Man, well it's great to be here once again.
The first time I came to this camp a couple years ago,
I made the mistake of doing what I usually do,
which is just to kind of get in, preach, get out.
But I was like, hold up, you know, this needs a few days,
because this is a really nice camping site.
And so last year I stayed a little longer,
this year I got to stay for a few days.
And so I love it here, I appreciate you putting this on,
Pastor Berzins and Mrs. Berzins and everybody else
who pitches in, because I know a lot of work and thought
goes into all of this, especially for us as the speakers,
they give us all kinds of snacks and food
and all kinds of cool stuff.
And so I'm really just thankful what a blessing it is
to come here, have fun, hang out with everybody.
So tonight's sermon is called
The Dumbest Doctrines of All Time.
These are the 10 dumbest doctrines of all time.
Now I don't think anybody's necessarily
really gonna agree with me that these are for sure
like the authoritative lists,
like these truly are the big ones.
But these are just 10 things
that I think are just so ridiculous and they're so dumb.
And people believe these things.
And I think everybody else kind of knows how dumb they are,
except the people who believe in them.
And so I'm gonna go through
these dumbest doctrines of all time.
But the first thing I want to say is that
these doctrines are not from the Bible.
They're not the commandments of God,
they're the doctrines of men.
And in the passage that we just read in Mark chapter seven,
Jesus is rebuking the Pharisees and he's saying
that they should not cast aside God's commandments
to follow man-made doctrines.
It says in verse number six there where you are,
he answered and said to them,
"'Well, have the zaiest prophesied of you hypocrites,
as it is written,
this people honor me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me.
How be it in vain do they worship me,
teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
For laying aside the commandments of God,
you hold the tradition of men,
as the washing of pots and cups
and many other like things you do.'
And he said to them,
"'Fold well you reject the commandment of God
that you may keep your own tradition.'"
So he was a little bit repetitive there,
just saying over and over again,
why are you ignoring God's commandments
and going after these man-made doctrines?
And a lot of the doctrines that people choose
that end up being man-made,
that end up making them a hypocrite,
that end up contradicting commandments of God,
you know, these things end up looking pretty dumb
to people on the outside.
And look, I want to say tonight,
this isn't about why Baptists are better
than some other denomination,
because I'm going to hit on the Baptist tonight.
I'm going to hit on the Presbyterians.
We're going after the Seventh-day Adventists,
Jews, Mormons, Catholics, Amish and Muslims.
So, I mean, we're going to be all over the place,
because it's human nature to get in a group
and sometimes get caught up in what that group is teaching
and get sucked into something stupid.
And so anybody could be guilty of this
or susceptible of this.
And so we all want to make sure
that we're constantly searching the scripture,
whether these things be so,
and not just believing whatever the crowd is doing.
You know, Americans today that aren't even religious,
just secular Americans,
they believe some stupid things today.
And so no one is immune from dumb doctrines, okay?
But I'm just going to go through 10 of them tonight
and kind of cover a bunch of different religions
and denominations.
But let's just start with something dumb
that I've heard taught in Baptist churches.
And if you would flip over to Isaiah chapter 50,
how about this independent fundamental Baptist
dumb doctrine, no beards on men.
I mean, you want to talk about a stupid doctrine,
a doctrine that says that men should not have beards.
Now you say, Pastor Anderson,
could anyone actually be that dumb?
Yes.
When I was growing up,
this was a thing amongst independent fundamental Baptist.
And look, I'm not saying
that the people who taught this were bad.
In fact, there are many great soul-winning churches,
many great preachers and men of God,
but it's just because they're caught up
in the culture of their group.
They got caught up in such a foolish, ridiculous doctrine
as to prohibit beards on men.
In fact, even in 1998,
I was at an independent Baptist church
and there was a rule at that church.
No one who sat on the platform could have a beard.
No man was allowed to sit on the platform without a beard.
What kind of a bizarre rule is that
when Jesus Christ himself had a beard, for crying out loud.
When virtually every man in the Bible had a beard.
No, look, I'm not saying that you have to wear a beard.
That's also kind of silly
to demand that everyone have a beard
because there are a lot of nationalities in this world
that can't really grow a beard.
Maybe they can grow a beard, maybe a little bit,
but not everybody can even genetically grow a beard
for crying out loud, okay?
Some of us have been blessed with these genes,
but the point is, you know,
yeah, you see Joseph in Egypt shaving his face,
but pretty much every other man of God in the Bible
has a beard.
And here's a verse about Jesus.
It's a prophecy about Jesus Christ in Isaiah 50, verse six.
I gave my back to the smiters, verse six,
and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair.
So we see the hair being plucked from Christ's cheeks.
I hid not my face from shame and spitting,
for the Lord God will help me.
Therefore shall I not be confounded.
Therefore have I set my face like a flint.
Now, if we cross reference New and Old Testament,
it's easy to prove that this is a prophecy
about Jesus Christ having his beard plucked from his face
while he's being humiliated,
while he's going to be crucified.
So how dare anyone get up and say,
well, brother, in our church, you know,
we prefer that the men be clean shaven.
Well, hang that stupidity because men wearing beards
is natural, normal, and biblical.
And again, it's not required, but it is natural as rain.
And that's something that shows that even Baptists,
even independent Baptists can believe
some pretty silly things, okay?
