Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Faithful Word Baptist Church.
If you would, please find your seats and we'll begin our service this evening.
When you find your seat, grab a hymnal and turn to song number 198, Joy Unspeakable.
Song number one hundred and ninety-eight.
the opportunity to be a church this evening.
Please bless Pastor Anderson with your Holy Spirit
and help him to preach boldly into us
and open our hearts to hear the message this evening.
It's in Jesus' name that I pray, amen.
Next, turn in your song books to song number 212.
Song number 212, oh happy day.
to that same retry I knew.
Happy day, happy day, when Jesus watched my sins away.
He taught me how to watch and pray,
and let every joy sing every day.
Happy day.
That she's done
We'll get to you with one on the inside.
We have our service time Sunday mornings at 10 30 is our preaching service Sunday nights at six Wednesday nights at seven is our Bible study tonight.
We're in Psalm 76.
We've got the soul winning times listed there below as well as salvation and baptisms across the page this Sunday.
We will have coffee and donuts before the service in honor of all the birthdays and anniversaries for the month of April this Friday.
Just two days from now is the first Friday downtown soul winning event.
If you would like to participate,
then meet at that address indicated at six o'clock.
And you can also reach out to brother Steve Tilson,
who's organizing this,
at the cell phone number provided there.
Below that, of course, the cruise missions trip
to the Bahamas was a huge success.
We had 27 soul winners and 272 salvations.
Thank you for all the prayers and support.
Another cool thing was that just as that trip ended,
like the day that that trip ended,
Our next cruise missions trip actually began literally the next day.
We've got four guys out in the Caribbean this week, also still continuing the mission.
So we just literally from one day to the next rolled from this trip into the next trip.
And then I do have the preliminary results from that.
This is Brother Kenton and Brother Kevin Rowe and.
Brother Sean Conlon, Brother Daniel Ryder.
So they went to, on March 29th, they were in Martinique
and had four people saved.
In Guadalupe, they had 12 people saved on the 30th.
On the 31st in St. Lucia, they had 79 people saved.
And on April 1st in Barbados, they had again 79 people saved.
So they've already had like, you know,
170 some people saved or something on this trip.
They're hitting like six countries.
over the course of like a week and a half.
So praise the Lord for that.
A lot of exciting things going on with regard to missions.
And so stay tuned.
We'll be announcing some other future mission strips
pretty soon so that you can think about
possibly getting involved.
On the back, we've got the mother daughter tea party
coming up.
There are two different dates on this.
April 27th and May 4th, so if you haven't already signed up for one of those options,
be sure to get your RSVP in if you're planning on going. Other upcoming events below that,
of course, we have the baby shower for Shannon Betty. That's this Sunday, two o'clock.
All ladies and girls are invited to attend. Don't be shy about showing up for that.
And then one week from tonight, April 9th, we've got Pastor Bruce Mejia preaching.
right here from First Works Baptist Church.
And so be sure to be here one week from tonight to hear him.
And then other things that we've got coming up this month.
Well, I'm gonna be preaching on April 25th,
Friday night, April 25th in Seattle, Washington
out at Sher Foundation's church plant in Seattle
on April 25th.
So I'm looking forward to that.
And then I think there's something else going on
that just popped up.
but we'll announce it on Sunday.
I think that's it for announcements.
So let's go ahead and count up the soul winning
from the past few days.
So going back to Monday,
anything to report from Monday?
Okay, all right, got it.
Okay, anything else from, there we go.
Anything else from Monday?
How about Tuesday, anything to report from Tuesday?
Okay.
Anything else from Tuesday?
How about today, Wednesday?
Got it?
Okay, anything else from...
Okay, so that's for the van.
10 total, okay, 10 for the van.
Very good, keep up the great work on soul winning with that.
Let's sing our next song, come lead us.
All right, there should be an insert
in the front of your hymnal with the song entitled
Farther Along.
If you need one, please raise your hand
and one of the ushers will get you one.
Farther along.
Daddy.
From my brother, living the sunshine Will understand it all by and by
When we see Jesus coming glory When he comes from his home in the sky
There he shall be
Understand it all by and by.
And then we're singing the next turn in your hymnals, if you would, to song number 63.
Song number 63.
What a day that will be, song number 63.
Today, when no heart it shall come,
No more clouds in the sky,
No more tears to give the eye,
All his peace forevermore
On that happy golden shore,
What a day for his day that will be!
When my Jesus like shall see, And I look at one His face,
The one who saved me by His grace.
When He takes me by the hand, And leads me through the promised land,
What a day for His sake that will be.
no sorrow there, no more hurt is to bear, no more sickness to make, no more party over there,
then forever I will be, then the one who died for me, what a day for his day I will be.
What a day that will be, When my Jesus I shall see,
And I look upon His face, The one who saved me by His grace,
When He takes me by the hand, And leads me through the promised land,
All right, this time we'll pass the offering plates around as the plates go around.
Let's turn our Bibles to Psalm 76 tonight.
Psalm 76 as we always do, read the entire chapter beginning in verse number one.
beginning in verse number one
Psalm 76 the Bible reads in Judah is God known his name is great in Israel in
Salem also is his tabernacle and his dwelling place is in Zion
Their break he the arrows of the bow the shield and the sword and the battle see law
Thou art more glorious and excellent than the mountains of prey.
The stout-hearted are spoiled, they have slept their sleep, and none of the men of might
have found their hands.
At thy rebuke, O God of Jacob, both the chariot and horse are cast into a dead sleep.
Thou, even thou, art to be feared, and who may stand in thy sight when once thou art
angry?
Thou didst cause judgment to be heard from heaven, the earth feared and was still, when
Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee.
The remainder of wrath shall thou restrain.
Vow and pay unto the Lord your God.
Let all that be round about him bring presence unto him
that ought to be feared.
He shall cut off the spirit of princes.
He is terrible to the kings of the earth.
Dear Lord, thank you for your faith. We're Baptist Church Lord and I pray that you'd feel a pastor innocent with your Holy Spirit Lord
And I pray that you'd give us all ears to hear the message and to be better Christians and to love you more and to love one another more
and do you send them a prayer amen
Man, Psalm 76, we're continuing through the Psalms of Asaph.
And in verse number one, the Bible reads,
In Judah is God known,
his name is great in Israel.
And one of the major themes of this particular Psalm
is the greatness of God, the magnificence of God.
And I've got three points on that tonight.
And the first point I want to make is that God
is greater than all other gods.
Okay, and this is something that is taught throughout the Bible, but what I want to point
out here in verse number one is that it starts out by saying that God, that Judah, excuse
me, it starts out by saying that in Judah is God known and his name is great in Israel.
Now, obviously, God is tied to that geography biblically, but the difference between God
and the other gods of the heathen is that God was not just only known in Judah, he did
not only have a great name in Israel, but there were many, many prophecies in the Old
Testament that God would become known throughout the entire earth and that all nations worship
God.
