Psalm 41, beginning in verse number 1, the Bible reads,
Blessed is he that considerth the poor,
the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble.
The Lord will preserve him and keep him alive,
and he shall be blessed upon the earth,
and thou wilt not deliver him under the will of his enemies.
You know, today we need to keep the poor in mind.
He's saying blessed is he that considerth the poor.
A lot of people don't even want to consider the poor, even think about it.
And especially when we think of churches,
most churches, if they're going out trying to reach people,
trying to win people to Christ, or trying to invite people to church,
they're probably not going to pick the poorest, slummiest areas.
In fact, many people are even afraid to even go into these areas.
And they're surprised when our church goes in and knocks the doors of the poor,
knocks the doors in the so-called high-crime area.
But you know, the Bible makes it clear, Luke 4, for example,
Jesus said, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me
because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.
And the reality is that the Bible says
that it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to be saved.
Most of the time, the rich people of this world
are the least receptive to the gospel of Jesus Christ
because they're possibly filled with pride,
and they think that they don't need anything,
and they've got it all figured out,
and the Bible talks about how professing themselves to be wise,
they became fools, and they think that they know everything.
You knock the door of some rich person or a fancy neighbor,
they say, Oh, we're fine, we're fine, see you later.
Whereas the poor, in many cases,
they realize that they're not going to heaven because of how good they are.
They realize, when we show them what the Bible says,
for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,
it's easier for them to see that many times.
It's easier for them to understand the fact
that they need Jesus Christ their Savior in order to go to heaven,
and when Jesus Christ was on this earth,
he preached, and the Pharisees, the Sadducees,
the religious leaders, the political leaders,
they rejected him.
They didn't want to hear what he had to say.
They rejected the truth. They rejected God's Word.
He came unto his own, and his own received him not,
but it was the publicans and the sinners that received the Gospel,
that listened to what he had to say.
And he said, Blessed are ye poor.
He said, Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for there's the kingdom of heaven,
because it'd be better to go through this life poor
and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
be saved, go to heaven,
than to have all the money in the world and to lose your own soul.
Look at James chapter 5, if you would.
James chapter 5, while we're thinking about what Psalm 41 says,
Blessed is he that considerth the poor,
the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble.
The Bible says,
Labor not to be rich, cease from thine own wisdom.
The Bible also says that the love of money is the root of all evil.
Now, most modern Bible translations will change this.
And here's why they change it.
Not because that's not what the Bible says,
but they'll say this,
Well, that can't be true.
That's what they'll say.
Well, that can't be true.
And so you get these new modern,
you know, the NIV version,
the New American Standard, whatever it is,
the Bible of the Month Club is putting out this week.
These new Bibles will change it to,
The love of money is a root of many kinds of evil.
And they basically take away the meaning of God's word.
He said, The love of money is the root of all evil.
The longer I live on this earth...
When I was a child, I thought,
That's kind of odd.
You know what?
The older I get, the more I see how true that is.
You know, the Bible's not always right.
I mean, look at the evil in this world.
And when we talk about the word evil,
it doesn't just necessarily mean sin.
The word evil is talking about harming others,
things that are harmful to others.
It's always motivated by money.
And you say,
Well, not every crime is motivated by money.
That's true.
But the love of money is the root of all evil.
You look at the...
And I remember a great example that someone sent me
about this was Paul Maldonado,
who was a serial rapist.
And he was a very wicked person.
People will say,
Well, you know, how is that motivated by money?
That's not the love of money.
But if you study the life of Paul Maldonado,
you'll see that it started out when he got into Amway,
and he started going to these seminars,
these get-rich seminars,
where he developed a philosophy of using people.
He developed a philosophy of the ends justifies the means.
He developed a philosophy of greed
and wanted to acquire money for himself.
Later, that translated into more sin
that was even worse and more violent and so forth.
But it started in his life with the love of money.
And the love of money is where a lot of wickedness starts,
and it's the root of all evil in this world.
It goes back to the love of money.
You look at the corruption in our government today.
It's based by the money power that basically is behind it.
It's the banking system and so forth.
And so it's the love of money.
But in James 5, look what the Bible says here in verse number 1.
It says,
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.
Your gold and silver is cankered,
and the rust of them shall be a witness against you,
and shall eat your flesh as it were fire.
Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
Behold the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields,
which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth.
And the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.
Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth and been wanted.
Ye have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter.
Ye have condemned and killed the just, and he does not resist you.
Now that's a great passage. That's not the one I meant to read, though.
Go to chapter 2. I meant to go to chapter 2.
Now that was great, too, though. You know what I mean?
I was going to go with it.
Basically, he's talking about the rich people ripping off the poor people.
You know, abusing them, using their work, not paying,
withholding fraudulently from their wages and so forth.
But look at James 2. This is the part that I actually wanted to talk about.
It says in verse number 1,
My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Lord of glory, with respect of persons.
For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring,
in goodly apparel,
and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment,
and ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing,
and this is not talking about somebody who wears clothing from Abercrombie and Fish.
This is just talking about, you know, just like the nice clothes, the expensive clothes.
It says, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment,
ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, verse 3,
and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place,
and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool.
Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts?
Watch verse 5.
Hearken, my beloved brethren,
hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith,
and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?
But ye have despised the poor.
Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment scenes?
Basically, it's not about getting you arrested.
He says, Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called?
If ye fulfill the royal law according to the scripture,
thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well.
But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin,
and are convinced that the law is transgression.
So go back to Psalm 41.
We could go all over the Bible tonight and make this the whole sermon.
I don't want to do that.
But we should respect the poor as much as we respect the rich.
God said that if we respect persons,
if we respect someone who has money more than someone who does not have money,
we're committing sin.