Number two, if you would go to Psalm 150.
Number two, how about this doctrine?
No musical instruments in church.
There are literally denominations out there
such as Presbyterians and Church of Christ
that teach that it is wrong, that it is sinful
to have musical instruments in church.
What a ridiculous doctrine when God literally commands us
over and over and over again
to praise the Lord on stringed instruments.
Look what the Bible says in Psalm 150.
Praise ye the Lord, praise God in his sanctuary,
praise him in the firmament of his power,
praise him for his mighty acts,
praise him according to his excellent greatness,
praise him with the sound of the trumpet,
praise him with the Psalterian harp,
praise him with the timbrel and dance,
praise him with stringed instruments and organs,
praise him upon the loud cymbals,
praise him upon the high sounding cymbals,
let everything that has breath praise the Lord,
praise ye the Lord.
And I've asked Presbyterians,
how do you justify this bizarre, ridiculous doctrine
because they say, well,
the New Testament doesn't tell us to use them.
But here's what I wanna know, first of all, number one,
why would the New Testament have to repeat everything
that's already in the Old Testament?
Wouldn't that make the New Testament a little bit long?
Have you ever noticed that the Old Testament's
like three or four times as long as the New Testament?
I mean, if we have to repeat everything,
that is such a bad way to interpret the Bible.
The Old Testament tells me not to look
at my auntie's nakedness,
but I can't find it in the New Testament.
So ergo, I guess it's okay to look at my aunt naked?
That's stupid.
Because what should be our guiding principle
is that anything that's not specifically changed
in the New Testament, we should assume that it's the same.
Why would it change?
If God said, I wanna be praised with a stringed instrument,
I wanna be praised with trumpets and psaltery and harp,
and then the New Testament's like,
well, you didn't say that again.
But here's why it gets even more ridiculous
is that the New Testament literally commands us in church
to speak to ourselves, teaching one another
in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
Wouldn't one of those be Psalm 150?
So according to them, we should come to church
and we should a capella sing,
praise him with the sound of a trumpet,
praise him with psaltery and harp, but don't do it.
Just talk about doing it.
So you should go to church
and sing about musical instruments,
but oh no, that's sinful for you
to use a musical instrument.
Folks, it's gotta be one of the dumbest doctrines
of all time.
No musical instruments in church, it makes no sense.
And this is just one Psalm.
I could point you to Psalm after Psalm after Psalm
after Psalm that says this, okay?
And to say, well, that's Old Testament.
Folks, where in the New Testament does it say anything
about the music program changing?
It doesn't.
So why would we assume that it changed?
And by the way, have you noticed that the book of Acts
isn't exactly a musical journey?
It's not exactly a book about music.
You know, what is Acts emphasizing?
It's emphasizing the preaching,
it's emphasizing the missions,
it's emphasizing the evangelism.
So yeah, it doesn't talk about the musical instruments
because it doesn't even talk about music hardly at all.
There's virtually no mentions in the New Testament
describing what the music is like because guess what?
Real biblical Christianity and real movements
of soul winning and evangelism aren't based on music
as much as they're based on preaching the word of God.
It pleased God through the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe.
So Acts isn't really a book about music.
Romans isn't really a book about music.
So to say, well, it didn't re-mention it,
but you know what he did say?
He said Psalms, go to Psalms, use Psalms, sing the Psalms,
and then you go to Psalms and what do you find?
Musical instruments, musical instruments,
musical instruments, musical instruments.
And they'll say, well, no, that's only in the temple
with the Levites and only certain people are allowed
to touch those instruments.
Folks, music is part of being a human being.
Every human being partakes in music.
And by the way, we could go outside that,
we could just look at Habakkuk the prophet,
you know, he's praying and composing music
for musical instruments.
You know, I mean, just, we could go on and on.
Let's move on.
So dumb doctrine number three, the Seventh-day Adventists
have a doctrine that says you can't wear any jewelry,
so therefore no wedding rings, no engagement rings
because you can't wear jewelry.
So here's what they instead do,
super expensive engagement watches.
So think about the hypocrisy,
think about the dumb doctrine that says
you can wear a $20,000 Rolex as a Seventh-day Adventist,
gold and precious stone, you know,
you can wear a super fancy expensive watch.
You can say, will you marry me
and give her the engagement watch.
And look, we had an extended family member
that was Seventh-day Adventist
and she showed us the watch and said,
hey, my brother reminded me of this today.
She showed us, hey, look at this,
this is my engagement watch because we don't,
you know, we don't want to have jewelry
because I guess, I don't know,
that would be flashy or having expensive things.
What's that fancy watch?
But they're like, well, no, no, no,
because the watch tells you the time.
So it's not jewelry because it has a function.
I don't know, I guess you get a ring pop.
Ring pop will be fine because it's candy.
You can suck on it, get a mood ring and say,
hey, this is my, you know,
this is for my emotional health or something, right?
I get everything's got to have a function.
You know, you got to have some kind of a decoder ring
or maybe you can get like a $20,000 engagement decoder ring
or something, right?
Has microfilm in it or something, I don't know.
But do you see the kind of hypocrisy
and dumb doctrines people do
when they make up arbitrary rules,
like no engagement ring,
and then they just find like a loophole,
but didn't say anything about watches
and, you know, be like flava-flave over here,
but don't you dare wear a necklace, you know,
put a big clock around your neck.