Really, I think this is probably one of the most remarkable prophecies of the Bible that
has been fulfilled in such dramatic fashion.
There are obviously a lot of different religions in the ancient world and different gods.
And what's interesting about that is that these other gods of other geographies, whether
They never even made claims like this that,
hey, eventually the whole world's gonna worship us.
Eventually the whole planet,
all the nations are gonna be worshiping us.
Those claims were never made.
And yet in the Old Testament,
this claim is made repeatedly.
And I'm just gonna give you just a small sampling of this,
just looking at a few scriptures.
But over and over again, the prediction is made
that the whole world is gonna worship
the God of the Bible and that everybody on the whole planet is going to know who he is.
Other gods aren't even trying to make that claim. Not only did the God of Judah, the God of Israel
make that claim, but he actually delivered on that claim because here we are in 2025
and everybody knows who God is. Everybody knows about the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible is on
every continent in every country and it's just gone around the world again and again and again.
Listen to some of these predictions from the Bible and you can turn to some of these if you want.
Maybe you could flip over if you want to Isaiah chapter 2.
We'll come back to Psalms.
But while you're turning there, I'm going to read for you from Psalm 22.
And if you know anything about Psalm 22,
Psalm 22 is one of the great messianic Psalms about the Lord Jesus Christ.
It starts out with that famous verse,
And it talks about Jesus' hands and feet being pierced on the cross and everything.
So it's a very good psalm about Christ and his death on the cross and so forth.
But toward the end of that Psalm 22, it says in verse 27,
All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord.
And all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.
For the kingdom is the Lord's and he is the governor among the nations.
that all the kindreds of the nations are going to worship before God.
And of course, this is in the context of the Lord Jesus Christ crucifixion.
Because let's face it, why does everybody in the world know who God is?
Why does everybody know about books like Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus?
Why do they know about Psalms and Proverbs and all these Old Testament scriptures?
It's because of Christianity.
It's not Judaism that has spread the Word of God and spread the knowledge of God throughout
the world because Judaism is a tiny, tiny minority in this world and has been hated
and despised for the last 2,000 years, not respected.
Let's just look at the facts.
Let's just look at some of the data.
Claim the name of Christ tonight in 2025. There are 2.3
Billion people claiming to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ not saying that they're all saved
But that would claim the name of Christ. How many Jews are there in this world?
Well, the total number of Jews period is
15.7 million and only a couple million of those are actually even religious at all
So you have a couple million religious Jews, and you have a couple billion.
religious Christians. So you have literally 1,000 times as many people
claiming to be Christians as you have
that actually would say, yes I believe in Judaism and I'm
you know I'm believing that the Torah is the Word of God or whatever
and then yet you'd have 2.3 billion Christians that would make that claim.
So I wonder who's driving
the knowledge of the glory of the Lord here. It's obviously
Psalm 86 verse 8 says, Among the gods there is none like unto thee, O Lord, neither are
there any works like unto thy works, all nations whom thou hast made.
shall come and worship before thee, O Lord, and shall glorify thy name." Now, if God is just
another little regional God, you know, the Philistines have their God and the Syrians have their God
and he's just the God of this little, you know, podunk nation in the Levant, just this little
country that's not really that significant in the scheme of things, that'd be a pretty bold claim to make.
for this little regional deity, which is how sometimes people will try to paint
the God of the Old Testament. Okay, well if that's true, it's just this little regional deity,
that's kind of interesting that he now dominates the entire planet
and everybody on this planet knows about the Ten Commandments
and they know who God is and Jesus Christ's name is just everywhere.
Okay, why? Because that's what God said would happen and that's what happened.
Look at Isaiah chapter 2 verse 2.
It says, and it shall come to pass in the last days
that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on the top of the mountains
and shall be exalted above the hills and all nations shall flow unto it.
Go, if you would, to chapter 11 in Isaiah.
Chapter 11, I'm going to start reading while you get there.
It says, And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
This is talking about the Lord Jesus Christ,
the Son of David, but jump down to verse nine.
So in the context again of Jesus,
it says in verse nine,
For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea and in that day
There shall be a root of Jesse talking about Jesus of course the son of David
Which shall stand for an ensign of the people and to it shall the Gentiles seek and his rest shall be
Glorious go to Isaiah chapter 45 and look we're just looking at a small sampling
But this is a major theme throughout the Old Testament and what you have to understand about why this is so remarkable is that when this is being written,
you know, this stuff is like, you know, in the case of Isaiah, what approximate like 700 years before Christ or something like that,
when God was more regional, you know, when other nations sort of had their gods and then there's Israel's God, the true God.
Prophets are going out of Israel and preaching the gospel in other nations and the word of God
went forth. But let's face it, in general, in the Old Testament, Israel was by far,
you know, the concentration of where people are that are worshiping the Lord God.
But there's a prediction being made that in the future, and of course it's connected with
are going to worship the Lord.
The whole world is going to know who the Lord is.
The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
And again, it's a bold prediction in 700 BC.
But yet, we see it fulfilled even, you know, dramatically, probably beyond what the people
who lived at that time could have even imagined, as far as just how ubiquitous the knowledge
of the Lord is in 2025.
And obviously, it's been this way for a long time.
Where did I have you turn?
Chapter 45?
It says in verse 22 of Isaiah 45,
Look unto me, and be ye saved all the ends of the earth,
for I'm God, and there's none else.
I've sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth
in righteousness, and shall not return,
that unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue.
shall swear." And then you don't have to turn to these, but Habakkuk 2.14,
for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
Zechariah 14.9, and the Lord shall be king over all the earth.
In that day shall there be one Lord and his name one. And again, that's just a small sampling.
You know, we could go through and find lots of other Bible verses making this bold
Proclamation that God is not just another God,
it's not, and this is what the atheists of our day
would have us to believe.
Oh, there's just kind of all these gods,
all these different religions, these little regional gods,
and you know, Yahweh, as they like to call him,
you know, is just one of them.
He's just one of all these different gods.
You know, why should I believe in this one particular God over all the rest of the gods?
Well, because that God predicted that he was going to dominate the entire world and that
everybody in the world would know who he is, and it's connected to predictions about the
Lord Jesus Christ dying on the cross for our sins, and then we can look back and see that
prophecy fulfilled to a T, that, yes,
God, the Lord, the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has taken over
the world so that when people think of God, that's who they're thinking of.
And even false religions like Islam, because, you know, we already said Christianity represents
2.3 billion people, well, the second largest religion in the world is Islam with 1.6 billion
people.
the God of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and it even says in the Quran,
hey, the God of the book of Psalms is the true God.
So basically, even though they've twisted and perverted the faith,
they're still acknowledging the God of Psalms as being the true God.
So if you just combine Christianity and Islam, it's only half the people on the planet.
