have any regrets?
Not about that at all, because, you know, why should I have schmoozed a bunch of politicians?
When the chips are down, they're not going to do anything for you.
They're only going to serve themselves and their own interests.
Oh, hey, Jack Treber learned a really powerful lesson the hard way.
Politicians don't tell the truth.
They're not loyal to you.
See, some of us already knew that when we were like knee high to a grasshopper, but
he had to get to be like 60 years old or something to figure out politicians aren't honest and
they don't stand up for you and they don't have any loyalty to you.
They only are loyal to themselves.
What a lesson.