Okay, here's another one, dumb doctrine number four.
Let's get on the Jews a little bit, amen?
Yeah.
How about this?
They teach that their women, this is Orthodox Jews, okay?
They teach that the women have to cover their hair,
but then here's what they do.
They cover their hair with a wig.
So if you've seen the movie, Marching to Zion,
one of the rabbis in that movie, Rabbi Ruben Mann,
the one who's like, you know,
someone killed somebody, so what?
Well, that guy's wife walked up to me and she showed me,
she's like, oh, well, this is a wig.
And she showed me, she's like, I have to keep my hair
covered so I just wear a wig that looks like my hair.
I mean, think about it, dumbness, like what's,
I guess the whole point of covering their hair
is supposedly some kind of misguided view of modesty.
So here, let me just put on a fancy wig
that looks exactly the same.
It might even look fancier than her real hair,
but because it's not her real hair,
she's technically within compliance.
You see these kind of hypocritical, arbitrary,
pharisaical, fake man-made rules.
I mean, that's a pretty dumb doctrine.
But you know, let's hit the Jews again.
How about this?
According to Judaism, you cannot eat
a chicken sandwich with cheese on it.
A chicken sandwich with cheese on it is not kosher.
Now you say, Pastor Anderson, is a chicken a clean beast?
Absolutely.
Are Jews allowed to eat cheese?
Absolutely.
But they're not allowed to combine
the chicken with the cheese.
That's right.
Now you say, Pastor Anderson, why are the Jews
not allowed to combine the chicken with the cheese?
The reason is because there's a verse in the Bible
that says, thou shalt not see the kid in his mother's milk.
So I guess they're afraid that when the cheese was made,
they milked a chicken.
Chickens don't give milk.
So here's where the Jews are at.
They're like, well, you're not supposed to see the kid
in his mother's milk.
So what if the meat from the cow,
you know, this is why they can't eat a cheeseburger,
because what if they go to In-N-Out Burger
and through some bizarre twist of fate,
the cow that went into your burger, you know,
also came with the cheese from its kid,
or whatever, I got that backwards,
but the cheese came from the cow
who gave birth to the kid
that was chopped up into your burger.
But here's the thing, if you're dealing with chicken,
that literally can't happen,
because chickens are not mammals.
Chickens don't, I mean, does anybody see
how ridiculous this is to say,
well, don't see the kid in his mother's milk,
so don't have chicken with cheese,
because what if it's chicken cheese?
I mean, folks, the stupid just burns on that one, okay.
But let's move on to the Mormons.
Now with the Mormons, I mean,
it's like a cornucopia of dumb doctrines.
We can literally spend the whole night
just talking about crazy things.
But how about this one?
The more, and if you would turn to Matthew chapter 26,
the Mormons do communion with water.
Instead of grape juice, they use water for communion.
I'm talking about just clear water, like water, water.
So I was out sowing on the Indian reservation,
and someone gave me a pamphlet
and said the Mormons dropped off this pamphlet with me,
and it was a pamphlet printed by the Mormon church,
why we celebrate communion with water.
And this is what it said.
It said, well, we can actually use any drink.
The drink doesn't matter.
So we can use any drink, so we choose water.
It's like, are you guys that cheap?
They're like, like just, you know,
it's like your dad takes you out to eat.
He's like, hey, everybody's getting water.
The president of the Mormon church
and his $10 million manager's like, hey, water folks.
All right?
So it's, they literally do communion with water, okay?
I'm sure John MacArthur would love it, you know,
since he's always denying the blood and what have you.
But anyway, look at Matthew chapter 26, verse 27.
This is where Jesus Christ is instituting the Lord's Supper.
He's at the Last Supper.
And it says in Matthew 26, verse 27,
it says he took the cup and gave thanks
and gave it to them saying, drink ye all of it,
for this is my blood of the New Testament,
which is shed for the remission of sins.
But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth
of this fruit of the vine.
Fruit of the vine, that's grapes, am I right?
That's juice, fruit of the vine,
until that day when I drink it new, right?
New meaning freshly squeezed.
New with you in my Father's kingdom, right?
So it's pretty clear what the drink is.
It's the fruit of the vine.
It's new wine, it's grape juice.
That's the drink that Christ instituted.
But they say, oh, we'll just do it with water.
I mean, why don't you just do it with milk?
You know, why don't you do it with Coca-Cola?
That's just stupid, my friend, okay?
You need to follow what the Bible says.
Now, obviously, we could look at the Mormons and say,
man, that's just ridiculous to use water for communion.
How stupid, it doesn't even make sense.
Like, just why don't you just get the grape juice?
What is your deal?
But, you know, it's almost equally stupid
the people who want to use alcohol in communion.
And they say, you know what, when the Bible says wine,
it means wine.
Well, that's funny, because my Bible doesn't say wine.
Does yours, does your Bible say wine here?
Does anybody in the room have a Bible that says wine
in that verse?
Because if so, you don't have the King James.
And here's what's funny, we can go to Mark,
and you know what you're not gonna find in Mark?
In the Last Supper, wine.
You know what you're not gonna find in Luke?
In the Last Supper, wine.
You know what you're not gonna find in 1 Corinthians,
chapter 11, about the Lord's Supper, wine.