Not just being aware of God because there's about eight billion people in the world and about four billion of them are saying hey
we believe in the God of
Abraham Isaac and Jacob
So much for a little regional God right when half the planet is
Confessing him today in 2025 and the other half of the planet knows who he is
They're still aware of him, they still know.
So God is far superior to other God.
So back to our Psalm tonight, Psalm 76.
I just wanted to lay that down before we get into Psalm itself.
It says in verse 1, in Judah is God known.
His name is great in Israel, right?
But now, where we're standing in 2025,
this gets expanded to, in America is God-known.
In the entire world, his name is great.
Everyone in the world today realizes
that when we're talking about the one true God,
we're talking about the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.
You know,
Every major monotheistic religion would confess that.
It's not like there's some other really big competition for God here besides that.
But then in verse 2 it says,
In Salem also is his tabernacle and his dwelling place in Zion.
So again, I think that what the psalmist is getting at in these first couple verses
is to make sure that we know which God is the true God.
The true God is the God of Israel.
the God of Judah, and in Salem is his tabernacle and his dwelling place in Zion.
Now, in John chapter 4, Jesus has a confrontation with the woman at the well.
And when he talks to the woman at the well, she says to him,
And ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.
This is John chapter 4, verse 21.
Jesus saith unto her woman, Believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father, ye worship, ye know not what, we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.
Okay, so when Jesus talks to the woman at the well,
She puts this sort of dilemma before him saying,
well, you know, our fathers worship God in this mountain,
talking about Mount Garizim.
you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. So she's
kind of saying which one is it? You know, I perceive that you're a prophet. You
seem like you know what you're talking about. So let me ask you a Bible
question. You know, do we worship God in Mount Gerizim like the Samaritans say, or
do we worship God in Jerusalem like the Jews are saying? And Jesus gives her a
clear answer. He says, first of all, women believe in the hour cometh when you
at Jerusalem worship the Father.
What he's saying is that in a very short time,
geography's not gonna matter.
Why is geography not gonna matter in a very short time?
Because the earth is gonna be filled
with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea in a very short time.
The entire world is going to know about and worship the Lord and it's not going to be
associated with a certain geography of coming to the temple or Jerusalem, whatever.
It's going to be local churches.
It's going to be people worshiping the Lord and praying in the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ and wherever two or three are gathered together in His name, He'll be there in the
midst.
But he still gives her a clear answer to the question even though he says look this is kind of a moot point
Since in a very short time
Geography is not going to matter because the whole planet is going to be worshipping Christ
But he says ye worship, you know, not what?
We know what we worship for salvation of the Jews.
So, what he's saying is, your biggest problem as Samaritans
is not that you're worshiping in the wrong geography, that's not your biggest problem.
Your biggest problem is that you don't even know God,
who you're claiming to worship. You worship, you know not what.
Right, we know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews
And so the idea here is that the answer to this question is Jerusalem not
Horizon right that is where men ought to worship and it's not because that place is so special per se
It is rather because of the fact that that place is identifying you with the true God and if you're
worshiping in Jerusalem and you got the Bible of Jerusalem and you're at that house then you're
actually worshiping the correct God whereas if you're in these other geographies worshiping and
joining up with another religion you're worshiping a different God wrong God and you don't know what
you're worshiping you don't know the truth and you don't have salvation because the Bible says
Because this is, of course, back when the Jews were worshiping the true God, unlike
now where they are not worshiping the true God, because the Bible says, if you don't
have the son, you don't have the father.
And so they have a different God because they've rejected Jesus.
He says, for the hour cometh.
And now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth,
for the Father seeketh such to worship him, God is a spirit, and they that worship him
must worship him in spirit and in truth.
So this is what Jesus told the woman at the well.
And so the important thing here in Psalm 76 verse 2 when it says, in Salem also is this
tabernacle and his dwelling place in Zion is that we are identifying the correct God,
right?
Because a lot of times people could just use the word God and they're not referring to the God of the Bible.
So, we're homing in on the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God
of Scripture, the God of the Old Testament.
And so, Jesus is looking at the Samaritans who are kind of worshiping God, or worshiping
the Lord, but, you know, they're not really worshiping the true God, are they?
They think they are, but they're not, sort of like Muslims.
They think they are, but they're not, because if you don't have the Son, you don't have
That God doesn't have a son. Well, then you're not talking about the God of the Bible because the God of the Bible does have a son
His name is Jesus and so you can see how
Geography is not special in and of itself, but rather geography helps us to identify with the correct God and the correct Bible
Okay, the Samaritan scriptures are corrupt and tampered with and it's not that they were in
Geraisim that was really their biggest problem. It was the fact that they worshipped
They know not what they knew not what and and the Jews knew what they worshipped and
Salvation of the Jews because they had the right God and the right Bible. Okay, that's what we see in this passage
So that's the big difference now a lot of people today
They make an idol out of that land or out of that geography even to this day
When Jesus is saying in John chapter 4,
hey, it's not going to matter in a very short time.
He says, the hour cometh, and now is, right?
When the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
He said, believe me, the hour cometh, when you shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father.
So why do we feel like we need to go to Jerusalem to go worship the Father?
When Jesus said, hey man, the hour is coming,
when you're not gonna be doing it in Mount Garizim,
and you're not gonna be doing it in Jerusalem.
So I went to Mount Garizim, and I went there,
and let me tell you something,
there's very little going on there.
There's not much going on.
Okay, when I was there, there were no other tourists there,
not even one.
We were the only people there.
and we drove up as far as we could drive,
then we got out of the car, hopped a fence,
and went all the way to the top of Mount Garizim,
and there was nobody there.
And there's a little tiny community of people living there that identify as the Samaritans
and they're still following like a Samaritan religion, sort of the religion of the woman
at the well before she got saved, before she believed in Jesus.
It's just this tiny little community, a handful of people.
We're talking like on the order of like, I don't remember the exact number, but don't
quote me on this, but maybe on the order of like a couple hundred people or something.
Right millions and billions of Christians and there's just kind of a couple hundred people that are still like stuck on Mount
Garizim or something, but there's there's nothing going on there
Okay, and then in Jerusalem. No, there's a lot going on in Jerusalem
But most of it is false religion, right because it's predominantly
Judaism that's going on there, but then you also have all these misguided Christians going there
and thinking somehow that they're going to find some closer, deeper connection with God
by going to that place, by being in that place that somehow that's going to bring them closer to God.
And I do not believe that for one second.
Look, if I thought that going to Jerusalem and going on the Temple Mount or going to Golgotha
or going to the empty tomb, if I thought it was going to bring me to closer to God, then I would have done it.
You know I've traveled a lot of places in this world and I've taken a lot of trips
And I could easily just right after the service night
I could easily just book a flight and just hop on a plane and go there, right?
It wouldn't be hard at all. It would take me just a few minutes
I have the resources to do that and I could just easily, you know
I could probably book us all a trip there, you know what I mean?