And when someone comes into church that's poor,
they should be treated the same as the wealthiest person in the city.
In fact, I'll probably treat them better.
And we not get the world's philosophy of being impressed by the fancy car,
being impressed by the fancy house, the fancy clothes.
Those things mean nothing to God.
The streets in heaven are paved with gold.
That's how much it means to him.
It means nothing to him.
We need to have a spiritual outlook and not be impressed and enamored by the riches that this world have to offer,
which means nothing.
But look at Psalm 41.
Blessed is he that considerth the poor.
The Lord will deliver him in time of trouble.
Now that right there tells me that if I'm generous to the poor,
if I'm helpful to the poor,
if I preach the gospel to the poor,
if I provide their physical needs and take care of them,
and I'm not just a greedy person,
just my name's Jimmy, take all you give me,
just want to get everything for myself,
that when times of trouble come,
God is going to bless me.
You see, we think that we need to stockpile and hoard up everything we can for when the time of trouble comes.
But wait a minute.
The Bible says that if I'm generous,
if I give to the poor,
if I give to my fellow brother in Christ,
if I help people out that I know are in need,
I'm basically putting money in a bank account that's never going to go bad
because it's basically God is looking down.
He sees that.
He sees generosity.
He sees what we give.
He sees how we help people and care about the poor.
We don't just push it out of our mind when people are in need or going through pain or suffering.
If they're in jail, if they're in the hospital,
if they're going through bad times,
if we care about them and help them,
God says, you know what?
In the time of trouble, I'm going to deliver you.
I'm going to preserve you.
I'm going to help you when the rough times come.
And you know what?
Let me tell you something.
We are on the verge of some times of trouble.
We don't know when.
We don't know what.
We don't know all the details.
But I'll tell you right now, you know,
things could get ugly soon.
Who knows what's going to happen?
I mean, we live in very uncertain times.
And I would rather, you know, and some people have everything all signed up,
but you know what?
I'd rather just know that God's looking out for me.
I'd rather just know, you know what?
I've done right.
I've considered the poor.
God's going to deliver me in time of trouble.
God's going to take care of me.
I would rather have that than any insurance policy in this world.
I'd rather have that than any bank account in this world.
I'd rather have that than anything.
Just knowing, hey, God's going to take care of me.
God's going to protect me.
I'd rather have this promise right here in Psalm 41.
Things can go bad.
Times of trouble will come.
But it says in verse 2,
the Lord will preserve him and keep him alive,
the one who considers the poor.
And he shall be blessed upon the earth,
and thou will not deliver him under the will of his enemies.
Look at verse 3.
The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing.
Thou will make all his bed and his sickness.
Now, we're going to go through times of sickness.
We're going to go through times of trouble.
I do not believe in this health and wealth,
prosperity gospel of the Joel Osteens of this world,
who basically tell you,
if you serve God, everything's going to go great.
That's not what the Bible says.
The Bible says,
Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus
shall suffer persecution.
You know, you look at the people in the Bible.
Turn, if you would, to Hebrews chapter 11.
Keep your finger here in Psalms,
but look at Hebrews chapter 11.
This is a really famous chapter in the Bible.
Hebrews 11 is known as the faith chapter.
And at the end of Hebrews chapter 11,
beginning in verse 32,
he begins to run through.
He's already gone through tons of examples
of the Old Testament of people who lived by faith
and what happened in their lives.
But then he just kind of sums it up at the end.
He says in verse 32,
And what shall I more say?
For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and of Barak
and of Samson and of Jephthah,
of David also and of Samuel and of the prophets,
who through faith subdued kingdoms,
wrought righteousness, obtained promises,
stopped the mouths of lions,
quenched the violence of fire,
escaped the edge of the sword,
out of weakness were made strong,
waxed valiant in fight,
turned to flight the armies of the aliens,
women received their dead, raised to life again.
Now that all sounds great.
I mean, God's power,
all the miracles that he's running through there,
of God parting the Red Sea,
God making the walls of Jericho fall down,
God protecting Daniel when he was in the lion's den
and so forth.
But keep reading.
He said,
And others were tortured,
not accepting deliverance,
that they might obtain a better resurrection.
And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings.
Scourgings is basically a beating.
Yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment,
they were stoned,
they were sawn asunder,
were tempted,
were slain with the sword.
They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins,
being destitute, afflicted, tormented,
of whom the world was not worthy.
They wandered in deserts and in mountains
and in dens and caves of the earth.
Now, where does your best life now work into that passage?
You know, where is that saying that,
boy, if you do the right thing,
everything's going to go your way,
you're going to be healthy,
you're going to have money,
you're going to live to be 120 years old,
and everything's going to be blessed.
No.
The people in the Bible who lived for God,
they went through trials and afflictions,
they had tribulations,
they had problems,
and they went through pain and suffering,
and they weren't immune from those things,
but the difference is that the Bible says in Psalm 41,
if you're still back there,
the Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing.
It says, thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.
It doesn't say that you're never going to be sick.
It doesn't say you're never going to languish.
It doesn't say you're never going to suffer.
It says that God is going to strengthen you
to go through the suffering.
See, God's not going to take away all adversity out of your life.
He's not going to take away all bad circumstance from your life,
but he can strengthen you and lift you up
to help you go through the trials,
to help you stay strong in the power of the Lord
and in the power of his might,
not to back down,
not to falter,
not to fail.
God will be with you through the tribulation.
It says in John 16, 33,
These things have I spoken unto you,
that in me you might have peace.
In the world you shall have tribulation,
but be of good cheer.
I've overcome the world.
He's saying,
I'll be with you under the uttermost part of the world.
He says,
You're not going to be free from problems,
but I'll bless you.
