Help all of us to be closer to you and to love you more, and in Jesus' name I pray, Amen.
Alright, this is the last chapter of the book of Philippians that we're going to be studying.
Now in Philippians chapter 1, the great theme that we saw in that chapter was boldness.
Not living a life of fear, but living a life of boldness.
Number 2, in chapter number 2, it talked a lot about others.
Not always being concerned with ourselves, but thinking about the big picture.
Thinking about what would benefit other people, what would benefit the church,
and having a more broader picture, and having unity of the same goal and the same vision
of soul winning, reaching other people, and not just concerned with what concerns us, but others.
Then in chapter number 3, just some great preaching, just a great list of things that Paul is preaching here
about some things that he wants to teach to the Philippians and so forth.
In chapter number 4, he starts out by saying,
Therefore my brethren, dearly beloved and longed for.
Now he's talking about the fact that he loves the people that he's writing to.
He's writing to these Philippians that he won to the Lord.
He started this church, and he's calling them his brethren, dearly beloved and longed for.
He's expressing his love to them in chapter 4 here.
My joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved.
Now notice he says, my joy and crown.
He's calling them his joy and his crown.
You see, he got his joy from the fact that he'd won these people to the Lord,
and he taught them everything, and he taught them how to live for God and be a soul winner,
and this was the source of Paul's joy.
That's a great way to have joy is to be able to point to somebody and say,
I made a difference in that person's life, and to be able to say,
this person right here was not saved, and now they're saved because I preach the gospel to them,
or this person right here was not living for God, and I got them on the right track.
Boy, that will give you joy in your life when you can see an impact that you've had on others.
But notice he says, my joy and crown.
Now the crown there is referring to rewards that he's going to get in heaven.
Now throughout the Bible you hear mention of earning various crowns,
and it says in the book of Revelation in chapter 5 that the elders that were there,
remember they take off their crowns and they cast them at the feet of Jesus.
They earn these rewards, and then they present them to God as sort of a way to say thank you.
So he's saying that he's going to get crowns, he's going to get rewards
for the fact that he won these people to the Lord, but then look, this is interesting, it says,
so stand fast in the Lord my dearly beloved.
He's saying listen, I love you, I have so much joy just to know that you're there,
and that I've reached you, that I've won you the Lord.
He says you're my crown, and he says that's why I want you to stand fast in the Lord.
He says I don't want my investment that I've made in you to be in vain.
I don't want to just win you to the Lord, I want to win you to the Lord,
and then I want you to serve God for the rest of your life and get other people saved.
I want to reproduce myself in you, and I don't want you to fall out of this thing
because I want you to stand fast so that I can get a full reward.
Let me read this for you, you don't have to turn there, but in the book of 3 John,
it says right here, I'm sorry, let's see, did I have the wrong one?
Oh, I was looking at 2 John, I'm sorry.
It says right here, that's not the verse I thought it was, but it says, I'm sorry,
but it says, he's saying take heed unto yourselves so that we can get a full reward.
He's saying it's pretty much the same thing.
He says I don't want you to fall out, I don't want you to quit on God because I want to receive a full reward.
You see, I would rather win somebody to the Lord and have that person get all kinds of people saved
and serve God for the rest of their life than for me to win somebody to the Lord and invest in somebody
and then have them just fall out and not get anybody else saved and it stops with them.
It's a better reward. Think about it, what if you were like a man like Stephen in the Bible
who his career was cut short, let's put it that way, he started out preaching in Acts 7
and by the end of the chapter he was dead.
He preached a very harsh type sermon, but God is filled with the Holy Spirit,
preaching exactly what God wanted him to preach.
They got so angry at him that they stoned him to death and you say, come on Stephen,
why don't you tone down your preaching a little bit
and then maybe you could have had a little more longevity, you could have seen a lot more people saved,
but you'll notice that in the crowd while Stephen was preaching there was a man named Saul
and that young man watched Stephen preach that great sermon
and he watched him look up to heaven and say, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge
and as they were throwing rocks at him and killing him,
I wonder if that had something to do with the fact that shortly thereafter he got saved
and became probably the greatest preacher that ever lived.
So you could be like a Stephen and win an apostle Paul and have a great influence.
You say, well, I'm not a preacher and I don't preach to thousands of people and I just live a very simple life.
Yes, but you don't know that one person that you win to the Lord could be the next apostle Paul.
One person that you win to the Lord could go on to win thousands of people to the Lord.
And so he's saying, I want you to stand fast in the Lord because you're my crowd.
I've invested in you. I love you. I prayed for you.
And as he said in chapter 1, he says, I thank God that I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day.
And so he's prayed for them and he says, I want to return on my investment.
Stand fast in the Lord. Now the word fast, it doesn't mean moving fast like quick.
It actually means exactly the opposite. It's interesting, the word fast.
You can think about the word like fasten your safety belt. Same thing.
Fasten something means to hold it down, to tighten it up, to keep it secure.
Now when he's saying stand fast, he's saying don't move. Stand still. Don't move.
Be steadfast, unmovable.
Look, I'm so tired of churches changing all the time. I'm so tired of people changing what they believe.
And from one year to the next you talk to them and they don't believe what they used to believe.
This book does not change and we should not change either. And we need to stand fast.