And we could all go there and we could all get closer to God except that's stupid and meaningless
Because it wouldn't bring us closer to God
And why don't we just listen to what Jesus said when he said,
you're neither going to worship God in this mountain and you're not going to worship God in Jerusalem.
So why would I think I need to go worship God in Jerusalem?
When Jesus literally said, you're not going to worship God in Jerusalem.
Okay, then I'm not going to do it, Lord. Thank you.
And that's why I've never been there and I never plan to go there.
I have no desire to go there.
I'll go there in the millennium when Jesus is physically there,
ruling and reigning, then I'll go there.
And there's no reason to go there before that.
Because before that, it's basically just a dried out,
desiccated desert place.
And if you want that, well, just look out the window.
Because even when we drove through Palestine,
you know what it looked like to me?
It looked a lot like Arizona.
And then we went up on the mountaintop where where Moses looked into the promised land and you know
Because I've never been to Israel
But I went up on the mountaintop and I looked into Israel and you know what it looked like a dry desert
It looked a lot like just coming down the I 17 from Flagstaff and coming into Phoenix. And so what's the point?
There is no point, right? What is the point of that geography the point of emphasizing Jerusalem?
that it identifies the true God, the knowledge of God, the scriptures of God,
that Jesus is the son of David, and Jerusalem is the city of David. That's
the significance of Jerusalem, not the physical location. Like people get
all spooky about it like, you know, it's like a portal to another dimension
or something. It's sort of like when you go to these vortexes.
You know like Sedona is sort of like a spiritual vortex, right?
I mean, come on, right?
Did you feel something when you went there?
You know, I remember we went to this place when we were up in the Redwoods.
My sister and I, we went to this place that was called Confusion Hill.
And it was a vortex.
And, you know, things rolled uphill and all of the laws of physics were suspended and everything.
And, you know, it turns out it was all hoax.
You know, you're not going to believe this.
There's another place like that in Santa Cruz, California.
And what it is, it's basically like a fun house.
So they build things in such a way
where it's an optical illusion.
And we were tripping out, because we
weren't smart enough to figure out how the tricks worked.
We knew it must be a hoax
But we were just we couldn't figure it out because we were literally like rolling things uphill and and you know
She was taller than me and all this stuff. It was just we're just like whoa
We were kind of tripping but at the end of the day we knew okay
This is just physics and optics that we don't understand
And we're, it's a gag, right?
And I, you know, I'm kind of a sucker for roadside attractions.
So I, you know, I stop at places like this, folks.
So, you know, it's not like Jerusalem is some kind of a vortex or something, you know, where it's like,
well, this is a place that's just pointed at heaven or something.
This is where, you know, creation happened.
And this is where God, you know, communicates with us more.
Like we get just a little closer to God or something like that.
It's stupid and ridiculous.
And where two or three are gathered together in his name, there he is in the midst.
And Jesus said,
Gerizim, doesn't matter, and Jerusalem doesn't matter.
It matters that you're worshiping God in spirit and in truth.
It matters that you've got the right God.
And so when the Bible is telling us in Psalm 76-2, and Salem also is his tabernacle,
and his dwelling place in Zion, it's not saying that he literally lives there.
He's not confined to that because the Bible says even at the dedication of the temple
that the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain God, which means that God transcends
the physical universe, right?
He is beyond the scope of even our universe.
And so therefore, if God cannot even be contained by the entire universe or the heaven of heavens,
then how in the world can he live in a house made with hands?
That's what Solomon said.
But no, this house is just to offer sacrifice before him.
So when the Bible says Salem is his tabernacle, his dwelling place is in Zion,
that's because that's where he's being preached.
That's because that's where his servants are.
That's where his praises are being sung.
That's where his people are.
That's where the Word of God is proclaimed.
And so today, in the New Testament,
that would be the local church,
and it doesn't matter if it's in Arizona,
or the Philippines, or Timbuktu.
It could be anywhere.
So number one, we said God is greater than other gods because he is universal in scope. He's worldwide
He's not some little regional deity some regional gods some Scandinavian pagan god or something worshipped by a few people
No, he's the god of the whole earth and the entire planet knows who he is in
2025 as predicted by scripture
But number two, God is greater than our enemies.
So God's greater than other gods, but number two, God's greater than our enemies.
Look at verse three, it says there, he break the arrows of the bow, the shield and the sword and the battle,
sea law. So the enemies of God that came against Jerusalem, God broke their weapons.
He broke the arrows of the bow, he broke the shield, he broke the sword, he broke their battle.
Now, here's what the Bible says in Isaiah 54-17.
No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper,
and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment, thou shalt condemn.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
and their righteousness is of me, sayeth the Lord.
Now, what is a heritage?
A heritage is like an inheritance.
It's something that you inherit.
So the Bible says that this promise
No weapon that is formed against these shall prosper.
That is a promise that the servants of the Lord inherit.
And their righteousness is of me, sayeth the Lord.
So we don't have our own righteousness, which is of the law.
We have that which is of the faith of Christ.
The righteousness which is of God by faith.
As born again saved Christians, Jesus Christ's righteousness has been imputed unto us.
Our faith is counted for righteousness.
It's Jesus' righteousness on our account.
And the Bible says that those servants of God who have Christ's righteousness imputed under them,
they inherit this promise, no weapon that is formed against these shall prosper.
So just as God broke the weapons in verse 3 of Psalm 76,
the arrows of the bow, the shield, the sword, the enemies of Jerusalem,
He broke those weapons.
that are formed against us will not prosper, and God will break them as well.
And notice what it says, also it says,
no weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper,
and every tongue that shall rise against the judgment thou shalt condemn.
So notice that the battle is not always with actual arrows and bows and swords and shields.
It's a battle of words, it's a battle of information, it's a battle of thoughts, and casting down imaginations, and every thought bringing it into subjection of Christ and so forth.
So the battle that we fight is not a battle of flesh and blood, we're fighting against spiritual wickedness in high places.
And so when the Bible says, every tongue that shall rise against the judgment thou shalt condemn, this is talking about the fact that we as Christians.
As we serve God, people are going to rise up against us and fight against us with their mouths.
And they're going to lie, they're going to slander.
And look, the first sermon that Jesus preaches as you're reading the New Testament, right?
You start in Matthew chapter 1 and you turn a few pages,
you get to the first sermon, the sermon on the Mount starting in chapter 5.
And what does he say?
Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness' sake,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
What does that persecution look like?
You know, is it just talking about being thrown in prison
or something like that?
Well, no, it says this in the next verse.
Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you
and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely
for my sake.
So, blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness sake, and then he lists three
things and it's sort of like a sandwich, okay?
And on one end of the sandwich, you have blessed are they that revile you.
What does it mean to be reviled?
This is talking about people speaking against you, okay?
This is like when they mocked Jesus on the cross, they reviled him.