I'll take care of you.
I'll keep you strong through the trials.
He said in verse 4,
I said,
Lord, be merciful unto me.
Heal my soul,
for I have sinned against thee.
Mine enemies speak evil of me.
When shall he die and his name perish?
And if he come to see me,
he speaketh vanity.
His heart gathered iniquity to itself.
When he goeth abroad, he telleth it.
All that hate me whisper together against me.
Against me do they devise my hurt.
Now again,
if you do right,
if you serve God,
there are going to be people who hate you.
I mean, this is David.
This is the man after God's own heart.
A righteous man,
a godly man.
Not perfect.
He said,
Look, I've sinned.
In verse number 4.
But,
he had a lot of enemies,
and there were a lot of people that hated him
that would have loved nothing more than to see him fall.
And that's what they whispered about.
But notice it says in verse 6,
If he come to see me, he speaketh vanity.
This is what we need to beware of.
Look at verse 9.
Yea, mine own familiar friend,
in whom I trusted,
which did eat of my bread,
hath lifted up his heel against me.
Often times,
we have enemies that we don't even know about,
is what God's telling us here.
He's talking here about people,
who when they come to see you,
they speak flattering words.
They say nice things.
It seems like they're your friend.
I mean, it seems like they care about you.
It seems like they love you.
But the Judas Iscariots of this world,
will often betray you.
And he says here that they speak vanity when they're with them.
I mean, they talk the talk.
But as soon as they're gone,
they're whispering and devising evil.
They're devising hate.
That's why I don't trust anybody.
Just as a rule for my life.
And you say,
Well Pastor Anderson, that sounds horrible.
I don't find that in the Bible anywhere.
I find many verses telling me not to trust man.
Not to put confidence in man.
Jesus himself said,
I don't trust man because I know what's in man.
That's the way he said it in the book of John.
And the Bible says in Psalm 118, 8,
which is actually the exact dead center of the Bible.
Like if you took all the verses on this side,
and all the verses on this side.
The middle verse says,
It is better to trust in the Lord,
than to put confidence in man.
The Bible is constantly telling us,
Trust God.
Trust the Lord.
He's the only one you can trust.
You can't necessarily trust man,
or your friends, or even people.
And the sad thing is that many people,
they think that because somebody goes to church,
trust them.
You know, they think,
Oh, well this person goes to church.
I remember,
I went to a church and it was a very big church.
It was a large church where I didn't know everybody.
At all.
It was a very large church.
And I remember,
we'd been going there for just a short time.
And they had this activity,
it was like a couples retreat,
where they wanted the couples to go,
and you know,
it was like a fun little thing,
like a vacation resort place somewhere.
And they said,
No children allowed.
You know, something like,
I'm not going to go then,
because obviously I have children.
And I had two little children at the time.
We had two or three.
Right, two?
Two little boys.
You know, my two oldest,
Solomon and Isaac.
And they said,
Well no,
you just leave your children at so-and-so's house.
Just some random person,
you know,
I'm just supposed to leave my children at their house,
and I didn't even know these people.
Don't worry,
they go to our church.
They're from our church.
That means nothing.
It means nothing.
Now listen to me.
Would you take a million,
if you had a million dollars,
which you don't,
but if you had a million dollars,
would you just drop that off at somebody's house?
Just because they go to church?
Oh yeah,
they go to our church,
but they go to our church.
You know,
and you just leave that suitcase for a million dollars.
Just watch this for me.
Okay,
I'm going to go on this retreat for a couple days,
and I'm going to come back.
Let me tell you something.
My children are worth more to me than a million dollars.
I mean,
they are worth far more.
I'd rather lose a million dollars any day of the week
than to lose one of my children.
And it just shows a lack of,
either a lack of understanding,
or just a total disrespect
for the gift that God has given us and our children,
or just a total,
I don't know what it is,
but just to just randomly drop your children off with people
who you don't know because they're from church.
Did you know that many times
church is just a haven for weirdos
and pedophiles and perverts
because they know that people are going to be trusting
and dumb and just turn their kids over to them?
And they'll literally target,
they won't target this church
because we don't trust anybody.
We don't give access to children,
but many churches,
I mean, you come the first week,
you're like,
okay, your three-year-old goes here,
your five-year-old goes here,
your seven-year-old goes here,
and we'll take it,
and you're just like,
oh, okay.
And who knows who they're going with?
Now that will never take place at this church.
We don't do that.
And that's why all of our activities,
we make it for the family.
And that's why we're all in church here together.
We don't split off and go in some dark corner somewhere.
We ought to be out in the open
because in 2010 we are living in perilous times.
And you hear about it every single week.
And again, that's why,
and by the way,
that's why my children don't go to school either.
Because the fact that all you have to do
is just go on Google News
and just type in the word school
and it'll show you all the news articles
from the last few days on school.
And you can even just hone it down to just Arizona
and you'll find two kinds of articles.
Basically there's just a ton of articles.
If you just type in school on Google News,
there's hundreds of articles.
But they really fit into two categories.
One is like teacher molested child
or bus driver molested child or janitor molested child.
That's all one category.
All the teachers molested each other.
And then the other category is teacher wants more money.
You know, so it's like every other article you go on the basis.
Teachers need more money.
Teachers molested the child.
This teacher wants more money.
This one's molested kids.
And I'm not saying that obviously
they're not all molested kids.
But it only takes one to molest my child
before, you know, somebody needs to die.
Okay, and so the bottom line is that, you know,
I don't just put my kid on a bus and just see you later,
see you in ten hours, see you in eight hours, whatever.
I want to, especially little children.
You know, obviously as children get older,
they get more freedom
and they can fend for themselves a little bit.