You say, well, what if it's not popular? What if people don't like it? I don't care. I'm going to stand fast.
You say, well, what if it defends somebody? It doesn't matter. I'm going to stand fast.
What if it becomes against the law to preach what you preach? I'm going to stand fast.
It doesn't matter whether the whole world's coming down around me. I'm going to stand fast in the Lord.
I need to keep my doctrine the same as it's always been, as I've always preached. We all need to stand fast.
Now look at verse number two. It says, I beseech Euodius and beseech Syntyche that they be of the same mind in the Lord.
Now these two people, Euodius and Syntyche, if you read the context here, these are two ladies in the church.
And they were having some kind of a fight. They were having some kind of a bickering and fussing between them as ladies.
I'm just kidding. Anyway, you know how it happens sometimes.
But he's saying, please don't let your personal differences get you away from the goal of this church.
Don't get all hung up about some kind of a personality conflict. Have the same mind,
and this is the same type of terminology used in chapter two, when he says,
I want you to be in one accord with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel.
And that's basically what he's saying in verse number two.
And it says in verse three, And I entreat thee also, true yoke fellow, help those women which labored with me in the gospel,
with Clement also, and with other my fellow laborers, whose names are in the book of life.
Now you notice here he's talking about some women that have helped him.
He's talking about Euodius and Syntyche, and he's talking about some other women that have helped and labored with him in the gospel.
Now you often wonder, now of course we don't believe that women should preach behind a pulpit, right?
We don't believe that women should pastor a church. The Bible is extremely clear on that.
And we don't believe that women should teach the Bible. As the Bible says, I suffer not a woman to teach.
And then it all says, I suffer not a woman to teach, nor do you serve authority over the man.
So women are never to be in authority over men. We don't put women in leadership.
But women have an extremely important role in the Bible and in the church.
Now look, here in the Bible, Paul is taking special attention.
He's not bringing up any of the men in this church at all. He's just bringing up these women.
He's saying, help those women. And what were these women doing? Who labored with me in the gospel.
Does it say that they were just laboring with him sweeping the floor? No, it says they labored with him in the gospel.
Does it say they just labored with him and they planned ladies' activities? No, it says they labored with him in the gospel.
These women preached the gospel with Paul. You say, well, did they get up in the pulpit and start preaching? Absolutely not.
But they went out and they preached the gospel to unsaved people.
If you look at Acts chapter 2, I'll just explain it to you. I'm not going to have you turn there.
But in Acts chapter 2, there were 120 people in the upper room.
And the Bible says that a large amount of them were women.
And those 120 people went out soul winning and had 3,000 people saved in Acts chapter 2.
Many people erroneously think that Peter got up and preached and 3,000 people got saved. Absolutely not true.
You read it carefully and it very clearly says that Peter only was preaching to people who lived in Jerusalem,
who were men of Judea, who were born in Judea.
Whereas the 3,000, it says, were from every country under heaven, devout men from all over the earth.
And if you go back and read this in your own time, Acts chapter 2,
you'll see that there were clouds of people from all different parts of the world there.
And 120 people, a lot of which were women, went out and preached the gospel to these people.
God did a miracle where they were actually speaking in these people's native languages.
It lists 17 of the languages.
And these men and women went out, preached the gospel to people, soul winning,
and 3,000 people got saved and baptized.
Now some of those people that got saved and baptized were those that Peter preached to,
but it was actually a huge minority.
It was not even close to being the significant number of people that got saved and baptized.
There's a thing that has gotten into most people's heads in churches where they have this idea
that we're supposed to get everybody together in some service, preach the gospel,
and all these people are going to come down the aisle and get saved,
and people are going to be flooding down the aisle getting saved.
That is not reality. That is not the truth.
The truth is that God said, go ye, go forth weeping, bearing precious seed.
Go ye therefore into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
Go ye therefore into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in.
Now, bringing people to church that are unsaved, a big crowd of people,
we preach to them and they come down the aisle and get saved,
that is not something that's even found in the Bible.
I mean, in the day of Pentecost, that's not what happened.
It wasn't one man preaching. It was 120 people preaching.
Read it, and there's no other way to interpret that chapter, Acts 2,
because it says, I counted, it says eight times that he was preaching to people that were from Jerusalem,
and it just finished saying that of the 3,000, they were from all over the world.
They were just sojourning in Jerusalem.
They were just there for the feast of Tabernacles that was on that day.
Billy Graham, it makes me think of Billy Graham.
I forget who it was that was telling me.
It was Pastor Nichols' dad said this, and also Dr. Moore from 1st Baptist Church of Hammond was saying this,
that back in the 1950s, 1960s, they worked for Billy Graham's Crusades.
I mean, we're talking like 40 years ago and 50 years ago.
They worked at his Crusades, and Billy Graham would get up, and they trained them.
They trained these different workers, and they said, here's what you do.
When Dr. Graham gives the invitation and asks people to come down the aisle to receive Christ as Savior,
he said, all of you get up out of your seat and flood down the aisle.
And I've heard this from two, three, four different people from that generation.
Get up and flood down the aisle.
That way, people will think that just a ton of people are coming forward.
And they told them that the reason we want you to do that is because if someone's unsaved
and they see hundreds of other people coming forward, then they'll think, oh, so big you all go forward, too.