What does it say?
What does it actually say?
Now, does God know how to use the word wine?
Has he ever used the word wine
in any other part of the Bible?
Well, what did he say here?
Fruit of the vine.
Yet, if I had a nickel for every time,
so he's like, oh, you Baptist,
you guys do the Lord's Supper with grape juice?
You guys are like a little kid with your little drink box,
your little juice?
Well, we're at the adult table,
and we're doing real wine.
But hey, is that what the Bible said?
The Bible, first of all, number one,
the Bible does use the word wine
about both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages,
number one, but number two, it doesn't even say wine.
That's right.
It says fruit.
It's fruit of the vine.
And it even says new.
I'm gonna drink it again with you in the kingdom of God.
New.
But yet they believe that ridiculous thing.
Wine means wine.
And then another thing that the overly literal,
of course, not in this case,
because it doesn't even say wine,
but the overly literal view of the Lord's Supper,
where you have the Roman Catholics and the Lutherans
and so forth saying that it's the literal body
and blood of Jesus,
that they're literally eating the flesh of Jesus.
And look, my friend,
they're not saying this metaphorically or figuratively.
They think it literally turns into the body
and blood of Jesus,
that they literally drank blood or ate his flesh.
And in fact, there's a famous incident
where Martin Luther was arguing with Zwingli about this,
you know, during the Reformation period.
And he had this piece of paper
where he just had the word written, this is my body.
And every time Zwingli would make like a legitimate point
about how it's symbolic, it's figurative,
it pictures the body and blood of Christ,
Martin Luther would just keep showing that paper.
This is my body.
And people are like, oh, Martin Luther's so cool.
That was such a cool thing.
I just, he just kept holding up a sign.
This is my body.
It's like, first of all,
Jesus sitting right there when he said that,
when he held a phrase like this is my body,
his body was literally holding it.
Because see, his body is not that,
because he's the body, number one.
But number two, we can do that with any verse in the Bible.
How about when Jesus in Psalm 22 says,
I'm a worm, not a man.
What is that?
I'm a worm.
No, no, Martin Luther, Jesus is not literally a worm.
I'm a worm.
No, he's not a literal worm.
I'm a worm.
You see what I mean?
People get sucked into some dumb doctrines, don't they?
All right, let's move on.
Speaking of the Catholics,
we haven't gotten on them yet, have we?
Let's get on them with number seven,
because we said number one, the Baptist, no beards on men.
Talk about a dumb doctrine.
Two, Presbyterians, Church of Christ,
no musical instruments.
Seventh-day Adventists, no jewelry,
but you can have expensive Rolex watches,
because they tell the time.
Number four, the Jews where they wear a wig over their hair,
they probably put ketchup on their ketchup.
Number five, Jews with no chicken with cheese.
And I'm not saying I'm some huge chicken with cheese fan,
but you know, I am a big cheeseburger fan.
What kind of a religion prohibits the cheeseburger?
And you know what, most, I'll bet you the old IFP,
most of them think that being a Jew just means like no pork.
Oh no.
It means you could never eat it
in and out burger again at all.
Okay, or whatever you guys have out here
that you claim is as good or not as good.
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean.
The point is, you know, their rules of kosher
don't make any sense because a kid in his mother's milk
can never be a chicken because listen, boys and girls,
chickens are birds, not mammals,
and therefore they do not give suck until they're young.
Okay.
They chew up a worm and put it in the baby's mouth, right?
So that was number five, no chicken with cheese.
Number six, the Mormon's communion with water, okay?
Number seven, okay, here's a weird one.
I got a weird one for you.
The Roman Catholics, this is number seven,
one of the dumbest doctrines of all time.
So of course the Roman Catholics,
they have this false doctrine that says
that Mary is still a virgin right now,
like she just stayed a virgin forever.
Now obviously we believe in the birth,
or we believe in the virgin birth of Christ.
Why is the virgin birth of Christ so important?
It's because it's essential to Jesus being the son of God.
But what you'll notice about all these dumb doctrines
is that they tend to kind of miss the point,
which is like the point goes right over their head.
And so the point of the virgin birth
is not so we can just get all excited
about the virgin Mary and worship the virgin Mary.
The point of the virgin birth is that it proves
that Jesus is the son of God because he's born of a virgin.
So he has no earthly father.
The father in heaven is his father.
That's the miracle of the virgin birth.
That's why it's so important.
But they're just obsessed with her being a virgin.
So they want to teach that she continued being a virgin,
even though the Bible clearly says
that Joseph knew her not
until she brought forth her firstborn son.
And that he was her firstborn son.
Well, you know, if there's a movie called part one,
there's supposed to be a part two, okay?
So of course that's this dumb doctrine they believe,
even though the Bible names four of Jesus's brothers
and he had four half brothers
and at least three half sisters.
So Joseph and Mary literally had at least seven kids
after Jesus was born.
But in order to continue this obsession
that they have with the virgin Mary,
because I haven't even got to the dumb part yet.
The dumb part hasn't been mentioned yet.
I mean, it's all dumb, but the really dumb part is
that they believe that Mary didn't actually give birth
to Jesus in a normal manner.
She didn't actually squeeze out the baby Jesus.
Like every woman who gives birth, right?