But boy, just a little child just to trust.
And you see, I don't agree with you.
You know what, that's fine.
But you know, it's going to be your loss someday.
And again, you know, I have certain rules that I live by,
and I don't expect people to have my same rules.
And I mean, you have whatever rules you have.
And if you want to drop your kids off with whoever,
that's your prerogative.
But I'm just telling you something.
I'm not going to do it, and this is why.
Because of the fact that the Judas Iscariots in this world,
because of the fact that in the news
they're always creeping in, I just don't trust people.
You say, but Pastor Anderson, they go to our church.
But see, here's the thing.
If you start trusting one,
then you have to trust another.
So I just have a blanket rule.
My kids are not out of my sight or my wife's sight,
my little kids.
They don't leave our sight.
Because I don't want to have to sit there and evaluate.
And here's the thing.
I'm the type of person where I like to give you a little bit of it or the other.
And that's why this is my motto.
You know, suspect no one, trust no one.
You know, I don't want to sit here and wonder,
like, oh man, I'm looking for the red flags here.
You know, is someone still a bad person?
You know, I just want to treat everybody like they're a great person
and give people the benefit of the doubt.
Everybody's innocent until proven guilty, you know.
And everybody I meet, I just like to think that they're a great person,
that their heart's in the right place.
I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.
But what gives me the luxury to do that is that I don't trust anybody.
So I can just treat everybody like they're the greatest person in the world
and just assume that everybody is
and just live in my little bubble where I think everybody's wonderful.
But you know what?
Because of the fact that I'm not dropping my kids off at anybody's house.
And you know, I mean, who here has driven my car?
Have I given you the keys and said, drive my car?
Look at all these hands going up.
Who here have I said, here, take my child?
But the sad reality is that most people would, like, never loan their car.
Oh man, don't, you know, don't take my car.
And yes, my car is a nice car, you know.
2008, okay, you know.
I know it has 140,000 miles on it, but that's pretty new.
But the bottom line is, my car, if my car disappeared right now,
if my car was destroyed, would it really be the end of the world?
You know, it's just a thing.
It doesn't really mean anything for eternity.
I mean, I use it, but if I lost a child or if my child were defiled,
that would be so much worse.
And so I'd be so much more careful with the things I care about the most,
like my family, than just with inanimate objects.
My house, my car, these type of things.
We need to care more about people than things.
You know, it's everything just about, you know, Jesus said,
a man's life consisted not in the abundance of things which he possesses.
You know, we shouldn't just live this covetous life where it's all about things.
It should be about people.
And we should love our children and love others.
But just don't assume, and what I'm trying to get at with this part of the passage is,
don't assume, because somebody goes to church,
that they must be a righteous person, because it's just not true.
There will always be tares among the weak, the Bible says.
There will always be those who creep in.
He said there will be false prophets among you.
There will be people among you who have crept in.
And we've had people come in and creep into this church
that were later exposed and unmasked as traitors that have crept in.
And it's always going to happen, you know.
And if they're not here today, they'll be here tomorrow.
You know what I mean?
You just need to be on the Lord.
Not to treat people badly or to be on some kind of witch hunt,
but just to keep it in our mind that, you know, Judas is scary.
It's always going to be.
Even Jesus had Judas in his church.
And do you remember when Jesus was sitting at the Last Supper?
He's got his 12 disciples around him, and they're eating the Last Supper.
And he says, you know, one of you is going to betray me.
And they all said, no, no, no.
And he said, nope, one of you, before tonight's over, is going to betray me.
And basically, they all began to say, is it I?
I mean, they looked at him.
I mean, Peter looked at him and said, is it I, Lord?
John looked at him, is it I?
You know, Andrew looked at him, is it I?
No one said, you know, Judas.
That's Judas.
And even when Jesus said, because John, you remember the apostle John,
was sitting right next to Jesus, and he kind of asked him to just cry,
like, Jesus, tell me who it is, you know.
And Jesus told him, it's the one that I'm, he told just John,
that's the one that I'm going to hand the sop to right now when I've dipped it.
So he dips the sop and hands it to Judas, okay?
And says, and I don't know if everybody heard him say that,
but he hands the sop to Judas and says, that thou doest, do quickly.
Judas gets up and walks out, storms out of the room.
And even then, they did not realize he was talking about Judas.
They thought that he was just going to buy something for the beast.
They thought he was just going to the store.
Because they thought that it couldn't be Judas.
It's the one that you don't suspect.
It's what God's teaching us here in this Bible story, Judas is scary.
You know, no one saw that it was going to be him.
They thought it was, is it me?
They didn't just know it was him.
And guess what Judas' job in the group was?
He was the one that handled the money.
You know, you've seen sometimes whoever's counting the offering,
I'll always be like, thanks Judas, you know.
But nobody likes when I say it.
You remember people were counting the offering later?
I'm like, oh, okay.
Judas, are you done counting the offering?
But the bottom line is, he was in a trusted position.
He handled the money.
But you know what, doesn't that show us God's view of money?
If Jesus put the trader, well, you're the trader,
well, I'll put you in charge of the money.
I mean, it must not have been that important to him.
I mean, if Jesus' church was all about money,
wouldn't he have put like John in charge of the money?
You know, the most trusted disciple, the most righteous disciple?
Wouldn't John have been the one to handle the back?
But he just put it in the hands of Judas.
Look, it doesn't matter.
It's not about money.
And there will be traders among us and you never know who they are.
So you've got to be sober.
Be vigilant, the Bible says,
because your adversary, the devil, is a roaring lion
walking about seeking whom he may devour.
You know, he's out to get you.
He's out to destroy the righteous.
The Bible says that the adulterous will hunt for the precious life.
I mean, there are women that are out there to get you.