But do you think maybe part of the reason that they were doing it was because they wanted it to look like
they had about ten times as many results as they really did?
And so you'll see it on TV, all these people flooding down the aisle, and they'll say,
oh, thousands are responding as Dr. Graham finished preaching this sermon.
People are flooding down the aisle and getting saved.
Nobody knows those people are workers for the Crusade, and they're not getting saved.
They're just coming down.
And then the people who do come down, who knows whether they've got a Lutheran helping them,
because it's all just ecumenical, all churches.
They could get down to the end, and the worker that deals with them about salvation could be a Roman Catholic.
Or they might be a Lutheran, or they might be a Presbyterian, or they might be a Methodist.
Who knows what they are? Who knows what they believe?
And nobody gets baptized.
They just bring them down and tell them to make a commitment to Christ or some kind of prayer or whatever.
And it's a sham.
The real truth of the matter is that personal soul winning is what Jesus Christ did.
Personal soul winning is what the apostles did.
Look at the Book of Acts.
Paul just goes down to the river where a bunch of women are washing clothes and just starts winning them to the Lord.
He goes into the marketplace and starts winning them to the Lord.
He goes into the synagogue and just starts preaching to them.
That's what he does.
He doesn't just invite a bunch of people to church and have this big ecumenical service where thousands show up and thousands go down the aisle.
It's very glamorous and exciting, but it's just not reality.
It's not the truth.
The truth is, personal soul winning is the key.
Now look at chapter 4.
It says,
Help those women which labored with me in the Gospel.
All that was to say this.
Women can be used of God in a great way, as much as men, as a soul winner.
In Christ there's neither male nor female.
And God wants every woman to be a soul winner.
And they can be used just as greatly.
You say, well, oh man, you get to pastor a church and you get to get up and preach.
Getting up and preaching is not the greatest calling of Christianity.
The greatest calling in Christianity is to be a soul winner.
Being a soul winner is better than being a pastor of a church.
I would rather be a soul winner and not a pastor than to be a pastor and not a soul winner.
I'd rather hang around somebody who's a soul winner than to hang around with some pastor who never wins anybody the Lord.
Because he has some title.
That title means nothing.
What means something is laboring with Jesus Christ in the Gospel.
That's what means something.
And that's available to every man, woman, boy, and girl.
And you say, well, the Bible says that a divorced man cannot pastor a church, for example.
And you say, well, what's he supposed to do then?
What's he supposed to do?
He can do everything else in the world.
He can go soul winning.
He can preach the Gospel until he's blue in the face.
Not everybody has to pastor a church.
Pastoring a church is meaningless compared to being a soul winner, to preaching the Gospel to every creature.
That's where the glory is.
That's where the joy and the crown is.
Paul was not a pastor of the church.
The man who's writing this book.
He was not a pastor whatsoever.
He was not even married.
He was a single man.
So he's not qualified to be a pastor anyway because he's not married.
Because the Bible says that a bishop must be the husband of one wife and so forth.
And so here's a man who had no position, no title, no little comma after his name with some lofty title.
But he won people to Christ and everybody knows the apostle Paul, don't they?
Because that's where the glory and the crown and the joy was in winning people to Christ.
But look at the last phrase in verse number 3.
It says, whose names are in the book of life.
Now as I was going over this chapter and studying it again for this message,
I was thinking about the book of life.
And I looked up the book of life every time it occurs throughout the Bible.
Now I've told you this many times, that's the way that I like to study subjects.
I like to just see the first time God mentions it and then I just follow it all the way through the Bible.
I don't go to the dictionary.
I definitely don't go to commentaries and stuff like that.
But I start at the beginning.
I just compare spiritual things with spiritual.
And I want to show you something about the book of life that you probably don't know
because there's a common misconception about it.
And so I want to take you through the Bible every time it occurs and show you this.
So please turn to Exodus 32, 30.
Exodus 32, 30.
This is the first time that the book of life is mentioned in the Bible.
Exodus 32, 30.
Exodus chapter 32 verse number 30.
This is after Moses had come down from the mount.
And you probably know the story where Moses came down from the mount.
He had just received the 10 commandments.
And he finds Aaron and the people worshipping a golden calf.
They've stripped off their clothes.
They're dancing.
They're having a wicked party.
They're drinking.
And the Bible says in verse number 30,
And it came to pass on the morrow.
This is after everything's cooled down.
He's already straightened things out.
And it came to pass on the morrow that Moses said unto the people,
You've sinned a great sin.
And now I will go up unto the Lord.
Peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin.
He's saying, I'm going to go up and talk to God
and maybe we can get him to calm down because he's mad.
Verse 31 it says,
And Moses returned unto the Lord and said,
O this people have sinned a great sin,
and have made them gods of gold.
Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin,
Now look at that hyphen.
That is the only hyphen in the entire Bible.
This is a very significant verse.
That is the only time, see that weird dash right there?
Only time that that occurs in the Bible.
Because this is the only time in the Bible where God,
or whoever's talking to him, does not complete their sentence.
And so he doesn't complete the sentence.
He starts to say something and then there's a dash.
The only time that that occurs in the Bible.
It says, Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin,
and if not,
Blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.