They squeeze, you know, sorry, kids.
You know, I don't want to tell you
like where babies come from or anything.
But the point is, you know, push, right?
And they push out the baby from their body.
Well, here's the problem with that for the Catholics.
The Catholics, they're worshiping Mary so much.
They don't want anything to pass through
that part of her body in any way.
Because they're so obsessed with her,
which is so stupid because after she gave birth,
she was still a virgin.
When Mary gave birth to Jesus, she's still a virgin
until she came together with Joseph
and had seven more kids.
That's when she stopped being a virgin.
But they're so warped in their view.
I kid you not, I'm not making this up.
Here's what they teach.
They teach that Jesus was in Mary's stomach
and that he sort of like turned into a mist.
He turned into a mist and then he was able
to just kind of cruise out that opening
without, you know, damaging it or opening things up too much.
He was able to just kind of cruise through there
and then rematerialize outside the womb,
back as a baby again.
And this doctrine comes from a book
that the Catholic church has, you know,
or that Catholic people, I should say,
it's not part of their official canon,
but the Catholic people look to as being something
that teaches us about Christ.
It's called the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
And in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas,
and they have an Infancy Gospel of James,
in these teachings, you know, they have Jesus
doing miracles on the playground and so forth,
but they also have this doctrine
where he literally like beams out of the Starship Enterprise.
Like he basically is beamed out of the womb.
He's in the womb as a baby,
and then he like turns into this vapor
and then he just comes out and then reforms as a baby.
Is that one of the dumbest things you've ever heard?
Like Mary has one job.
Mary, you have one job.
What's her one job?
Gestate and give birth to the baby Jesus.
And they're like, no, no, she didn't give birth
to Jesus like that.
You know, that's below her dignity.
She just kind of relaxed.
She just kind of chilled out while the vapor just woo.
Like, you know what it's like?
It's like a genie coming out of a bottle.
Like you maybe Joseph rubbed her belly three times
and then, you know, it comes out of the bottle or whatever.
All right, that's pretty weird, huh?
Sorry to subject you to that.
All right, I got another one for the Catholics.
Dumb doctrine number eight, beating yourself,
self-flagellation, right?
I mean, what a dumb doctrine.
You know, the Bible teaches that every normal man
in this world nourishes and cherishes his own flesh.
Isn't that what the Bible says?
That every man nourishes and cherishes his own flesh.
We all take care of our flesh.
We take care of our body, we're supposed to.
And then, you know, the Bible says
that husbands should love their wives
even as they love themselves.
And just like we take care of ourselves,
we should take care of our wife.
But no, no, no, they teach to beat yourself.
And so we have Roman Catholics right near us in Arizona
because in Arizona, the Roman Catholicism
that is practiced amongst the Native Americans
is not necessarily the textbook Roman Catholicism from Rome.
It's a syncretic religion that mixes
Native American traditional beliefs with Roman Catholicism.
So it's a mix of Native American paganism with Catholicism.
And so we have this Indian tribe
that's literally a mile and a half from our church
on the Yaqui reservation,
literally less than two miles from our church,
people are whipped two miles from our church.
They're publicly flogged or flogged themselves
or flog others on Easter.
And they have a rule, no cell phones, no filming.
You know, I don't know why they're not proud
of their wonderful doctrine.
But you want to know why they don't want
any cell phones down there?
Because they know how stupid it is
that everybody's going to make fun of them online.
You know what?
I've said some things from the pulpit
that people make fun of, but you know what?
I'll say it again.
Amen.
And I'll put it out there.
Why?
Because I'm not ashamed of what I believe.
And if the world laughs at it,
well, guess what?
The wisdom of the world is foolishness with God.
But when people just know
that he's just stupid, kind of stupid,
then it's just like, hey everybody,
turn off the cameras, you know?
Because I'm about to say some stupid stuff right now.
No, man, everything that we say, we should say publicly.
You know, we as preachers shouldn't have a doctrine
that we can't preach or teach publicly.
We shouldn't have some ritual or ceremony
that has to be done in the temple, behind closed doors,
because it's so weird, right?
If it's normal, put it out there.
You don't have to get to like level seven
of being a new IFB before you learn
like the reprobate doctrine.
You can learn on the first day
if you walk in on the wrong Sunday, amen?
Amen.
Or the right Sunday, depending on how you look at it.
Number nine, dumb doctrine.
This is for the Amish.
Is there doctrine of Rumspringer?
Who knows what this is?
So this doctrine of Rumspringer is a doctrine
when their young people grow up and become a young adult,
they send them out in the world to sample a life of sin.
So they, you know, they keep them really sheltered
and they raise them in the Amish community,
but then when they become a certain age,
like an older teenager, there's a certain age
where they go on their Rumspringer,
where they send them out to travel
throughout the heathen world and they go
and they party and they drink and they commit fornication
and they just experiment with sin
to see if they really want to be Amish or not.
Because if they really want to be,
I guess it's that thing, if you love something,
let it go and see if it comes back.
Am I getting that right?
Who's seen a rom-com that can explain that to me?
Does anybody know?
Somebody recited to me the right way.
If you love something, set it free.
That's all?
Okay, I thought it might go deeper than that.
All right, thank you.
If you love something, set it free, you know,
because if it loves you back,
it'll come back or something, right?