You know, there are men that are out there to deceive and to trick
and to be a traitor, to betray you.
And so, you know, it's negative.
But again, it could save you a lot of heartache
if you just get this through your head and realize,
I can't just trust everybody.
You know, the world out there thinks that man is basically good.
That's the philosophy of the world.
But that's not what the Bible teaches.
The Bible teaches there's none righteous, no, not one.
And even among those that are, you know,
it's very few that are even, you know, in church
and trying to do what's right and golly.
There's a lot more evil in this world than you think.
We just live in one little corner of the world
where things are still pretty normal.
There are places all over this world
where sin and wickedness is even more out in the open than it is here.
And so we ought to be careful.
We ought to be sober. We ought to be vigilant.
And we ought to not just randomly trust people.
But he says in verse number 5,
Mine enemies speak evil of me.
When shall he die and his name perish?
And if he come to see me, he speak at vanity.
His heart gathereth iniquity to itself.
Verse 6, When he goeth abroad, he telleth it.
Verse 7, All that hate me whisper together against me.
Against me do they devise my hurt.
And evil disease, say they, cleaveth fast unto him.
And now that he lieth, he shall rise up no more.
Yea, my known familiar friend, and whom I trusted,
which did eat of my bread, had lifted up his heel against me.
By the way, Jesus quoted that verse about Judas.
He quoted this at the Last Supper, this exact passage, Psalm 41, 9.
Verse 10, But thou, O Lord, be merciful unto me,
and raise me up, that I may requite them.
Now, if you think about this prophetically,
because obviously there's the application of David,
talking about his life, people who had betrayed him.
But because Jesus quoted this at the Last Supper,
in reference to himself, he said, as it is written,
this is basically a prophecy of Jesus Christ,
and really verse 10 is a prophecy of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Read verse 10, it says, But thou, O Lord, be merciful unto me,
and raise me up, that I may requite them.
Now, David is talking about just being raised up from his sickbed,
in order to basically defeat his enemies.
But here he's talking about Jesus Christ being risen up from the dead
to requite his enemies.
Now, of course the Bible says of Jesus,
sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.
You see, there is a recompense coming to the evildoers of this world someday.
It's something that's not preached anymore today.
Because people today want to come to church,
they want to get a positive only message.
I love the positive, but we need to get the whole counsel of God.
Positive, negative, good, bad, indifferent.
God teaches very clearly that there is a judgment coming
for those who do evil in this world.
And this should be a comfort to us as Christians,
because of the fact that it can begin to make you an angry person,
if you really dwell upon all the bad things in this world,
and especially when you see people do a lot of really bad things
and just get away with it.
It can really make you upset, can't it?
I mean, when you hear about all the evil in this world,
and you see people just getting away with murder, literally,
and you see what our government is doing,
and you just get so angry about it, you say,
Pastor Anderson, and by the way, the Bible says this in Ecclesiastes 1,
it says, For in much wisdom is much grief,
and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow.
You know, so is ignorance is bliss.
You know, just go through your life, everything is great.
But the more you start to find out about some of the negative things in this world,
the bad things going on in this world, it can bring sorrow,
it can make you upset, it makes you angry.
The Bible says in Ecclesiastes, Surely oppression made the righteous man mad.
And when you see the oppression, when you see all the evil in this world,
and you say, Pastor Anderson, you seem to know a lot about these things,
how do you deal with it?
You know, how do you just stop from just being an angry person,
or just from letting bitterness eat you up?
Well, it's simple.
It's because I know and realize that whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap.
And I know that God will recompense the evildoer.
That's why he said, Brethren, avenge not yourself.
He said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, saith the Lord.
I will repay.
You see, God's telling us, you don't have to take vengeance.
You don't have to right all the wrongs in this world.
I mean, you do the best you can to fight for justice and what's right.
But you know what?
When you see people getting away with the most wicked and ungodly things,
you don't have to take it into your own hands.
You don't have to become angry and let anger eat you up from day to day.
Hey, I go through every day rejoicing.
I mean, I'm rejoicing. I'm praise the Lord.
Now you say, do you get angry?
I get angry often.
And the Bible commands us to be angry.
In Ephesians chapter 4, it says,
Be ye angry, and sin not, letting out the sun go down upon your wrath.
God says, look, there's a time to be angry.
You ought to be angry.
And you know what?
If you're never angry when you see the things that are happening,
there's something wrong with you.
If it doesn't make you angry, but, he says,
don't let the sun go down on your wrath.
Don't go to bed mad.
I try to practice this in my life.
And let's say my wife and I have a disagreement.
Because my wife and I, we never fight or anything.
We have the perfect marriage and never fought, never raised our voices.
It's been just like all those rock and roll songs on the radio say.
You know how everything's just perfect ever since I met you.
And all the movies.
No, that's not reality.
But anyway, I love my wife.
My wife and I had a great marriage.
And I'm very happily married and thrilled to death to be married to my wife.
And I'm happier now than I was when we first got married.
I mean, I love her more than I ever have.
But you know what?
There are times when there's going to be fighting in marriage.
And the world lies to you on the radio,
and the Backstreet Boys have lied to you, and whoever else.
To get an unrealistic view of what marriage is.
And then when things don't work out, it's like,
oh man, I married the wrong person when I compare.
They're all like that.
You know what I mean?
You're like, I married the wrong person.
They're all like that.
No, I'm just kidding.
But anyway, I'm teasing, but there's some truth in that.
It's true.
If you ask my wife all her complaints about me,
it would be like, he leaves stuff around the house.
He doesn't fix things around the house.
He drops his stuff everywhere.
He snores.
It's like, do I snore?
Yes.
Okay.