Boy, that's amazing, isn't it?
That's probably the most amazing offer anybody ever made.
He said, If you'll forgive them and not destroy them,
and he has such feeling here that he actually just
breaks down in the middle of the sentence
and can't even finish his sentence.
And he says, And if not,
Blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.
He's saying, Send me to hell and let, if you'll forgive them.
That's how much he loved these people.
Now I can't even understand that.
But it's in the Bible, so I believe that it's true.
I mean, I can't even believe that somebody could feel that way or even say that.
But notice the first time the Book of Life's being mentioned.
Well, actually, let me read the next verse.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me,
him will I blot out of my book.
Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee.
Behold, mine angel shall go before thee.
Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them.
And the Lord plagued the people because they had made the calf which Aaron made.
So notice, the first time the Book of Life is mentioned,
both Moses and God talk about somebody's name being taken out of the book.
It doesn't talk about anybody's name being written down.
It mentions somebody's name being taken out of the Book of Life.
Now, the common conception is that when a person gets saved,
and I've heard this taught in virtually every church I've been in,
that when the person gets saved, their name is written in the Book of Life when they get saved.
Well, let's see if that's true.
I want to go through all these verses with me, and we're going to put these into three categories.
Number one is somebody being taken out of the Book of Life, which is what we just saw.
God and Moses both talked about that somebody's name was going to be taken out of this book.
Number two, somebody's name who's already there,
and we're just talking about the fact that it's there.
And number three, talking about somebody's name actually being written in the book.
So let's go through it with that in mind.
That was somebody coming out of the book.
Let's look at the next reference, which is found in Psalm 69.28.
This is the next time the Book of Life is mentioned.
Psalm 69.28.
In Psalm 69.28 the Bible says,
Let them be blotted out of the book of the living and not be written with the righteous.
You see that?
Let them be blotted out of the book of the living and not be written with the righteous.
So are they coming out?
Is it somebody that's there, or are they going in?
They're coming out.
Again, somebody's name is being taken out of the book the second time it's mentioned.
We now turn to the next time, Daniel 12.1.
Daniel 12.1.
And I'm showing you every single time that this book of life occurs in the Bible.
Daniel 12.1.
It says,
And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people,
and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was,
I'm sorry, such as never was since there was a nation,
even to that same time, and at that time thy people shall be delivered,
everyone that shall be found written in the book,
and many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,
some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
So here we have a mention of people's names being in the book.
They're not necessarily being written down or taken out in this verse.
They're just already there.
So, so far we had two occasions where God was taking people's names out of the book of life.
Now we have a mention of people's names already being there, and we're just talking about it.
Let's go to the next one, Luke 10.20.
Luke chapter 10, verse number 20.
In Luke 10.20,
and I'll start reading in verse 19, it says,
Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions,
and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
Notwithstanding in this rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you,
but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.
So now the second time we have mentioned people's names are just already there,
people's names are already written in heaven, the disciples.
Then look now, we're going to jump to Philippians 4, where we just were.
I'll just read it for you because you just heard it.
Whose names are in the book of life.
Again, so the first two times people's names were getting taken out.
The next three times, it's just talking about people's names are there.
They're already there.
Now turn to Revelation.
We'll see the final several times that this book is mentioned.
Revelation 3.5.
Revelation 3.5, the Bible says,
He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment,
and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life,
but I will confess his name before my father and before his angels.
So now we're talking about a saved person.
Is he going to write their name in because they got saved?
No, it says he will not blot it out.
It says that he will not blot out his name out of the book of life,
but I will confess his name before my father and before his angels.
Now I'm showing you every occurrence,
and eventually we're going to get to the occurrence where people's names are written in,
and it might surprise you when they're written in.
It's a little different than you might have thought,
but look at Revelation 13.8.
Revelation 13.8, the Bible says,
And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him,
whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb,
slain from the foundation of the world.
So here's another verse just talking about people's names
either being there or not being there,
neither coming in or out.
Now turn to chapter 17, verse number 8,
and you'll see where their names go in right here.
And this is the only time in the entire Bible
that the Bible talks about anybody's name being written into the book of life.
It says,
The beast that thou sawest was and is not,
this is Revelation 17.8,
and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit and go into perdition,
and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder,
whose names were not written in the book of life,
from the foundation of the world,
when they behold the beast that was and is not, and yet is.
Now it says here that people whose names are in the book of life
were written in the book of life from the foundation of the world.
So apparently, from what we've seen so far,
just going through this one by one,
it sounds like everybody's name was in the book of life
from the foundation of the world.
Now we're talking about when God said,
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth,
there was a book of life with every single human being's name in it
that have ever lived.
Because that's the only time in the entire Bible
it talks about people's names being written in.
It says the people that are saved
that are not worshiping the beast and that are not going to hell,
it says they had their name written in there from the foundation of the world.
People's names are taken out of the book only.
Now this is the interesting part.
Look at the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22.
This is the final mention.
Or I'm sorry, I skipped one.
Look at Revelation 20, chapter 20.
These are the most commonly referred to.
That's why I skipped them.
But Revelation 20, look at verse number 12.
It says, And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God,
and the books were opened, and another book was opened,
which is the book of life.
Skip down to verse number 15.