I mean, there's gotta be more.
If it doesn't come back, it was never yours.
See, I'm getting, it's like a hive mind here.
We're gonna get it together.
The point is, though, that they have that attitude
of like, you know, we're gonna turn the young people loose,
let them go out and drink, party, fornicate,
see what that's like, and then they can decide
whether they wanna do the Amish way of life
or whether they just wanna go follow the devil.
And you say, why would they do that?
Because they have this hyper-Calvinistic view
that says everything's predetermined,
everything's foreordained,
and so they're either the elect or they're not.
And if they're not, we don't even want them anyway.
Folks, I don't have this attitude of like,
well, they're either the elect or they're not,
and if we don't want, hey,
we wanna pull people out of the fire.
But not only that, even our saved young people,
obviously if they go out and live and party
and live a life of sin,
they're not gonna lose their salvation.
But why would we want them to get a taste of all that sin?
It's like a bear at a national park,
once it tastes a picnic basket,
that bear will end up eventually dead.
This is why you don't feed the bears.
If you feed the bears, they will die.
You wanna know why they will die?
Not because of the food that you're feeding them,
because once they have a taste of human food,
they're gonna keep coming back for human food,
keep coming back for human food,
and then humans will defend their food,
and then the bear will get aggressive,
and the bear gets shot.
And bears that have become too comfortable with humans,
bears that have become too much used to eating human food,
they don't just walk around like,
like Yogi Bear or something,
they end up getting aggressive,
and they get shot.
Yogi Bear's dead.
Okay, and so, you know,
why would I want to get young people
a taste of something that's not for them?
It's like the shark that's tasted blood, right?
And now no one's safe at the beach.
I think every shark has already tasted blood,
but I don't know.
That's why we should go back to my bear example.
But the point is, my friend,
that the Bible clearly teaches us,
flee fornication.
And you know what else he says?
He said, I would have you wise concerning that
which is good, but I want you to be simple
concerning that which is evil.
I don't want you to know about evil things
and be experienced in the filth of this world.
Hey, I thank God that I don't know what beer tastes like.
I don't need to know.
Okay, I don't need to know what it's like
to shoot up on heroin, to snort cocaine,
and let me tell you something.
I don't crave those things because I've never had them.
But people who've had cocaine, people who've had heroin,
people who've drunk, people who've smoked,
people who've done any kind of drugs,
now for the rest of their life,
they have the potential to fall off the wagon
to go back to that, whereas the statistical chances
of a 41 year old man who's never drunk,
never done drugs, to just go off and do those things,
it's like so many zeros in front of it.
You might as well just round it off to zero.
There's literally a 0% chance
of me becoming an alcoholic or a drug addict
if I haven't touched it by the time I'm 41.
Look at the stats.
That's why a drinking age even exists.
The whole point of the drinking age
is that people who make it to 21 without drinking
are very unlikely to abuse alcohol.
That's what statistics have shown.
You make it to 41, you know,
it's not like you're just a 75 year old man,
like give me that beer, you know, let's go.
You're already set in your ways.
Think about it.
Let's say you go out on room spring,
and you know what, even though Baptists
don't have this as a doctrine,
I'll bet you that there are some Baptist kids
in our churches though that are gonna go out
and do their own little room spring
where they just go out and live a sinful life
just to see what it's like.
Not because we're telling them to,
but just because they're choosing to sin.
And listen to me, I'm glad that I didn't do that
because guess what?
If you've gone out and committed fornication,
if you've gone out and drunk, if you've got unpartied,
and many of you adults that are in here,
I know that you have testimonies like that
where you've done that stuff,
and I guarantee you that you don't, you're not,
you regret it because it's gonna have
continuing repercussions in your life.
For the rest of your life, there's kind of this door
that's a jar where you could fall back into alcohol
or drugs or fall back into those habits
because you've done it.
I wouldn't even know where to start.
Like if it was like, all right, let's do drugs,
I'd be like, I don't know, what do I do?
I don't know, you know?
It would be like, it would just be like a fit,
I'd be like a chimpanzee on a bicycle
trying to do these things
because I don't even know how to live a sinful life.
If I went down to the club or whatever,
I'm just kind of like, I don't know what to do.
You know, I'm just like, I don't know, what do I do?
You know, yeah, all right, let's go, whoo!
I don't know, the point is, you know,
why would I want to have been
with all these other women than my wife?
That's really gonna help my marriage, right?
Just having all that baggage.
Why would I want to have cravings
for cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs?
I got a bad enough time with all the cereal cravings
and all the desserts that I crave.
Cinnamon toast crunch is my drug of choice.
And so we should flee fornication,
we should be simple concerning evil.
What a dumb doctrine to throw the young people to the wolves
so they could experiment with sin.
Show me that in the Bible.
It's nothing like that in the Bible.
Number 10, the dumb doctrine
is the Muslim female ninja outfit.
Go to Genesis chapter 38.
So I went to Turkey one time on a layover
because I was on my way to Cyprus
to go soul winning in Cyprus.
And we had a long layover in Istanbul, Turkey.
We had like, you know, 10 or 12 hours or whatever.
So we decided that we were gonna take a little tour
of Istanbul, Turkey, which is a Muslim country,
but it's the most liberal Muslim country.
So they're not really hardcore Muslims like other places.