Okay, so they revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you.
So the persecution starts with reviling you and ends with saying all manner of evil against
you falsely.
And then in the middle, it's persecute you.
So I wonder what kind of persecution is predominantly going to follow Christians in the New Testament.
You know, and I don't see in America today, I don't see Christians being thrown in prison
I don't see Christians being beheaded in America, and here's the thing.
Even throughout history, you know, most of the time God protects his people.
Even throughout the biblical narrative, God usually protects his people from that kind
of physical violence.
But you want to know what God does not protect us from is people lying about us, slandering
us and saying all manner of evil against us falsely for his sake.
Now, it should not surprise you when people speak evil of men of God, Christians, and
even you, as you serve Christ, that shouldn't surprise you at all.
Because over and over again, this is predicted, this is going to happen.
The first sermon preached by Jesus, he's already warning people right out of the gate.
You're gonna be persecuted and what's that gonna look like people are gonna revile you and they're gonna say all manner of evil against you
falsely for my name's sake and
I would submit to you if if somebody's not being
Verbally attacked lied about and slandered then they're probably not even serving Christ at all
Because all that will have godly in Christ Jesus self-suffer persecution
See you. I don't know man where there's smoke. There's fire
If that guy was really a man of God,
why would so many people be saying bad things about him
if he's a good guy?
Why would that, you know,
if that lady is really serving the Lord,
why are so many people saying bad things about her
where there's smoke, there's fire?
Well, how about this?
Where there's service for God, there's persecution.
100% of the time.
Show me the church that is not getting persecuted at all
and I'll show you a church that isn't serving God.
Every single time unless it just started five minutes ago or something and yeah
And I'm joking when I say that because yeah, maybe for the first couple of years
They won't experience a lot of persecution as they're getting off the ground
But in the long run all that will live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution
Isn't it interesting, everybody has their feelings and opinions about the so-called
new IFB, whatever that means, basically our church and other like-minded churches.
But isn't it interesting that our churches and our friends' churches seem to be bearing
the brunt of persecution in America today as far as just if you just look at which churches
are getting their bank accounts canceled?
by these evil Jew banking cartels, right?
Which churches are getting their bank accounts canceled?
Which churches are getting fire bombed?
You know, which churches are getting attacked,
slandered, and is there just all kinds of gossip
and trash talk and lying about on the internet, right?
Which churches have a bunch of weird,
androgynous freaks out protesting outside their church?
I mean, go down the list,
whatever you wanna talk about persecution.
Go down the list, you know which churches are being sued and dragged into court and everything and it's funny how you see
These churches that criticize us and pontificate and and all these things
But then I don't see them suffering persecution and yet the Bible said that
Everybody who's serving God is going to be lied about slandered and persecuted
But the good news is that no weapon that's formed against us shall prosper and that the tongues that shall rise against us in judgment
We will condemn them
We will someday be able to get up and say told you so and
Condemn the tongues that have lashed out against us in the long run. We will prevail
And look what the Bible says in Psalm 76, verse 3, it said,
They're break he, the arrows of the bow, the shield and the sword and the battle.
Selah, verse 4, thou art more glorious and excellent than the mountains of prey.
Now what does this mean? Obviously it's speaking to God. God is more glorious and God is more excellent.
than the mountains of prey. Well, in the Bible,
mountains are often used as symbols of
kingdoms or nations, right?
So, you know, the ten mountains on which the whore
sitteth, even in the book of Revelation, the ten mountains are ten kingdoms and so forth.
And that's also, you know, in the book of Daniel, you have a great mountain that fills
the whole earth and it represents the millennial reign of Jesus Christ and so forth.
So these mountains could represent kingdoms.
That's typically the imagery that's used throughout the Bible.
And if you think about prey, the mountains of prey, these are basically mountains or
nations or kingdoms or groups that would prey upon God's people, right?
nations. They are the mountains of prey, meaning that they go after prey, meaning that they
are predators. And God is more glorious and excellent than the mountains of prey. Here's
another way of saying that, greater is He that is in you than He that is in the world.
The Lord is greater than the mountains of prey. So point number one was that God is
greater than other gods, but point number two is that God is greater than our enemies.
all the weapons that they verbally throw at us
will eventually be broken and destroyed.
No weapon that's formed against us will prosper.
God is more glorious and excellent
than the mountains of prey.
Flip over if you want to Psalm 124.
We're gonna come back to Psalm 76,
but go to 124 briefly.
And we'll probably just kind of read the whole Psalm
because it's pretty short.
But Psalm 124, starting in verse number one,
it says, if it had not been the Lord who was on our side,
now may Israel say,
if it had not been the Lord who was on our side
when men rose up against us,
then they had swallowed us up quick.
And quick here is not talking about speed,
but rather it is talking about alive, right?
They would have swallowed us up.
They would have eaten us alive, he's saying.
They would have swallowed us up quick when their wrath was kindled against us.
Then the waters had overwhelmed us.
The stream had gone over our soul.
Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.
Blessed be the Lord, watch this, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth.
The mountains of prey.
those that are out there seeking to devour God's people
and swallow them up whole.
God is on our side, it's never going to happen.
God will not give us as a prey to their teeth.
Our soul has escaped, verse 7, as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers.
The snare is broken and we are escaped.
Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth.
And so God is more powerful than our enemies.
It says, the stout-hearted, and another way of saying stout-hearted would be valiant,
the stout-hearted, or brave, or courageous, or valiant, are spoiled.
They have slept their sleep, and none of the men of might have found their hands.
Now, the idea here when it says they've slept their sleep,
it's not saying that they're taking a nap.
It's saying that they're dead.
They're like really asleep, okay?
And so, they're spoiled.
What does it mean to be spoiled?
Then they're stripped of their belongings, you know, they got money in their pocket. They've got expensive gear
They've got expensive weapons armor, whatever they have a value. They are stripped
And that is the spoils of war that go to the victors.
And so the snout-hearted are spoiled,
meaning that they're laying on the ground dead
and people are taking everything of value off of them.
They've slept their sleep
and none of the men of might have found their hands.
What does it mean when it says
that they haven't found their hands?
You know, I thought of the expression,
hey, cat got your tongue?
You know, basically not finding your tongue, meaning that you don't know what to say.
Not being able to find your hands is basically not coming up with the ability, the skill,
the strength to win, which is what the hand represents.
Verse 6,
At thy rebuke, O God of Jacob,
both the chariot and horse
are cast into a dead sleep, right?
That's the kind of sleep we're talking about,
the dead kind, okay?
And it's talking about the chariots,
the horses,
The valiant man the mighty man, you know, whether it's infantry cavalry, whether it's chariots, right?
They're all dead. They're all destroyed by the Lord verse 7 thou even thou art to be feared
And who may stand in thy sight when once thou art angry say look don't make God mad once God's mad
You're done. You're cooked. It's over for you. Game over, right?