It says, And whosoever was not found written in the book of life
was cast into the lake of fire.
So this is the verse we know that
if your name's in the book of life, you're saved and going to heaven.
If your name is not found in the book of life at this final judgment day,
you're going to hell.
Now look at the last chapter, Revelation 22, verse number 17.
Now the key to understanding verses 18 and 19.
Verses 18 and 19 are very commonly quoted and referred to.
But verse number 17 is the key.
You'll notice at the beginning of verse number 18, do you see the word for?
That's a conjunction.
For is a conjunction because whatever we find out in verse number 18
is building on what we just heard in verse number 17.
So in order to understand verses 18 and 19, you must have verse 17.
It says, And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come,
and let him that heareth say, Come,
and let him that is at first, Come,
and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.
He's saying, he's begging people to come to Christ.
He's begging people to get saved.
Whosoever will may come and be saved for free.
Take the water of life freely.
And then look at verse number 18.
For, and that means because,
I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book,
If any man shall add unto these things,
God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.
What are the plagues that are written in this book?
Well, it's all kinds of hell, fire, and damnation,
and the final judgment, the end of the world, the tribulation,
where God is pouring out his wrath on mankind.
Look at verse 19.
And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy,
God shall take away his part out of the book of life
and out of the holy city
and from the things which are written in this book.
He which testifies these things sayeth,
Surely I come quickly. Amen.
Now, that's a pretty strong verse, isn't it?
He's saying if anybody takes out one word out of this Bible
and tries to change the Bible and removes one single word,
he says, I will take away their part out of the book of life.
Oh, you mean they're going to lose their salvation?
Well, no, you can't lose your salvation
because Jesus said, I give unto them eternal life
and no man shall pluck them out of my hand.
Now, what does this mean?
Well, obviously, we already learned that everybody's name
was in the book of life at one point or another.
And God says when people sin against him and refuse to get saved,
if they never get saved, their name is taken out of the book of life.
He will not confess their name before his father.
And at the end of the world, well, they'll go to hell immediately when they die.
And then at the end of the world, they'll be cast into the lake of fire.
Now, why am I going through all this? What's the point?
Well, there's some important things that we can learn from this.
Number one is that there's a point that a person can get to
before they die when they can no longer get saved anymore
because their name has been blotted out of the book of life.
Either one of two things happens.
Somebody dies without getting saved, their name is blotted out.
Or there are certain sins that a person can commit,
a certain line that people can cross where they can no longer get saved anymore.
One of those things is a person who changes the Bible,
the people who made these false Bibles.
And I find this funny because in the NIV, in this verse right here,
in fact, I'm going to go grab it because I've got one.
I've got so many phony Bibles in there, I couldn't find the right one.
Let me show you this. It's interesting.
Look at the last verse in the Bible.
Now, we just finished seeing how you're not supposed to take away
any of the words of this book or he says,
I'm going to take your name, I'm going to take your part of the book of life.
You're not going to see the holy city.
You're going to have all the plagues that are in this book.
You're going to go to hell. You're going to burn in hell.
You won't even have a chance to get saved anymore.
I'm through with you if you pervert my word.
Look at the last verse of the Bible.
It says right here, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
You get the NIV just right after you just finished saying don't change it.
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people. Amen.
Now, look, the Bible says the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
He says, I want everybody to get saved.
I want everybody to have the grace of Jesus Christ.
I want everybody to come and take the water of life freely.
It's for everybody.
And by the way, it's the Lord Jesus Christ.
You know, the NIV is always dumbing down his title
and dumbing it down from Lord Jesus Christ to Jesus Christ
or from Jesus Christ to just Christ.
It dumbs it down about 143 times, I think it is.
But look at this.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people. Amen.
It's just for certain people.
Now, that's not right.
So, they're so brazen.
The people who made this book are so brazen and wicked
that they just finished translating the part where it said,
don't take away a word or I'll send you to hell, sir.
And they say, I think I'll leave out Christ.
And I think I'll take away the fact that it's for everybody
and just make it for God's people.
Isn't that amazing?
Now, these people, I'll guarantee you,
these people will go to hell when they die.
The people who made this book, the NIV and every other perverted Bible
that takes out words and puts in words, they will go to hell.
You say, well, maybe they'll get saved.
They won't get saved because their part has been taken out of the Book of Life.
That's what God's saying.
And, of course, there are many other parts of the Bible that talk about this.
Like, for example, Jesus said that a person who blasphemes the Holy Ghost,
He says there's no forgiveness.
It's the unpardonable sin.
He says a person can cross a line where God's Spirit convicts them.
They've been enlightened.
They've seen the Gospel.
They've understood it.
And God's Spirit convicts them and He gives them a chance.
He gives them a chance.
And finally they say no for the last time.
And the Bible says that God gives them up
and God gives them over to a reprobate mind in Romans chapter 1.
And He turns them into a filthy animal and says,
you will not get saved.
I'm through with you.
You're damned to hell.
Go to hell.
And there can come a time when people...
Now, do we know when that line that people cross?
No, we don't know.
So we're just supposed to go out and preach the Gospel to every creature.
But God says that there's a line that people can cross just like Pharaoh did.
Pharaoh hardened his heart.
He said, who's the Lord?