You know, I guarantee you, everything that I list,
probably it's like 99% of men in America leave their stuff around the house.
Don't fix things.
Like, I'm an electrician, but half the electrical in my house doesn't work out.
And I mean, that's everybody.
And then women just, you know.
But so is John.
He's a really sensitive guy.
He wears a lavender tie, and he's really, you know.
My husband's this barbarian, you know.
You know, and he has a beard, and you know, it's just like, yeah.
The bottom line is, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
You know what I mean?
And you'd be deceived if you think that, you know, your husband's so bad,
but all these other guys, well, they're just wonderful.
Well, why do you live with them for a while?
You know, and then we can turn it around the other way.
If I listed everything that I don't like about my wife, okay, I'm done.
I just did.
I love everything about her, all right?
You know, if I were to list, if I were to have a list of grievances, okay.
You know what I mean?
They're all like that.
You know what I mean?
If you think about it, and look, I'm just thankful, you know.
My wife's beautiful.
She's a great cook.
She's fun to be around, you know.
But, you know, the same, anything that I said about her, you know,
and I list things about myself, you know, I'm going to save her that humiliation.
No, I'm just kidding.
But anyway, if I were to say something about her, I guarantee you,
it's probably just a female thing, you know what I mean?
And nobody's perfect.
Everybody has their issues.
So there have been times when I've been angry at my wife, all right?
And there's been times, I'm sure, when she was angry at me.
And I bet if I sat here right now and thought over the last ten years
that we've been married almost, I could probably think of a bunch of things
where she did me wrong.
And she could probably think of a bunch of things where she did me wrong.
But if I, I need to let that go every day, and listen to me now.
I know babies cry and everything, but listen.
I'm giving you right now, I'm about to give you the most important
marriage advice you'll ever give anywhere.
And straight out of the Bible.
I literally, if I could just tell any married person one thing
that would help their marriage be the best marriage possible,
it's forgiveness.
Because of the fact that in ten years or twenty years and thirty years,
you are going to do wrong by your wife.
And your wife's going to do wrong by you.
And the only way you're going to have a relationship
is if you can let things go.
And that means when you go to bed each night,
you don't let the sun go down on your lap.
You push a reset button, and in the morning,
you don't bring up whatever was yesterday.
And you know, I hope my wife will do me the same courtesy,
and not hold something against me from yesterday.
You've got to have a new, and the Bible says in Lamentations chapter 3,
that God's mercies are new every morning.
It's as great as thy faithfulness.
We ought to be the same way.
We ought to give people a brand new start in the morning,
and when I wake up, I'm not going to bring up to my wife
what we were fighting about last night.
You know, another thing.
Because what's going to happen is you're just going to stack up.
And you know, when me and my wife do have an argument,
I don't want her to bring up something I did seven years ago.
Well, you remember when you did this?
Oh yeah, well what about five and a half years ago when you said this?
You know, you're never going to get along like that.
And so honestly, there's going to be fighting,
but you've got to just let the sun go down on your lap.
Don't bring that anger in the next day.
Don't let it become a root of bitterness
that just grows and festers and just cankers.
But look, that's the best advice I'd give you for marriage, honestly,
is just every day is a new day.
Fresh start, forgiveness, I mean, it's very biblical.
But not just marriage.
Just in every area of your life,
you've got to learn to let things go before you go to bed at night.
That's what it teaches when you said,
let not the sun go down on your lap.
Because of the fact, even just for your physical health,
you know, if you just are always brooding and mad and angry,
the Bible says that we should not be an angry person.
He said we should be angry,
but we shouldn't just be a continually angry person.
And so when I go to bed at night,
I don't just lay in bed and fall asleep at night.
You know, think about chemtrails, you know,
you've got to make your life better.
I don't want to think about that while I'm falling asleep every night.
You know, stuff like that, and I need to learn more about that,
but stuff like that is going to make you mad,
because it ought to make you mad.
But you know, I don't want to go to bed thinking about that.
You know, I just want to go to bed and just kind of let it go,
and then the next morning, you know, whatever.
But the bottom line is we've got to learn to give place under wrath,
the Bible says.
And part of the way that you can do that,
you say, well, how do you deal with anger, though?
How do you deal with bitterness?
Part of it is when you realize that God is going to judge.
That's a comforting thing, because nobody likes injustice.
You know, nobody likes to think that somebody commits murder
and then just gets away with it, right?
I mean, wouldn't that make you mad?
But you know what, nobody ever gets away with anything.
That's the truth.
Nobody ever gets away with anything.
I mean, whatsoever a man soweth, it says this, be not deceived.
God is not mocked.
For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
Now, if we're saved, if we believe on Jesus Christ,
our sins are forgiven because Jesus already reaped what we sow.
I mean, Jesus paid for our sins.
He was punished for our sins.
But let me tell you something.
The unbelievers of this world, they will reap.
I mean, they may have sowed the wind,
but the Bible says they'll reap the whirlwind.
And so it's not our place to have to feel like we have to punish everybody
who says something bad about us, who does something wrong in this world.
We don't have to feel the need to punish it ourselves.
Realize that God will recompense.
He will repay.
He is a God of vengeance.
And so that can be comforting to us to know, you know what,
we don't have to take things in our hands.
We can just live our life and know that God's going to bless us
and God will repay the wicked to his face, the Bible says.
And so let's keep reading here.
Let's finish this up.
It says, verse 10, but thou, O Lord, be merciful unto me
and raise me up that I may requite them.
By this I know that thou favor'st me,
because mine enemy did not triumph over me.
And as for me, thou uphold'st me in mine integrity
and set'st me before thy face forever.
Of course, we're going to be with Jesus Christ in heaven for eternity.
The Bible says so shall we ever be with the Lord.