And so once God's angry at you, you should be very afraid.
God is to be feared when you've made him angry.
It says in verse 8, that it's caused judgment to be heard from heaven.
The earth feared and was still.
And the stillness here, you know, is referring to not speaking.
Quiet as in the earth is kind of shut up because they're scared at the judgment of God
It always amazes me when people don't fear God
You know because I'm I'm fear in the Lord and I'm rejoicing with trembling over here
I'm serving the Lord with fear and trembling
But the transgression of the wicked tells me that there's no fear of God before their eyes and
You see the wicked just raging and being confident
having no fear of God and man their day is coming and it's going to be ugly and
it's going to hit them hard and it's going to be too late because they didn't
fear God look fear the Lord and his goodness and the thing is when we're
going through life and things are going good we should fear to lose that.
Right, I mean when things are going good when everything's going smooth and and and and our bank account is filled and our health is good
Families happy
Everything's going well, you know at that point. We don't want to start getting puffed up and arrogant and thinking oh, man
I'm invincible
Man, God can take you down. God can destroy you in a second
Of course, we've been talking about you know some examples of that lately
Because there have been some dramatic examples of this in the last couple weeks
And you say, I don't know why you bring this up.
Why are you bringing this up?
You know, are you just doing some kind of a victory lap
about this?
No, my friend, I'm bringing this up
because I want you to fear God
and I want other people to fear God
because I can honestly say from the bottom of my heart,
I do not enjoy or take pleasure
in watching our enemies suffer at all.
do not get off on this in any way shape or form or think like oh man I hope it's
worse for them and oh I hope they feel the pain is like honestly I'm an
extremely empathetic person and you know seeing anyone suffer the suffering
itself kind of bothers me and freaks me out and it you know it's kind of
uncomfortable if anything I do not delight in or rejoice in the downfall of
that I do. So that's on one level. On one level I'm not enjoying it, but on another level
I'm rejoicing at the fact that God is punishing the wicked because of the fact that it shows us
that God is just and that God is going to give wicked people their desserts.
Because a lot of people are confused by this because again, you know, we live in a day where people just cherry pick one verse and
They just have their little one little verse that they cherry pick and they love to just beat everybody over the head with it as a
bludgeon and ignore the rest of the Bible.
And the people that are righteous, people that are serving God,
people that are doing right, they just love to just bludgeon them
with their little, ha ha, gotcha Bible verse.
And you know what, they're full of baloney because they didn't read the whole Bible.
Okay. And the Bible says here in Psalm 58, verse 10,
it says, the righteous shall rejoice when he seeeth the vengeance.
He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.
So that a man may so that a man shall say barely there is a reward for the righteous
Verily he is a God that judges than the earth
Now the other side just completely ignores these two verses
These two verses don't matter these two verses don't exist for them
Okay? All they want to do is just keep throwing a verse from Proverbs at us.
Oh, rejoice not when your enemy falls. Rejoice not when your enemy falls or something.
But then what about when the Bible says the righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance?
And see, if you're going to have a right biblical worldview, and it's not just this issue, it's every issue, my friend.
In every issue, we must take everything that the Bible says and believe all of it.
the part that we like and ignore the other side, right?
It would be wrong to just embrace Psalm 58, 10 and 11
and to ignore the Proverbs passage.
That would be just as wrong.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
We need to take both, we need to always reconcile both.
And the idea here is that when your enemy falls,
you shouldn't be gleeful and enjoying the suffering
and sadistically looking on and just,
oh yeah, burn baby, burn in that sense.
And also, you know what, it's always smart
and it's always righteous whenever you win at anything.
or whenever you are vindicated to what I say as, quote,
control the celebration.
OK, so if I'm out playing basketball,
and I win at basketball, you know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to control the celebration because it's bad sportsmanship when you win to just
go on and on and way, you know, and go overboard on the celebration.
It's not comely.
It's not seemly to over celebrate.
So you win at a board game, you win at sports, you win at anything, you control the celebration.
Okay.
You know, a biblical perspective, something about sportsmanship or something.
I don't know, I did a Bible sermon on that one time, using the Bible to demonstrate those things.
But the thing is, you know, at the same time though, yeah, we don't want to just enjoy or derive pleasure from other people's suffering.
And even God says, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.
God says he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but then how do we reconcile that with Psalm 58 verse 10
Saying the righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance. I'll tell you why he's not rejoicing because he just really loves
Watching his enemy suffer. He's rejoicing because in verse 11 because there's a reward for the righteous. That's why he's rejoicing
Isn't that something to get excited about? Well, God really is gonna reward the righteous
Wow, isn't this exciting?
There is a God that judges in the earth.
And when you see the wicked get punished, you say, you know what, there is a God that
judges in the earth.
And look, the reason why I think it's important that people acknowledge what's happening
right now and not stick their heads in the sand and refuse to see that wicked people
are being punished around us as we speak, that there are these crystal clear examples
of people being punished by God for their open, brazen wickedness.
You know why we need to acknowledge that is because we need to understand that there's
And so here's the thing, I would love to see all of my enemies punished dramatically and publicly.
Not because I enjoy them being punished, I have zero pleasure in them suffering.
The only rejoicing that I get out of it is that people are seeing it.
Because then they know that there's a God that judges in the earth and that he really will reward the righteous.
That's all.
Why? Because I don't want my children to grow up and see people do wicked things and get away with it.
And I don't want your children to grow up and see people doing wicked things and get away with it
and then have this stupid thought in their head,
well, I'm going to get away with it too!
And so the more examples that they see of the wicked being punished, it tells them,
hey, I better watch out, I better mine my peas and queues.
Okay, why did God rebuke kings in the Old Testament and say touch not mine anointed and do my prophets no harm?
Why did he do that? He's warning them. Don't mess with the man of God. Don't mess with the people of God
Don't mess with the church of God. If you do you will suffer
So why would I not be glad to see God's word come to pass?
If our church throws someone out according to what the scripture teaches in 1 Corinthians 5
and delivers them over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,
well, when the flesh gets destroyed, then I'm going to say,
hey, there is a God that judges in the earth.
And so in that sense, I'm going to rejoice.
But I'm not going to rejoice in the sense of just deriving like a sick pleasure from the suffering of others.
I mean, I don't know, is this complicated because I don't feel like it's that complicated?
I feel like sometimes our enemies are just kind of simple-minded fools who can't think or something.
Like they're drooling and slobbering and grabbing on to one verse like,
love your enemies and then they just can't understand anything about praying for the enemies to be destroyed.
You see what I'm saying?
Whereas I'm like, love your enemies, amen. Love your enemies.
Pray for these enemies of the Lord to be destroyed.
Like, I can reconcile these two things
because I guess I'm just thinking on a level that's a little more complex
than these bunch of toddlers spiritually
who just grab onto one proof text and want to beat us all over the head with it
and they don't even read the rest of the Bible.