I don't know the Lord.
I'm not going to let these people go.
And the Bible says that Pharaoh hardened his heart.
But after Pharaoh hardened his heart several times,
then the Bible says that God hardened his heart
because he got so sick of Pharaoh hardening his heart,
he says, okay, I'm sick of you hardening your heart.
Now I'm going to harden your heart and you can't change your mind.
You can't get saved.
Same thing happened with Esau.
God came to the point where He said, I hate you, Esau,
and you're going to go to hell when you die.
He came to the point where He said, I hate Esau.
You say, well, God loves everybody.
Well, He says He hated Esau.
Because people can cross a line where they cannot get saved anymore
because they've just pushed it too far with God.
God said, my spirit will not always strive with man.
He has a line where people can cross.
And He is the God of the second chance, but He's not always the God of the 300th chance.
So we see that people's names are taken out of the book of life
when they usually it's because they died without getting saved.
Sometimes people can even do something that's so wicked that God will say, you've crossed the line.
And it's not that, well, if they asked Jesus to save them and believed on them, they wouldn't be saved.
It's that they won't do that because God has taken away any kind of a Holy Spirit's convicting on them
and He's just given them over and just says, I'm through with you.
He knocked on the door for a long time and He says, I'm not knocking that door anymore.
I'm through with them. I'm sick of it.
You're going to change my Bible and go to hell.
That's what He says.
Here's another thing we can learn from this.
If God put every single person's name in the book of life, that means that God wants everybody saved.
He had their name there. That was His plan. That was His will.
God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
The Bible says that God will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.
Now, God wants everybody saved. That's why He put everybody's name in the book of life.
It's not God's will for anybody to go to hell.
You might have heard of Calvinism.
Calvinism is a doctrine that says God chooses who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.
In John Calvin's book where he teaches all this doctrine, his Five Points of Calvinism, the Tulip,
he says that only the people who God chooses, their names are in the book of life only.
He says at the foundation of the world, God wrote the book of life
and it only had people's names who were going to get saved.
And that's it. There's only people whose names are in there.
Kind of like this, you know, it's just for God's people.
Just the people that He picked. And He said Jesus did not die for everybody.
He only died for these certain people whose names are in the book of life.
Now, then, why is God so inept at writing His book that He's got to keep blotting things out?
It sounds like the book is changing.
It sounds like the book's changing all the time because He's constantly blotting people out of it.
So how is it that if God just has it all planned out, according to Calvinism,
He's already decided, you know, there's no...
Don't worry about going soloing because He already decided who's going to heaven and who's going to hell
and if they're going to get saved, God's going to find a way to get them saved
and if they're not going to get saved, there's nothing you can do for them.
Look, then why does God constantly have to blot out His book
if He just planned it all out and decided who's going to get saved?
Yeah, He did decide who was going to get saved and He put everybody's name in there
and He said I want everybody to be saved and I will blot out people
only because I have to but I'm not willing to finish the parish.
He said I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. That's what God says.
He said I'm not happy about it when somebody doesn't get saved and goes to hell.
He says it breaks my heart because I have their name in the book of life. I wanted them saved.
And so sometimes false doctrine is created just because something's repeated over and over
and people repeat over and over that when you get saved, boom, God writes your name in the book of life.
It's not found in the Bible and it's totally unscriptural
because the Bible talked about people getting blotted out constantly
and it never talks about people being written in except for one time it says
the foundation of the world, people's names are written in there.
And the fact that you're saved means that God will not blot out your name
because you've been saved. That's what the Bible says.
But anyway, let's get back to the book of Philippians.
I just wanted to show you that about the book of life.
And by the way, I hate Calvinism.
That's probably the doctrine that I hate more than anything,
the false doctrine that tells people that God decides everything that happens
and God decides who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.
Well then, what's the point? If I believe...
You think I'd be starting a church if I believed that? Are you kidding me?
Why? What would be the point? I mean, if people are going to get saved, they're going to get saved anyway, right?
I'm going to go live it up, man.
The whole point of being a soul or the whole point of pastoring a church is to try to get people saved.
And by the way, that's why these Calvinist churches are dead as a doornail and never get anybody saved
because they don't believe that what they do matters.
They just say, it's all in God's hand. It's ridiculous.
God said, whatsoever thou bindest on earth, I'll bind in heaven,
and whatsoever thou loosest on earth, I'll loose in heaven.
He says, you are in the driver's seat, sir.
I want to get everybody saved, but it's up to you how much time you're going to put in out there
hitting doors and getting people saved.
It's up to you how long you're going to spend praying for your loved ones and getting them saved.
You write the book. You're in charge, God's saying.
Well, I kind of like that because at least I'm not just helpless watching everybody go to hell.
I can do something. I can make a difference. I can get people saved. Praise the Lord.
But look at chapter number four, whose names are in the book of life, verse number four.
Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.
Always rejoice in the Lord, he's saying.
And he emphasizes it. Again, I say rejoice.
People have a tendency, apparently, because he has to repeat himself,
people have a tendency of just not rejoicing, being down.
We're living in a day when antidepressants are flooding the markets. Why?
Why are people so depressed? Why are they so down? Why are they so negative?
Well, the joy is found in the Lord, and it says rejoice in the Lord.