It's a little more laid back of a Muslim country.
So we had the whole day in Istanbul.
So we booked like a professional little tour guide thing.
And so this woman took us around the town
and showed us the sites while we were there.
And so we got to know her.
We witnessed her, we gave her the gospel.
She didn't get saved,
but she was pretty receptive to the gospel.
Obviously she was Muslim,
but you know, we spent the day with her
showing us all the sites.
And she told us toward the beginning of the day,
she said, you know, those really radical Muslim outfits
where the women have their face 100% covered
in just a little slit of their eyes.
She said, those are actually illegal here in Turkey.
They're not allowed, okay?
Because you know, a lot of women that are Muslim,
they just do like a head covering thing.
But a lot of them actually, you know,
will do that radical, what I call like the ninja suit
where it's just literally just black
and just their eyes are,
sometimes their eyes aren't even visible.
They're just like, they can just see through the fabric.
Okay.
And so this woman told us, she said,
it's illegal in Turkey because Turkey does not want
to become this super radical, over the top Muslim country.
They want to stay kind of like a liberal, secular country.
Like where Islam's our religion, but we're pretty secular.
You know, we want to be not associated
with Islamic extremism.
So it wasn't allowed.
So, you know, we're walking around the city
and you know, we get 10 minutes into the tour
and I said to the tour, I said, hey, you know,
I said, you know, this woman's not in compliance.
I said, you know, what's she's doing?
She's like, well, yeah, you know,
she's like, you'll see, it's not allowed,
but you'll see it, you know.
So then, you know, 10 minutes later, I'm like, excuse me,
hey, you know, there's another woman in the,
whoa, she's in the ninja suit, you know.
And she's like, yeah, you know.
So then it just got to be the big joke of the day.
The whole day we're just like, violation, violation.
You know, we were just calling about like,
you're breaking the law right now.
We were just calling out all the women in the ninja suit
because it technically wasn't even allowed.
But what a dumb doctrine to take female modesty
to the point where you literally put a bag over her head.
Is she that ugly, you got to put a bag over her head?
You know, it reminds me of, you know, my grandpa one time.
My mom was going to go out with some of her friends.
And you know, when teenagers go out with their friends,
parents are concerned with who they're hanging out with.
And so my grandpa, you know, he says to my mom,
you know, I don't want you going out
with this group of teens or whatever,
because the teens are there in the living room.
And he says, I don't want you to go with them.
And they said, why not?
You know, why can't we go?
And my grandpa just singled out a certain guy
and said, he's too ugly.
You know, you can't go with these guys
because he's too ugly.
And so one of my mom's friends, Janet,
said, well, why don't we put a bag over his head?
Then will you allow us to go out?
And you know, and my grandpa said, yeah, I will.
I'll allow it if a bag is placed over his head.
Because my grandpa was kind of a, you know,
he had that style.
He joked around a lot.
So they literally, they went and they got a bag
and they cut eye holes and they put a bag
over the friend's head.
And they said, you know, now am I allowed to go out
with my teenage friends?
And he said, yes, you may.
You know, you have my blessing.
And they literally went out with the teenage friends
and that guy had to have a bag over his head.
Also back to point number one, same grandpa.
When my dad went to date my mom,
he showed up and my dad had facial hair.
He had a beard or mustache, whatever.
And he said, you have to go in the bathroom
and shave right now or you can't take my daughter out.
And my dad literally went in the bathroom
and shaved off his beard right then and there.
And if he hadn't have shaved it off,
I would have never been born.
And neither would Clint.
You'd never be born if he had,
what if he would have said, I'm not shaving, you know?
All right, that was off topic.
But folks, look at the Bible, Genesis chapter 38.
Let's see what the word of God says
about the female ninja suit that the Muslims wear
in chapter 38 of Genesis verse 15.
It says, when Judah saw her, he thought her to be a harlot
because she had covered her face.
So according to the Bible, having your face totally covered
is a sign of being a prostitute.
Why?
Because you're ashamed of who you are.
You're ashamed of what you're doing.
You don't want to be caught.
You don't want to be seen as a prostitute.
So in shame, you wear two COVID masters,
you know, over on your face.
So it's totally contrary to the word of God,
this covering of the face, veiling of the face.
So let me conclude by saying this, I'm done.
Those were my 10 dumbest doctrines of all time.
You probably are thinking about all the dumb doctrines
that I missed, but I hope you'll agree
that these are pretty dumb.
I mean, even if they're not your top 10,
I hope several of these would be on your top 10.
I mean, some pretty dumb stuff.
Jesus warping out of Mary's womb, chicken with cheese.
I mean, come on.
But here's the moral of the story.
You say, Pastor Anderson, we had some laughs.
Thanks for telling us about some dumb stuff
that's out there, but what is the point?
What am I supposed to learn from this sermon?
What am I supposed to do with this information?
Well, here's what you're supposed to do.
Prove all things.
You know, the Bible says, prove all things,
hold fast to that which is good.
We need to check our beliefs with the word of God
to make sure we don't believe something stupid.
And you know what all 10 of these have in common?
We went through some very diverse religions,
diverse doctrines.
I mean, we went through a lot of variety,
but what do all 10 of them have in common?
You know what they have in common?
Is that everyone outside of these groups
thinks that they're stupid, everyone.