Wherefore come from one another with these words.
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting and to everlasting.
Amen and amen.
The last thing I want to cover is this with verse 13 here.
Because this is a big subject today and you know what,
it's a subject that I don't think the Bible could be any clearer on
and yet so many people today are deceived on the subject of Israel.
And it couldn't be any clearer.
And yet we have so many churches,
and I would say among independent Baptists,
which is what we are, we're an independent Baptist church,
I would say among independent Baptist church,
probably 99% are wrong on this.
Because they're all going to the same colleges
and the same seminaries and the same cemeteries
and places where this is being pumped into them.
But that doesn't make it true.
Basically this teaching that Israel is God's chosen people.
That is not true.
And you can say it as many times as you want,
but that doesn't make it true.
Because the fact that the Bible makes it clear
that in the Old Testament God called Abraham
and God set apart and sanctified Abraham
and he said I'll make of thee a great nation
and he said I'll bless thy seed.
But in Galatians 3 and 4 that explains
that that seed that he was blessing was Jesus Christ
that was going to come out of the loins of Abraham.
And so Abraham was blessed by God.
Abraham was a righteous, godly man.
His son Isaac was a righteous, godly man.
His son Israel, who the nation of Israel is named after,
was a righteous and godly man.
The nation of Israel went down to Egypt.
They were in bondage. They were enslaved.
They cried out to God.
God delivered them.
Moses came and brought them in the Promised Land.
And they had their ups and downs as a nation.
And when they did wickedness in the sight of the Lord,
God kicked them out of the Promised Land.
You remember when they went into captivity?
And then when they got right with God
and called out to God, he brought them back in.
And then you remember a few hundred years after that,
a little over 400, Jesus Christ came on the scene.
They rejected Jesus Christ.
And Jesus said to them,
the kingdom of God shall be taken from you
and given to a nation, bringing forth the fruits thereof.
And that's when they got angry and wanted to stone him to death.
When he said, look, if you don't consider yourselves worthy of the kingdom of God,
he said, he'll be taken from you.
Now, we see all throughout the Bible,
and especially the New Testament is where this is really emphasized.
But you can even find this concept in Isaiah 65 and 66 in the book of Hosea.
All these concepts are there, but in the New Testament, it's explicit.
When he flat out tells them, he says, look,
the natural children of Israel have rejected the Gospel,
they've rejected Jesus Christ,
and the Bible says they are not blessed by God,
they are under a curse by God.
Let's just look at a few quick scriptures.
Look at John chapter 3.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Let's look at John chapter 3.
Because a lot of people are confused on this,
and this is an important issue today,
because a lot of people will teach this Zionism,
and they're basically teaching that if America helps Israel, God's going to bless us.
And if we do wrong by Israel, then we're going to be cursed by God.
This is coming across Baptist pulpits all over America, literally.
This is the consensus of Christianity,
even though it's not been the historical teaching at all.
I mean, it's something that in the last few hundred years
has been a calculated ploy to create the Zionist doctrine
that is not a biblical doctrine.
Look at John chapter 3 and tell me what this means.
Verse 36,
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life,
and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life,
but the wrath of God abideth on it.
Now, that tells me right there that if someone does not believe on Jesus Christ,
they do not have the blessing of God on them.
They have the wrath of God on them.
And John the Baptist himself said to the Jews,
Think not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father.
For I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham,
and now also the axe is laid under the root of the trees,
therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit
is hewn down and cast into fire.
He said, just because you're Abraham's child, John chapter 8,
we don't have to turn there, but in John chapter 8,
we don't have to turn there,
but basically the Jews are saying to him,
Abraham's our father.
He said, Abraham is not your father.
He said, you're of your father the devil, because they were the Pharisees.
They believed in a false die. They did not believe in Christ.
It says in 1 Thessalonians 2,
For ye also did suffer like things of your own countrymen,
even as they have of the Jews,
who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets,
and have persecuted us,
and they please not God, and are contrary to all men,
forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved.
He said, to fill up their sins always, for the wrath has come upon them to the uttermost.
And so just because Jerry Seinfeld is Jewish or something,
he is not God's people.
He does not believe in Jesus Christ.
He is not one of God's chosen people, and he is on his way to hell.
That's a fact.
And the same thing goes for the so-called Jewish state.
Even though the Bible says he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly,
he's a Jew which is one inwardly.
And circumcision is the circumcision of the heart and the spirit.
He said, we are the circumcision which worship God and the spirit,
and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.
And so just because somebody is living in that strip of land over there,
and is a descendant of Israel, a descendant of Abraham,
that doesn't make them God's people, because if they reject Jesus Christ,
they're not God's people.
They don't get a special pass because of what family they were born into.
They are not saved, and God's wrath is upon them.
I do not, for the life of me, know where Christians are getting this doctrine.
I can't figure it out.
It's pastors who don't read the Bible, or it's people who don't read the Bible,
or don't care what it says, because literally,
I can literally show you like 50 different chapters in the New Testament
that deal with this exact subject, and they all say the same thing.
And yet they'll take you back to Genesis 12, when God's blessing Abraham, the person,
not his descendants thousands of years later that hung his son on the cross,
and said, crucify him, his blood be on us and on our children.
And so you say, well, you're anti-Semitic, you're a racist.
I'm not anti-Semitic by telling you that all men are created equal.
That's not anti-Semitism.
I'm saying what the Bible says.
There is no difference between the Jew and the Gentile.
There is no difference between the Jew and the Greek,
for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.
There's not a difference.
He said, in Christ there's neither Jew nor Gentile, neither bond nor free.
It doesn't matter is what I'm saying.
I'm saying that you're saying the Jews are God's chosen people.