Now, if God's telling you to rejoice, it sounds like you're in control of whether you rejoice or not.
Now, if rejoicing is just this feeling that comes over you where you experience joy,
like, boy, I'm just really happy because nothing so happened.
Or, boy, God just isn't giving me joy.
Look, joy is something that you choose to do.
God's telling you to do it, and he has to tell you twice, in fact. He says, rejoice.
So, apparently, I have the choice right now, no matter what's going on, because this is all the way.
No matter what's going on in my life, no matter what bad things are happening,
no matter what the circumstances are, God is telling me, rejoice.
And I have the choice right now to decide, am I going to rejoice,
or am I going to be down and depressed and in the dumps?
It's up to me whether I'm going to obey God and rejoice,
or whether I'm going to disobey God and not rejoice, and be down and depressed.
It's not something that happens to you.
It's a choice that you're making to have a pity party versus rejoicing.
Rejoice about what? Everything's going wrong.
Rejoice in the Lord, it says. Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.
Rejoice that you're going to heaven when you die, that you're saved.
Rejoice that God has given you wonderful blessings in this life.
Rejoice that he lets you live in America.
Rejoice that you can go to church and sing songs with God's people,
where people in other countries maybe, it's against the law,
and they'd be killed for having church services and they suffer in a jail cell somewhere.
Rejoice in all the things that the Lord has done for you.
Rejoice that you have a copy of the Word of God in your hand right now.
Boy, some people throughout the ages would have killed to have this book in their hand.
They would have done anything to have a copy of the Bible,
the perfect Word of God in their hand.
Boy, what a treasure.
If I had two boxes up here and I said one box is a million dollars cash,
unmarked bills, tens and twenties,
and then the other box is the answer to every question that anybody's ever wondered,
all the wisdom of mankind, the answer to everything, the mind of God is in this box.
Would you be so foolish and stupid as to choose a million dollars?
That's going to be wasted? What are you going to spend it on?
And you say, well, no, I want the other box.
Well, it's right here. I got it in my hand.
If you realize that's what it is, that's when I started reading the Bible laws
when I realized what it was.
When I was 16 years old and some liberal preacher took me out to eat,
some liberal Baptist preacher whose name is not in the Book of Life,
took me out to eat and was telling me why I needed to get rid of the King James Bible.
He was trying to tell me how the King James Bible was bad
and how I needed to get the NIV in these new Bibles.
And he explained to me something.
Ironically, I was taught this by a liberal Baptist preacher.
He explained something to me.
He said these Bibles are not the same.
He said these are not even translated from the same Greek and the same Hebrew.
He said these come from totally different sources.
And he said these ones, the NIV, he said this comes from new findings that they dug up
that's more reliable.
And I said, whoa, wait a minute.
I always thought they were just two different versions of the same thing.
He said, no, you've got to get this one. This one's more accurate. It's newer.
They found these really old documents in some monastery and this is it right here.
And I thought to myself, do you think God's Word is sitting on some rock somewhere
and somebody discovers it in the 1800s? Absolutely not.
Obviously the one that's been used for countless ages is the one that is the right one.
And so I was taught that by this liberal preacher.
And I remember how my life was revolutionized that day
because I went home and I held this book in my hand
and I began to study that whole subject about the Word of God.
And when I studied it, I saw that the Word of God was perfect.
And when I saw that this Bible, the King James Bible in my hand had no mistakes in it,
I couldn't believe I said, this is exactly what God said.
I mean, this is exactly the way He said it.
This is what God says.
And that clicked in my mind.
And man, I just started reading it and just read it incessantly.
And I read it and read it for hours a day.
I remember just thriving out reading it and just thinking, good night.
I'm reading God.
It changed my life.
When you realize that what this book is,
when you put this book in its proper place, good night.
You just want to read it.
Rejoice in the Lord always.
In the Lord.
And again I say rejoice.
Let your moderation be known unto all men.
The Lord is at hand.
Now moderation there, a lot of people think that,
I think in the NIV it's probably like, do all things in moderation.
Because they believe in doing the drinking and moderation and everything.
But let your moderation be known unto all men.
The word moderation there is referring to the fact of what we're talking about here,
about this fight that's going on between these women and the church.
And moderation is talking about getting along is what it's talking about.
You study that word.
It's talking about people getting along.
And you've heard of somebody being like a moderator
who helps people get along in an argument and so forth.
And then the Bible says the Lord is at hand.
He says look, the Lord's coming back and you're wasting your time bickering and fussing and fighting.
We don't have time for this.
We need to be striving together for the faith of the gospel.
We need to have one accord, one mind, having the same love as we saw in chapter 2.
The Lord is at hand.
Boy, I just flew in from San Francisco.
San Francisco, I just flew in from this afternoon.
And boy, I felt like the Lord was at hand when I was in San Francisco
because everybody I saw it seemed like was a pervert.
And I don't really like San Francisco very much,
but that's where I've been for the past couple of days.
And the Bible says in verse number 6,
Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving,
let your requests be made known unto God.
And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding,
shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
He's saying here, be careful for nothing.
What does that mean, don't be careful?
Don't wear your seatbelt.
Don't buckle in the kids in the car seat.
No, he's saying be careful-ness.