They just ignore the rest of the Bible.
How do you ignore that like a huge chunk of the Book of Psalms
is praying curses upon other people?
Maybe you just don't have I don't know are you know you don't have the 19 Psalms that are just the whole things an imprecatory song
But even outside of the 19 that are just completely imprecatory cursing Psalms
Even throughout the rest of the Psalms. It's just the enemies the enemies the enemies the enemies it's like the whole book of Psalms
But again, these simple-minded, spiritual babes who don't know the Bible, don't care to think complex.
They just think in these really black and white terms of just everything's just on or off,
and they can't have any kind of a complex thought in their mind to reconcile different things in the Bible.
Does everybody understand what I'm saying? Because I don't think this is complicated at all.
To understand that on one level I'm supposed to control the celebration when my enemy falls
But on the other hand I can rejoice in God's justice and
Be glad that the young people are seeing examples of people getting smoked
So that they can be aware
Because here's the thing you know what if we never find out about it it might as well have not even happened as far as I'm concerned
You know this this guy Ryan whose skin is rotting off of his body right now
Okay, who who slandered Pastor Thompson and who attacked Pastor Shelley and stole money from the church and his skin is rotting off
His body right if nobody knew about it, then you know what? It would be meaningless as far as I'm concerned
I don't think it would be you know, I wouldn't derive any joy from it whatsoever
But the fact that everybody knows about it is a blessing from God that people can see hey
God will avenge his people God will punish the wicked
You know, it's funny. I saw an article that popped up today because this is you know his his skin condition
He's the only person on the planet
They said it's like a one in a trillion chance that someone would be hit with all three of these skin disorders at once is a one in a
Trillion chance and there's only eight billion people on the world and then I saw an article today
And I know that these news articles they like to use, you know, really
hyperbolic language and so forth, they get a little bit exaggerated sometimes, but they
literally said in this article that I read today, quote, that he may be the healthiest
man in the world.
That's what they said.
I'm not the one saying this.
Don't look at me like that.
They said that, bro, must be the healthiest man in the world.
Okay, and then to be able to have survived, I guess,
this long, being hit with just this extreme plague
and affliction, and you know what that tells me?
Here's what I learned from that.
You can be the healthiest man in the world,
and when God's anger is kindled against you,
you're going down.
You say, oh man, I took all my vitamins,
and I ate super healthy, and I'm just a regular RFK over here,
you know, and nothing bad's gonna happen to me physically.
Well, you know what?
When God just snaps his fingers, he can take you down.
I mean the new and I'm not saying the news article isn't exaggerating
But they're saying well this guy was super healthy and now he's being afflicted by this mystery disease
We don't know where it came from
We have no idea what causes it and he got hit with one for the father one for the son and one for the holy ghost the triple
Whammy the trifecta
And they're talking about what a great guy is and they're saying how you know, maybe he's like Job
The author of the article says,
and then it said, that Ryan said, I'm no Job.
You can say that again.
Well, let's get back to the passage here.
It says in verse number seven,
thou even thou art to be feared,
and who may stand in thy sight when once thou art angry?
Will the healthiest man alive stand in your sight?
When God, when God's angry, is the healthiest man alive, gonna be okay?
Nope, because he can just snap his fingers and Bro gets a mystery disease.
That's the worst skin disease on the planet.
That's, you know, prognosis, I think he's, he's supposed to be dead in like a couple weeks or something.
He has like two weeks to live.
And you know what? Hey.
I don't care how long he lives.
I'm not just enjoying his suffering.
I don't care if he lives two weeks or two months or two years.
You know, all I'm glad is that people are seeing
one of the worst enemies of God's people
being destroyed before our eyes.
Not because it's fun to watch people destroy.
I mean, the pictures are gross.
I didn't want to look at the pictures.
What it is though, it's more just a situation of like, wow.
God is really taking care of business and I'm sorry, but I
Love everything that the Lord does like when the Lord does something good. I like it when he when he saves
I like it when he dams. I like it. I just like what he does, you know
Verse 8
That it's caused judgment to be heard from heaven the earth feared and was still you know, it's funny
You know God's judgment falls and you have all these loudmouth fools
praising Lionel
Right praising Lionel just oh man you really exhibited the fruit of the Spirit with how you dealt with Pastor Anderson
That's why I read someone wrote online when he lied and put me in the nut house for 24 hours
You know, oh you're really exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit Lionel
God's gonna reward you for what you're doing Lionel and I'm thinking like yeah this comment aged well
Because Lionel's in the nut house right now. He's been there for two weeks and he's still there
Right. He put me he thought he was so cute putting me in there for what 22 and a half hours or whatever
He's been in there for weeks
with no end in sight and
Isn't it funny how all of Lionel's cheerleaders online?
All the people that were cheerleading him, all his little buddies from the XNIFB Fellowship Facebook group,
isn't amazing how still they are.
Their favorite song right now is Be Still My Soul.
Okay?
Because all of a sudden they're not blowing off their mouths anymore, cheerleading Lionel,
now all of a sudden they're awfully quiet.
You know, I'll bet I wonder if Ryan's co-conspirator against pastor Thompson Chad Argon. He's a little quiet too. Isn't he?
He better be quiet. He better shut up and he better be scared to death
He should be you know
He should be going to pastor Thompson and begging forgiveness for teaming up with that evil Ryan against him
Seth bookouts a little quiet who was teamed up with Ryan against pastor Shelley
The earth feared and was still anybody with a brain in their head should fear God even without seeing these examples
Just from seeing what the word of God says if you actually believe the Bible that should be enough to make you scared
And and serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling
But when you see these dramatic examples that we've seen over the last few weeks, it really drives the point home doesn't it?
And then it says in verse nine,
when God arose to judgment to save all the meek of the earth.
Now there's two meanings we could take from verse number nine.
When God saves all the meek of the earth.
Number one.
that the meek are going to be saved actually just physically like the
enemies are attacking God's people and the meek are going to be spared God's
going to save them physically God's going to go to bat for them God's going to
protect them right but then also there's another secondary meaning talking
about salvation as in going to heaven because it's the meek that are actually
going to be saved and go to heaven why because meekness has to do with humility
And if you think about it, humility is a big part of why one man gets saved and another man doesn't.
I mean, what's the biggest reason why people don't get saved? It's pride.
Because people who aren't saved, what do they believe?
People who aren't saved, this is what they believe.
I'm going to heaven because I'm a good person. You know what that is? Pride.
Oh, I'm going to heaven because of my own works. That's pride.
Oh, man, you mean to tell me this guy over here with all the bad things he's done?
You mean to tell me he's going to go to heaven? You know what they're saying? I'm better than that guy.
And so I deserve it and he doesn't.
Whereas the meek realize, hey, we're humble,
we realize we've all sinned and come sure of the glory of God.
And you know what, I can't even imagine this mentality
that's mad that somebody's going to heaven.