If one of them believes in Jesus Christ as their savior, then he's God's people.
Amen.
Whether he's a Jew or a Gentile, it doesn't matter.
But if you're telling me that a Jew that's practicing Judaism,
which is a false religion, which rejects Jesus as the Messiah,
the Bible says, who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?
He's anti-Christ that denieth the Father and the Son.
That's the first time it's ever due.
So think about it.
What does it mean to say that Jesus is not the Christ?
You're basically saying that there is a Christ, but that it's not Jesus.
Well, that's Judaism.
Because they believe that the Messiah is still coming.
And guess what? He is still coming.
The anti-Christ is going to come.
And the Jews, according to the Bible, will accept him as the Messiah.
And basically, false Christianity will accept the anti-Christ as the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Oh, here he is.
But it'll be the anti-Christ.
The Jews will accept him as their Messiah.
That's why I'll say it now and I'll say it again.
Judaism is the religion of anti-Christ.
1 John 2, that's what it says.
If you say that Jesus is not the Christ, you're saying there's some other Christ besides Jesus,
that's what anti-Christ means.
Anti-Christ, that's what it means.
And so you say, are you against...
I'm not against the people, the nationality.
I'm against the system.
I'm against false religion of Judaism.
And I'm against the political system of Zionism because it's based upon abusing people's ignorance of the Bible.
Abusing the fact that they never read the book of Acts.
They never read the book of Galatians.
They never read the book of 1 Thessalonians.
You know, some preacher just stood up and said,
I'll bless them to bless you.
Bless them to bless you.
Bless the Jews. Bless the Jews.
Because he's just repeating something over and over again.
And we need to get back to getting in the Bible and reading this because you know what, let me tell you something.
My whole life growing up, I believed that the Jews were God's chosen people.
Man, don't mess with Israel.
It's God's people over there.
Never even crossed my mind. Hello?
They don't even receive Jesus Christ.
They're all part of false religion, you know?
Never even crossed my mind.
You say, Patrick, how did you figure this out?
Just reading the Bible. That's it. I mean, literally.
I went through my whole life believing that because that's what I heard in every church I went to.
I started just memorizing the Bible.
I'm memorizing 1 Thessalonians 2.
I have 1 John 2 memorized.
I have a lot of these chapters memorized.
And all of a sudden I started saying, you know what, this isn't right.
But I thought, wait a minute, this can't be wrong.
Everybody believes this.
And at first I was apprehensive to preach it.
Because I was like, man, I don't know if I should preach this.
I must be missing something.
So then I read the whole Bible again, cover to cover, just looking for this one issue.
Because I was like, I must be missing something here.
Because there's no way they could all be wrong.
So I went through it. I went through it.
I got to the end of it and I said, yeah, I'm preaching this.
And I preached a sermon about 4 years ago.
Basically exposing this.
And saying, look, the Jews today are not God's chosen people because they don't believe in Christ.
We're God's chosen people, red and yellow, black and white, who believe on Christ.
And so it's a biblical doctrine.
And I don't think that anti-Semitism is the word for it.
I'd say that the Zionist is the racist.
Who somehow, oh, you're Jewish. Oh, wow.
Oh, you're one of the chosen ones.
Oh, you are the chosen people.
And it's like, who cares that all these people are being killed in communist China.
And people have been killed in Cambodia by the millions.
And people have been killed in the Soviet Union to the tune of 50 million.
You know, the Holocaust is when the precious chosen were killed.
And look, don't make me out to be something I'm not.
I think that Adolf Hitler was evil and filled with Satan and a murder.
And he murdered tons of people.
And obviously it's horrible and wicked.
But you know what?
Anyone who murdered people should be looked at the same way as Adolf Hitler.
Anyone who murdered tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people.
Whether they killed the Jews or any national.
Because I happen to believe that the people in Cambodia who were murdered,
isn't that just as much of a Holocaust?
Or the people murdered in communist China, isn't that a Holocaust?
Or how about the abortion Holocaust in America?
40 million strong.
Why don't we call that the Holocaust?
But you see how people look at, oh, the Jews were killed here.
But wait a minute.
I believe that every person has the same value to God.
He doesn't put a special value on the Jews.
I think he looked at the Russians being killed.
Or he looked at the Germans being killed.
Or he looked at the Chinese being killed.
Or whoever it was.
Or the unborn that are killed.
And I think to him it's the same value.
So what I'm teaching is the exact opposite of racism.
I'm teaching that you know what?
The word race is not even found in the Bible.
Except when it says to run a race.
He never said that there's races.
He said he's made all nations of the earth of one blood.
We're all human beings.
We're all one blood.
And so he doesn't give a special treatment to the Jew over the Gentile.
He said there's no difference.
There is no difference.
We are human beings.
And if we believe in Christ, we're God's people.
If we do not believe in Christ, we are not God's people.
And that's why people need to get saved.
And then they will be blessed.
Then they will be on their way to heaven.
But only because they believe in Jesus.
That's it.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for your word, dear God.
And I thank you so much that I'm not going to be a second class citizen in heaven.
Because my name doesn't have gold or stain in it or anything like that.
God, I thank you that when I get to heaven, I'm going to be one of your people.
And that in heaven the Jew and the Gentile will be side by side if they believe on Christ.
God, that we are your people and that we're blessed if we love you, dear God.
And if we're saved, we're going to heaven.
God, I just thank you so much for your word that promises us that if we regard the poor,
if we do the right things, if we're generous, that you'll take care of us.
And God, help us not to worry about the future because we know you're going to take care of us.
Help us not to become angry, bitter, cantankerous people,
but rather help us to know where to put our anger at the end of the day
and just rejoice in the Lord daily.
And we love you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.