And the Bible says that Paul said,
I would that you would be without careful-ness.
Careful-ness in the Bible means that you care about things,
like you're worried about things all the time.
You have all this care, cares and worries.
And he's saying, be careful for nothing.
He's saying, just don't worry about anything.
Don't worry.
But what's the opposite of worrying about everything and stretching about,
oh man, I don't know how this is going to work out,
and I don't know how I'm going to pay the bills,
and I don't know how my kids are going to turn right,
I don't know what to do.
What's the opposite of being careful?
It says, but in everything, by prayer and supplication,
with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.
He says, don't worry about things.
Just pray to God about everything.
And he says, and then you won't have to worry,
and then just don't even worry about it.
Just pray about something and say, God, I want you to do this.
This is what I'm asking you to do.
He says, pray, supplicate, thank Him for the good things
that He's done for you in the past.
And it says, and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding,
shall keep your hearts and minds to Christ's ease,
then God will give you peace.
And you won't have to worry anymore.
The reason why you worry is because you're not praying.
And the cure to worrying, the cure to stress,
the cure to carefulness is prayer.
You take all the things that are stressing you out,
that are bothering you, the impending doom that you feel,
and you say, I don't know what to do about this, God,
and you spend time praying and making your supplication to God,
and then thanking Him.
And it says that God will give you peace.
God will take away the word,
because if you know that you prayed about it,
and the Bible says if we ask anything according to His will,
He heareth us.
And if we know that He hear us whatsoever we ask,
we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.
So once you've prayed to God and asked God to do something
and told Him what you want Him to do
and thanked Him and praised Him and asked Him what to do,
well, then either He's going to do it or He's not going to do it.
And if He doesn't do it, it's because it wasn't according to His will.
It's not for the best anyway.
And in that case, you don't want it to happen,
because it's not going to be for the best anyway.
And so once you just give something to God, you just pray about it,
you can have peace saying, look, I prayed about it.
I'm not talking about necessarily praying for ten seconds.
I mean actually praying about something.
If you've done what you could to pray about it,
then you just leave the results with God,
and you don't have to worry about whether it's going to turn out all right,
because you prayed about it.
And if it doesn't happen, it's because God obviously didn't want it to happen,
and that's up to Him.
But if you don't pray about it, maybe God did want it to happen,
but you didn't pray, so it's not going to happen.
Because praying and getting a hold of God is your responsibility.
Once you get a hold of God, let Him decide,
and just have peace that you've done what you could by bringing it to God.
I have to skip a lot because of the lateness of the hour,
but I just wanted to show you something else interesting in here.
I already preached on a lot of this actually.
Within the last couple of weeks, I preached on these verses from,
let's see, number 11 down through 17.
I mean, I've already preached on all this.
But look at the closing of the chapter.
Verse number 21, right down there at the bottom.
It says, Salute every saint in Christ Jesus.
I'm talking about everybody who's saved.
Salute every saint in Christ Jesus.
The brethren which are with me greet you.
All the saints salute you.
And look at this amazing phrase.
Chiefly, they that are of Caesar's household.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
The saints of Caesar's household, he's saying, salute you.
It's almost like he's kind of bragging a little bit.
He says, yeah, all the saints, he says, salute every saint in Christ Jesus.
The brethren which are with me greet you.
All the saints salute you.
Oh, by the way, chiefly, they that are of Caesar's household.
Now, do you know who Caesar was, especially during this time period
when Paul's writing this, was Nero.
Nero was the man that cut Paul's head off. He beheaded Paul.
Nero was a very wicked king.
He actually used people in his garden as human torches to light his garden.
He's the man who was insane.
He actually burned down half the city of Rome and laughed about it.
The man was completely insane. He was a pervert. He was a weirdo.
And Paul is saying here that while he was in jail, while he was appearing in Rome,
appealing his cause to Caesar, of all people,
he appealed to Caesar to see if Caesar would let him out of jail.
He took it all the way because he was a Roman citizen.
He was able to appeal to higher and higher powers until he appealed all the way to Caesar.
And Caesar executed him after he'd been in Rome for two years.
In the process of being in jail, in the process of standing before Caesar
and giving his case, he was able to win people to Christ in Caesar's family.
Can you imagine that?
Maybe he was able to win relatives of Caesar and the Lord.
Talk about loving your enemies.
Here he is being held by this wicked, evil pervert,
and behind his back he's winning people to Christ.
He's getting saved, the very family of this wicked man.
It's amazing what God can do.
What can we learn from that?
Don't give up on the hard cases.
Don't give up on the people that it seems like they're never going to get saved.
They're so far away from God, and they're just so different than Christianity,
and I just don't see how they could ever fit in in a church.
I can't see them reading a Bible and praying.
I just can't picture it because they're so ungodly.
Do you think that these people were Sunday school kids that are going up in Caesar's household?
No way.
These men were vile and perverted men, this culture.
And these men could get saved, and if these people could get saved,
then anybody could get saved.
I mean, these are kids and adults that grew up around all kinds of ungodliness,
but the grace of God was able to save them.
So don't give up on the hard cases.
Preach the gospel to every creature and win people to Christ,
and God will bless you for it.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, thank you so much for this great chapter on Philippians,
and, Father, I just pray that you would bless the two of us.