And only the people within the group
think it makes any sense.
I guarantee you that a bunch of people are laughing
and thinking how stupid it is
a church that says beards on men are wrong.
I guarantee you that people are just shaking their head
and face palming so hard that it hurts
about not having musical instruments in church
when the Bible says to do it like 20 times.
I guarantee you that all kinds of people
are scoffing and laughing about Mormons
doing communion with water or Catholics beating themselves
or Amish people sending their kids out to drink and fornicate
when they're supposedly so conservative.
And you know that everybody who's not a Muslim
is looking at that ninja suit,
just thinking that it's the dumbest thing ever.
Notice that people within the group think it's normal,
but everybody else can see it.
They're like the only ones who can't see how dumb it is.
And so here's the moral of the story.
Don't get isolated.
Don't get in an echo chamber
where the only people that you interact with
are people who believe exactly like you.
You got your newsfeed on social media
and everybody believes exactly like you
and you only talk to people
who already believe exactly like you.
You get in this echo chamber
and you don't realize how radical you're getting,
how dumb you're getting, how overboard you're getting.
You know, it's important that we don't get too isolated
because when we interact with other people,
it challenges our beliefs a little bit
and we actually can stop and do a little self-examination.
You know, we're supposed to be in this world,
not of the world.
And so we're not supposed to go off
and be in a monastery or a cloister
or get on some compound
where the church buys a bunch of property
and we all live on some compound
because then we just get weirder and weirder
and don't realize how weird we are.
But if you get around other people in this world,
you know what they're going to tell you?
Dude, you're weird.
Your religion's weird.
Now look, if somebody tells me I'm weird
or that my religion's weird,
I'm going to say, well, this is what the Bible says.
But if I don't have anything in the Bible,
then I might go, hey, that is kind of weird.
Why am I doing that?
That is kind of dumb.
That is kind of weird.
That doesn't really make sense.
Why is it that only my little group believes this
and no one else sees it?
And it's not even in the Bible
or it's some weird roundabout twisting of scripture
to get there.
We need to prove all things
and we need to not get too isolated.
I've said it often, church makes you normal.
Church makes you normal.
Why?
Because when you get in church,
you get around a bunch of other people.
If you say something dumb,
people are going to be like, dude, that's dumb.
Like if you say, hey, I think maybe the earth's flat.
Try saying that in a faithful word and see what happens.
Say the earth's flat one more time in a faithful word
and see what happens.
You know, I mean, you're going to get laughed out of there.
You should get laughed out of there.
And if everywhere flat earthers went,
they got laughed out of there,
they'd maybe think about their life a little bit.
But the problem is they get on a social media
where everybody's a flat earther.
They hang around with all these other flat earth people.
And then they start thinking it's normal.
And they start thinking, well, everybody believes it's flat.
It's just, it's just NASA.
You know, but everybody else gets it.
And so church makes you normal.
Cross pollinate with some people outside of
your immediate family, your immediate group.
You know, it's okay to spend some time
with other born again Christians who go to other churches.
You know, it's not like, oh, well, if they're not new IFP,
we can't fellowship with them.
You know, there are other born again children of God
in other churches.
It's okay to hang around with some other saved Christians
from other churches and cross pollinate a little bit
so you don't get so inbred that you rack up
all these recessive genes of, you know,
these foolish doctrines.
Next thing you know, you're not questioning anything
because everybody just agrees with you all the time
whether the Bible says so or not.
And so prove all things and also don't get so isolated
in this world, you know, and by the way,
this is a great reason to go soul winning
because going soul winning, you're interacting
with people of all different religions.
And when you tell them something,
they're going to question it.
They're not always just going to say, oh, well,
that's what Pastor Anderson said.
Well then, you know, that settles it.
They're going to be like, who's Pastor Anderson?
Show me that in the Bible.
You know, have you ever talked to people
and they'll tell you some crazy doctrine.
You're like, dude, that's crazy.
And they're like, no, no, no,
you just have to listen to this one sermon.
And it's like, well, is it in the Bible?
Just listen.
It's like, well, you know, I should be able to get it
from the Bible or you should be able to articulate it to me.
Like if you can't articulate it to me,
maybe you don't even understand it yourself.
Because one of the tests of whether you really understand
something is whether you can explain it to someone else.
If you can explain it to someone else,
that's a good sign that you get it.
Just listen to the sermon.
Now I'm all for recommending sermons to people
and saying, hey, listen to the sermon,
but not because you can't explain it yourself.
You should be able to say what the doctrine is
and what it means.
And then you could recommend a sermon or something,
but you should still know it yourself.
Or how about this?
It should still be able to be derived from the Bible.
It might be simpler.
And look, I don't want to explain everything
for the 50th time.
So I'm constantly pointing people to sermons
because I'm just like, I don't want to explain this again.
I already explained it too many times.
Listen to my sermon.
But you could theoretically get anything I preach
from the Bible on your own.
You don't need me.
Okay, so examine yourself, prove all things.
Don't get isolated.
Church makes you normal.
Let's bow your heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord,
and help us not to reject the commandments
that you've given us,
commandments like praising you
on an instrument of 10 strings.
Help us not to neglect your commandments
so that we can keep some tradition of man.
Lord, help us to always have the Bible
as our final authority and not a given church or preacher.
And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.