Like, let's say I got to heaven
and God turns out to be way less strict than I thought
about who's going to heaven and who's not.
What if I got to heaven and I just found out hey turns out Pastor Anderson, you know
God really had a loose definition of what it meant to believe on Jesus and
Just everybody who even vaguely believed on Jesus made it. I
Would just be like sweet
You know, I'd be like great
Right, I wouldn't be like wait a minute. You need to tell me these people are now I wanted them to go to hell or something
I mean, honestly, like if God just forgave the whole planet,
I'd just be like, hey, great, whatever,
as long as I'm not going to hell.
I can't understand this mentality that's like,
oh man, if that guy's going to heaven,
then I don't want to go.
I mean, somebody just said that to me two days ago.
They said, if people like you are going to be in heaven,
then I don't want to go.
And I'm just thinking to myself, like,
I don't care who's there, I still want to go.
You know what I mean?
Like, I just want to go.
But again, it's because they don't really fear God.
They don't really think hell is real
if they're making statements like that,
if they think that way.
And I just don't understand this thing
that begrudges people like,
how could God let these super sinful people
to go to heaven, that's not fair.
Well, I'm like, I'm glad he's letting super sinful people
to go to heaven as long as they believe in Jesus,
because that's why I'm going to heaven
as long as I believe in Jesus, you know?
Because the Lord Jesus receives sinners.
Amen. I'm not thinking like oh man, I'm so much better than everybody else. I want to go to heaven
I want others to be damned. I'm just like hey, I don't deserve it. They don't deserve it
You know, let's all let's all just get people to believe in Jesus so that so that we can just get as many people
To go to heaven as possible
Not like oh man, this guy's too wicked
You know, so God's going to save all the meek of the earth physically in this lifetime,
in the sense that He's going to protect us from our enemies, but then also God's going
to save all the meek of the earth because it's the meek of the earth who are humbling
themselves and trusting Jesus' Savior instead of thinking, I'm going to heaven because I'm
better than other people.
You know, they have the attitude of the Apostle Paul that said, well, in my flesh dwells no
good thing.
You know, I don't have my own righteousness.
I got to hurry up and wrap up, but it says in verse number 10,
Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee.
The remainder of wrath shall thou restrain.
The idea here is that when man roars against the Lord
and has wrath and anger toward the Lord,
it ends up actually being turned into praise for God
in the sense that when the heathen rage,
God destroys them and is even glorified by their destruction.
And then the remainder of wrath, and the ones that are still mad at God after that, he restrains, meaning he keeps them in check.
Verse 11.
Vow and pay unto the Lord your God, let all that be round about him bring presence unto
him that ought to be feared.
Now obviously in the New Testament, you know, the Bible is clear that we shouldn't swear
any oaths or anything like that, but the idea with vowing and paying unto the Lord would
be, you know, committing to do something and then doing it is the idea here.
And so we are not going to obviously swear an oath, we're just going to make a simple
statement.
Yes, or no about something but we should make decisions and then follow through with them
So we should say for example, I'm gonna go to church three times a week and then we go to church three times a week
I'm gonna go out soul winning every week, and then we go out soul winning every week
I'm gonna read my Bible every day. We read the Bible every day, you know, and then it says
Val and pay unto the Lord your God let all that be around about him bring presence
Under him that ought to be feared or to say you know what I'm gonna give 10%
to the Lord. I'm going to bring my tithe to the local church saying that you're going to do it
and then doing it, falling through with it, bringing presence under the Lord, paying
unto the Lord your God. And then it says in verse 12, he shall cut off the spirit of princes.
He is terrible. And again, terrible. This is an old definition of terrible that means like
Not terrible like like if we said something's terrible we mean it's bad and the old you know
The older language of the kjv terrible is more like terrifying
okay
He shall cut off the spirit of princes. He is
Terrifying is what the Bible is saying here. He's terrifying to the kings of the earth
He's terrible to the kings of the earth meaning that the most powerful people in the world
If they're smart should be scared to death of the Lord God
Because again, they could be the quote-unquote healthiest man in the world as the news article
portrayed Ryan, healthiest man.
They could be the richest man, the most powerful man, and God could just snap his fingers and
they just die.
They could just fall over dead remember King Herod he got all puffed up and he made this speech
And when he made the speech the people
Said this is the voice of a God not the voice of a man. This is the voice of an absolute God
And instead of Herod giving the glory,
he just sucked up that praise of being called a God.
And the angel of the Lord smote him,
this is what Acts chapter 13, I believe,
in the book of Acts, the angel of the Lord smote him
and he's eaten up with worms.
He's got worms in his intestines,
eating him up from the inside.
It doesn't matter how powerful you are,
how famous you are, how much people love you,
how healthy you are, how much money you have.
When worms are eating you up from the inside, you're not having a good day, right?
I mean, think about it.
And then, you know, we saw in the book of Chronicles recently about the guy whose bowels, like,
fell out day by day over the course of, like, a couple of years.
That's no picnic.
I don't care, you know, I don't think that you wake up in the morning and, you know,
another piece of your bowels falls out, but then the stock portfolio is looking good,
Wall Street Journal is looking good, Bank Statements looking good, huh?
Hares looking good today, huh?
And it just goes to show you how God can just take you down.
And this is why we got to fear the Lord, but you know what?
It's a positive thing because, number one, God's greater than other God's.
God's not a boogie man. God's not one of many. God is the only one. He is the one true God.
He is greater than all other gods. And number two, God is greater than our enemies. And
then thirdly, God is greater than the leaders and rulers and governments of this world.
He's greater than the great man of this world. The King Herod's and all the powerful man of this world.
He can snap his fingers and bring them to their knees. And so hey, he's on our side. Thank God.
that if God be for us, who could be against us?
Let's bribes and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for your word.
Thank you for this chapter, Lord.
Let these truths sink down into our ears, Lord.
This is one of the more obscure Psalms, Lord.
I don't think I've ever heard a sermon
from any part of this Psalm in my life.
But Lord, thank You for these powerful words and these powerful truths, help us to live
by these things and help us every single day to remember that You are all-powerful and
that You are in control and that we rise or fall based upon Your favor, Lord.
And Lord, help us to stay humble.
And when you go to bat for us and destroy our enemies,
Lord, help us to control that celebration
and not to get overboard and get too excited
or get too happy about it.
But also, Lord, help us not only to fear for ourselves,
but also to proclaim your justice and wrath
so that other people may fear as well.
And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
And then lastly, let's turn in our hymnals
Our best. Song number 402.
Hear ye the master's call, give me thy best.
In 400 years we'll be there.
Hear ye the master's call, give me thy best.
that is his best.
You then the best you can,
not for reward,
not for the praise of men,
but for the Lord.
Every word for Jesus lives.
You are best by all.
Way not for him to walk, he not their spy.
May the smile of God bring testifying.